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tions of the kind can be received. The terms on which the

profession in Italy are invited to assist at the Congressare liberal enough to show the interest taken by the Govern-ment in its success-a ten-franc subscription entitling thesubscriber to travel by railway at reduced fares and toreceive a copy of the official Atti di Congresso. " Repre-sentatives of the profession from foreign countries are also,as we can testify, cordially welcomed on these occasions bytheir Italian brethren, and British.practitioners or consultantswhose autumnal holiday may find them in Rome during thelast week of October would find much to interest and gratifythem in the proceedings of the Congress. With this view,applications for tickets of membership should be made toDr. Edoardo Maragliano, professor of clinical medicine inthe Genoese school (Via Galata, 39, Genoa), who has beencommissioned by the organising committee to furnish all

applicants with the required information.

LAVATORIES AT RAILWAY STATIONS.

ANYTHING that seriously affects the comfort of the largerhalf of the English people can hardly be a matter of trivialconsequence, and this is of course the more true if the healthof so many persons is at the same time involved. Such amatter is public lavatory accommodation, respecting whichcomplaints have recently been heard that due provision hasnot been made for the larger-that is, the female-section ofthe community. A lady writes to us objecting to the pennytax imposed on those of her sex who make use of this formof convenience at railway stations. We confess that wecan to some extent appreciate, though we do not per-haps entirely sympathise, with her view on the subject.In so far as the needful relief of physical discomfort is con-cerned the railway companies are certainly bound to provideamply for it. This, we allow, is not done at most railwaystations, and herein there is clearly room for improvement.At the same time it must not be forgotten that sometimeseven passenger trains are fitted with needful appliancefor securing a fair measure of comfort. Curiously andalso culpably enough the purpose of cleanliness is aptto be more evident than its practice in this case, for manyof the lavatories are by no means well kept. When, how-

ever, we come to questions of copious water-supply and thefinding of well-washed linen towels we confess that the rightto charge a trifle seems to us to be fully justified. The

lesser, coarser, and in many ways inferior male half of thepopulation are in this respect no more highly favoured thantheir feminine betters.

INJECTION OF MILK INTO THE VEINS.

A CORRESPONDENT writes to ask us whether the state-

ment contained in Cope’s Natural History of 1864 betrue that "if milk be injected into a vein it will quicklybecome fatal, and that with more certain destruction thaneven the venom of the viper. " Our correspondent also wantsto know, if this be true, how is the danger brought about. Itis not the first time these questions have been submitted tous for answer, and we admit they are difficult because theevidence is conflicting. It would seem that in some casesnew milk injected into a vein undergoes coagulation and bythe immediate plugging of the veins which it induces causes

rapid death from mechanical arrest of the circulation. Wehave reason to know that this has been proved by experiment,and also that on injecting fresh milk into the peritoneal cavityof a narcotised animal, in order to ascertain if there wouldbe absorption of the fluid from the peritoneal surface,absorption of the saline and watery part, with coagula-tion of the caseine in rather a dense layer over the intestinalsurface has been demonstrated. These facts would seem to

give credence to the statement that milk cannot be safelyinjected into the system; but there are other experiences that

modify that view. In 1854 the late Dr. W. Bird Herapath ofBristol suggested that milk should be injected into the veinsof persons in the collapse of cholera ; and it is the fact that

Dr. James Bovell of Toronto did inject milk in such cases inthe cholera sheds of Toronto in the same year, acting inde-pendently on his own suggestion. Dr. Bovell reported on sixcases in which he injected fresh cow’s milk and two of thecases recovered. It was objected by ourselves and byothers at the time that two cases afforded insuffi-cient evidence of a direct advance in practice, and

that the quantities of milk transfused-twelve ounces

in one case and eight ounces in the other-were too

small to give assurance of positive results apart fromother influences that were at work and that would accountfor the recoveries. At the same time the experiences provedthat there are circumstances under which milk can be injectedinto the venous circuit without danger, and that one of thosecircumstances is a condition when this remedial measure is

most demanded and most promising. For the moment we

may leave the matter with two suggestions-namely, thatthe danger which may result from the presence of milk inthe veins is not septic, but is from coagulation of the milkand the plugging arising therefrom ; and that if this

danger could be prevented very important results mightbe obtainable from transfusion of milk in collapse of thecholeraic type.

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FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISEASES.

DR. W. H. THOMSON of New York recently read a paperbefore the Association of American Physicians on the abovesubject. An abstract is given in the Boston Medical andSurgical Journal of June 30th. The term functional" has

been applied in general to nervous diseases in which nocharacteristic organic changes have yet been demonstrated.Most writers, however, regard the term as only provisional,on the assumption that some kind of structural changein nervous matter must underlie every definite nervous dis-order and that such change will in time be found. Dr.Thomson has long been of opinion that there are inter-mittent nervous disorders which cannot be explained by anyhypothesis of changes in nervous matter, whether molecularor otherwise, but are to be explained by the varied states ofthe blood. By a proper selection of functional poisons someclose imitations of functional neuroses can be artificially in-duced and cause neuralgia, paralysis, delirium, convulsionsand all intermittent symptoms of the kind, and then it is notedthat these symptoms disappear in about the time and orderthat the functional nervous attacks decline. Another corre-

spondence between functional poisons and functionalneuroses is that in both pathological anatomy affords noassistance in the explanation of the results. Modern

chemistry has shown that in the healthiest processes of ourdigestion a whole series of poisons are elaborated which areof the same nature as the functional poisons with which wehave been long familiar, and are quite sufficient to cause

every variety of functional nervous derangement and even tokill, without the microscope or scalpel being able to tell why.Against the perils of auto-infection the system is providedwith a variety of safeguards. One of the most efficient seemsto be the antiseptic properties of the digestive secretions,which keep the putrefactive processes in the alimentarycanal in check. The liver also subserves a preservativefunction against auto-infection. But the complex che-

mistry of these secretions is liable to numerous dis-

turbing influences, notably nervous irritations. If nervousinfluences are capable of deranging the chemistry of the

body, why may not such perturbances of nervous origin,occurring now and then as nervous actions characteristicallydo, suffice to produce either increased amounts of alkaloidalpoisons or else to diminish the effectiveness of the normal