in 62 localities and there were 269 deaths, against 294 last September and 250 last month; there were but 10 deaths in country towns and 170 in the large cities. Typhoid fever is reported from 73 localities, and 157 deaths, of which 80 occurred in the large cities. and 42 in rural towns representing less than one-half the population. The mean barometer for the month was 30.15, the mean relative humidity 71 per cent., the average mean temperature 61°, or 1° below the normal; there were 16 clear days and a rainfall of 1.35 inches against a normal of 3.15, with southerly and westerly winds of average velocity.

New York City, 1,995,000. Report for September: Deaths, 3,110; 1,363 under five years of age. Death rate, 19.70. Zymotic diseases per 1,000 from all causes, 175; diphtheria, 89; typhoid fever, 32; cerebro-spinal fever, 16; consumption, 390; acute respiratory diseases, 375; diarrhoeal diseases, 347.

Brooklyn, 1,100,000. Report for September: Deaths, 1,776; 819 under five years. Death rate, 19.58. From zymotic diseases, per 1,000, from all causes, 192; diphtheria, 60; typhoid fever, 32; consumption, 166; acute respiratory diseases, 154; diarrhoeal diseases, 208.

Buffalo, 360,000. Report for September: Deaths, 352; 170 under five years. Death rate, 11.7. From diphtheria, 10; acute respiratory diseases, 31; consumption, 32; typhoid fever, 5. Rochester, 170,000. Report for September: Deaths, 154; 37 under five years. Death rate, 10.8. From consumption, 22; acute respiratory diseases, 9.

Albany, 100,000. Report for September: Deaths, 145; 26 under five years. Death rate, 17.4. From typhoid fever, 10; diphtheria, 6; consumption, 16; acute lung diseases, 8.

Syracuse, 120,000. Report for September: Deaths, 121; 37 under five years of age. Death rate, 12.1. From diphtheria, 2; acute respiratory diseases, 5; consumption, 17.

NORTH CAROLINA.-George G. Thomas, M. D., President, Wilmington; Richard H. Lewis, M. D., Secretary, Raleigh.

The September Bulletin summarizes the mortality for August, from twenty towns, with an aggregate population of 99,38443.417 colored.

Total number of deaths, 145, of which 86 were of colored people and 50 under five years of age. Typhoid fever caused 3 deaths; malarial fever, 18; whooping cough, 6; consumption, 14; pneu

monia, 2; diarrhoeal diseases, 22. Annual death rates-whites, 12.6; colored, 24.4; total, 17.5.

OHIO.-S. P. Wise, M. D., President, Millersburg; C. O. Probst, M. D., Secretary, Columbus.

Cincinnati, 405,000. J. M. Withrow, M. D., Health Officer, reports for September 412 deaths; 148 under five years of age. Annual death rate, 12.20. From consumption, 55; pneumonia, 21; bronchitis, II; zymotic diseases, 60; diphtheria, 10; typhoid fever, 9.

Cleveland, 350,000. J. L. Hess, M. D., Health Officer, reports for the month of September: Deaths, 403; 181 under five years. From diphtheria, 5; typhoid fever, 4; consumption, 23; tuberculosis, 15; pneumonia, 23; bronchitis, 8. Death rate, 13.8.

PENNSYLVANIA.-Pemberton Dudley, M. D., President, Philadelphia; Benjamin Lee, M. D., Secretary, Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, 1,214,256. Theodore B. Stulb, Health Officer, reports for the five weeks ending September 30: Deaths, 1,804; 539 under five years of age. From diphtheria, 176; typhoid fever, 234; consumption, 208; pneumonia, 131; scarlatina, 14. Annual death rate per 1,000, 11.09.

Nov. 17-Diphtheria in the 33d and 37th Wards, covering a period of seven weeks, there have been reported 152 cases, of which over 50 were removed to the hospital. The type of the disease thus far has been extremely mild. There have been but II deaths, giving a death rate of about 7 per cent., while the mortality rate of the same disease during the corresponding time was over 25 per cent. throughout the entire city.

Nov. 1-9. Diphtheria reported prevalent in Nanticoke, Pittsburg, Union Hill, Ringoes and Lebanon.

Pittsburg, 285,000. Report for the five weeks ending October 30: Deaths, 429; 152 under five years of age; typhoid fever, 21; consumption, 24; diphtheria, 17. Death rate, 15.4.

SOUTH CAROLINA.-Charleston, 65,165-white, 28,870; colored, 36,295. H. B. Horlbeck, M. D., Health Officer, reports for five weeks ending October 30: Deaths, 141; 104 colored. Under five years of age, 47. Annual death rate--white, 13.3; colored, 29.721.5.

TENNESSEE.-J. A. Albright, M. D., President, Somerville; J. Berrien Lindsley, M. D., Secretary, Nashville.

Bulietin for August-September, reports: Yellow fever and filth go hand in hand, and where the sanitary arrangements are good there is no more danger from this than from any other fever. Assuming that the cases at New Orleans, Ocean Springs, Biloxi, and Bobile are genuine yellow fever, we see how innocuous it is where the surroundings are comparatively clean. Memphis cleaned up. thoroughly after the epidemic of 1878 and 1879, and adopted a scientific sewer system, with the result that not a single case of yellow fever has ever appeared here since. (A few cases occurred subsequently.) The health boards in the various towns of the South have been frantically drawing up quarantines against each other, and the thing for them to do is to manifest hereafter some activity in having their towns thoroughly cleaned. Hardly a year passes that some cases of yellow fever do not slip into our Southern ports. If they find a nidus of filth to feed on, they spread. The authorities of every Southern town should realize the fact that there is one sure preventive of epidemic, and that is sanitation. Instead of sleeping throughout the year, and then hoping to meet the emergencies by drawing up a quarantine, they should adopt an effective system of cleanliness. They should devote themselves to sanitation first and in preference to all other public work. Better a clean town than anything else. It ought to be a crime for any town to be dirty. Let the good work begin now, and keep it up throughout the year.-Commercial-Appeal, Sept. 23.

TEXAS.-R. M. Swearingen, M. D., State Health Officer, Austin. Galveston, Texas, October 16.--Whereas, after having heard a full explanation of the prevailing epidemic now in Galveston, and also a thorough explanation of the courses and results of all the suspected cases of yellow fever, as diagnosed by Drs. Guiteras and Swearingen and some of the local physicians, we, the visiting physicians of the interior of Texas, resolve that WE DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THERE IS A CASE OF YELLOW FEVER IN THE STATE OF TEXAS.

Resolved, further, That WE DO NOT BELIEVE THERE HAS BEEN A CASE OF YELLOW FEVER IN THE STATE OF TEXAS WITHIN THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS. While we believe that Drs. Guiteras and Swearingen and others who have made diagnoses of yellow fever in Galveston and Houston were honest and conscientious in their diagnosis, the results have not borne out such diagnoses; be it further

Resolved, That we are unanimously of the opinion that dengue

the disease now prevailing as an epidemic in Galveston and Houston-now exists also as an epidemic throughout the entire State of Texas.

J. F. Collier, M. D., Health Officer Montgomery County; J. E. Vann, M. D., Health Officer Trinity County; J. S. Wooters, M. D., Crockett; C. I. Holt, M. D., Kilgore; Lawrence Corley, M. D., Crockett; F. C. Woodward, M. D., Grapeland Board of Health; W. N. Hooper, M. D., Conroe; G. S. West, M. D., Palestine; W. G. Jameson, M. D., Palestine, Chief Surgeon International and Great Northern Railroad; J. L. Hall, Crockett; G. L. Davis, Trinity.

UTAH.-Salt Lake City, 48,076. W. T. Dalley, M. D., Commissioner, reports for September 47 deaths, of which 15 were under five years of age. Annual death rate per 1,000, 8.04. From zymotic diseases, 12; consumption, 3; cholera infantum, 6.

WASHINGTON.-Seattle, 60,000.-R. M. Eames, M. D., Health Officer, reports for September 36 deaths. Annual death rate per 1,000, 7.2. Deaths from consumption, 2; pneumonia, 1; typhoid fever, 4.

WISCONSIN.-Solon Marks, M. D., President, Milwaukee; U. O. B. Wingate, M. D., Secretary, Milwaukee.

Milwaukee, 275,000. Walter Kempster, M. D., Commissioner of Health, reports for September: Deaths, 300; 141 under five years of age. Annual death rate per 1,000, 130. Diphtheria caused 7 of age. Annual death rate per 1,000, 13.0. Diphtheria caused 7

Dr. Eduardo

MEXICO.-Cousejo Superior de Salubridad. Licéaga, President, Mexico; Dr. José Ramirez, Secretary-General. City of Mexico, 344,377. Bulletin reports for the month of September, 1,327; from diarrhoeal diseases, 352; tubercular diseases, 138; pneumonia, 84; bronchitis, 83; typhus, 47; smallpox, 19; other causes, 604. Annual ratio per 1,000 population, 46.50.

BUENOS AYRES, 725,554. A. B. Martinez, Director of the Municipal Statistics Bureau, reports for the month of June 1,118 deaths, of which 411 were under five years of age. Annual death rate, 18.4 per 1,000. From diphtheria there were 22 deaths; typhoid fever, 30; acute lung diseases, 237; consumption, 99.

For the month of July 1,346 deaths, of which 515 were under five years of age. Annual death rate, 22.2 per 1,000. From diphtheria there were 21 deaths; typhoid fever, 16; acute lung diseases, 375: consumption, 130.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

THE RELATION OF STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION.

Reproduction and dispersal are the two great aims in the life of every plant and animal. All else is but the means, the mere contrivances to gain the best advantage in the accomplishment of these ultimate efforts. Every species, every individual exists by virtue of having striven to attain these ends. In the structure of each one is the record of the attainment, partial or complete, as the case may be. And each man and woman of us is toiling in his or her way toward the same goal, unconscious of that something within us, greater than ourselves, that "guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to another." The burs and "stickers" that cling so persistently to our clothes are but a part of the same great effort. It is the only way sweet cicely, desmodium, the bur-marigold, and their kin have of traveling through the woods, and so on from forest to forest, from swamp tangle to swamp tangle. They live their lives as truly as a man lives his, with equally as good a purpose that is equally as well attained. Each embodies those essential qualities of living that the great teacher discerned when he bade men "consider the lilies of the field."-From Burs and Beggar's Ticks, by Prof. S. Trotter, in Appletons' Popular Science Monthly for November.

LEPROSY AN EXCLUSIVELY HUMAN DISEASE.

The active cause of leprosy is a specific micro-organism, the bacillus lepræ. The period of incubation varies from a few minutes to several years.

Leprosy is an exclusively human disease; it is not inocuble to animals. It is never of spontaneous origin, but is invariably derived from the lesions or secretions of a person similarly diseased. Its development in a country previously exempt from the disease may always be traced to its importation in the person of a leper from an infected centre. We know nothing definitely of the mode of infection or the channels of entrance through which the bacillus gains access to the organism-whether by direct contact, by inhalation or imbibition of the germs, or by other intermediaries. Observation proves conclusively that every leper is a possible source of danger to all with whom he may come into intimate and prolonged contact. -From "Leprosy and Hawaiian Annexation," by Dr. Prince A. Morrow, in North American Review for November.