1524 ’THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND TN FLORENCE." "

elevation to office-the speedy and satisfactory completion ofthe " Policlinico " whose claims have been so fruitlessly urgedupon preceding Ministries. With the accelerated progressthat noble " shrine of illinera Medica " may at length counton making, all doubt as to a fitting locale in which the

Eleventh International Congress of Medicine and Surgerycan hold its sittings is at an end. An additional

guarantee for the success of the mighty gathering is indeedafforded by the fact that its president is also the newMinister of Public Instruction, whose goodwill and solici-tude for the best interests of its members only requiredofficial opportunities and powers for translation into deeds.Thus the Congress, opened by the King and presided over byone of the wisest and most popular of his Ministers, hasunusual and unexpected prospects of happy results, not theleast of which will be the profitable account to which its

lessons, practical and theoretical, will be turned by a Pre-sident who has so deeply at heart the professional advance-ment of his country.

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"THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND IN FLORENCE."

THE leading journals of Central Italy announce, from

official information received in Florence, that Her MajestyQueen Victoria will certainly visit the Tuscan capital nextspring. This intention on the part of the Queen has, forsome time, been known to our readers. "When at

Windsor last summer," says the 1,-azione of the llth inst.,"Prince Corsini took leave of Her Majesty, the Queenreplied, ’A rivederci a Marzo’ ("till wa meet againin March "). "Various i,n.teraicnez2 of the Royal house-

hold," continues the Florentine journal, "have alreadyin the course of the autumn been inspecting more

than one of the villas in our environs, and indeed, we knowthat Colonel Biggs, who accompanied Her Majesty on theQueen’s last visit, is in treaty with the proprietor of the VillaFabbricotti at Montughi for Her Majesty’s vernal villeggia-tura." For the present the project of a ten days’ subsequentresidence in the Royal villa at Capo di Monte, seems aban-doned in favour of a short visit to King Humbert’s LombardCastle at Monza. This modification of programme has muchto recommend it-the advantages of the Neapolitan villeggia-tura being more than balanced by those available at Mocxa,with its proximity to the North Italian lakes, and to thenoble mediseval cities of the Lombardo- Venetian territory.

THE NATURE OF THE RECENT EPIDEMIC ATGREENWICH.

THE Greenwich epidemic is still involved in a good deal ofobscurity. At the adjourned inquest which was held on the12th inst. both Dr. Bulstrode of the Local Government Boardand Dr. Klein, F.R S., were present as witnesses. Dr.Bulstrode announced the conclusion at which he had arrivedas the result of the investigations-etiological, bacteriological,and chemical-which had been carried out ; and the termsin which he did so had evidently been carefully thought out.He stated that the disease, which had been fatal to old peoplein the workhouse, and which had also prevailed in someparts of the town of Greenwich, was an infectious form ofdiarrhoea which was shown bacteriologically not to have

been Asiatic cholera, but which, having regard to its

distribution in Greenwich and its seasonal incidence, wasprobably related to those forms of diarihoeal sickness thatespecially tend to prevail in seasons when cholera is pre-valent in Europe. For the precise significance of this differen-tiation of the Greenwich diarrhoeal disease from true cholerawe would refer our readers to our comments on " Cholera in

England : its Bacteriological Interpretation," in our issue ofNov. 25th last. Dr. Klein, in giving evidence, decided that bac-teriologically the disease was not Asiatic cholera; but in all thefatal cases which he had examined he had found a definite

bacillus which was not present in the healthy intestine, butwhich, in his view, might have been concerned with themalady. Here again we are face to face with the exceedinglydifficult problem as to whether there is any etiological rela-tion between our English cholera and our autumnal fataldiarrhoea on the one hand and Asiatic or true cholera on theother hand. The point will never be cleared up at coroners’inquests, and we trust that no attempt will be made to super-sede skilled bacteriological investigation with recent materials,by a process of the heretofore clumsy methods involvingdelay which have been customary at some of our inquests.The investigator must be almost on the spot to secure suchmaterial as he needs, and if he has to wait the pleasure ofpublic officers appealing to the Home Office or other bodieshe may just as well drop his work altogether. On the other

hand, there need be no difficulty in his receiving six to eightinches of the small intestine without in any way interferingwith any such work as devolves upon a coroner and a jury,who are incapable of understanding the etiological points atissue ; and it seems to us a pity that, with such abundant

material as was available in the case of the eleven bodies ofthose who died of the Greenwich disease, any cavilling aboutbacteriological and etiological research should have beenheard.

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THE DIFFUSION OF SMALL-POX.

IN some of the towns where small-pox was most rife adiminution in the intensity of the prevalence is observable.Thus, the fresh attacks last week in Bradford were reduced to30, and in Walsall to 37, the number of patients under treat-ment in the hospital at the latter place being also on thedecline. On the other hand, the disease in Birmingham showsbut little abatement. There were 63 fresh attacks last week,some 240 patients are in hospital, and the authority havedecided to erect a permanent small-pox hospital in a verysparsely-peopled part of the borough, and to allot more thantwenty acres to that purpose. In Bristol an increase is noted,the fresh attacks amounting to 25 ; and in other places thenumbers were as follows : West Ham, 14; Wakefield, 12 ;Aston Manor, 9 Liverpool, 5 ; Bath, 3 ; Middlesbrough, 3 ;Handswortb, 2 ; and Leicester, 2. There were also small-poxoccurrences in Batley, Bolton, Croydon, Wimbledon, Willes-den, West Bromwich, Rowley Regia, Smethwick, Derby,Chadderton, Oldham, Huddersleld, Halifax, Dewsbury, Hnll.Aberavon, Wilienhall &c. In the metropolis there were 20new cases last week, one epidemic area being Bow-common-lane ; and there were on the llth inst. 114 cases under treat-ment at Long Reach and the Gore convalescent establish.ments.

THE SOCIETY OF ANÆSTHETISTS.

Ix another column we publish a report of the first

meeting of this Society. So much importance has of latebeen attached to all matters connected with anaestheticsthat there is no doubt a raison d’etre for such a society.While many surgeons and physicians have undertaken specialwork in connexion with the elucidation of both the physiologyand practical bearings of ana3-ithesia, there has up to the pre-sent time been no society where such work could be sure ofbeing intelligently criticised and discussed by those experiencedin the subject. Now, however, if anesthetists fail to get theirresults duly ventilated it will be their own fault. THE LANCEThas always been so impressed with the immense importanceof careful and accurate study of ansesthesia that since 1848,when Mr. Wakley published his observations on chloro-form in these columns, we have uniformly accorded to

the subject the space its importance deserves, and have

1 A Record of One Hundred Experiments on Animals with Ether andChloroform performed by Thomas Wakley, F.R.C.S., Surgeon to theRoyal Free Hospital, THE LANCET, Jan, 1st, 1848.