ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

possible before they have become encapsuled by fibrous tissue. The tre8.t­ment is based on two lines, eliminative and restorative. 7. In the first years of life the physician is obliged to proceed with caution, and to employ only those means which will not be too great a tax on the little patient, and the treatment should be interrupted occasionally, the intervening periods being regulated by the circumstances of the case. This is particularly to be observed with the expulsive treatment up to the age of puberty. The first measures are to ensure that all the secretory organs are acting freely; repeated purgatives, chosen with regard to the age of the patient, should be adminis­tered, and the action of the skin assured by active muscular exercise. Dr Solles thinks that the portal system contains the largest number of spores, and consequently the functions of the liver should be stimulated. Iodide of potassium seems to have a powerful eliminative action. The skin should be further stimulated by hot baths, and also by sulphur baths, and the n8.tur8.1 medicinal waters.-Lallcet.

THE CURATIVE ACTION OF TUBERCULIN IN GUINEA-PIGS.

PROFESSOR PFUHL has carried out in the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin a series of experiments in which tuberculous guinea-pigs were treated with varying doses of tuberculin. These experiments showed that the treatment by means of small doses had no marked beneficial result, and that was the case also when the administration of the tuberculin was combined with small doses of calomel, sublimate, gold, silver, arsenic, creosote, or benzoate of soda. On the contrary, very favourable results were obtained when the dose of tuberculin was gradually increased and large doses were given for some time. The animals thus treated survived much longer than untreated tuberculous guinea-pigs, and the lesions found after death were very different from those present in ordinary cases. The tuberculous lesions in the liver and spleen had undergone a very conspicuous retrogressive chan)"e, and been in great measure resorbed. On the other hand, the treatment had been without effect in retarding the progress of the lesions in the lungs. Whereas the control animals succumbed with extensive tuberculous lesions in the spleen and liver before the lungs were much affected, in the animals treated with large doses of tuberculin the hepatic and splenic alterations had been checked, and life prolonged until the pulmonary lesions had attained an adv8.nced degree of development. The tuberculin thus appeared to exert a curative action on the lesions in the liver and spleen but not on those in the lung; and, as Koch had previously pointed out, when tuberculous guinea-pigs are killed by the injection of very large doses of tuberculin the symptoms of reaction on the part of the spleen and liver are very marked, but slight and not constant in the lungs. It thus appears that a not too slight reaction is necessary to secure a favourable effect with tuberculin. Why this reaction does not follow in the lungs of guinea-pigs is not clear, but Pfuhl maintains that the case is different with man, in whom the administration of tuberculin is followed by early changes in the lungs, and consequently by a curative effect.-Zeitscllrijt filr Hygiene und Illfediollskrallk.

THE NATURE OF IMMUNITY AGAINST ANTHRAX.

DR WEYL 1 has made experiments designed to ascertain whether when the spores of anthrax are introduced into the body of an immune animal they are

] Zeitsc:nift fUl Hygiene nnd Infectionskrank.