"Fourth Disease." In The Lancet he has given at length a description of this affection and given it an entity as distinct as any of the eruptive fevers. He has seen it preceded and followed by them and considers it neither protective from nor protected by the others. The premonitory symptoms vary from none to severe. It appears usually in spring and summer. The incubation period varies from nine to twenty-one days. The rash, which is usually the first symptom, may resemble either measles or scarlet fever. Desquamation may be slight or considerable. The temperature may vary from normal to 104° Fahrenheit, and the pulse correspondingly. It usually subsides in a fortnight and there are practically no sequelæ. "Progressive Medicine" in commenting upon this subject refers to the confirination of DUKE's conclusion by Broadbent, RUTTER, and JOHNSTONE in The Lancet for July 28, 1900.

UREINE.

THIS is said to be a product resulting from the slow evaporation of urine, admixture with nitrate of silver, filtering and the evaporation of the filtrate. Its discovery is reported in the "International Clinics" as having been announced by OVID MOOR to the Thirteenth International Medical Congress. It is supposed to be the principal organic constituent of urine, more abundant than urea and the source of so-called uremia. It is described as having a pale yellowish color, a slightly bitter taste, a specific gravity of about one thousand two hundred and seventy, a feel as of a fatty substance and is freely miscible in water and alcohol in all proportions. It is believed to hold the peculiar odor of urine and has a remarkable faculty for taking up oxygen.

CONTEMPORARY.

THE BACTERIOLOGY OF GASTROENTERITIS.
[ARCHIVES OF pediatrics.]

WHILE writers of one hundred years ago attributed an infectious origin to cholera infantum, and compared it to the remitting fevers caused by marsh miasm, the impulse to the bacteriologic investigation of summer diarrhea was not given until ESCHERICH, in 1886, published his work on the intestinal bacteria of infants and their relation to the physiology of digestion. The first bacteriologic examination of stools during an epidemic of diarrhea was made by LESAGE and HAVEM in 1888. BAGINSKY'S work followed, but the most important and exhaustive studies were made by BOOKER from 1886 to 1897. As the result of these he called attention to three principal forms of summer diarrhea, based upon a correspondence of their clinic, anatomic and bacteriologic features: (1) dyspeptic or noninflammatory diarrhea, in which the obligatory milk-feces

bacteria are found, chiefly the bacillus coli communis, the bacillus lactis aerogenes appearing in smaller numbers; (2) streptococcus gastroenteritis, in which there is a general infection and ulceration of the intestine, with streptococci as the predominating forms, some bacilli being present as well; (3) bacillary gastroenteritis, charcterized by a general toxic condition with less intestinal inflammation, and the presence in the stools of several varieties of bacilli, the proteus vulgaris being the most common. ESCHERICH studied the streptococcus cases more closely (1897-1899) and found the cocci numerous and in almost pure culture in the stools in acute, severe cases, while it was possible to isolate them from the urine and the blood during life and from the viscera after death. The cocci occur in pairs or very short chains and resembled the pneumococcus or the meningococcus more closely than they do the ordinary streptococcus. Clinically the symptoms vary much in the mild and in the severe cases; the stools may be watery or contain much pus and blood. Staphylococci have also been found in diarrheal stools, but much less frequently than streptococci.

Later (1899) ESCHERICH described cases of dysentery (with croupous inflammation of the colon) due to a virulent colon bacillus, and designated the affection coli-colitis contagiosa. VALAGUSSA (1900) studied an epidemic of dysentery among children in which he found a bacillus belonging to the colon group and identical with that isolated by CELLI and FIOCCA from cases in Italy and Egypt. It was present in the stools in almost pure culture and gave a specific agglutinating reaction with the blood of patients ill with the disease. In 1898 SHIGA, in Japan, described the bacillus dysenteriæ, an organism more nearly related to the typhoid than to the colon group; and FLEXNER found the same bacillus in one form of acute dysentery studied in Manila. Both CELLI and ESCHERICH tried to identify the bacillus they described with that of SHIGA. The bacillus pyocyaneus has also been found in the stools of cases of epidemic infantile dysentery.

It is evident, then, that no specific bacterium of gastroenteritis has been found; that there is one form in which the streptococcus is the predominating organism; and that the bacillus dysenteriæ may possibly be proven to be the cause of epidemic dysentery both in children and in adults.

MEDICAL NEWS.

THE PUT-IN-BAY MEDICAL MEETING.

THE Mississippi Valley Medical Association, the second largest medical body in the United States, will hold its next meeting in Hotel Victory, Put-in-Bay Island, Lake Erie, Ohio, on the 12th, 13th and 14th of September, under the presidency of Doctor A. H. Cordier, of Kansas

1

City. The preliminary program announces forty-five papers by as many physicians, some of whom are located beyond the confines of the Mississippi Valley. Several Detroit physicians are listed to participate in the meeting. The address in Medicine will be delivered by Doctor Frank Billings, of Chicago; that in Surgery by Doctor Reginald Sayre, of New. York City. The annual banquet will be held on the evening of the first day; the reading of several papers with stereopticon exhibits and demonstrations will occupy the evening of the second day; while the president's address and the annual orations will be delivered on the three mornings of the meeting. A rate of one cent a mile is offered for the round trip. The secretary of the association is Doctor Henry E. Tuley, of Louisville, Kentucky.

MINOR INTELLIGENCE.

THE Dallas Medical College has been absorbed by the Trinity University of Texas, and will hereafter be known as the medical department of that institution.

THE Long Island College Hospital will erect a new building to replace the main structure of that institution. It will cost $175,000, over twothirds of which amount has already been secured.

THE American Medical Missionary College, of Chicago, will erect a new hospital and college building to cost $100,000. The site that will probably be selected is in the vicinity of Cook County Hospital.

THE following officers are in charge of the Grand Rapids Academy of Medicine for the current year: President, Doctor Hugo Lupinski; vicepresident, Doctor Henry Hulst; secretary, Doctor John R. Rogers; treasurer, Doctor Earl Bigham.

DOCTOR S. WIER MITCHELL, of Philadelphia, who is now traveling abroad, was recently entertained by the medical profession of Tokio and Yokohama at a reception given in honor of the distinguished physician at the Maple Club, Shiba Park.

THE Jackson County Medical Society held its quarterly meeting at Castle Hall, Jackson, Michigan, Tuesday, July 9, 1901. The program promised papers from Doctors Lewis, Main and Roberts of Jackson; Hubbard, of Parma; and Vaughan of Ann Arbor.

WOMEN will henceforth be admitted as students to Rush Medical College, the recently made medical school of the University of Chicago. Only the two lower classes will be allowed to enter at present, but next year accommodation will be made for the two higher classes.

DOCTOR NIELS FINSEN, of Copenhagen, has expressed the belief that greater results can be accomplished in the treatment of certain diseases by the application of sunlight than by x-rays, lupus and ulcers being especially mentioned as ailments amenable to the phototherapeutic innovation of which the doctor is the originator.

GERMANY has a society devoted to the study of medical history. It was organized as a consequence of the abolition of a section of the Association of German Scientists and Medical Practitioners, which had a

similar object for its purpose. Its promoters were Doctors Kahlbaum, of Basel; Pagel, of Berlin; and Sudhóff, of Hochdahl.

BARNEY MARTIN, a native of County Cavan, Ireland, and a man whose claim to have lived in three centuries has been authenticated, recently succumbed to heat prostration in the Borough of Brooklyn, New York, at the age of one hundred and nine years. Deceased came to America seventy-one years ago, and pursued the vocation of cab driver to within a decade of his demise, at which time he was employed as park laborer.

WOANDSU is a newly-discovered food plant of the leguminous class. It is indigenous to tropical Africa and is extensively cultivated by the negroes for food purposes. This fruit or nut has recently been analyzed by a French chemist, who found its constituents to be fifty-eight per cent. of starch, nineteen per cent. of nitrogenous matter, six per cent. of hydrocarbon, four per cent. of cellulose, three per cent. of ash, and ten per cent. of water.

THE mental depression often coincident with and subsequent to influenza is thought by the health commissioner of Chicago to be an important factor in the causation of suicide, which has greatly increased in that city during the past few years. This conclusion was reached after a careful investigation, and the coroner has been requested to institute special inquiry regarding the possible relation between the germ disease and self-destruction.

THE Ontario Medical Association elected the following officers at its recent annual meeting in Toronto: President, Doctor N. A. Powell, of Toronto; vicepresidents, Doctors R. Ferguson, of London, R. W. Garrett, of Kingston, L. C. Prevost, of Ottawa, and J. L. Turnbull, of Clinton; general secretary, Doctor H. C. Parsons, of Toronto; assistant secretary, Doctor George Elliott, of Toronto; treasurer, Doctor A. R. Gordon, of Toronto.

POPE LEO XIII tendered a luncheon to eight guests at the Vatican on July 4, in honor of the physicians who minister to his bodily ills, Doctors Lapponi and Nazzoni. According to report this is the first instance during the reign of the Sovereign Pontiff in which the hospitality of the Vatican table d'hote has been extended to anyone, notwithstanding His Holiness has officiated at the helm of Saint Peter twenty-three years. Surely these medical gentlemen should greatly appreciate the honor. The invited guests occupied a table in the center of the dining room, while Leo functionated as host at a table in the exclusiveness of an alcove window.

THE Philippine Commission has established a government biologic and chemic laboratory in the archipelago. The general laboratory and its several branches will be conducted under the superintendency of Professor Paul C. Freer, M. D., of the University of Michigan, who has accepted the position at a salary of four thousand dollars a year. A health board consisting of a commissioner, a sanitary engineer, a chief inspector, a secretary, and a laboratory superintendent, has also been established by the commission. Honorary membership, without the privilege of voting, will be enjoyed in the board by the chief army and navy surgeons and the dean of the medical and pharmaceutical association. The health commissioner will receive a salary of six thousand dollars a year.

A SANITARY CONVENTION will be held under the auspices of the Michigan State Board of Health at Ludington, Thursday and Friday, September 5 and 6, 1901. It will consider (1) Sewerage. (2) Water-supplies. (3) Milk-supplies. (4) Restriction of Communicable Diseases. (5) Restriction and Prevention of Consumption. (6) Hygiene of the Home.

THE medical board of the Lansing Hospital for the quarter embracing July, August, and September, is as follows: Rush J. Shank, M. D., chief of staff; L. Anna Ballard, M. D., secretary. Consulting surgeons: R. C. Mahaney, M. D., Owosso; T. M. Sanford, M. D., De Witt; M. Coad, M. D., Williamston. Attending surgeons: George E. Ranney, M. D., J. A. Post, M. D., C. D. Black, M. D. Consulting Physicians: F. N. Turner, M. D., Webberville; G. B. Wade, M. D., Laingsburg; F. D. Woodworth, M. D., Mason. Attending physicians: E. D. North, M. D., J. H. Wellings, M. D., V. W. Conner, M. D., George L. Garner, M. D., O. A. Tooker, M. D., H. A. Carpenter, M. D. Consulting oculist: David H. Bokhoff, M. D. Attending oculist: C. M. Dickson, M. D. Consulting gynecologists: O. H. Freeland, M. D., Mason; R. H. Nichols, M. D., Onondaga; G. A. Austin, M. D., Laingsburg. Attending gynecologists: H. W. Landon, M. D., C. M. Watson, M. D., Harry A. Haze, Microscopist, F. N. Williams, M. D. Consulting obstetricians: Edward North, M. D., Holt; N. A. Dryer, M. D., Bath. Attending obstetricians: Cora P. Ganung, M. D., Philo A. Tyler, M. D., S. Gertrude Norris, M. D.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

REVIEWS.

ECZEMA.*

THE author of this little book has enjoyed rare opportunities for observing this disease and embodied the results of his studies in a lucid style and comprehensive text.

*By L. Duncan Bulkley, A. M., M. D., of New York. Third edition, entirely rewritten. G. P. Putnam's Son, New York and London, 1901.

TEXT-BOOK UPON THE PATHOGENIC BACTERIA.*

IN the preface the author warns the reader that this work treats of pathogenic bacteria, as the title implies, and not of the whole subject of parasites. No one will be disappointed in its brevity, however, but will find instead a practical and valuable work, full of the information most needed. This, the third edition, brings the subject well up to date.

*By Joseph McFarland, M. D., Professor of Pathology in the MedicoChirurgical College, Philadelphia. Pages, 621, with 142 illustrations. W. B. Saunders & Company, Philadelphia.