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that it is free from ptomaines, for a case of poisoning hasrecently been reported through feeding with a thyroid pre-paration. It must be remembered also that many of thesepreparations offered for sale are rendered inactive through I,faulty methods of preparation.

THE LATE SURGEON-MAJOR PARKE.

A MEMORIAL brass has been set up in the parish church ofKilmore, Ireland, in memory of Surgeon-Major Parke, whosepremature death evolved such widely expressed sympathy atthe time, both in medical and lay circles. The following is.a copy of the inscription : " In Memory of Thomas HeazleParke, Surgeon-Major A.M.S.C., second son of Wm. Parke,Esq., J.P., of Cloghes House, Kilmore. Born Nov. 27th,1857 ; died Sept. llth, 1893. Beloved and honoured by allwho knew him. He entered the Army Medical Staff in

1881; served in Egypt with distinction, accompanying theBazuda Desert column of the Nile Expedition for the relief- of General Gordon, 1884-85. From January, 1887, to

December, 1889, he served on the expedition for the relief ofEmin Pasha as surgeon. It is as a tribute to his constant

gentleness and care for the sick and suffering, and to thesplendid services he rendered alike to Europeans andAfricans during the three years’ march across Africa, thatthis tablet is erected in grateful and affectionate remem-brance by the two surviving officers of the expedition,Henry Morton Stanley, A. J. Mounteney Jephson (lieu-tenant)." The brass is mounted on a slab of polishedmarble.

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THE FRENCH ARMY MEDICAL SERVICE.

WE recently 1 alluded to the retrogressive spirit displayed by the military authorities in their treatment of the medicalstaff of the French army, and we regret to observe that the J

topic is still the subject of unfavourable comment in severalof our Parisian contemporaries. The feeling of discontent amongst members of the medical corps is described as J

becoming daily more and more accentuated, and unquestion- iably, if the facts now adduced are exact, these neglected, 1

not to say despitefully treated, officers have every reason to i

be dissatisfied. A writer in La Itevue Médicale, signing himself Georges Collet, is responsible for the following sserious allegations. When, in answer to a telegram from the War Office, General Duchesne despatched from Madagascar his list of nominees for admission to the Legion of Honour he forgot the officers of the Corps de Santé. The

omission having been observed, the General - in - Chief’sattention was invited thereto by cable, whereupon he atonce sent home a second despatch giving the names of allthe medical officers taking part in the expedition! It would,of course, be possible to interpret this extraordinary pro-cedure in a complimentary sense ; the General might besupposed to mean that where all had acquitted themselvesso meritoriously it was impossible for him to make selections ;but, unfortunately, no such flattering explanation can beaccepted by people acquainted with the real state of affairs.

-

It was notorious that when the Madagascar expedition wasbeing organised very little attention was paid to the demandsof the Medical Director ; and throughout the operationsadministrative medical officers were compelled to engagewith the superior staff of the force in never - endingcontests whereof the echoes have traversed the seas.

The truth is the Corps de Santé is on the eve of

losing the position it has so laboriously acquired.The decree which overrode the law by removing all trans-port material from the control of the chief medical officermust be fresh in everyone’s recollection. M. Collet’s next

- charge is made on the authority of Dr. Noel, and refers

1 THE LANCET, Sept. 28th, 1895.

to the remarkable manner in which the military medicalelement has disappeared during the last few decades fromthe officers’ roll of the Legion of Honour. In order that the

discrepancy may be seen at a glance we have constructedthe following table from the materials supplied in our

contemporary:-

* Approximate number.

The position of médecins majors of the second class is

declared by M. Collet to be deplorable. Before an officer of

this grade can hope for promotion he must have from twentyto twenty-five years’ service and be about forty-three yearsold. No medical officer can expect advancement in the

Legion of Honour until he has served for at least thirty years,and even then he cannot count on it be his career ever so

blameless. There are now several retired officers with morethan this amount of service, inclusive of from ten to

fourteen campaigns, who are not in possession of the

coveted rosette. The department had great hopes whenGeneral Zurlinden was at the head of affairs that somethingwould be done to improve its position ; but he is no longer aMinister, and serious doubts are entertained regarding thefriendliness of his successor, M. Godefroy Cavaignac. As

we mentioned last week, M. Vigne stated in the FrenchChamber that the hygienic and medical arrangements inMadagascar were defective, but if the medical officers weretreated as M. Collet says, it is not right that they shouldbe made to bear any blame in connexion with the terrible

mortality by which the expeditionary ranks were doublydecimated. A mortality of 20 per cent. in a few monthsshould be a warning to all Governments and generals notto neglect medical advice when military operations haveto be conducted in a bad climate, or, for the matter of

that, in a good climate. -

CASTS IN NON-ALBUMINOUS URINE.

A PAPER on this subject appears in the Berliner KlinischeWochenschrift, No. 14, 1895, by Dr. A. Kossler. The writer

has made a study of the occurrence of casts in urine whichdoes not contain serum-albumin, with special notice of theirrelation to nucleo-albumin. He accordingly investigatedmainly cases of infectious fevers, tuberculosis, and variousforms of poisoning, nucleo-albumin being more commonlyfound in connexion with such conditions than with nephritis.He examined the urine of twenty-nine patients which wasfree from albumin, and found casts of various forms in themajority of the specimens. Chronic pulmonary tuberculosisyielded the greatest number of positive results ; in eighteencases casts were found-hyaline and granular ; and in a fewof the cases epithelial casts also. Solitary specimens of bloodcasts of both varieties, red and white, and of amyloidcasts were likewise reported. Two cases of rheu-matic endocarditis gave similar results, and one case eachof the following diseases-viz., scarlet fever, enteric fever,croupous pneumonia, empyema following pneumonia, anda prolonged case of severe bronchitis, in which the tempera-ture remained high; there were also two cases of phosphoruspoisoning and two of a febrile disorder of an uncertain

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nature. As before stated, all the specimens of urine exa-mined did not contain scrum-albumin, but the majority ofthem yielded nucleo-albumin in varying quantity, and thewriter contrasts the occurrence of casts in connexion withnucleo-albumin with that of their occurrence with serum-albumin. Various circumstances go to show that the sourceof nucleo-albumin with casts is renal. Dr. Kossler had

opportunities of examining twelve of the eighteen cases ofpulmonary tuberculosis post mortem. In none of the caseswere there any well-marked inflammatory changes, either

diffuse or circumscribed, and he did not find in any of themcell-infiltration and exudation into the glomeruli. On the

other hand, he was able to demonstrate changes in the epithe-lium of the urinary tubules : coarse granulation, well-markedcloudy swelling, and loss of nuclei, all stages of necrobiosisof the cells to the full destruction of the same. Hut these

degenerative changes were not distributed through the wholeof the kidney, but were distributed in small patches through-out the tubular structure. The occurrence, therefore, ofcasts with nucleo-albumin seems to stand quite apart fromthe ordinary exudative processes in the kidneys ; the histolo-gical characteristics were entirely those of degenerativelesions of the glandular tissue.

AN ACTION FOR RECOVERY OF FEES BY ADENTIST.

AN important case was recently heard before Mr. JusticeMathew which opens up the question of fees. The actionwas brought by a dentist to recover fees to the amount

of .&105 for two small removable pieces of bridge-work,each carrying four teeth. The plaintiff, in support of

his case, stated that the defendant had agreed to pay thesum sued for, but this fact hardly seemed to be supported bythe subsequent evidence. Amongst other things we noticethat the plaintiff stated he practised as a specialist inadvanced American dentistry, and that removable bridge-work was never done by any dentist but himself. For thedefence Mr. Charles Tomes gave evidence and expressed theopinion that the work was of a very ordinary character ; wasdone by hundreds of dentists both here and in America ; andthat a fair fee would be about 30 guineas. The result of thecase was that the plaintiff was allowed the sum of £30. In

reviewing, this action we cannot help thinking that bridge-work is only too frequently used as a means of claiminglarge sums of money, and the patients, too nervous to facepublicity, pay the sums demanded. The more quickly peoplebegin to learn that there is no such thing as dentistry specialto a country the less we shall hear of these cases. A fewmore decisions similar to the above would, we think, havea beneficial effect.

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SYRINGOMYELIA IN A CHILD.

IN the Revue Médicale de la Suisse Romande Dr. Thomasrelates the particulars of a case of this curious affection

occurring in a child aged six. The patient went to adispensary on account of severe and troublesome diarrhoea,but the hands were noticed to be peculiar in appearance.He was an only child, born at full term, but the labour waslong and difficult. He had had digestive troubles and a

severe burn in 1893. Two years before he was seen-i.e.,at the age of four-the mother noticed that he did not seem tohave pain when he was burnt. On examination the child wasfound to be of medium height and thin. There was a moderatedegree of lateral curvature with the convexity directed to theleft. The hands were large, stumpy, and cyanosed, and in theleft hand the terminal phalanx of the index-finger had almostdisappeared, while those in the other fingers and also in thethumb had been altered. Similar changes were present inthe right hand. There was at least no marked degree ofmuscular atrophy in the hands and none in the legs, but

while tactile sensibility seemed to be normal there was.

diminution of that for pain and for the appreciation of heatand cold. The knee-jerks were not obtained ; there was no-incontinence of urine, but loss of control over the sphincterani. This case is peculiar and interesting because of the-youth of the patient and the completeness of the clinical

features of the case. An unusual feature certainly is the los&of control over the sphincter ani. But if, as seems likely tobe the case in some instances, the condition which we

designate syringomyelia" " depends upon a developmentaldefect in the spinal cord, such a defect of control might bedue to a cause similar to, if not identical with, that whichproduces a similar weakness in certain cases of spina bifidaocculta.

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THE FORMS OF MUSCULAR ATROPHY.

IN his essay on the Duchenne-Aran type of progressivemuscular atrophy (noticed on another page) Dr. J. B.Charcot does good service in presenting in tabular form thenumerous conditions under which muscular atrophy arises,although, as he says, any classification in the present stateof knowledge must be regarded as provisional. It may beuseful to reproduce here the categories which he has formu-lated under the three heads of "myelopathy," ’’neuritis,"’and "myopathy."MYELOPATHIC GROUP. - A. Acute Anayotrnphies. 1. Infantile’

paralysis and adult spinal paralysis. 2. Acute central mvelitis.3. H:ematomyelia. 4. General subacute anterior spinal paralysis.B. Chronic Amyotrophies. I. Protopathic Forms : 1. Progressivemuscular atrophy, Duchenne-Aran type. 2. Labio-glossal laryngealparalysis. II. Deuteropathic Forms: 1. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosisor muscular atrophy, Charcot type. 2. Hypertrophic cervical pacby-meningitis. 3. Syringomyelia. 4. Tabes. 5. Various types of centralmyelitis. 6. Intraspinal tumour. 7. Disseminated sclerosis. III. Specialform of family progressive muscular atrophy commencing in the feet.and legs and involving the hands subsequently.NEURITic GROUP.-1. Infectious Form : a. Diphtheria, typhoid fever,

&c. b. Primary infective neuritis, beri-beri. c. Multiple neuritis conse-cutive to syphilis and tuberculosis. 2. Toxic Form 3. SpontoneousForm, neuritis afrigore, &-c. 4. Atrophic For»a, dyscrasic or eachectic,as from pernicious ancemia, chlorosis, cancer, diabetes. 5. Se2zsoryneitr tis.MYOPATHIC GROUP.-I. Pseudo-hypertrophic paralysis. 2. Juvenile

form of Erb. 3. Progressive muscular atrophy ot infancy of Dill henne;facio-scapulo-humeral type of Landouzy-Dejerine. 4. Hereditary formof muscular atrophy of Le4 den and Mobius. 5. Scapulo-humeral type ofZimmerlin. 6. Femoro-tibial type of Eichorst.

TREATMENT OF SMALL-POX BY EXCLUSION OFTHE CHEMICAL RAYS OF DAYLIGHT.

Ia September of last year Dr. J. Moir drew attention in ourcolumns to this treatment of small-pox, and we have sincereceived communications on the subject from Dr. Moir, Dr.Finsen, and Dr. Feilberg. Dr. Finsen has recently published’an interesting historical account of the Red Light Treatmentof Small-pox, the scientific basis on which it is founded, andthe method of carrying it out. Dr. Feilberg states that he wasat first very sceptical as to the influence of red light onsmall-pox patients, but, nevertheless, tried its effect on

several unvaccinated children suffering from small-pox, andwas surprised at the favourable course which the diseasetook. The vesicles did not suppurate, there was no secondaryfever, and no permanent pitting resulted. The essential

point for the success of this treatment, according to Dr.Feilberg, is that the patients should come under treatmentduring the early stages of the disease, shortly after thevesicles have appeared ; if the seventh day has been reachedsuppuration can hardly be avoided. Another importantpoint is that the exclusion of the chemical rays of daylightmust be complete and continued until the vesicles have

quite dried up. Dr. Moir, whilst admitting that Dr.

Finsen bases his treatment on a scientific basis, and

notwithstanding the extreme ability displayed both byhim and Dr. Feilberg and the care and fairnessshown by them in their papers, is still doubtful as ta

whether their explanations are correct. He admits that h&criticises without experiment, but though he has not used