Tae idea of utilizing the admirable organization of the Maritime Customs to collect original information about disease from widely scattered stations on the coast and rivers of China was an exceedingly happy one, and the abso-Into license given to the medical men at the various ports to write what they liked, subject only to the judicious shroff age of the editor, was well calculated to draw out the latent powers of the various medical officers and to gratify their idiosyncracies. Several papers of great value have appeared at intervals in the Medical Gazette, but on the whole it is perhaps surprising that so many comparatively idle men, with such good opportunities of obser vation, have not done more. The Gazette just issued opens with a report by Dr. Henry of Ichang, who laments the unsanitary condition in which the natives live, and from which the foreign residents are unable to free themselves, He remarks on the shyness of the Chinese in seeking foreign medical aid owing to their dread of the supposed powerful effect of foreign drags. We own to some sympathy with the Chinese in their dread of "powerful" drags. An account of a Chinese cremation ends the paper. Dr. Ringer contributes an interesting report on the health of Amoy, the principal feature of which is the detailed account, with illustrations, of an extraordinary case of suicide by a man under the inflaence of drink forcing a feather brash down his throat, handle foremost, a piece of rattan being left ina lacerated cavity of the chest when the broom was withdrawn by the servants, Trrocasesof gunshot woundssuccossfally treated by Dr. McDongall in the "Ku-Iangsu Hospital are fally reported byrd. Ringer, showing a healthy ce-operation among the medical men at Amoy. Swatow has nothing very special to distinguish it, except rather serious outbreaks of cholera and hydrophobia, of neither of which however does Dr.
Pollock give any particulars. All these stations are reported by the doctors as being sickly for want of rain, which opinion is farther strongly confirmed by the observation of Dr. J. F. Wales at Canton, where there had been a fall development of the nual tropical ailments, In the troatment of dysontry Dr, Wales is unable to say that ho found ipecacuanha of much service, and. "at present ho is satisfied with prescribing a saline purgative follow. ed by opium and belladonna." But dysentery is a delicate subject to treat according to its various stages, and what is suitable in some cases or at certain stages is not so in others. It would have been interesting therefore to know in what manner and under what circumstances Dr. Walea exhibited his ipecacuanha, and the grounds on which ho bases his opinion that it causes tormina and tympanites. It is satisfactory. to know that the climate of Canton, hot and humid, is very favourable to the treatment of syphilis. Dr, Aldridge, from Hoihow, contributes the most valuable paper in the volume. With his skeleton battalion of twelve individuals, it was not easy to group the discases, into symmetrical statistical tables such;, a delight the medical scribe, bat, the small community have dono their. best to famish types of all the orthodox maladies,—typhoid, cholera, remittent fever and dysentery. The climate: is decidedly unhealthy. Dr. Aldridge makes no bones about it, and, to make matters worse, the Chinese housed,"'in which the foreigners are at piésent obliged to live, are simply abominable, Some brief but good observations on the progress of cholera in Hainan are given; also notes on vaccination, which has been practised by the Chinese with great success, and a valuable discussion on the drinking water of Hoihow. The report concludes with an amusing description of a morbid "superstition among the Chinese who think them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.