Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

15 relapses in all; that is, about an eighth of the whole. On the other hand, of 2,148 cases of Cancer in the female, there were only 34 instances of the disease in the lip of these, 22 were treated by excision; and in seven-nearly a third-there was a return of the disease.

This difference does not hold good of Cancer of the Tongue; for then the disease is equally fatal in both sexes. Of nine operations, in which a cancerous tumor of this organ was extirpated, three were performed within one twelvemonth after the earliest appearance of the disease. In the other six cases, the patients died, the disease having previously returned.

As respects Cancerous diseases of the Mamma, we find the following data. Of 277 operations, 73 were performed within the last two years: as yet we cannot say positively what are the results. Of the remaining 204 cases, 22 of them proved fatal in the year after the operation, and in 87 others there was a relapse of the disease.

M. Leroy deduces the following conclusions from his researches :

1. Extirpation does not arrest the progress of Cancerous disease.

2. This operation should not be resorted to, as a general method of treatment, except for Cancer of the skin and lips.

3. There is no necessity to extirpate Cancerous disease of other organs, except when an alarming hæmorrhage supervenes.-Comptes rendus.

The Academy appointed MM. Roux, Velpeau, and Serres, to report upon this communication of M. Leroy.

M. ORFILA'S REPLY TO HIS CALUMNIATORS.

In the course of the present month (May) M. Orfila has published, in the French journals, a letter addressed to his Confreres, in defence of his conduct against a long-continued series of calumnies, with which he has been assailed for the last ten years (he says), not only as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, member of the royal council of Instruction, and author of various works, but also as a dishonest and pretended political character. As this exculpatory epistle is viewed, by many of his countrymen, as a document useful and important for the scientific history of the present age," it may deserve some notice at our hands.

[ocr errors]

He is accused, in the first instance, of base subserviency to government on numerous occasions, and more especially on that of his mission to Blaye, in 1833, for the unworthy purpose, his accusers say, "of officially ascertaining the dishonour of a captive woman-the Duchess of Berri, who was, at that time, a prisoner in the Castle-and even of using force in this unmanly office." We need scarcely say, that the charge in question is utterly without foundation, and must have arisen only from motives of personal hostility, or of base mendacious envy. The fact is, that M. Orfila, in company with MM. Andral, Fouquier, and Aurity, was appointed by the then existing ministry, of which Marshal Soult was at the head, to proceed to Blaye, to report upon the state of health of the Duchess, as it was currently reported at the time that she was very seriously ill.

On their arriving at the fortress, they found indeed that she was suffering with a pulmonary catarrh; but the symptoms were not at all alarming; and the medical men, therefore, did not deem it necessary to remain longer than was necessary in order to draw up a report of her case, and consult with the Duchess's ordinary medical attendant, on the treatment to be pursued.

M. Orfila, it seems, was sent on a subsequent occasion, to visit the illustrious detenue, about a fortnight after her accouchement, in consequence of its having been again publicly alleged, that her health had suffered very much from the No. LXXXI,

P

imprisonment, to which she had been subjected. She refused, indeed, this time to see the medical men-that had been sent by Government from Paris; but the sole motive for this refusal was, it seemed, because she was quite satisfied with her own private physicians, and she moreover now declared that she would receive no visits from any strangers, unless she was also permitted to see her personal friends, MM. Chateaubriand and Hennequin. She, however, wrote a letter to M. Orfila, full of kind expressions, and conveying her regrets that circumstances prevented her from admitting him to her presence. Such are the actual circumstances of a mission that has been rashly and unjustly pronounced by his accusers, to be" dishonourable and utterly unprofessional."

It is unnecessary to notice the charges that have been brought against M. Orfila, in his capacity as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Member of the Council of Education, as we have no means of exactly ascertaining the truth or fairness of them; nor, even if they were substantiated, can the subject at all interest the foreign reader. We observe, by some of the French Journals, that one of his capital offences is, in having been accessory to the appointment of M. Guerin as surgeon to a public hospital. This was probably an injudicious step; but surely it can never justify the unmeasured condemnation which is sought to be heaped upon him. However this may be, we pass on to his defence against the very serious charge of prostituting his scientific talents in the alleged following manner.

One of the most grave reproaches with which history will have to charge M. Orfila, is that of having perverted the duty and character of a medical man when appealed to by justice, of having accustomed the tribunals to regard him always as a sort of necessary adjuvant to the accusation, of having at pleasure transformed his mission of pity and charity into something which, in hands not so well intentioned as his own, would hold the mean between an accuser and an executioner. However, to be just in all things, we willingly state that, on one occasion, M. Orfila had to change his accustomed part; and that he is fairly entitled to the high dis. tinction of having saved an innocent person from the scaffold: we allude to the well-known affair of Chambery.

"I was not aware," replies M. Orfila, " that the mission of a legal physician was a mission of pity and charity; I had supposed, with all honourable men, that the savant, when consulted by the tribunals of justice, should restrict himself to the simple enunciation of the truth.

"Thus, because my investigations have led to the detection of crime on ten different occasions in the course of my medico-legal career, and because my evidence on these occasions was fatal to the accused, I am stigmatised as something between an accuser and an executioner! Since, too, the writer of the article against me has determined on not bestowing any praise, except for those cases in which science is instrumental in saving the accused from condemnation, I may fairly be permitted to claim some for my conduct on the following occasions, which he has, no doubt unintentionally, omitted to mention.

"In 1826, the body of a young man of the name of Alberici, a Carbonaro of Lombardy, was taken out of the Po. The physician, commissioned by the government to report on the case, gave it as his opinion that the man must have been thrown into the water, after he was strangled. Five of the national guards, who had been sent to lead Alberici to prison, were accused of the murder, tried, and condemned to death. Confident of their complete innocence of the charge, these men petitioned for a new trial, and submitted their case to various learned societies in Italy.

"In consequence of the discrepancy in the judgments that were received, I was requested by the counsel for the defence to investigate all the particulars, and to state my professional opinion of the case. After examining all the documents and evidence connected with the accusation, I drew up a memorial, which concluded in these words: that it was certainly rash to affirm that Alberici had

been strangled, that nothing in the documents of the cause warranted this opinion, and that the report of the post-mortem inspection had been drawn up with an inconceivable remissness.'

"My efforts were crowned with entire success; for the already convicted criminals were straightway acquitted.

"2. A woman, of the name of Trichereau, accused of having poisoned her husband, had been kept in prison for nine months, on suspicion of having been guilty of that crime, when I was desired, in company with M. Lesueur, to examine and report upon the case. As soon as our report was laid before the attorney-general (procureur du roi) the accusation was abandoned, and the woman set at liberty.

[ocr errors]

"3. Louise Lannier, accused of infanticide, was tried before the Court of Assizes of the Seine, in July 1842. Her mother, also, was suspected of having been privy to the crime. Two medical men, that had been charged with examining the affair, gave it as their opinion that the death had been caused by the immersion of the infant in the fluid of a privy,'-in consequence of their having found a similar coloured fluid in the minute ramifications of the bronchi. I was consulted by the counsel for the accused, as to the value of the medical evidence that had been given, and the following is a summary of my answer :The question, whether fluids, in which a dead body has been found immersed, may penetrate, after death, into the minute bronchial tubes, has long been the subject of lively discussion. To ascertain the truth, I have made numerous and very varied experiments, sometimes on human corpses, and at other times on dogs, and other animals; and the result of all these researches is, that I have come to this incontestable and uncontested conclusion, that the presence of fluids in the extreme bronchi does not constitute a proof of submersion during life,since, fluids have been found to penetrate quite as far into their ramifications when the body had been immersed immediately, and even several hours, after death had taken place?' The accused were accordingly acquitted.

"4. I do not exaggerate, when I say, that there exist, at this present moment, in the Archives of the Royal Court of the Department of the Seine, more than thirty reports, almost all written in my own hand, on different cases in which my opinion has invariably and at once effected the acquittal and liberation of the prisoners.

"This part of my defence I cannot more appropriately close than by quoting the profession of faith, which I made in 1840 before the Court of Assize at Dordogne: 'I have detailed at considerable length the scientific facts of the cause in question, I have furnished all the information that has been required of me, and I am still ready to communicate whatever I know or may be desired; but let it be remembered that I am not here to speak in support of the accusation any more than in the interest of the accused; my mission is one solely of science and of truth. In my opinion, the last words pronounced in this Court ought assuredly to be in favour of the accused. A medical man would utterly mistake his duty, if he endeavoured to weaken or invalidate the defence, when the accused, already borne down under the weight of crushing charges, can retain no hope of escape unless this (the defence) retains all its force and full impressiveness. It belongs to the public minister to reply, and avail himself, if he thinks proper, of all the facts of science that may serve his cause: to every one belongs his own peculiar office and duty.'

"Could language like this be expected from a man who is designated as 'something between an accuser and an executioner'?

"The last charge on this head, that has been made against me, is couched in these words: On the occasion of every new experiment, we have seen M. Orfila deciding the greatest difficulties of science with the same air of assurance, the same bold tone of affirmation, although perhaps, only a few years before, he was in the habit of employing means of investigation altogether different from what he em

ploys at the present time. We are indeed distressed to see one of the highest personages of one profession compromise the value of science and the dignity of our art by rash unguarded assertions and a presumptuous assurance, which might at once vanish on the discovery of a less fallible re-agent than has been hitherto used. "The whole of this statement is utterly false. In my investigation of the different mineral poisons,-for it is obviously to this subject that the allusion in the foregoing passage is made,—from the time that I first pointed out the necessity of destroying all the organic matter with which they might be blended, and the mode of effecting this, I have constantly made use of either the nitrate of potass, or the nitric acid; and moreover, I have always had recourse to sulphuretted hydrogen (l'acide sulfhydrique) or to Marsh's apparatus, for the purpose of discovering and making apparent the presence of the poisonous matter. Without doubt, this latter instrument has been improved since it was first introduced; but does this circumstance at all warrant the inference that the Arsenic, which was thereby discoverable when it was less perfect, is now not arsenic at all? Do we not rather see that, so far from injuring the cause of the accused, the improved apparatus rather tends to favour it? It is especially unjust to me not to acknowledge that, since the publication of my work, I have been the first to suggest and discuss, in special memoirs, the various objections which might be made to the system which I have created, and that I have thus myself furnished weapons to serve the cause of the accused. These objections relate especially to the impurity of the tests employed, to the nature of the different soils which may be impregnated with Arsenic, to the imbibition of poisonous matter, &c. Ask the advocates of the accused if they have ever combated my reports by any other means, save those with which I have supplied them in my own writings." -Gazette Medicale,

M. MITSCHERLICH ON FERMENTATION.

The act of Fermentation is produced by the formation of a Vegetable being, just in the same manner as that of Putrefaction is by the formation of an Animal one. The infusory animalculæ, on which the latter process depends, have been described as consisting of one or of several minute globules, grouped together side by side, and endowed with a sort of creeping or rotatory motion. According to our author's observations, the other animalcules, present in putrifying substances, are to be regarded as having been deposited in them from the air, either by insects, or in some other way which we do not so well understand. A certain quantity of Oxygen is necessary for the due development and conservation of the Vibrios, that are found to exist in animal bodies. These animalcules are observed to be abundant throughout the entire extent of the alimentary canal, from the mouth to the anus. One of the readiest means of detecting their existence is to examine with the microscope the inter-gingival deposit, or matter which accumulates between the teeth. Occasionally they may be perceived on the surface of the skin; but M. Mitscherlich has never detected them either in the blood or in any of the secretions.

If a small portion of sugar be added to a fluid which contains these animalcules, not only do they continue to form in great numbers, but there is produced at the same time a vegetable product-viz: the ferment or Yeast. If more sugar be added, the formation of the animalcules is impeded or even entirely suspended, while the generation of the former becomes more abundant.

In a clear fluid, in which fermentation is about to commence, we observe first of all that it becomes somewhat troubled; and we discover, with the aid of the microscope, the presence of numerous globules of different sizes. Day by day these globules become larger and larger, while new ones are continually forming

at the same time. In some fermentable fluids, as in grape-juice, these globules usually remain single and isolated, the one from the other; in others, the globules enlarge in bulk and give off new ones from their sides, in the same manner as buds sprout from various vegetable forms. There is indeed a marked difference in this respect in the upper and lower yeasts, that exist in the fermented liquor of breweries: in the former, the globules are generally composite and aggregated; while, in the latter, they are almost all solitary and detached. The globules consist of a vesicular envelope and of granular matter within; the separate granules being the Spores, or germs of future globules.

Substances, which exercise a poisonous action on the Fungi, are also found to destroy the working effects of Yeast: corrosive Sublimate may be adduced as an example. On the contrary, those substances which act energetically on the animal organism-such as the Emetic (Ipecacuan ?) in the solution of which the fungi are so quickly formed-have no effect on the process of fermentation.

A great number of the Fungi, which are known as diseases or morbid growths on vegetables, have a similar agency with genuine Yeast: they give rise to great and important changes in the composition of the surrounding organic matter. Thus it is with the Fungi of trees in reference to the ligneous fibre.

These and other analogous facts unquestionably open up a new field of enquiry as to the various compositions and decompositions, which the roots of plants may produce in the soil.

The process of Fermentation presents therefore a multiple and very varied interest. It is by the development of a substance of contact, so to speak, that the decomposition of one of the most important chemical combinations is effected. This substance is now found to be an organised living existence; it belongs to one of the simplest forms of animate development, the successive phases of whose evolution may be most satisfactorily traced.—Journal de Pharmacie, Sept. 1843.

PROCESS OF EMBALMING.

The method pursued by Drs. Broc and Pougin in embalming the body of Marshal Count d'Erlon-one of Napoleon's most distinguished officers-who recently died in Paris, was the following. A mixture, composed of a Solution of Corrosive Sublimate in alcohol (500 grammes of the salt in 2000 grammes of fluid), of a Solution of Arsenic in water (25 grammes in 250), and of a Solution of Aromatic Essential Oils in spirit (24 grammes in 2000), was injected into the lower end of the left common Carotid Artery. A portion of the mixture was also introduced into the Cavities of the pleura and peritoneum, the gaseous contents of the intestines having been previously liberated by numerous punctures in their coats. The body was afterwards enveloped in a multitude of linen bandages. As a general remark, it may be stated that not more than about three litres of fluid altogether should be injected into the body of an adult; otherwise it is apt to exsude into the bronchi, and to return by the mouth in great abundance.

THE NEAPOLITAN PHLEBOTOMIST.

The following description of the Salassatore of Naples is from the pen of a recent traveller in Italy, who has published what he calls his "Medical Impressions," in the feuilleton article of the Gazette Medicale.

"How often have I stood before the marvellous sign-boards, over the blueframed windows of the shops of these ministers of the lancet! Imagine to yourself a man, painted in all the naiveté of the nudities of a terrestrial paradise,

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »