gress by means of compensations, and that they should prepare statistical reports of all adulterated foods and drinks, and especially as to their comparative adulterated constituents. Such reports ought to be placed before Congress, and Congress should be urged to enact laws to prohibit such adulterations and imitations under penalty of a heavy fine and imprisonment for any violation of the said laws.

I certainly believe that this would be a "protective tariff" (as good as the McKinley Bill), if our home manufacturers were compelled to produce only pure articles of food and drink and to have everything unadulterated. This would, indeed, be a great protection for this country, and our fellow-citizens would not be compelled to send to Europe for a pure article, as they might be supplied in this country and thus keep their gold. Here, also, what a protection, and all by the aid of the microscope! Would not this be one of the greatest and noblest acts Congress has done since the Declaration of Independence? And if Congress were willing to enact laws prohibiting the adulteration and imitations of our food and drink, how else than by the aid of the microscope could such adulterations and imitations be detected? If the worthy readers of the ANNALS OF HYGIENE were only aware of the unwholesome food and drink they are daily using, how both are adulterated and what are the comparative adulterated constituents, including both quantity and quality, they would rise up in arms and not only boycott our home producers, but would certainly raise an insurrection against such adulterators and imitators. How can these adulterations and imitations be revealed except by the microscope? What a wonderful instrument the microscope is!

The microscope during the last forty years has done "wonders." Just see how Pasteur, the great French chemist, has studied and discovered the process of fermentation, and this, again, was only accomplished by the use of the microscope. Also from a hygienic point of view, had it not been for the microscope, Koch, the greatest bacteriologist that ever lived, would not have discovered the cause of consumption (tuberculosis) and of that deadly and most infectious disease, Asiatic cholera. Just see how Koch ventured to go to India and remain there month after month employing in his labors the highest powered microscopes that were ever invented and manufactured by the shrewdest and finest opticians in the world! With these instruments Koch labored hard and finally succeeded in making the discovery that Asiatic cholera is caused by a germ which he called "comma bacillus."

Had it not been for the microscope the great anatomists, and especially the great pathologists, would not have made such wonderful progress and such great discoveries during the past forty years. For instance, they have proved without a doubt the causes of typhoid fever, pneumonia, smallpox, scarlet fever, even of cancer and other grave afflictions. Without the microscope, scientists would never have made the discoveries of the causes, "the etiological conclusions" of all the various diseases. It would still have been neces. sary for the physician to work in the dark, and to treat rather the symptoms of the disease than the disease proper as the scientific physician now does.

When that greatest of calamities befell the people of Johnstown; when the great flood had buried beneath its ocean of water nearly 10,000 human beings, was it not a notable and extraordinary fact that the Pennsylvania State Board of Health, and especially the Hon. Benjamin Lee, M.D., of Philadelphia, as soon as the waters of the flood had subsided in the Conemaugh Valley, resorted to the microscope for the protection of the survivors after the débris had been removed and disinfectants employed to destroy the germs of disease. Was not the microscope the principal factor in analyzing the food and drink of the survivors after the great calamity? Just see how the waters of the Conemaugh and Allegheny rivers were examined and analyzed so that it might be positively stated that the waters of both rivers were so polluted and unwholesome as to be unfit for drinking purposes for months after the great catastrophe! The microscope should be used in every family. Even the grocer, butcher and farmer should make themselves acquainted with the workings and manipula tions of a microscope. Of course, a physician simply must have one, otherwise he is considered incompetent.

Just see how the doctors-George E. Fell and Spitzka-jumped upon the microscope when the world-renowned murderer, Kemmler, was executed by electricity electrocuted." It was the only reliable apparatus or instrument they could secure in order to determine accurately, first, that the man was dead; second, what killed him. The cause of death, that is, the result of the electricide, as has been authoritatively stated, and which was revealed by the microscope, was nervous shock. This means simply a destruction and paralysis of the nerve centres of the brain and spinal cord. Scientifically, or rather microscopically, expressed, a disintegration of the protoplasm of the nerves, nerve cells and ganglion of the brain and spinal cord, with a secondary destruction or disintegration of the elements of the blood, producing a hemorrhagic transudation into the ventricles and substance of the brain, coagulation and death. There is not a particle of doubt that Kemmler was dead after the very first shock, even if the papers did call it a "bungled-up job." We know from experimental research the action of electricity upon the living tissue, whether animal or human. When 1000 volts or more are applied to living tissue, whether animal or human, a tremendous lightning-like nervous shock follows, in the first, the destruction of the superficial layers of nerve cells and ganglion of the brain, followed by the destruction of the deeper layers, until the entire brain is destroyed in a similar manner.

I have had the opportunity of experimenting upon the brains of cats and dogs, and these have been my results, all through the aid of that wonderful instrument, the microscope. I think it will require about 1200 to 1500 volts, applied from fifteen to twenty-five seconds, to kill any ordinary human being, especially when applied as near as possible to the nerve centres. Consequently, it is a matter of possibility for a human being to stand 1000 volts, that is, when it has been applied to his extremities, such as his feet or hands, and only for a very short time, say about two or three seconds, and still recover from the

shock. Should the poles be applied directly to the head or spine, then it is an impossibility for a human being to recover from the shock, even if applied but for a single second. And if only the very superficial layers of the nerve cells and ganglion are destroyed, he would remain a deformed invalid for life. His hands and feet would be more or less paralyzed, and he would probably die very soon after the shock. Therefore, in Kemmler's execution-electrocution -he was certainly dead after the first shock. The frothing at the mouth, the returning respiration and bleeding from the thumb, were by no means indications that he was still living, or that animation had returned. These symptoms were nothing else than spasmodic and convulsive contractions of the muscles of the different organs, just as a guillotined head would be dead after it is severed from its body. This, in fact, would be still more certain. I think a human being killed by electricity suffers less pain than a man guillotined or hanged. This fact the microscope has already revealed and demonstrated in a number of cases.

In the year 1884, while I was at the Hospital Generale de Strasbourg, Germany, under the direction of Professor Schwalbe, I was requested to witness a murderer guillotined. The execution took place at Metz. After the operation" decapitation "-I was directed to hold a post-mortem examination upon the subject. I took particular pains in studying the head, and especially the physiognomy of the subject. Immediately after the head was severed from its body and dropped into the basket, I took charge of it. The following has been my observation and experience, all through the aid of the microscope: His facial expression was that of great agony for many minutes after the decapitation. He would open his eyes, also his mouth in a process of gaping, as if he wanted to speak to me, and I am positive that he could see me for several seconds after the head was severed from the body. There is no doubt that the brain was still active, and this fact the microscope afterward revealed. Just think of the head severed from the body and still in activity! What agony he must have suffered by the process of guillotining! His decapitated body, which had been previously fastened upon a bench, was in continuous spasmodic and chronic convulsions, lasting at least from five to six minutes. and indicative of great suffering. I have no doubt that had not his body been previously fastened to the bench, he would have gotten upon his feet and hands and scrambled all over the "death chamber." That would, indeed, have been a terrible sight. Think of a headless human body performing the gyrations of a chicken just beheaded! Just as a chicken's body will jump around and spring up into the air from four to six feet, so would that of a man. I have seen chickens actually get upon their feet and run from ten to fifteen feet from the place of decapitation. All this intense suffering would last from five to ten minutes, and still the French nation advocates the use of the guillotine for a death penalty.

Even hanging is a barbarous process. If the neck is not immediately broken, rather dislocated, the sufferer generally lives from ten to twenty min

utes, and must certainly endure great agony by the process of strangulation and suffocation. Consequently, electrocution should in every instance be advocated for the infliction of the death penalty. Even the Humane Society ought to compel butchers, and especially killers at abattoirs, to slaughter beef, calves and swine by electricity, which is without doubt a painless death, certainly the quickest, easiest and simplest of deaths. Electrocution is, therefore, to be commended, and this conclusion again is reached through the aid of the microscope.

Pure Air and Sunlight as Preventives and Remedies in Consumption.

BY H. E. BEEBE, M.D.,

Of Sidney, Ohio.

It is with diffidence that I present a subject in which I have no discoveries of my own to ffer, and one that has attracted the attention of so many able workers, the results of whose labors have given us new ideas in the treatment of this formidable disease, and brought hope and encouragement to many who have looked forward, through a long period of suffering, to an untimely grave.

My purpose in this paper is to make an appeal for out-door life on the part of those who have reason to dread the attack of this destroyer, and out-door treatment for those on whom it has already obtained a hold.

Much has been written on the subject, but there seems a strange apathy on the part of the public in adopting as a preventive or remedy what is popularly but erroneously supposed to be the great, if not the principal, cause of the disease. Consumption being found to prevail mostly in regions of cold, late, wet springs, the conclusion has become almost universal that exposure to a climate of this kind is the chief cause; and in their endeavor to escape the effects of the weather, people have unconsciously, but none the less certainly, intensified the conditions which they were endeavoring to avoid.

The prevalence of the complaint and its nearly uniform fatal termination when once firmly settled, have done much to render the public skeptical concerning almost any proposed means of relief, and constant iteration, with abundant proofs of satisfactoy results, will be necessarry to carry conviction to the minds of sufferers or their friends as to the efficacy of the method of treatment now sought to be adopted, namely, out-door life as far as may be practicable, with an abundant supply of pure air during the hours that must be spent within the walls of a building.

It is only by constant repetition that the general public can be made to heed even the most salutary teachings; the most strenuous efforts are required to overcome the inertia of popular ignorance and indifference. The necessity for such an attempt, in this connection, is manifest when we consider that consumption is the cause of fully 15 per cent. of all the deaths occurring in the

United States-more than from any other one disease and more than from all other contagious diseases combined. Small-pox, cholera and yellow fever create a panic whenever they appear as an epidemic; municipalities and States are active in measures of repression and prevention; national power is summoned to establish quarantine regulations that shall protect the country; the newspapers daily chronicle the work of the epidemic, and on its near approach to a given locality the inhabitants who are able to do so flee as from an angry demon; yet these diseases appear only at intervals, and usually may be restricted to certain portions of the territory subject to their ravages, while consumption, more deadly than them all, slays its victims at all seasons, and few places in all our wide domain may be considered exempt from its visitation.

It is a matter of common belief that consumption is largely due to heredity, that its appearance in an individual indicates a similar diathesis in one or both parents, or at least in some ancestor not very remote, while, on the other hand, the child of consumptive parents is very apt, in due time, to follow the same course. Careful statistics, however, show that in not more than 25 per cent. of cases does this hold true; in the remaining three-fourths, the disease has its inception in the person affected.

Aside from hereditary influence, there are many predisposing causes; among them we may mention unhealthy occupations; lack of nutritious food; dissipation, fashionable or otherwise; direct contagion; and, chief of all, the lack of a sufficient amount of pure air. To this last cause, more than to all the others, may the disease be attributed, and while such conditions exist remedial agents will be applied in vain. An impure atmosphere, with an insufficient supply of sunlight, has a very favorable influence on the formation and growth of tubercles, especially in a locality where the soil is of such nature as to retain moisture and thus impede perfect drainage. Fresh air and the direct rays of the sun are the greatest health-giving agencies that exist for mortals, and yet people act as though these life-bearers were their deadliest enemies. A superstitious dread of "night air" causes many persons to keep doors and windows of sleeping-rooms tightly closed in order to shut it out—a proceeding as sensible as an attempt to bottle the sunshine. The fetid odor of such an apartment is sickening to one who may go into it after spending an hour in the bracing air of early morning. It would seem that the instincts of ordinary decency would rebel against such a proceeding, whereas many people labor to accomplish this as if it were something to be desired. We " gag" at the recital of a savage feast, where the host does honor to a visitor by masticating the food until it is in condition for swallowing, and then spitting it into the mouth of the guest; but wherein is this worse than breathing repeatedly the vitiated air that has time and again been inhaled by another, and each time discharged more heavily laden with the refuse brought by the blood from various internal organs? How can a diseased lung carry on the recuperative process necessary to bring it to a healthy condition? How can a sound and healthy lung retain for any great length of time its power for effective secretion under such condi