with the intention of supplying a concise guide, which, from its small compass and tabulated arrangement, renders it admirably adapted for use, both as a bedside reference-book and a work-table companion. The author is well known as one who has had, for several years, a very extended experience as a teacher of this important branch of physical diagnosis, and he has compiled a manual which will serve to lessen the difficulties in the way of the beginner and save valuable time to the busy practitioner. The arrangement of the matter and the small though clear type in which it is printed have enabled the author to compress a great deal into a very small compass, so that, while serving all the purposes of an analytical table, it is really a good deal more, although it is not, of course, to be supposed that this brochure can take the place of larger books.

WHAT TO DO FIRST IN ACCIDENTS OR POISONING. BY CHARLES W. DULLES, M. D. Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston, 1012 Walnut street. 1880.

A useful book for popular reading, containing plain rules for emergencies.

VICK'S FLORAL GUIDE FOR 1881. Published by JAMES VICK, Esq., Rochester, N. Y.

In mechanical execution and artistic design, this little book is a gem, an ornament for every lady's center-table. It contains 112 pages and nearly 600 illustrations. The price is 10 cents, and any one interested in the cultivation of flowers or vegetables will gain many useful hints from its perusal. The veteran seedsman also publishes an illustrated monthly magazine of thirty-two pages. Each number has a colored plate.

Price, $1.25 per annum.

The

A SKETCH OF OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY IN AMERICA. annual address delivered before the Massachusetts Eclectic Medical Society. BY MILBREY GREEN, M. D.

THE ANNUAL ADDRESS delivered before the National Eclectic Medica1 Association at Chicago, Ill., June 16, 1880. BY MILBREY GREEN, M. D' PROPORTIONS BY WEIGHT AND EQUALIZATION OF DOSES. A system of expressing the strength of remedies by symbol and observations on a proposed new class of pharmaceutical preparations, having the doses of all drugs equalized. BY ALBERT MERRELL, M. D. Reprinted from New Remedies for January, 1881. New York: William Wood & Co., 27 Great Jones street. 1881.

THE

Chicago Medical Times.

WILSON H. DAVIS, M. D.,

Editor and Publisher.

The important matter of a chair of eclectic medicine in the University of Michigan, now pending before the Legislature in a bill providing for the same, has received the attention of the press to some extent.

The justice of the measure seems not to be questioned by any. The other two leading schools of practice already have departments or colleges in the university, and all admit that the eclectics are as much entitled to a college there as the others. But the Regents are asking for immense sums of money for the university this year, and some have raised the question of "dollars and cents" in relation to the proposed eclectic chair.

When we consider the very modest demand of the eclectics, compared to what all the other departments have received, the eclectic bill appropriating just one-half as much ($3,000) as the act under which the homoeopathic department is established, and the amount of money the eclectics of Michigan and their patrons have paid in the last thirty years toward the support of the allopathic department in which they have not been permitted to have any privileges, it would seem that the matter of "dollars and cents" should hardly be a

question for consideration in this case. But since it has been raised, we think the question can be answered to the entire satisfaction of the tax-payers of this State. For when we consider this matter, we can but conclude that it will be hardly possible for the State to lose anything by the adoption of this measure, while it is highly probable that it would be a paying, profitable investment financially to the State in the near future. Students to the university pay matriculating and annual fees. These on an average, we are told, amount to $1,000 to each twenty or twenty-five medical students per year. This goes into the general fund of the university, and to pay expenses that otherwise would have to be provided for by appropriations for the Legislature.

This homoeopathic department has been running six years. The first year it had twenty-five students, the next fifty-one, the next seventy-three, the next sixty-three, the next seventy, and this, the sixth year, it has something over eighty, I believe, making an average of sixty and a fraction, for the six years.

There can be no good reason given why an eclectic department would not have as many students as the homoeopathic department has had. Eclectic practitioners are as numerous as the homoeopaths in this State and country. In Illinois, where all physicians are registered, there are a hundred more eclectics than homœopaths.

Then with the same number of students each of the six years that the homoeopaths have had, the eclectic department would become nearly self-supporting the second year, be more than self-supporting the third, and in six years would pay back all it had received from the State, and be in a position to thereafter furnish a revenue to the State of from $1,000 to $3,000 above its expenses.

It would be simply adding a new department to the university that would bring from eighty to one hundred and fifty students (beginning with a smaller number, of course, as all the departments did), and fees amounting to from $4,000 to $6,000 to it, while adding only the support of one chair or professorship to the expenses of the university.

In the matter of "dollars and cents," then, the advantage is clearly in favor of the State. No department now in the university ever promised so much. The appropriation is needed to start the college. We desire it made perpetual, to secure it against all contingencies and insure its permanency. Whenever the college becomes firmly established on a paying basis, or the university as a whole becomes self-supporting, this provision may be repealed.

The justice and feasibility being admitted, with the financial question properly understood, there certainly appears to be no obstacle in the way of the passage of this bill which nearly 5,000 voting citizens have already petitioned for.

[XLII.]

MODIFIED TREATMENT OF DIPHTHERIA.

BY S. H. POTTER, M. D.

During the past year I have treated a large number of cases of diphtheria, a good many of them children with scorbutic constitutions, and some adults of intemperate habits, and others with various complications. Various causes have

tended to render it proper to modify and simplify my treatment from the general course I have heretofore employed.

Without going into minute detail, I may give the readers of the Chicago MEDICAL TIMES a general statement that will enable practitioners to test the method which has proved with me entirely successful, not having lost a single case within a year, although a good many have been very grave cases. Parallel ones on other treatment have sometimes proved fatal before I adopted the following means and measures, viz.:

M. Give 3j every two hours to a child from one to two years old. The strength and dose I vary, according to the age and impressibility of the patient up to adult age, when I prescribe:

M. Dose, 3 three every two hours, and held a moment in the mouth before swallowing. In connection with the above, I give sulphur sublimatum, in ten to fifteen grain doses, to adults every six hours, until its effects are apparent. Locally, I apply, with a moistened swab, pure pulverized tannic acid to the exuded growth every four or six hours, and for a gargle— Sulphurated sol. sodium chloridi..................

3j.

3j.

Zjv.

zi.

zij.

Mix and add 3iij of water. Gargle thoroughly every four hours. In cases in which the disease extends into the trachea, lime steaming becomes of urgent importance. For this purpose unslaked, fresh quicklime, 3jss.; put into tin cup and cover with a pint and a half of cold soft water. Over this invert a funnel a little above the cup so as to admit air. Attach a tube firmly to the top of the inverted funnel with a suitable mouth-piece. The rising steam should be inhaled by the patient half an hour. After an interval of the next halfhour the same process should be repeated and persevered in until the disease abates.

An emetic of ipecacuanha will be required occasionally to evacuate detached fragments to avert impending suffocation, which may otherwise appear imminent in such grave cases. Ice may be freely employed, but stimulants only when the symptoms of failing vitality are well marked. Such patients must be kept under strict surveillance and properly treated during convalescence, or until their throats assume a normal condition and their constitutional vigor is fully restored. I can report typical cases of diphtheria thus treated, of an interesting character during the entire course of the malady, if time and space would permit.