of the various details of scheming as portrayed.

MANUAL OF SERUM DIAGNOSIS. By Dr. O. Rostoski, University of Wuerzburg. Authorized translation by Dr. Charles Bolduan. First edition, first thousand. Price $1.00. John Wiley and Sons, publishers, New York.

This little monograph presents in a most interesting, and at the same time, concise way the present state of knowledge on this most interesting modern development of medical investigation. It takes up briefly a discussion of the general considerations of serum diagnosis; typhoid and paratyphoid fever, with the Gruber-Widal and the Ficker test; agglutination in other diseases, the precipitins as diagnostic agents, with the forensic blood test; other diagnostic agents, as Deutsch's hemolytic blood test and Kraus' phenomenon, and Wilson's study on the Gruber-Widal reaction.

THE PRACTICAL MEDICINE SERIES OF YEAR BOOKS. Comprising ten volumes on the Year's Progress in Medicine and Surgery. Issued monthly under the general editorial supervision of Gustavus P. Head, M. D., Professor of Laryngology and Rhinology, Chicago Post-Graduate School. Volume VIII. Materia Medica and Therapeutics. By George F. Butler, Ph. G., M. D. Preventive Medicine. By Henry B. Favill, A. B., M. D. Climatology. By Norman Bridge, A. M., M. D. Sugges

tive Therapeutics. By Daniel R. Brower, M. D. Forensic Medicine. By Harold N. Moyer, M. D. Price of the volume, $1.00; price of the series, $5.50. The Year Book Publishers, 40 Dearborn St., Chicago.

The present volume is one of the most practical and most useful of the entire series of ten for the general practitioner, for whom the series is primarily intended. The subjects it treats are those which, from their very nature, must be the continuous study of the general practitioner, rather than the specialist, and there is no means by which the advances in these subjects can be presented to him as well as in the present form.

There have been no great advances made in materia medica and therapeutics during the past year, yet a number of new remedies of real worth have been added to our stock and new additions to the uses of our old friends have been not few. The 150 pages, which represent the condensation of only the really valuable contributions in that field, reveal the extent of the work really done.

The section on Preventive Medicine, of interest to all, is of special value to the practitioners of the smaller communities; those with whom the duty of conserving the public health is always present, and who do not shift this duty to the shoulders of the salaried health departments.

Climatology is given more space than usual this year, the contributions to the literature being such as to make that necessary.

VOL. XI.

Thursday evening, November 17, an infant of eight months was heard by its parents, in an adjoining room, to give a choking strangling cough, and when they ran in to see what was the matter, the child appeared to be all right and looked up laughing. Investigation, however, showed that it had pulled off its sock and loosened a safety-pin which had fastened it in place. The safetypin had disappeared. It, measured by a similar one from the same paper, was I 1/16 inches long and the spread of the point of the pin, when open, was 9/16 of an inch.

On Friday the child was perfectly normal, had only one little cry of distress, was nursing from the bottle, and additional search had not revealed the pin.

On Saturday, the temperature went up to 101°. It seemed time to know if the pin had been swallowed, and if so, where it had lodged. There was no trouble with breathing. Saturday at 2:30 p. m., an X-ray disclosed it

No. 2

lodged with the spring end at the level. of the third rib, the point to the right at the level of the first rib and pointing upward, the clasp above the first rib. It had evidently remained there for two days and was setting up an. inflammation, as evidenced by the temperature.

It seemed at once to be another case of the fish-hook in the boy's finger. It was easier to push the barb through, cut it off, and withdraw the hook, than to pull out the barb, for the following reasons: The point of the pin was riding upward and was wedged fast enough to hold it from going down in acts of swallowing. It could not be pulled up through the mouth, for the point would engage in the esophageal wall. It could not be turned around.

An external esophagotomy was a dangerous operation in a child so young, and, even if made, the pin could not be pulled up, and rude manipulations in a baby's throat are serious in their consequences.

8:30 a. m., the pin was passed, point downward, in a lump of fecal matter.

In selecting the best instrument for carrying out the idea of pushing the pin down into the stomach, I was careful to select something that would return if the end got below the pin, something that would not catch on the pin and fail to be dislodged, also something that

The spread of the pin formed one set of retaining lines formed from the stretched oesophagus, the brass sides of the pin, it was thought, would also steer the hollow end of the bougie down upon the coil of the pin, just as if a hopper were formed.

The larger bougie swept the oesophagus clean.

HOW THE INFLUENCE OF THE SUN'S

RAYS ACTS UPON THE VITAL

ORGANIZATION.

The surface of our earth is rendered beautiful by the almost countless forms of vegetable life which adorn it, and on the bare surface of the wind-beaten rock the mysterious lichen finds a sufficient amount of those elements which assim ilate and form its structure, to support it through all the stages of its growth; and at length, having lived its season, it perishes, and in its decay forms a soil for plants which stand a little higher in the scale of vegetable life. These again have their periods of growth, of maturity and of dissolution, and, by their disintegration, form a soil for others which pass through the same changes until at length the once naked rock is covered with a garden and the flowering shrub and the enduring tree wave in loveliness above it.

In a short time, we find the almost. microscopic seed placed in a few grains of earth, springing into life, developing its branches, unfolding its leaves and producing flowers and fruit. Although it has become a stately plant, we shall not discover much diminution of the soil from which it grew, and from which its structure is composed. Experi

ments have been made in the most satisfactory manner, and it has been proved that a very small amount only, of the soluble constituents of a soil are taken up by the roots of a plant. We have to look to other sources for the origin of the woody matter, of the acid and saccharin juices, of the gums and of the resins, yielded by the vegetable world. These are all, it will be found, formed by some mysterious modifications of a few elementary bodies. The plant in virtue of its vitality and under the excitement of the sun's rays, effects the assimilation of these elements; and these are the phenomena which it is our business to examine thoroughly if we are going to apply photo-therapeutics.

The conditions necessary to germination are moisture, a moderate temperature and the presence of oxygen gas. The experiments of Ray, Boyle, Scheele, and Humboldt all show that the presence of atmospheric air is necessary. Germination cannot take place at the freezing point of water, and at 212° all vitality is destroyed. If seeds are kept quite dry, they will not germinate, although the other conditions are fulfilled. All seeds do not germinate at the same seasons, some requiring a more elevated temperature than others,