By reference to the article on diphtheria in my late "Compend of Practice," the character of the disease, and the rationale for these modified means and measures, will be readily apprehended and easily adopted by practitioners disposed to test them. At the present time, when diphtheria and diphtheritic complications are so very common, any contribution from any source likely to prove serviceable or successful, should be duly reported. Various other modes of treatment may generally suffice in ordinary cases of the malady, or those not fraught with danger to life or unfavorable sequela. Respectfully submitted.

CONCENTRATED EXTRACTS.

PRACTICAL MEDICINĖ.

RESTORING THE HEART'S ACTION WHEN IT HAS CEASED TO BEAT.

(Louisville Medical News, from British Medical Journal.) I do not remember what induced me to kill a mouse by a blow upon the head and rip it open to see the heart beat. It did not. I pricked it with a needle and set it a-going. It stopped after a time. Then I gave it a second prick, and a few pulsations were distinctly seen. When I was in petticoats, my father was sent for to see a girl in a fit. He was out, and when he came home he was informed of the fact. "How long ago, and any second message?" Being told, he thought he need not go. My mother suggested he "ought to go," which he did. He found the girl dressed in her graveclothes and "laid out" upon a linen-covered table. He examined her and found some warmth over the heart. He ordered hot water to be brought-not scalding hot-and poured it into a jug, tore her shroud open, stood on a chair, and poured a continuous stream of hot water, until the throbbings of the heart were distinctly seen. That girl was the mother of several children before I left Scotland, in 1848. My mother used to laugh, and take her share of the credit of her restoration to life.

An old man here, Robert Robinson, several years before his death, took a fit, and apparently expired upon the floor,

where he was lying, pulseless and breathless. The heart had ceased to beat, and I was told that "he was beyond any doctor's power now." I felt some warmth over the heart, and tried my father's remedy; and, to the wonder of spectators, the septuagenarian revived, and lived several years afterward. Hot water can easily be obtained, and no one can object to such an experiment.

THE IODINE TREATMENT OF ASTHMA.

(British Med. Journal.) H. H. had suffered for the last six or seven years from attacks of dyspnoea, coming on in the night at 3 o'clock A. M., which formerly occurred only in June or July, but latterly throughout the year. I painted the lines of both pneumograstrics with a mixture of equal parts of the liniment and tincture of iodine, and ordered him to repeat it every night. The next time I saw him, he told me that "he had not had such a good night's sleep for twelve months." He slept all night, and was so surprised upon waking in the morning that he got out of bed to look at his watch before he would believe it. He discontinued the iodine after a few applications, as the skin became sore, but he has had no return of the attacks.

AN EASY, RAPID AND SAFE METHOD OF ARRESTING THE IRRITATING COUGH OF CERTAIN CONSUMPTIVES.

M. Landouzy, in Le Progres Medical. (Virginia Medical Monthly.) After reviewing the various medicaments often ineffectually used to calm the distressing and wearing cough attendant on certain stages of phthisis, the following practice is most highly commended: A syringeful of distilled water, containing a few drops of cherry-laurel water, is to be injected hypodermically in the supra or infra clavicular region, or in that region which appears from physical signs to be the seat of irritation causing the cough; the injection rapidly and for some time allays the cough. As simple as this proceeding is, he advises, for the reason of its very simplicity, that a knowledge of it should be kept from the patient; and further recommends-not from the love of new chemical names, but to

affect the above-mentioned object-that the proceeding should be described, not as an injection of distilled water, to which a few drops of cherry-laurel water has been added to disguise its nature, but as an hypodermic of binoxide of hydrogen. The patient should be made to think that a new and sure method of medication was being employed, which would result in his speedy relief, and thus the psychological element is introduced auxiliary to its other action. He concludes, that the action of the injection in suspending the cough is similar to its action in alleviating neuralgia and other pains, as reported by MM. Potain, Dieulafoy and Vulpian. It acts after the manner of such local excitants as hot water, mustard, chloroform, etc. The injection pushed under the skin of a consumptive cougher quickly produces on the cutaneous nerve plexuses an irritation, which is conveyed to a nerve center, exciting it in a new manner, producing a change in its molecular tension differing from the state conditional of the cough; or, in other words, the pain due to the injection drives away that special status of the ganglion of which the cough was the phenomenon, and occupied it itself; so that a short and fugitive pain is substituted for a wearisome hacking cough. The superiority of this method over the employment of ineffective cough mixtures or the habitual use of morphia is sufficiently apparent.

IODINE AS A SPECIFIC IN CROUPOUS PNEUMONIA.

(Chicago Medical Review). The treatment of croupous pneumonia has some time since lost its former active character, since we could but recognize that the course of the disease could not be influenced by any of the present plans of medication. A startling statement now appears by Dr. F. Schwarz, in the Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift (No. 2, 1881), who claims that the disease may be aborted by iodine or iodide of potassium. He quotes statistics in the first place from the most reliable German sources, according to which the crisis occurred in 0.6 per cent during the second day, in 4.7 per cent during the third, in 7.4 per cent during the fourth, in 15.9 per cent during the fifth, in 13.6 per cent dur

ing the sixth, in 22.7 per cent during the seventh, in 13 per cent during the eighth, and in 11.8 per cent during the ninth day. These statistics refer to 933 cases of croupous pneumonia treated expectantly. In opposition to these figures, Schwarz gives his results as the proof of the efficacy of his treatment. He has had altogether 98 cases, in 10 of which the abortive treatment succeeded.

This treatment is successful only when begun as soon as the disease starts. If instituted later, it seems to be powerless. The inference to which the author leads us is that he saw none but the ten cases quoted at a sufficiently early period, but he does not state this point in so many words. By reproducing the temperature curves, he proves that the aborted cases commenced in the usual characteristic manner. In all of these, the crisis was completed during the second day. The defervescence took from six to eighteen hours, on an average about twelve hours. The quantities given were very small, one-sixth of a drop of tincture of iodine, or about one grain of the iodide being taken every hour. After the fever had ceased, the local symptoms began to recede rapidly.

THE USES OF IODOFORM.

Chancre and Chancroid.-Take of iodoform 100 parts, sugar of milk 200 parts, thymol 1 part. Let the above be thoroughly mixed and reduced to an impalpable powder. The glands and prepuce must be thoroughly clean and dry. Then pack the ulcerated surfaces full with this powder, dust it over the surrounding parts, and secure it with a light bandage. Repeat the application as often as the parts become moist from new discharges. Ordinarily, about three applications will be required every day, for the first two or three days, then as healing continues, they may be repeated less frequently. A fair trial of this method, I am certain, will convince any one of its superiority.

Herpes Circinata, Herpes zoster and Herpes of the Perpuce. -Dissolve one drachm of iodoform in one-half ounce of the oil of eucalyptus, and paint the diseased surface with this solution. Two or three applications will usually effect a cure.

Granulated Lids.-Apply iodoform and sugar of milk, one part to five parts, directly to the everted lids with a soft brush. This occasions no smarting nor pain, and often cures cases of months' standing in two or three weeks. The thymol should not be used in these cases, as it irritates and produces pain.

Granular Pharyngitis.-The same powder as indicated for chancre and chancroid may here be employed with an insufflator thoroughly at bed time. The most obstinate cases will often yield promptly to this course.

Chronic Ulcers of the Leg, Cracked Nipples and all kinds of indolent Ulcers with raised edges.-Prepare an ointment containing one-half drachm of iodoform in an ounce of cosmoline, and apply frequently, after having previously thoroughly cleansed the parts. The well-known and popular addition of the balsam Peru to this ointment masks the odor and adds to its value. I would add that the above is an auxiliary, not a substitute, for the ordinary methods of applying pressure, such as strapping and bandaging, which should not be omitted.

Uterine Catarrh.-For uterine catarrh, or, as it is improperly called, endometritis-I refer to those cases in which there is congestion, and a consequent discharge, with some enlargement, and an erosion extending up into the canal-I employ a suppository, which is made and applied in the following manner: Mix one-half drachm of finely-powdered iodoform with one ounce of the butter of cocoa. This may be kept in a shallow ointment jar. I have a thin silver tube about onefifth of an inch in diameter, with a closely-fitting piston. This tube is about eight inches long. When a suppository is needed, I retract the plunger or piston to a point from the distal extremity of the tube, corresponding to the length of the required suppository. Then fill the lower open end of the tube by plunging it again and again forcibly into the jar containing the material for the suppository, and packing it solid by downward pressure of the piston. Then I apply the suppository by passing the end of the tube into the cervical canal, and force it out by pushing in the piston. The suppository will then be in the desired place. Five grammes of the iodoform may be used at a time. Unlike the gelatine pencils of