in Vogel's optical test the average error is 0.046.-(Centralblatt für die Medical Wissensch., No. 33, 1868. CURARE.—Curare comes from Para, Brazil, and is made from the juice of the strychnos toxifera. A peculiarity of curare, also met with in other organic poisons, is that it only acts toxically when it reaches the blood channel; and is innocuous, even remedial, when introduced into the system by other avenues. Iodide of sodium is in Brazil spoken of as a certain antidote to this poison, and mingled in equal quantity, in solution, the former is said to prevent the action of the latter. (Reise der Novara une die Erde, Wien, 1864.) HOMEOPATHY IN RUSSIA.-Our Allopathic cotemporaries have been industriously circulating a report that the Czar of Russia had forbade the Homoeopathic practice of medicine in his dominions. Dr. Verdi, of Washington, has the authority of the Russian Legation to say there is no truth in the report. We learn through the Bulletin de la Soc. Hom. de France, that Homoeopathy was never in a more flourishing condition. The only opposition it meets is from the faculty and medical authorities, and not from the government. The Minister of the Interior has granted authority for the formation of a Society of Homœopathic physicians at St. Petersburg. One of the wards of the hospital at Warsaw (by the will of the Russian government) has been given up to Homœopathic practice. Will the press circulate this, the true view of the situation?-Med. Investiga tor. REMOVAL OF FOREIGN BODIES FROM THE NOSTRIL.-Dr. Detwiler recommends (ibid.) when foreign bodies, with smooth round surfaces -such as beans and beads-become lodged high up in children's nostrils, the most dextrous surgeon is often foiled, or unnecessarily detained; the restlessness of the little patient, and the consequent exceeding difficulty of grasping the object, and the frequent slipping of the forceps from the smooth surfaces, will sometimes render all ordinary attempts to extricate the intruded substance ineffectual. By forcibly blowing into the child's mouth, and at the same time closing with the finger the free nostril, the foreign body can be speedily and easily ejected. This movement should be made suddenlyas if attracting the child's attention by a motion to give it a kiss. LIFE INSURANCE. To the Editors of the New York Eclectic Medical Review: Gentlemen-The business of Life Insurance has attained such proportions in this country as to fully justify the demand that our branch of the profession shall have a just, liberal, and equal participation in the benefits and profits of medical examinations, &c. We have experienced personally the humiliation of receiving an appointment as medical examiner, by a State agent (examining as many as twenty and thirty per month), yet not being recognized by the company as a regular appointee, as it was contrary to the rule laid down by the medical directors at the head offices, to appoint any physician not of the Allopathic profession. Having received a notice from the medical director of the First National Eclectic Life Insurance Society of New York, that Eclectic physicians, where found competent, would receive the appointments of the said company, such a just course meets with great satisfaction, and the stockholders and directors of said company should receive the [cooperation of our branch of the profession. Having examined the working plan of this company carefully, as well as having given considerable attention to the subject of life insurance, and compared their table of premiums and the tables of all the leading companies of the country, we notice that the tables of this company vary but very few cents on the one thousand dollars, above or below, all the other first-class companies, and that it is more liberal to the policy holders than the majority of the companies as exhibited in the last annual report of Commissioner Barnes of New York, which is no surprise to us, knowing that such companies base their rates from the Carlisle system of mortality. Being true friends of the system which your journal advocates, and feeling a full sense of obligation towards those liberal capitalists who compose the stockholders of said company, for placing our friends on an equal footing in the business of life insurance, we take this method of expressing our willingness to fully coöperate with said company. T. J. WRIGHT, M. D., President of the Ohio State Eclectic Medical Association. President of the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical Association. NEBRASKA STATE ECLECTIC MEDICAL SOCIETY. THE Eclectic physicians of this young and growing State organized a State association in October, 1868. The full proceedings we expect to publish in the next No. of the "Review." KANSAS STATE ECLECTIC MEDICAL SOCIETY. WE learn from Dr. G. H. Field of Leavenworth, that there will be a State society formed in that State early in the spring. By this time Michigan and Wisconsin will also have State Eclectic Medical organizations. MASSACHUSETTS ECLECTIC MEDICAL SOCIETY. THE eighth semi-annual meeting of the Massachusetts Eclectic Medical Society will he held at the Revere House, Boston, on Wednesday, January 13th, 1869, at 10 o'clock, A. M. Essayists-J. W. Towne, M. D., Milbrey Greene, M. D., J. H. Wright, M. D. The relative value of the Crude and Concentrated Remedies" will be a special topic for discussion. By order of the President. C. E. MILES, M. D., Recording Secretary. A HANDSOME BEQUEST. ISAAC BARTON of Philadelphia, who died a few months since, bequeathed about $60,000 to the Women's Medical College of that city. BOOKS AND JOURNALS RECEIVED. Proceedings of the Homoeopathic Medical Society of Ohio, 4th Buffalo Medical and Surgical Journal. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Eclectic Medical Journal of Cincinnati. The Druggists' Circular and Chemical Gazette. Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal. Chicago Medical Examiner. The Humboldt Medical Archives. The Western Journal of Medicine. The Philadelphia University Journal of Medicine and Surgery. The St. Louis Medical Reporter. The Cincinnati Medical Repertory. New York Medical Gazette. Herald of Health. Revista Medico-Chirurgica y Dentista. Druggists' Price Current and Chemical Repository. American Journal of Dental Science. Missouri Dental Journal. Professor of Physiology and Pathology in the Eclectic Medical College of New York. FEW subjects in physiology are less understood than the subject of human conception. It is one of the most mysterious processes of the animal economy; and its very mystery invests it with a peculiar interest. Multitudes of theoriesmany of them mere hypotheses-have been advanced to explain it. The theory of the Ovists, the theory of the Sperm. atists, the theory of the Combinationists-these, and endless modifications of these, have been promulgated from time to time. The theory of the Ovists, propounded by Pythagoras, and adopted by Aristotle, teaches, that the female parent af fords all the materials necessary for the formation of the offspring, and that the formative powers, possessed by, and lying dormant in, the female product, are simply awakened to action by the influence of the male. The theory of the Spermatists teaches, that the semen of the male furnishes "all the vital parts of the new animal, and that the organs of the female merely afford a fit place * Extract of a Lecture delivered before the Class in January, 1869. VOL. IV.-No. 9. 25 for its repose and suitable materials for its nourishment." The zoosperms, or seminal animalcules, were at one time regarded as the primary form of the forthcoming animal, and were styled homunculi or miniature men. The theory of the Combinationists teaches, that both parents furnish some semen or product, and that the union of these gives rise to the structure or egg from which the foetus is formed. The first of these hypotheses has few or no supporters among physiologists of the present day; the second still finds a few advocates, but the last is the theory now generally received. Both parents contribute towards the production of the new being. The contribution of the female is the ovum or egg, which escapes from the ovary at each menstrual period; the contribution of the male is the seminal fluid, which is deposited in the vagina during the sexual congress. The ovum, when free from its ovarian investments, is about the one-hundredth of an inch in diameter, and consists of the vitelline membrane, the vitellus or yolk, the germinal vesicle and the germinal spot. The seminal fluid is a mucous, viscid, colorless fluid, heavier than water, and of a neutral or slightly alkaline reaction. As seen through the microscope, it consists of two parts, viz.: the liquor seminis and the peculiar histological elements of the semen, the zoosperms, spermatozoids, or seminal animalcules. The zoo sperms are very minute, scarcely exceeding, in man, the one ten-thousandth of an inch in diameter, and consist of a round, oval, or pyriform, transparent body, with a tail-like appendage. Whether the fecundating power of the semen is derived from these, or from the fluid in which they float, is a question about which physiologists are not agreed. Some ascribe it wholly to the former, others wholly to the latter. Some contend that the zoosperm penetrates immediately to the ovule and converts it into a nest, in which it reposes until it is developed into a living fœtus. According to this view the liquor seminis or interzoospermic fluid serves no other purpose than that of a vehicle to convey the animal |