followed by complete exhaustion of the vaso-motor center, fall of blood pressure, insufficient blood reaching the respiratory center, with stoppage of breathing. After a period of rest the vaso-motor center again responds to the stimulation of increased intra-bulbar pressure, and the cycle recurs.

March 27 the final stage is reached, vaso-motor paralysis. Temperature, 99.6°, pulse 100 and very feeble, respiration 30. Blood pressure falling. Systolic blood pressure 120 mm., diastolic blood pressure 100 m., and death later in the day.

The autopsy showed an abscess cavity the size of an English walnut situated about the middle of the tempero-sphenoidal lobe and filled with thick pus.

The lining of the cavity appeared to be several months old, and apparently did not communicate with the cavity emptied at the time of the operation.

To be noted in this case is the late appearance of bulbar pressure symptoms,

Medicine and the University. In an address delivered at the convocation exercises of the University of Chicago, William H. Welch, Baltimore (Journal A. M. A., January 4), states that the past century is remarkable for the gigantic progress in the natural and physical sciences a progress which has influenced more profoundly the lives and thought, the position and prospects of mankind, than all the political changes, all the conquests, all the codes and legislation. He discusses especially the conditions and problems of medical education and research, particularly in their relation to the university and to circumstances existing in this country. The university, he de

clares, is the historical and proper home. of the medical school, which should be an integral part of the university, co-ordinate with the other faculties. He refers to the first medical schools in the United States, which were modeled after the University of Edinburgh, which, in turn, derived its traditions from the University of Leyden. It is to be regretted, he says, that the successors of these early schools did not continue to build on the good foundation laid, but established proprietary medical schools, the plan of which originated in England. To the proprietary schools Dr. Welch ascribes much of the great reproach on American medicine. The picture, however, may be made

too black; many of the teachers were devoted, capable men, who imparted sound professional traditions, and whose personality, in a measure, counteracted the evils of the system. At the same time the native ability and zeal of many of the students enabled them to overcome difficulties and to acquire, in course of time, a mastery of their calling and, perhaps, a resourcefulness engendered by these circumstances. He mentions the cost of a well-equipped medical school. The environment of a university is that best adapted to the teaching and the advancement of medicine. The medical school needs the ideals of the university in maintaining the dignity of its high calling, in laying a broad foundation for professional study, in applying correct educational principles in the arrangement of the curriculum and in methods of instruction, in assigning the proper place and share to the scientific and the practical studies, in giving due emphasis to both the teaching and the investigating sides of its work, in stimulating productive research, and in determining what shall be the qualifications of its teachers and of the recipients of its degree. Most invigorating is the contact of medical teachers and investigators with workers in those sciences on which medicine is dependent-chemistry, physics and biology. In the selection of teachers a matter of the first importance --Welch states that a university is in a superior position to secure the best available men wherever they can be found, regardless of any other consideration than fitness. Too often this choice has been.

determined in medical schools by irrelevant influences and considerations and an outlook on the world scarcely more than parochial in extent. In the difficult matter of adjustment of professional training to conditions of collegiate education peculiar to our country there are manifest advantages in the union of medical school with university, especially where the periods of liberal and of professional study are made to overlap. Where the sciences adjuvant to medicine, as general chemistry, physics, zoology and botany, are included in the medical curriculum, as is done in the German and French universities, it is economical and highly desirable that they should be taught in the collegiate or philosophical faculty rather than that separate provision should be made. for them in the medical faculty, where they do not properly belong. He discusses the problem of preliminary education and endorses the attitude of the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association. He also states that every medical school should possess a well-equipped hospital in order to give the students the proper clinical teaching. He contrasts the German and American systems of medical education, and speaks in favor of a certain amount of elective work. He also emphasizes the importance of research work, and in this connection refers to the work done at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, at the Phipps Institute for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, and at the Memorial Institute for the Study of Infectious Diseases.

THE LINE AND STAFF CONTROVERSY.

The old discussion of the eligibility of medical officers in the Army and Navy has been reopened by the assignment of a medical man to the command of a hospital ship and the resignation of the head of the Navy Bureau of Construction and Navigation. While our sympathies are entirely with the staff officers in this matter, we are still in doubt as to the merits of the case. A ship surgeon whose length of service entitles him to rank as a rear admiral should receive that title without any question.

His duties, however, are a different matter. A marine engineer may receive the rank and pay of a commander and yet be incompetent to command. A surgeon of high rank may be a skilled operator and yet grossly ignorant of the very first prin

he insist upon commanding a hospital ship when he knows little or nothing of the science and art of sailing her? Give the surgeon the rank and pay to which he is entitled by all means (to that he has earned the right), but the actual command should be entrusted to a man whose training and experience fit him for the position.

THE EFFECTS OF SULPHUROUS ACID AND SULPHITES UPON METABOLISM.

Dr. H. W. Wiley of the U. S. Department of Agriculture has just distributed his report upon the action of the substances upon metabolism and upon the excretory organs, in which he says:

In the preparation of foods sulphurous acid is chiefly employed in the form of the fumes of burning sulphur, applied either to the food products themselves in the course of manufacture or to the containers in which the food products are held. In the ripening of the wines in cellars it is customary to fumigate the barrels with burning sulphur each time the wines are racked. In this manner it often happens that the wine before it is finally ready for sale on the market may have been placed in five or more freshly-sulphured containers. By this treatment the wine absorbs a varying quantity of the sulphurous acid, depending to some extent upon the amount of sulphur used in fumigating.

When sulphurous acid is used as a preservative for food products after the manufacture has been completed it is usually employed in the form of bisulphite of lime or some similar preparation. Sulphurous acid has the property of uniting with certain organic radicals, such as aldehydes and some sugars, to form compounds which are more or less stable, and in this form it is known as combined sulphurous acid. When it exists in the form of an absorbed gas or in combination with an ordinary metallic base, such as soda, potash or lime, it is said to be in a free state. Combined sulphurous acid is set free from the organic combination by treatment with an acid with the aid of heat, or with a dilute alkali in the cold.