47THE NOTIFICATION OF CHOLERA AND THE DRESDEN CONFI:REI’(’,E.

denly fell asleep whilst shaving a customer. The attacks

became increasingly frequent until they seized him severaltimes a day in all positions and in spite of every effort

on his part to prevent them. Some were slight and almostmomentary, others of longer duration. During an attack hishead fell forwards on his chest and his face became intenselycongested. The attacks also occurred in bed. His ordinarysleep was very light and he frequently passed the greater partof the night in a semi-wakeful condition. He has been asomnambulist since childhood; and although when in thisstate he is usually quiet, he has been occasionally violent. Noconvulsion has been witnessed at any time, and treatmentso far has been ineffectual. The remarkable increase in

weight of this patient is very curious. A patient sufferingfrom similar attacks, described by Dr. Morrison in the Practa-tioner of 1889, weighed 259 lib. These attacks are certainly, Ias Dr. Jacoby insists, of great importance medico-legally,just as are their congeners of petit mal, with which auto-matism is so often associated. Where such a condition is

present it is important, if possible, to obtain corroborative i,evidence of epilepsy, and in the case of the last patient it is ’

significant that the tongue showed scars and the patientconfessed that it was often sore and swollen. But such evi-

dence may not always be forthcoming, and then the natureand circumstances of the sleeping attacks and the absence ofrecollection or knowledge of them may have to be reliedupon. Dr. Jacoby’s object is to show that sleeping attacks,occurring alone or in combination with other symptoms, if ofbrief duration and followed by amnesia, are probably epilepticin character. If somnambulism is also present the probability ’,becomes a certainty.

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THE NOTIFICATION OF CHOLERA AND THEDRESDEN CONFERENCE.

A CURIOUS announcement comes from Vienna. It is statedthat an official intimation has been given by France to thedifferent Governments who signed the Convention at Dresdento the effect that cholera has broken out in the Departmentof Gard, in France; and it is further stated that the FrenchGovernment is to be congratulated on having thus officiallyconfirmed the news of the appearance of the epidemic onFrench soil. If this is the sort of information which is to be

forthcoming as the result of the Dresden Convention we

might just as well have remained without it. Every reader of i

a newspaper has known for months past that cholera has pre- I,vailed in epidemic form, first in the north-west and then in the ’Isouth of France, and also that every effort has been made z’

to minimise the significance of these occurrences. It was, we

believe, at the instigation of France that the notification tobe given to other countries by one that was infected withcholera was only to take place after an actual foyer hadbeen created. We assume that a foyer is now regarded ashaving taken place. If so, our intimations of cholera fromFrance will come long after European and other countrieshave known all about it, and after the necessary precautionsagainst shipping from France have already been matured.Whatever difficulties there may be in determining whatamount of cholera ought or ought not to be notified, one thingis certain, that to wait for the production of a foyer is to waituntil the notification is useless. From this point of view theDresden Convention already calls for modification.

SPINAL SYMPTOMS AND PHIMOSIS.

A CURIOUS and interesting condition is described by SolonChomatianos in the Progres Médical and an abstract of the

paper appears in a recent number of the Ne1trologischesCent’l’alblatt. The patient was an officer aged fifty-eight, whohad always enjoyed good health and had never suffered fromsyphilis. His symptoms consisted of incontinence of urine,paresis of both lower extremities, ataxy in walking or in

standing with his eyes closed, loss of the knee-jerk andfinally immobility of the pupils to light. The patient sufferedfrom phimosis, which had followed balanitis of two years"duration. There was no other sensory change or symptomof spinal disease, and after the phimosis had been relievedall the symptoms disappeared and the patient completelyrecovered.

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THE LOSS OF H.M.S. "VICTORIA."

WHILST we are glad of the opportunity of offering oursincere congratulations to the medical officers whose namesare amongst the list of those saved from this ill-fated vessel,we desire to add our expressions of sorrow and regret atwhat must be regarded as a great national calamity. TheVictoria was a new and magnificent vessel, manned by thepick of the Mediterranean fleet, and carried the flag of one ofour ablest and most popular admirals. The short intervalthat elapsed between the time that the ironclad vessel wasstruck and her sinking, the nerve-tension of the disciplinedmen during those few minutes, the great and suddenloss of life, and the whole circumstances strike the imagina-nation and make the catastrophe one of the most tragical onrecord.

DEATHS OF EMINENT FOREIGN MEDICAL MEN.

THE deaths of the following distinguished members ofthe medical profession abroad have been announced :-Dr.Jean Henri Auguste Festraerts, founder of the Belgian medicaljournal, Le Scalpel, at Liège, in his eighty-second year.-Dr. Stolbushinski, Senior Medical Officer of the PleskauProvincial Hospital and Vice-President of the ProvincialMedical Society, of typhus fever, contracted in the dischargeof his duties.

IT is proposed to hold a public dinner at the WhitehallRooms, Hotel Metropole, on Monday, July 17th, to cele-

brate the grant of a Royal Charter to the Royal BritishNurses’ Association. Sir William Savory will take the

chair, and the following is the first list of those who haveconsented to act as stewarda : Sir Spencer Wells, Sir RichardQuain, Sir Joseph Fayrer, Sir James Crichton Browne, Sir

Dyce Duckworth, Sir William Roberts, Sir Alfred Garrod,Sir Edwin Saunders, Sir Edward Sieveking, Sir HenryThompson, Sir William Priestley, Sir Francis Jeune, Dr. Pavy,Dr. Gage-Brown, Dr. Heron, Dr. Bezly Thorne, Dr. Bedford

Fenwick, Dr. Alderson, Mr. Erichsen, Mr. Thomas Smith, Mr.Brudenell Carter, Mr. Pickering Pick, Mr. Langton, Mr.Alfred Cooper, Mr. Owen Lankester, Lady Jeune, LadyDuckworth, Mrs. Bedford Fenwick, Mrs. Bezly Thorne, MissIsla Stewart, Miss Thorold, Miss De Pledge, Miss Grace

Gordon, Miss Georgina Scott, and Mrs. Borrodaile Savory.The price of the tickets will be one guinea, and they can beobtained from the Secretary, 8, Oxford-circus-avenue, W.

A COURSE of free lectures (as required by the will of thelate Mr. Brown) was commenced by the Professor-Superin-tendent of "The Brown Animal Sanatory Institution,"Mr. Charles S. Sherrington, M.A., M.D., on June 28th. Thenext two lectures of the series will be delivered in the

theatre of the University of London on July 5th and 12th, at5 P.M., the subject being the Introduction of Substances intothe Circulation and Knee-jerk respectively. In October and

November a scientific demonstration will be given at theBrown Institution, Wandsworth-road, and also a popularlecture to working-men.

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SIR SAVILE CROSSLEY, Bart., has sent the Lord Mayor 20for the H. M. S. Victoria Relief Fund, and also a further dona-tion of nooo in aid of the Hospital Sunday Fund.