The objectors all insist that a trap will allow sewer gas to pass through it, and the experiments made at the Academy of Medicine showed that sulphureted hydrogen gas, etc., would so pass. The advocates of the trap have never denied that the water seal would absorb gases on one side and give them off on the other, but they do deny that, in the conditions existing in good plumbing, such gases will be given off in quantities to do any damage, and they confidently assert that the germ which is the dangerous element will not pass the seal at all. Pumpelly investigated the matter for the National Board of Health, and in no instance was he able to make the germ pass the seal of the trap. It is now proposed to set up against the weight of this scientific testimony the results of an investigator in Chicago, whose work was at once appropriated as an advertisement by stock jobbing disinfectant companies in a manner which raises a suspicion that the investigation was made in their interest. He described tersely the essentials of good plumbing, the necessity of a trap on the house drain, the ventilation of the soil-pipe, and the ventilation of the trap against siphonage. Of the first, he said that it offered protection to each householder against the entrance into his house of the germs of a contagious disease which passed into the common sewer from the house of a neighbor. Were the trap dispensed with, the contagion in the sewer would have free entrance into the houses connecting with it.
Prof. Chandler, in conclusion, alluded to the cordial relations now existing between the Board of Health and the majority of the master plumbers of the city. He said that for himself his opinion of the craft had greatly risen during his intimate connection with plumbers the last two years. He thought the majority of the jobs now done in the city are well executed. He believed that the Board of Health had not been obliged to proceed against more than eight master plumbers since the new law went into force. He called upon the Association to adopt a "code of ethics," which should define what an honest plumber can do and cannot do, and he illustrated his meaning by citing an extraordinary case of fraudulent workmanship which had been recently reported to him. His remarks on this point were greeted with frequent outbursts of applause.
THE PLANTAIN AS A STYPTIC.
The following abstract of a paper read by Dr. Quinlan at the recent British Pharmaceutical Congress, may prove of interest to medical readers in this country, where the plant mentioned is a common weed:
"About a year ago Dr. Quinlan had seen the chewed leaves of the Plantago lanceolata successfully used to stop a dangerous hemorrhage from leech bites in a situation where pressure could not be employed. He had searched out the literature of the subject, and found that, although this herb is highly spoken of by Culpepper and other old writers as a styptic, and alluded to as such in the plays of Shakespeare, its employment seems to have died out. Professor Quinlan described the suitable varieties of plantain, and exhibited preparations which had been made for him by Dr. J. Evans, of Dublin, State apothecary. They dried leaves and powdered leaves, conserved with glycerine, for external use; the juice preserved by alcohol, as also by glycerine, for internal use; and a green extract. He gave an account of the chemistry of the juice, from which it appeared that it was not a member of the tannin series; and also described its physiological effect in causing a tendency to stasia in the capillaries of the tail of a goldfish, examined with a microscopic power of 400 X. He regarded its styptic power as partly mechanical and partly physiological. The juice, in large doses, he had found useful in internal hemorrhages. The knowledge of the properties of this plant he thought would be useful in cases of emergency, because it could be obtained in any field and by the most uninstructed persons."