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or internal disease, it is the duty of the physician to examine the affected parts both by touch and by sight when necessary, and defined his meaning by a series of ilustrations of the importance of objective examinations in the treatment of various diseases. It is certain that the exhibit of pains and sensations is wholly inadequate to determine the nature of the disease. A similar careful examination is necessary in diseases of the liver, spleen and intestines. In diseases of the bladder and kidneys the use of the microscope and chemical analyses are of great importance, but in no department of medical science is the training of the senses and a large amount of clinical experience more essential than in the treatment of diseases of women. Many of the disorders coming under this head were referred to at considerable length. The value of the thermometer is cases of fever and all acute diseases is more accurate in distinguishing the real from the apparent symptoms evidenced by heat either by the patient or his attendants.

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Dr. J. Heber Smith, of Melrose, Chairman of the Committee on Materia Medica, made a report for that committee. He spoke of the poisoning of a physician at Harrison square by a spider (supposed at first to be a tarantula), and contended that the bite of a tarantula is as harmless as the sting of a wasp. This belief he backed up by numerous letters from army surgeons and others. The doctor said that in presenting these views he was eating humble pie, for in 1875 he had presented a lengthy essay contending for the opposite belief.

The Committee on Obstetrics, Chairman Thomas Conant, M. D., of Gloucester, made a report, reading two papers from members of the Association. Mrs M. J. Flanders, M. D., of Lynn, and M. V. B. Morse, M. D., of Marblehead, also presented papers on topics connected with obstetrics.

H. C. Clapp, M. D., from the committee on clinical medicine, read a paper on a rare case of gangrenis vul

vitis.

The speaker advocated the division of medical science into branches or specialties, but to be a master of specialty the physican must have a pretty full knowledge E. U. Jones, M. D., of Taunton, addressed the socieof all branches. Much time and careful study are re-ty on the sanitary conditions favorable to diphtheria. quired to learn how to collect these objective symptoms He cited several remarkable cases which had come unand correctly understand them, and many classes of dis- der his notice, and concluded first, that diphtheria is eases must be seen and be rightly explained and the pe simply an epidemic; second, that only those take it culiar features of each pointed out before the eye mas- whose constitutions are in a state of receptivity, and, ters the different pictures and classifies and assigns each third that in places where the disease has prevailed dur to its proper place, and this can only be done thoroughly ing a certain year the next year usually is characterized where large clinical and hospital advantages are obtained, by its absence, even though the sanitary conditions reand where abundance of material and competent teachers mained unchanged. are provided. The lessons to be learned from the address are these: Make a most careful examination of the body of the patient and a most thorough investigation of diseased organs and parts; never take the patient's description of organic changes which you can see or feel for yourself.

But few medical schools in this country have large hospital or clinical advantages to give their students, and their training in the examination of cases in the special departments of medicine is nearly unknown, but the importance of these special studies is becoming too well understood to be set aside, and the medical schools that fail to make provision for such studies will them selves be soon set aside.

THE CARE OF THE INSANE

was discussed by Samuel Worcester, M. D., of Salem. The public, he said, may be divided into two classes-those who swallow all the horrible tales of asylums which are served up by sensational writers and discharged patients and those who deny that our hospitals are any such hells as these persons would have us believe. He contended that the officers and physicians in charge of our insane asylums are in almost all cases men incapable of injustice or unkindness. Judged by results, the progress of medical science has not been attended with any corresponding improvement in the treatment of the insane. No especial or peculiar medical or moral In connection with the new order of things describ-treatment characterizes asylums; patients are treated ed, the elementary parts of a medical education must re- solely for their physical ailments on the principle that if main, the foundations of which must be well laid in the the body be sound the mind's manifestations will be norprimary teachings of medical science. The speaker would mal. It is time that politics be divorced from these inalso, if possible, select persons of good natural ability stitutions. The promotion of first assistants to the posifor the materials of which to construct the profession of tion of superintendent does not result advantageously to the future, and, above all, have the moral qualities up to the service because of their narrow experience. In most the needed standard. Among others, the old practice of asylums sedatives and opiates are given liberally to keep an apprenticeship in the office of a medical man, or of a the patient quiet, but in the homoeopathic hospital at student spending a part of his pupilage in the office of a Middletown, N. Y., where such treatment is unknown, physician in full practice, has fallen too much into dis- the percentage of cures is much larger than elsewhere. The speaker criticised the system of repression which is generally practiced, condemning the "moral treatment which suppresses the least indication of personality in any patient. One of the reforms most imperatively demanded is the appointment of women as trustees and asssistant physicians, with especial reference to the female patients. Mental disease in females usually arises from affections of the organs of generation, and in this lies the reason why at present the female insane are not especially treated and more often cured. Dr. Worcester acknowledged that there are times when the use of restraint is necessary, but he declared that the restraint now used in our hospitals is often unnecessary and excessive. Keepers frequently strap and bind helpless lunatics without the knowledge of the physicians. Punishment should. theoretically, never be part of the treatment of the insane. The shower-bath is considered proper by some superintendents, but Dr Worcester regarded it, as well as other uses of the bath, as cruel and unnecessary. Homœopathy cares for

use and should be revived.

In closing Dr Whittier claimed that in view of the fact that medical science will go on developing during all coming generations, it will not do to circumscribe its operations. Majorities attempt to force their opinions upon minorities, but when they come to see that they stand only on the edge of the great ocean of medical science, and that the knowledge they possess is but as a few drops compared to the mighty deep, they may abate something of their pomposity and arrogance and humbly do their own work and allow others to do the same. When science is so advanced as to allow the most perfect individual freedom to all its votaries, its fields will bud and blossom like the rose, and all its laborers can lie down and rise up together, with none to molest or make them afraid. Let us hope that in the near future, all attempts at domination over the medical opinions of men will have passed away, and that every physician will realize that the work he does is only a small contribution to the onward progress of medical science and practice.

the insane in a more rational and successful manner

than any other system, and he hoped that its claims would soon be given an opportunity for substantiation in this State.

Dr. Holt of Brookline, did not believe there was any chance of getting homœopathy into any asylum in Massachusetts. He contended that there is a disease preliminary to insanity that is not insanity.

Dr. Caroline E. Hastings of Boston, made the report of autopsies in the case of two children who died from tuberculosis after measles.

Dr R. E. Jameson read a paper by Dr. Cushing on heart disease, and one by Dr. Wheeler on paralysis fol lowing diphtheria.

A lengthy paper by W. H. Lougee, M. D., of Law rence, on observations in European hospitals, was read by its author to the great satisfaction of the audience. The doctor gave a minute description of a number of intricate cases which he saw treated in the great hospitals of Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London and other cities, and at the close of his deeply interesting paper a hearty vote of thanks was given him, and a copy of it was requested for publication.

Dr. Talbot reported, from the Committee on Surgery, that there was no report. Dr. H. N. Jernegan then asked permission to speak of the disease known as concus sion of the spine, introducing a Mr. Green of Indiana, who received his injury at a railroad accident in Connecticut by being hurled against an iron railing surrounding a car stove. Dr. Jernegan said that the question of concussion in railroad accidents was of great medico-legal importance at the present time, and his present purpose was to exhibit a kind of brace which afforded the patient relief. He also spoke of supports in cases of hernia, and at his suggestion Dr Banning of New York explained his system of pads for this pur

pose.

Medical Items and News.

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF HOMOEOPATHY will hold its annual meeting on the 24th of June at Lake George. It is expected that a very large number of members and their ladies will be present, and the occasion one of the most interesting and enjoyable in the history of the Institute. The excursion can be made to unite pleasure with professional duty, as, in addition to the trip to this charming locality, the opportunity will be afforded, at small expense, to extend it to other localities of interest in the adjoining country, and excursion: tickets, at low rates, will be furnished to almost any point desired. The following committee of arrangements was appointed by the Hom. Medical Society of the State of New York: Drs. J. W. Dowling and Alfred K. Hills of New York; W. H. Watson, Utica; A. W. Holden, Glen's Falls; S. H. Talcott, Middletown; A. R. Wright, Buffalo; H. M. Paine, Albany; and A. P. Hollett, Havana.

FEMALE PHYSICIANS IN INSANE ASYLUMS.-A bill is now before the legislature rendering it compulsory for all insane asylums to employ female physicians in the female wards. The asylum at Middletown has employed a female physician in its female ward almost since the organization of the institution.

GEORGE B. WOOD, M. D., died at his residence in Philadelphia, March 30, at the age of eighty-two years. Since 1820 Dr. Wood has been connected in a prominent way with the colleges, hospitals, and medical literature of this country. The U. S. Dispensatory, of which Sullivan Whitney, M. D., of Boston, read a paper and Dr. Bache. Dr. Wood wrote nearly two-thirds of 160,000 copies have been sold, was prepared by Dr. Wood giving some of the leading maxims on which rests the ho- the work. His "Practice of Medicine" ran through six mœopathic theory of attenuation, and urging a re-exami-editions and was one of the most popular books of the nation of the theory in the light of modern science. He advised physicians to make their own medicines.

Several members gave the results of experiments into the divisibility of matter, and Dr. Chace of Cambridge and Dr Thayer of Boston, spoke on the importance of Dr. Whitney's researches, differing, however, from his conclusion that matter may be infinitely divisible. The speech of the latter gentleman was especially forcible and eloquent.

Papers from the Committee on Pædology were referred without reading, and reports were received from the county societies. Dr. Thayer presented resolutions of sorrow at the death of Drs. William F. Jackson and Francis H. Underwood, which were unanimously adopted.

HÆMORRHAGE IN ABORTION.-Dr. Barker recommends in early abortion placing under the patient a rubber sheet and injecting into the vagina a large quantity of hot water of the temperature of 104 to 110°. The ovum comes away in a day or two without pain and without further hemorrhage. In cases of abortion where a tampon is necessary he always tampons the cervix uteri with a compressed sponge, and then only fills the vagina just sufficient to keep the sponge in place. In seven or eight hours during which the patient rallies from loss of blood the cervix is sufficiently dilated to permit

the removal of the entire ovum.

DIAGNOSIS OF SPINAL SCLEROSIS.-Let the patient cross one leg over the knee of the other. If a smart rap be made on the ligamentum patella of the supported leg, just below the patella itself, the same leg is jerked upward to a variable degree in the healthy individual. In the confirmed ataxic patient no such movement follows, no matter how hard a blow be struck.

day.

OBITUARY.-Dr. George Beakley, for twenty five years an active and popular homœopathic physician of New York City, died March 7th, at the residence of his sister, in Fonda, in this State, at the age of sixty-twoyears. Dr. Beakley graduated at Fairfield and again at the Albany Medical School. He was compelled to relinquish practice about a year before his death from a brothers Henry, of Peekskill, and Jacob, both physicians partial paralysis which eventually ended his life. His of high standing, the latter the founder of the New York Homœopathic Medical College and for many years its Professor of Surgery and Dean, have both passed away within a few years.

BULLETIN OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH. Brooklyn, N. Y., has expended $5000 for vaccina

tion.

ble extent in Havana and Rio de Janiero. Small pox Yellow fever has continued its ravages to considerahas raged also in these localities extending northerly to Great Britain, Russia and Canada. In November and December, 1878, there were 24,470 deaths from small pox in Fortaleza.

In Brazil, out of a population of 900,000, about 500,000 have died from disease and starvation consequent upon the long continued drought.

Cholera is on the increase in Turkey and in Asia. The mortality from the black plague has increased from fifty to 100 per cent. Every case being fatal in from twelve to forty-eight hours.

Diphtheria and scarlatina seems to prevail to very limited extent in warm climates.

CHLOROFORM.-Syme, Lester and Hughes, who have given chloroform as frequently as most surgeons, and never with bad results, observe this simple rule: "Never mind the pulse, never mind the heart, leave the pupil to itself. Keep your eyes on the breathing; and if it be comes embarrassed to a grave extent, take an artery: forceps and pull the tongue well out." Syme never lost a case from chloroform, although he gave it five thousand times; this simple rule enabled him (so he thought) to make this excellent record.

Cannabis Ind. IN EPILEPSY.-This remedy has been successfully used in doses of grain three times a day. CITRATE OF CAFFEINE.-This drug has been found to possess great value as a diuretic and cardiac stimulant in cases of cardiac dropsy, where a dilated, feeble and irregularly contracting heart undergoing progressive moral decay is the main clinical and pathological element to be contended against. In doses of two or three grains it produces abundant and instantaneous diuresis.

ECZEMA.-Dr. Piffard recommends in this troublesome PYROGALLIC ACID.-It is claimed this has a more disease a modification of Hebra's well known unguentum prompt effect than gallic acid or tannin in cases of inter-diachyli, in which lead plaster is incorporated by heat nal hemorrhage, with the advantage of being given in equal parts with vaseline. Unlike the preparation of small doses, being easily taken and having no unpleas- Hebra, it causes no burning sensation in excoriated ant after taste. parts. Kaposi gives it the name of unguentum vaseline. DUPLEX UTERUS WITH DOUBLE CONCEPTION-Dr. Sotschawa, of Moscow, relates a case of double vagina, and double uterus. Each uterus was impregnated. Owing to severe hæmorrhage a fœtus of about one month old was delivered from one uterus, and in a few days one of about three months from the other.

FLUID SILICATE OF SODA is highly recommended as an application in erysipelas. Three or four applications over the inflamed surface and for an inch beyond the line, each being permitted to dry well, it is said, prevent spreading and relieve the pain. The usual internal treatment should be continued.

BULLETIN OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH.

Issued from the Office of the Surgeon-General, U. S. Marine Hospital, under the National Quarantine Act of 1878.
[No. 38. Week ended March 29, 1879.]

OFFICE SURGEON-GENERAL, M. H. S., Washington, March 29th, 1879.

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THE

HOMEOPATHIC TIMES.

A MONTHLY JOURNAL

Of Medicine, Surgery, and the Collateral Sciences.

Vol. VII.

NEW YORK, JUNE, 1879.

No. 3.

Original Articles.

SANITARY SCIENCE AND ALCOHOL.

BY E. W. PYLE, M.D., OF JERSEY CITY.

(Read before the N. J. Homœopathic Medical Society, in Newark, May 6, 1879.)

physician to answer and to teach, and in so doing in the light of science he becomes a benefactor.

One of our first inquiries should be as to the nature of alcohol as a food. A food is that, which being innocent in relation to tissues of the body, is a digestible or absorbable substance that can be oxidized in the body and decomposed in such a way as to give up the forces which it contains.

Is alcohol innocent to the tissues of the body? Statistics abundantly prove that where ardent spirits are most largely and abundantly used the diseases and deThere are but few questions connected with the so- generations become more marked. Lord Shaftesbury cial and healthful interests of the human family more has said, in a Parliamentary report on the subject of important than those which relate to the influence of Lunacy, that six out of ten lunatics were made so alcoholic drinks. Whether we consider the impover through the action of alcohol on their bodies. The ishment they help to perpetuate among all classes, and Registrar General's report for England for the last ten their indirect effects upon the sanitary condition of years shows a mortality of fifteen out of every thousand individuals and communities, or whether we study their yearly. This result is drawn from about ten millions more direct influence over the moral, social and physi- of deaths. It includes all the working classes and the cal condition of the consumer, we shall be overwhelmed whole, in fact, of the adult population of the United by the magnitude of the subject and astonished at the Kingdom. If we consider the different classes of peotenacity with which a great popular error is perpetuated ple which make up this aggregate, we discover some from generation to generation. Sickness is one of the very interesting facts. The mortality of the ordinary great burdens to National prosperity. The welfare of agricultural laborers, the tailors and working classes, State must depend largely upon the health of her people. &c., was from thirteen to sixteen per thousand, while Great epidemics from time to time have so paralyzed that of the liquor dealers, liquor manufacturers, brewers' private and public interests as to bring forcibly to the men, and all persons mixed up by their avocations with minds of statesmen and physicians the necessity of sani- intoxicating liquors, was from thirty to thirty-two per tary reforms; and while there has always been on the thousand. Alcohol, the basis of all spirituous drinks, part of enlightened nations some attention to subjects of has no physiological lodgment in any part of the huhealth, it has been within late years only that individuals man body, unless the vital powers be so prostrated as to have become greatly interested in the sanitary condi- fail in the performance of their function. It is hurried tions of their homes and surroundings. The telluric on from organ to organ, marking its course by disturbconditions of the soil upon which we dwell, the bearances and excitements, until the emunctories take it up ings of heat and moisture, and all atmospheric condi- and unceremoniously eject it from the body. Its contions upon animal life, the detection of unfriendly sub- tinued use brings to every tissue weakness and not stances in the food we eat, in the air we breathe and in strength, sickness and not health, death and not life. the water we drink, have all been well dwelt upon by We are familiar with the cirrhosed liver, the wasted the sanitarist. A deadly disease breaks out in our kidney and shattered nerve centre that dethrone reason Southern border, and with a pestilential character that and drift the human bark hopelessly onward. carries thousands to untimely graves. The public attention is at once aroused; all are electrified with one common impulse to seek the cause, and by the intervention of sanitary measures hope to avert the recurrence of any such epidemic. But as yet one of the greatest curses that carries people to premature graves-one that ramifies itself more disastrously through society and the body politic than any infectious disease, one that lessens the strength, predisposes to disease and shortens human life immensely more than the combined influences of all obnoxious gases, has been unnoticed by the sanitarian. The apathy of State and society respecting the abuse of spirituous liquors is truly appalling. Intemperance is becoming a National curse. The clergy and philanthropist have labored earnestly to diminish the evil, but their course has been in a measure empirical. They have treated the symptoms rather than the diseases which it induces in the body. The inquiry should be not what alcohol makes us do, but what it does to us and o our descendants. This is the great question for the

We have but to put a few ounces of brandy in the vessel where float our favorite gold fishes to see them turn on their sides and die.

We have to expose its fumes directly to the insect world, and death speedily follows. We have but to increase the moderate dose to our own species and we have paralysis, prostration and death more frequent than is produced by any other known substance. Is there any other solution than that alcohol is not innocent to the tissues of our bodies and that when it is mixed with blood life is deteriorated and shortened?

Is alcohol oxidized and decomposed so as to give up to the body the forces it contains? This is a question which medical science has not solved beyond the possi bility of a doubt. Nor do I know that the scientific man will give us more information on the subject than our own aided senses.

When food is taken into our systems it is acted upon kindly by the digestive fluids, is absorbed, becomes a part and parcel of ourselves, and leaves the body only

:

when disintegrated. But it is quite otherwise with alcohol. We can smell it within a few minutes after administration coming from every pore, and long after the nose has ceased to detect, its presence can be demonstrated in the exhalations of the skin and lungs. The evidence of our senses proves that at least a large part of the alcohol which enters the body leaves it undecomposed, and therefore cannot have given up those

forces which held its constituent elements together.

THE RELATION OF ALCOHOL TO SHOCK.
BY H. I. OSTROM, M. D.,
County of New York, May 14th, 1879.)
(Read before the Homœopathic Medical Society of the

I shall endeavor to demonstrate, that to stimulate in

shock is unscientific, and opposed to the law of similars.
By stimulants, let those substances be understood,
which neither contain elements to nourish the body, nor
within the system form combinations which afford food.
Such substances by paralysing our system of nerves,
allows a proportional activity of the antagonistic sys-
tem. By stimulation, is signified increased function,
without a supply of food to compensate for the waste
thereby entailed. For convenience in the present dis-
cussion, alcohol is assumed to be typical of this class of
substances.
The subject admits four divisions:
I. The action of alcohol;

II. The nature of Shock;

III.-Indication for the treatment of shock;

By its power as a narcotic it enslaves the body and subjugates the will as food never does. Many a person becomes attached to his coffee, but let his physician declare that the continuance of his health depends upon the immediate giving up of the favorite drink and it will be abandoned at once. He is never conquered by an insatiable thirst. He never wastes his estate, beggars his family, pawns his wife's shawl and his children's shoes for further supplies of the article. When alco holic beverages are taken daily and in small quantities the individual usually increases in weight, not from increased nutrition, but from retarding the waste and retaining the old atoms longer in the tissues. By some this power to retard atomic change has been regarded IV. A comparison between alcohol and shock. as equivalent to nutrition, but the fallacy of such claims 1.-Alcohol possesses a strong affinity for nerve tissue, and the mischievous tendency will be fully apparent by and arrests functional activity. So far alcohol prevents reference to one of nature's plainest laws governing waste, but this prevention cannot be long maintained, living animal matter. The law is that all the phenom-because existence involves motion, and motion requires ena of life are associated with or dependent upon atomic expenditure of force; if motion ceases above a certain change, and that each individual cell has its determined though undetermined length of time, we deal with death. period of growth, maturity and dissolution. Hence to When taken into the stomach, alcohol paralyzes introduce into the living, healthy system any agent that primarily the sympathetic nerve, and secondarily the retards atomic change is equivalent to retarding the cerebro-spinal system; when it gains entrance into the phenomena of life embarrassing the tissues with the effect is to thicken the walls of the presence of material that is inert and should, PRcn29lodorpuses, and convert bioplasm into formed from the system. If alcohol be a food, why has it not material, in this manner eventually starving the living contributed to the support of the soldier in his long, part of the cell. Alcohol also coagulates albumen, and weary marches ? The Army of the Potomac in the previ is conversion into fibrin. After death, the spring of 1862 was subjected to great hardships ander right side of the heart, the pulmonary arteries, and sysposed to the wet and malarious region of the Chickatemic veins, are gorged with blood, while the left side of hominy. Under these circumstances there was much the heart and the arteries are comparatively empty, sickness and suffering. The commanding general issued showing an absence of co-ordination between the two an order on the 19th of May allowing every officer and motions of the heart. May we not reason from this phesoldier one gill of whiskey per day. The results were nomenon, proceeding upon the theory that muscular tisso manifestly injurious to the sanitary condition of sue possesses an inherent quality of contraction, that the the army that in just thirty days the order was counter cerebro-spinal system, in at least one of its functions, manded by the same general. Concerning this experi- regulates one of the motions of the heart, and the symment Dr. Frank Hamilton, serving with that army, pathetic system the other? says: "It is earnestly desired that no such experiment will ever be repeated in the armies of the United States. The regular routine employment of alcohol cstimulants by man in health is never useful. We make no excep tions in favor of cold, heat or rain; nor indeed in favor of old drinkers when we consider them as soldiers." If alcohol possesses food properties, why has it not contributed to the support of the intrepid arctic explorer in braving the region of a northern latitude? Why has the gymnast and all persons interested in the power and endurance of muscle not taken advantage of its food giving or food-producing power. In the hands of a skillful physican alcohol is at times potent. By virtue of its power to diminish the sensibility of the nervous system, to decrease temperature and to retard the active tissue destruction of disease, he can by its timely ad ministration economize the vital forces and bridge the chasm that saves his patient. But it should be used only as medicine and in disease. There is no depart ment of knowledge so little understood by the people in general as that which pertains to the preservation of the body in what they drink. The drink of the world shortens human life to a most alarming degree. And as physicians interested in all the sanitary measures that add to the comfort and longevity of our race, it becomes our duty to teach the effect of alcohol upon our bodies and upon our descendants. Should we all do this conscientiously and to the full limit of our talents sanitary science would indeed confer a lasting benefit on our

race.

From the foregoing, it appears that alcohol destroys the functional activity of that system of nerves which it primarily attacks, and by so doing, affords a brief opportunity for the opposing system to increase its activity. 2. Traumatic shock may be regarded as a nervous derangement which has its origin at the periphery, and is conveyed to the cereb: um by means of the sympathetic nerve. In the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems of nerves, exists an illustration of the dual forces of nature. These forces when united, constitute our conception of vitality, whether we deal with the spiritual or the physical plane, it is equally true. When they are not in perfect accord, when one is unduly active because the other is correspondingly passive, disease exists, and consciousness of pain.

The heart receives filaments from both systems of nerves, but that the contractions of this organ depend upon its nervous supply, is rendered doubtful from numerous experiments. Upon the supposition that galvanism increases functional activity, the sympathetic is probably the exciting nerve, because when galvanized, the motion of the heart is accelerated; the pneumogastric on the contrary, is probably the depressor nerve, because when subjected to the same process, the rhymical motion of the heart is arrested. In shock, excluding those cases which originate in the emotional sphere, and those caused by direct violence to the brain or spinal cord, there is paralysis of the sympathetic, with increased action of the pneumogastric because of the absence of antagonism, followed by slowness of the

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