640

serious when precautions have to be taken against theoccurrence of a contingent and long-deferred event. Popularopinion is in such a case of no value whatever. The stimulusnecessary to set it in action is wanting. The emergency is

precisely of the kind for which drill is the remedy. Men

can be drilled to anything, but when the effect to be

eventually attained is so remote, as in this instance, fromthe means by which it is to be produced, nothing but drillavails to keep the means in active use and efficient condi-tion. We shall look, then, with much more interest to thedetails than to the main outlines of the Government scheme,already so long deferred, and shall be more disposed to relyupon methods in this matter than on men.

ALLEGED MILK INFECTION AND SCARLATINA.

MR. HENRY ARMSTRONG has prepared a very careful

report on an outbreak of scarlatina, in the Jesmond districtof Newcastle-on-Tyne, which is apparently associated withtho use of milk from a certain dairy. The outbreak wassudden and limited in duration, 19 cases in 16 householdsoccurring between January 27th and February 6th; and ofthe 19 attacks 17 occurred in persons having their milk fromthe same dairy. The milk came from Gosforth; but amongst50 families in that district taking the same supply no caseswere heard of; there were also 169 households in Newcastlewho had their milk from the same dairy, and who remainedunaffected. Suspicion, therefore, seems at first sight to freethe dairy itself, and this notwithstanding the fact that somescarlatina appears to have existed in the house of one of the

dairy workers some few months before the outbreak. Thecows are also declared to have been healthy, one onlyhaving had chapped teats ; but on this point we can hardly,in the present state of our knowledge, accept any definiteassurances. Coming next to the distribution of the milk,there was an incidental purchase of additional supplies inboth the Newcastle milk-walks, and although inquiry as tothese incidental sources of supply led to no results incul-pating them, the very occurrence complicates the storymaterially. However the milk became infected, the infectionmust have been a limited one both in point of time and inamount. Both milk-walks were attacked, one to the extentof 5t and the other to 9 per cent. of households supplied.But whilst the actual source of infection remains undis-covered, the report forms, by reason of its careful preparationand argumentation, a valuable addition to the subject ofdisease-distribution through the agency of milk services.

NURSING AT THE PRESENT DAY.

THE Princess Christian has done good service in a worthycause by placing before the general public a description ofthe life and training of a hospital nurse and the necessaryobjects aimed at by the British Nurses’ Association..Not-withstanding that much has already been written on thissubject, we are well aware that there still is need forsuch advocacy as that of the Royal authoress. Thenarrative of a nurse’s duties, their variety, their fre-

quent difficulty and constant responsibility, the dangerfrom disease implied in their discharge, the reason forwhat appears to many their superfluous detail, not

least their healthy action in educating the sympatheticbetter self of womanhood and the ready cheerfulness withwhich they are undertaken, will not sufft3r by frequentrepetition in the public ear. That self-denial is involved ina calling of this kind is certainly true, but no true womanwill consider this in itself a drawback. Unless the limitsof reasonable endurance be exceeded, or the asceticism ofnervous enthusiasts be allowed to colour with its morbid huethe aspect of such work, there must be in it something whole-somely engaging and refreshing to a generous nature. The life

of a nurse is not a martyrdom. It has, no doubt, its hardship?,and even its serious perils. It has also its hopes and its satis-faction. In its duties, whether they imply for the time beingthe seeming drudgery of probation or the vigilant labours ofexperience, there is always present the great interest of

reality, the centre about which life revolves. There is,therefore, in this useful sphere of effort much to attract

those whom health and leisure qualify to enter it. We maynow very shorcly direct attention to the purpose of theBritish Nurses’ Association. Founded on the maxim that" union is strength," it aims at uniting by a common bondof mutual assistance the fifteen thousand women at presentemployed as nurses throughout the kingdom. Its object istherefore a thoroughly natural one, and, judiciously carriedout in detail, must recommend itself as worthy of universalsuppot. -

THE AIR OF EDINBURGH THEATRES.

AN interesting account has been given by Mr. Cosmo J.Burton of the amount of carbonic acid and organic matterin the Theatre Royal and Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edin-burgh. At the time of the experiments the theatres were byno means full; nevertheless, the temperature was from tento fifteen degrees above that recorded immediately beforethe houses were opened, while carbonic acid was multipliedfrom three to five times. Mr. Burton remarks that thevitiation of the air proceeds with extraordinary rapidityat first, but the rate of change soon decreases, till towardsthe end of the performance the air becomes little or noworse, and, indeed, in a few instances it appeared to slightlyimprove. The atmosphere of all parts of the theatre was notequally vitiated ; the air of the gallery was considerablyworse than that of any other part of the house; the

amphitheatre, dress circle, and pit did not come in thesame order as to degree of impurity in the experiments,but the pit was always worse than the dress circle,The late Dr. Parkes stated that headache and vertigo areproduced when the amount of carbonic acid in the air ofrespiration is not more than from fifteen to thirty volumesper 10,000, and our experience of some theatres leads us tosuspect that Mr. Burton’s results are not special to Edin-burgh. The facts as to all theatres ought to be known;for the public had much better lose an evening’s enj’)y-ment than submit to the enforced inhalation of a polluted

atmosphere for a number of hours.

LOCAL FACIAL SWEATING.

AN investigation of the various observations made onlocal facial sweating will show that many instances are

, attended with increased redness and temperature in thearea in which the secretion is augmented, and in other cases

there are no such accompaniments. It is important to,

establish this distinction between cases attended with amodification of the capillary circulation and those in

which the vaso-motor perturbation is wanting, theI

nerves controlling sweating being alone affected. la

: 1876 Ostroumow and Luohsinger proved the independ-,

ence of vaso-motor and perspiratory phenomena in

their experiments cn the sciatic nerve of the cat, MM.

: Vulpian and Raymond think that the secretory fibres.

of the sweat glands of the face accompany tb3 vertebral. nerve, or else emanate from the bulbar filaments of the sym-’

pathetic. The cervical sympathetic is assumed to be para]3sedif there be hyperaemia, hyperthermia, hypersecretion, andl myosis. When there is hypersecretion with a dilated pupil

the explanation must be different. This group of symptoms, may be referred to an irritative lesion either of the trunk ofthe sympathetic or of a centre in the medulla oblongata.. Cases of medullary and cerebral lesion have, indeed, beenrecorded in which vaso-motor and sudatory troubles existed