Brown-Séquard has brought out his great Vital Fluid. He is reported as saying: "I never made use of the word 'elixir,' still less of the words 'elixir of life.' These are all expressions or inventions of sensational newspapers. If quacks or ignorant men in America have killed people, as stated by the New York papers, they would have avoided committing those murders had they paid the least attention to the most elementary rules as regards the subcutaneous injection of animal substances. Injections of animal matter have no danger, as a rule, unless the substances begin to be decomposed. When this condition of things exists, no good can be obtained, and there is grave danger of inflammation, abscesses, and even death."
"Professor Brown-Séquard is reported to have lately informed the French Academy of Sciences that, by condensing the watery vapor coming from the human lungs, he obtained a poisonous liquid capable of producing almost immediate death. The poison is an alkaloid (organic), and not a microbe or series of microbes. He injected this liquid under the skin of a rabbit and the effect was speedily mortal without convulsions. Dr. Séquard said it was fully proved that respired air contains a volatile element far more dangerous than the carbonic acid which is one of its constituents, and that the human breath contains a highly poisonous agent. This startling fact should be borne in mind by the occupants of crowded horse-cars and ill-ventilated apartments."
"A very curious geographical distribution of certain virtues and vices has been mooted by a scientist. Intemperance is mostly found above latitude 48°, amatory aberrations south of the forty-fifth, financial extravagance in large seaports, industrial thrift, in pastoral highland regions."
"Advance in Hygienic Clothing.—The new cellular clothing now coming into use in England is said to be a success. It is woven out of the same materials as the common weaves of cloth, being simply, as its name indicates, closely woven into cells, the network of which is covered over with a thin fluff. Its porous quality allows the slow passing of the outside and inside air, giving time for the outside air to become of the same temperature as the body, obviating all danger of catching colds, and allowing vapors constantly exhaled by the body to pass off, thus contributing toward health and cleanliness. The common objection to cotton clothing—that it is productive of chills and colds—is removed if woven in this manner, and the invention can certainly be said to be strictly in accordance with hygienic and scientific principles."
The annual death rate, in 1888, for the principal cities of the world, per 1,000 inhabitants, was: San Francisco, Cleveland, Stockholm, 17; Bristol, Dresden, 18; Chicago, Cincinnati, Edinburgh, London, Turin, 19; Berlin, Baltimore, Brussels, Buffalo, Liverpool, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, 20; Brooklyn, St. Louis, Tokyo, 21; Amsterdam, Christiana, Paris, Washington, 22; Glasgow, 23; Copenhagen, 24; Bombay, Boston, New Orleans, Pesth, Venice, Vienna, 25; Breslau, Calcutta, Manchester, New York, Prague, Rotterdam, 26; Dublin, 27; Rome, 28; Hamburg, Munich, 29; Trieste, 30; Buda Pesth, St. Petersburg, 32; Alexandria, 38; Madras, 40; and Cairo, 51.
The death rate among the poor and rich respectively varies much. In Paris the death rate per 1,000 inhabitants between 40 and 50 years in easy circumstances was 8.3 against 18.7 among the poor. In London are some districts of the wealthy classes where the rate was 11.3 against 38 in the slums. The mean age at death among the gentry was 55 years, while among the workers it was 20-1/2 years. It was found that only 8% of the children of the upper classes died in their first year against 19% in the general population of Liverpool and 33% in the slums of that city. Deaths from consumption were nearly one-fourth of all deaths among the poor, and only one-eighteenth among the rich.
The above facts and figures cannot fail to set every intelligent person who reads them to thinking of this great health problem.