the home and spun wool, without écoles ménagères, without courses of special duties, there was formed Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, and Arria, the wife of Peto, in general that most beautiful and serious woman, who was none the less admired by the man of Roman history."

Taking Brunetière's classification into revolu tionary feminism and Christian feminism, Signorina Evangelisti thinks the former is found chiefly in the Germanic race, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon colonies of America and Australia, and the latter in the Latin race. She hopes that good sense will prevent "revolu tionary feminism" from gaining a hold in Italy. Feminism and the Housekeeping of the Future.

The new woman-not in the objectionable sense the woman of mental training and culture, will apply her advanced ideas to housekeeping, so as to greatly simplify this scienceor art and will thereby greatly increase the comfort of life. This is the opinion of Herr Wilhelm Wetekamp, director of the WernerSiemens Realgymnasium at Schönberg, near Berlin. In a recent number of Die Woche, the illustrated weekly of the German capital, Herr Wetekamp discusses, in an entertaining way, the means which will be brought about in the housekeeping of the future by the higher education of woman as applied to the developments of twentieth century invention. The housekeeping of the present day, he says, begins with that terrible bugbear, house-hunting. In the future, this difficulty will be minimized, because the woman of the future will have more to say in the building of dwelling-houses. Then comes the equally, if not more terrible, question of servants. In the middle class, it is not too much to assert that "servants are a luxury that swallows up from one-fifth to one-quarter of the household income-besides their becoming increasingly difficult to obtain." In the future, che efficiency of the mistress as a housekeeper and the labor-saving devices will lessen the need for servants. Another economic phase of housekeeping which Herr Wetekamp considers very important is that of the time and labor wasted by both mistresses and servants in the marketing, when a few experts could make these purchases for the community at the same time. and at lower rates. There is also a tremendous scattering of forces in the household itself. this point the German writer says:

On

Glance for a moment at the operations of ten households, and you must acknowledge that ten kitchens, with ten stoves and ten servants, etc., are rather unpractical, and that four or five maids could readily accomplish the same work if practically arranged. But, it is said, there is something so genial in having one's

own kitchen! Is it so genial to have next to our livingrooms a laboratory for the preparation of our food? to get the odor of the cabbage or that of our neighbor's roast? In case of visitors, we see the mistress trudging back and forth into the kitchen, just so that they may be provided with something to eat. Is that congenial? No! Our home should be a place where all-the family and the guests-may find recreation and repose after the day's work, and not an establishment for preparing food.

The time to be gained in this way, we are told in this article, could be devoted by women to helpful social effort and to cultivating herself so that she may understand her husband's sphere of interests better than 99 per cent. of the modern women do. But, far above all, the great benefit of this freedom from the petty cares of the household would be that the mother could devote herself to the training of her children, making this her chief duty, not merely a side issue.

She is in reality destined by nature rather for a mother than for a cook, and every reasonable man must regard it as more advisable to leave the preparation of food to the hands of strangers than the care and education of the most precious of our possessions.

Anticipating the objection that eating in restaurants would prove expensive and would sacrifice family privacy, Herr Wetekamp says:

A bettering of existing conditions can take place only by having each dwelling connected in some way with a central kitchen. That this method is practical is evidenced by the Centralbygning, originated by Director Fick in Copenhagen, which has been in operation for some time. It demonstrates especially that, while fully maintaining the character of "home," the expense of housekeeping is diminished and the mistress is enabled to save sufficient time for self-culture and for devoting the proper attention to the training of her children.

In describing the conditions which prevail there, and in replying to the question, How is such an establishment to be organized? he fol lows the communications which the above-named Danish champion of joint housekeeping has most kindly made public.

The simplest would be for a number of families to unite in order to erect a building, engage help, etc., at the common expense. But chaos would in that case soon ensue, for a "number of families" cannot manage. In order to produce any results, the project must be put into the hands of a person or company who can devote their entire attention to it. The requisite number of parties being secured, every contributor has a right, after the completion of the structure, to a dwelling at the calculated rental; but he may transfer his rights and obligations. The occupants are interested parties, but not joint owners.

As to the arrangements of the house and the mode of life:

The kitchen is in the cellar, or perhaps preferably on the top floor, and is connected with the individual

the poison from the stomach), and that, owing to its absorbing power and its avidity for all gases and all salts, it immediately determines the formation of an innocuous combination. Its absorbing power is so great that one volume of charcoal absorbs ninety volumes of ammonia gas. Chemists have proved the analogy existing between this property and the solution of gases

in water (the most soluble being the most absorbable). Some time ago I had occasion to cure a whole family (five persons) who had been poisoned by verdigris, and were already in agony (throat constriction, rapid breathing, and intense thirst). I gave them large doses of animal and vegetable charcoal in water, and brought them out of it without any trouble.

IN

Na recent issue of American Medicine, November 18, 1905, Dr. T. D. Crothers states that for a long time all the leading authorities on therapeutics regarded alcohol as a valuable stimulant and tonic, and supported their claims by many exhaustive studies until it appeared that its therapeutic power was established beyond question. In small doses alcohol was said to be a tonic and stimulant, while in larger doses it depressed and lowered vitality. Modern research has failed to confirm this theory, but has indicated the action of alcohol to be that of an anæsthetic and narcotic.

The studies of Professor Kraepelin, of the University of Heidelberg, showing the depressing action of spirits and its narcotic properties to cover up pain and discomfort, fully confirm the work of Richardson and others who, a few years ago, announced that alcohol must be considered a narcotic, and any medicinal action it had was entirely due to this power. The good results obtained in some of the clinical researches of the older physicians are now explained by the modern physician as due to this anæsthetic and narcotic action. This kind of medication, like that from the use of opium, covers up the symptoms of pain and discomfort at the peril of injury to the metabolism and vitality of the body.

Within the last few years, alcohol has become less and less popular as a drug in public hospitals and where used has been chiefly employed for external applications, as a bath in fevers. Formerly alcohol was thought to be very useful as a tonic for worn out elderly persons. theory is also rapidly passing away. Nearly all the old people's homes and hospitals for the aged have abandoned spirits as a tonic.

This

It seems to be a settled conviction that alcohol used medicinally or as a beverage is depressive and lowers vitality, lessening the oxygen-carrying properties of the blood corpuscles and increasing the waste of the system. Several authorities urge with great positiveness that the use of alcohol favors the growth of toxins and bacterial products in the body, by its disturbing action on nutrition.

Strange to say, in view of the above-mentioned facts, quite a large class of physicians continue to use alcohol as a stimulant, and in cases in which vitality is low for the purpose of increasing the heart's action, and particularly in collapse. This practice has proved to be especially dangerous in many ways, notably in the collapsed condition of persons found on the street, and to whom spirits are given as heart stimulants. Should such collapse and coma be due to cerebral hemorrhage, the action of spirits on the heart would cause a sudden flow of blood through the arteries, thereby increasing the hemorrhage and practically making fatal a condition that might have been overcome otherwise.

Dr. Crothers shows that when the coma comes from the presence of toxins and pressure from congestion on certain brain centers, the action of alcohol increases the toxins and sends them with greater rapidity over the large brain areas, producing graver results. In the last stages of fever or profound exhaustion, the attempt to keep up the heart's action by spirits is simply making large drafts on resources with increased collapse and more certain death. This is more startling from the fact that so many substances can be used to produce this result without danger.

In the doctor's opinion, the cheap California wines now on the market contain the purest forms of alehol, together with acids and other products, which may have some medicinal action. He maintains that the older the wine, whiskey, or brandy, the more complex and dangerous are the spirits and alcohol present.

One of the recent conclusions, which is confirmed by daily experience, is that alcohol, either taken as a drug or a beverage, has cumulative action. The apparent good results are misleading, and the invalid who has taken spirits in moderation for a long time, with the belief that he is regaining health and vigor, is suddenly seized with acute inflammation of the lungs or kidneys, which he attributes to some trivial cause. A sclerotic (hardened) condition of the arteries, combined with a feeble heart action, culminates in a fatal issue. The inference is very clear

that the connection between the continuous anæsthetic and narcotic action of alcohol and the final collapse is far more intimate than we realize.

This every-day experience confirms, and it is seen in the low vitality and feeble power of resistance of all persons who use spirits either as a drug or medicine. The mortality of moderate or excessive users of spirits is a well-known clinical fact. Constant anæsthesia of the nerve centers going on for a long time must inevitably result in organic changes. If this condition fol

lows when its use began in health, its effects will be much more complete when used on dis eased tissue and degenerative processes.

"In the exhaustion of old age," says the author, "the dangerous prescription of alcohol in some form still continues to be given, and the results are always fatal. . . . I know of but one use of alcohol in the sick-room that is thoroughly scientific, that is its use, as a refrigerant, to cool off the skin in fevers; it excels ice in the rapidity and certainty of its action."

THE

HE captivating subject of immunity has attracted special attention for several years past, and our knowledge of it has been greatly extended. Some very curious facts in connection with the subject are related in the review of a year's progress in this field of research given by Dr. Paul LeConte in the last number of La Cellule (Louvain).

A toxin of fatigue was obtained by making an extract of fatigued muscle. This toxin when given to the rabbit by intraperitoneal injection brought about a reaction in the blood of the rab bit resulting in the production of an antitoxin, by means of which the action of the original toxin, or poison, could be neutralized.

It has been proved experimentally that if one species of animal, which we may call A, has been made immune with the serum of a second species B, the serum of species A will precipitate all the albuminous material of species B, but will not affect the serum of a third species.

A class of elements known as precipitines serve in medico-legal cases to distinguish between the blood of different species. In a very striking series of experiments precipitines were extracted from mummies, one five thousand years old, and another, the mummy of a child, two thousand years old. The precipitines obtained in this way gave the usual reaction, and the author concluded that these bodies retain their properties during intervals of even thousands of years.

The writer also states that the anti-bodies of morphine and arsenic have been definitely set aside, and the anti-cancerous and anti-epileptic serums are considered useless.

Immunity from disease depends upon a number of different factors, many of them not fully understood even now, and needing more thorough investigation.

The resistant elements of the blood include

substances known as antitoxins, agglutins, precipitines, alexins, etc. Naturally, the question arises as to where the peculiar substances that make the blood resistant, and prevent the development of disease germs, originate.

Scientists thought alexin, which has the power of destroying microbes, might be produced by the white corpuscles of the blood, about which so many remarkable characteristics have been discovered, but it is now agreed that the living white corpuscles do not secrete alexin ; only the disintegrated ones liberate it. Among the prod ucts of extraction of the multinuclear corpuscles there is alexin, and it is also found in the extract of the spleen, and of the red marrow of bone, which are believed to be centers of formation of the leucocytes, but the amount contained in these centers is always very small in proportion to that found in the serum.

The bactericidal power of animals has been studied for the past fifteen years, before the discovery of antitoxins, alexins, etc. Scientists were not slow to establish the paradox that animals whose blood-serum was most strongly bactericidal when used experimentally outside the body were most easily infected when microbes were injected into the blood, and the fact forced itself into recognition that blood in an unaltered condition does not play the same rôle as serum outside the body, and from this they come to the conclusion that the bactericidal power develops during the coagulation of the blood, while Metchnikoff, going a step further. considers the destruction of the white corpuscle as the only important factor.

Many experiments have been made to deter mine whether the plasma of the blood contains alexin. The dog, rabbit, sheep, etc., were tried, and alexins were found in the plasma of the dif ferent animals, where they were as abundant as in the corresponding serums.

THE

HE surface of the sea is two and one-half times as vast as the surface of the earth. Its mass is enormous,-one milliard and onethird cubic kilometers.

If the basin of the sea had been emptied at the moment of the birth of Christ, and if an enormous flood, taken from some unknown source, had been poured into the empty basin at the rate of a cubic kilometer a minute, the basin would not yet be full. Nearly six hundred years would be needed to complete the task of bringing the waters of the sea to their present level.

very

This is the way a writer in the Journal de St. Petersburg (published in French in the Russian capital), signing himself J. de Br.-, begins a consideration of the bottom of the sea. The earth under the seas, he continues, is like the superaquatic earth. In it are plains, plateaux, peaks, small hills, valleys, and ravines. But down there there are no sharp edges. It has all been worn smooth by "the washing of the eternal seas." The "landscape" is visibly aged and very monotonous, like the earth exposed by digging under ancient ruins. ample, take the Atlantic Ocean.

For ex

Under the extremely regular dark line which forms the upper limit of its aquatic atmosphere, the submerged land shows the trace of various accidents of nature. Looking at the sea, it is very easy to imagine that there must be a very deep valley under all that mass of water, and that the valley must have an axis like the axis of the two continents,-European-African, and American. But the real depths of the sea are a very different matter. At the bottom of the sea there are two valleys. The one nearest to us (Europe) is the valley of the East Atlantic. Of course, it is farther south, starting between Africa and South America, in the neighborhood of the valley of North Africa, and passing between the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores, to the southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. That valley is very deep, and, at its depths, there are more than five kilometers of water overhead. The valley of the East Atlantic runs along near Europe, ending southwest of the British Isles, where it is separated from the basin of the North Sea by a sort of a crest. The other valley,the valley of the West Atlantic,-is on a very much larger scale, parallel to the valley of the East Atlantic. The two valleys are separated by what builders would call a "sill,”-a long sill passing between the Azores, which may be called a superaquatic rise of ground. This sill is not over three thousand meters deep. It is a submarine chain separating the two valleys, the general direction being from north to south,-a chain which, counting from the depths of the valleys, is more than two thousand meters high. The valley of the West Atlantic is very deep, the bottom being more than five kilometers below the surface of the sea. As it skirts South America, the Bermudas lie on its left. It runs under the broad sea off Newfoundland and Labrador, ending off Greenland. The sill continues as far as Iceland. The sub-Atlantic earth, therefore, comprises two great parallel valleys, separated by a chain of moun

tains. Toward the north the ground of the valley is high. Between Greenland and the continent, by Iceland and the islands to the north of Scotland, it is all one vast plain, without depressions of any importance. A relatively insignificant rise above the ground level is sufficient to bring about the continuity of the change.

Did this continuity exist at any of the early epochs? No one can tell. But we know that, as far as we can form any conception of submarine conditions, there was always a connec tion between England and the continent. England was joined to the continent. We know that the rupture which set her free is of geologically recent date.

The greatest depths of the sea, the places where the submarine ground is farthest from the surface of the water, is on the other side of our world, in the vicinity of New Zealand, where the water is more than nine kilometers deep, in the ravines of Kermadec and of Tonga. These two ravines lie one behind the other, separated by a crest of three thousand meters altitude. The ravines are not more than seven thousand meters deep. But, generally speaking, the submarine land is level compared with the land above water. Farther out from the coasts there are abrupt descents, but their contours are worn smooth and rounded by the deep undercurrents. All the submarine lines are soft and uniformly monotonous. There is but one place (the region near the volcanic, or Madreporean, islands) where the submarine landscape is abrupt, and somewhat like the exundated earth.

Apart from that, the whole thing is so dull that the bare thought of it would be killing were not the man interesting himself in such matters naturally, and as a consequence of his inclination, already very dead. In the immediate vicinity of the coasts there is more submarine variety. It is probable that even there all the descents are slow and even. But at least a man can see daylight. Light penetrates to a depth of over two hundred meters. Light may be seen three hundred, even four hundred, meters below the surface of the sea. There is life there, abundant vegetation, and many animals. But away down in the depths, -that is another matter! There all penetration of solar light is arrested. There is no word fit to describe the peculiar quality of the cold. The deeper we go the lower is the temperature, except in certain very limited, closed basins, where the temperature of the basins is relatively high, as it is under the Mediterranean.

The Prince of Monaco, who, as is well known, delights in submarine experiments, has a friend, Dr. Richard (also an experimenter), who has taken the temperature of the water on the same vertical at a depth of six thousand meters, by means of bottles of his own invention. On the surface the temperature was 20 degrees. Two