One of the most important symptoms of tuberculosis is a rapid low tension pulse (80 to 100), especially with a small heart and in people from 20 to 40 years old. A daily rise of temperature above 99 is confirmatory.

Diabetes is a disease of low tolerance for carbohydrates. Ascertain the patient's capacity for absorption of burnt-up grape sugarits appearance in the urine-and see that he does not exceed it. Let the suspect take 100 grammes of sugar in water an hour after breakfast and if sugar is found in the urine put him on a diet.

The diabetic patient can not secure the full value of his food. Total exclusion of carbohydrates from a diabetic's diet is dangerous as well as unnecessary. If suddenly withdrawn diabetic coma

may ensue.

Fresh raw potato has only one third as much starch as bread, and often can be better taken by patients; may be it makes a more easily burned sugar.

For the diabetic thirst give lemon juice in water with cream of tartar or a little saccharin.

For acetonuria give 20 or 30 grammes of sodii bicarb. daily until the urine is alkaline.

For morning vomiting-of drinkers-give Cuprum met. 4th trit, before meals.

Castor equii is good for cracked nipples, fissured fingers, friable splitting nails and warts. Apply the trituration in 5 parts of lanoline with 29 parts of vaseline. This remedy should be studied in cases of coccygeal pain.

JOHN E. WILSON, M.D.

Medical Progress.

CONDUCTED BY
AND

WALTER SANDS MILLS, M. D.

An Early Sign of General Paresis.-E. Toulouse and Cl. Vurpas at the 13th Congress of Alienists, held at Brussels, have called. attention to the new sign of Paresis, viz., that it modifies the pupillary reflex to Eserine and Atropine. In the latent portion of the disease the reaction to these drugs does not appear at all; in the time of reaction, or at the later period of the disease, a few drops of either drug will produce a maximum effect in a short time. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, April, 1904.

Syphilitic Convulsions.—A man, 34 years of age, suffered from convulsions of syphilitic origin. For five months preceding he had shown a remarkable tendency to sleep. This somnolence apparently replaced the characteristic headache so frequent and diagnostic in such cases. Other prominent symptoms following the convulsions were profound stupor and motor aphasia. reason was probably extensive syphilitic endarteritis of the cerebral arteries, without thrombosis or embolism, but possibly with spasm of the arteries. Under appropriate treatment the patient entirely recovered.-BENNET, in British Medical Journal,

The

Metastatic Carcinoma of the Meninges.-Westenhoeffer reports a case of a woman, 29 years of age, upon whom a clinical diagnosis has been made of retroperitoneal tumor, paralysis of the abducens and serous cerebro-spinal meningitis. The autopsy and succeeding microscopical examination threw light upon the case. There was a diffuse infiltrating cancer of the stomach, with metastases in the retroperitoneal glands, the liver and the pancreas as well as the meninges. The colon bacillus was found in the brain and in the other organs, the distribution of the germ being probably antemortem.-Virchow's Archiv, Vol. 175, 2.

New Sign of Basilar Meningitis.-Squires found this sign invariably present in cases of Basilar Meningitis as early as the fourth or fifth day of the disease. This sign consists in the rhythmical contraction and dililation of the pupils when the head is manipulated as follows: Place child's head between knees of the observer with the face up, with body supported; grasp sides of child's head with each hand, and produce gradual and forcible extension of the head on the spinal column. As the head is brought back in extension the pupils will begin to dilate simultaneously with the extension, and by as much as it is extreme so great will be the dilation. On the other hand upon flexion the pupils contract so that when the chin is forcibly brought to the manubrium the pupils are well closed. SQUIRES, in Medical Record, March 26, 1904.

Neurasthenia a Pathological Entity.-Edes asserts that, without straining the facts, it is possible to look upon neurasthenia as a real entity and not merely as a name invented to gloss over a want of classification. Neurasthenia is a state of diminished energy of the nervous centres, especially the highest psychical, closely akin to ordinary fatigue, of which it is indeed a higher development, but so extreme as to have become different in kind, that is, in incapacity for rapid restoration under favorable circumstances and in time in some measure corresponding to that taken in its development. If this definition is accepted it follows that the causes of neurasthenia must be various. The author reviews a number of the principal causes which have been alleged to be the origin of the affection and asserts that too often the physician's special idiosyncrasy is apt to carry the day.-Boston Med. and Surgical Journal, March

3, 1904.

A rapid method of diagnosing (chronic) plague in animals is badly needed. Any or all domestic animals suffer from the plague; pigs may have it for weeks without betraying any symptoms, even with a temperature of 103° or higher. Turkeys may live 44 days after being infected; ducks, 54; geese, 35; sheep, 34. During all this time they may be a source of infection through their flesh, feces, urine and the parasites which inhabit their skin or its covering. Rats are not the only carrier of the infection, and probably are not the principal one. A fowl, with a temperature of 107°, will eat its food. Pigeons, bats, crows, monkeys and marmots may have the plague. The only reliable test is pyrexia.

NORTH AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF HOMEOPATHY

Original Articles in Medicine.

Ο

SOME FAMOUS CRIMES AND CRIMINALS.*

SIDE LIGHTS, AND PSYCHICAL STUDIES.

THE WEBSTER-PARKMAN CASE.

BY GEORGE WHEELOCK GROVER, A. M., M. D.

Sheffield, Mass.

N Friday, the 23d of November, 1849, at about ten minutes past one, P. M., Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes finished his lecture on Anatomy, at the Harvard Medical College, Grove street, Boston. Fifteen years later it was my privilege to hear the genial professor deliver a lecture on the same subject, at the same hour, on the same spot.

As I passed down those stairs, in the company of scores of bright young men, and walked along the lower hall, I could not but ask myself the question, as we swept by the door on our right, between the bottom of the stairs and the outer entrance, Suppose that door had been a trifle ajar on that November morning of 1849, or had one of those young men that were rushing by been impelled to stop and listen a moment, what would he have seen or heard?

The sight that he would have witnessed would have been of one man prostrate on the floor, another standing over him with a piece of broken grapevine in his hand.

When the Medical School connected with Harvard University

*This article is reprinted from advanced sheets of a book on this subject, to be published shortly for the writer.

occupied the old building on Grove street, the chemical laboratory was situated just under the anatomical lecture room.

John White Webster, who was professor of chemistry in 1849, had occupied the chair for about twenty-five years, and was indebted for his appointment, largely, if not entirely, to the friendly influence of Dr. George Parkman. The man upon the floor that November day was George Parkman; the man standing over him was John White Webster. Dr. Parkman was dead; Professor Webster had killed him.

What was the meaning of this strange crime? What were its effects on the man who committed it? As we trace this deed backward into the life and mind of the man who brought it to pass, what did it do to that man himself?

Dr. George Parkman was a peculiar type of man, seldom seen outside of Scotland, England and New England, not frequently even there. Men, like fruits, exhibit qualities that vary, according to the localities where they ripen. Your hard headed philanthropist develops best in the land of the sterile soil and bleak, cold climate.

When the world needs conquerors or reformers nature, or God, says, "Look for a man with a big lower jaw." This Parkman had. There was energy enough manifest in the lower portion of his face to drive his purposes through any amount of resisting material. Widen out his head between the ears, and you would have a Brigham Young, on the whole, the ablest executive personality the nineteenth century brought forth-and it brought forth Napoleon. Push his eyes farther front and make them fuller at the outer lid and you would have more of the Andrew Carnegie sort.

For one, I like such men: as friends, they know how to love; as enemies, they know how to hate.

The dead man had been a liberal benefactor of the medical school for a generation; he had contributed largely toward the erection of the very building in which he was killed. He established the chair of Anatomy, then filled by Prof. Holmes; the "Parkman Professor of Anatomy" is the designation by which it is known to this day.

The characteristics of such a man need not be dwelt upon: generous, magnanimous, loyal and true; treat him honorably, appeal to his kindness, be true to him, and the stars are not more stable than his friendship; deceive him, try to cajole, let him see that you have counted on the fact of his being more or less of a fool, then beware! the current of his wrath will be Niagara-like in its volume and power of destruction.

All this Prof. Webster had done; all this Dr. Parkman knew. that Prof. Webster had done; and Prof. Webster was aware that Dr. Parkman knew it.

The Webster crime, so far as the events leading to it are concerned, may be described in one word-extravagance. This one word reveals the secret of those sad years wherein Prof. Webster seemed to work hard, but accomplish little; a brilliant man, an able chemist, social, agreeable, moving in refined society, received as a peer by kingly men; yet he was always handicapped in some way, his faculties under an eclipse that threw a gathering darkness into his life.

Not many years had elapsed ere this trait was recognized; then began the anticipation of income, the borrowing from friends, the vexation of spirit, the irritability of disposition that sorely tried the patience of friends. Through these years-and they were many—Dr. Parkman had been such a friend as it is not given to one man in a thousand to possess. Time after time he raised money, accepted notes, listened to excuses worn threadbare from constant use; showing all the time that last and most decisive test of the genuineness of friendship, that of an impatient man exhibiting patience, a stern, just man manifesting charity.

This went on so long that the one that did the leaning seemed to suppose that the prop would be always there; and perhaps it might, had not Prof. Webster, heedless and demoralized, made. the single fateful error that a proud man never pardons. He lied to his benefactor, and his lies were of such a quality as indicated lack of preparation. He did not seem to think it essential to put together his garment of falsehood; he flung the loose parts down before Dr. Parkman with an air of saying, "There they are; they would not deceive anybody but a fool, but they will answer for you."

The climax came when Prof. Webster gave a valuable cabinet of minerals to Dr. Parkman as security for a loan, and then repeated the transaction with a mutual friend whom Dr. Parkman saw every few days. As a matter of course, the chapter of accidents soon brought the matter to Dr. Parkman's knowledge, and that was the beginning of the end.

When he discovered how his forbearance had been abused, Dr. Parkman lost no time; he called at the college on Monday, November 19, and told the Professor that something must be done at once, that he would wait no longer, that he knew him as he was, at last, anything but an honest man. Dr. Webster did