Caudillac "had frequent attacks of somnambulism; he sometimes found his work finished in the morning."

Bossuet "suffered from a disease from which he lost his speech, knowledge, and even the faculty of understanding."

Dumas says: "Victor Hugo was dominated by the fixed idea to become a great poet, and the greatest man of all countries and times. For a time the glory of Napoleon haunted him.”

Chopin ordered by will that he be buried in a gala costume, white small shoes and short trousers. He abandoned his wife, whom he loved, because she offered another person a seat before she offered it to him.

Giordano Bruno "considered himself enlightened by a superior light sent from God."

Comte "considered himself the great High Priest of humanity." Madame De Stael died in a state of delirium which had lasted several days, according to some authors several months. She used opium immoderately. She had a singular idea during her whole life; she was afraid of being cold in the tomb; she desired to be enveloped in fur before burial.

English men of letters who have become insane or have had hallucinations and peculiarities symptomatic of insanity are Swift, Johnson, Cowper, Goldsmith, Shelley, Byron, Southey, Lamb, and Poe.

Swift was somewhat cruel in disposition, and late in life became a violent maniac. The post-mortem examination showed cerebral effusion and softening of the cortex. There were a number of cranial anomalies.

Shelley, "when young, was strange and fond of musing alone, and was called Mad Shelley; he suffered from somnambulism and had dreams, and was excitable and impetuous. At twenty he took laudanum and had hallucinations; he saw a child rise from the sea and clap his hands, a vision which it was difficult to reason away."

Charles Lamb "was confined in an insane asylum."

Johnson "was hypochondriacal and apprehended insanity, fancying himself seized with it. He had convulsions, cramps, and a paralytic seizure, depriving him of speech. He had hallucinations of hearing." Carlyle "considered Southey the most excitable man of his acquaintHe became demented and died. He wrote verses at eight years of age."

ance.

Cowper "was attacked with melancholia at twenty, which continued a year. He himself tells of his attempts of suicide. After his failure

in attempting suicide he relapsed into religious melancholia, believing he had committed the unpardonable sin. He was confined in an insane asylum eighteen months."

Keats "was an extremely emotional child, passing from laughter to tears; he was very passionate, using laudanum to calm himself. Sometimes he fell into despondency. He prophesied truly that he would have no rest until he reached the grave. The attacks of critics agitated him almost to insanity."

Coleridge "was a precocious child, weakly, and morbid in imagination. This condition of mind caused him to run away from home when a child, and from college when a student. When thirty years old his physical suffering led him to use opium. Subsequently he had lateral curvature of the spine."

Burns says: "My constitution and frame were ab origine blasted with a deep, incurable taint of melancholia, which poisons my existence." Dickens "died from apoplexy. He was a sickly child, suffering from violent spasms."

George Eliot "suffered from melancholic moods, and from her thirtieth year had severe attacks of headache. As a child she was poor in health, and extremely sensitive to terror in the night. She remained in 'quivering fear' throughout her whole life."

De Quincey," the opium eater, took the drug as a relief from neuralgia and general nervous irritability. He was in bad health for a long 'time, dying at the age of seventy-four."

Alfred De Musset "had attacks of syncope. He died at forty-seven. He had a morbid cerebral sensibility, showing itself in hallucinations; he had a suicidal inclination. He was a dissipated gambler, passing from gaiety to depression."

Wellington "was subject to fainting fits. He had epilepsy, and

died from an attack of the disease."

Warren Hastings was sickly during his whole life. In his latter years he suffered from paralysis, giddiness, and hallucinations of hearing. During the time of his paralysis he developed a taste for writing poetry.

Carlyle, "the dyspeptic martyr, showed signs of extreme irritability. He says, in his diary, 'Nerves all inflamed and torn up, body and mind in a hag-ridden condition.' He suffered from a paralysis in his right hand. Carlyle's antecedents were conspicuously of a nervous kind."

Bach "died from a stroke of apoplexy. One of his numerous children was an idiot. His family suffered from nervous diseases."

Handel "was very irritable; at the age of fifty he was stricken with paralysis, which so affected his mind that he lived in retirement for a year."

Nisbet says: "Pathologically speaking music is as fatal a gift to its possessor as the faculty for poetry or letters; the biographies of all the greatest musicians being a miserable chronicle of the ravages of nerve disorder, extending like the Mosaic curse to the third and fourth generation."

Newton "in the last years of his life fell into a melancholia which deprived him of his power of thought. In a letter to Locke he says that he passed some months without having a consistency of mind. He was also subject to vertigo. From the character of manifestation and the result following this disease, Moreau goes so far as to say that it permits a certain degree of diagnosis, and may be called acute dementia.”

"The insanity of Tasso is probable from the fact that, like Socrates, he believed he had a familiar genius which was pleased to talk with him, and from whom he learned things never before heard of."

Swift "died insane."

Chateaubriand, "during his youth, had ideas of suicide, and attempted to kill himself. His father died of apoplexy; his brother had an eccentricity bordering on insanity; was given to all vices, and died of paralysis."

Tacitus "had a son who was an idiot."

Beethoven "was naturally bizarre, and exceedingly irritable. He became deaf and fell into a profound melancholia in which he died."

Alexander the Great had a neurosis of the muscles of the neck, causing his head to incline constantly upon his shoulders. He died at the age of thirty-two, having all the symptoms of acute delirium tremens. His brother, Archide, was an idiot. His mother was a dissolute woman; his father was both dissolute and vicious.

De Balzac "died of hypertrophy of the heart, a disease that predis- · poses to cerebral congestion. The eccentricity of his ideas is well known." Lamartine says "he had peculiar notions about many things; was in contradiction with the common sense of this low world. His father was also peculiar."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE TREATMENT OF EPIDIDYMITIS.*

BY J. T. WINDELL, M. D.

Assistant to the Clinic of Genito-Urinary Diseases, University of Louisville.

Prophylaxis in the treatment of epididymitis, advocated by most all writers on venereal, was probably first recognized by Bumstead, for he it was who said that one of the first orders given to a man with gonorrhea should be for a suspensory bandage. During the existence of any urethral inflammation the use of a properly adjusted suspensory bandage will almost always prevent the occurrence of this complication; the support given the scrotum and the removal of the strain from the spermatic cord is probably the reason for this.

The elder Otis says "nothing is so conducive to the development of an epididymitis, under favoring conditions, as an unsupported, downhanging testicle and a standing patient."

A great variety of suspensory bandages offer for the doctor's approval or the patients' whims, from the heel of a sock to the silken web and many-buckled concern of the manufacturers.

A suspensory that fits the scrotum, with the pouch made of thin, non-absorbent material, preferably bolting-cloth, whose straps and tapes do not contain rubber elastic, one that when adjusted will retain its position without tension in whatever posture the wearer may be, and of a moderate price is the ideal one. The nearest approach to this is the one I present for your inspection to-night. It answers well for slim men with protruding hip bones, but must have a belly-band attachment for fat men. The prevention of epididymitis is not limited alone to the wearing of a suspensory bandage, as is seen by enumerating some of the exciting causes other than urethral inflammation, viz: the one most recognized by the laity, strong injections, overdistension of the urethra and forcing the injection past the cut-off muscle, sexual intercourse, straining at stool, violent exercise, such as running, jumping, bicycle, horseback or carriage riding over rough roads, the introduction of bougies, catheters, and syringes through the posterior urethra in a septic condition, or when this portion of the canal is engorged and swollen from any cause. Therefore, if you wish to prevent epididymitis, patients with urethral inflammation should be instructed to use a syringe of moderate size (half ounce preferred), to urinate before injecting, to throw in the injection with care not to overdistend the urethra, to keep the bowels open, to avoid sexual intercourse, and to refrain from any violent exercise. All *Read before the Practitioners' Club, April 9, 1895.

instrumentation of the urethra should be performed with the greatest care and gentleness; all instruments should be made perfectly aseptic just before their introduction. This is best accomplished by dipping in boiling water.

As to the curative treatment of epididymitis, every antiphlogistic method known, a great many drugs of different classes and several surgical procedures have been used in treating this most common complication of gonorrhea. Probably the most used and the least effective is the poultice. While such applications of heat to a painful and swollen testicle have some anesthetic effect, I doubt if the course of the disease is ever much shortened by their use, whatever be the substance of which they may be composed. Poultices containing some narcotic drug, as opium, belladonna, hyoscyamus, stramonium or tobacco have been highly recommended by writers on this subject. The claim of some that the narcotism of the testicle by means of the popular tobacco and flaxseed meal poultice is the best curative method for acute epididymitis has not resulted favorably in my experience.

Applications of cold, either by means of the ice-bag or rubber coil, have also been used, and in my hands have resulted more favorably than that of heat by means of the poultice; but this method too long continued is apt to result in sloughing of the scrotum and is not to be recommended as routine treatment.

Tincture of iodine, ether, collodion, camphor, iodoform ointment, belladonna ointment, mercurial ointment, lead-water, and opium as topical applications, and tartar emetic, epsom salts, pulsatilla, ergot, opium, salicylate of soda, and iodide of potassium internally, the application of leeches, strapping the testicle with adhesive plaster, first proposed by Fricke, of Hamburg, and many other methods and means have been more or less successful in the treatment of epididymitis.

The puncture of the tunica vaginalis, proposed by Velpeau, is without doubt a prompt and reliable surgical means of treatment. Taylor says that as soon as fluid can be detected in the tunica vaginalis we have the golden opportunity of giving almost instantaneous relief and cutting off the further progress of the disease. But the attempt to carry out this plan is always forcibly resented by the patient, many preferring to suffer rather than submit to the knife. Drawing off the fluid by the hypodermic syringe is a modern method of equal utility, and not so objectionable to the patient.

In March, 1892, I had under my care J. W. B., aged twenty-eight, with gonorrhea contracted from his wife; during the third week the