lapsus ani-the tumor being the size of small foetal head, and so much inflamed and tender, that she has been unable to return it for the last two days.

After the liberal local use of cold, the tumor was returned and a palliative treatment instituted till after recovery from parturition (then two months distant) and its immediate effects.

The history of this case is that the patient has had prolapsus ani ten years, always produced by defecation, and lately a walk across her chamber has been sufficient to induce it. General health good.

On September 1, finding that prolapse had occurred at every stool since the birth of her child, now three months old, and that the erect position, maintained for a short time, was capable to produce it, the treatment by ergotine was begun by injectiug gtt. xij of a solution of equal parts of ergotine and water beneath the prolapsed mucous membrane, very slowly, withdrawing the needle after two or three minutes, and returning the prolapse. The immediate effect of this injection was severe pain in the part, passing off, however, in a few hours, and succeeded by general muscular soreness, which lasted from three to four days. The effect upon the prolapsed bowel was marked. There was no tendency to protrusion except during defecation, and that to less than half the former extent. The injections were repeated at intervals of about four days (the subsidence of "muscular soreness" being the criterion as to interval, the prolapse being induced in constantly decreasing size by straining at stool) until six had been given. After this, the prolapse was not induced by a stool, and the necessity for the ergotine terminated. It has now been a month since the last injection; the patient has been in the active discharge of the duties devolving upon a housekeeper in the country, but has had no return of the malady.

This plan of treatment was suggested to me by a paragraph in Braithwaite's Retrospect for March, 1880, which credits Dr. Vidal, through the Paris Medical, with three cases of prolapsus ani, successfully treated by ergotine hypodermically, as well as the generally received doctrine, at the present day, of the physiological action of ergot upon relaxed tissues.

OLIVE OIL IN LARGE DOSES FOR THE SOFTENING AND EASY EXPULSION OF BILIARY CALCULI.

The Medical Record credits the London Lancet with the following: Dr. Roderick Kennedy, Kingston, Canada, has found olive oil, given in large doses, to be the desideratum for softening and promoting an easy expulsion of biliary calculi. He says that in every instance in which calculi were proved, or presumed, to have been the cause of periodic suffering, these bodies were promptly and painlessly expelled in larger or smaller quantities by the use of large doses of olive oil. Three cases are cited with the symptoms of the passing of gall-stones. All the usual remedies were employed, but no appreciable effect on the pain was obtained until the olive oil was used; six ounces of the oil were administered at bedtime, followed in the morning by a full dose of castor oil. When there was no action of the bowels, an enema was given, which was usually followed by several copious motions containing softened gall-stones. The administration of the oil at intervals of a few weeks or months prevents the re-formation of the concretion for the time, but still the oil alone does not alter the causes or diathesis upon which the formation of these bodies depends.

HEREDITARY SYPHILIS.

The Detroit Lancet gives the conclusion of Prof. Wolff, of Strassburg, concerning the above subject. His work is founded upon a series of clinical observations, which the author has gathered during a period of several years. Wolff divides his cases into three categories. In the first twelve cases, the mothers were free from syphilis, the fathers were syphilitic or still presented symptoms of the disease. In all these cases the children, kept under observation as long as possible, remained absolutely free from the affection. In the second series, the author mentions some cases in which the mothers were affected; the children, of course, were syphilitic. In the third series, twenty-eight cases observed in the clinic of the Faculty of Strassburg are reported, from which it appears that women, who become affected after conception, have a better chance of giving birth to living, though syphilitic,

children than those who are affected before conceiving. Conclusion: The transmission of syphilis from a father to his children can only take place by infection of the mother. In all cases in which a child is born with syphilis, its mother is or was syphilitic. Wolff never saw a case where such was not the fact. The importance of this assertion, both theoretically and practically, in the question of maternal nursing, is evident to all.

THE TREATMENT OF RINGWORM.

A writer in the British Medical Journal says: The difficulty experienced in the treatment of ringworm is known to every one who has seen much of this disease. I therefore think your readers will be glad to hear of a remedy which I have recently used with complete success. Struck with the similarity that exists between the disease known in the East Indies as dobzitch and ringworm, and knowing how rapidly the former yields to the application of goa powder, I was induced to try the active principle of this substance, chryssophanic acid, in the proportion of one dram to one ounce of vaseline. The result has been the rapid destruction of the fungus, and consequently a complete cure. Chrysophanic acid has been recommended in the treatment of psoriasis, but I am not aware of it having been used hitherto for ringworm.

PEPTIZED MILK AS FOOD FOR INFANTS AND INVALIDS.

Nunn (Buffalo Medical and Surgical Journal) recommends the following modes of preparing this valuable food: Take one pint of milk at 80° Fahr.; add a teaspoonful of rennet solution or ten grains of pepsin, and keep the mixture at 80°. When coagulation is complete, but before the whey has begun to separate, beat the whole up smooth with a whisk or beater, and pass through a fine milk-strainer to insure the minute division of the curd. This preparation appears to keep equally as well or better than raw milk, remaining apparently unchanged for twenty-four hours if kept cool. Dilute and sweeten for feeding as usual.

By this method coagulation is complete, and no further change of that nature is requisite, the weakened stomach of

the invalid receives the necessary nutriment carrying with it its own digestive principle.

THE INFECTION PHTHISIS.

The Louisville Medical News makes the following excerpts from an article in the London Lancet, by Reginald E. Thompson, M. D., F. R. C. P.:

"There are many questions in medicine which have long engaged the attention of the profession and caused such a division of opinion that authorities will be found ranged in two opposite camps in equal numbers, holding diametrically different views regarding them; and among such open questions the contagiousness of phthisis may be classed as one that has been affirmed by some and denied by others at all periods of the world's history.

"It is indeed a very old question, for it was advanced by Aristotle and answered in the affirmative by him and Morton and many others; but authorities of equal weight and number can readily be found who have taken the other side, and given a direct negative to such a possibility.

* * *

"The proposition which I shall venture to advance is this: That infective phthisis-by which term may be designated that form of disease which results from the infection of phthisisis a disease which has peculiar symptoms and signs of its own serving to distinguish it from phthisis, and approximating closely to those of a pyogenic or infective pneumonia.

"If this proposition can be established, then I think that it must be admitted that the question of the possible communication of phthisis will have received a more satisfactory answer than when arguments were drawn from the numerical point of view. Of late years experiments on animals have been largely appealed to with regard to the nature of phthisis and tubercle; but inasmuch as I believe that the artificial disease differs materially from phthisis as it appears in man, I have no intention of pressing the results of such experiments into the argument, nor of appealing to them, though I could do so with some effect, to help me in a difficult question.

"The observations upon which the following conclusions are based extend over a period of ten years, and are derived

from a total of twenty thousand patients. The series of cases to which special attention has been directed are those of wives infected by hushands, inasmuch as the possibility of error arising from blood relationship is hereby avoided, and the association of the nursing wife with the sick husband is so constant and intimate that if phthisis can be communicated it must be looked for in such instances.

"Fifteen well-marked examples of this kind have come under notice out of something like fifteen thousand cases of phthisis, so that the proportion of infective cases may be reckoned on as not less-probably a little more-than one per mille. Hence it is easy to understand why observers with a small number of patients should disbelieve the possibility of contagion. I have, however, rejected from the series cases which might have been included, but in which the symptoms were not so acute and distinctive, and which may eventually prove to be chronic or sub-acute forms of that disease, which was manifested in an acute form in the fifteen selected cases.

"Grouping all the cases together, and analyzing the symptoms and signs which characterize them, I would advance the following conditions as serving to identify the disease and to distinguish it from the ordinary forms of phthisis:

"1. A slight hacking cough seems to be the earliest symptom of infection, and I would suggest that this is an indication of the irritation of the air passages, due to the introduction of the materies morbi through their agency.

"2. Symptoms of constitutional poisoning are at once shown by the rapid emaciation which is noticed by the patient in a very early stage of the disease.

"3. As the disease progresses, rigors, accompanied by night-sweats and pyrexia, occur at frequent intervals.

"4. Later on the cough returns, considerably aggravated, and sputa are from time to time tinged with blood. Hemoptysis to a small amount occurs, but is not frequently repeated. "5. The physical signs are usually bilateral, though not necessarily exactly uniform on both sides.

"6. The pulmonary disease is disproportionate to the amount of constitutional disturbance, and is not sufficient to account for the extreme emaciation of the patient.