All these matters should be thought over before the meeting is right upon us, if we intend to make the best use of the opportunities presented, and not embarrass the presiding officer by a jumble of ill-digested work, or bring disrepute upon the Society by presenting papers put together without due study.
Another matter of vital importance should be carefully considered by every member of the Society. It is the amendment proposed by Dr. T. D. Haigh, of Fayetteville. He proposes to amend the Constitution (Art. IV, Sec. 2,) so that the officers are elected by ballot. This is not a new feature. It has been tried before in the Society but was found to consume a great deal of time. This is the only objection we have heard against it, and this should not be considered insuperable, if the amendment corrects abuses of which we have heard complaints.
We would like to see the office of President filled for a longer term than one year. A good presiding officer is not so easy to get that we ought to be willing to let him go out of office as soon as he has shown his capacity, and this remark applies with peculiar force to the present incumbent. To affect this change though, there must be a further amendment of the Constitution.
YELLOW FEVER POISON SURVIVES A WINTER.
“The U. S. Steamer Plymouth, Captain Hanning, which left Boston March 15th, for a cruise to the West Indies, returned to Vineyard Sound on account of two cases of yellow fever occurring on board when about 80 miles south-east of Bermuda Islands.
“The ship had been in Boston during the winter, and as she had come from the West Indies last autumn with yellow fever on board she had been frozen out and fumigated. As she had not called into any port since leaving Boston, this development showed that the germs of yellow fever still existed in her, and she was headed north, being deemed, under the circumstances, unfit for cruising in the tropics. On the 31st of March, Peter Eagan, the boatswain’s mate, was buried, having died from yellow fever on the previous day.”—Wilmington Sun’s associated press telegram.
The above dispatch has since been verified and the minute details will no doubt be investigated most thoroughly. Notwithstanding this case is not without a parallel, it comes in uncomfortable collision with the theories we cherish of the killing power of low temperature on the yellow fever poison.
In the most dismal times of a ravaging epidemic the heart turned with anxious longings for the arrival of frost! This was the line of demarcation between the pestilence and recovery from it! But in this case we are informed that the Plymouth spent the winter in Boston harbor with open hatches, the cold being intense enough to freeze the water in the boilers. Every means for thorough disinfection had been applied that could suggest itself to the minds of the well educated medical officers in the service of a government lavish in its supplies. With all this, a short cruise develops the fever in a form intense enough to cause the death of one of the two seized with the disease.
We will await the detailed accounts of the investigation which is to follow with peculiar interest. It is a starting point for the National Board of Health, and a difficult one.
We append the following from the Surgeon-General of the Navy, received through the Bulletin of the Public Health, from Surgeon General Hamilton, U. S. M. H. S.: