Every week one or more specific cures are announced through the press for various dangerous maladies to which human beings are liable, such as typhoid fever, leprosy, consumption, heart-failure, and various other diseases. These are mostly in the nature of serums injected into the circulation. Professor Behring, the discoverer of the diphtheria serum, has discovered a serum which he claims will cure tuberculosis in cattle and in children, rendering the latter immune during life. Another physician has announced before the Boston Medical Society the discovery of a specific for heart-failure. The secretions of certain glands of the body are injected into the circulation to strengthen heart action. The discoverer of the supposed specific for typhoid crushes the germs of the typhoid disease in liquid air, and the juices thus obtained are injected into the human organism both as a preventive and as a specific for the cure of typhoid. But it is in the treatment of consumption that the greatest number of remedies are being invented—and proved ineffective, as the other specifics also may prove to be.