1310

urgently needed. His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victorwill formally open the Royal Jubilee Wards in the NationalChildren’s Hospital, Dublin, on Wednesday, the 29th inst.ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS: BEQUEST BY THE LATE

DR. JOHN BARKER.

The College of Surgeons has had a sum of more thanB1000 transferred to its credit, being a legacy by thelate Dr. John Barker, formerly a Curator and Examiner of Ithe College. Dr. Barker wished the money to be expendedin prizes for the best dissections sent in by medical students,the prize to be awarded by the Curator of the College, thePresident, and the Professor of Anatomy in the Universityof Dublin. The sum of .E10 was to be given to theCurator to entertain, in the College if possible, the successfulstudent. Counsel’s opinion was obtained as to whether thismoney could be utilised for general College purposes or forprizes for dissections, and as a result the Council were in-formed that they should follow the directions of thetestator’s will, unless they could not be carried out.

CORK-STREET FEVER HOSPITAL.

From the eighty-third annual report of this institution, Ilearn that of 709 cases treated in the hospital during theyear, 59 died, or 10 31 per cent. Were it not for a prolongedepidemic of scarlatina existing in the city, the total numberof zymotic diseases would have fallen far short of thosetreated during previous years. There were only sixty-twocases of typhus fever under treatment during the past year,a number below any previous record in the hospital. The

mortality from scarlatina was only 8’72 per cent.Deputy Surgeon-General R. Webb has taken over the

duties of principal medical officer for the Dublin district.The late Mr. Richard Kemmis has left £100 respectively

to the Adelaide and Meath Hospitals, Dublin.Dublin, June 21st.

BELFAST.

(From our own Correspondent.)

THE ULSTER MEDICAL SOCIETY.

AT a meeting of the members of this Society, held lastweek,, it was decided, upon the motion of Professor Dill,seconded by Dr. Gibson, that an address be forwardedto Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of her Jubilee.The address was then adopted, in which attention is drawnto the interesting fact that the Ulster Medical Society isone of the oldest madical organisations in Ireland, havingwitnessed Her Majesty’s birth, coronation, and happy reignof half a century.DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL HOSPITAL.

Iregrettohaveto announce thedeath of W. T. B. Lyons. D.L,President of the Board of Management of the Royal Hos-pital, which took place under exceptionally sad circumstanceson May 4th. The deceased gentleman was suddenly seizedwith illness while presiding at the weekly meeting of theHospital Board of Management. He was removed to thesuperintendent’s room, and thence to his daughter’s residence,where, a few hours after his sudden seizure, he succumbed,his death being due to cerebral haemorrhage. Mr. Lyonswas one of the warmest friends of the Royal Hospital, andas chairman of the Board of Management he always displayedgreat tact, judicial wisdom, and kindness. No one has asyet been appointed as his successor.

THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE PORTADOWN TOWN.

COMMISSIONERS.

At a special meeting of the Portadown Town Com-missioners held last week Dr. George Dougan was re-electedchairman for the ensuing year, having already occupiedthat position for the past two years. Dr. Dougan had cometo the meeting determined not to hold office any longer;but so unanimous and cordial was the request of his brothercommissioners that he would again preside, that he ulti-mately acceded to their wish.

EPIDEMIC OF ROTHELN.

During the past two months Belfast has been visited bya very widespread epidemic of German measles. The typeof the disease, as a rule, has been mild, but adults have

suffered much more when attacked than children. In someof the public schools its spreading has been much facilitatedby the fact that parents have in some cases, from the mild-ness of the attack, allowed their children to go on attendingclasses. 1 have not heard of any fatal cases. The enlarge-ment of the glands at the back of the neck has been a markedfeature in the epidemic.

THE ULSTER EYE, EAR, AND THROAT HOSPITAL.

In the printed report of this hospital I find thatDr. McKeown gives a very interesting tabular statement offorty-nine cases of cataract for the year 1886. In all exceptthree the new operation by injection was done, a methodwhich was first introduced by Dr. McKeown in 1884, andwhich has the advantage that by it patients need not waituntil the cataract is ripe, but can be operated upon morespeedily and with greater ease and certainty than formerly.This is the second series of cases published by Dr. McKeown.

Belfast, June 21st.

PARIS.

(From our own Correspondent.)

PROPHYLAXIS OF SYPHILIS.

AT the two last meetings of the Academy of Medicine,Professor Fournier read the report of the commissionappointed to inquire into this question, and the importanceof the document may be understood from the fact that thefirst instalment takes up nearly thirty pages of the Bulletinde l’Académie. The best résumé of it is given by theGazette Hebdomadaire, which sensibly moderates theeminent professor’h somewhat undue raciness of descrip-tion, at the same time weeding out some of the more

questionable neologisms-e.g., to quote but a single ex-ample, such expressions as the hybrid "polymortality."This report is the basis of the propositions submitted by thecommission to the Academy in order to be transmitted tothe Government with the view of showing to what extentsyphilis is a permanent danger to the public health, andwhat means should be taken to remedy this danger. Thedisease, says the reporter, is, indeed, disastrous and dan-gerous through its multiple consequences, individualsocial, and hereditary. It is, with alcoholism, one of thegravest social evils of the present time. It is looked uponin society as the result of a series of successive contamina-tions rather than the consequence of a single contagion,and it is therefore supposed to be evidence of an ill-spent lifeof debauch. This view is erroneous. Syphilis is contagious,like all other contagious diseases-i.e., it results not fromrepeated infections, but from one alone. There are numbersof people who acquire the disease from what ProfessorFournier terms "moral virtuous," or purely accidental, con-tagions, but syphilis, both deserved and undeserved, has &

common origin. The infection of a virtuous wife and thecontamination of a child may most often be traced back todisease of a prostitute ; hence the consequence that to com-bat syphilis in the latter is to protect both the virtuouswife and child. Public interest requires that such an evilshould be repressed by general measures capable of reachingit at its source. These measures are of three kinds: 1. Theextension of the disease may be restrained by administrativeor police regulations to prevent provocations in the publicthoroughfares, by what is called the inscription or registrationof prostitutes, which brings them under police and sanitarysupervision, by the inspection of those establishments which,under the names of taverns and drinking bars, are in realitynothing else than houses of assignation. 2. Syphilis maybe checked, in the second place, by treatment by hospital-isation-i.e., by extinguishing its germs of contagion.3. It may be combated not less efficiently by teachingthe rising medical generation more thoroughly than hashitherto been done all that concerns the symptom of thisdisease in its different forms, its social dangers, and itstreatment. As regards measures of administrative pro-phylaxis, the Commission was unanimous in declaring thatprostitution constitutes a public danger by the contagionwhich it disseminates in the population. It is therefore in-dispensable, both on hygienic and moral grounds, that itshould be supervised, and, if necessary, repressed by th&public authorities. The measures proposed for this purpose