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that the thyroid gland is functionally more active in womenthan in men and that it enlarges during menstruation andpregnancy. The best all-round results were obtained in theinsanities connected with child-bearing. In folie circulairethe thyroid treatment was found to be useful in abortingthe maniacal attacks. As regards the modus operandi of thedrug it is thought that thyroid probably acts by freelystimulating metabolism and ridding the economy of tran-sition and toxic products. Other substances-e.g.. thymus,ovarian extract, orchitic extract, and the like-have similar

.effects, but the thyroid substance surpasses them in theserespecta. -

CHILDREN IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA.

NOT last among those who honour the memory of our late

-beloved Queen should be the place of her children subjects.Her long reign was rich in measures devised for their

welfare and protection. Until it began practically nothing-had been attempted for their good. Trade practice washarsh and unscrupulous without restraint, and publicopinion was ignorant or indifferent. Even the law was

blindly callous in its vigour, so that we are amazed to findterrible penalties recorded against the petty thefts of merechildren. Every measure on the statute-book which is-intended to protect the rights of children has come into

-being within the Victorian era. Factory children,children employed in mines, in brickfields, in chimneys,in agricultural gangs, on canals, on the high seas,

pauper children, street beggars and hawkers, acrobats,children in pantomimes, criminal children, all found in

their Queen a friend as ready as powerful to help them.The last great act of this series and the crown of her

endeavours on behalf of suffering childhood was the com-prehensive measure passed in 1889. It grappled with twoevils -cruelty practised upon children under whatever con- ’,ditions, and the corruption of their morals. So great anassault upon the enemies of childhood might well succeedthe process of sap and mine by which the same foes hadbeen steadily weakened during 50 years. Its success hasbeen its justification, though not its only one. There are

proofs to show that the operation of this Act has accomplished- much not only for the welfare of children but for the

reformation and happiness of their parents also. It has

brought into the dreamy indefinite ethics of the latenineteenth century something of "grit" and practicalresolution. The national foot has gone down on abuses in

our very homes because they were scandalous abuses whichTio so-called" liberty of the subject could excuse. Wouldthat we had more of this righteous determination in dealingwith other strongholds of evil practice. With time, andlight, and honest minds we are not without hope of furthergreat results. For what we have recorded a liberal share ofthanks must be assigned to a Sovereign who all her lifetimestrove to do her duty to her country and to her kind.

IMMUNITY AND PROTECTIVE INOCULATION.

IN an address delivered at the annual meeting of the’Texas Academy of Science Dr. H. W. Harper gave aninteresting account of the various steps which had led up toour present knowledge of immunity and protective inocula-tion. He recapitulated the facts which led Jenner to his

discovery of vaccination against small-pox, and then pro-ceeded to discuss the parallelism which subsists between thephenomena of fermentation, infection, and immunity. His

expositions on the chemical facts which hava beenascertained as regards the nature of fermentationwere very instructive, as also were his remarks on

the chemical structure of certain ptomaines and leuco-maines. The formulae given in the address are too com-

plicated to reproduce here. He next referred to the

discovery of substances in the blood serum of animalsimmunised against diphtheria and tetanus which are ablespecifically to protect other animals against the toxins ofthese diseases-substances now known as antitoxins-andmaintained that it has been shown by different observersthat toxins were rendered innocuous by means of anti-

toxins through a purely chemical process in which bio-

logical processes had no share. Dr. Harper then went

on to argue that the theories advanced by Pasteur,Metchnikoff, and others are insufficient to explain actualfact?. He considered that the existing known conditionsof immunity might roughly be divided into two groups-biological and chemical-and the explanations of theiroccurrence must follow this grouping and must be based onbiological and chemical grounds. He believed that in the

ultimate analysis the biological explanation will rapidly passfrom the body as a whole to its respective organs and theirrespective cells to the nucleated cells and finally to theorigin of the nucleus. His concluding remarks are a littledifficult to follow. It is evident that he considers the

problem of immunity to be a bio-chemical one, but longand patient investigation will be necessary before thechemical changes taking place between the toxins and

antitoxins are fully understood and before the relative

importance of the biological and chemical processes can becompletely estimated. -

UNNECESSARY RISKS IN WAR.

A COMPANY commander serving with his regiment at theseat of war and writing from the Transvaal sends a well-considered and common-sense communication to the Timesof Feb. 2nd in which he refers to the carrying away ofwounded men from the fighting line and the unnecessaryrisk of life to which this practice frequently gives rise. Heis careful, of course, to guard himself against being under-stood to urge that wounded men should be left to take careof themselves, but he points out how frequently it happensthat the natural desire to get a wounded man out of actionmay not turn out to be the best and most desirable thing todo for the man himself and how it may expose those who do

so, or attempt to do so, to unnecessary risk. As far as the

wounded man is concerned the movement-as in the caseof wounds of the trunk of the body-may be actually in-jurious to him and in some instances take him further awayfrom skilled surgical aid, for, according to the experienceof the company commander, " he is more likely to find adoctor in the fighting line than behind it." Manyinstances are also cited in which those carrying awaywounded soldiers from positions where they might havefared well have attracted the enemy’s fire and been killed orwounded. He believes that in the aggregate the casualtiesoccasioned in this way are considerable.

" I am, I trust,"he writes, " as humane as most people, but also some-what utilitarian (we are not very utilitarian in the BritishArmy as a rule), and on one occasion, knowing that we weregoing in for a stiff fight, I warned my company that wewere not going in as stretcher-bearers, but to Bght, and thatno man was to leave his duty for the purpose of carryingaway me or any other wounded man. We would want

every available rifle in the firing line, for we were

going in, I said, to win if we could (we did as

it happened) ; when that business was concludedthose of us who might be wounded could be seen

to. I have heard of others giving the same order."We consider the company commander to b3 perfectly right.In every big engagement these attempts to rescue andremove wounded men occur as a matter of natural impulseand are usually prompted by the noblest motives,although this may not be invariably the case. But such

attempts are not and, under the circumstances, cannot be