simultaneously reached in regard to muscle by Loeb. "The colloidal particles are positively charged. Those charges induce in the water about each particle negative charges, the number of negative charges being proportional to the surface of the particles. Now, when two adjacent particles are thrown together mechanically (mechanical stimulation) or by heat or in any other way, they coalesce, and the surface of the coalesced particles is smaller than the sum of the surfaces in the separate particles. There is a sudden diminution in the number of positive charges holding the negative charges. A certain number of the latter are at once set free. These immediately precipitate the next layer of colloids. By the coalescence of these particles, negative charges are again liberated and the nerve impulse is thus propagated. The speed of its propagation is probably connected with the minute diameter of the axis cylinder process, which makes the movement take place in one direction. If we prevent recipitation, we can stop the nerve impa and the negative variation also. Thus, anesthetics probably prevent conduction in nerves by dissolving to some degree the fatty substances conspicuous in nervous tissue, thus preventing the progressive gellation which conduction requires.

Dr. Jacques Loeb in his last published article (American Journal of Physiology, February, VI., 6. p. 411) similarly works out some of the applications of the new ideas to toxins and antitoxins. Already he had suggested and studied the probable cause of the action of muscle, as already noted. Starting with the now familiar notions concerning the probable structure of protoplasm, Loeb maintains with much good evidence behind him that toxic and antitoxic effects may be due to the various alterations in the viscosity of the protoplasm making up living tissue. He considers the process of cell division one of the phenomena of protoplasmic streaming, and it is obvious that oftentimes the action of toxins and antitoxins may be directly dependent on division of cells. Whatever, then, dis

turbs the streaming power of protoplasm will interefere with toxins and antitoxins, for to alter the normal viscosity of a colloid is, of course, to disturb this reproductive power. Supposing, for example, a toxin to be dependent for its effects in the body on the activity of a large number of monovalent anions, their evil influence would be easily controlled by the introduction of even a small number of bivalent cations, since bivalent anions have double the power that univalent ions have; and employing the ions of much higher valence (many of the most violent poisons are such) the effect would be still more practicable owing to the smaller amount of the substance required. Such results are already demonstrated for low organisms in the laboratory; it remains to apply the principle to the massed cells of more highly developed animals.

So as concerns antiseptics, enlightening conceptions, explanatory if not prophetic, are not lacking. The reason that salicylic and picric acids, e.g., are so destructive to low forms of life is that they are easily dissociated in the tissue electrolytes, and thus liberate a large proportion of hydrogen cations, which are preeminently poisonous, for reasons already suggested. Similarly for mercuric bichlorid, the mercury cations are very poisonous, while the copper in its solutions is nearly as effective. Metallic salts in general disinfect, that is, kill, not only in proportion to their concentration, but also according to the special properties of the salt and electrolyte concerned. The bactericidal power depends both on the metalic cation and the anion and on the proportion of undissociated molecules. When the salt is a complex one, the metal may be then only a part of a compound ion and so it may act much differently from what it would alone. An example is the potassium of potassium ferricyanid. Ions of high valence are the most strongly disinfectant, bivalent less so, and univalent ions least, other qualities being similar: for example, fluorin, bromin and chlorin are active in this respect in the order given, the order of their descending valences. The effects toward disinfection

of salts with a univalent cation are due to the negative electrons of their anions. Loeb also demonstrated that for muscle the relative toxicity may be proportional to the migration-velocity of the ions.

Such are, in merest outline, the methods by which some of the results already attained by this new sort of knowledge have been secured. The future will reveal their value, whatever it be, to science and to mankind. The present line of research has evidently but just begun, and has apparently not yet reached what one may hope will prove the most practically useful field of all, the scientific preparation of drugs for the cure of human disease.

EVILS OF EATING ALONE.

THERE are some few happily disposed individuals, says the London Lancet, who can dine alone, and not eat too fast, nor too much nor too little. With the majority it is different.

The average man puts his novel or his paper before him, and thinks that he will lengthen out the meal with due deliberation by reading a little with, and more between, the courses. He will just employ his mind enough to help, and too little to interfere with digestion. In fact, he will provide that gentle mental accompaniment which with happier people conversation gives to at meal. This is your solitary's excellent idea. In reality, he becomes engrossed in what he is reading till, suddenly, finding his chop cold, he demolishes it in a few mouthfuls; or else he finds that he is hungry, and paying no attention to the book, which he flings aside, he rushes through his food as fast as possible, to plunge into his arm-chair and literature afterward. In either case the lonely man must digest at a disadvantage. For due and easy nutrition, food should be slowly taken and the mind should not be intensely exercised during the process. Every one knows that violent bodily exercise is bad just after a meal, and mental exertion is

equally so. Wise people do not even argue during or just after dinner, and observation of after-dinner speeches will convince any one that most speakers neither endure themselves nor excite in their hearers any severe intellectual effort. In fact, the experience of countless generations, from the red Indian of the woods to the white-shirted diners of a modern party, has perpetuated the lesson that a man should not eat alone, nor think much at this time, but should talk and be talked to while he feeds. Most people do not think much when they talk, and talking is a natural accompaniment of eating and drinking. How does it fare with the many solitary women of to-day? No better, we know, than with the men, but differently. Alone or not, a man may generally be trusted at any rate to take food enough. (We suppose, of course, that he can get it.)

With a woman it is different. She is more emotional, more imaginative, and less inclined to realize the gross necessities of existence. Therefore, the woman doomed to dine alone as often as not not dine at all. She gets dyspepsia because her digestion has not sufficient practice; a man gets it because his functions practise it too often in the wrong way. Worst of all, perhaps, is the case of the solitary cook. In the myriads of small flats in London there are thousands of women "doing" for their solitary masters and mistresses. These women, whose main occupation is to prepare food for others, find it impossible to enjoy, or even to take, food themselves. As confectioners are said to give their apprentices a free run of the stock of the shop for the first few days, knowing that it will effectually cure appetite afterwards, so the women who are always occupied with buying and preparing food grow unable to use it for themselves. These people suffer from dyspepsia, which is cured if somebody else manages their kitchen for a week, allowing them to take meals without preparing them. It needs no moralist to declare the evils of solitariMan is a gregarious animal. Physically and intellectually we improve with

ness.

companionship. Certainly it is not good to eat and drink alone. It is a sad fact of our big cities that they hold hundreds of men and women who, in the day are too busy and at night too lonely, to feed with profit, much less with any pleasure.

FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN SKIN.

We know by experience, says the editor of the Western Druggist, that "catching cold" is, unfortunately, only a too easy matter; but few persons reflect upon the share which the skin, through ignorance and carelessness, is made to play in the process. When we allow a chill to affect the skin, especially when its blood-vessels are full of blood, as they are after exertion, and when its glands are actively discharging their secretion, a peculiar influence passes to the nerves of the skin; this influence is propagated inward, comes to affect the lining membrane of the nose and throat, or the lungs themselves, and then succeeds the "cold in the head," or in the chest, as the case may be. Hence one of the great rules of health must consist in our care of the skin surface. We must guard against chills and undue exposure, if we are to keep free from colds and coughs. For a cold, as a rule, is the penalty that follows neglect of the skin, and the too sudden change from a heated atmosphere-itself an unsanitary condition to a cooler one. The functions of the skin as an organ of excretion—that is, for getting rid of waste matters-correspond to those of the lungs and kidneys. Skin, lungs and kidneys form in fact a kind of trio, performing essentially the same work, namely, that of eliminating from our bodies the waste which inevitably attends every act and process of living and being. What are the waste matters got rid of by the skin? Chiefly heat, water, carbonic acid gas, minerals, and small quantities of other matters, such as fatty acids, fats, etc.

The sweat-glands are always acting. Not that we are always sensible of perspiring;

but, as a matter of fact, we are continually perfoming that process. The healthy skin is a moderately moist skin, and contrasts very markedly with the dry skin of the fever patient, or of the unhealthy person. Each sweat-gland, as we may say, is a coiled-up tube. Outside the glands is a dense net-work of blood-vessels. Hence the waste matters in the blood are separated from the inside of the sweat-gland by what? -only by the thin wall of the blood-vessel, and the equally thin wall of the air-tube. In virtue of certain laws regulating the passage of fluids and gases through thin membranes, we accordingly find that the watery constituents of the blood, the carbonic acid gas, and other matters, strain or transude through the walls of the blood-vessels and through those of the sweat-glands. Thence the sweat passes upward, to be exuded through the pores on the skin surface. A similar process of filtering waste matters from the blood into the interior of a tube occurs in the kidney. Summing up, in twenty-four hours a healthy adult will excrete from the skin about 18 ounces of water, about 300 grains of solid matters, and about 400 grains of carbonic acid gas.

WHAT A MAN EXPECTS IN HIS

HOME.

A MAN looks for sympathy at home. Out in the world there are a thousand worries and disappointments and frets of temper. He goes out all day, and fights a battle, sometimes a hand-to-hand one, to provide bread for those dependent on him, and to keep the home going smoothly and well. When he comes back from his work he expects a little consolation. He wants to unburden his mind, and be condoled with, and cheered, and encouraged. When he finds. no interest in his cares and troubles, only a determination to have as much money to spend as usual, no matter how and where it comes from, he finds the struggle with life considerably harder than it was before,

or than there is the very faintest need for it to be. He expects brightness. To come home tired and worn out in mind and body, nerves overstrung and at fullest tension, and then to be greeted with ill-temper or with melancholy, this is generally the last straw. If a wife wants to drive her husband to his club or to the public-house, she can't select a quicker way to do it. Men are not like women, to whom the association of home is so strong that they cling to it, even when all that made it has gone and crumbled into dust. When a man's home is not what he expects it to be, he has a trick of leaving it to look after itself without more ado. And a wife need never be surprised to find herself and the unsatisfactory home left to their own devices. Most of all-he expects love. An unloving wife can never make her husband happy. She may fulfil all her duties towards him. There will be only a cold performance of grudging bestowal, not the warm, unstinted giving that comes from the heart. Love makes home beautiful and delightful-it sweetens daily life, and helps one to endure troubles. The wife who really loves her husband will not need to be told how to make him happy. She will give him all he wants or asks for in his home, and she will find that he will repay her by preferring that home to any place on earth, and echoing the words of the dear old song, that there is no place like it.

Life's a long tragedy; this globe the stage.-Watts.

Sin let loose speaks punishment at hand. -Cowper.

Sleep is sweet to the laboring man.Bunyan.

The universe is but one vast symbol of God.-Carlyle.

CHANGING FASHIONS IN MEDICAL TREATMENT.

It is interesting to look back thirty years. and note the great changes which have taken place in the principle and practice of the art of healing during that period. The germ theory of disease was beginning to be generally understood, and pathologists, with the aid of powerful microscopes and tubes of gelatine, were investigating the habits and customs of these newly discovered and unfriendly visitors to the higher animals and man. Next the myriad armies of parasites were vigorously assaulted by various substances which were found to have the power of killing both them and their spores. This period may be described as the reign of antisepsis. Patients with bronchitis, pneumonia, phthisis and other lung troubles were made to inhale steam highly charged with vapors of benzoin or other substances, which it was hoped would arrest the action of, or destroy, the pneumococcus or tubercle bacillus in the lungs. At the same time great precautions were taken for fear an odd germ should gain access into an operation. wound; the air around and often the face and clothes of the operator and his assistants being saturated with steam and carbolic acid by means of Lister's spray. This has now been superseded by what is known as the aseptic method, which aims at the prevention of access of germs, not by killing them at the time of operation, but by excluding their presence from the room, the skin and the instruments. The latter are boiled, and the former rendered scrupulously clean and free from all particles of dirt or dust.

It was next discovered that it was not the mechanical action of the germ which killed its unfortunate host in most cases, but the chemical products arising from its activity which, disseminated by the blood stream, produced a poisonous effect. The physician and pathologists, therefore, sought for antidotes for these, and soon discovered that the germs, like higher forms of life, would die if forced to live on their own waste products. This led to the practice of injecting prepara

tions resulting from the activity of germs, modified by various processes, into the patient with the hope that the living bacilli would thereby be destroyed. In the case of tubercle the results did not justify the hope, but in that of diphtheria antitoxin more favorable effects have been produced. Still another method is to inoculate the individual artificially with a modified virus and so produce a modified form of the disease and render him immune to the severe form. Broadly speaking, this was the principle adopted in the inoculation of smallpox now superseded by vaccination. Coupled with this active treatment against the germ, the body of its host was also rendered as strong as possible to resist its onslaught, and for this purpose large doses of cod liver oil and other forms of highly nutritious food stuffs were ordered in cases of wasting diseases. Light and oxygen were also found to be germicides, and hence we came to the benefit of light and airy surroundings.

Thus we reached the last stage of all, which is the open-air treatment of consumption. All these researches, all this knowledge, all these complicated, pathological actions have at length led to the conclusion that the best treatment is Nature's great restorer Fresh Air. The old muffling up of the body to prevent "catching cold" is to be discarded, and a patient is to exercise, sit, eat and sleep in the open air, being merely protected from rain and snow.

It is not fifteen years ago since an eminent surgeon asked a member of his clinique what was the "sheet anchor" of surgery, and the student, after thinking for a minute, answered, "Iodide of potassium." "No," replied the teacher; "the sheet anchor of surgery is Rest." Fractures, sprains and most other forms of injury were then treated by rendering the part immobile for weeks with plaster of Paris or other forms of splints. A great change has since taken. place. Passive movements and massage are now commenced, in all cases involving an injury to a joint, a few days after the accident. The result is that cases of impaired mobility are becoming a thing of the past

and the necessity of breaking down adhesions is unknown in good modern practice. In medicine also, exercise is not merely ordered as a common sense treatment, but old gentlemen and ladies are taught definite movements to cause their sluggish livers to act, and all kinds of appliances, such as artificial horses, are to be procured for this purpose.

Young women who would otherwise suffer from constipation, anæmia, and many other complaints now perform a variety of exercises, with or without the aid of machinery, before their morning bath, and spend a certain portion of the day in gymnastics and fencing. We hope, therefore, that the rising generation of children will be the offsprings of robust and clean-physically and mentally-mothers, and will be brought up in a similar manner. The advice, "Fresh air and exercise" is as old as the hills, but now it is "rational," not empirical, now its action is thought to be understood, not merely supposed.

Nor can we argue that all our knowledge is superfluous, notwithstanding the constant changes in its teachings, and that no advance has been made because many steps have seemed to lead to error. The greater the knowledge the simpler appears the most complicated of Nature's phenomena, and the time may come when the whole of therapeutics may be literally summed up in "Fresh air and exercise."

A. CONAN DOYLE is soon to display his patriotism after the manner of the old pamphleteers. He has written a small book "The War: Its Cause and Effect," "to combat the flood of lies which have pervaded the world about British policy and British soldiers." At Dr. Doyle's request the book will be put on sale by his publishers, McClure, Phillips & Company, at the mere cost of printing, and the author hopes that his carefully gathered mass of testimony will set old England aright in every nook and corner of our country.