A surgeon in a provincial town in Scotland has achieved a remarkable operation. He cut out from the neck of a patient a diseased portion of the larynx, and inserted an artificial larynx through which the man can speak articulately. This is one of the triumphs of surgery.
We mentioned some time ago that certain practitioners in the United States had succeeded in removing tumours by the application of a current of electricity. Recently the same method has been employed, and with the same success, for the removal of those blemishes from the skin popularly described as ‘port-wine stains,’ and other excrescences. Care is required in regulating the strength and duration of the current according to the nature of the case; if this be insured, the operation can hardly fail of a successful result. Particulars of cases and their treatment are published in the _New York Medical Journal_.
Pursuing his contributions to meteorology, Professor Loomis of Yale College, Newhaven, U.S., finds that the areas of rainfall in the United States generally assume an oval form, and the oval is not unfrequently a thousand miles long and five hundred broad. He finds too that falls of rain often have great influence in checking the progress of a storm; and that they appear to be subject to some law of duration. For example, some rains last eight hours, some sixteen, some twenty-four; but beyond twenty-four hours the instances are very rare. ‘This fact,’ he remarks, ‘seems to indicate that the causes which produce rain, instead of deriving increased force from the rainfall, rapidly expend themselves and become exhausted. It cannot be explained by supposing that the vapour of the air has all been precipitated, because these cases chiefly occur near the Atlantic coast, where the supply of vapour is inexhaustible. Is there not here an indication that the forces which impart that movement to the air which is requisite to a precipitation of its vapour, become exhausted after a few hours’ exercise?’ By further research it is found that during the six months from November to April, violent winds are more than five times as frequent as during the other six months of the year; and that they come from a northern quarter two-and-a-half times more frequently than from a southern quarter. Though Professor Loomis’ observations apply to the climate of America, they may be considered with advantage by our own meteorologists.