Lycopus Virginicus for Stings and Bites, etc.-J. R. Briggs, Fort Worth.

ternally, were simply magical. The pulse came down to 100, and the hurried breathing and cyanosed condition rapidly disappeared. The tongue became moist, and the patient comfortable, in four hours, and he slept soundly. Rapidly, the grave symptoms gave way in every respect, and in twelve hours the patient's countenance, which previously had assumed an anxious aspect, became normal and placid.

To make a long story short, the patient was, in three days, able to attend to business.

I do not pretend to say in what way this remedy relieves the patient; but, that it does relieve, is a fact, nevertheless. I have used it since for the stings of insects, and find that, applied externally, it will at once relieve the pain attending the sting of the hornet, honey bee, wasp and stinging lizard.

Confining my practice to the eye and ear for the last five years has prevented me from making further trials of this "charm weed" of the Indians.

I ask the profession to give it a trial in all cases of bites and stings of venemous reptiles and insects, and report its results.

APPENDIX-Section on Practice of Medicine, etc.

A CASE OF MALARIAL IRRITATION OF THE BLADDER IN THE FEMALE, WITH REMARKS

BY HENRY K. LEAKE, M. D., DALLAS, Texas.

I do not recollect to have seen that malaria has been accorded that due prominence in the causation of irritable bladder which the clinical history of the case that I will briefly relate would seem to demand, and it is chiefly for the purpose of asserting and enforcing this claim. to especial recognition, that I have thought it timely to present, on this occasion, the report on which these prefatory remarks are based.

About March I of the present year, a lady whose health had been uniterruptedly good, thirty-seven years of age, the mother of six children, the last of which being an infant of four months, applied to me for treatment for what she considered the ailment to be, incontinence of urine. She stated that the condition had come on gradually, at the first amounting to mere frequency of urination during the day, without any attendant pain or other symptom which attracted her at tention. This frequency had increased, however, to such an extent as to seriously embarrass her in the per

Malarial Irritation of the Bladder-Henry K. Leake, M. D., Dallas, Texas

formance of domestic duties, and prevent her from visiting friends, or doing the necessary shopping in the interest of the family. Moreover, she soon became troubled at night, often rising six, or perhaps a dozen times, in obedience to the urgent calls for micturition.

The amount of urine passed at each discharge was not large, but exceeded in quantity that ordinarily retained in cases of acute cystitis, which the affection, in many respects, closely resembled. There were no deposits worth noting to be observed on examination of the urine when just passed, or when cold. The fluid appeared to be somewhat higher colored than normal, indicating an excess of coloring matter. There was also a super-abundance of mucus, in the form of large floculi, distinctly observed, thickening the urine, but no pus or blood could be detected on close and repeated examination.

As the case progressed, the desire to evacuate the bladder was preceded by a sharp twinge of pain, not amounting to severe suffering, which the patient averred was "low down at the very neck of the bladder,” but which was immediately relieved on empting the viscus.

The lady was apprehensive, lest some displacement of the uterus was the cause of the symptoms, a condition to which she might be predisposed by her last confinement, and superinduced by over-exertion, recently undergone in revising the appointments of her house. A careful examination, however, of the pelvic organs discovered them in their normal relations, and no tender

APPENDIX-Section on Practice of Medicine, etc.

ness at any point, except a slight pain, more accurately described, as uneasiness, experienced when the neck of the bladder was firmly pressed towards the pubis by the point of the examining finger, on bi-manual palpation.

Under my continued observation, the foregoing symptoms were all intensified.

The frequency of micturition increased to almost constant dribbling from the bladder, both daily and nocturnal; the cloud of mucus in the urine was much augmented, and while the color appeared to remain unchanged, there was a large excretion of solid matter. Neither the precise amount of the latter nor its chemical constitution, I regret, was determined by the proper analysis, but, as the deposit was always marked in the warm urine, it was composed probably of phosphates.

The uneasiness elicted at the neck of the bladder by pressure on this part soon changed to actual soreness. Moreover, the slightly cutting sensation, which announced the degree of toleration reached by the bladder of the amount of urine which had accumulated, eventuated in the most distressing tenesmus, enforcing the more prompt, painful and frequent evacution of the organ. The spasm of the bladder persisted, also, for some time after its contents had been completely extruded. In short, at the end of the second week, the case had passed into one of apparently serious import, and was operating with telling effect on the vitality and mental equipoise of the patient.

Malarial Irritation of the Bladder-Henry K. Leake, M. D., Dallas, Texas.

The tripod of treatment, namely, rest, opium and alkalies, upon which Van Buren and Keys cogently protest the successful management of cystitis rests, was relied on to relieve what I now feared was a case of this distressing disease, the cause of which I could not then determine. The constitutional effect of belladonna was evoked, also, to mitigate the symptoms, and finally hot water vaginal injections were employed for their well known analgesic and antiphlogistic effects upon the pelvic viscera. Such measures gave only temporary relief, the features of the case resuming their original character whenever the effect of medication, which was occasionally suspended to ascertain the status quo of the disease, had passed off.

At the beginning of the third week from the first appearance of the symptoms, the patient complained of slight chilliness towards evening, and it was observed that this was followed by fever, the theremometer in the mouth registering 101 degrees. These symptoms were interpreted to indicate the constitutional expression of the local inflammation existing in the bladder. Hence no special attention was directed towards them.

The chilliness was repeated, however, on the third evening, and on the fourth, day at the same hour, reappeared as the prodrome of a marked rigor, followed by an abrupt rise of temperature to 103 degrees, succeeded by sweating, and a return to the normal temperature in about four hours, thus clearly demonstrating a well defined periodicity of the febrile movement.