Next, M. Abeille, chief physician to the hospital at Ajaccio, has an interesting communication—­On the employment of electricity to counteract the accidents arising from too long inhalation of ether or chloroform.  He found that patients submitted to galvano-puncture could not be rendered insensible by the effects of ether—­the galvanism invariably restored sensation—­and taking this accidentally-discovered fact as the basis of further research, he set to work and made a series of experiments on living animals, and arrived at results which in a brief summary are:  that electricity, made to operate by means of needles implanted in several parts of the body, especially in the direction of the cerebro-spinal axis, reawakes sensibility, and immediately puts the relaxed muscles into play.  ‘It constitutes,’ he adds, ’according to my experiments, the most prompt and efficacious means—­I may say the only efficacious—­to restore to life any person whose inhalation of chloroform has been prolonged beyond the time prescribed by prudence.  It is the first means to which recourse ought to be had; and trials made in other ways appeared to me to lead to nothing but loss of time, which in many cases would be fatal.’

M.H.  Deschamps says, that there is a ‘certain sign of death,’ which, if attended to, will entirely prevent risk of that much-dreaded accident—­premature interment.  It is a certain green tinge which always makes its appearance on the abdomen, even before the cadaverous smell, and is a positive evidence that decomposition has begun.  There are some people to whom the knowledge of this fact will be a satisfaction; but if, as is popularly supposed, bodies are not unfrequently buried alive, how is it that we never hear of a revival in a dissecting-room?  Then, on another point of physiology, M. Payerne states, with regard to the distress experienced by many persons in the ascent of a high mountain, ’that the lassitude and breathlessness felt in elevated places appear to proceed, not from an insufficiency of oxygen, but rather from the rupture of the equilibrium between the tension of the fluids contained in our organs and that of the ambient air, whatever be the way in which the rupture is produced.’  And, to close these physiological matters, M. Chuart begs the Academie to include among their premiums for rendering arts or trades less insalubrious, one for ’different inventions designed to diminish the frequency of accidents which take place in coal-mines from explosions of gas.’  How much such inventions are needed, recent events in our own coal districts but too painfully demonstrate.