part while passing the lancet to the tooth, rendering it impossible to slide down either inside or outside. Apart from this case, I have cut hundreds before and since, and seen no harm done.

When should the gums be cut? I mean by cutting not scarifying, but cutting down to the whole diameter of the tooth. If the gums of a child in a fit are swollen I always cut them.

Strong, well-fed children usually are not the ones troubled with teething irritation.

Prof. Eli Ives, of New Haven, taught his students that nature's outlet for teething irritation was by the bowels, ears, and the eruption of the tooth through the gum. Hence a mild diarrhoea, sores behind the ears, cutting the gum, all done artificially if not naturally, are the best means to relieve urgent symptoms. Dentition produces serious disease of itself, besides adding increased trouble in many of the diseases of children.

I have seen as prompt relief by cutting the gums in teething children as in the extraction of a tooth for toothache. A child of two and a half years had a fit which lasted two days, with startings and crying, so that its parents were obliged to carry it in their arms. On examining the mouth, the second molars were much swollen. I made a cross-incision over each. The child was instantly relieved, so that it wanted to get down, and was on the floor with its playthings, laughing, when five minutes before it was in an agony of restlessness and nothing could satisfy it.

In another case the child was not only relieved but gratified by the pleasant sensation of the cutting, and opened its mouth to have me try again before leaving. Some days after, when visiting another case, the child came up with its mouth open.

Helping the wisdom tooth through by cutting down upon it many of us know to be a great relief, and we can thus realize how the tender child must often suffer for want of the same treatment. It would seem also that the swelling of the gums in either case was not the result of biting upon hard substances, as a late contributor to the JOURNAL, April 25th, suggests, but from the tooth itself.

In a clinical lecture on disorders occasioned by the development of the dens sapientiæ, by Professor Velpeau at La Charité Hospital, as reported in the Medical Library, September, 1846, is the following: Besides four vicious directions of the tooth backward, forward, inwards, and outwards, there is a fifth one directly upward, caused by the tooth merely pressing against the gum, and being thus impeded, as in the case presented, producing severe pain in the face and mouth, with swelling, so as to close the jaws. The jaws were forcibly opened by a wooden wedge, and free division was made down to the tooth, resulting in immediate betterment. He related this case to M. Esquirol, who informed him that a lady had been brought into his institution laboring under mental derangement, and was restored to reason by a crucial incision of the gum which liberated the wisdom tooth.

Previous to reading this article I had a case of complete closure of the jaws, existing for ten years, which the lady said started from her wisdom tooth, doubtless caused by some failure of the tooth to come through. She died soon after, and I had no means of verifying my belief.

If such are the trials of teething in adults with merely the gum as an obstacle, and prompt relief is afforded by cutting, shall we deny this boon to children, among whom the results of difficult dentition are frequently fatal ?

THE BLOOD CORPUSCLE.

MR. EDITOR, — When attending the lecture of Dr. E. Cutter in Tremont Temple, in which he gave a résumé of his wonderful discoveries concerning the characteristics of the blood corpuscles in the "nameless disease," I was saddened to think that such a mass of nonsense was being poured into the ears of the eager audience; however, knowing the fate of those who attempt to thwart the dear public in obtaining that which it desires rather than that which is true, I held my peace. Yet I must protest when I read a commendation of the same lecture in the letter from Buffalo in this week's issue of your journal. The writer could hardly have examined Dr. Cutter's micro-photographs when he calls them "triumphs of art;" nor could he have heard Dr. Cutter with much attention to pronounce his lecture " a matter-of-fact discourse."

I don't think Dr. Cutter will be bold enough to show the mass of diffraction rings, foreign bodies, and general confusion which he calls micro-photographs of blood corpuscles to any expert with the hope of supporting by their aid any of his "a priori" theories, any more than I think that he can demonstrate the peculiar "copper-colored " bodies in the blood in syphilis without regard to the color of the light employed in the illumination of his microscope.

I do not attempt a serious criticism; the work is unworthy of it. I do not write with personal feeling, for I do not know Dr. Cutter. If my remarks seem harsh, allow me to say that I think the occasion demands it. Very respectfully yours,

DAVID HUNT, M. D.

MR. EDITOR, — In reply to the query of C. L. A., propounded in the number of the JOURNAL for May 30, 1878, page 717, I would say that the law of the diffusion of gases effectually prevents carbonic acid gas from sinking to the floor. In expired air carbonic acid gas forms but a small part of the mixture, and this mixture tends to rise under ordinary circumstances, because it is of a higher temperature than the surrounding air. Long before it can cool so much that the superior specific gravity of the carbonic acid could exert any effect it is thoroughly and equally diffused throughout the room, and nothing but powerful chemical attractions can then separate it.

If a jar be filled with carbonic acid gas, and on it be placed mouth downwards a second jar filled with hydrogen, the lightest of all gases, if communication be free between the jars, in a very short time the heavy carbonic acid will have diffused upward until there is just the same proportion of it in the upper as in the lower jar, and it will not again separate. The phenomena presented by the sufferers in the Black Hole of Calcutta were not those of carbonic acid poisoning, nor is it probable that carbonic acid had much to do with them.

C. L. A. will find the proof of these statements in any good work on the chemistry and physics of gases, in Pettenkofer's researches on ventilation, in Claude Bernard's experiments on the effects of carbonic acid, in Swissaigne's researches on the composition of the air at different heights in a closed room,1 and in the reports of experiments on the ventilation of the Capitol, made by Dr. Wetherell in 1865, contained in Report No. 49, House of Representatives, Forty-First Congress, third session.

Under some circumstances it is better to have the point of exit for foul air at the bottom of a room, but this is not because there is a greater proportion of foul air at the bottom, nor is carbonic acid gas the most dangerous impurity which is to be got rid of. I. S. B.

THE following persons received the degree of doctor of medicine at the annual commencement of Harvard University, Wednesday, June 26, 1878:

Edward Abeles.

George Booth Ambrose.

Jonas Edward Bacon, A. B.
Charles Parker Bancroft, A. B.
John Winters Brannan, A. B.
John Bryant, A. B.

Henry de Wolfe Carvelle.
Perley Peirce Comey.

John Patrick Curley.
William Nelson Deming.
James Edmund Dorcey.
John Wheelock Elliot, A. B.
Edward Mortimer Ferris, A. B.
Charles Elmer Field, A. B.
Samuel Eaton Fitz, A. B.
Frank Byron Flanders, A. B.
Samuel William French, A. B.
Frank Boutelle Fuller, A. B.
George William Galvin.
John Flint Gore.

Otis French Ham.

William Louis Johnson.

Joseph Wadsworth Keene, A. M., M. D.
George Wallace Kelley.

William Philip Kelly.

Henry Sherman Kilby, A. B.
George Adams Leland, A. B.

Otis Humphrey Marion, A. B.
William Castein Mason, A. B.
Charles Brenton Matthewson, A. M.
James Joseph M'Carty.

James Jackson Minot, A. B.

Henry Lee Morse, A. B.

William Oxnard Moseley, A. B.
Walter Andrus Phipps.

William Wotkyns Seymour, A. B.
Frederick Arnold Smith.
William Towle Souther, A. B.
Frederick Dabney Stackpole, A. B.
Charles Bliss Stockwell, A. B.
George Thomas Tuttle, A. B.
Clarence Albertus Viles.
Charles Rumford Walker, A. B.
Luther Robinson White.
Fred Webster Whittemore.
Harold Williams, A. B.

Samuel Bayard Woodward, A. B.

We learn that there were seventy-two applicants, of whom six withdrew their names, and nineteen were rejected.

CONNECTICUT RIVER VALLEY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. At the annual meeting, held at Bellows Falls, Vt., May 1, 1878, the following officers were elected for the year ensuing: President, N. G. Brooks; vice-president, S. Nichols; recording secretary, D. P. Webster; corresponding secretary, A. P. Richardson; treasurer, E. R. Campbell. The next regular meeting will be at Bellows Falls, Vt., July 3d. WALPOLE, N. H., June 16, 1878.

A. P. RICHARDSON, Corresponding Secretary.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED. - Fifteenth Annual Report of the New York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled, May, 1878.

Dilatation of the Cervix Uteri. By George H. Lyman, M. D., Boston. (Reprint from Volume II. Gynecological Transactions, 1878.)

In Memoriam Charles Edward Buckingham. By George H. Lyman, M. D., Boston. (Reprint from Volume II. Gynecological Transactions, 1878.)

Practical Chemistry for Medical Students, specially arranged for the First M. B. Course. By M. M. Pattison Muir, F. R. S. E., Prælector in Chemistry, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. London: Macmillan & Co. 1878. (For sale by James Campbell & Co.) Medical Education. Extracts from Lectures delivered before the Johns Hopkins Univer sity, Baltimore, 1877-78, by John S. Billings, M. D., Surgeon United States Army. Balti

On the Necessity of Caution in the Use of Chloroform during Labor. By William T. Lusk, M. D., New York.

Relations of Syphilis to the Public Health. By Frederic R. Sturgis, M. D. New York. 1877. Pp. 40.

Insanity in Ancient and Modern Life, with Chapters on its Prevention. By Daniel Hack Tuke, M. D. London: Macmillan & Co. 1878. (From A. Williams & Co.)

Second Annual Report of the State Board of Health of the State of Wisconsin. 1878. Transactions of the Vermont Medical Society for the Year 1877.

Visions: A Study of False Sight (Pseudopia). By Edward H. Clarke, M. D. With an Introduction and Memorial Sketch, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, M. D. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. The Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1878.