COMPULSORY ALIMENTATION.

M. De Regis, in reopening the discussion upon Compulsory Alimentation in patients affected with sitophobia, has discussed the three following practical propositions :

1. That the washing out or ablution of the stomach by alkaline solutions, or, what is better, the waters of Vichy, may be indicated in such cases of abstinence as may be supposed to depend upon physical disease of the stomach. This expedient, introduced from Germany, has been resorted to in various of the Parisian hospitals.

2. He suggests that where artificial feeding is practised for a long time it would be prudent that the aliments thus conveyed should contain doses of pepsine, in order to secure the absorption of sufficient quantities of albumen.

3. That in the mechanical process of introducing food, the tube should be so constructed as to expand itself laterally, so as to occupy the whole of the passage into which it may have entered, and thus to announce that the passage entered is or is not the larynx.

The Chronicle commenced in the Annales Médico Psychologiques for January 1881, is to be continued for the purpose of epitomising and recording all facts relative to the clinical and theoretic study of mental maladies.

ALBUMINOUS URINE IN EPILEPTICS.

The first recherches on this subject seem to have been made by Drs. Sutherland and Rigby in Britain and Michea in France. The Physicians of St. Luke's investigated the cases of 192 insane patients, and found albumen in the urine of seven. Michea, confining his inquiries to epileptics and hysterics, found neither sugar nor albumen in the urine of such cases.

M. Hubert, resting on the experience of English observers, affirms that the presence of albumen in the urine of epileptics has been demonstrated.

.

MM. Moreau de Tours, Sailly, Jaccoud, and Bourneville, pronounce emphatically against the presence of albumen, while Otto found it rarely in the urine of epileptics.

These contradictory conclusions were tested at Mareville by M. Christian, who examined the urine of 38 epileptics, before, during, and subsequent to a paroxysm, and notwithstanding all scientific care in the manipulation, albumen was detected in the urine of only one individual, who, it was found, clinically laboured under parenchymatous nephritis, albumen having been discovered

not only before and after a paroxysm, but associated with granular fatty cylinders. The experiments of Claude Bernard, by puncturing the fourth ventricle, and the subsequent appearance of albuminuria, and the supposed connection of the surrounding cerebral region with epileptic disease, has not been borne out by the researches now under consideration. It is obvious that the obstacles presented to respiration during an epileptic fit, by the immobility of the muscles of respiration, and by the closure of the larynx, though grave, are not of sufficient duration to prevent the formation of albumen, and, consequently, according to M. Bourneville, no such substance was detected in a patient who died during the paroxysm. Besides, the visceral congestions present during an attack, rapidly disappear on its cessation.

Recent works contain the theory of M. Hamon that albuminuria is itself a nervous affection, dependent upon the central and ganglionic systems. It has been added that attention should be directed to the condition of the nerves which supply the kidneys, as in eclampsia; the presence of albumen must be regarded as a consequence and not as a cause of the disease. Lesions of the nerves, and even conditions of the encephalon may lead to interstitial nephritis, and consequent albuminuria. It should be added that in the examination of 14 persons who died in the Statu Epilepticus, and of various other diseases, with the exception of two instances of slight congestion, no perceptible structural change could be detected in the substance of the kidneys. M. Bourneville has recorded a similar experience in five cases.

It would appear from these observations that no connection has been established between epileptic affections and the secretion of albumen by the kidneys. De Witt, an American, is reported to have found albumen in one-twentieth of the cases of epilepsy which have come under his treatment.

It would appear from the above observations, and from the experience of a large number of the most distinguished French experts, delivered upon the controverted points, that traces of albumen may be detected in the urine of epileptics, especially after repeated attacks of the malady; but that the occurrence is very rare, and, as none of the concomitant or collateral conditions or symptoms of the patients in whom the detection was made have been described, no reliable conclusion can be drawn as to the connection between albuminuria and this form of the neurosis; indeed, it is probable that where this condition was observed, it depended upon renal, or even remote causes, aud not upon epilepsy.

Annales Médico Psychologiques, Nov. 1880.

REVIEWS AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

A German-English Dictionary. Used in Medicine and the Cognate Sciences. By FANCOURT BARNES, M.D., Aberd., M.R.C.P., London, &c. H. K. Lewis, 136 Gower Street, W.C., 1881.

THIS work will be of great value, not only to medical students in general, but also to those who are engaged in psychological studies. German medical terms have multiplied so rapidly of late, that a concise glossary of them had become a necessity. Dr. Fancourt Barnes has supplied this want, and has executed his task carefully and satisfactorily. He gives the following account of his own reasons for publishing the work :"In consenting to undertake the compilation of a dictionary of words used in German medical literature, I was well aware of the many difficulties, some of them insurmountable, which would beset the task. One of the chief of these was the collection of the ever-multiplying legion of new words. I cannot pretend to have brought all these together; it is impossible to do more than to gather up those which have been more or less recognised in the course of a few years' existence. Another difficulty was to determine whether or not a word had grown so old as to become obsolete, and therefore not worthy of a place in the dictionary. Where there appeared to be any doubt on this point, I preferred to leave the word."

We have much pleasure in introducing this work to our readers, and we cordially recommend it.

Six Addresses on the Being of God. By C. J. ELLICOTT, D.D., Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.

Published under the

direction of the Tract Committee. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross, London.

Ir must be a source of gratification to all who take an earnest interest in the vital questions of the day, to find that the admirable addresses, delivered last autumn twelvemonths, by the Bishop of Gloucester, in the course of his visitation to the clergy and others, have been published in a separate form by

the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The zeal, high mental culture, and profound scholarship of Dr. Ellicott are an abundant guarantee that any subject which he takes in hand will be treated thoughtfully, cautiously, and faithfully.

The Addresses are divided into six parts. 1. The nature of the principal arguments. 2. The Being of God attested by the general consent of mankind. 3. The being of God as shown by the existence of the universe. 4 The being of God as shown by the presence of final aims in nature. 5. The being of God as evinced by the moral law. 6. The evolutionary hypothesis.

It is impossible for us, within the limits of a review, to do more than quote a few passages from this valuable work. The following remarks are especially noteworthy:

"To prove anything involves an appeal to something higher or more certain than the thing to be proved. But here we are attempting to prove the existence of the Ens realissimum, of that which in itself is the very essence of all certitude; we are attempting to show that He is, who is himself the fountain and source of all existence. Proofs then, as proofs, and arguments, as arguments, may rightly be set aside, but in the form of considerations, especially if set forth with plain common sense, they may be found very useful to many of us just at the present time. They will be of use to us in giving clearness to our own inner convictions; and will especially help us in all our more serious efforts to convince others. If we would really persuade in subjects of this higher nature, two things are imperatively required in us, first :-thoroughly realised convictions, and that lucidity of thought which nothing but organised knowledge can give or will give to the mind that would bring home to others the primary and fundamental truth of the being and personality of God."

"This lucidity of thought, and clear common sense is now required more than ever. Popular scepticism, at the present time, is increasingly guilty of confusions of thought that can hardly be too strongly condemned. Doubtful science, and still more doubtful logic are now united in the discussion of all deeper subjects; and of these in none more than in the discussion of the great subject we are now considering. The whole principles of causation, as we shall more clearly see in a later portion of this charge, have been tampered with and thrown into confusion. Definitions have assumed the conceptions of that which they are elaborately constructed to set forth and define. Even such fundamental ideas as force and energy have been mixed up by some of our greatest thinkers, and whole theories elaborated from data that will not stand the test of a moment's really rigorous and scientific criticism."

"The time, therefore, would seem to have fully come for a sober and impartial review of the leading considerations, which, apart from revelation, lead us to a belief in the blessed and consoling truth, that there is an almighty, all-wise, and all-holy personal God, who has created all things-worlds visible and invisible; spiritual and material; and who governs all according to the good pleasure of His holy and eternal will. The considerations, it will be observed, are of different degrees of cogency; but taken together, and especially in their proper gradation, they will certainly be found to form a multiform argument which it would seem hard for any candid mind fairly to resist. This aspect of the momentous question has been far too much neglected. It has not been seen sufficiently clearly that it is on the cumulative, or to speak perhaps most accurately, the ascensive nature of the considerations or so-called proofs that conviction seems mainly to rest. No one of them, to a really candid mind, seems perfectly sufficient, taken by itself, to prove the whole truth; but when all are taken together, it will be, I trust, acknowledged by every fair reader or hearer of this charge that the weight of the united considerations is especially great, and that the popular assertions as to the utterly invalid nature of the proofs for the existence of God are certainly without just foundation."

Dr. Ellicott first appeals to History for his proofs, secondly, to Nature, and thirdly, to Humanity. He says that the arguments derived from the moral world, are those that the deepest thinkers consider to be the most convincing.

With regard to the proofs derived from the general consent of mankind, he observes:

"When we turn to the two most ancient of the great religions of the old heathen world, the two earliest religions of our own Aryan race, the Vedic and the Zoroastrian, it seems impossible to deny the evidences of a belief not only in supernatural and divine agency in regard of the existence of the visible and material, but even in the being of One who was regarded as the substratum and foundation of all existence. It may, and indeed ought to be admitted that in these ancient forms of faith the idea of creation was by no means clearly united with that of the One Being who was felt to be, though not definitely declared to be, the sort of First Cause or substratum of all things. Still we certainly do find in them the two ideas which, taken together, make up that one idea which we are now seeking to substantiate the idea of an all-creative God. In the Vedic faith this was much more obscured, though in the remarkable practice of representing each god as, for the time being, supreme, we see the old monotheistic idea struggling to find