NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

MARVELS OF SURGERY. A sensation" was created at the meeting of the British Medical Association at Toronto recently by- the exhibition of two dogs and two cats, holding in their bodies transplanted kidneys, formerly belonging to other cats and dogs. These were regarded as marvels in surgical accomplishment, all the animals being in line health and displaying all the natural propensities of .their kind, the cats to spit and the dogs to growl. The surgeon responsible for this remarkable experiment is Dr. Alexis Carrel!, formerly of the University of Chicago, and now of til'. l . Rockefeller University of New YorlT. Dr. Carrell. explaining these experiments, stated that one of the dogs had had the transplanted kidneys a week, and they seemed to be performing their functions successfully. Dr. Can-ell further stated that he had ali*eady succeeded in keeping dogs alive for 1? days after the operation, and that one of the cats had possessed its new sets of kidneys for (wo months. Limbs of cats and guinea pigs had also been cut off and put on again, the animals doing well afterwards. Dr. Carrell was modest as to what lie hoped to accomplish by these experiments so far as human beings were concerned, but other physiologists present were very hopeful, though the problem, they admitted, was to get any person to consent to such an operation.

gain to the indigenous population of thai country which has accrued from French rule? The land, has r.ol been taken from '■ lit in, life and property are absolutely se- ' • euro, education is widespread, and, is in accordance with the religious ideas of the people, either Mohammedan or Christian. Locust plagues have been abated, irrigation has opened vast tracts to profitable agriculture, and, in, short, France lias resumed in a most effective manner th«» -'Mi work which had been taken up by Rome, ->jf and which was. so lamentably interrupted for centuries by the Islamic upheaval, and, above nil, by the Turkish conquest of Algiers and Tunis in the sixteenth century. Whatever may have been her original in- >?ff tentions, she has not created a new Franca in North Africa, but a. new, a more enlightened, and a vastly-happier Numidia, a, Barbary that is no longer barbarous. Still ' | more remarkable lias been her work in Tunis, a close parallel to that which Uritain for almost the same number of years has been carrying out in Egypt. To anyone who knew the Regency of Tunis before it became a French Protectorate, and made acquaintance -with that country after 20 years of French administration, th« difference is truly remarkable. In Tunis the native dynasty lias been preserved and strengthened, and so far from Tunisian - nationality having been extinguished by V, French control, it has a much mor" real character now as a French Protectorate • j|'• than as a dependency of Turkey, under whose aegis the population was dwindling, the desert was spreading, and a country which once rivalled Italy in civilisation ■>' wag becoming almost as much closed to Mediterranean civilisation as is at present the case with Morocco.