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but angular-a circumstance that much increases the range of motion for a given hygrometric alteration.

Mr. Ullman has utilized this singular plant by attaching it to a sort of weather-dial, so constructed that its index is made to point to different indications of weather according to its degree of dilatation or contraction, and is very confident that he can predict all important changes in the weather by it twenty-four hours beforehand. At present we have had but little opportunity of verifying this power, as our spring weather here is so variable that we have half a dozen different kinds of weather within forty-eight hours, and it would be difficult to say which was foretold by a given movement of the indicator. But we are able to say that the first specimen which we subjected to meteorological influences foretold its own destruction, having indicated by a complete backward revolution, twelve hours beforehand, a violent storm; the effects of which, however, spite of its prophetic powers, it was, Cassandra-like, unable to avert, but was swept away from its attachment, and its index broken off short in the process.

We are much interested in the Indicator, and shall report further from it hereafter. It has a hard Arabic name besides the one we have given, which our readers could not pronounce if we gave it; at least, we have ourselves seriously damaged a tooth in the attempt.

For sale at A. Stretch's, corner of Union and College streets, and Demoville & Co.'s, opposite the Post-office, Nashville, and at other drugstores in the city.

MEDICAL NEWS FROM CHICAGO.

WE observe that the Faculty of Rush Medical College, Chicago, has sustained an important loss in the persons of Professors Davis, Johnson, and Byford. We hear rumors of the organization of a new Medical College in that city. We also observe that the Chicago Medical Journal has passed from the editorial control of Prof. Davis into that of Prof. Brainard.

Prof. Brainard has recently amputated the lower extremity of a youth, aged seventeen, at the hip-joint. This, it appears, is the seventh time this operation has been performed in the United States. Of the other six operations, four were successful.

The first, very imperfectly recorded, was by Dr. Walter Brashear, of Bardstown, Ky., 1806.

The second, by Dr. Valentine Mott, of New York.

The third by Dr. J. F. May, then of Washington City, now of Shelby Medical College, Nashville, 1850.

The fourth by Dr. H. A. Potter, of Geneva, New York.

Of the three recorded in Dr. Eve's book, Dr. May's was the only one which was performed according to the usage now in vogue, (Beclard's method;) Dr. Brashear's having been performed as an amputation at the middle of the thigh, and the bone afterwards resected to the acetabulum.

Dr. Potter's was intended at first for an amputation three inches below the trochanter major; and the articulation being then explored and found to be diseased, the incisions were extended and the head of the bone excised.*

NEW VIEWS OF GLYCOGENY OR SUGAR FORMATION IN ANIMALS.

THE indefatigable Bernard has entered upon a new field of discovery. Soon after his discovery of the sugar-forming property of the liver, he made the additional observation that sugar could be found abundantly in all parts of the young animal during foetal life; but he has now ascertained that at a period when the foetal liver is not sufficiently developed for the performance of this function, the placenta develops in its substance a sort of glandular structure capable of secreting large quantities of glycogenic (sugar-forming) substance.

The paper which details this discovery has already been translated by us, together with one by M. Serres, affirming a correspondent glycogenic function in the germinal membrane of the chicken during the early period of incubation. Both these will appear in our next. Meanwhile we invite the attention of our readers to some observations of Mr. Pavy, published in the present number, which seem to show that during life this glycogenic matter (a sort of animal starch) does not pass into the saccharine condition, though capable of doing so very rapidly after death.

* Vide Eve's Remarkable Cases, p. 561, et seq.

EDITORIAL CHANGE.

into new

WE observe that the Belton Medical Journal, Ohio, is to pass hands; this also we regret, as we have always admired the elevated spirit in which the Journal has thus far been conducted. We also regret that a little well-meant badinage of ours relating to the dimensions of the Journal was taken seriously. We beg our contemporary to reflect that the medical editor has some very dry and thorny work to do, and that it would be hard that we should be prohibited from indulging in a kindly joke occasionally. We are ourselves fond enough of a little fun to believe that, when well meant and well received, it is like charity in Shakspeare's immortal poetry:

"It is twice blessed:

It blesses him that gives and him that takes."

PROFESSIONAL CHANGE.

WE observe announced in some of our exchanges the resignation by Dr. Alfred Stillé, of the Chair of Practice in the Medical Department of the College of Pennsylvania. We much regret to observe this brilliant faculty breaking up, as we fear the resignation of Dr. Richardson last summer, and that of Dr. Stillé this spring, must shake the deservedly high estimation which the school has gained in all quarters. Not but that Dr. Richardson's was replaced by an excellent name in Dr. M'Clellan, and we hope to see a distinguished personage occupying the now vacant chair; but in so admirably selected a faculty as this, any change is to be deplored.

OUR NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

WE have great pleasure in welcoming among our contributors Dr. L. Bauer, of Brooklyn, L. I., whose excellent lecture upon the diseases of the hip-joint will, we think, interest a large class of our readers; his diagnostic tables will be found of great practical value. In our next number we shall give the concluding portion of the lecture, embracing the treatment

of hip disease, and illustrated by some illustrative cases, admirably reported by Dr. Johnson, his colleague in the Long Island Hospital. This portion of the lecture will be illustrated by wood-cuts of apparatus, which Dr. Bauer with great courtesy sends us from New York.

NOTICE.

THE present number of the Record will come into the world without the customary obstetric aid from its editor during the latter stages of parturition, as we expect to be meeting our professional brethren at Louisville during that interesting period. If, therefore, any thing should not appear in strict professional form, it must be attributed to the fact that Mr. Stitt, our publisher and locum tenens for the time, though an excellent proof-reader and accomplished gentleman, is not much of a doctor.

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A CLINICAL LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE LONG ISLAND COLLEGE HOSPITAL, OF BROOKLYN.

By LOUIS BAUER, M. D., M. R. C. S., (Eng.,)

LICENTIATE OF N. Y. STATE MED. 80C.; CORRESP. FELLOW OF THE LONDON MED. 800.; MEMBER OF THE N. Y. PATHOLOGICAL SOC.; PROFESSOR AND SURGEON TO THE LONG ISLAND COLLEGE HOSPITAL, ETC.

Treatment. The treatment hitherto, and we apprehend still, pursued in hip-joint disease, is, to say the least, very deficient and unreliable. Honest and unbiased surgeons will admit this. The idea that this malady is of a specific dyscrasic character has been disastrous by slighting the importance of local appliances. For many years have Dr. Physick, Sir Benj. Brodie, and Prof. Bonnet, of Lyons, inculcated the rule of rest for joint diseases, and yet how few surgeons have followed their advice! A most dangerous and culpable indifference to this imperative maxim has widely spread, and those may be even sneered at and set down as charlatans who dare to deviate from the orthodox plan of "laisser

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