The Warwickshire Herald. — 1885-05-09 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

INOCULATING FOR CHOLERA.  The Madrid papers are full of details on tire experiments of inoculation as a preservative against cholera, which have been made in Valencia hy Dr. Jaie Ferran, a young Catalan physician, whir urs sent t,. Toulon and Marseilles during the epideri, e of 1884. Senor Ferran has discovered thables subini.ting the comma bacillus to certain hernical elements very similar to the bile of animals arid to the gastric juice of the human stomach, this microbe passes though sum sive and invariable stages of development. in one of which he has detected the eggs, which are, in his opinion, the real generators and propagators of cholera. Dr. Ferran has made many experiments on men and animals, which lead him to state that inoculation by this bacillus can produce the death of animals with every symptom char et ristic of cholera, and that the inoculation of human beings creates symptoms identical in their nature, but with less intensity and no fatal results. The inoculation is generally practised upon the lower part of both arms. In two or three hours it produces local irritation, difficulty in nerving the limb and dull pain. After about four or five hours the pulse rises to 114 and even 120, and the heat of the body to 37 and 40 centigrade. The person thus inJculated feels languid, shivers, loses appetite, and suffers from nausea, diarrhosa, cramp, and sleeplessness. After 21 hours these symptoms abate, and they generally disappear in 48 hours. All successive inoculations, even to the extent of eight cubit centiratres of virus, prove utterly harmless, both in adults and children. In animals, after inoculation, it has bsen observed that successive and larger doses of vii us, introduced by inoculation, also prove harmless, whereas these same ooses produce death with choleraic symptoms in any animals not previously inoculated. Dr. Ferran has also observed that the local sympt sis resulting from inoculation seldom vary, whereas the genet al symptoms vary according to each case. Not a single case has occurred in which successive inoculations in men or animals have caused death, lie has tried his experiments on himself and other medical men, and on hundreds of believers in this preservative. Re thinks himself, therefore, justified in expecting from these inoculations the same results as have been obtained from inoculation in small-pox and carbuncle. Toe Madrid Academy of Medicine sent down a commission of meical men, and their report is highly favourable to Dr. Ferran's experiments. Foreign scientific and medical societies and eurgeons have taken great interest in these experiments, and have eongratulated Dr. Ferran.  The murder at Handsworth, Birmingham, by a pen sioner named Boulton, of his niece, has had a melancholy sequel. The mother of the murdered girl has since become insane. She is continually raving *bout the murder, and has had to be placed under restraint.  A Whitehaven spirit merchant having been spoken of by.another person in the trade as "a shabby fellow" and as "barely honest," brought an action for damages at the Liverpool Assizes. The jury wished to return such a verdict that each party would have to pay his own costs. On the judge telling them that this was not in their power, though he should be very glad if it was, they found for the defendant, adding an expression of opinion that the action ought never W have been brought.  '