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353 even in minute doses. Owing to the severe shocks which the circulatory, digestive, and nervous systems are habitually re- ceiving, it can scarcely fail to produce disease in one or all of these systems. I have frequently resorted to smoking as a stimulant, but invariably found it to produce the opposite effect; and I have seen the same result in several other cases. I regret that, in consequence of my having already occupied too much space, I must omit many things that would be ad- vantageous to the completion of the subject; but I trust that what I have said will stimulate others to follow my example, or induce those who may oppose me to make similar observa- tions for their own satisfaction. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, KEITH MACDONALD, L.R.C.S. Edin. THE SOLUTION OF GOLD IN THE BODY. To the Editor of THE LANCET. SIR,—Having known considerable anxiety caused by the swallowing of pieces of dentists’ gold plates, I was led to make a few trials on animals with solid mercury and diluted sulphuric acid, given some time after the gold was swallowed. The gold was rendered brittle and partly dissolved in the mercury, and the animals seemed to suffer no bad consequences. I hope that by your permitting this suggestion to appear in THE LANCET some one of more experience may undertake the matter, and form a determinate method of treatment. I am, Sir, yours truly, T. WORDSWORTH POOLE, M.D. PARISIAN MEDICAL INTELLIGENCE. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) DR. FERRUS, whose death occurred here a few days ago, and was announced in your last issue, was a man of no ordinary stamp. Blunt almost to harshness in manner at times, he was essentially humane and philanthropic ; full of humour and witty irony at others, he was, nevertheless, idolized by his patients; an indefatigable worker, he delighted in society and conversation, and was in the midst of all his occupations a great talker ; in the outset of his career a military surgeon, he ended by becoming one of the most successful and enlightened of the alienist specialty, and though resident in early life in an obscure provincial town, and possessed of no great prospect of advancement at first, he steadily climbed to the top of the tree, and was followed to the grave last week by all the most reo markable political and scientific Frenchmen of the age. He was born at Briançon in 1784. He graduated at Paris in 1804, and commenced the exercise of his profession as a military sur- geon in the Imperial Guard. He went through the last cam- paigns of the Empire as surgeon-major, and in consequence of heroic behaviour on the field of battle was decorated by the hand of Napoleon himself. At the fall of the Buonaparte dynasty, Dr. Ferrus left the army, and became Pinel’s assistant at the Salpétrière. In 1826 he was transferred to Bicetre in a more independent capacity, and here commenced the important reforms in the treatment of insanity which ultimately spread his fame, he being the first to propose bodily labour as a means of cure in mental alienation. He caused the patients under his charge to be employed in agricultural pursuits, and the St. Anne’s farm, to which I have already referred in former letters, was established for the more thorough investigation of the scheme. In 1830, on the accession of Louis Philippe, Dr. Ferrus was named one of the physicians to the King, and a year or two later was entrusted with a mission to England for the purpose of examining into the progress made in the treat- ment of the insane. The results of his journey are embodied in a work of great merit, entitled, "Considerations sur les Alienes," which bears date 1834, and the material alterations subsequently effected in the Legislature regarding the insane were mainly attributable to the influence of his suggestions. Before leaving the subject of M. Ferrus, and after having dwelt upon the more solid qualities of his mind, I must relate an anecdote, which illustrates the humorous features of his cha- racter, and the logical drollery to which he would sometimes resort in order to convince a sceptical audience of the truth of an apparently paradoxical assertion. He was a frequent guest at the house of Alibert, who every Sunday was in the habit of giving very exquisite dinners, to which were bidden all the most noted celebrities of the day. Science, the arts, the drama, literature, and the political world, each furnished a contingent to these charming entertainments-an invitation to which alone was worth a diploma in belles-lettres. On one occasion during dinner, conversation fell upon the different trades and profes- sions in France. Some one asked which of all professions waa the most followed in Paris. "That of medicine," answered Ferrus, " without doubt, and not only in Paris, but in all countries." Everyone dissented, and Alibert foremost of all. "Why, there are not above a thousand doctors in Paris," said he, " and some villages in the provinces have no doctors at all.’’ Ferrus, apparently silenced by the overwhelming majority, ended by saying that he was sure the company would ere long find that he was right. In the course of the evening, throwing himself into an arm-chair, and burying his face in a handker- chief, he began to groan most piteously. In an instant he was surrounded by the whole of the party, who sympathizingly in- quired the cause of his distress. " A violent toothache" was the answer. " Go home and gargle with warm milk," said one ; " Put a little cotton-wool steeped in laudanum into your ear," said another; a third recommended a poultice of boiled figs; a fourth a stocking full of hot sand; a fifth (and this nop less a person than Humboldt) the repetition of some charming couplet which Brazier had just sung; and so on until each of the company had recommended some infallible recipe. When the list of panaceas was exhausted, Ferrus, throwing away his handkerchief, and desisting from his grimaces of feigned agony, burst into a hearty laugh, saying, "Well, was not I right ? ’? You are all doctors, and have each furnished me with a pre- scription. In France no one believes in medicine, and yet each one is a physician. Will you still venture to deny that my assertion was correct ?" This playful satire on one of the great social absurdities of the age created much merriment, and doubtless carried a wholesome lesson to the minds of all pre- sent. M. Maisonneuve, one of the surgeons of La Fitie, laid before the Academy of Sciences at its last meeting the notes of a case in which the advocates of conservative surgery cannot fail to be much interested. A young man, in the month of August, 1855, consulted this practitioner in consequence of an extensive necrosis of the tibia of the right leg. The limb presented a de- plorable aspect, its volume being triple that of the natural size, and the surface of the skin being furrowed by deep ulcers, through which the mortification of the whole bone during its entire length could be perceived. The disease had commenced after a fall, which occurred two years previously, and the ex- cessive suppuration had occasioned constitutional disturbance of a nature so serious as to threaten life. The most eminent surgical authorities of I’aris, and M. Velpeau amongst them, had declared that amputation of the thigh could alone save life, and that any idea of preserving the limb was, to say the least, Utopian. In spite of such imposing authority, and con- fident in the regenerating powers of the periosteum, so posi- tively demonstrated by M. Flourens, M. Maisonneuve deter- mined on attempting the sub-periosteal resection of the entire tibia, an operation to which the patient readily consented, and which was accordingly performed on the 24th of August, 1855. Chloroform having been administered, an incision fourteen inches in length was made down the front of the leg, the periosteum was divided, the bone laid bare, entirely shelled out from its fibrous envelope, and so removed in toto. With the exception of the two articular surfaces, the osseous shaft was found to be diseased throughout its whole length. The wound healed kindly, and by the fortieth day after the opera- tion the patient was able to walk with the aid of crutches, as in a case of simple fracture; and so complete has been the sub- sequent regeneration of the tibia, that at the present time the limb differs in no respect from its fellow, with which it has kept pace in growth as to strength, length, and bulk; and the only trace which remains of the terrible operation, to which the patient is indebted for the possession of his leg, is the long cicatrix with which its anterior surface is indelibly scored. The extirpated tibia exhibited to the Academy by M. Maison- neuve measures in length twelve inches and a half; in breadth, at its upper part, an inch and a quarter-at its lower extremity, one inch. The committee appointed to report on this remark- able case includes MM. Flourens, Milne-Edwards, Velpeau, Cloquet, Jobert de Lamballe, Claude Bernard, and Longet; and their report is awaited with the greatest impatience. M. Trousseau delivered last week at the Hôtel Dieu two most interesting lectures upon a disease concerning which I
