sea-salt, containing a minute quantity of ioduret of potassium, acted
as a preservative from goître on all the inhabitants of a district who
made use of it. The air, too, has been examined as well as the water,
and, so far as yet ascertained, the proportion of iodine in the
atmosphere is variable, and much greater in amount in some regions
than in others. The activity prevailing in this particular branch of
inquiry is the more encouraging, as the maladies which it aims at
removing are of so peculiarly distressing a nature; and the
investigation is one likely to lead also to valuable incidental
results.

Next, M. Abeille, chief physician to the hospital at Ajaccio, has an
interesting communication--On the employment of electricity to
counteract the accidents arising from too long inhalation of ether or
chloroform. He found that patients submitted to galvano-puncture could
not be rendered insensible by the effects of ether--the galvanism
invariably restored sensation--and taking this accidentally-discovered
fact as the basis of further research, he set to work and made a
series of experiments on living animals, and arrived at results which
in a brief summary are: that electricity, made to operate by means of
needles implanted in several parts of the body, especially in the
direction of the cerebro-spinal axis, reawakes sensibility, and
immediately puts the relaxed muscles into play. 'It constitutes,' he
adds, 'according to my experiments, the most prompt and efficacious
means--I may say the only efficacious--to restore to life any person
whose inhalation of chloroform has been prolonged beyond the time
prescribed by prudence. It is the first means to which recourse ought
to be had; and trials made in other ways appeared to me to lead to
nothing but loss of time, which in many cases would be fatal.'