much of the old "sham" respectability of the School used to rest. Medical Jurisprudence was merely an appendage to the midwifery chair; and not merely this, but it had to share its little fraction of attention with other important departments, which, though each deserving of special attention at the hands of teachers who are really masters in their art, still remain, we trust not intentionally, in undeserved obscurity and neglect.

"One great cause of the ill name that the Faculty seem inclined to attach to Medical Jurisprudence as a separate branch of study, is undoubtedly owing to the fact that those who have attempted to teach it have usually been lawyers who knew nothing whatsoever of physic, or doctors who knew as little of law. And yet it is just precisely this same method, save that its folly would be intensified by subjecting the student to a pair of one-sided and therefore partially ignorant teachers instead of, as now, to a single one, that the Faculty wish to be permitted again to establish."-Journal of the Gynecological Society.

THE SOCIAL EVIL-DR. HOLLAND'S BILL.-Many persons are anxious lest the bill introduced in the Senate of California by Mr. Wand, should be slipped through by strategy, in defiance of public sentiment as far as expressed. That there are individuals who would accomplish that purpose if it were possible, we do not doubt. The passage of the law would greatly enhance the rental value of a certain class of property in San Francisco; and it would also enable the proprietors of certain houses greatly to increase their revenue by monopolizing trade. Hence, golden arguments are suspected; and the suspicion is justifiable, in view of the pertinacity exhibited in pushing the measure. That some of its advocates have honest motives we do not doubt for a moment. Alarmed by the great extent of licentiousness and disease, some individuals thoughtlessly

clutch at any proposed remedy. Others again have had a European experience and have fallen in love with. European institutions. Take that class of Europeans and of American travelers in Europe who know every thing, and a few excellent Americans who know nothing and go by impulse, and unmarried miserables, and married libertines, and you have the head and front of the advocacy of the social evil license. Of the great mass of citizens who acknowledge the obligations of morality and religion, nine-tenths are hostile. Among females, the friends of license are among the licentious; whilst virtuous women, almost without exception, shrink from it as by a sacred instinct.

The attempt to obtain legal sanction for gambling is of kindred birth. Both movements belong to the effete and vicious code of the old world. Even in the principal countries of Europe, gambling is now no longer licensed. Whilst the law makers of Europe are abolishing their "hells" as too corrupting for their standard of morals, the attempt is made to transplant the curse to the soil of our young republic. It is not likely such a retrograde movement in civilization would have been made in California but for the precedent which sought license for the other vice. .If licensed gambling houses be entitled to the name of "hells," are licensed houses of prostitution less deserving of the appellation? Truly both are hells; and we devoutly pray that the Statute Book of California may never be polluted with a legalization of either.-Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal.

NOTE. These sentiments we fully endorse. See article in former number of Journal-ED.

ARSENIC IN DYSPEPSIA.-Dr. J. C. Thorowgood, in the Practitioner, speaks highly of the action of arsenic in many diseases of the stomach. He has found that onedrop doses of Fowler's solution in half an ounce of infusion of Columba had the effect, in a case he treated, of allaying the pain, stopping the vomiting of food, and

enabling the patient to eat and digest small quantities of mutton. He states that the small irritable tongue, with projecting papillæ and yellow or gray fur, indicate arsenic. The more purely local the gastric symptoms, the better is the chance of arsenic doing good. Where there is much general exhaustion of the system, with disordered urine or hepatic congestion, it does not promise much.-New York Medical Record.

THE SELLING OF DIPLOMAS.-The following letter is published in the New York Medical Record for March:

SIR: Duty to myself, not favor to persons or colleges, -for I never knowingly do favors where crime may possibly be abetted thereby-renders it requisite to say, that on further investigation, I find there is no evidence within my reach which will justify the following paragraph of my letter published in the Record of the 15th March inst. as regards the College alluded to:

"Besides such outrageous acts, it is credibly stated that this same college advocates the propriety, and follows the practice, of selling their diplomas to persons living in distant parts of the State, on the simple statement of the person seeking it, without any presentation of certificate or credentials."

I had either misapprehended the statements alluded to, or they incorrectly represented the only written evidence I have yet seen upon this matter of the practice of the said college, of giving diplomas without examination.

So far as the evidence before me goes, the college offers to examine any graduate of a medical college, and, if satisfactory, to give him a diploma for $35.

It also offers to receive the diploma by mail, or indeed any certificate of graduation, and, excusing the examination, issue a diploma for $175, that is, charging $140 more when they do not examine, than when they do examine. Respectfully, STEPHEN ROGERS.

[And is this all? Although it is not right, still 'tis not so heinous as we thought.]-ED.

THE RED BLOOD-CORPUSCLES.-Mr. E. Ray Lankester presents, in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, an interesting contribution to our knowledge of the physical structure of the red blood-corpuscle and the action of gases and vapors upon it.

The red blood-corpuscle has no outer coat distinct from its contents, and having a pronounced inner limitation, none being visible under the highest powers of the microscope (what might be mistaken under low powers for such proving under high powers to be an illusion of refraction), and the corpuscle, torn or cut by drawing a needle across the slide, suffering no escape of viscid material from their interior, but furnishing portions which by the collapse of their edges assume a rounded form; yet their service must be defferentiated into a film or pellicle having no definite inner boundary, and similar to the pellicle which forms on a cooling mass of jelly, since they become wrinkled when subjected to oblique pressure, and recover their form and outline again with great elasticity and precision.

The stroma of which the viscid mass mainly consists appears homogeneous in the mammalia, but contains a nucleus in the other vertebrata. This nucleus, though undetected by Savory, seems to exist in perfectly fresh corpuscles, and has been detected in blood while circulating in the vessels of the frog. It is somewhat indistinct, though a temporary delimitation may be caused by certain physiological conditions of the animal, and after removal from the circulation it becomes sharply and permanently defined.

The usually described forms characteristic of certain classes of animals, are not believed to be the only normal forms. The blood of the frog seems to vary at different seasons of the year, and the ordinary biconcave discs of human blood may be more or less replaced, in fresh and perfectly healthy blood, by the "thorn

apple" and the "single" and "double watch-glass forms."

The macula discovered by Dr. Roberts, of Manchester, in the blood of all vertebrata are strangely ignored by most of the recent authorities, though published many years ago. They are fully verified by the author's researches. A part of the matter composing the corpuscle segregates to form spots, usually one in man but often three or four in the frog, which are ordinarily imperceptible, but which are deeply stained by nitrate of rosanilin, and form sharp little pullulations under the influence of tannin. Whether the development of those macula is post mortem or not seems to be undetermined.

That the corpuscles are not in the condition simply of a moistened membrane is shown by the very curious observation that they will readily float out of the plasma into a drop of oil. When separated in this manner from the plasma they show a strong tendency to cohere and thus assume hexagonal forms, just as they sometimes do when a thin film of blood is dried upon a slide.

The appearance and disappearance of the granulation of the nucleus, and other effects demonstrated by Stricker to take place when blood, after contact with aqueous vapor, is exposed alternately to carbonic acid and atmospheric air, is proved to be due to the alternate presence and absence of the carbonic acid, and not in any part to the oxygen of the atmosphere, since the air may be replaced in the experiment by hydrogen or other gases.-Cincinnati Medical News.

Chemical and Scientific.

PEPSINE.-Emil Scheffer, in an elaborate paper in the American Journal of Pharmacy, gives us the results of numerous experiments with reference to the preparation and properties of a pure and reliable pepsine. The