in recent urethritis to recommend the practice over that by other wellknown remedies, but in the treatment of gleet he had much better success. In seventeen cases, most of them obstinate, and which had been treated in vain, the mean duration of treatment with the zinc injections was nine days. The remedy usually caused no pain, and was very rarely followed by accidents.

IS ELECTRICITY AN ANESTHETIC?-The question has been raised in the College of Dentists of England. At a late meeting Mr. Peter Matthews, President of the College, occupied the chair. He opened the debate with an address on the various anæsthetic agents used in surgery, and ultimately came to the question: Is electricity an'anaesthetic, or is it not? He (the president) after a long and careful experience, had no alternative left but to answer that question in the negative. He then related with great precision the details of various cases of extraction of teeth, in which he had employed galvanism, but explained that although the result was, in some instances, modified from ordinary tooth-drawing, he could not admit that in any instance had the pain of extraction been abolished. In certain peculiar cases, indeed, (cases where the elastic tissue which connects the tooth with its socket, the tooth periosteum, is inflamed and painful,) the application of galvanism in extraction adds to the pain of the operation. Mr. Matthews then described the different modes of applying the electric current, and concluded by expressing his opinion that, in our present state of knowledge, electricity could not be considered as an anesthetic agent. Dr. Purland, Mr. Weiss, Mr. Lobb, and Mr. Perkins, joined in the discussion, the tenor of their experience being consonant with that of the president. It was clearly the general feeling that galvanism in tooth extraction acts only by producing a diversion of pain, not by causing insensibility.

SPONTANEOUS POST-MORTEM ACCOUCHEMENT.-In the Vierteljahrschrift is given a case of this kind. The mother, a strong, healthy peasant, had been forty hours in labor when M. Frentrop was called to her. The midwife had in vain attempted turning. The doctor also attempted it, and failed on account of the violent contractions of the uterus. The woman eventually died twenty-four hours later undelivered. The woman was then laid out; and when they came to bury her, twelve hours afterwards, a child was found forced out of the womb, and lying between the thighs of the mother; the placenta was unattached. The physiological fact, though not new, is interesting; but the practice of the doctor must have been very disgracefully defective.

PROPER MODE OF ADMINISTERING CHLOROFORM AND ETHER. Erichsen directs as follows: On a piece of folded lint about two inches square, and consisting of three doubles, about 3j of the anaesthetic is poured, and the lint then is held at a distance of about three inches from the nose of the patient, so as to permit of the very free access of air with the first few inhalations of the vapor. After the lapse of about half a minute, the lint is brought nearer to the patient's nose, to within a dis

tance of perhaps an inch, being never allowed to touch. At the same time a porous towel, not doubled, is lightly laid over the face of the patient and the hand of the operator, so as to prevent the escape of the vapor, but not to interfere with the admission of air.

Anaesthetics should not be administered too suddenly, or in too concentrated a form, and, while under the influence, the patient should not be raised up off the table or couch. If the lint is too much saturated with it, and be held too closely applied to the mouth and nostrils, the patient will not be able to get sufficient atmospheric air, and may speedily become partially asphyxiated.

ON THE COMPARATIVE ACTION OF CHLORATE AND IODATE OF POTASH. In a late discussion in a French medical society, M. Demarquay announced that he had made some comparative experiments upon the action of chlorate and iodate of potash, in mercurial salivation and ulcerated stomatitis; and he found that, although the first of these salts exercises a well-known and powerful effect upon the bucco-pharyngeal membrane, yet its operation is inferior to that produced by the iodateone gramme of the iodate producing more prompt and satisfactory results than four grammes of the chlorate.-British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review.

CHLOROFORM IN INTERMITTENTS.-Dr. Whitehorn, from Kansas Territory, writes to the American Journal of Medical Sciences: "I have administered chloroform on several occasions to patients shaking violently with an ague chill. In every instance it has stopped the rigors after several inhalations. The feeling of oppression and all pains are simultaneously relieved. Should symptoms recur, I repeat the dose. I hope some of your subscribers, with a more extensive field than mine, will repeat the experiment, and report."

CROTON OIL AS AN EPISPASTIC.-When strangury is feared as a result of the use of cantharides, Dr. Von Bastelaer recommends the following as an efficient substitute: White wax, two parts; croton oil, six parts; fresh lard, twenty-two parts, by weight. Melt wax and lard, and rub in a heated mortar until the mass is cool, and then mix in the oil thoroughly.

PNEUMONIA BLEEDING.-What are the comparative effects of praetising or abstaining from bleeding in a case of pneumonia? Is one or the other practice indiscriminately to be adopted? The answer to these questions, abstracted from the evidence of some of the most eminent men of the day, may be given thus: The non-bleeding plan has a demonstrable advantage over that of indiscriminate and repeated bleedings. The judicious practice of moderate early bleedings, general or local, in cases of more or less sthenic pnenumonia, and of refraining from it altogether in asthenic pneumonia, whether as regards the character of the disease or the constitution of the patient, is pressed upon us both by experience and science. So says the editor of the British and Foreign Medico-ChirurgiJ. H. C.

cal Review.

Bibliographical Notices and Reviews.

HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, from its organization up to January, 1855. By N. S. DAVIS, M. D., Professor of Principles and Practice of Medicine in Rush Medical College; Member of the American Medical Association; Physician to the Mercy Hospital, Chicago; Permanent Member of the Medical Society of the State of New York; Fellow of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York; Corresponding Member of the New York Medical Association; Member of the Illinois State Medical Society, etc., etc., etc. To which is appended Biographical Notices, with Portraits of the Presidents of the Association and of the Author. Edited by S. W. BUTLER, M. D.

The most hostile criticism must grant that this is a well-filled title-page; and even as is the title-page, so is the book filled with the titles and achievements and labors and sufferings of N. S. Davis, M. D., Professor of, etc., etc., Member of, etc., etc., and headed by an excellent photograph of that gentleman, expressing all that importance which the title-page announces and the volume affirms. Indeed, the subject-matter of the work would be better expressed if the title-page read as follows: "Ilistory of the part taken by N. S. Davis, M. D., Professor of, etc., etc., Member of, etc., etc., in organizing, fostering, and adorning the American Medical Association; of the purposes he intended to effect by so doing; of the wicked opposition they met with; of the valuable papers contributed by him, with the honors conferred on some of them, and the unaccountable and disgraceful neglect encountered by others; of the discomforts and perils, by land and by sea, braved by him in attending its meetings; with a variety of other matters, all tending to the praise and glory of N. S. Davis, M. D., Professor of, etc., etc., Member of, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc."

We freely place these suggested alterations at the disposal of the author, in case of his publishing a new edition hereafter.

This work, as will be seen from its title-page, is more than four years

old; nevertheless, we have never till now had an opportunity of expressing our appreciation of it, never having seen a copy of it till we found one announced in the shop-window of a book-store near the Hall where the concentrated wisdom of the profession was assembled in Louisville last May. To avow this is to make the acknowledgment (and we had better make a clean breast of it at once) that this was the first time we had ever formed one in that august assemblage, for the History, etc., has since 1855 (as we are informed) always formed a standing dish at the Society's meetings, and wherever such meetings are held the book is known.

"Not to know that, argues yourself unknown.”

We hasten to make up for lost time, by proclaiming to our readers the stores of historic lore which we, and perhaps they, have hitherto missed our share of. They must get the History.

Next to the labors and sufferings of the author in establishing and instructing and defending the Society, he is mainly occupied with a history of its doings, or rather attempts, on the subject of medical education, and its efforts to remodel the medical colleges, the execution of which enterprise he represents as the proper function of the Association. The logic by which he proves this is beautiful in its simplicity; it amounts to this:

“I, N. S. D., Professor of, etc., etc., Member of, etc., etc., founded the American Medical Association. I did so with the purpose of remodelling the medical colleges according to the perfections of my ideal standard.” Therefore the Association exists for that purpose.

"I, N. S. D., etc., etc., feel entirely competent to deal with this question."

Therefore the Association is competent to dispose of it.

Wonderful perversity of human nature! wonderful obtusity of the medical intellect the colleges have never yet seen the logical necessity of placing themselves under this remodelling process, and, worse still, the Association itself seems to be getting tired of the question, and the great reformer and historiographer seems in danger of being left in the solitary sublimity of indignant expostulation, while the Association resolves itself into a mere scientific body, and the colleges pursue their vocation, each according to its own judgment, deaf to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.*

And even this is not all: among the inmates of these recalcitrant

* Such will be inevitably the effect of the proposed division of the Association into sections for scientific purposes.

institutions were men found daring enough to hold up our reformer with all his schemes to the scorn of the profession; among these we find two offenders treated with special severity, and the names of them are Payne and Bedford, and their dwelling is in Gotham.

Being in possession of the writings of the first of these two gainsayers, we were inspired with the desire of knowing what could be urged against the reasonable demand of our author upon the colleges to surrender themselves into his remodelling hands. With trembling fingers we turned over the audacious sheets, and at every page were more and more struck with what we saw. Not content with contesting the right of a self-constituted body to deal with vested rights which were not derived from its authority-with treating the proposed reformations as visionary and mischievous, and calculated to turn away from the avenues of the medical profession a class of men who had constituted its bone and sinew -not satisfied with ignoring the claims of N. S. D. to deal with medical education according to his pleasure, this bold offender proceeds to show that the veritable N. S. D. himself entered the profession without the qualifications which he would exact from those who in future may aspire to join its ranks; that he who was demanding Greek and Latin and mathematics and physical science, and a thorough liberal education, as the condition of even commencing the study of medicine, was at that very time destitute of the ordinary acquaintance with the spelling and grammar of the English language which is acquired in a common-school education; that in the very letter wherein he calls upon the University of New York to place herself under the remodelling process, "Unanymously is written with two y's, notise with an s, and anual with a single n."

Alas, Oh N. S. D.!

Fas est et ab hoste doceri.

And irreverently as these revelations are made, even your exalted wisdom might be augmented if they should lead you to look back on the humble path by which you made your own way into the medical profession. Blush not, man, at remembering that it was a lowly though an honest one. We find it honestly set down in the memoir attached to this history that you entered the profession under many disadvantages, that your "early education was limited and defective," and that at the age of sixteen all these shortcomings were made up in a hurry by a hasty six months at Cazenovia, employed upon "English grammar, chemistry, natural philosophy, algebra, and Latin." Nay, hang not your head, because you forced your way into an honorable profession with every thing