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sense, we may safely anticipate, we think, that still more

important conclusions will follow the consideration of thereserved questions. Under the plea that patent-still spiritwas better for the health of the whisky drinker the trade,or a section of it, has supplied him with a spirit, or blendedspirit, which cost the distiller much less to produce thandoes a spirit made entirely from malt and in the pot still.The introduction of a cheapfy produced spirit entirelyaccounts, in fact, for the infliction of the question of ’’ Whatis whisky ? " upon our time and attention. The trade has

developed to such a large extent upon these lines that aRoyal Commission has found it unreasonable to withhold

from the adherents of the patent still and unmalted grainthe right to the use of the word " whisky." " We do not com -plain of this concession if we can be assured that later it willbe insisted that there shall be a distinctive label and thatthe words Scotch whisky or Irish whisky, malt whisky, andso forth shall have the meaning which these respective termsso obviously imply. It is in this direction we think that the

public needs protection the most, and we feel confident thatthe Royal Commissioners have made up their minds to givethis aspect of the question their most careful consideration,having regard to the interests first of the community at largeand then of the industry.

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CORPSE MEDICINES.

Nicasius Le Febure, F.R.S., who describes himself as

Royal Professor in Chymistry to His Majesty of England(Charles II.), has left on record in his work, "A CompleatBody of Chymistry" (1670), some very curious directionsas to the preparation of medicines from mummies and

corpses. There are four kinds of mummy medicines, hetells us, the most valuable being derived from "bodies,dryed up in the hot sands of Lybia, "where whole caravansare frequently overwhelmed by simoons and suffocated."This sudden suffocation doth concentrate the spirits in allthe parts, by reason of the fear and sudden surprisal, whichseizes on travellers." " In order to obtain a drug not inferiorto this variety take some young lusty man’s body, of about25 or 30 years of age, dead by suffocation or hanging, anddissect the muscles without loss of their common membrane,and being thus separated, dip in sp. of wine, and

suspend in a place where the air may be dry and passfreely to and fro." In wet weather the muscles must

be hung in a chimney over a small fire of juniper untilthey become as dry and well seasoned as the powdered beefwhich mariners use for their long sea-voyages. Thusyouwill lhave a mummy not inferiour to that of the fourth kind before

described." " Braised in a mortar and " digested," in fimo orotherwise, during a philosophical month," the powder ofthis fifth or Paracelsian mummy, when mixed with spirits ofwine, "old triacle," powder of viper’s flesh, and so forth,becomes a most efficacious balsam. "It is an excellent

internal remedy against all venemous diseases, but parti-cularly against pestilential." The "dosis," according to

Le Febure, is from one to three grains in broths or tinctureof sassafras. Used externally it was held to be most efficaciousagainst bruises and all kinds of pains and it was especiallyto be applied to palsied limbs. Human fat might also beused against the same diseases and required no particularpreparation.

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UNCERTIFIED CAUSES OF DEATH IN IRELAND.

AMONG the defects of public health organisation and

administration in Ireland the excessive proportion of un-certified causes of death calls for special attention. The

quarterly return ’issued by the Registrar-General for Irelandrelating to the first quarter of this year shows that the

causes of 6091 of the 23,353 deaths registered during thethree months ending with March were not certified either

by a registered medical practitioner or by a coroner. Thus

the proportion of uncertified causes was equal to 26 . 1 percent. of the deaths registered in Ireland, whereas in Englandand Wales during the same period the proportion of uncerti-fied causes did not exceed 1.6 per cent. of the registereddeaths. This excess of uncertified causes of death

in Ireland is also well marked in the returns for

its principal urban population. It appears from the

Registrar-General’s annual summary of the weekly returnsrelating to Dublin and 21 of the principal urban districts ofIreland during last year that the causes of 971 of the

23,564 deaths registered were uncertified, equal to 4.1 percent., whereas the proportion of uncertified causes duringlast year in the 76 large English towns, for which the

Registrar-General issues weekly returns, did not exceed0’ 9 per cent. In Dublin registration area the propor-tion of uncertified causes of death last year was

equal to 3’ 2 per cent., whereas in London it did not

exceed 0’ 1 per cent. In the 21 Irish urban districts,the enumerated population of which ranged from 370,163in Belfast to 7588 in Armagh, the mean proportion ofuncertified causes of death was equal to 4’ per cent.

The largest proportions of uncertified causes in these Irishtowns were 12’0 per cent. in Wexford and in Ballymena,13-0 in Limerick, 17-0 in Clonmel, 22-3 in Galway, and24’4 per cent. in Sligo. It may be noted that the highestpercentages of uncertified causes of death during last year inthe 76 English towns were 4-4 in Gateshead, 4-5 in

Warrington, and 5-1 in South Shields. The marked defi-

ciency of death certification in Ireland probably implies theneglect to provide medical attendance during the last illnessof the deceased, but from whatever cause it may arise the

subject is one calling for investigation. It may probably bedue to a great extent in rural districts to sparseness of popu-lation and to practical difficulty in obtaining medical attend-ance, but this difficulty can scarcely exist in the 21 urbandistricts referred to above, and it seems reasonable to

suggest the probability of a definite relation between theexcess of mortality in these Irish town districts, to whichwe have recently called attention, and the frequent neglectto provide medical attendance indicated by the high pro-portion of uncertified causes of death.

MEDICAL TEXTS IN GREEK AND LATIN PAPYRI.

THERE are numerous references to medical matters, as

well as frequently found fragments of ancient medical

works, being recovered among the hundreds of papyriannually discovered in Egypt, which, although of small

importance individually, if taken collectively as their

quantity augments, deserve to be considered because of

their information concerning medicine in antiquity. A short

time ago Herr Kalbfleisch summarised the papyri of this

description stored in London and Berlin in a treatise

entitled "Papyri Græcæ Musei Britanniciet Berolinensis." This work has since been commented upon by Professor

Wesseley who had gained much experience in decipheringsuch manuscripts during his work upon the Rainier papyriat Vienna, and as the science of papyrology is so novel he

was able to emend many of Herr Kalbfleisch’s readings.The celebrated codex of the " latrica " of Menon, a medical

compendium of about the Aristotelian era, first edited byKenyon and Diels, was added to by some further fragmentsof the manuscript which were acquired by the BritishMuseum. These new portions were as far as possiblerestored to their proper positions in the text in an article

by Herr Diels in the proceedings of the Royal Prussian

Academy. The special journal devoted to the study of papyri,the Archiv für Papyrusforschung, in its second yearly volumedescribes a papyrus at Geneva treating upon surgery. It is a

sort of medical students’ catechism, the text containing