and on its careful removal, it was found obstructed by a small body about the size and shape of a bean, lodged about half an inch from its connection to the cæcum. Beyond this, the vermiform process was gangrenous; there was a small perforation at its extremity, from which the feculent matter had escaped. The mucous coat of the caput coli was red, thickened, and covered with small granules of lymph; the remaining portion of the colon was healthy. Several folds of the ileum and jejunum were adherent by recently formed lymph, but there was very little effusion into the abdominal cavity.

Stomach and spleen, normal.

Liver about its natural size, of a yellowish granular structure; the gall bladder was filled by dark, greenish, inspissated bile; gall ducts clear.

Kidnies. The left enlarged, and in the early stage of granular disease; right, healthy. Sincerely yours,

G. A. SABINE, M. D.

MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS.

The following appointments of Professors have recently been made: University of Pennsylvania.-James B. Rogers, M. D., Professor of Chemistry, vice Professor Hare, resigned.

Ohio Medical College.-Professor L. M. Lawson, of the University Transylvania, Professor of Materia Medica, vice Prof. Harrison, transferred to the Chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine.

Hampden Sidney College.-Charles Bell Gibson, M.D., Professor of Surgery, vice Professor Warner, deceased.

University of New York.-Professor S. H. Dickson, of the Medical College of South Carolina, Professor of Theory and Practice, vice Professor Revere, deceased.

College of Physicians and Surgeons of the city of New York.Professor Alonzo Clark, of Pittsfield, Lecturer on Physiology and Pathology.

Medical College of South Carolina.-Dr. Bellinger, Professor of Surgery, in the place of Professor Geddings, transferred to the Chair of Practice, vice Dr. Dickson, resigned.

Philadelphia College of Medicine.-Henry Gibbons, M. D., Professor of Institutes and Practice of Medicine, vice Prof. Thomas D. Mitchell, resigned. D. P. Gardiner, M. D., Prof. of Chemistry, vice Professor Allen, resigned. Louis H. Beatty, M. D., Professor of Obstetrics.

Hampden Sidney College and University of Virginia.-Professor Cabell, whose appointment to the Chair of Surgery in Hampden Sidney College was recently announced, declines the appointment, and retains his connexion with the University of Virginia.

ANNUAL ANNOUNCEMENTS.

We have received the following Annual Announcements and Catalogues of Medical Colleges:

Annual Announcement of the Medical Department of Illinois College Jacksonville, Ill. Session of 1847-8.

This College has five professors. The lectures commence on the first Monday in November and continue four months. Number of the last class, 39; of graduates, 13.

Fifth Annual Announcement for 1847-48, and Catalogue for 1846-47, of the Rush Medical College, Chicago, Ill.

Rush Medical College has six Professors. The lectures commence on the first Monday of November, and continue sixteen weeks. Number of the class attending the last session, 70; of graduates, 16.

Catalogue of the officers and students of the Medical Department of Hampden Sidney College, in Richmond, Virginia. Session of

1846-47.

The Faculty consists of six Professors. The lectures commence on the first of November, and continue until the third week in March. Number of the class, 75; of graduates, 17.

Annual Circular and Catalogue of the Medical Department of the University of Buffalo.

Number of Professors, 7; of the class, 67; of graduates, 18.

The lectures commence on the last Wednesday in February, and

continue sixteen weeks.

CORRECTION.

The last number of the Examiner contained an elaborate article on the principal antidotes or counter poisons, without the proper credit. It was translated by a young friend for the Examiner, from the Annuaire de Thérapeutique of Bouchardat, for 1847.

RECORD OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.

Ship Fever at the Bellevue Hospital.

To the EDITOR of the New York Journal of Medicine:

Dear Sir:-In compliance with your request, I send you the enclosed brief statement of my observations and experience at Bellevue Hospital, during the late prevalence of Ship Fever, in the midst. of which I was appointed to the charge of the establishment, in May last.

Your readers are doubtless informed of the immense influx of pauper immigration into the port of New York, especially from Ireland, during the present year. Their impoverished condition by reason of the famine at home, had superinduced a morbid predisposition, which only needed, an exciting cause to develope those functional disturbances, which characterize fever. Their circumstances on ship-board, being crowded together between decks, to an extent little short of that said to be resorted to in slavers; short of provisions, and even of water; without the possibility of cleanliness or ventilation; presented a combination of morbid agencies which could scarcely fail to generate not merely fever, but pestilential fever, in some malignant form. Amid such accumulated filth and wretchedness, it is not at all wonderful that such frightful reports of disease and death should herald almost every arrival; nor could it reasonably be expected otherwise, than that our hospitals and almshouses should be crowded with the sufferers, borne thither on landing, either already sick, or so deeply infected as to render escape from an attack of fever scarcely possible.

Such has accordingly been the fact, and to an extent which may be estimated from the following statistical items prepared from the best data found in the hospital.

From the 1st of January, 1847, to May 25th, this hospital was under the charge of my predecessor in office, who admitted during this period 769 cases, many of thein direct from ship-board. Of these, as appears by the record, 306 were discharged cured-154 died, and 309 remained in the hospital under treatment, a large portion of whom were nearly moribund, when I assumed the charge as resident physician.

At that time, May 26th, 1847, there were over 800 patients in the house, 309 were suffering with ship-fever. Cases of the latter description were then admitted at the rate of 60 to 80 per day, so that within a week or two, notwithstanding deaths and discharges, the number had increased to 1147 in the hospital, over 600 o: whom were ill with the ship-fever.

With this large number, being so much beyond the capacity of the hospital buildings to accommodate, and alike beyond the available re

sources of the establishment, to furnish immediate supplies, very great suffering, and appalling mortality were unavoidable, until other and more extended facilities could be provided. The crowded state of the wards, which could not be adequately ventilated or even cleansed, had already resulted in developing an endemic atmosphere, for only in confined and impure air is this fever ever infectious. The proof that it had become so, was seen in the fact that a majority of the medical assistants had already sickened, and one of them had died. Many of the nurses were sick and some of them dead. Moreover, the adjacent alms-house building, with a population of 1500, began to give proof of having become infected, no less than 17 cases of the identical form of fever having occurred within 48 hours, some of which were rapidly fatal.

Under these appalling circumstances, 80 tents were pitched upon the adjacent green, and were immediately filled with the patients from crowded wards, which thus admitted of being whitewashed, cleansed and ventilated. A number of shanties in the yard were soon filled in like manner and for the same purpose. By these and the like extemporaneous devices, ample room was provided for the increasing number of patients, and a thorough purification of the apartments was attained. And here, as in other cases, it was soon demonstrated, that the patients who were removed into the open air immediately improved, and a very large portion of them soon recovered. The new cases were very generally placed in the tents, and my records show that over 200 cases were discharged cured from the tents, no one of whom had entered the walls of the hospital.

But to return to the statistics of the hospital. It appeared by the books that from May 25th to August 3d, 1847, there were admitted into the hospital 917 cases of ship-fever, which, added to those remaining in the house, makes the aggregate of cases treated within that period amount to 1226 during about ten weeks.

By a table, prepared August 3d, the following results are furnished,

From these respective data, the whole number of cases of ship. fever admitted into this hospital since Jan. 1st, 1847, has been 1995, of whom 347 have died, which latter number gives the aggregate mortality, down to Aug. 3d, the date to which the calculations have been made. It gives an appalling aspect to the fever, but furnishes no just criterion of the necessary fatality of the disease, nor of its want of amenability to judicious treatment; as appears from the fact that a very large proportion of the cases were brought in suffering under the profound coma which characterizes late periods of the disease, and still worse, very many were moribund when they reached

the hospital. No less than 17 died during one week, within four hours after admission, while four, during the same week, were dead before they could be carried to their beds. The folly and inhumanity of sending dying persons in a heavy carriage over the rough pavements, to so distant a hospital, must be painfully obvious, extinguishing, as it often does, the spark of life which remains, and which else might possibly be revivified.

The following extracts from the weekly reports since May 26th, 1847, though they include deaths from all diseases, may aid in arriving at the comparative mortality, before and after the cleansing and ventilation of the hospital, and the removal of hundreds of the sick for treatment into the open air; a measure resorted to in this instance from necessity, but found highly salutary and useful, especially in the management of ship-fever.

No. of patients.

Deaths.

9th "

During this period, the cases of ship-fever numbered about one half of all the diseases in the house; and differing but little from this ratio in the proportion of deaths, showing that the mortality, of late, is not greater than that resulting from other diseases. Since Aug. 3d, the cases of fever have been diminishing rapidly, and the whole mortality of the hospital has not exceeded 18 weekly. At present, Aug. 23, there are not more than 50 cases of the fever in the establishment, the most of these having been landed at Quebec, whence they have found their way to this city, and these less malignant and dangerous than those we have heretofore treated.

This subsidence of the fever, so that the discharges now exceed the admissions, has reduced the aggregate of patients below 700, so that the tents have now been emptied, and I find ample room for all in the wards of the hospital; while the comfortable state of these wards, and the encouraging condition of the sick, are sources of no small gratification.

In respect to the peculiar nature and specific character of this fever, the late period at which the patients generally reached the hospital, has precluded very accurate observations. Occasional opportunities, however, have occurred for watching its inception and progress in the persons who sickened on our premises. Many of these came hither from on ship-board apparently in health, but really in a state of morbid predisposition, though latent, which soon after developed itself in an attack of the fever, as well characterized as were the cases which had fully developed the disease on board of the same ships. While