not the degradation of his morals, when chided for his folly, replies, with an air of triumph: "Surely there can be no harm in tobacco, since the Reverends A, B, and C (all good men) use it."

Let us point out some of the evil effects of tobacco for the edification of our misguided reverend brethren, in the hope that they may be induced to abandon its use. If for no other reason, they should do this because it injures the health and vitiates the appetite, often begetting a desire for alcoholic stimulants. Thus it may be the forerunner of drunkenness. Only a few days ago a poor drunkard told me that so long as he abstained from tobacco he could keep sober, but if he smoked a few cigars his cravings for whisky became irresistible. This young man's experience is that of many. Smoking and drinking go hand in hand to destroy the youth of our land.

The use of tobacco was adopted by the Spaniards from the American Indians shortly after the discovery of the new continent by Columbus. In the year 1560 it was introduced into France by the ambassador of that country at the court of Lisbon, whose name, Nicot, has been perpetuated in the generic title of the plant.

There are several poisonous principles extracted from tobacco, with such high-sounding names as nicotine, nicotianin, malic acid, ammonium, etc. But the chief poison is an active principle known as nicotine, which experiments on the lower animals have proven to be one of the most deadly poisons known in the vegetable kingdom. Cigars when smoked give off gases, which when collected and examined are found to be oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, and marsh gas, the smoke at the same time depositing empyreumatic by-products which are deadly poisons.

Tobacco is a powerful sedative poison, which is locally irritant. Moderately taken it calms mental and bodily inquietude, and produces a state of general languor and indifference, which seems to have great charms for those habituated to the impression. In large quantities it gives rise to confusion in the head, vertigo, stupor, faintness, nausea, and vomiting, and general depression of the nervous and circulatory functions, which, if increased, eventuates in alarming and even fatal prostration. Many of the so-called cases of "nervous break-down" attributed to overwork are due to nothing but the excessive use of tobacco. Go into the counting-rooms of many of our merchants and you will find a spittoon filled with tobacco juice, and the fumes of tobacco smoke filling the room, and yet if the merchant feels dizzy and

languid at the end of a day's work, he complains of the anxieties of business telling upon his nerves!

If you have a noisy tom cat that catches no mice but makes night hideous with his squalls, and you wish to kill him, catch him, and draw a broom straw through the stem of your pipe, collecting some of the gummy substance which is there; now put one drop of this tobacco smoke gum on the cat's tongue, and in a few minutes he will be laid out dead. I have known farmers to kill calves by rubbing on them a decoction of tobacco to destroy vermin.

I am not trying to scare the reverend tobacco habitues; I am stating every-day facts. If you don't believe me, just examine,a work on vegetable chemistry and try the cat experiment. But some one will say, “We don't take these poisons; we spit them out and smoke them out." I apprehend that such ignorance of the real nature of the poison, as such remarks show, is the reason so many use tobacco. Surely the millions who use tobacco would not continue the habit if they knew what a deadly poison it is. You may ask, "If it is such a deadly poison why don't it kill us?" It will kill you by inches, or by fractions of an inch, if you please. Its use gradually undermines the health of the strongest man, and for years he may not realize it, but let an attack of severe illness overtake him, and he is unable to withstand the ravages of disease because his system is already saturated with a narcotic poison, and he must succumb to an attack that one who is not a tobacco user might readily recover from.

Tobacco is such a virulent poison that doctors are afraid of it, and never prescribe it. When a person takes an overdose of opium he may be relieved by evacuation of the stomach and stimulants internally and externally. For an overdose of arsenic there is the hydrate of iron, but for an overdose of tobacco there is no remedy, it sinks its victim lower and lower into death in spite of all efforts to save him.

Here are some of the diseases attributed to the use of tobacco: Dyspepsia, water brash, cancer of the mouth, impotency, laryngitis, angina pectoris, palpitation of the heart, amaurosis, color blindness, insanity, horrors, suicidal mania, etc.

If you have a friend whose sight is failing, before he goes to the eye and ear doctors for advice, get him to suspend tobacco for sixty days and he will probably have no need for a specialist. If you find a tobacco eater black with the "blues" and contemplating suicide, assure him. that if he will abstain for sixty days the shape and color of things will

change to better and brighter. If your tobacco-smoking friend has that scape-goat of all uncertain ailments, the "liver complaint," assure him that "thirty days" will relieve his biliary embarrassment, and sixty days will restore his health to par. If you find a poor, miserable being with cancer of the lips or tongue, brought on by smoking tobacco, you might as well tell him to smoke on, for he has a disease that baffles all human skill and will torture him to death. There is no more horrible death than that resulting from cancer of the tongue, and the smoking of tobacco is set down by all authorities as one of the predisposing causes of this disease.

Talk of distilling the essence of Christianity through quids of tobacco! How can a preacher dare to stand up before the altar of God and attempt to dispense the sweet savor of Gospel truth with his tongue reeking in loathsome poison? I have no patience with a so-called "temperance man" who appeals to a "drinker" with his mouth full of tobacco. The drinker, if he is not a chewer, is the more temperate of the two.

Another count against the use of tobacco is, that it is a very expensive habit. The average smoker will use, say four cigars daily, costing at least twenty cents. Now, at the end of ten years this cigar money, with interest, will amount to one thousand dollars! The money spent in the United States every year for tobacco would build a railroad to the Pacific. The money spent every year in the Christian world for tobacco would put a copy of the New Testament into the hands of every human being! Go to, then, philanthropists! Here is something to be done right at home, and all can work at it. Come out and show your fellow men what they are doing when they feed their bodies on nicotine.

LOUISVILLE.

UROTROPIN (HEXAMETHYLENETETRAMIN).

BY. J. A. FLEXNER, M. D.

Though the subject of comparatively recent trial, the favorable reports which have come to my notice regarding urotropin lead me to think that some additional facts concerning this "new remedy" may not be amiss. Urotropin is a derivative of formic aldehyde. It differs in this respect from the many recent additions to pharmacy and therapeutics in not being a coal-tar derivative. The well-known antiseptic and preservative power of formic aldehyde in solution led Nicolaier, of Göttingen, to use the solution of formic aldehyde containing forty per

cent of the gas, and known as formalin or formol, as a means of preserving specimens of urine from decomposition pending its examination. Nicolaier noticed that to such specimens of urine to which the formic aldehyde had been added, neither uric acid nor the amorphous urates deposited, though the same specimens not treated with the formic aldehyde deposited abundant quantities of either uric acid or the urates as the case might be, and these substances, even when present, underwent solution on being mixed with the formic aldehyde. Specimens of urine which readily deposited large amounts of uric acid when acidulated with a mineral acid, such as hydrochloric acid, did not deposit any uric acid when treated with formic aldehyde in sufficient amount.

The result of these investigations prove very conclusively the great solvent power which formic aldehyde has over uric acid. As is well known most of the salts of uric acid are but slightly more soluble than the acid itself, and it is very nearly insoluble. The reputation which the lithium salts have as uric acid solvents is based upon an error, very common when the results of the chemical laboratory as obtained with plain water or simple fluids come to be applied to practical therapeutics. The fact that lithium forms an insoluble phosphate and that the blood and urine contains decided amounts of soluble phosphates, conclusively show that practically lithium salts given by the mouth are converted into insoluble phosphates of lithium long before it can combine with uric acid. In this respect it is no exception to the chemical law that when the ingredients for the formation of an insoluble body are present in the same mixture, this substance will always be formed. Medical opinion for a long time has attributed the success attending the use of the lithiated waters to the water and not to the lithium they contain. A similar error obtains with reference to the more recently introduced piperazine, lycetol, lysidin, etc. While these substances, outside of the body, form very soluble combinations with uric acid, it has been conclusively proven that they do not act in urine, and they are therefore comparatively useless when given by the mouth. Formic aldehyde itself, owing to its irritating and noxious qualities, can not be taken internally. That it formed an amine combination was well known to Nicolaier, and after proving the solvent power of formic aldehyde over uric acid in physiological liquids, as well as water, he concluded to try the amine combination above referred to as a substitute for the formic aldehyde. This substance, hexamethylenetetramin (urotropin), is nonpoisonous even in considerable quantities, very soluble in water, unirri

tating when properly used, and has been proven to be fully as good a uric acid solvent as formic aldehyde itself. Further, it meets fully the shortcomings of all the uric acid solvents hitherto in use.

use.

The name urotropin was applied to hexamethylenetetramin owing to the changes which its administration brought about in the urine. Alkaline and putrid urines, urines containing mucus in excess, altered or ropy pus or pus-forming organisms, uric acid or deposits of amorphous urates, rapidly become restored to a normal acid reaction, and the uric acid and urates remain in solution, and the secretion which had been diminished in quantity is increased'; and where the salts of lithium, piperazine, etc., have no solvent power over uric acid calculi and uratic deposits or antiseptic powers when present in urine, urotropin will dissolve these calculi and deposits and render the urine sterile during its Hence urotropin is a most valuable resource in all suppurations of the urinary tract and in all gouty and rheumatic conditions where an active eliminant of uric acid or its salts is indicated. A further valuable property urotropin possesses is due to its combining readily to form a very soluble combination with salicylic acid. A solution containing from ten to fifteen grains of each to the fluid ounce of water or other suitable vehicle is readily prepared, and has the great advantage over other soluble salicylates that it is free from the very disagreeable taste which they have. It appears to be far less irritant to the gastric mucous membrane than solutions of salicylic acid usually are, and the combination promises a wide range of therapeutic usefulness.

LOUISVILLE, KY.

WHAT AID IS THE MICROSCOPIST TO THE SURGEON ? *

BY AP MORGAN VANCE, M. D.

We often hear the expression, "Let me remove a small piece of that growth and submit it to the microscope, and we will be able to tell exactly what it is;" or, "Have that breast removed, and we can tell exactly what its character is by the same test." Now, after quite a long and varied experience, I am becoming more and more skeptical as to the power of the most expert to talk with positiveness about any questionable specimen. In fact, when a man is very positive about any given specimen I am inclined to take his opinion with a grain of salt.

* Read before the Louisville Medico-Chirurgical Society, October 25, 1895. For discussion see page 494.