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in the Union Hospital for the week ending May 6hh, threefresh cases having been admitted, and two having diedduring the week.In Derry, the barque Unanima, from North Shields to

New York, put back into Lough Foyle, owing to an outbreakof the disease on board ; the vessel, however, has been putinto quarantine, and the danger of small-pox spreading inthat locality is comparatively slight.A case has been imported into Drogheda, a sailor belong-

ing to a schooner windbound having been put on board ariver steamer and brought up to Waterford. This is a

very bad case and has been removed to the separate wardprepared in the fever hospital for small-pox patients.

CHOLERA IN RUSSIA.

THE Messager Officiel gives the following details respect-ing the prevalence of cholera in Russia. The epidemic ap-peared at Moscow on the 12th of March, and from that dateto the 4th of April, 15 cases occurred, of which 7 were fatal. Onthe 4th of April 35 cases occurred, and 12 deaths. From the4th of April to the 14th, the number of cases was 71, andof deaths 52, making a total, from the 12th of March tothe 14th of April, of 121 cases and 71 deaths.

Cases of cholera bad also occurred at Cronstadt, at Pskow,and in the district of Maloyaroslavets (government ofKalonga). At Cronstadt, from the 30th of March to the6th of April, 6 cases were reported, of which 3 were fatal.At Pskow, 4 cases and 1 death took place (two of the casesbeing treated in the provincial hospital, and two in thelazaret of the 5th Batt. of Infantry of Reserve) betweenthe 30th of March and the 4th of April.In the district of Maloyaroslavets there had occurred, in

four villages, 9 deaths from cholera, all the patients beingpeasants who worked in a factory at Moscow, and who hadreturned to their villages suffering from the disease.The following are the further official returns for St.

Petersburg since our last report. (See THE LANCET, Aprilthe 28th.)

Totals, from first appearance of cholera, August 29th,1870, to April 16th, 1871 (inclusive): cases, 4304; recoveries,1933; deaths, 1719.

THE VACCINATION COMMITTEE.

THE House of Commons Committee on Vaccination haveclosed the taking of evidence, and it is hoped that their reportwill be presented in time for legislation this session. We canhave no doubt as to the result. The evidence given by theanti-vaccinationists did not deserve the name, and when-ever their statements could be examined closely the caseinvariably broke down. The wild assertions that the

fatality of small-pox has diminished, that it does not affectthe general mortality, that vaccination produces diseasesof the teeth, scrofula, consumption, &c., can have no effect

upon the Committee, and we shall be surprised indeedif the array of facts and statistics adduced by Mr. Simonand Dr. Seaton do not enable its members to pronouncemost distinctly on the desirableness of enforcing the opera-tion, so far as it can be done without making martyrdomso notorious as to defeat the very object sought for.

It may be thought by some that the remote possibility ofcommunicating syphilis should induce the Committee torelax compulsion; but we hope that this infinitesimal con-

tingency will not be allowed to stand between the infantand the positive danger of small-pox, to which, if unvae-cinated, he will certainly be exposed, and from which thea nf recovery are small

Correspondence.

THE CONSTANT CURRENT IN THERAPEUTICS.

"Audi alteram partem."

To the Editor of THE LANCET.SIR,-An incident which occurred at the last meeting of

the Clinical Society appears to me sufficiently important tomake it desirable that those who are seriously studyingtherapeutics in this country should appeal to the Englishprofession against a singular and very discouraging preju.dice which appears still to prevail, and for which there isreally no reasonable ground whatever. On the occasion ofsome papers being read by Dr. Buzzard and myself, on thetreatment of neuralgia by the constant current, Dr. Gull,the President, interfered, with the whole weight of his

official position, to persuade the Society that the electricaltreatment of neuralgic pain was in the unsatisfactory posi-tion of lacking any scientific basis; and, in fact (as he ex.pressly suggested), was comparable to the exploded methodof treatment by "Perkins’s metallic tractors." He justi-fied this statement by a reference to some "elaborateresearches" of his own, made some twenty years ago, inthe course of which he arrived at the conclusion that elec.tricity had no positive and reliable therapeutic powers, andthat if the constant current more frequently seemed to do

good than faradisation, it was really because it producedless morbid disturbance, and did less harm than the latter.

, I shall avoid the personal aspects of this discussion,for the scientific question at stake is far too seriousto be mixed up with private feeling. I feel it a dutyto protest, in the strongest manner, against the dis-

paraging mention by Dr. Gull of a remedy as to thegreat value of which scientific Germany may be said to bepractically unanimous, although there are differences ofopinion on points of detail. Those who have not had thetime or opportunity to follow the course of scientific inves-tigation on this subject must be informed that researchesmade 11 twenty years ago," whatever their intrinsic value,have decidedly no bearing on the effects of the "constant"current, as that word is now applied ; for at that time noapparatus existed (at any rate in this country) by means ofwhich an electric current could be applied with "constancy,"within the modern meaning of the term. It was to Remak,principally, that the merit was due of insisting upon thenecessity of working with apparatus the current fromwhich is delivered with approximate evenness of tension.Unfortunately for medical science, Remak, incensed at theobstinacy with which Duchenne maintained the superiorityof faradisation for all purposes, went so far as to deny thevirtues of the latter process almost entirely, and thusit happened that electro-therapeutists were, to a largeextent, ranged into two hostile camps, each ignoringthe facts of the other with singular perversity. But forsome years past a better spirit of investigation has pre-vailed ; and before Remak’s premature death, in 1866, itwas fully recognised that although his statements mighthave been somewhat exaggerated, we possessed, in theconstant current, a new and peculiar therapeutic agent ofextraordinary power. The amount of patient labour whichhas been given to these investigations in Germany is suchas puts English physicians to shame by contrast with theiralmost universal supineness ; and it is simply inexplicablethat a leader in the English medical profession shouldattempt to commit a body like the Clinical Society to theexpression of a supercilious incredulity which must be theresutt of an entire unfamiliarity with the facts worked outwith such patience and self-denying devotion by our conti.nental confreres. Those English physicians who have workedat the subject with due attention to what has been doneabroad, have, I imagine, not the smallest doubt that thetherapeutics of pain have passed into a new epoch during