Hearty Meal Research Articles

Rongrong Pan.

"A turning point in my career was the development of nanokits for the analysis of small molecules and protein activity in single cells … I'm always in a good mood when I have a hearty meal and chat with my family after a busy day." Find out more about Rongrong Pan in her Introducing … Profile.

P37 MULTIMODALITY DIAGNOSTIC APPROACH TO A JUVENILE CASE OF SUSTAINED VENTRICULAR TACHYCARDIA

Abstract Clinical case 31–year–old male subject, former competitive athlete, with family history of coronary artery disease and no further cardiovascular risk factors or previous cardiac events. Previous SARS–CoV2–related paucisymptomatic infection (January 2022) and subsequent episode of fever (August 2022) with negative SARS–CoV2 nasal swab. In September 2022 he reported sudden onset of palpitations after hearty meal. Because of such symptoms, the patient underwent Holter ECG showing 90 episodes of ventricular tachycardia (VT) and one episode of sustained VT. Based on such evidence, the patient went to the emergency room (ER). During the ER stay, blood exams (blood count, high–sensitivity troponin, BNP, CRP, D–dimer) and ECG were normal and SARS–CoV2 test was negative. The patient was then hospitalized in cardiac ICU. The echocardiogram showed left ventricle with normal dimension, thickness and wall motion (EF: 65%, mean GLS: –20%), trivial mitral and aortic regurgitation, no pericardial effusion. Subsequently, a cardiac coronary CT scan was performed showing absence of atherosclerotic lesions and myocardial bridge of the middle segment of LAD artery. The diagnostic pathway went on with cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) demonstrating focal hypokinesia and wall thickness reduction of the anteroseptal–anterior junctional wall at middle–distal level (minimum thickness: 3 mm) where a millimetric area of late gadolinium enhancement with transmural distribution was described; absence of myocardial oedema. In addition, an EPS was performed with electroanatomical high–density/definition mapping of the left ventricle showing normal volumes, signals and activation and absence of LAVA/LV. Taking into account such findings, a subcutaneous defibrillator was implanted for primary prevention and a control CMR was scheduled in the follow–up period. Conclusions This case underlines the central role of CMR in identifying areas of myocardial fibrosis that can represent the electroanatomical substrate for triggering ventricular arrhythmias. In this case, the arrhythmic events are associated with a focal area of transmural fibrosis and wall thinning, usually indicating ischaemic damage, nonetheless in the presence of normal coronary arteries.

Crustacean stomachs are crabby, but not caustic

There is a bag of hydrochloric acid inside each of us. To digest our food, our stomachs secrete stomach acid, which is powerful enough to dissolve bone and erode teeth. But not all animals are walking bags of caustic acid. Crustaceans’ stomachs are literally a thousand times less acidic than ours and are about the same pH as fresh rainwater. Crabs rely far less on stomach acid than we do, so Alex Quijada-Rodriguez, Dirk Weihrauch and colleagues at the University of Manitoba, Canada, studied crabs to find the consequences of using less stomach acid. When our stomach lining pumps in acid, it leaves our blood more alkaline, but if crustaceans use less stomach acid, does eating make them alkaline too?To investigate, Quijada-Rodriguez and colleagues fed green shore crabs (Carcinus maenas) a hearty meal of scallops and sampled the pH within and outside their stomachs. Yet, even while digesting their meal, the acidity of the crabs’ stomachs never changed. However, when the team tested samples of the crabs’ haemolymph (the crustacean equivalent of blood) after dining, they found something unexpected. Instead of becoming more alkaline, the haemolymph became more acidic.Being acidic is dangerous, whether you're a human or a crab. Acid impairs our hearts and brains, so animals keep a tight rein on their pH. Normally, crustaceans get rid of extra acid in the same way we do: they breathe it out. Our blood converts excess acid into carbon dioxide, which we exhale to reset our pH, and crabs do too. So Quijada-Rodriguez and colleagues sampled the crabs’ haemolymph after a meal to measure carbon dioxide, but things looked dire. Even 6 h after eating, carbon dioxide was ∼50% above normal. This means the crabs couldn't breathe out the carbon dioxide fast enough to reset their pH. Left unchecked, this build-up of acid could prove fatal. But, of course, crabs don't die after every meal. Surely, something else was expelling the acid.Acid is not the only by-product of digestion. Protein in the crabs’ diet produces ammonia, a toxic chemical used in household cleaners. And when the team checked ammonia concentrations in the crabs’ bodies after dining, the toxin doubled, and peaked at the same time as acid in their haemolymph. Yet, instead of compounding each other's toxicity, acid and ammonia may cancel each other out. The University of Manitoba team recorded how quickly acid and ammonia left the animals. Although the crabs secreted only a small amount of acid, they cleared ammonia at a much higher rate. However, ammonia appeared to carry acid away with it. Weihrauch's lab had previously shown that crustaceans secrete ammonia as a weak acid called ammonium. In essence, ammonia soaks up the crabs’ acidity before it's quickly thrown out. Just like us, after a messy meal, crabs use ammonia to clean house.We humans go through all the trouble of producing stomach acid – an acid so corrosive that laboratories like Quijada-Rodriguez's label it with ‘Danger!’ and lock it away in specially made safety cabinets. Perhaps in time, the team will clarify how crustaceans can digest without such extreme digestive systems, given that crabs’ stomachs are less acidic than the coffee I'm drinking now.

Meaning-driven syntactic predictions in a parallel processing architecture: Theory and algorithmic modeling of ERP effects

Syntactic and semantic information processing can interact selectively during language comprehension. However, the nature and extent of the interactions, in particular of semantic effects on syntax, remain to some extent elusive. We revisit an influential ERP result by Kim and Osterhout (2005), later replicated by Kim and Sikos (2011), that the verb in sentences such as ‘The hearty meal was devouring … ’ evokes a P600 effect—a signature of syntactic processing difficulty—even though all stimuli were grammatically well-formed. We view this effect as a manifestation of a conflict in the assignment of grammatical subject and object roles to the verb's arguments as performed independently by a semantic system (predicting that meal should be the object) and by a syntactic system (labeling meal as the subject). More specifically, we develop an explicit algorithmic implementation of a parallel processing architecture that supports (i) meaning-based prediction of grammatical role labels, using either a probabilistic label guesser or a neural network, and (ii) comparison of the predicted labels with labels assigned by a state-of-the-art dependency parser. We demonstrate that the system can classify sentences from the Kim and Osterhout (2005) corpus with adequate accuracy, and can detect labeling conflicts as intended. Some implications of our results for models of prediction in language processing are discussed.

Grammatical predictions reveal influences of semantic attraction in online sentence comprehension: evidence from speeded forced-choice sentence continuations

ABSTRACTResearch in language processing has established that semantic information can influence (a) online sentence interpretation when syntactic cues are indeterminate, and (b) offline judgments of syntactically unambiguous but semantically anomalous sentences. The question of whether semantic information can influence online sentence interpretation when semantic cues oppose unambiguous syntax remains unanswered. We investigate this question using two speeded forced-choice sentence continuation studies. Under time constraints, participants continued sentence fragments such as “The hearty meal was devouring … ” (Attraction Violation) and “The sealed envelope was devouring … ” (No-Attraction Violation) with either BY or THE. Although participants had an overall preference to continue all fragments with THE, they were more likely to choose BY in Attraction Violation than No-Attraction Violation sentences. When choosing THE, participants took longer in the Attraction Violation condition. These results suggest that semantically attractive interpretations can be pursued online even in the face of unambiguous but contradictory syntactic cues.

From Corinth to Perryville: Military Movements and the Fight to Save the Confederate Nation in 1862

From Corinth to Perryville:Military Movements and the Fight to Save the Confederate Nation in 1862 Thomas M. Grace (bio) When Confederate captain Thomas Spight awoke the morning of June 15, 1862, the heat of the approaching summer had already enveloped the small corner of his native northeastern Mississippi, where he had spent the night sleeping under the stars. Spight had reached the hamlet of Tupelo a day earlier, amid the hasty retreat of the Rebel army from Corinth, a strategic railroad junction fifty miles to the north. Initially separated from his regiment, the Thirty-Fourth Mississippi, Spight had sought shelter under a stand of bushes and feasted on a meal of “buttermilk, Irish potatoes, beans, bacon & c[offee],” a repast he had been lucky enough to acquire during the army’s withdrawal.1 [End Page 3] The hearty meal revived Spight’s spirits. Despite the losses of the previous months, and the fall back to Tupelo, the officer maintained his confidence that the Confederacy would prevail. Spight, unlike many others, had also maintained his health during the series of reversals beginning at Fort Donelson in February 1862 and ending up with the Rebel army in the west defeated, underfed, and plagued by tropical disease. Writing to his future wife, Spight made a remarkable prediction, insisting that “a month from today this army will be north of the Memphis-Charleston RailRoad.” Spight believed that once “we are rested a little, we will commence moving again. . . . If so I would be willing to stake the fate of the Confederacy on the battle that will be fought. . . . I have no fear as to the present…for we know too well [the] consequences of subjugation.”2 The Memphis and Charleston Railroad to which Spight referred ran along the southern border of Tennessee through Mississippi and Alabama, linking the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast through Corinth, Mississippi; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia. Confederate secretary of war Leroy P. Walker called the Memphis and Charleston line “the vertebrae of the Confederacy.” Over its rails just weeks before had come thousands of Confederate troops from across the Deep South to reinforce the Rebel army before Shiloh. Without it, Walker predicted, not only would the movement and supply of the Confederate army be materially hindered, but the “people will abandon the country”— both the geographic region of the Confederate heartland as well as the Confederate state—“to the occupation of the enemy.” The defeats at Shiloh and Corinth had cut the line west of Chattanooga, leaving the western Confederate states hanging on to Richmond by the flimsiest of supply and communications threads.3 When the army did move again, it would be under a new departmental commander, Braxton Bragg, and, as Spight had predicted, [End Page 4] the Rebels would get north of the vital Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Their circuitous offensive maneuver—moving down to the Gulf of Mexico to reach north into Kentucky—would underscore the strategic dangers facing a new Confederate nation whose industrial, agricultural, population, and transportation heartland was in danger of permanent loss. This article will examine the campaign that Spight predicted, which, at around 950 miles from Tupelo to the Kentucky border (and even farther to the campaign’s decisive battlefield at Perryville), was the longest trek taken by a large-scale Confederate force during the Civil War. Although the Battle of Perryville and the subsequent retreat from Kentucky have been the subjects of previous studies, this essay will emphasize the many logistical obstacles involved in the transfer of a defeated, demoralized, and unhealthy Rebel force from Mississippi to Kentucky. Bragg’s invasion showed both the possibilities and limitations of the slaveholding South and the Confederate state which sprang up to defend it.4 Named head of the Western Department on June 20, Bragg confronted long odds.5 Even before he could utilize his army in a bid to regain territory lost to Union forces, he had to see to its health, training, leadership, and supply. In the seven weeks the Army of Mississippi spent at Tupelo, Bragg would make gains in all those areas. That might not have been enough time to complete any of those efforts, but pressing...

The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain

The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Idle Lustas

The Exeter Book poem, “The Wonder of Creation”, named in the standard edition “The Order of the World”, is at the centre of the paper. It is a much-neglected Old English poem, yet interesting intellectually, and often difficult. Vanity is important in it, idle lustas “vain desires”, are central to it. There is more in it than the negative teaching that all life is vanity, for there is hope of a better realm. The temptation of Vainglory, the seventh Capital Sin, worthless glory, is a theme in Old English homiletic literature: the wish for false joys is a vanity. That is a theme in Cynewulf's poetry and in the prose of the Blickling Homilies. That a life of prayer and fasting enables man to fight the devil is a serious homiletic message. Our First Parents experienced unprofitable desires. Original Sin is mentioned in this paper, but not every healthy, hearty meal shares in that fundamental theological concept.

Conflict and surrender during sentence processing: An ERP study of syntax-semantics interaction

Recent ERP studies report that implausible verb-argument combinations can elicit a centro-parietal P600 effect (e.g., “The hearty meal was devouring …”; Kim & Osterhout, 2005). Such eliciting conditions do not involve outright syntactic anomaly, deviating from previous reports of P600. Kim and Osterhout (2005) attributed such P600 effects to structural reprocessing that occurs when syntactic cues fail to support a semantically attractive interpretation (‘meal’ as the Agent of ‘devouring’) and the syntactic cues are overwhelmed; the sentence is therefore perceived as syntactically ill-formed. The current study replicated such findings and also found that altering the syntactic cues in such situations of syntax-semantics conflict (e.g., “The hearty meal would devour …”) affects the conflict’s outcome. P600s were eliminated when sentences contained syntactic cues that required multiple morphosyntactic steps to “repair”. These sentences elicited a broad, left-anterior negativity at 300–600 ms (LAN). We interpret the reduction in P600 amplitude in terms of “resistance” of syntactic cues to reprocessing. We speculate that the LAN may be generated by difficulty retrieving an analysis that satisfies both syntactic and semantic cues, which results when syntactic cues are strong enough to resist opposing semantic cues. This pattern of effects is consistent with partially independent but highly interactive syntactic and semantic processing streams, which often operate collaboratively but can compete for influence over interpretation.

Examining the evidence for an independent semantic analyzer: An ERP study in Spanish

Recent ERP findings challenge the widespread assumption that syntactic and semantic processes are tightly coupled. Syntactically well-formed sentences that are semantically anomalous due to thematic mismatches elicit a P600, the component standardly associated with syntactic anomaly. This ‘thematic P600’ effect has been attributed to detection of semantically plausible thematic relations that conflict with the surface syntactic structure of the sentence, implying a processing architecture with an independent semantic analyzer. A key finding is that the P600 is selectively sensitive to the presence of plausible verb-argument relations, and that otherwise an N400 is elicited (The hearty meal was devouring … vs. The dusty tabletop was devouring …: Kim & Osterhout, 2005). The current study investigates in Spanish whether the evidence for an independent semantic analyzer is better explained by a standard architecture that rapidly integrates multiple sources of lexical, syntactic, and semantic information. The study manipulated the presence of plausible thematic relations, and varied the choice of auxiliary between passive-biased fue and active-progressive biased estaba. Results show a late positivity that appeared as soon as comprehenders detected an improbable combination of subject animacy, auxiliary bias, or verb voice morphology. This effect appeared at the lexical verb in the fue conditions and at the auxiliary in the estaba conditions. The late positivity elicited by surface thematic anomalies was the same, regardless of the presence of a plausible non-surface interpretation, and no N400 effects were elicited. These findings do not implicate an independent semantic analyzer, and are compatible with standard language processing architectures.

Immune or not immune: two cases of acute flaccid motor paralysis

A 40-year-old man of Chinese descent presented with severe weakness. I was asked to review him in the intensive care unit where he had been admitted with a diagnosis of...

CRABS PRIORITIZE DINNER

![Figure][1] In a body of water as large as the Pacific Ocean, you might think that salinity levels would be fairly constant; and they are in the ocean depths. But head closer in to shore, and it can be a very different matter. At stormy times of year, coastal freshwater run-off can

Vincent Louis DeQuattro, MD, FACP, FACC

HomeHypertensionVol. 38, No. 6Vincent Louis DeQuattro, MD, FACP, FACC Free AccessObituaryPDF/EPUBAboutView PDFView EPUBSections ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload citationsTrack citationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InMendeleyReddit Jump toFree AccessObituaryPDF/EPUBVincent Louis DeQuattro, MD, FACP, FACC1933–2001 Vito M. Campese and Franz H. Messerli Vito M. CampeseVito M. Campese Search for more papers by this author and Franz H. MesserliFranz H. Messerli Search for more papers by this author Originally published1 Apr 2018https://doi.org/10.1161/hyp.38.6.e27Hypertension. 2001;38:e27Vincent Louis DeQuattro died tragically on August 17, 2001, while snorkeling along the coast of Maui. He was born in Lawrence, Mass. His father was an Italian immigrant, and his mother was Irish immigrant. He completed high school at Pasadena Junior College in 1950. In 1955, he completed his master of science in the Pharmacology and in 1960 he obtained his medical degree, both at George Washington University.He did his internship/residency at Los Angeles County General Hospital. Between 1962 and 1963, he did a fellowship in hypertension-related cardiovascular disease at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. From 1964 to 1966, he was a clinical investigator at the Experimental Therapeutic Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda under Albert Sjoerdsma.His first faculty position was in 1970 as an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, where he rose to full professor of medicine in 1978. From 1974 to 1981, he was chief of Seventh Floor Medical Complex at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, and from 1978 until his death, Dr DeQuattro was the chief of the hypertension service at the same Institution.Between 198l and 1982, he performed a fellowship in cardiovascular disease in the Section of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles, and since then he had been a practicing cardiologist as well as internist.He was a member of several societies, including the Advisory Board of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research of the American Heart Association, American Society of Hypertension, American Federation of Clinical Research, American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, International Society of Hypertension, and Inter-American Society of Hypertension. He served on the Fourth and Sixth Joint National Committees on Detection, Evaluation, Prevention, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure.Dr DeQuattro dedicated most of his career to studying the role of the sympathetic nervous system in the pathophysiology of hypertension. While at NIH, he developed his interest and expertise in measurements of plasma catecholamines by a double-radioenzymatic method. He used this assay to make the original and pivotal observations (published in J Clin Invest. 1967;47:2359–2373 and in Lancet. 1972;1:806–809), that ≈30% of patients with essential hypertension manifest biochemical evidence of increased sympathetic nervous system activity. Subsequently, several other laboratories confirmed this observation with more direct techniques. He had a special interest in the diagnosis and management of pheochromocytoma, and the large majority of patients with this condition in the Los Angeles area were referred to him for diagnosis and management. Dr DeQuattro published >145 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 42 chapters in books.Dr DeQuattro was an outstanding teacher and speaker. He loved to lecture to his colleagues and enjoyed the challenge of scientific argument. He was an outstanding teacher at the bedside. He had a very deep understanding of internal medicine, and students and house officers were very impressed by his knowledge, empathy, and sense of human participation. His patients simply adored him. He was engaging, personable, and always concerned for their well being; the patients felt his humanistic qualities, his concern, and his engagement. His cheerful and noisy laugh was sometimes better than any remedy he could provide.On a personal note, Dr DeQuattro enjoyed life, always to the fullest extent. He loved to ski the powder snow of Vail or Mammoth Lakes, enjoyed hiking in the Sierra, loved playing tennis, and always could be convinced to join in for a hearty meal and a bottle of good Italian wine. His personal touch, friendliness, and concern for others made him a unique individual. With these humanistic qualities, he touched the life of many of us. His laugh was his best foil: it was loud, crackling, contagious, and devastating for any adversary. For us, he was a personal, close friend to count on no matter what.We all miss him, and he will long be remembered by colleagues, students, and personnel who worked close to him. But more importantly he will be missed by a very large number of patients who relied on his care, his dedication, and his wisdom to carry them through adversities.Dr DeQuattro loved to conclude his lectures with Mussolini’s dictum: “Better to live one day like a lion than live 100 years like a lamb.” Vince DeQuattro lived like a lion and died like a lion. Previous Back to top Next FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails December 2001Vol 38, Issue 6 Advertisement Article InformationMetrics https://doi.org/10.1161/hyp.38.6.e27 Originally publishedApril 1, 2018 PDF download Advertisement

A Hearty Meal? The Prison Diets of Cranmer and Latimer

In March 1554, the Oxford Martyrs, Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, were confined at Oxford in the care of city officials until their executions in October 1555 (Latimer and Ridley) and March 1556 (Cranmer). Because of a reimbursement dispute, Oxford bailiffs' accounts for Latimer and Cranmer survive for the relevant part of the municipal year 1555-56. The accounts record the composition and costs of the prisoners' individual daily diets by item and dish for 245 meals.This is unusual, since food accounts from this period normally are highly aggregated, and information on individual meals usually is derived from descriptive or prescriptive sources. The prisoners' diets conformed to the general conventions of the period, but the accounts allow a nuanced analysis. Individual tastes and situations were accommodated, but both Cranmer and Latimer were maintained at a dietary level significantly below that authorized for persons of their status, and Cranmer's precedence as archbishop was not recognized. The religious regime was observed strictly (but not harshly) and clearly was the primary determinant of dietary change, far outweighing all other influences such as seasonal availability of foodstuffs or nutritional theory.

Editorial: Sleep inducement by L-tryptophan.

When a hearty meal induces drowsiness, it is because blood leaves the brain and goes to the stomach (gut). Surely you have heard your mother or your grandmother or somebody tell that old wives' tale, and maybe you believed it. It is nonsense, according to Hartmann et al in a report appearing in the current issue of Archives of General Psychiatry (31:394-397, 1974). Complete hydrolysis of proteins yields some 20 different amino acids some of which are essential or in that they serve important functions but cannot be synthesized by the body. Among the indispensable amino acids derived from food is L-tryptophan, which, among other actions, in animals and man has been shown to induce sleep, presumably by raising blood levels of serotonin. Accordingly, Hartmann et al undertook a sleep-laboratory study of the effects of L-tryptophan on sleep latency (the time from lights out until sleep) in a group

HOUSEKEEPING FOR TWO

ALL housekeeping should be light housekeeping in the summer, and light housekeeping should be lighter than ever. We have an unfortunate habit of spending the most beautiful time of the summer day, from six to eight in the evening, in the house, eating, and washing dishes. It should be possible occasionally for the family of two to adjourn to some spot out-of-doors where the sunset is visible and contentedly munch a sandwich and a hard-cooked egg and finish with fresh fruit. Let the sandwich bread be at least twenty-four hours old, and it should be cut in even slices, not too thick nor too thin. If you wish to be very dainty, you may cut off the crusts, but they are better left on. Butter each slice evenly. Butter spreads much better if it is first rubbed to a creamy consistency with a wooden spoon. Put a crisp, tender leaf of lettuce with a generous teaspoon of mayonnaise between the slices. A hard-cooked egg is a different thing from a hard-boiled egg. Put water in both parts of the double boiler, and put it over the fire. When the water in the lower part boils, put the eggs in the upper part, leave the cover off, turn the fire low and let the eggs cook forty minutes. The result will repay the extra time and trouble. Instead of the usual picnic egg with a white of leathery texture, you have a thoroughly cooked, but tender egg which, if well masticated, is perfectly digestible. A handful of nuts will add to the pleasure as well as the nutriment of the feast. Get a half-pound of shelled Jordan almonds. Cover them with boiling water and let them stand two minutes, then throw them into cold water and rub off the brown skins. Dry them on a towel, spread them in a shallow pan, add one teaspoon of olive oil, shaking them well, so that the oil may coat each nut. Brown them delicately in the oven. Turn them out on soft paper, which will absorb any surplus oil, and sprinkle with salt. A pound of almond meats contains about three times as much nutriment as a pound of round steak, and they should be eaten accordingly. Nuts eaten after a hearty meal and without thorough mastication are likely to be indigestible, but if well chewed and eaten with due regard to their high nutritive value, they make a wholesome addition to the bill of fare.

Rumination in Man.

Ashton, R. I., April 14, 1898. To the Editor: —I was much interested in Dr. Sinkler's paper on Merycism or Rumination in Man, published in your issue of the 9th inst., as I recollect that when a young man, say from 18 to 25 years of age, I frequently, at long intervals, used to return my food, especially after a hearty meal when accompanied or more often followed by the use of wine or other alcoholic beverage, and finding it rather agreeable, remasticated and restored it to the stomach. I agree with Dr. Sinkler that rumination is not the result of indigestion but of improper mastication, at least in cases where, as in my own, the food returned is sweet and pleasant, and he is undoubtedly correct in his opinion that it passes out of the stomach and ceases to be returned to the mouth as soon as it becomes

Excursion to oakbank Shale Pits and Paraffin Oil Works. Messrs. Calderwood and Mitchell, Leaders. 10th June 1882

On the invitation of Mr Beilby, manager, Oakbank Oil Works, and Mr Calderwood, manager, Pits, Oakbank, the Society visited these works. The party were met at the Oil Works by Mr Mitchell, chemist to the works, and were conducted over the various operations, from the manufacture of the crude oil out of shale to the refined products, burning, and lubricating oil and solid paraffin. In the Refinery the members were shown by Mr Maxwell, junior, the arrangements for putting out a fire, should such occur, by means of steam blown in from a boiler. The party then proceeded to the shale pits, where they were met by Mr Calderwood, who conducted the members to the underground workings. The galleries, which are somewhat extensive, were traversed, and the methods of ‶trimming″ the shale explained, after which the surface was regained. Arrangements having been made for dinner at the Torphichen Arms Hotel, Mid-Calder, the party proceeded there. After a hearty meal, Mr Ralph Richardson, W.S., F.R.S.E., Vice-President, proposed the health of the various gentlemen to whom the Society was indebted for an enjoyable day. Mr Calderwood replied. Mr Alexander Cockburn then proposed the health of Messrs Richardson and Macadam, which were suitably acknowledged.

The First Swallow at Menton

THE first swallow arrived here alone in the rain on Monday, March 19. It entered the best room of the cure by one of the windows which chanced to want a pane, and the good old man immediately removed a pane from the other window, by which the swallows have been in the habit of going in and out. I did not hear of the arrival of this summer resident until the 23rd, when I immediately paid it a visit. It is still solitary but not uncomfortable; it flits about the room from place to place, and from nest to nest, twittering very contentedly; and when a bright hour comes it flies out, where, sporting in the sun it soon makes a hearty meal. But it has arrived decidedly too soon, for it has found as yet mostly wet and rather cold days with snow-covered mountains for its immediate surrounding. Such, however, is the climate of this place, difficult to conceive by untravelled Englishmen, that I at this moment bask outside in the sun, soothed by the singing of birds, surrounded by flowers and butterflies, and the green trees with their golden fruits. I am in the midst of summer, and yet I have but to turn my head, and there, close at hand, are the mountains white with snow.

The case of a full-grown woman in whom the ovaria were deficient

The woman whose case is here described was born in Radnorshire in the year 1770. She was of a fair complexion, and, except when irritated, of a mild temper. In her diet she was remarkably abstemious, eating very little, either of animal or vegetable food; and if at any time she ate a hearty meal, or took several kinds of food, she was so much affected by it as to faint. She was of a costive habit, seldom having a passage oftener than once in nine days, sometimes only once in fourteen days. She ceased to grow at ten years of age, and was only four feet six inches in height. Across the shoulders she measured fourteen inches, but her pelvis measured only nine inches, from the ossa ilia to the sacrum. Her breasts and nipples never enlarged more than those of a man; nor did she ever menstruate, or show any other sign of puberty, either in mind or body; on the contrary, she always expressed aversion to the familiarities of young men. At the age of twenty-one she became uneasy at finding herself different from other women, and, attributing the difference to her not having menstruated, frequently applied for medical advice.