applied to the skin continuously for days without causing the slightest dermatitis, and although it has no anesthetic or antiseptic properties, it has a wonderful effect in controlling the pain and shortening the duration of erythemas and erysipelatous inflammation of the skin. Given internally, Unna, Schmidt, Schweninger, Nussbaum and others find it "increases the appetite; raises the working power of the digestive organs; regulates (without increasing) the action of the bowels, and heals old gastro-intestinal catarrhs." Its most satisfactory internal use, however, is in rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, muscular and joint pains, lumbago and general myalgia. In such cases Lorenze considers it of unsurpassed excellency, and Nussbaum, Schweninger, Gadde, Elliott and others have obtained good results and praise it highly. 41 Thomas J. Hays has given it internally, and by inhalation through a Genois respirator, for profuse expectoration in chronic bronchitis, bronchorrhoea, pulmonary consumption, secreting cavities, etc.," and believes it to be "a positive addition to the therapeutics of pulmonary diseases." As an external application it has been used by Nussbaum, Kopp, Schmidt, Martin and others in erysipelas erysipeloic conditions of the skin, and in burns of the first and second degree, with good results in all, and with "magical" results in some cases. Schmidt is especially earnest in his plea for its use in burns, claiming that its prompt application will prevent blistering in all cases. The writer's use of the drug has been limited to the external application of a watery solution of varying strength, never exceeding 25 per cent. in I. Two cases of acute sycosis. In each of these cases a 25 per cent. solution applied every hour entirely relieved the intense pain in twelve hours; and its continued use, at longer intervals, cured each case in about one week. In one case the disease had been in progress about four weeks and had been aggravated by stimulating applications. The relief afforded this patient seemed almost miraculous, considering that the drug used had no anesthetic properties. 2. Four cases of erysipelas. These obtained relief from the burning pain, but the disease otherwise ran its usual course. 3. Six cases of erysipelatous inflammation of the skin. Each of these got very prompt relief from the pain and a complete cure followed in a few hours. 4. Twenty cases of "dermatitis venenata," of all degrees of severity, and in all stages of the disease. A 25 per cent. watery solution of icthyol applied every two hours made it possible to discharge every case convalescent in twenty-four hours with but two exceptions, when thirty-six hours were required to effect a cure. My experience with the drug, therefore, leads me to conclude: I. 1. That it alone is not curative in erysipelas, but that it is an excellent local application, giving more relief than most remedies applied externally. 2. That in all local erythemas its effect is wonderful; in ivy poison it is as nearly a specific as quinine is in the malarial fevers and it stands alone as a remedy of unsurpassed or unequalled value in such cases. 3. That it merits great confidence and demands further trial in cases of acute sycosis. In all cases where it is used externally, after one or two applications, the parts should be thoroughly washed in warm or hot water to get rid of the dried residue of the former applications, permitting the fresh application to come in direct contact with the diseased surface. Japan a Highly Syphilized Nation. Dr. A. S. Ashmead, in an interesting article in the N. Y. Medical Record, July 2, says of it, that the maximum of the population have had syphilis or escape it because of ancestral protective inheritance, through multiple inoculations in preceding generations. The disease is generally of a mild type compared with that of Europe and America. A MAN the other day was complaining to his butcher that the piece of meat sent him was so tough that his mother could not even chew the gravy.—Kansas Medical Catalogue. An Insidious Cause of Disease. The above is the title of the leading article in the Homopathic Envoy for August, in which the writer says: "There is, perhaps, no more fruitful source of chronic, and apparently hopeless disease than the so-called 'cure' of skin diseases by external means." The following case is then given by way of illustration, and the writer "bespeaks a careful reading:" weeks, was changed for calcarea phos. The night sweats, at first, disappeared; appetite returned; food well digested; side pains disappeared; and soon a marked change was observed in the appearance of the sputa, no longer purulent; night cough less, with return of sleep. 66 'Improvement began in less than one week from taking the first dose of calcarea, and continued steadily from that time. For weeks and months infrequent doses of calcarea were Near administered, followed by placebos. "In the winter of 1885, I was called to give 'some relief' to a girl of ten years in the last the close of the following summer I was called stages of consumption. I found poor Minnie to the office door by the bell. Standing there B. in a most deplorable condition, emaciated was a beautiful young miss, with florid cheeks to the lowest degree, constant racking cough, and full form, with a smiling countenance, expectoration free, of purulent sputa, stitch- waiting to be recognized. 'Do you not know ing pains in lower lobe of left lung, clavicles your little patient?' was the laughing query very prominent, by the sinking of upper lobes from my consumptive girl, doomed to have of both lungs; exhausting night sweats, hav-been laid to rest beneath the snows of a New ing but little sleep from the constant cough England winter!" and expectoration; no appetite, the small A homopath may not see anything wonderamount of food taken but partially digested; ful in the cure of "a most deplorable" case of bowels inclined to diarrhoea. Diagnosis of tuberculosis pulmonalis, with Hahnemanic tuberculosis pulmonalis was too evident to be dynamizations of chalk and sulphur, which in mistaken; corroborated by physical exploration of the chest. simplicity far excels Bergeon's rectal injections of gas, with improvement after a few "Of course I could give the mother no ra- days' treatment, provided he gets "interested” rational ground of hope, nor remove her fears and strikes the scent of psoriasis or scabies, that before the melting of the snows her though the fungi or acari have long been daughter would be laid to rest. After leaving dead. If a faithful disciple of Hahnemann, such palliating remedies as were suggested, why should he need the information, “in and whilst wrapping up to meet the wintry babyhood she had been afflicted with a humor, winds for my return, it occurred to me to ask and so get "interested." Hahnemann, in his the mother if her daughter had in babyhood Orgrnon. (page 183) says he spent twelve years been afflicted with a humor? The answer was in tracing the origin of an "incredibly large instant. 'A humor, sir; why, when a babe, number of diseases to their source," viz., itch. her head was one running sore! Laying To use his own language, "this hydra-headed aside my coat and reseating myself I asked: monster of disease does, after the completion 'Yes; and how about the case?' A doctor of the internal infection of the whole organfrom Biddeford (allopathic) attended her for a ism, announce by a peculiar cutaneous eruplong while; he kept her head smeared with tion, sometimes consisting of only a few vesointments, and after months of external treat-icles, accompanied by intolerable voluptuous ment cured her and she has had no return of tickling, itching, (and a peculiar odor), the humor since.' Of course I am interested now. monstrous internal chronic miasm-the psora, At once I laid aside the paliatives just pre- the only real fundamental cause and producer pared and left instead powders of calcarea of all the other numerous, I may say, innumcarb. 6 x trit. This remedy, after a few days, erable forms of disease, which under the name was changed for sulphur, 12x; one powder of nervous debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, each morning for a week; after which I re- mania, melancholia, imbecility, madness, epiturned to calcarea carb. This, after a few lepsy, and convulsions of all sorts; of soften ing of the bones (rachitis), scoliosis and cyph- guilt, lust, passion, disease, lunacy, folly, idiosis, caries, cancer, fungus, hæmatodes, ma- ocy." (Mr. Everst's sermon, p. 39.) lignant organic growths, gout, hemorrhoids, From the article above quoted, where it is jaundice, cyanosis, dropsy, amenorrhoea, hem- claimed phthisis pulmonalis is cured by calcaorrhage from the stomach, nose, lungs, blad-rea carb. 6 x trit., changed after a few days for der and womb, of asthma and ulceration of sulphur 12 x, one powder each morning for a the lungs, of impotence and barrenness, of week with a return to calcarea c., and in a few megrim, deafness, cataract, amaurosis, urinary weeks changed to calcarea phos., we may incalculus, paralysis, defects of the senses and fer that all the dreadful conditions and diseaspains of thousands of kinds, &c., figure in es above enumerated are amenable to the same systematic works on pathology as peculiar in- treatment. If these vagaries of unbalanced dependent diseases." minds were true, we should forthwith substitute churches and Sabbath schools, and boards of Not to be outdone by his master, Mr. Everst health, asylums and penitentiaries, and all the makes a still more comprehensive and extenvarious means used to uplift man intellectualsive list of the fearful consequents of this dreadful disease. The proofs of Hahnemann's ly and morally, to preserve health and prolong doctrine are from his own experience. "The life, would yield the palm to sulphur and cale. taint is, as Scripture has hinted, and investigation has within these few years shown, the pa rent of all these chronic tendencies, these ca S. C. But alas! it only "occurs to the faithful and while "wrapping up to meet the wintry disciples of Hahnemann, after prescribing chexias, these scrofulas, these atrophias, this winds," to inquire whether the patient "had sterility, this atony, this gout, this rheumatism, in babyhood been afflicted with a humor." this phthisis, this hereditary insanity, with all its hydra heads and multiform shapes and shades, dark passions, furious lusts, stubborn obstinacies, scowling tempers, suicidal manias, gloomy revenges, gnawing jealousies, fretfulness, ill humor; in short, all the various aberrations of mind, and reluctance to bear patiently the burdens which the Lord lays on The New York Polyclinic. The catalogue of the New York Polyclinic shows an attendance for the session of 1889-90 of 422. The following extract shows that the faculty have resolved to exclude all but graduates of regular medical colleges from matriculating at this school. "Practitioners, who are graduates of regular medical colleges, or who, having attended one or more courses of lectures at such college, and have a legal permit to practice, will be admitted.” man. The chronic taint in the constitution increases the chronic proneness to sin which Adam left us. This combination of the two, aided often by stimuli, and almost always by large doses of violent, inappropriate medicines antecedently given, (medicines which a child may put into the constitution but which ten men can not get out again,) which festers in A pupil in one of our public schools comyour jails, rots in your hulks, seethes in your plied recently in the following manner, with a lanes and alleys and bubbles up in crime, request to write a composition on the subject madness and eccentricity all over your land. of a physiological lecture to which the school This it is which makes your atheist on the one had just listened: "The human body is made hand, your bigot on the other. This it is up of the head, the thorax and the abdomen. which feeds the flame of folly everywhere The head contains the brains when there is over the earth, placed Simon on his pillar, any. The thorax contains the heart and lungs. sent the world on crusades, lights the gutter. The abdomen contains the bowels of which Nay, (Why travel eastward?) which here in there are five: a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w our land gave disciples to Johanna Southcote, and y."-S. M. Journal. creates Mormons, peoples Agapemore, begets holy jackets and bleeding pictures and confounds God's reasonable heritage with crime, TWENTY-EIGHT per cent. of all births in Paris are (reported) illegitimate. For the KANSAS MEDICAL JOURNAL: A SUCCESSFUL NEW DRUG.-An efficient Report of a Case of Misplaced (Credulity) emollient and sedative is one of the chief indi Confidence. cations in the treatment of the urinary tract. Among the remedies employed for this purpose, Pichi (Fabiana Imbricata), has, through long clinical testing, won an enviable place. The demand for this drug and the difficulties of obtaining proper supplies has led to the appearance in the market of much pichi of inferior and therapeutically useless quality. Parke, Davis & Co. state that they employ a special agent in the habitat of this drug to collect supplies, and guarantee its quality. They will also on request supply samples to those physicians who desire to clinically test I was called Monday morning, 2:30 a. m., to see Mrs. Blank. Her husband told me she was having cramps. I found her propped up and gasping for breath, limbs cold, lips purple, cyanosis well marked, pupils contracted; wanted the lamps lighted, complained she could not see; features drawn and shrunk. Collapse seemed to be eminent. She would have a chill every five or ten minutes, chill ushered in with gaping; her teeth would chatter and her whole body would shake and shiver; pulse weak and slow, but did not intermit. it in their practice. I gave her a mixture of chloroform, Hoffman's anodyne and spirits of ammonia armotic, to warm her up and relieve the internal congestion, also had her inhale nitrate of amyl. Under my ministrations the collapse was abated and the chills became lighter and farther apart, so that at five a. m. I left her resting easy. After she had become better I remarked that her symptoms reminded me of a similar case in which I had charged the symptoms to a ten grain dose of antipyrin. She then told me she had had a headache Sunday afternoon and had taken three doses of "Preston's Hed Ake," a nostrum that has been lately introduced and advertised as a cure for headache, and warranted to contain no 'morphine, chloral, cocaine, antipyrin or any other dangerous drug.". The last dose being taken at nine p. m. 66 REST IN THE TREATMENT OF TETANUS.— Renzi, of Naples, has treated successfully sevWe are told by Chamber's Journal that Prof eral cases of tetanus, by absolute rest for the patient. This absolute rest does not mean simple release from labor, but includes rest for the several senses as well as for the body. the room is darkened, and the floor is heavily The ears of the patient are closed with wax, carpeted. Every fifteen minutes the nurse en ters with a shaded lantern to attend to his wants, and to administer food such as eggs, milk and other fluids. Nothing solid or requiring any attempt to masticate is given. Sedatives are administered as required to relieve pain. It is said this treatment shortens but little, if any, the length of the disease, but it lessens the force of the paroxysms, which gradually cease altogether.-New York Med ical Times. DR. LONGENECKER'S paper on page 597, From the extended reputation of antipyrin as an antidote for the ails and aches of la grippe, as well as the enthuriastic praise given it in some medical journals by physicians for headache, we may expect in the near future to learn of many cases of poisoning by the of the August number, line 7, from bottom of coal tar synthetic remedies put to the front in patent medicines as pain relievers. I am satisfied the above case was one of collapse from antipyrin or antifebrin. The symptoms simulate both in some respects. page, first column, should read Dr. Bull instead of Dr. Ball. Page 598, first column, line 21, should read operative methods. Page 599, first column, line 13, should read excretion; line 28 should read Kneis & Bailey. Page 598, in second column procedure, should read Mr. Cowper. OREXIN, named from its supposed properties as an appetizer and digestive, has proven to be practically useless. THAT influenza and cholera are bound to DAMAGE OF SYPHILIS.-The tissues of a gether by any relationship, is generally scout-person who has had syphilis are to be regarded by those medical journals which have men- ed as damaged, and so permanently placed at tioned the coincidence between the occurrence a disadvantage for the wear and tear of existof the two diseases. Prof. Zdekauer, a med- ence. They are liable, under slight irritation, ical authority of St. Petersburg, is inclined to to take on an inflammatory condition, which regard the danger as by no means a remote is apt to become chronic. Hence the pres one. It has been his lot to see four epidemics ence of palmar psoriasis from the friction of of cholera in the years 1839, 1848, 1866 and an umbrella or walking-stick, and psoriasis of 1884. In each case an epidemic of influenza the tongue from the irritation of tobacco occurred in the year preceding the cholera smoke or carious teeth. Further, this pecuvisitation, and he fears that the cholera germ, liarity of the tissues damaged by syphilis must "after passing the winter on our soil will obviously predispose to chronic inflammatory spread the cholera next spring." As a safe-affections of the circulatory and nervous sysguard, he advises unusual attention to sani- tems, and so pave the way under suitable contary matters in the Prussian capital, so that ditions for ataxy or impairment of the cereif the cholera does come it will find the city bral circulation.--New York Medical Times. in the best condition for resistence to the disease. Prof. Zdekauer calls attention to the fact that cholera flourishes most in countries like Italy and Spain, where but little attention is paid to sanitation; while in England, where the public health is closely looked after, cholera never makes but little headway.— North Western Lancet. "I am prescribing Tongaline with satisfactory results. For the indefinite aches and pains of nervous patients it is superior to any other anodyne. For Nervous Headache or Muscular Rheumatism it is almost a specific. "PARK RITCHIE, M. D. St. Paul, Minn." THE death of Prof. J. Adams Allen, A. M., M. D., L. L. D., Dean of Rush Medical College, is chronicled in the last number of the Journal of the American Medical Association. A PIN was lately removed from the ear of a THE FORCEPS-A DEATH TRAP.-A cor-woman at the university hospital. She had respondent of the British Medical Journal used it to stop itching, when it slipped into writes as follows:-Last week I attended a her ear and penetrated the drum head.— Times healthy young Primipara, assisting her when and Register. exhaustion was setting in with the forceps. My hands had been soaked in sublimate solution, and the forceps smeared with carbolized glycerine. The uterus contracted firmly, and there was no oozing after delivery. In two days fever, ending fatally, set in. I could not imagine how this patient became infected till I took the wooden handles off my forceps. Beneath the wood was a good coating of blood -dry, black and dirty; there was plenty of the same stuff round the screws and in the screw holes; this, I think, explained the septicæmia. The traction expresses this poisonous stuff, liquified by soakage, and from the hands of the doctor, notwithstanding the early sublimate soakage, the patient is poisoned. We have got to the time of day when the handles should be metallic, and of one piece with "I used Ponca Compound with great benefit for a patient who suffered from periodical ease. headaches in connection with uterine dis"M. S. LUND, M. D., Roseburgh, Oregon. "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs," contains all the letters in the alphabet.Southern Medical Record. THE population of the United States, acthe blades, I put my handles in the fire, and cording to the last census, is about 6,500,000. when I put the blades in position for the future will put a towel round the flats to protect my hands. I am, etc. SHALL consumptives marry? |