Middlesex, Wandsworth.—The arrangements for extinguishing fire have been improved. With the object of obtaining special training for idiot and imbecile children, the Committee propose to send them to the Eastern Counties Idiot Asylum at Colchester.

This volume is the most interesting and the most remarkable record of a single worker in this field which has appeared since Marro's “Caratteri dei Delinquenti.” It cannot be ranked with the latter book, for Dr. Laurent has not accumulated the large body of minute facts concerning his subjects which Dr. Marro used in so admirable and judicial a manner, making a distinct advance in our knowledge of criminal anthropology. Being, however, less dry and technical, Dr. Laurent's work is much more generally attractive, and it also opens up some of the wider aspects of the subjects with which Marro was not directly concerned. His style, also, possesses in a high degree that lucidity and charm, holding the reader's interest through six hundred pages, which is so common among French scientific writers, and so rare in England and Germany. This remarkable record of his experience was produced by Dr. Laurent as the fruit of some years spent at the Infirmary of the Prisons de la Santé, its publication becoming possible by the enlightened policy of the French administration. How long will it be before we may expect similar records of their experience from English prison surgeons?

Dr. H. Lissauer (“Archiv. für Psychiatrie,” xxi. Band, 1 Heft) details a case of soul-blindness (Seelenblindheit), and then sets himself to clear up our conception of what this deficiency really is. It is through the hope of this latter promise being fulfilled that I have pored through the fifty pages of the “Archiv.,” and after performing such a task one feels reluctant to admit that his labour has been in vain. Munk, whose experiments first led to the conception of soul-blindness, believes that the power of receiving the impression from visual images as well as the seat of the memory of these images is located in the occipital lobe. Reinhard thinks that the perception of space and form is dependent upon the integrity of the superficial layer of the visual zone. Wilbrand assigns to one spot in the cortex the recognition of optical images, and to an adjoining part of the cortex the memory of such images. In the published cases describing the results following injury to the occipital lobe, there is noted a loss of visual power, but it is not clearly defined what this loss consists in. The case described by Lissauer was a man 80 years of age, of a neurotic constitution, but good general health considering his age. He had suffered for two years from attacks of giddiness, and sometimes fell on the ground. The intelligence seemed on the whole to be well preserved, though there was some loss of memory, and in relating old stories he confused the sequence of time. There was presbyopia and complete right-sided hemiopia. The parting line of vision lay a little to the right of the fixation point, so that central vision was preserved in both eyes. The sense of colours remained good, and he could write quite well, but he had in great part lost the faculty of recognizing objects by sight, though when he was allowed to use his other senses he soon made them out. The vision of stereoscopic objects was destroyed, but when one needle was laid upon another he could tell which was the nearest to him, and he generally took the measure of objects correctly. The power of reading was nearly destroyed; he could not even read what he had written a short time before, and the capacity for drawing known objects was much impaired. The old man was interested in his own case, and readily lent himself to inquiries and experiments, the results of which are given in detail. For example, a candle was held before him; he said it was a drawing pencil, and at last made it out correctly. A clothes brush being shown to him, he said it was a cat, and it being objected that it was too small for a cat, he said it was an artificial cat. He then pointed out where the head, tail, and four paws were; but on touching it he at once said that it was a clothes brush. On being shown a cow and calf, he said it was a young and old animal; then he said “cattle.” On being asked, Where is the head? he pointed to the hinder part of the cow. On being asked where the horns were, he indicated them correctly. On being shown a coffee mill, he said it was an ink bottle; but when the handle was turned he immediately recognized it. Being shown a picture of the Emperor William, he said it is “our Kaiser, the old one.” He also recognized at once a picture of Napoleon.

Brown-Séquard asserted, in 1889, that testicular extracts (from young animals) exerted marked stimulating powers on the nervous system when injected subcutaneously. His statements were confirmed by numerous observers. No bad effects resulted, but certain local manifestations suggested the separation of the base spermin, present in the testicular extract, and the use of the base alone. Parke, Davis, and Co., in America, and Prof. Poehl, in St. Petersburg, have prepared this spermin. It is an organic base which forms a well-defined crystalline salt with phosphoric acid. The crystals of this salt appear to be identical in form and composition with the crystals found by Charcot in the spleen and in the blood of leukaemia; in the marrow of bones in the same disease (Neumann); and in the expectoration of asthmatics (Leyden). Schreiner, in 1878, separated these same crystals from semen and from various organs of the body, and determined the chemical formula of the salt. Kobert, experimenting with spermin, declared it to be non-poisonous. Prof. Tarchanow, however, experimenting with the hydrochlorate of spermin, prepared by Prof. Poehl, found an increased force of the heart's contraction and a rise of blood pressure; other observers have confirmed his results. Kobert, objecting, maintains that in those diseases in which spermin is found in excessive quantity, the stimulant effects described are lacking. The firm of E. Schering has of late introduced a preparation to which they gave the name spermin in the first instance, but have now replaced it by “Piperazidin.” This body has been investigated by A. W. V. Hofmann, who finds it to be diæthyl-diamine. Experiments with this body give very divergent results as compared with those of Tarchanow, for no stimulant action can be recognized after subcutaneous injection in rabbits. Piperazidin, therefore, does not suggest usefulness as a nervine or cardiac stimulant, though it remains to be seen whether this body is identical with that previously experimented with under the name of spermin. One interesting property belongs to piperazidin; it has a great solvent action on uric acid, far surpassing that of lithia. Failing, then, its use as a nervine tonic, piperazidin may yet prove serviceable in another way.—“Therap. Monatsh.,” p. 88, Jan., 1891.