"Eh, old fellow! no cough yet?" "Seems to me you are not looking so well this morning?" "Just come in, and let me thump you a little to see how the thing is going on.-Med. Record. PERSISTENT PRIAPISM.-Homer, a mulatto, bar-keeper of one of our most respectable drinking saloons, aged twenty-eight years, married, father of four or five children, of temperate habits, with respect to food and drink, but addicted to excessive venereal indulgence. Never had gonorrhoea, nor any other disease of the genito-urinary organs, seized immediately after conjugation with his wife, with an intensely painful erection; applied cold water assiduously; then had recourse to hot baths and fomentations, took purgatives and afterwards opium. Having obtained no relief, came to me ten hours after the attack in great distress. Symptoms and condition of the organ.-Countenance haggard, and expressive of anxiety; general demeanor indicative of much suffering and alarm. Intense pain referred to the virile member; sense of weight or heaviness about the anus and perineum. On inspection, the organ presented an intense rigidity and hardness, and stood at an obtuse angle with respect to the abdomen. The glands, corpora cavernosa, corpus spongiosum, in a word, all the parts of the member were involved-agony increased on slight pressure; temperature apparently natural. No enlargement or signs of disease referable to the body of the pros-trate; bladder nearly empty, no vesical irritation had ever been complained of; no rectal entozoa; other functions normal. Treatment, May 10th, 10 A. M.-Potass. bromidi grs. xv, in solution, every two hours. 4 P. M., pain relieved, organ flaccid, but sore. Continue the solution in doses of grs. v, every four hours. May 11, 9 A. M.-Has slept well during the night; no pain, but a little soreness; urinates well; appetite good, with buoyant spirits; returns to the duties of his vocation. July 15.-Has another attack immediately after sexual con gress with his consort; applies at the pharmacy for the same prescription, and not being able to obtain it in consequence of my absence, procures an antaphrodisiac mixture from one of the employees of the establishment, and after taking it faithfully for fourteen hours, without relief, advises me of his condition, and gets the following: R.-Potass bromid., 3ij; aq. pur., 3iv. M. S. Take a wineglassful every hour in some water. July 16th.-Saw the patient this morning; he was perfectly relieved. Said two doses were sufficient. I advised a continuance of the bromide in small doses (five grains) three times a day, and enjoined upon him the necessity of banishing all libidinous thoughts from his mind, if possible, for a time. Nearly nine months have elapsed since, and Homer has continued in good health, and enjoys his connubial felicities as formerly, but not quite, he says, so free of restraint.-N. O. Jour. of Medicine. FEMALE MEDICAL STUDENTS.-Edinburgh has followed the example of Paris in admitting ladies to the regular study of medicine.-Med. Record. BLISTERING IN ACUTE RHEUMATISM.-In St. Vincent's Hospital, London, Dr. Mapother recently exhibited to his class several cases of acute rheumatism which he had treated mainly by means of the blistering plan. He advocates this method of treatment very strongly, and has found it to afford much more favorable results than any other which he has tried. He stated that in some cases the patients expressed themselves relieved of the acute pain before there was time for any serum to be poured out; and this fact, if true, would, he thinks, argue that the blisters act as counter irritants to the diseased structures, and prodace relief in that way.-Ibid. COMPARATIVE MORTALITY IN ARMIES FROM WOUNDS AND DISEASE. Dr. Edward S. Dunster contributes some valuable. statistics on "The Comparative Mortality in Armies from Wounds and Disease," in the U. S. Sanitary Commission Memoirs, as follows: "Among the English, during the Crimean war, the mortality from disease was to that of wounds 3.52 to 1; the mortality among the French showed almost the same ratio. During the Mexican war there were seven times as many deaths from disease as from wounds. During the recent war, the mortality in our army from disease was to that from wounds as 1.90 to 1, a ratio which is gratifying.-Ibid. [We confess that we are too dull to comprehend the reason of the gratification this showing gives our New York'cotemporary. It only proves that in the comparative success of disease and all arms in killing Englishmen in the Crimean war, that disease beat bullets more than three and a half to one, and that the same ratio obtained as to the French allies of the English in the same war. During the Mexican war, on the American side, disease beat bullets seven to one; but in "the war of the rebellion,” the deaths from rebel bullets, as compared with those from disease in the Federal armies, was as one to one and ninetenths. Apalling, we should think, rather than gratifying in the latitude of New York. Our cotemporary could hardly be presumed to claim greater health for the Northern soldier in the swamps of the South, than for the same class of men on the plains of Mexico; or that the surgeons were more successful in the late war than in the Mexican. It is perfectly clear that the Southerner, like the Scotchman, had learned to "kill twa at a blow."-ED. NASH. JOUR.] ELECTRICITY IN HYSTERIA.-Dr. Newman, of Chicago, in the Chicago Medical Journal, of January 15th, reports two cases of hysteria. In the first, after trying all sorts of medicines, combined in all sorts of ways, on the second day says: "There she lay, raving and tossing like a maniac; medicine seemed of no use. I determined to change my course of treatment. I thought of electricity, and acted on the impression. Took the electro-magnetic battery and placed one of the poles to the occiput and the other to sacrum; the effect was instantaneous, the rigidity of the muscles gave way. She soon went to sleep, and had no more paroxysms that day. January 4th, I made another application, and In the morning, to use her own words, she said it gave her strength and cheerfulness. She recovered rapidly, and soon went about her work as usual. CASE II. Jan. 9th, 1869.-Was called to see a married woman aged thirty-six years. The poor woman had suffered both mentally and physically at the hands of her cruel husband, and to cap the climax of his meanness he had sold all the little treasures given her by her mother. Pardon me for taking up so much space, I will now come to the case. Found her laboring under an attack of hysteria, frothing at the mouth, twitching and jerking of the limbs. I resolved to give the electro-magnetic battery another trial, which I did, and to my great pleasure the effect was magical. She has not had any more paroxysms since I first used the battery. By the way, I neglected to say that she had the spells about a week before I was called. I have just left her house, and she says that she feels better than she has felt for a long time. In recording this case I have come to the conclusion, that much good may result from the use of electricity as a therapeutic agent, but we must not expect too much from it, for the simple reason that we have no specifics.Chicago Med. Journal. UTERINE SYMPATHY.-By H. D. Vannuys, M. D., Lewisville, Indiana. I was called to attend Mrs. McN. -y, in confinement, at 8 o'clock, P.M., Dec. 23, 1868, and found her in a state of general excitement, and intensely fearful of the result of her parturition, although she was the mother of five children, her previous labors having been active, and attended with no untoward symptoms. I soon ascertained her doubts and fears were based upon her peculiar feelings at the time, and unusual feelings during the last two months of her gestation. She then gave me the following history of her case: On the night of October 12, 1868, she became intensely frightened in consequence of an intoxicated man, who, a few days before, demanded of the family in question to vacate the premises owned by him, and being refused, coming to the house armed with an axe, commenced manipulations upon one corner of the same, and finding but little progress made, changed his tactics, and in like manner commenced upon the front door of the house, at which juncture the husband and family rushed to the door. Mrs. McN- in the seventh month of her gestation, imagined she saw the blade of the axe penetrate the skull of her oldest boy, when she rushed to his rescue, and it was with much difficulty she could be persuaded that no such injury had been inflicted; from which time until her confinement she had complained of a constant distress and uneasy sensation in the left hypochondrium, accompanied by an ususual, and almost continual, motion of the child in utero. In due time a large and well-developed male child was born; but upon the left parietal region of the scalp was found a fissure some three inches in length, and in depth, extending from above downwards, about five-eights of an inch, and about two inches forward of the larger fissure was found a much smaller one, very similar in appearance. These fissures seem to be formed from an excess and duplicate of scalp tissue, folded upon itself, and bearing no signs of any present or previous inflammatory action. They corresponded peculiarly in location and appearance to the wound the mother imagined she saw inflicted upon her son by the desperado. The above case being one of many hundreds of like character, if not subject to demonstration by any plausible theory, yet stands out in bold relief as confirmatory of a strong relationship existing between the foetus in utero and cerebro spinal axis of the mother. Medical men, from education or from habit of reasoning from cause to effect, are, of all men, the most skeptical upon all questions and subjects which do not admit of positive demonstration, and which do not recommend themselves to the mind by some tangibility of reasoning; hence the question of strong mental or emotional impressions, made upon the mind of the mother in pregnancy, having an effect upon the fœtus in utero physicially, has been accepted by doubtful disputation by a large class of medical men, but anticipated, and very frequently sorrowfully realized by many an anxious mother. The theory of ascribing many of the normal and abnormal phenomena of obstetricy, from the first hour of conception to |