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414 the bacillus in bone marrow or the pulp of spleen macerated at a low temperature. It is more resistant to warmth than to cold and can only be preserved by exclusion of air and light. Curiously enough, according to M. Chantemesse, its toxic power is more marked among large than small animals. He is now making inoculation experiments upon horses at the Institut Pasteur, and we may expect the records of his results. At the Société Médicale des Hopitaux M. Ferrand and his assistant gave an account of a singular case of apparent typhoid fever in which the serum reactions of M. Widal had been obtained when the patient was in reality not suffering from typhoid fever, but from septicaemia the result of an injury to his finger. M. Widal, who was present at the meeting of the society, criticised the method employed by the experimenters in the case. Le Service Médical de Nicit. This service continues to occupy the attention both of medical men and the Municipal Council. During ten years it has rendered the greatest service to the community, for anyone taken ill during the night was able to obtain from the ’, police station the help of one of the medical men enrolled for the service. A medical man summoned in this way was paid ten francs by the municipal administration, who recovered the same from the invalid, save in the case of paupers. The Municipal Council has, as your readers well know,l found the strain upon their finances too great. Repayments were infrequent, and from economical motives the Council decided that each medical officer of the service should be paid a salary of five hundred francs a year, irrespectively of the number of visits that he might be called upon to pay. Most of the medical men refused to accept the terms and Paris is now without its service medieccl de nuit. The trouble has arisen from the fact that the conditions of the service varied much according to the social status of the residents in the different districts. In rich districts the medical man would expect to be disturbed say twice a month, but in poor districts he might have to rise six times in the night, so that to award the same payment all round was to inflict an obvious injustice. Negotiations are still proceeding between the medical men and the Municipal Council, and the general idea in Paris is that the latter has made its economical departure in a maladroit manner and that the failure of the service has been due to irregularity in the way in which the Municipal Council has managed its part of the work. For political reasons and fear of unpopu- larity the Council is said to have taken no pains to see that they were repaid the fees they had advanced. A public dinner has been given to Dr. Huchard, a well- known worker in diseases of the heart, by no less than 233 of his fellows, in celebration of his election to the Academy of Medicine. Dr. Duroziez, also best known for his researches in cardiac pathology, has recently died in Paris. His work hardly met with the official or public recognition that it deserved, for his treatise upon diseases of the heart was widely consulted by the medical profession. Feb. lst. ROME. (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) Professor Salvatore Trinchese. ONE of Italy’s most honoured academic figures has departed in Dr. Salvatore Trinchese, sometime Rector of the Neapolitan University and Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Comparative Embryology in that seat of learning. A distinguished alumnus of the same school, he succeeded Panceri in 1880 in the anatomical chair, from which he was transferred to the other professorships above mentioned. During his régime as Rector (an honour he held twice) he took the initiative, since energetically carried out, for the enlargement and re-adjustment of the University’s curricula, himself laying the foundation-stone of the new buildings. He was a valued as well as voluminous con- tributor to scientific periodicals, especially to those bearing on nature-study in its anatomical and embryological re- lations, and he leaves behind him many works of remark- able merit in general biology. His funeral was largely 1 THE LANCET, Jan. 16th, 1897. attended by the academic and scientific world ; but a& he was in religion what Italians call a "Calvinista" " (non conformist), the function was purely civil. L’Istituto Kinesiterapico. Italy has this week brought herself abreast of a movement which, begun in Sweden under the auspices of Major Ling and Dr. Gustav Zander, has been vigorously taken up in Germany and Austria-the movement for the mechanical exercise of the muscles, the joints, and, indeed, of all parts of the system which are apt to get out of gear by sedentary or self-indulgent habits. The Commendatore Beccaro and Dr. Colombo have the credit of this salutary initiative, and in the "Istituto Kinesiterapico " (establishment for the therapeutics of motion), just opened in the Piazza di Termini, they have given Rome a lead which, it is. to be hoped, will be followed by other great Italian centres, particularly those which, as seats of learning, offer more inducements to cultivate the mind than the body. In the British Isles athletic sports for the young, and such games as lawn tennis and golf for the middle-aged and elderly, have no counterpart in the continental, particularly the Latin, countries. True, these latter have the fencing saloon and the pistol gallery, but such exercises as these imply, generally in a confined atmosphere and calling into play a very limited proportion of the physical powers, are not for a moment to b& compared to the games-football, cricket, golf, or boating- which, pursued at fresco, make British youths and men the most finely-developed in the world. Cycling, no doubt, is beginning to be widely practised abroad ; but it has its dis- advantages—the "kyphosis bicyclistarum," for instance, of continental classification-and needs to be supplemented by other modes of exercise to compensate for the over-pressure of one set of muscles and the comparative inertia of others. Besides, something more systematic than a discipline which can be carried out only " when weather permits" is required, especially in great cities, to counteract the degeneration or worse induced by sedentary life. In spring, in autumn, say the Roman organisers of the "Istituto," the delicious air of the surrounding hills is itself an attraction to out-door exercise ; while in summer the resort to mountain or seaboard, or this or that Transalpine, or even Cisalpine " Kur-ort," enables those who can afford it to give the body its due proportion of movement. But in winter this salutary exertion is suspended, the relapse into sedentary life is inevitable, and with it the no less inevitable return of the " degenerations and organised incapa- cities " and " disabilities " which make the professional man or the brain-worker a premature invalid or valetudinarian. In winter, therefore, as, indeed, all the year round, the needs of the sedentary classes are met by the "Istituto," which is conducted on the only sound principle of bodily exercise, that of a gradual evolution of the powers of each organ, the enfeebled or dormant ones first receiving attention till they are brought level with the more normally developed, and the whole system finally endowed with that harmonious balance in which excess in one direction is reduced to atone for restriction in another. To this end accurate measurements are taken of the degree in which a muscle or limb is defective, and the particular exercise or mechanical apparatus which its condition indicates are prescribed and brought into play. No movement is allowed to last more than two minutes, sometimes not even so long. Fatigue, cr anything approach- ing to it, is carefully avoided. Again, when muscular force is so impaired or undeveloped as to be incapable of exertion, electricity is brought in to restore or evolve the missing power till this in turn becomes capable of under- going the voluntary movements above referred to. Every operation of the professional masseur is indicated by mechanical devices-‘ tapotement," for instance, being effected by a series of little hammers with elastic covering which keep up a beating movement along the course of a muscle or nerve till a healthy reaction is induced. To enumerate all the appliances in use at the " Istituto " would be to compile a formidable catalogue-a catalogue, moreover, susceptible of almost limitless extension as experience suggests new contrivances. The composition of the assembled public at the opening day supplies a measure of the inspira- tion under which the " Istituto " has been started and of the social class it is meant to serve. Medicine was repre- sented by its acknowledged heads-academic, clinical, and consultant ; while the number of lawyers, merchants, bankers, artists, men of letters, and journalists was a significant indication of the clientz,da in whose interests
