peculiar one. Just in connection with this subject I want to mention a fact which came under my notice when examining some of the hospital wards lately in regard to their ventilation. The supply of air in the ward, a great long one, was ventilated by a peculiar system. The ventilation was very defective, and yet they had introduced the very best system known. At each end of the ward were two fire places which they used when they could not get a very direct supply of air. The air was heated up in the winter season. This statement was made to me, that when these furnaces, placed at each end to warm the ward were burning in one end, they could get no fire in the other end. I said, how do you account for that? They could not account for it. The simple fact was that when the air is drawn from one part of the ward the other fires go out. When these fires are burning those fires go out. That is a sort of peculiarity found in other hospitals. The trouble was in the ventilation. They were taking the air from out doors, heating it, and then blowing it by a series of fans, a broad fan and conical one, by means of these fans they force a certain amount of this warm air up into the ward. They have got no provision for drawing it out but they force in a certain volume, a volume of pure warm air in the winter season and cold air in the summer season, into the wards, and the other air naturally forces itself out, passing from the ward, leaving it filled with pure air-as pure as you could wish. You could smell no hospital odor about it—nothing at all, it was sweet and pure. It certainly is a perfect system for ventilating the wards of a hospital. Every one should understand the great importance of this subject.

DR. LUKENS : I want to ask one question, I have now nobody on my side at all. Suppose this here to be a trap full of water. The outer pressure here is enough to drive the water back and to open this trap and let in the gas, which will it do, go up through the dwelling or up the ventilating pipe?

DR. JAMES: It might and it might not. The probabilities are that a large quantity would, but that would be no objection to the system of ventilation. It would go up here, and there, and if you found this in this way, you evidently would have a current of air going up here. It would go straight in preference to going around any one of these traps. The current of gas would be upwards. That is no objection to the system.

PUERPERAL MORTALITY: A STUDY.

BY GEO. B. PECK, M.D.

Theme. Austin Flint endorses the statement that "Science is knowledge reduced to principles." If that be true, homœopathy is the only system possessing any claim to be considered a Science of Therapeutics, for its professors alone, of all practitioners of medicine, recognize in their writings and in their acts the existence of any principle of cure. To ascertain in what manner, to how great an extent, and how successfully this code is applied to those complications of the physiological process known as parturition, which imperil the life of mother or child, has been one purpose of the Bureau of Obstetrics during the past year. Should the returns seem imperfect, or their logical interpretation surprising, let each one ask if his duty in this matter has been performed; then he is competent to judge the conduct of others.

Varieties. The fatalities of the lying-in chamber are twin-like in character; they must be maternal or infantile. But their origins are extremely diverse. With rare exceptions, the former can be ascribed to a failure of vital force, or to an excessive loss of blood, or to over-stimulation of nerve centres, or to blood poisoning. In like manner, the latter arise from conditions operating before the inception of labor, or during its progress, or immediately after its termination, though inseparably connected therewith. The experience of ninety members of this Institute in treating these emergent conditions is herewith respectfully submitted.

Occurrence of Exhaustion and Shock. Maternal mortality resulting from nervous causes (that term is used with a popular, rather than a strictly technical signification,) is infrequent. But one death has been reported that can be thus classified. That occurred three hours after the termination of a perfectly normal labor, despite the administration of China, stimulants, heat, etc. A case of exhaustion following the use of Chloroform was transferred to a "regular" practitioner. All others, including the victims of shock, recovered.