greatly to the practical value of the volume, and we are sure such an authoritative work on these subjects has never before been published.

THE TREATMENT OF FRACTURES; WITH NOTES ON A FEW COMMON DISLOCATIONS. By Charles L. Scudder, M. D., Surgeon to the Massachusetts General Hospital. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Octavo of 563 pages, with 739 original illustrations. Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders & Company, 1905. Polished Buckram, $5.00 net; Half Morocco, $6.00 net.

There is no subject upon which the general practitioner so often needs clear and concise directions than when he is called upon to take charge of a fracture. It may be that he does not have enough of such work to keep him in touch with the latest methods of treatment and if results are not perfect, he may find that he has rendered himself liable to recovery of damages on account of having failed to properly treat the case. This is just such a book as the general practitioner wants. The fact that it has passed through five editions in as many years proves that it is popular and appreciated. Fifty new illustra tions have been added to the present edition, the text has been carefully revised, and new matter added throughout. Important changes have been made in the treatment of fractures of the neck of the femur, bringing this part of the book in accord with the latest advances. The 739 illustrations do what they should-they illustrate, showing the reader just what is intended. Undoubtedly this feature has aided greatly in the success of Dr. Scudder's work.

TO REMOVE RUST FROM INSTRUMENTS.

The instruments are placed over night in a saturated solution of stannous chloride, which causes the spots to disappear by reduction. The articles are then rinsed in water, laid in a hot solution of soda soap, and dried. It is well to rub them with absolute alcohol and prepared chalk. Another convenient method for removing rust is to lay the instruments in kerosene. Paraffin oil is the best preservative against rust, and the most convenient way of applying it without getting an unnecessarily thick coating is as follows:

One part of the oil is dissolved in 200 parts of benzine, and the objects, after being thoroughly dried and warm, are plunged into the solution. Instruments with joints, as scissors or needle-holders, are worked in the fluid, so as to cause it to penetrate into all crevices, and the benzine is then allowed to evaporate in a dry room.-Pharmaceut

isches Zentralblatt.

Cleveland Medical and Surgical Reporter.

Contributions are solicited upon any subject connected with the practice of medicine or the allied sciences, and the only restrictions placed upon them are that they shall be free from personalities and given to the REPORTER exclusively. The Editors of the REPORTER are not responsibl for any opinion expressed by contributors.

Vol. XIII.

OCTOBER, 1905.

Original Articles.

"HOMEOPATHY.”

No. 10.

By Gaius J. Jones, M. D., Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Clinical
Medicine, Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College.

I wish to say something in regard to Homeopathy this morning. I have spoken somewhat on the other varieties of treatment and I want to explain in as simple a manner as I can the system in which I have the most confidence.

It is not to be supposed that Homeopathy is going to remove 'mountains. In ordinary practice, that is, in general medical practice, you ought to be able to relieve four cases out of five, if not nine out of ten, that you are called to treat, by the homeopathic remedy-much better than you can in any other way. It is time that we learned again the lesson of the old master. It is a singular thing that we soon forget. or else we fail to learn the important lessons which are to be learned by all of us.

I belong to a generation in advance of yours. You have not had the opportunity of witnessing the effects of drug treatment which I have, and the lessons which were taught by the physicians who had abandoned that method of prescribing and taken up something far more desirable. It is so all through our lives. We see the son of a miser, a spendthrift; the son of a spendthrift, putting away his money. in a little bank and gradually accumulating property. We find that many of the sons of the careful homeopathic prescribers become careless and are inclined on account of their lack of knowledge and lack of personal experience in regard to the evil effects of drugs to be lax in prescribing, and do that which their fathers would have avoided. But there is still hope for the grandson. He may return to the methods of his grandfather; he may see the evil of this promiscuous method of prescribing.

A lecture delivered to the Senior class of the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College, session 1904-1905.

It is not such a difficult matter to take up the study of Homeopathy, to learn the pathogenesis of the remedies which we are required to use. I think that students are inclined to imagine that it is exceedingly difficult to arrive at a conclusion in regard to the proper remedy. It is not so. You can become acquainted with remedies as you become acquainted with your associates. By mingling with them you learn to understand them and to recognize every sound of their voice; every footstep indicates who is coming. And so if you learn the pathogenesis of a reasonable number of drugs you can see almost in the physiognomy of the patient what remedy is called for.

I was requested by my preceptor, or rather the physician whoafterwards became my preceptor, to read a book, which I practically committed to memory-Hempel's Materia Medica. It was first published in about 1863. It has been revised and was re-published in 1880 by Chas. J. Hempel, and this has been revised since by Dr. Arndt. The book contains a course of lectures by Hempel taken verbatim. I have not time to quote anything except in regard to the proving of a remedy with which you are familiar. The author takes up the question of proving and then he collects all the cases of poisoning that he can get and eliminating in that way those symptoms which would be considered valuable by many writers. He has quite a number of cases of poisoning by Aconite. Here are several cases:

A boy ate some of the leaves of Aconite instead of parsley. Twohours after, he complained of a burning sensation in the mouth, throat and stomach, followed by swooning and death. A post-mortem inspection showed that the cerebral vessels were enormously distended with a dark-colored fluid; a deep inflammatory blush extended over the mucous surface of the stomach, with dark-colored patches.

A young man ate the leaves of Aconite by mistake. Two minutes after eating the leaves, the patient experienced burning heat in the mouth, throat, gullet and stomach, with a sensation of swelling of the face, general feeling of numbness and creeping of the skin, restlessness, dimness of sight, stupor and partial insensibility and death.

Pereira relates the following case of poisoning by Aconite in his Elements of Materia Medica: A man, his wife and child, ate some roots at dinner by mistake for horse-radish. The greater portion was eaten by the man at about two o'clock in the afternoon. Three-quarters of an hour after eating the roots, the man complained of burning and numbness of the lips, mouth and throat, which soon extended to the stomach, and was accompanied by vomiting of his dinner, and afterwards of a frothy mucus. His extremities were cold, but has chest was warm; his head was bathed in a cold sweat; his eyes were glaring; there was excessive trembling and violent pains in the head; the lips were blue; there were no spasms, cramps, or convulsions; his breathing was not affected; he died apparently in a fainting stateabout four hours after dinner.

!

The woman was similarly affected; the same burning and numbness of the lips, mouth, throat, and stomach; violent vomiting; curious sensation of numbness in the hands, arms, and legs; she lost the power of articulating; her attempts to speak were attended with unintelligible sounds only; she experienced great muscular debility, was unable to stand; some of the external senses were disordered; though her eyes were wide open, her sight was very dim, and the surrounding objects were seen indistinctly; sensibility greatly impaired; face and throat almost insensible to the touch; she was very dizzy, but neither delirious nor sleepy; body and extremities cold; she frequently pulled her throat, but knew not why; five or six hours afterward she began to recover.

We have had quite a number of cases of death from Aconite in this city, one case in particular which proves the necessity for accurate writing of prescriptions. This gentleman procured for his child a 2 dr. phial of the tincture of Aconite, and the instructions were to place ten drops in half-glass of water and to give a teaspoonful every hour. It seems that he went home, put ten drops of the medicine in half a glassful of water, but gave a teaspoonful of medicine from the bottle and in a few hours the child was dead. A suit for malpractice was instituted against the physician. It was a very unjust verdict, but he was obliged to pay a large sum of money. He was not a homeopathic physician, but a man who is practicing here at the present time.

Those cases that recover bring about a reaction, in which there is increased heat, which must necessarily follow a condition of that kind. This chill and cyanotic condition are similar to that we get in the onset of a fever. We get it in pneumonia especially, a marked chill, with restlessness and coldness of the extremities. It not only covers the symptoms of fever, but the symptoms which precede that. If we have positive evidence in a case that this drug will produce such symptoms we prescribe for similar symptoms and we get relief. We have cause for belief that the homeopathic theory is correct. I have prescribed this remedy when those symptoms are present and the symptoms have disappeared and I do not care how many advise me in regard to other remedies. All you have to learn is how a drug affects a person and the characteristic symptoms of that drug and then prescribe it in the proper dose. But you never can succeed if you expect to cure symptoms which are similar to those produced by large doses of Aconite if you give too large a dose. If the drug produces it in large doses it certainly will aggravate in similar doses.

I regret to see some of our men carrying only the tinctures in their cases. They cannot expect to succeed in that way. Some of the remedies will act quite as well in that strength, but the great majority

of them will fail. For instance, you take a case of persistent vomiting, the picture of Ipecac. From the cold sweat and almost collapse, the feeble pulse, and the constant nausea you see that it is a perfect picture of Ipecac. Do you suppose that you can cure that case by giving the tincture or crude drug? Good sense would teach you better. You must give a dose that will not aggravate.

Take Sulphur, for instance. You have all inhaled the fumes of sulphur and have been obliged to go out of the room on account of it. If you have a cough like that and you want to cure it with Sulphur because it is the indicated remedy, do you suppose you can do it with the tincture? You would say that the system is wrong and the remedy not indicated. You turn to another remedy perhaps, of equal strength, and fail. The practice of Homeopathy must take with it the small dose if you wish to succeed. I do not expect that you will always give the 30th or the 200th. That I am not insisting upon, but you must give most of your remedies as high as the 3rd if you wish to succeed and in many cases you can go higher than that with profit.

The characteristic symptoms. as you notice here, of a drug correspond and point to a pathological condition. That is what I claimthat every symptom indicates some change. We do not always recognize those changes. We may not be able to recognize those changes even after death. We cannot tell what kills a person when he dies in an epileptic convulsion. He may have had epilepsy for years and it was not known what produced it. So you may notice symptoms which are characteristic of a certain disease and prescribe remedies accordingly. You cannot be positive of the actual pathological change. On the other hand, the tendency of the materialists of to-day is to consider the body as a something which is a compound of inorganic substances. They treat it in a chemical manner, regardless of the lifegiving power which produced it and gives to it the power which makes the individual not an inanimate being but a living animal. You cannot put chemical substances into the stomach and expect the same results that you would obtain if you should put them into another receptacle where other chemicals are mixed and ready to be acted upon. The contents of the stomach, the contents of the intestines and the secretion of the glands are all affected by the mental state of the individual.

Take one remedy, then two, then three, and go on up to ten or twenty-five and study them thoroughly so that you have their principal characteristics in mind and then prescribe. I think there is a general fear that the remedy may not be the proper one, and therefore, it is often thought that it would be better to give two or more.