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time since its foundation in Frankfort in compliance with therule that the meeting shall be held alternately in North andin South Germany. The municipality and the townspeoplespared no pains to give to this old and distinguished societya reception worthy of its importance. On Sept. 20th, whichwas the day before the Association commenced its sittings,the members were invited to attend the laying of the founda-tion stone of a monument to Dr. Theodor Sommering, the great

anatomist and one of the pioneers of electric telegraphy.The proceedings began on Sept. 21st with a general meetingin the great hall of the " Saalbau

" in presence of about 2000persons, including members, their ladies, and invited

guests. The Empress Frederick came expressly from herresidence of Cronberg and entered her name in the listof Theilnehmer (temporary members). Dr. Schmidt, thewell - known laryngologist, who was president of thelocal committee of organisation, welcomed the Associa-tion in the name of the Frankfort societies of medicalmen and naturalists. He remarked with satisfaction thatFrankfort was now for the third time honoured by the pre-sence of the Association, the first occasion having beenthe meeting in the year 1825, when only 108 membersattended and facts like the circulation of the blood and theexistence of oxygen were still to some extent matters of

controversy. He was sure that the president of a future

meeting in this city after another period of seventy yearswould not be able to claim for his contemporaries an equaladvance beyond the present state of natural and medicalscience. The profession was now in possession of a stock ofknowledge which may be extended and perhaps completed,but which can never be declared erroneous. Probably newmicro-organisms will be discovered and their action as causesof disease will be regarded from another point of view; but itis impossible that, to take a hypothetical case, the presenceof bacilli in tuberculosis and cholera will be denied.Roentgen’s discovery will possibly be improved, but posteritywill not question the existence of "x" rays. After this inaugural speech Dr. Schmidt resigned the chair to thePresident of the Association, Professor von Ziemssen, whothanked the local committee for its cordial reception, andexpressed the gratification of the meeting at the presence ofthe Empress and the representatives of the Governmentand the municipality. It was hoped that Dr. Nansen, thefanaous explorer, would have attended the meeting, butunfortunately he was unable to be present. A telegram wassent to Professor Galle of Breslau, who fifty years ago wasthe first to actually behold the planet Neptune. The first ofthe papers was one on Biology and Hygiene and was readby Professor Buchner. He said that all our hygienicmeasures aimed exclusively at the prevention of disease, andthat our success in this direction brought with it the dis-advantage that by diminishing the mortality from epidemicswe preserve all without distinction, the weak as well as thestrong, and thereby interfere with the law of natural selec-tion described by Darwin. These hygienic measures must,therefore, be completed or supplemented by others calculatedto improve the physique of the human race-in other words,to strengthen the body and enable it to resist the unwholesomeinfluence of modern life. Unfortunately of late years we havekept mainly in view the development of the mental powersand have somewhat neglected physical training, but itis a very satisfactory thing that we are already beginning tolay stress upon the regeneration of our bodily qualities, andthat gymnastics and athletic sports are becoming moreand more popular. School authorities in Germany havehitherto been somewhat opposed to such interference withscholastic routine, but they now understand their obliga-tions in this respect. The hygienic ideal will, however,not be reached until physical training occupies in the schoolcurriculum an equal position with mental work. Alluding toEngland Dr. Buchner said that from this point of view someother nations are much in advance of Germany, but hehoped to see the time when his countrymen would be simi-larly proficient in physical training. The other addressesdelivered at the first general meeting were by Dr. Lepsius (Darmstadt) on the Glacial Period, and by Dr. Neumayer(Hamburg) on Antarctic Exploration.At the second general meeting, held on Sept. 26th,

Professor Lang (Heidelberg) was elected President andProfessor Waldeyer (Berlin) Vice-president. The next placeof gathering will be Brunswick. A proposal was made byProfessor Waldeyer to the effect that the Association shouldhenceforth meet every second year, and that the interveningyears should be reserved for special congresses, but the con-sideration of it was postponed till next year. Professor

Dyck (Munich) then gave an account of .the InternationalCatalogue Conference held in London. As a continuationof the scientific catalogue of the Royal Society of Londonan international catalogue of works in all branches of

natural science, edited by an international commission ofsavants, will be eventually published in London.

The papers read at this meeting were by Dr. Verworn(Jena) on Paralysis and Irritation, and by Dr. Below (Berlin)on the Results of Hygienic Precautions in Tropical Countries.The principal subjects brought forward in the medicalsections were: (1) Formaldehyde, by Dr. Rosenberg (Berlin) ;(2) Water-supply in Ancient Greece, by Dr. Hiippe (Prague) ;(3) Traumatic Diseases of the Spine, by Dr. Thiem (Cottbus) ;(4) The Diagnosis of Gunshot Wounds by means of theRoentgen Rays, by Dr. Scheyer (Berlin) ; (5) Localisation inthe Brain, by Dr. Flechsig (Leipzig) ; and (6) the Preying ofLeucocytes on Bacteria by Dr. Buchner (Munich).

After the conclusion of the proceedings the medicalmembers of the Association visited the Hoechst chemicalfactory, where Behring’s antitoxin is prepared. ProfessorBehring (Marburg) delivered an address describing thedetails of its production, and the visitors were then shownover the establishment.

ROME.(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

" Societa Freniatrica Italiana ": its Ninth Congress.FOR the moment the main interest of Italian medicine

gravitates to Florence, where the Society of Alienists. isholding its ninth Congress. Italy’s record in this depart-ment of the healing art is exceptionally good, for while con-tributing not less ably than her contemporaries to thediagnosis and treatment of the insane, she has alsomade independent studies of mental disease on its pro-phylactic side and has impressed on the State the duty’of "beginning early" to supervise the school-child, andwherever intellectual or moral defect is found to educatethe child specially and apart. Year by year her alienistcongresses gain in scientific and practical interest, and thepresent marks a distinct advance on all its predecessors forthe variety of its programme and the thoroughness and ani-mation of its discussions. Its seat is the Aula Magna of theIstituto di Studi Superiori; its retiring president Dr.Tamburini of Modena ; while its attendance includes suchwell-known names as those of Morselli of Genoa, D’Abundoof Catania, Tanzi of Florence, Funaioli of Siena, Bianchiof Naples, Lombroso of Turin, Guicciardi and Ferrariof Reggio Emilia, as well as a considerable representa-tion of the profession and the public. Dr. Tamburinidelivered the opening address, in which, after an eloquenttribute to the late Professor Verga of Milan, he gave aluminous survey of the medico-psychological field, drawingattention to the ominous fact that Italy has witnessed withinthe last quinquennium an increase of her insane from 14,000to 30,000. Psychiatry, he admitted, has nowhere registeredmuch progress in the etiology and therapeutics of mentaldisease ; but a juster sense of its shortcoming now pervadesits votaries, new researches are beginning to fructify,and we are on the eve of fresh departures in pathologyas well as in treatment. In one particular Italy is

awakening from her mediaeval lethargy. For example,Florence (as reported in THE LANCET of Sept. 26th,p. 917) is following worthily in the track of her alienistreformer, Chiarughi, and bringing up her asylums to thestandard of the nineteenth century. The same city was,moreover, the first among Italian seats of learning to givesystematic instruction, theoretical and clinical, in psychiatry,the venerable Professor Bini (to whom he invited the Con-gress to send a cordial " saluto ") being the initiator referredto. The address was characterised by all Dr. Tam-burini’s mastery of detail and vigour of style, and at itsclose his successor in the presidential chair was appointedby acclamation-Dr. Tanzi, Professor of Psychiatry at theFlorentine Istituto and Superintendent of the San Salvi" Manicomio." Thereafter the proper business of the Congressbegan, Dr. Algieri of Monza leading off with a retrospect ofthe work of the " Society Freniatrica Italiana

" from 1894 to1896, and Dr. Ellero, of Milan, and Dr. Bianchi, of Naples,following with special papers, the former, on the ScientificCriteria for Determining the Civil Capacity of the Insaneand on the Relations between Civil Incapacity and Penal

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Imputability; the latter on Partial Lesions of the Brain,leading in certain Subjects to Profound Paraphasic Dementiawith loss of Civil Capacity. On both of these able thesesand the discussion they evoked I may have something to

Isay in another letter.< < A Stoic of the Woods."

There has just died near Mantua an eccentric character I,known to all the neighbourhood as the Om dal Bosco"(the local patois for "Uomo del Bosco" or Man of theWoods), whose mental condition is described as one of"mania errabunda" and "involutionary regress to the

savage state." He was possessed of land and a considerablefortune; never left the district in which his property lay ;dressed, as a local biographer puts it, ’ &deg; in costume

Adamitico," with the exception of a solitary bandage roundhim to represent the fig leaf of his prototype; and livedalmost exclusively on raw meat and vegetable accompanimentsalso uncooked. He was a good neighbour and a kind masterin spite of his habits. These were modified by a restlessnesswhich took him out of his hermit’s couch several times

during the night to perambulate the country, half-naked, inhis carriage. For twenty years he never washed, and heinvariably drank out of the same glass, which he wouldnever allow to be cleaned. Nothing but his harmlessness,his amiability, and his excessive popularity with the countryfolk, who would have resented any interference with him,kept him out of a lunatic asylum. On his death theother day his will was found to contain numerous andhandsome bequests to charitable objects, as well as

liberal allowances to his domestics. To his relativeshe left not one farthing-not that he professed todislike them, but because they had once tried to put himunder constraint. When his full biography comes to bewritten it will add another to the not inconsiderable roll ofcases in which a retrogression to the primal state so far asmode of life and personal habits are concerned has co-

existed with no small intellectual shrewdness and a bene-volence rarely encountered in more conventional types.This " Stoic of the Woods" was very far indeed from being"a man without a tear " (to continue Campbell’s well-knownline), and leaves behind him an amount of popular gratitudewhich many a millionaire might envy. His name was LuigiPizzi ; his estate was called Mantuanella, and he was in hisseventy-fourth year when he died.

An Anecdote of Moritz Schiff.The Italian press, lay as well as professional, teems with

biographical detail regarding the late Professor Schiff of

Geneva, whose noble services to the country’s medical schoolsare all the more remembered from his having been drivenfrom his Florentine chair by an anti-vivisectionist agitationlargely fomented by " zoophilists " and homoeopathists. Hisfirst wife, according to one biographer, was a Rothschild,who made it a condition of his sharing her fortune andfaring sumptuously every day that he would absolutelyrenounce his experiments on living animals. For a monthafter marriage he tried to accept the situation but couldstand it no longer, and at the end of that time he had acceptedthe simpler life with the return to the laboratory.

Oct. 10th. ____

VIENNA.(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Carcinoma of the Stomach.DR. HAMMBRSCHLAG has just published a highly interest-

ing pamphlet on carcinoma of the stomach, wherein he callsattention to the fact that serious derangements in thefunction of the stomach may be brought about by histo-logical changes in its mucous membrane. In the contentsof a carcinomatous stomach collected one hour after a testbreakfast there may be found abundant lactic acid andnumerous long bacilli, but there is no free hydrochloric acidand there is an absence or diminution of the albumin-

digesting principles. Moreover, the peristaltic action isinterfered with, and though there may be no pyloricstenosis the food is no longer kept in motion. Dr. Hammer-schlag has observed forty-two cases ; he classifies them

according as pyloric stenosis is present or absent, and in thenext place according as secretion is entirely arrested or

only diminished. The last group is characterised by its

symptoms and may be divided into those cases in whichthe predominant features are respectively either pain or

dyspepsia. In twenty-seven out of the forty-two cases therewere grave disturbances, and there were only four cases inwhich secretion was normal. The absence of hydrochloricacid is of no diagnostic value; pepsine was diminished intwo-thirds of the cases, a symptom which does not in anyway characterise carcinoma, for it may also occur in atrophyof the mucous membrane and in chronic catarrh. Accordingto Dr. Hammerschlag the increased formation of lactic acidis of great importance and is produced by peculiar bacilliwhich are to be found only in gastric juice containing lacticacid and which possess the faculty of producing lactic acidfrom sugar and maltose. No doubt these organisms occurnormally in the digestive tract, but they produce lactic acidonly if their development is promoted by perverted chemicalaction. Some authors believe the lactic acid fermentationto be due to the absence or diminished supply of the freehydrochloric acid and also to the contents of the stomach notbeing sufficiently kept in motion, but Dr. Hammerschlag hasseen cases where, in spite of the existence of the above con-ditions, there was no lactic acid fermentation and thealbumin digestion was normal. He therefore believed theferments of the stomach to be of great importance in thelactic acid fermentation and considered that there were threepredisposing causes-viz., absence or diminished formationof free hydrochloric acid, decrease of the ferment, and insuffi-cient peristaltic action. Of these symptoms, the first whichoccurs is the decrease of hydrochloric acid, then that ofpepsine, and finally the increase of lactic acid ; but in casesof carcinoma originating from a gastric ulcer the chemicalaction may be normal to the last. Histological examinationof the mucous membrane in cases of lactic acid formationshows atrophy of the glandular elements which are suppliedwith cylindrical epithelium.

Antitoxin Treatment of Diphtheria.In the report of the Anna Hospital for Children Professor

Wiederhofer has given a full account of the antitoxin treat-ment of diphtheria in that institution during 1895. The

patients admitted with diphtheria were 749 in number ;serum treatment was employed in 712 cases, among whomthere were 131 deaths, being a mortality of 18’4 per cent.Of these deaths twenty-four occurred within the first day,and if these cases be excluded from the computation themortality is reduced to 15’5 per cent., whereas among 7149cases of diphtheria admitted from the year 1867 to the year1894 the mortality was 43 per cent. Intubation was per-formed in 105 cases, among whom there were 8 deaths (7’5per cent.) ; intubation and tracheotomy were performed in90 cases, with 52 deaths (57-7 per cent.) ; primary tracheo-tomy was performed in 34 of the most urgent cases, with 24deaths (70’5 per cent.). Among the 712 cases in whichserum was employed 229 received operative treatment insome form or other and 84 of them died (3.66 per cent.).

Heriditary Syphilis.In the Klinische Wochenschrift Dr. Zappect gives a full

account of the various publications on hereditary syphiliswhich appeared last year ; he also makes special reference tothe symptomatology of hereditary syphilis as well as to thesubject of hereditary syphilis with deferred symptoms.According to Neumann, the infection of syphilis from themother is well ascertained, and there may be either (1) infec-tion of the mother before conception ; (2) infection and con-ception at the same time ; or (3) infection subsequently toconception-the latter being dangerous only in the firstmonths of pregnancy. The occurrence of infection subse-quently to conception has been denied by Finger, butNeumann and Lang believe it to be satisfactorily made out.Syphilis existing in the father may produce either intra-uterine death of the fcetus or debility without any specialsymptoms of syphilis, or it may even fail to give rise to anysymptoms at all. Dr. Finger believes that in the first casethe seminal fluid possesses virulent qualities, and that in thesecond it has undergone deterioration without being actuallyvirulent, whilst in the third it is of normal quality.Neumann, however, considers the seminal fiuid to beinfectious in its relation to the ovule. Syphilis of the fostusmay have the following effects on the mother : (1) she mayacquire syphilis without primary symptoms (conceptionalsyphilis) ; (2) she may retain her health for a time,eventually developing tertiary symptoms (conceptionalsyphilis with deferred symptoms) ; or (3) she mayacquire an immunity against syphilis. The patho-gnomonic signs of syphilis hereditaria tarda as given byHutchinson have been refuted by Neumann, who acceptsthe symptoms described by Fournier-viz., greyish colour,