Treatment of Frost-bitten Persons.

A medical writer says: With regard to the treatment of frost-bitten persons, the part affected should be rubbed with cold water or snow, and then with fluids of a medium temperature, in a cold room; cautiously bring the patient into a warm atmosphere, and administer small quantities of cordials or warm tea, then cover him up in bed, and encourage perspiration. Even where the patient seems quite dead, or has lain as if dead for days, you must give a fair trial to these remedies. When poor Boutillat, the French peasant, who awoke crying out for drink after his four days' sleep in the snow, was brought to his friends, they wrapped him in warm linen, dipped in aromatic water, and this was but too probably the cause of the

low's feet mortifying.

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How cold slaughters its victims we do not exactly know some say it paralyzes the heart; others think that the cold, t use a popular expression, drives the blood inwards, and kills by apoplexy. The irresistible sleepiness that creeps over a person 'lost in the snow,' is well known, and has often been described; if once it is yielded to, death, under the forlorn circumstances usually present, is sure to result. But, undoubtedly, it may kill at once. Persons have been found stone dead standing upright at their posts, all the machinery of life having stopped at once-the mouth half open, as it was when the last groan was uttered; the limbs still in the position they assumed during life, and having undergone, through the peculiar antiseptic nature of the cold, none of the changes we find after other forms of death."

Influence of Cod-liver Oil and Cocoa-nut Oil.

Dr. Thompson, in a paper read before the Royal Society, states, that he found that, during the administration of cod-liver

oil to phthisical patients, their blood grew richer in red corpuscles. The use of almond oil and of olive oil was not followed by any remedial effect; but from cocoa-nut oil results were obtained almost as decided as from the oil of the liver of the cod. The oil in question was a pure cocoa oleine, obtained by pressure from crude cocoa-nut oil, as expressed in Ceylon and the Malabar Coast, from the dried cocoa-nut kernel, and refined by being treated with an alkali, and then repeatedly washed with distilled water. It burns with a faint blue flame, showing a comparatively small proportion of carbon, and is undrying The whole quantity of blood abstracted, for analysis, having been weighed, the coagulum was drained on bibulous paper for four or five hours, weighed, and divided into two portions. One portion was weighed, and then dried in a water-oven, to determine the water. The other was macerated in cold water until it became colorless, then moderately dried, and digested with ether and alcohol, to remove fat, and finally dried completely, and weighed as fibrin. From the respective weights of the fibrin, and the dry clot, that of the corpuscles was calculated.

The Brain of the Negro.

According to the investigations made by Prof. Tidemann, of Heidelberg, the weight of the brain of an adult male European varies from three pounds and three ounces to four pounds and eleven ounces troy weight; that of the female weighs, on an average, from four to eight ounces less than that of the male. The brain usually attains its full dimensions at the age of seven or eight, and decreases in size in old age. At the time of birth, the brain bears a larger proportion to the size of the body than at any subsequent period of life, being then as one-sixth of the total weight; at two years of age it is onc-fourteenth; at three, one-eighteenth; at fifteen, one-twenty-fourth; and in the adult

period, that is, from the age of twenty to that of seventy, it is generally within the limits of one-thirty-fifth and one-fortyfifth.

No perceptible difference exists (says Prof. Tidemann,) either in the average weight or the average size of the brain of the negro and of the European, and the nerves are not larger, relatively to the size of the brain, in the former than in the latter. In the external form of the brain of the negro a very slight difference only can be traced from that of the European; but there is absolutely no difference whatever in its internal structure, nor does the negro brain exhibit any greater resemblance to that of the orang-outang than the brain of the European, except, perhaps, in the more symmetrical disposition of its convolutions. The facial angle in the negro is smaller than in the European.

Effects of Tea on the Body.

The general theory of chemists hitherto has been that tea lessens the waste of the body, and so sustains the bodily powers with less nourishment than is otherwise required. Dr. E. Smith, at a recent meeting of the Society of Arts, gave the result of some experiments he had made to ascertain the truth of this theory. He found that if there was abundance of food in the system, and that, especially, of the farinaceous or fat kinds, tea is a powerful digestive agent, and, by promoting the transformation of food, it aids in nourishing the body; but with a deficiency of food, it wastes the tissues of the body, and lowers the vital powers.

The Evil of Over-dosing.

"If a Christian man offers a proper prayer to the Lord, short and to the point, and then stops, as all sensible men do; many

persons think it's no prayer at all, and that the petitioner must be a very stupid sort of a fellow, not having sense enough to know how to pray. Such persons would read Christ a lecture,

if he were here now."

The foregoing sensible remarks are taken from the "Union Baptist Church" organ, the Christian Banner, published at Fredericksburgh, Va. We respond, "Amen," and proceed further to remark, that most persons think that a doctor who does not prescribe an enormous quantity of physic to a sick patient, is no doctor at all. "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole," is too Homeopathic for the great majority of mankind. They dose the Almighty with large quantities of pray. r, for the same reason that they swallow large doses of medicie, namely, because they have not progressed out of ignorance, superstition, and error.

How to make Iron Magnets.

QUESTION." Is it possible to bring common cast iron into the state of permanent magnetism? Is such magnetism better than the hand in disease?"

ANSWER. It is well known that any bit of iron, properly related to the earth's magnetic currents, will become perfectly magnetized. According to the Professor of Natural Philosophy at Louvain, the artificial process of magnetizing cast iron is simple. Cofford Crahoz, at a late meeting of the Academy of Science, at Brussels, presented the Professor's modus operandi, which is equally practicable for any person, who, with economy, wants a permanent magnet. The Professor takes a bar of gray cast iron, which he brings to a red heat, and then sprinkles it on both sides of three-fourths of its whole length with prussiate of potassia, and puts it, then, in cold water, and when cooled, it is magnetized with a strong electro-magnet. It may also be used for a horse-shoe magnet. The human system is com

posed upon magnetic principles, and is, therefore, the best battery for healing purposes.

Food for Infants.

Says a writer: No mother would feed a child on the milk of a sick cow, if she knew it; but is there any reason to suppose that the milk of a sick woman is more healthy than that of a sick cow? Either must inevitably be sources of disease. The cows in New York, fed on distillery slops, are no worse off, and no more diseased, than thousands of mothers, who live on unhealthy flesh, and drink, not the slops, but the liquor of the distillery, with the additional poisons of tea, coffee, tobacco, and various drug medicines. What with diseased mothers and distillery cows, our children have a hard time of it; and so, ten or twelve thousand die every year in this single city. And this appalling mortality, far more frightful than the cholera, goes on year after year, and nothing is done, because we think it inevitable, and have got hardened to it. I have written upon this subject for years, and I am determined that people shall think upon it. When they have once thought, there is no fear but they will act. There is no man with a human heart in his bosom, and there can be no woman, who must not feel interested in ascertaining the causes of infant mortality, and the means of staying its terrific progress. .

American Improvements in Surgery.

Probably no diseases (says the Illustrated News,) have been so ineffectively and unsatisfactorily treated as those attacking the spine, the hip, and the knee, the reason being found in the fact that but little has been accurately known of the real nature, progress, and cause of these maladies. A recent discovery has, however, thrown considerable light on these subjects, and prom