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an agency. He then states that the sanitary inspectors who,he had hoped, were the officials by whom the work was tobe performed, and who were the nucleus of the sanitarydepartment which he desired to see established in the city,have been dismissed. A real sanitary department in Calcuttahas heretofore only existed in name, and now it appears thatthe sanitary organisation for carrying out inspections, whichthe most insignificant village in England possesses, is lackingfor this great eastern capital, with its terrible death-ratefrom preventable causes. Had there been no inspection ofthe special surroundings of the dairy and other premiseswhich led to the discovery that in the case of theA>’dencluthathose who were attacked with cholera had used the impli-cated milk, that outbreak, like others in Calcutta, would,probably have gone to swell the list of cholera cases due toso-called climatic causes.

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THE EPIDEMIC OF ENTERIC FEVER AT

MOUNTAIN ASH.

THE severe outbreak of enteric fever at Mountain Ash is-said to be extending and to call for unceasing labour on the.part of the medical practitioners of the district. Up to theend of last week HO attacks had occurred, and a period hasnow arrived when the deaths have commenced, five fatalattacks being recorded. Happily, there is reason to believethat the cause of the extension of the epidemic has beendiscovered. The outbreak has been almost exclusively con-nned to a suburb of Mountain Ash known as Miskin, andthere it has been found that the choking of a branch sewerhad led to a large block in the sewerage system, with the,result of forcing back upon the houses the fetid emanationsarising from the decomposing sewage. This block has been.dealt with; and we may hope that the sanitary circum-stances of the place are such that, the initial cause onceremoved, the further spread of the disease will be checked.

FOREIGN UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE.

Berlin.-Professor Hertwig will commence his lectures asSecond Professor of Anatomy in October. Dr. Schmaltz hasbeen appointed to the second Professorship of Anatomy inthe Veterinary School.

J6K6C.—Dr. F. Semon has qualified as docent in Anatomy.- e/.—It is reported that a Hygienic Institute and a Pro-

fessorship of Hygiene are to be established.

THE Vienna Academy of Sciences have elected Dr. Leopold’Pfanndler, Professor of Physics at lnnsbruck, and Dr. Hubert’Seitgeb, Professor of Botany at Gratz, Members; Dr. KarlToldt, Professor of Anatomy at Vienna, Dr. Sigmund vonWroblewsky, Professor of Physics at Cracow, Dr. ErnestFleischi von Marxon, Professor of Physiology in Vienna,Home Corresponding Members; and Professor H. E. Beyrichof Berlin, Foreign Corresponding Member.

DR. BILLROTH, our readers will be glad to learn, is

steadily regaining health and energy at St. Gilgen, by thepleasant waters of the Wolfgang-See. He hopes to resumeis prelections with the reopening of the winter session.

THE Crown Prince of Germany has written to Pro-fessor Virchow, announcing a continued improvement, andthanking the renowned pathologist for his investigationsinto the character of his Imperial Highness’s malady.

DR. EDMUND XBUSSER, assistant in Professor Bamberger’sMedical Clinic in Vienna, has been appointed Body Phy-sician to Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF HYGIENE,

i VIENNA, famous historically as a seat of Congress, willfour weeks hence give hospitality to the greatest numericallyas well as philanthropically that has yet assembled withinher walls. To the invitations issued by the OrganisingCommittee of the International Congress of Hygiene 1320affirmative replies have been received. The ordinary mem-bers will be numerous enough to suggest the thought thatthe gathering is as much an ethnographic as a hygienic one.Austria contributes 788, Hungary 182, Germany 85, France63, Belgium and Italy 24 each, Russia 19, Switzerland 13,England 12, Holland 9, Denmark 8, Roumania 5, NorthAmerica 5, Spain and Egypt 3 each, South America 2, andPortugal, Bulgaria, and Turkey 1 each. The official

representation is also considerable. The common Ministriesof Vienna and Buda-Pest depute 15 delegates ; the AustrianGovernment 12, the Hungarian 18, the French 10, the Belgianand Swiss 4 each ; the German kingdom, the Bavarian, theSaxon, the Spanish, the Netherlands, and the Egyptian, 2each ; the Italian, the Danish, the Portuguese, and the Nor-wegian kingdoms, 1 each ; Brunswick, Hamburg, Lubeck,Bremen, Roumania, Servia, Persia, and the Argentine Republic also 1 each. The proceedings will relegate to the secondline all purely controversial themes of hygienic science,and deal mainly with the thoroughly practical questionsof human well-being. Of the twenty books and brochuresdistributed by the Hygienic Section among the members ofthe Congress, some of them ranging from 100 to 150 pages(the Demographic Section has limited itself to two brochuresof a few pages each), the subjects dealt with are-Water inall its aspects as a Necessary of Life, including Drainage, andthe preservation of Rivers from Pollution; the Utilisationof Human Refuse ; the Adulteration of Food ; Alcoholism;the Hygiene of Schools, of Seafaring Vessels, and Factories;the erection of Isolation Hospitals; the Protection ofAnimals from Epidemic Disease by Inoculation; the Etiologyand Prophylaxis of Cholera, considered with referenceto the recent European visitations-the whole field, in short,of sanitary science in its rigidly practical bearings. Thespecial sections, as well as the general meetings, willassemble in the new university buildings. Within the samewalls has been brought together, chiefly through donations,a splendid hygienic and demographic library, which, afterthe close of the Congress, will become the property partlyof the University Institute for Hygiene, partly of theCentral Statistical Commission. In connexion with thelibrary there is also a magnificent assortment of plans andgraphic representations of what may be called the matél’ielof sanitary and demographic science. The residue of themoney subscribed for the Congress will be devoted to afoundation for the promotion of iabriks-hygiene"—to remainas a monument of the Congress long after its immediateprogramme has been fulfilled. Demography, we maymention, will be represented at the Congress for the lasttime on this occasion, its votaries having made specialarrangements with the newly organised Statistical Institutefor enrolment among its members.The organising committee, as already remarked, has now

issued in printed form the opening address, dealing withthe twenty-two subjects set down for discussion. These inthemselves constitute a formidable volume, and will enableall the members of the Congress to obtain a complete insightof each subject that is to be debated. The greater numberof papers are in German, but these, for the most part, areaccompanied with summaries of the main argumentwritten in French. After German, second in number arethe discourses in French, and finally there are four papersin English. The first is a report on the Purification andUtilisation of Sewage, by Dr. E. Frankland of New Reigate;the second is a short Report on the Importation of Rags, byProfessor Corfield ; the third is an account of the Liws re-latingto Factories and’Workshops, by Mr. F. Hayes-lVhymper;and the fourth is a paper on International Regulationstor preventing Epidemics, by Mr. Shirley F. Murphy. Thislatter may probably lead to a somewhat stormy debate, as itwill be remembered that English ideas on quarantineA wereleft in a minority of two at the last Congress, held threeyears ago at the Hague. Among the French papers,M. Durand-Claye’s summing up of the Shone and Waring

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systems of drainage is certain to elicit very warm con-tradictions. Indeed, we already hear of various speakerswho are preparing for the fray; and it must be borne inmind that the debates open on September 26th, so thereis not much time to be lost. The excursions and variousentertainments all seem to have been organised on avery grand scale and with much method, and the numberof adherents to the Congress being unprecedentedly large,everything indicates that this gathering will be moresuccessful than any of its predecessors.

THE FROZEN MEAT SUPPLY.

THE enormous importance of everything which has abearing upon the food supply of Great Britain gives a veryspecial interest to much of the evidence which was tenderedto Mr. Justice Stephen in the course of the long patent trialwith which he brought his judicial labours to a close forthe legal year now just ended. The subject matter of thepatent in question is a refrigerating machine, and interestingas its theory may be as a branch of thermo-dynamics, itwould have bean little but a piece of laboratory apparatusbut for one thing. It has been found applicable to the im-portant purpose of bringing dead meat from America,Australia, and New Zealand in a perfectly sound condition.The trade is at present in its infancy. Ten years ago,although experiments had been made with a view tothe importation of cargoes of dead meat, they had allmet with very indifferent success. The trouble arose outof a very trifling circumstance. Air contains, as every-body knows, a certain proportion of water vapour. Thisis, indeed, rather a popular way of putting the fact.If atmospheric air be considered to be strictly a mechanicalmixture of oxygen and nitrogen, then of course it does notalways and necessarily contain water. But although oxygenand nitrogen are often spoken of as being the principal (andsometimes roughly as the only) ingredients ot common air,this is hardly accurate. So long as oxygen and nitrogenwere regarded by physicists as " permanent gases," radicallydifferent from condensable vapour, like steam or carbonicacid, it was natural to draw a line between the gaseous andvaporous constituents of the atmosphere. But that dis-tinction holds no longer. The brilliant experiments ofAndrews, of Cailletet, of Pictet and others have recentlyshown that the most volatile gases are only vapours at atemperature much above, or a pressure greatly below, satu-ration point, and in this view it is impossible any longer todeny to the omnipresent and beneficent water vapour whichpaints our sunsets and fertilises our fields its right to theposition of a constituent of prime importance in the terres-trial atmosphere.But prior to 1877 it almost seemed as if this subtle vapour

would for ever shut Great Britain off from the greatest dead-meat markets of the world. The problem was to preservethe meat during a voyage lasting from two to five weeks,and involving, in the case of the southern hemisphere, thecrossing of the equator. The solution was obvious-viz.,to reduce the temperature of the chamber in which the meatwas carried to a point that would arrest putrefaction. Otherraethods of antiseptic treatment had indeed been tried, but notonly without success, they hadnever even offered a reasonableprospect of success. An antiseptic dressing may do no harmto living flesh, because the vital processes speedily eliminateforeign elements; but once lodged in the substance of deadanimal tissue, the antiseptic dressing became itself a groundof offence, and one which no subsequent treatment couldwholly or satisfactorily remove. Not so, however, the treat-ment by what may,perhaps, be termed antiseptictemperature.This demands no counteraction but the subsequent thaw, andleaves no ineradicable mischief behind it. This, then, was, aswe say, the obvious solution, and for years was only obstructedby the difficulty of dealing in the refrigerator with the in-evitable water vapour. Unlike the so-called "permanentgases," water vapour is always present in the atmosphere,under ordinary conditions, in such quantity as to be actuallyat its point of saturation. A slight increase of pressure ora slight fall of temperature suffices to precipitate someportion of this vapour. Hence the difficulty. The engineis required suddenly to accommodate in the liquid or the

solid form what up to that moment has been present onlyas a gas; and it is not surprising, therefore, that many-most, indeed-of the engines that have been constructed forthis purpose have been liable to clog through accumulationsof ice and snow.The deposition of water as a result of increased tension

in water vapour. though theoretically correlative to thedeposition through reduction of temperature, does not.indeed, give rise to any practical difficulty. Indeed, in prac-tice it is somewhat in favour of the operation, for as a matterof experience great reduction of temperature is almost

always accompanied by simultaneous reduction of pressure.Thus the one condition tends to promote evaporation, whilethe other is producing condensation. But it falls far shortof effecting a complete compensation. Our readers will,remember the beautiful experiment of Cailletet, alluded to.above, in which hydrogen gas, after being subjected to anenormous pressure and to the refrigerating influence offreely evaporating carbonic acid, was allowed to stream

through a cock into the open air. It might have been sup-posed a priori that the relaxation of pressure, which itselfproduced the cold, would have countervailed the condensingeffect of the cold so produced. But it was not so. In thecentre of his emergent jet of liberated gas little lumps ofsolid hydrogen formed and fell upon the floor. In the sameway grains of ice form in the expanding water vapour-when the reduction of pressure is considerable, and these-grains of ice, accumulating in the working parts ofthe machine, have of course a strong tendency to block itup. How strong this tendency is may be collected from the-evidence of one of the engineers, who told Mr. JusticeStephen that "cold air machines are frequently made todeliver 1,680,000 feet per day, and this would produce about5 cwt. of snow equal to three cubic yards in twenty-fourhours without taking into account evaporation from themeat, and this on the assumption that the air taken into themachine is already below freezing." It may well be sup-posed that the disposal of such a quantity of solid matter-generated within the machine would in any case be a seriousproblem, but it is complicated by the circumstance that this.maes of snow comes into existence precisely where it is mostmischievous. In order to get the full refrigerating effect, it,is necessary to make the air do work during its expan-sion, and consequently it must be expanded in a closedchamber, in a cylinder in fact. This accordingly is wher&the snow is formed, and the problem of its removal in thesolid form Imust be faced if once the water vapour gains.admission.

Stated thus, the difficulty conveys a hint as to how it maybe evaded. All that is wanted in the expansion cylinder isthe permanent gas. If the water vapour can be removedthe whole difficulty is at an end. Completely to remove itis not practicable, is not desirable perhaps, for it is probable-that the desiccating action of a truly anhydrous atmospherewould have a deteriorating effect upon the meat cargo. Butby the simple expedient of cooling down the entering air,,before admitting it to the expansion cylinder, to a tempera-ture just above 32° F., and giving it time to deposit its con-densed moisture in a liquid form, the practical difficulty has.been overcome. The liquid water runs away under tb&mere] action of gravity. The residual vapour, thoughstill producing snow, produces so much less than ifit had gone into the cylinder at an ordinary atmospherictemperature as to make all the difference between com-mercial failure and commercial success. Equipped withthis contrivance, the merchant finds it as eaey to make his.way through the circumambient ocean of water vapour as.to traverse the subjacent ocean of liquid water, and withoutrisk or trouble to bring his inert cargo of perishable meatfor a six weeks’ voyage through the tropics. Already theboon of this great enlargement of his meat supply ibeing felt by the British consumer. Last year it seemsthat a million frozen carcases arrived in London fromNew Zealand and the River Plate. In April of the

present year 131,000 carcases of frozen mutton wera

received. Thus a beginning has been made of what willprobably in the end prove to be a most important departurein the department of our food supply.

ACCORDING to advices from Jamaica, brought by theRoyal Mail Company’s steamer Orinoco, small-pox hasentirely disappeared from the island, but several ports cfCuba are declared to be infected.