908 NEW ZEALAND.-OBITUARY

concerning the administration of the Castlemaine Hospital.The honorary staff apparently object to the present arrange-ment of having a highly paid and experienced residentmedical officer, who is allowed a limited consulting practice,and would prefer a junior man as house surgeon, who wouldsimply carry out their directions. Actions for libel havebeen brought, and the whole proceedings were not calculatedto uphold the dignity of the profession, and the judge wasvery severe upon both parties to the suit for bringing what hecalled such a schoolboy’s quarrel into court at all.

Indigenous Medicinal Plants of Queensland.At a recent meeting of the Medical Society of Queensland,

Dr. Bencroft exhibited a number of specimens of nativemedicinal plants ard preparations extracted from them.The eucalypti yield various kinds of gum, containingastringent principles allied to tannic acid. By dissolvingthe recently exuded gum in water and evaporating the con-centrated solution this gum is obtained in red scales and isvery useful in diarrhoea. From the bark of the cinnamomumobtusifolium can be obtained a tincture with aromatic andastringent qualities, combining the properties of cinna-

mon and catechu and having no toxic properties. Itis especially useful in chronic ciarrhcea. The tincture pre-pared from the alstonia is a capital all-round bitter, free fromtannic acid and non-toxic ; though tasting exactly like quinine,it is not antiperiodic. The alkaloid of the duboisia is too wellknown to require more than mention, but the pituri obtainedfrom an allied plant has very different physiological pro-perties. The active principle appears to be nicotine, or a

closely allied body. The natives in the interior chew it incompany, each sucking for a short time a small quid, passedfrom one to the other. The leaf is probably forty timesstronger than that of tobacco.

Aeute Mononephritis.At the last meeting of the South Australian branch of the

British Medical Association Dr. A. A. Lendon read a verysuggestive paper with the above title. He first narrated acase of ordinary typical nephritis with dropsy, in which hefound post mortem that one kidney was very much morediseased than the other, and this fact suggested that it hadbeen affected long before the other. Then the notes of acase were read with all the classical symptoms of nephritis :scanty urine containing blood and blood-casts in the firststage, then albumen with granular and fatty casts, and

finally cardiac hypertrophy and ursemic symptoms, but noanasarca throughout. Dr. Lendon explains this case as oneof nephritis affecting one kidney only, which he thinks wouldaccount for the absence of dropsy.

Renal Surgery.At the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association

Mr. H. M. O’Hara recently reported four cases and Mr. G. A.Syme two cases of successful nephrolithotomy. The lattersurgeon also read notes of a case of Exploratory Nephrotomyfor supposed Renal Calculus, which ended fatally from

secondary hemorrhage. Mr. Jordan Lloyd’s method of

exploring the kidney with a tenotome and child’s bladdersound had been adopted, and the heamorrhage whichoccurred at the time was apparently arrested by plugging. Itrecurred next day when the dressings were changed, and thepatient collapsed in spite of the transfusion of salinesolution and the almost immediate arrest of the haemorrhage.At the necropsy the tenotome was found to have divideda vessel of considerable size.

NEW ZEALAND.(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

.Blackm2ilircg ec Medical Man.DR. MooRE of Napier has had the very unpleasant task of

bringing to justice the husband of one of his patients. The

culprit accused the doctor of criminally assaulting his wifewhile she was under the influence of chloroform, which wasadministered for some minor operation without any otherperson being present. The blackmailer demanded 250 or"he would expose the way in which his wife had beentreated." After a long trial the prisoner was convicted andsentenced to five years’ penal servitude. Dr. Moore has had alesson not to give an anæsthetic without a third person beingpresent, a maxim which cannot be adhered to, for manyreasons, too closely.

Medical Education in New Zealand.In reply to the circular issued by the Wellington branch of

the New Zealand Medical Association, and to which I referredbv the last mail, Dr. Closs, acting as hon. secretary to the Otagobranch, has circulated a manifesto among medical men prac-tising in the colony, of which the following is a brief sum-mary :—In the first place, objection is taken to the tone of thecircular, to its incorrect statements, and to the circulation ofthe manifesto outside the branches of the Association, sinceit was most fitting that it should have emanated from the NewZealand Medical Association alone. The Otago School, it isaffirmed, has already turned out graduates who have acquittedthemselves as well as those trained in older schools, and is ofgreat importance not only to Dunedin as a teaching centre,but to the colony at large. Referring to the amount of

hospital practice to be taken advantage of in the school, it isconsidered that there is ample material therein for clinicalteaching, and a protest is made against the affirmation that"less than 25 per cent. of the cases have been of any valuefor teaching purposes." Mention is also made of the aidderived from associated institutions, the cases in which areavailable as supplementary means of clinical instruction.Exception is likewise taken to the statement that in DunedinHospital insufficient means are provided for the study ofminor surgery as well as of pathological anatomy. Finally,with regard to the care exercised in securing thoroughness inthe professional examinations it is stated that an examiner isappointed by the New Zealand University with equal powersto act with the teacher of the subject in which the student isto be examined, and that the same rule applies in the case ofthe final examination. While admitting the vast importanceof this subject it seems to me that announcements of opinionscirculated throughout the colony by local branches of the NewZealand Medical Association can do little good. The wholesubject should be discussed in all its details at a properlyconvened meeting of medical men practising in this colony.Anything short of this can only open the door to newspapercriticism which cannot tend to improve the status of ourprofession in this young colony.Feb. 21st.

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Obituary.HENRY SMITH. F.R.C.S.ENG.

By the death of lTr. Henry Smith on Easter Sunday, athis residence, Summerhill, Horsell, after a few weeks’ illness,the medical profession has lost another of the brilliant

operating surgeons who were trained at King’s CollegeHospital by the late Sir Wm. Fergusson. Henry Smith wasborn at Parkhill, Croydon, in 1823. His father was a Londonsolicitor and a native of Herefordshire. He was educated atCroydon and afterwards at Harrow, where amongst hisschool-fellows were Sir Robert Peel, Sir Thomas Moncrieffe,Shelley (the son of the poet), and other celebrities. In those

days his chief recreations were fishing and birds-nesting, andhe has recorded in a short auto-biographical sketch manyamusing anecdotes associated with these sports in his earlyyouth. He maintained through life his love for allobjects of natural history, such as birds, ferns, andflowers, and was ever an ardent and enthusiastic fly-fisher,spending the greater part of the short holidays from pro-fessional work which he allowed himself in the spring andsummer in this amusement, in which he attained greatproficiency. So infatuated was he with this sport that inafter years his lectures and clinical demonstrations wereconstantly interspersed with illustrations connected withthe rod and line. His classical education at Harrow alsocame into evidence by his frequent apt quotations inGreek and Latin. Henry Smith had no predilection for themedical profession, but in 1840 he was apprenticed by hisfather to a general practitioner in the West-end, and wentthrough the drudgery connected with an open surgery, evento delivering the medicine at the houses of the patients.It is amusing to relate that, although his master forbadehim to smoke, he contrived to do so in the bottle shed,successfully evading detection by subsequently washing hismouth with peppermint water. Many other anecdotesof his apprenticeship are very interesting. During thistime he was brought into contact with many of thethen leaders of the profession-Lawrence, Marshall Hall,