die. To promote these desirable views, the Society proposes to distribute annually gold medals, or a sum of money to the amount of 1,200 francs, to those veterinarians who shall furnish the best memoirs, which will be received till the 1st of February each year; they must be signed with the authors' names. The Society also proposed the following subject, for a prize of a gold medal, or money, value 1000 francs, to be adjudged at the public meeting in 1811. "To determine by a course of observations, the most frequent causes of blindness in horses, and to indicate the best means of remedying it.".. ،، La Société Academique de Medicine, proposes the following. question for the subject of a prize, to be decreed at the ordinary meeting, the second Tuesday in September, 1811. Quels sont les signes qui indiquent ou contr'indiquent la saigné, soit dans les fièvres intermittentes, soit dans les fièvres continues, designées sous les noms de putrides ou adynamiques, malignes ou ataxiques?" The author who determines this question in a satisfactory manner, will receive a gold medal valued at 300 francs. The memoirs to be written in French or in Latin, and forwarded free of expense, by the 1st of July, to M. Léveillé, Secretary to the Society, rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, No. 52. La Société de Médecine de Besançon, considering that information is yet wanting on the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the skin, has offered for the subject of a prize essay, to be adjudged at its public meeting in September, 1811, "l'histoire anatomique, physiologique, sympathique, et pathologique de la peau.” Plumbi acetas has been given with success in epilepsy, in doses of four and five grains in the day. The muriate of manganese and the phosphate of manganese produce the same effect as the oxide of iron, and may be given in the same doses. The phosphate of copper, and the phosphate of silver have been used as purgatives; which effect they produce in doses of a single grain; they have been found excellent hydragogues. Mercury, given so as to induce ptyalism, continues to be practiced with great success in phthisis in various parts of America.Medical Museum, Philadelphia. M. Vitalis, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, Literature, and Arts, of Rouen, and Professor of Chemistry in the same city, having, in the course of his operations, formed a combination of phosphoric acid and potass, both very pure, and having obtained by suitable evaporation of the liquor, a salt perfectly crystallized, thought that the chemists, who have all announced the incrystalli zability (incristallisabilité) of the phosphate of potass, were deceived. Not wishing to trust to his own experiment alone in controverting what had been asserted on the subject, by the most able che mists, M. Vitalis sent a small quantity of the salt to M. Vauquelin, that he might submit it to experiments. The result of his researches is as follows: 1. The salt is very white, crystallized in prisms, with four equal sides terminated by pyramids with four faces corresponding to the sides of the prism. 2. It is very acid to the taste, and strongly reddens the colour of turnsol it is not alterable by the air. 3. It precipitates abundantly lime-water in white flakes. 4. Caustic potass does not disengage ammoniac. 5. It precipitates copiously the solution of muriate of platina. 6. It does not give out phosphorus by heat, but it melts in a clear glass which crystallizes, and becomes opaque upon cooling. 7. Thus melted, it does not dissolve in water so readily as before. 8. A portion of this salt having been saturated by potass, and submitted to a spontaneous evaporation, did not crystallize; but was reduced to a kind of viscid fluid like a solution of gum. From these experiments it clearly follows, that the salt in question is an acid phosphate of potass (phosphate acide de potasse); that thus the opinions of chemists upon the properties of common phos phate of potass, are not affected by the peculiar qualities of this salt; finally, that M. Vitalis has enriched chemistry with a new species of salt which ought to hold a place in the already numerous class of those bodies.—Annales de Chimie. METEORIC STONE IN INDIA. The following extract of a letter from Futty Ghur, in the East Indies, dated 21st July last, presents us with an account of a curious phænomenon which has become frequent in Europe and America of late years "A large ball of fire fell from the clouds, it burnt five villages, destroyed the crops, and some men and women. The ball is still to be seen; it is as hard as a stone. This happened near Shahabad, across the Ganges about thirty miles northward from this place. I have heard nothing further about this, but a vague report." On the decomposition of fulminating powders of mercury and silver by charcoal. (Journal Général de Médécine, &c.) Experiments upon living animals had caused the fulminating powders of mercury, and silver to be ranked with the most active poisons. M. Pagot Laforet, to whom we owe the knowledge of two of these powders, the fulminating powder of silver and mercury detonating white, and the fulminating powder of silver and mercury detonating grey, has ascertained that very small doses are sufficient to kill in less than half an hour, cats, dogs, hares, and other animals which he had submitted to his experiments. Continuing his remarks concerning these powders, he has found that if we mix pulverized and wet charcoal with the powders that the charcoal at tracts tracts their oxygen, and decomposes them, so that they cease to de tonate, and they lose their corrosive action, and only yield a metal. lic taste to the tongue. gave to M. P. Laforet has endeavoured to make an application of this dis covery to the treatment of cases of poisoning by them; he a cat a sufficient dose to occasion death, and as soon as the symptoms of their having taken effect appeared, he made it swallow a great quantity of the powder of charcoal mixed with water in the consistence of thick milk, so as to effect the decomposition of the powders in the stomach. His expectations were not frustrated; he remarked that the symptoms of poisoning ceased immediately, and that the cat suffered no injury from the fulminating powder. He intends to continue his experiments. Vaccination in Glasgow. The following statement contains perhaps one of the most decisive proofs of the utility of vaccination which has been submitted to the public. The first column contains the year. The second the number who have died of the small-pox in the city. The third the whole number of deaths in the city. The fourth the number of deaths in the city and suburbs. There are perhaps few towns of the same magnitude where the beneficial effects of vaccination have been more distinctly experienced. None of those jarring opinions, which have disgraced other parts of the kingdom, are known in Glasgow. The profession universally recommend the practice, and the people almost as universally receive it. The few deaths by small-pox, which have occurred, within these last six years, have been exclusively among recent incomers, and the poorest and most wretched of the Highlanders and Irish. It appears from the records of the Vaccine Institution, that, previous to January 1811, upwards of fourteen thousand five hundred have been inoculated gratis.-Edin. Jour." Letter from the National Vaccine Board to the Governors of the Finsbury Dispensary, London, on the bad effects of the practice of inoculating for the Small-Pox, at that Charity. Leicester Square, Oct. 25, 1810. SIR,-As the Finsbury Dispensary was instituted from the purest motives of charity and benevolence, it is conceived, that you and the other governors will approve of a communication, intimating, that the practice of the dispensary in one point is producing effects the reverse of your intention. It is scarcely requisite to inform you that parliament, after fully examining into the merits of the discovery of vaccination, were convinced of the important benefits that would result from its general adoption; and parliament, in consequence, have authorised Govern ment to form a National Vaccine Establishment, in order to extend vaccination to all parts of the empire. This establishment is placed under the controul of the president and censors, and the master and governors of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons of London; who, from experience, and au thentic information, are fully persuaded of the wisdom of the prac tice of vaccination, and of the futility of those objections which have been urged against it. They observe, however, with regret, that although vaccination has spread not only through the British empire, but also among foreign nations, with the most beneficial consequences, yet from prejudices artfully kept up, small-pox inoculation is still prevalent among the poor of this metropolis. About two years ago, the governors of the small-pox hospital took this business into consideration, and, from a conviction of the great mortality which was caused by propagating a contagious and fatal disease, they prohibited their medical officers from inoculating the small.pox, or distributing small-pox matter.. A decrease of deaths from the small-pox was the immediate consequence: but unhappily this fatal malady again rages through the town, and destroys, within the bills of mortality alone, about thirty persons every week. Upon investigating the sources of this direful pestilence, I have learnt, that besides the pernicious activity of certain private prac titioners, the inoculation of small-pox is extensively carried on at the Finsbury dispensary; above a thousand persons having been inoculated there last year, and matter having been distributed for the inoculation of others to an unknown extent. You are earnestly requested to reflect upon the consequences of thus diffusing among the crowded lanes, courts, and alleys of this 'populous city, a baneful infection which proves fatal to multitudes, and strikes many with total blindness. These indisputable facts made an irresistible impression upon the minds of the governors of the small-pox hospital; and as they knew that the inoculation of the small-pox was disapproved of by the most eminent of the medical profession, they were little affected by (No. 147.) 3 N the the misrepresentations of the prejudiced, or by the sophistry of a few who are interested in the propagation of small.pox. It is to be presumed that when the governors of the Finsbury dispensary deliberate upon this subject, they will decide with equal prudence and humanity. For they are at present, though no doubt unintentionally, opposing a most benevolent measure of parliament; and sanctioning a practice most fatally injurious to the community. I have the honour to be, &c. JAMES MOORE, Director. Report of the Surgeons of the Vaccine Institution of Edinburgh, 1810. In reporting to the managers of the Vaccine Institution the state of vaccination for 1810, the surgeons have the satisfaction to mention, that nothing has occurred which can in any degree diminish their belief of the perfect efficacy of the cow-pox, as a preventive of the small. pox. Since last report, 583 have been vaccinated, making in all 11,108, from the commencement of the practice at the institution. The Surgeons have, since last report, inoculated with the small pox a great many children, who have been vaccinated eight, nine, and ten years ago-all of whom have been found to resist the infec tion. In no instance have they seen any bad effects which could be attributed to vaccination; and, upon the whole, the experience of another year serves to confirm them in their former opinion, that the practice of vaccination is deserving of the highest degree of confidence from the public. Signed by Wм. FARQUHARSON. Edinburgh, Jan. 21, 1811. JAMES BRYCE. ALEXR. GILLISPIE. Letter on Vaccination in Ceylon, from Thomas Christie, Esq. Med. Sup. Gen. to the Editor of the Ceylon Go vernment Gazette. SIR, I beg leave to subjoin, for more general information, an abstract of the number of patients vaccinated in the different districts in Ceylon, during 1809, amounting to 25,697, which added to 103,035, the number vaccinated in former years, makes a total of 128,732 persons who have been officially reported to me, by the respective superintendants and vaccinators, as having regularly passed through the vaccine disease, since its first introduction into this island in 1802, besides a few others inoculated by individuals, not belonging to the vaccination establishment. Agreeable to the best information I have been able to obtain, the small-pox has not existed in any part of this island, since February 1808, till October last, when the disease was brought to Jaffnapatnam by a country boat from Quilon on the Malabar coast. The contagion |