contains much material in easily accessible form, for which you would have to search diligently in the text-books and manuals of the period. The author is evidently one who sees the things that pass before him and tries to account for the facts observed. His explanations do not always carry conviction, but are too valuable to excite adverse criticism from a reviewer who loves an independent thinker. His advice to the reader as to the management of labor and the details of bedside technique stamp him as one of those men who can separate the frills from the essentials, and who recognizes the all-essential fact that asepsis means an absence of sepsis rather than an elaborate formula. For the man who already has a modern text-book this little work will be more valuable than another of the same kind, while even to the man with a wellstocked library it is by no means devoid of value. It will be surprising if it does not have a large sale among both obstetricians and general practitioners. For the men who work in farm-house and tenements it would be hard to find a little work of equal value.-Lancet-Clinic. MANUAL OF DISEASES OF THE EYE. For Students and General Practitioners. By Charles H. May, M. D., Chief of Clinic and Instructor in Ophthalmology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Medical Department, Columbia University, New York, 1890 to 1903, etc., etc. Sixth edition, revised, with 362 original illustrations, including 22 plates, with 62 colored figures. Price $2.00, net. Wm. Wood & Co., New York. However far the tendency towards specialization may extend, there must always be general practitioners; and a good general practitioner, especially in the country, but also in the city, must not fail to be conversant with the general principles of the various specialties, and with the main lines of treatment of the commoner diseases, as well as the more urgent necessities of the rarer ones. While, therefore, elaborate treatises are necessary to the specialist, the briefer manuals will always find a place on the shelves of the general worker. The revised sixth edition of May's "Diseases of the Eye" will prove a very welcome acquisition to those (and there are many) who do not possess a satisfactory manual on this subject. The work can also be recommended to students desiring a text-book, which is at the same time extremely practical, and more thorough than is usual with volumes of its price and size. It is throughout concise, clear and comprehensible. The illustrations are extremely numerous, and really illustrate the text. The many colored plates are as good as will be found in some more expensive and ambitious treatises. Dr. May's Manual is perhaps most adequately recommended by the facts that since August, 1900, it has in this country passed through six editions and a number of reprints, and has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese. GENERAL MEDICINE. Practical Medicine Series, comprising ten volumes on the Year's Progress in Medicine and Surgery, under the general editorial charge of Gustavus P. Head, Chicago Post-Graduate Medical School. The Year Book Publishers, 40 Dearborn Street, Chicago. Price $1.50. Volume VI, 1909. In this number infectious diseases, especially typhoid fever and malaria, are reviewed in detail. Under the head of the diseases of the gastro-intestinal tract, the advances made in etiology, diagnosis and treatment, and even in the anatomy and histology of the organs concerned are thoroughly considered. The articles on Cardio-spasm, Cardiac Stenosis, Acute Dilatation, Duodenal Ulcer, and Mucous Colitis are especially good, and contain all the references to the literature on this subject in the past year. An abstract of an article by Euttner in the Berlin Klin. Wochen. Schr., in which he holds that the dependence of duodenal ulcer upon extensive burns of the skin is very doubtful. This will come as a surprise to many who have been taught to regard it as one of the common complications. An article by Ascher, abstracted from the Archiv. fur. Verdauringkrankheiten on the influence of medicaments on the action of pepsin, in which he shows that alcohol, sodium salicylate, iron and arsenic preparations tend to check the pepsin secretions, is an important contribution, in that some of these preparations are often given with the idea of stimulating the flow of gastric juice containing pepsin. CONLIN, FRANK M. (Omaha). Progressive Medicine, Vol. III, September, 1909. A Quarterly Digest of Advances, Discoveries and Improvements in the Medical and Surgical Sciences. Edited by Hobart Amory Hare, M. D., Professor of Therapeutics and Materia Medica in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. Octavo, 336 pages, with 37 engravings. Per annum, in four cloth-bound volumes, $9.00; in paper binding, $6.00, carriage paid to any address. Lea & Febiger, Publishers, Philadelphia and New York. Progressive Medicine for September covers the important advances made in the line of Internal Medicine, Dermatology, Obstetrics, and Neurology in the past year. A good article upon the present status of the tuberculin tests and the tuberculine treatment, and with references to the literature (with statistics) is well timed. The etiology and treatment of asthma is well reviewed, reference is made in the etiology to the microbe which Carmalt Jones believes to be the etiological factor in certain forms, and to the vaccine which he has prepared and used successfully in several cases. The dangers attending the administration of diphtheria anti-toxin to asthmatics is again mentioned. Arteriosclerosis, its causes and the treatment of its various manifestations, is well reviewed. "The Arterial Wall and Blood Pressure Readings" is the subject of a thorough article on the fallacies of instrumentally recorded pressures. Russell maintains that "these pressures have to be variously discounted according to the varying resistance of the arterial wall in different states of contraction, or relaxation, and above all, that the arterial wall when much thickened by disease can account for an important fraction of the pressure apt to be attributed to the blood column within it." In the section upon Dermatology and Genito-Urinary Diseases, the use of ethyl chloride in the treatment of chancroid is mentioned, and also the other extreme of temperature with the Paquelin Cantery, both of which owe their therapeutic effect to the fact that the chancroid bacillus is especially susceptible to extremes of heat. The use of carbon dioxide in the treatment of lupus erythematosus is reviewed and some good results shown. The serum diagnosis of syphilis or the Wasserman reaction is explained in an easily comprehensible way. Under Obstetrics, Pregnancy and its complications and the puerperal period are thoroughly considered. In the diseases of the nervous system, brain tumor and the different forms of neuritis are taken up in detail. CONLIN, FRANK M. (Omaha). TREATMENT OF DISEASES OF CHILDREN. The new (2d) edition, by Charles Gilmore Kerley, M. D., Professor of Diseases of Children, New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital, etc. Second revised edition. Octavo of 629 pages, illustrated. Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders Company, 1909. Cloth, $5.00, net: half morocco, $6.50, net. This is the second edition published within a short period to supply the demand for a most excellent work on the Treatment of Diseases of Children. The author does not hesitate to score the practices of many who follow teachings that have proven worse than useless, nor to caution against many of the newer over-rated remedies; neither is he afraid to speak of the value of many articles that are mentioned by some authors only to be condemned. He has made a close study of disease and its rational treatment in children. He has followed out certain original ideas and his conclusions are founded upon investigations and demonstrations carried out by himself and his co-workers and not copied from other authors. The great number of institutional and private cases seen by him for several years has enabled him to compile case records which he has given us in this book. The work is written not so much for the student as for the general practitioner. Under treatment, instead of mentioning every drug in the pharmacopeia, he rarely mentions drugs until every other means of relieving the economy has been thoroughly outlined. He gives the technique of each procedure in a few simple, practical terms which can be understood and carried out by any practitioner without a coterie of trained nurses and assistants. Then the judicious use of a few of the best drugs is given. He speaks of the abuse of bowel irrigation in some of the intestinal disorders where it is used too often and continued too long. Under the heading of "Feeding of Children" he has something to offer in the uses of malted foods and cooked cereals. He uses the malted foods in many cases of constipation with beneficial results, and believes in the addition of cereals after the sixth month in all bottle-fed children. He has demonstrated that infants can digest much larger quantities of starch than was previously thought possible. He gives a number of very useful food formulas in preparing the diet for children, and believes that too much fat in the form of cream is often responsible for many of the gastro-intestinal disturbances of children. Under vaccine therapy he gives a resume of the latest tests and how they are used. He devotes many pages with excellent cuts to gymnastic therapeutics. This is a subject every general practitioner should be very familiar with, as he is the one to notice and advise in many of the early deformities that can and should be corrected. The last chapter is devoted to drugs and drug dosage, both internally and externally. The work as a whole is very thorough and practical and will be appreciated by the busy practitioner. CONLAN, P. L. (Omaha). WESTERN MEDICAL REVIEW Per Published Monthly by WESTERN MEDICAL REVIEW COMPANY, Omaha, Nebr. Annum, $2.00. The WESTERN MEDICAL REVIEW is the journal of the Wyoming State Medical Society and is sent by order of the Society to each of its members. NEIL DAVID NELSON, Shoshoni, President OFFICERS: H. E. MCCOLLUM, Laramie, 1st Vice-President All matter for publication in this section should be sent to G. L. STRADER, M. D., Editor, Cheyenne, Wyo. COLLABORATORS-SUBJECT TO REVISION. Pestal, Joseph. Douglas; Keith, M. C.; Casper; Marshall, T. E., Sheridan; Nelson, N. D.; Shoshoni; Wicks, J. L., Evanston; Wiseman, Letitia, Cheyenne; Young, J. H., Rock Springs. To the man who is doing either rectal or general surgery, the subject of hemorrhoids will appear trite, and anything said upon it will sound in his ears as "a twice told tale," but this paper may hope to appeal with something of interest, if nothing of novelty, to the man who does not himself do surgery, and who has not been in the habit of having his hemorrhoidal cases operated upon. Allow me to say at the outset, that I consider homorrhoids a surgical affection. That many of my fellow-practitioners do not, for one reason or another, agree with me, is evident; for I cannot otherwise account for the many patients who suffer torture for years, become morphine fiends, cocaine fiends, neurasthenics, and physical wrecks of every description,-all due to an obstinate case of hemorrhoids. I have had patient after patient who had been treated for years and had never even been told what an operation would do for them. Only today an old patient, whom I had recently operated upon, remarked: "Doctor, if I had had this done ten years ago, I would have lived to be one hundred years old." In *Read before the Wyoming State Medical Society, Cheyenne, September 2, 1909. a serious case, medicinal treatment is palliative at the very best; usually it is of little avail, and it is never permanently effective. There are cases also in which operative measures have had poor results, but the explanation is that a suitable operation was not chosen, or was not properly done. There is no possible hemorrhoidal case, provided it is uncomplicated by other troubles, that cannot be cured by the proper operative measures. For convenience, we may safely divide hemorrhoids into two great classes, external and internal, the former being covered with skin and the latter with mucosa. In the majority of cases we find a combination of the two. Little need be said of the diagnosis. In the majority of cases it is easy, if you do not listen to the patient, but make a thorough examination. Do not rely too much upon the sense of touch, but see them for yourself. -through the speculum if necessary. Of course we must differentiate from carcinoma, fistula, fissure, ulcer, ischio-rectal abscess, prolapse and pruritus. As we all know, this last trouble, pruritus, may be due to many other causes besides the one under discussion. In taking up the discussion of treatment, it should be understood that I am speaking of well developed cases, chronic or otherwise. It is for these that I do unhesitatingly recommend surgical procedures. This does not, however, mean that medicinal treatment is never in order. In the acute stage of any case, I prefer palliative measures for a few hours or days, as the severity of the symptoms indicate. This treatment consists of hot and cold applications, sedative and astringent lotions, salves, ointments, suppositories, etcetera. Where the pile is protruding, if it is not too much inflamed, it is usually reducible. Invert the patient, and after anointing the parts with olive oil, gently press the pile back into the recOne drachm of tincture of opium added to two ounces of warm olive oil, injected into the rectum, often gives great relief. This may be repeated in three or four hours. In only one variety of hemorrhoid should the palliative treatment in the acute stage be omitted, namely, the thrombotic. Here, inject with cocaine, incise and turn out the blood clot, and your patient will be promptly relieved. In chornic hemorrhoids, where the patient refuses operation, the physician has little choice. He must then fall back on sedative and astringent applications, whose name is legion. For the pruritus, so often accompanying these cases, nothing seems to give more universal relief than some preparation embodying the old stand-bys: carbolic acid, camphor and menthol. |