furnishing to the red blood-corpuscles in particular a specially serviceable nutritive element; and, second, that the iron preparations alone may fail, especially in dyspeptics, and that it may be necessary to supplement them with inhalations of oxyin order to cure the chlorosis and anæmia completely. Allg. Med. Cent. Zeit., No. 98, 1879.

INFLUENCE OF PILOCARPINE ON BALDNESS.

[Translation in Medical Record.]

The following occurs in the Moniteur Scientifique for February, 1880:

"Dr. G. Schmitz has twice noticed the reproduction of hair on the heads of bald patients, whom he had treated with hyperdermic injections of pilocarpine, for eye diseases (Berl. klin. Wochensch.). On an old man aged sixty, who had been operated on for double cataract, he made three injections in the space of fourteen days. The membrane over the pupil disappeared, as he had expected, but, at the same time, the head of this man, who was completely bald, became covered with a thick down, and afterward his hair grew and became thicker, so that at the end of four months there was no trace of baldness left, and the patient became the possessor of an abundant crop of hair, partly white and partly black. In the case of another patient, thirty-four years old, suffering from detachment of the retina, the top of the head was entirely without hair on a surface as large as a playing-card. In this case, also, two injections of the same medicine resulted not only in curing the eye disease, but also in the reproduction of hair."

TANSY IN PRURITUS VULVÆ.

Dr. Richard L. Butt, of Midway, Ala., extols the use of tansy (tanacetum hortense) for the relief of pruritus vulvæ. He has found a poultice made of the leaves of the plant, and applied as hot as the patient can bear it, to be efficacious when leeches to the thighs, washes of borax, lead, zinc, nitrate of silver, sulphate of copper, etc., had been tried in vain. The editors of the American Practitioner, which records the above, think that possibly the mode of using the tansy, in

poultice as hot as can be borne, has something to do with the success which has attended the treatment in the hands of Dr. Butt.-London Lancet.

ACUTE AND CHRONIC RHEUMATISM.

J. H. Egan, M. D. (in the Medical Brief) gives his experience with the new remedy, Manaca. He reports several cases cured, and considers this agent as much a specific for rheumatism as quinine for malarial poisoning. The effect of the remedy was headache (which was at once relieved by coffee), followed by continued perspiration and an amelioration of the distressing symptoms.

SELECTED.

Country Doctors.

From the Annals of the Anatomical and Surgical Society, Brooklyn, N. Y. A long period of time has elapsed since any medical man was known to quote a line from the Eclogues or Georgics of Virgil. In fact, it would seem to be a precept of the materia medica that pastoral themes and professional thrift are incompatibles; and apparently the Esculapius of to-day dares not even think of the gentle Tityrus, least he should himself becɔme, too, patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi. But what if he did? It is the agrophobia, and not the spreading beech, which is baneful to an enthusiastic man. The youthful graduate packs his trunk the morning after commencement day, and betakes himself reluctantly to the railway station. is envious of such of his classmates as can afford to settle in the metropolis and await the tide of professional fortune. For them, the fates have decreed an opportunity to keep up their studies and build up their reputations; for him, there is no future excepting the rust and dust, the abundant toil and scanty remuneration, the obscurity and desuetude of a country practice. He cannot remain in the city to starve, therefore he must go to the country; but he believes that in so doing he goes into a sterile exile, a Siberia where no good fortune is possible except, perchance, to make one's escape.

He

This view of the matter is as mischievous as it is fallacious. It must necessarily work injury to the individual practitioner, to his patients, and to the profession at large. Of course, a man who does not expect to study is not likely to study. If the mental pabulum which he can extract from the old wives' lore of the village in which he functionates is all that he demands for himself, it is doubtless all that he will get. But the old wives are not to blame for this. The fault is in the man himself; or in the purpose and expectation with which he enters upon the career which falls to his lot. True, the metropolis affords advantages and opportunities which the village does not furnish; it also imposes hindrances and limitations which are not encountered in the village. The converse is also true. And to the student who has learned the knack of withdrawing into his sanctum, it is comparatively unimportant whether he be surrounded with the bustle of the town or the gossip of the country. The town is critical; the country is fecund, that is all.

The country doctor complains that he is deprived of the stimulus of fellowship; but he is mistaken. The post office will keep him closely en rapport with his peers, whatever the intellectual rank to which he may attain. Whittier at Amesbury lives in a community of poets; with Tennyson at breakfast, Longfellow at dinner and Holmes lending the sparkle of champagne to his tea-table. So will the country doctor enjoy the real fellowship that he earns. He complains that he is cut off from attending upon the great clinics of the metropolis. Yes, but every case that comes before him is a clinic, if he will but turn it to account. He has but to keep up the scientific habit and purpose of life, and all that he does will have the character and productiveness of scientific work.

The wide domain of experimental science is probably as accessible to the country doctor as to his urban confrere. A laboratory can be established anywhere, and it is from the laboratory that modern science expects to obtain her most important data. Edison's laboratory stands in a metropolis of Jersey mud; Virchow built his reputation in a remote townlet; Mayer, of whom Tyndall says, "as seer and generalizer,

Mayer, in my opinion, stands first," was all his life a country doctor; and no man who can obtain control of a garret or a shanty, should permit himself to complain that he lacks a fulcrum from which to move the universe.

Moreover, aids and guides to private study are vastly more abundant and accessible than in the days of Mayer or the youth of Virchow. To the students of anatomy, the books of Gray and Huxley, a scalpel and the cadaver of an animal, will furnish material for any amount of research. For histology, Rutherford's little book and a microscope will open the way to a life-long career. For experimental therapeutics, what could be more favorable than Ott's monograph, and the plenitude of organic life which is to be found only in the country? If the country doctor would be a chemist, let him start his laboratory, and Morfit's "Manipulations" will tell him all that he lacks; if botany is his choice, a microscope and Sach's book will give him an excellent start; or if he cares to join. the great army of physiologists, he will find all that he needs in Sanderson's handbook for the physiological laboratory.

But the country doctor complains that he has no time. True enough, perhaps; neither has the city doctor; only the great workers have time for work.

He started poor; Yet the success

Some fifty miles from New York City, there lives a country doctor whose gig has rattled over the stones and plowed through the mud of the vicinage for more than a quarter of a century. He still toils day and night at the vocation in which he has grown gray-he will never grow old. probably he is not yet rich in worldly pelf. of his life is such as would satisfy the reasonable ambition of any man. The visitor knocking at his door will be welcomed by a broad-shouldered genial scholar, who takes his guest to his heart when he gives him his hand, and opens wide to him the portals of a mansion where simplicity vies with elegance, and all domestic graces flourish in a Christian household. To have developed such a home were success enough for any man. But yonder is another and larger building. It is the fire-proof library and laboratory, where this man proves to the world, after a fashion of his own, that a country doctor has no time

for scientific pursuits, no stimulus, no fellowship. Here are thousands of rare and priceless volumes, collected, arranged, and mastered by this country doctor. How could he have found time for all this? But this is not all. Up stairs, in a spacious hall, cabinet after cabinet is filled with collections of shells, of skeletons, of pathological specimens-thousands and thousands of objects of scientific interest, grouped, studied and remembered by this country doctor. But this is only the by-play of his life. Year after year, he sits at his desk, in the half-hours which he can save out of the day's turmoil, and, looking out upon the noblest of rivers and the fairest of scenery, he thinks out the great work of his career. Every year adds a few pages to the book, and each decade shows that he may hope yet to see his masterpiece completed.

The Treatment of Ringworm.

Surgeon Cottle (London Lancet) gives the following practical rules for the treatment of ringworm:

In recent Cases, etc.—In ringworm of the body, in infants, and in cases of recent origin on the scalp in older children, after the hair has been cropped short around the affected spots (if on the scalp), and the part well scrubbed with soft soap, to insure the removal of crusts, etc., I direct the affected part to be thoroughly soaked and rubbed, three times daily, with a solution of salicylic acid, in alcohol (thirty grains in an ounce), or with benzine, etc. The diseased hair, crusts, etc., must be cleared away as often as they are reproduced. This is generally all that is required, such cases as those indicated readily yielding to these measures. If any patches show a tendency to linger, they may be painted with glacial acetic acid, or blistering fluid, or carbolic acid. Solutions of salicylic acid in alcohol of themselves, however, set up considerable skin irritation, and sometimes a crop of pustules.

Chronic Ringworm.-In chronic ringworm of the scalp, this treatment, however, will not always end the case, and it then becomes advisable to have recourse to the formation of a pustular rash. To effect this, the tardily mending spots should