by making a glycerinated extract of spleen from rats, and precipitating it afterwards with alcohol; the protein is then soluble in water. The most minute doses, injected into mice suffering from anthrax, were sufficient to cause recovery from the most virulent form. In the calmest contemplation of this discovery, we must admit that it is extremely full of possibilities of the greatest magnitude. Almost every bacterial disease. if not all of them, find animals in which they have no effect, and 'do not take.' Mr. Hankin had some time ago announced the discovery of these natural protective substances; now he has begun the practical application of them. It needs little thought, and no long discourse on anyone's part, to bring to one's mind the vastness of this achievement. Tuberculosis itself is a disease that some animals do not contract! So is Texas fever, in our country; so is so-called mad-itch in cattle; swine plague, etc., etc. Besides that, it is a great step in advance in the settlement of the question of natural and acquired immunity." Hager's Sign in Diagnosing the Early Stages of Pregnancy. A writer in the Southern Medical Record says "I am now convinced that, in a large majority of cases, it is possible to make a diagnosis of pregnancy during the first six or eight weeks. All the well known symptoms should be taken into account when you are able to elicit them from the patient, but many women have very few, if any, rational symptoms, during the early stage of pregnancy. This sign has never been found where pregnancy did not exist, nor have I ever failed to find it where the body of the uterus could be examined by bi-manual palpation. In the early stage of pregnancy a condition of active hyperemia exists in the uterus, and with the exception of a very slight softening at the external os these changes are principally confined to the body of the organ, causing an enlargement in its transverse diameter, especially the antero-posterior, which is made to project over the cervix. The whole organ under these circumstances very much resembles a fatbellied jug. As the enlargement in the corpus is due to an increase in the amount of arterial blood flowing through it, it is consequently resilient and this resiliency is my main guide in diagnosis. The examination is made in this manner Place your lett hand on the abdomen of the woman and your right index finger in the vagina, and as pressure is made against the corpus with the index finger it is bound to yield. As soon, however, as this pressure is removed the body again springs back to its for. mer shape. In other words, the corpus is resilient. A New Test for Albumen in Urine. A THE following tests have been published by Zouchlos (Rundschau), and are recommended on account of their simplicity and accuracy: A solution of one part of acetic acid and six parts of one per cent. solution of corrosive sublimate is prepared; to this the suspected urine is slowly added, which at once produces a distinct cloudiness. This test is not affected by peptones, uric acid, or the phosphates. still more delicate test than the above has been proposed by Zouchlos: Three ounces of a ten per cent. solution of rhodium potash, with six drams of acetic acid; of this a few drops are added to the suspected urine. If albumen is present, there is at once formed a distinct cloudiness, which is insoluble in excess of the solution.-Virginia Medical Monthly. How to Extinguish Fire. FOR the benefit of our new readers we republish the following from an old number: Take twenty pounds of common salt and ten pounds of sal ammoniac (muriate of ammonia, to be had of any druggist), and dissolve in seven gallons of water. When dissolved, it can be bottled, and kept in each room in the house, to be used in an emergency. In case of a fire occurring, one or two bottles should be immediately thrown with force into the burning place so as to break them, and the fire will certainly be extinguished. This is an exceedingly simple process and certainly worth a trial. Cyanide of Mercury in Diphtheria. COUNT VON VOLMERSTEIN states, in the Kreuz Zeitung, that during the five years he has used cyanide of mercury in the treatment of diphtheria he has not lost a single case, nor has he ever known of a single case proving fatal where the patient was treated according to his directions. If his prescription is taken at an early stage, he says, the disease is cured in two or three days with ease; and even if the illness has reached an acute stage, Mercurius cyanatus is almost invariably effectual. remedy is really a homopathic one, and ishydrargyr. cyanat., 0.1, and spirit dilut., 150.0. A teaspoonful of this preparation should, he says, be mixed with a tumbler of water, and a teaspoonful of the mixture given to the patient every half hour till improvement is shown, when the doses must be gradually reduced. The glass should be covered, and should stand in a vessel of warm water to keep The The agents so combined act conjointly, and give better results and avoid the danger of chloral alone. it tepid. Between the doses give a teaspoonful of tepid milk. Count Recke-Volmerstein declares that he can offer absolute proof of all his assertions. And, indeed, his name and that of the newspaper in which he writes are a guarantee that the remedy of which he writes is at least worthy of consideration.-National which insomnia, delirium, and like symptoms Druggist. [The stock mixture described above would approximate one grain of cyanide of mercury dissolved in three ounces of dilute alcohol. Of this a teaspoonful is to be added to a tumbler of water, and administered as directed above. — ED.] Local Anesthesia.-A Side Issue Worth Knowing. A suspicious character is retailing, in Ontario, a local anesthetic at five and ten dollars. He makes the purchasers sign an agreement to forfeit one hundred dollars if they divulge the secret. He then goes out and sells it to any other person who will buy it. Our subscribers can save their money, as we herewith give it to them: Chloral hydrate, 26 grains; fluid extract belladonna, 10 drops; sulphate atropia, I grain; carbolic acid, 8 drops; muriate cocaine, 18 grains; saturated solution boracic acid, 8 drams. Dissolve well. Then filter.-Dominion Dental Journal. The result is a permanent, clear, amber-colored solution, containing the full proportion of the extracts, entirely avoiding the use of alcohol or other objectionable and incompatiable solvents that soon change the solution and throw down unsightly precipitates, and thus change the relative proportions of the different agents. This solution will compare very favorably with any of the much-vaunted, exorbitant priced preparations that physicians have been more or less in the habit of prescribing. Few remedies have a wider range of action, being readily diffused into the blood, soon eliminated, no profound narcosis, no unpleas. ant after effects, secretions unaffected. Combined with aromatic spirits of ammonia, we get a safe and efficient remedy for alcoholic excesses and other forms of acute mania in are manifest.-E. C. HOOVED in Lancet Clinic. Blood Gravitation in Health and Disease. Perhaps the first observation made by the first man of our race in the science of surgery, was upon the subject of blood gravitation. The first part of the body to receive an injury, was doubtless the hand or the foot, and in his efforts to mitigate the pain consequent upon the inflamed and swollen member, he elevated the limb with relief. From that time to this, the savage and the civilized man alike, have followed this practice, though the circulation of the blood was not dreamed of. The practice was empirical, but philosophical. While suffering with nasal catarrh years ago, I was worried with the occlusion of one nostril the pillow, I found that in less time than it at night in bed, and in turning my head on takes to tell it, the obstructed nostril was open, admitting the free passage of air, while the other one was firmly closed. This I saw was by the gravitation of blood in this erectile tissue. I have often repeated this experiment, and always with the same result. Some years ago, I was called to attend a stout, healthy, youth, of twelve years, who had been struck on the tibia, about the middle, by a base ball. It had produced periostitis, and the most rigid antiphlogistic means had failed to control the inflammation. I finally got a block and tackle, and with a staple in the ceiling elevated the boy's foot almost in a perpendicular direction from the body. The subsidence of the inflammation in the soft part was almost magical. After a week, the foot was taken down and the boy thought to be well; but it was found afterwards that the bone beneath the wound was dead, and it had, of course, to be removed. This boy was on his back ten months. Had the foot been elevated before the periotitis set in, or even before the bone became necrosed, it is almost certain he would not have been confined one-fourth the time. I noticed once a most singular exception to this practice of elevating the foot, which rather confirms than disproves its value. I was called to a confirmed inebriate in convulsions-a man advanced in years-and found some days after my first visit that the wife had applied a mustard plaster to the legs, and had, in the excitement, left it on too long, and serious inflam mation had set in. I at once had the leg elevated, as in the case of the boy, but not with the same result, much to my surprise. Sloughing soon set in, and I found no blood at all got to the affected part, and in looking into the cause of this state of things, I found that the man had valvular disease of the heart, and the organ had no power to send any arterial blood to the elevated foot. The man died. He was a new patient and I before to examine his heart. where elevation should not ticed; but it is "an exception that proves the rule." had no occasion This was a case have been prac The late Dr. John P. Metteauer, of Prince Edward county, Va., had called my attention in a published case to a clinical fact that I thought was important, to wit: that in giving patients with irritable stomachs disagreeable medicine, you should require them to lie upon their right side, so as to gravitate the drug from the cardiac to the pyloric orifice of the stomach, and thus prevent vomiting. I have often tried this experiment and with apparent suceess, sometimes due perhaps to the imagination of the patient; but in considering the anatomy of the stomach, it occurred to me to be very doubtful, if the Doctor's theory was correct. Medicine is given generally in small quantities and on an empty stomach, and it would naturally gravitate towards the great curviture of the organ, some distance from the cardiac orifice. I think the true explanation of this fact, if a fact, is, that there is less blood at the cardiac orifice when the patient lies on the right side, and hence, less irritability of the muscle guarding it. I saw a few days ago a most remarkable case, illustrating this law of gravitation of blood. I was called to see a woman of sound health and good surroundings, who was suffering with intense inflammation of the neck of the blad. der. I had attended her for years, and this was the first attack of the kind. She had passed a good deal of blood, and was in intense agony; could not sit still a minute. Such were her sufferings that I was tempted to relieve her by the catheter, though I knew it would be bad practice. I put her on a lounge and fortunately got a large, hard, hair pillow, and forced her to sit in it and had almost to hold her there a few minutes, with the head and shoulders very low, when to her inexpressible relief, the neck of the bladder relaxed, and she passed her water almost without pain. I gave her medicine which I was satisfied would relieve her before next morning; but when I called next day, I found she was still lying on this hair pillow in bed, and she was afraid to do without it. This case I regard as an im portant one. The bladder is in the centre of the body, and if gravitation plays such an active part in relieving congestion here, and acts so speedily, it is logical to conclude that the intestines and other pelvic organs, would be equally influenced in their congested and inflamed state, by the gravitation of blood, as was the bladder in this case. I have been treating for years a woman with chronic congestion and ulceration of the rectum, and she finds it impossible to lie on the left side with any comfort-due of course, to the gravitation of blood to that side. In cases of flatulency, I think the same rule is good. In this case the gas would naturally gravitate towards the ascending colon, but the increased peristaltic action would be through the vasomotor system. I have thought that the thousands of men and women who have to stand all day upon their feet at business, and who will likely, in after years, suffer from varicose veins, would escape this disability if they would sleep on a double-inclined plane. This can easily be done, by placing a plank three feet long under the mattress at the foot of the bed, raising the feet about twelve inches above the pelvis. In phthisis and pneumonia, I always direct the patient to lie on the opposite side from the congested lung. Where both are diseased, this cannot be done with any success. In liver complaints, I insist that the patient shall lie on the left side habitually. All persons advanced in life, and with a tendency to apoplexy, should lie with the head well elevated. I have no doubt many a man's life would be lengthened many years by attending to this suggestion. I find that a great many persons are not aware of the fact that in wounding of the veins and even the small arteries of the hand, that by elevating the member above the head the bleeding will cease almost at once. Children threatened with brain congestion, should have their heads and shoulders well elevated. I was once called to see a very young infant that had been abandoned by a physician as suffering with hopeless congestion of the lungs. I found that the young and ignorant mother had the chest and head below the line of the pelvis, and the child was being suffocated with the flow of blood to the chest, but on elevating the shoulders and head at a strong angle with the body, the breathing improved and the child speedily recovered. The head and chest of a young infant is so much heavier than the lower half of the body, that their tendency is to sink below the line of the pelvis, and should be guarded against. These facts will, I hope, be sufficient to ac complish the object of this brief paper, to wit: to draw the attention of young physicians to this very practical question. Nature, or the God of nature, has given us a very beautiful suggestion on this subject in the mode of preventing the overflow of blood in the head, not only in man, but more especially in the herbi vorous animals. This, as is well known, is accomplished by the zigzag course of the arteries supplying the head with blood. I have met with men in the profession, and many outside of it, who entertain and preach a kind of pious resignation to the death of a patient or a friend, by arguing that death is the law of our being, and, nolens volens, we must obey. Yet it is well to remember, that our bodies are as much machines as the locomotive or any other construction of man's device; and that the laws of nature apply as certainly to the machine, man, as to any other, and that the bad play of the organs, the under pressure, or friction of its wheels and pulleys, will just as certainly, if neglected, wreck the one machine as the other, and that it is the doctor's duty to detect and prevent these disasters in time. That it is as much his duty to prolong life as to save it, and that the doctrine of "fate" should find no place in his philosophy The man, like the machine, will not live out half his days, if noisy joints and unsteady movements receive not prompt attention. WILLIAM W. PARKER, M. D. Richmond, Va. The Age of Puberty of Indian Girls. Dr. A. B. Holder, of Memphis, Tennessee, says in the American Journal of Obstetrics, that the age of puberty among Indians it is not easy to learn, since it is the custom in most tribes for the girls to marry before the menses appear. A curious result of this custom came under his observation while in medical charge of a tribe in the Northwest. Since the girl menstruates after marriage and its attendant pleasures, the idea prevails in the tribes that the menstrual flow is the result of sexual intercourse. In two instances, Indian men came to me with the complaint that their daughters, in the boarding school at the Agency, had been seduced, as their menses had appeared! Girls in the camp will conceal and deny the flow if it occurs before they have been sold in marriage. It is presumable that the early marriage and consequent sexual excitement, with the entire absence of modesty in Indian thought and conversation, would tend to cause precocious menstruation, and facts establish this impression. Even in the girls who are in school till after puberty menstruation occurs earlier than among white girls in the same latitude. In St. Xavier Mission School, on the Crow Reservation, Montana, containing forty Indian girls, there are none above twelve years of age who do not menstruate. The St. Ignatius Mission School, Flathead Reservation, Montana, contains three to four hundred Indian children, received into the school so young that the ages of the girls can be learned with considerable accuracy. The sister-superior of that institution says that "in general the Indian girls begin to menstruate younger than the white girls, and those who at the age of fourteen have not yet their menses generally die of consumption.' Dr. Holder's most accurate observations were made at an Agency school which was under his personal supervision. Concerning ten girls in it he was enabled to fix positively the ages at which the menses first appeared. These girls were received into the school when quite young, and the record of their ages made at the time is almost certainly correct. Three are half-breeds, seven full-blood Crow Indians. They menstruated as follows: One at 141⁄2 years, one at fourteen years, two at 13 years, three at 12 years, two at 11 years, one at 1023 years. The two at 13 and one at 12 are not yet quite regular. The one at 1023 has menstruated four times at proper intervals. From so few cases it is of course impossible to make reliable deductions. The average for these ten girls is 12.91 years, while, according to the only American statistics (Emmet's), iu the white race the average is 14.23 years. This early average agrees with Dr. Holder's opinion, drawn from other sources and expressed above. It is also in accord with the opinion of such physicians in charge of Indians as have given him their views. The duration of menstruation in the case of rarely exceeding three. They have been rethe above school girls was usually two days, markably free from pain or other unpleasant symptoms on the establishment of the function or at its recurrences.-Med. and Surg. Reporter. Treatment of Membranous Croup. How then shall we proceed to secure its curative effect, since calomel is the remedy? In the first place, let it be remembered it is not to be given in purgative doses, for this would prevent its curative effect. It must be given in a way to secure its permeating and modifying effect upon the circulating fluids and the systemic condition; and to this end it should be given in small doses and frequently repeated. A child from one to three years old, after having a dose of two grains (or even three grains if there has been delay), should be given one grain every hour, promptly, persistently and without fail M,-From half to a teaspoonful two to four hours apart. If there is much febrile excitement, I generally use two or three drops veratrum viride three or four hours apart to restrain the circulation, and in addition to these I use and advise a small blistering plaster over the larynx or upper windpipe. These latter measures are resorted to as precautionary, but the chief reliance is placed in the calomel. During the first hours of this treatment the symptoms may seem to march steadily on towards suffocation, but if properly administered and persisted in, the physician or friends will usually, in the course of twelve or fifteen hours, have the pleasure of observing a marked change for the better in the progress of the symptoms, the sound of the breathing will indicate a growing looseness in the obstruction, and after this, by an effort of the child-a smart struggle, it may be-the accumulation may be forced up into the mouth and may be wiped out, or perhaps may be swallowed, but in either case greatly to the relief of the patient. It is gratifying, aye, it is simply beautiful, to witness the effect of the treatment, the manner in which the obstruction is broken up, and the change from the condition of impending suffocation to that of comparative freedom of respiration. When this occurs the calomel should be discontinued and some action of the bowels procured. There is but little danger of salivation, but it would be preferable to suffocation. I have not known it to occur.-E. F. STARR, M. D., in Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal. Elaterium in Sub-Involution of the Uterus. To cure this disease all engorgement must be removed. The interstices and tubular glands and cells must be emptied of the serum which is constantly accumulating and overflowing, in the form of leucorrhea, as long as the sub-involution exists. This can be done by the application of the elaterium or the squirting cucumber. The attention of the writer was first called to the usefulness of elaterium ten years ago. Cowperthwaite, in his general analysis of the drug, says that it "acts powerfully upon mucous surfaces, causing an enormous flow of watery serum from the first mucous membrane that absorbs it." We reasoned, if elaterium produces that effect, it would be the very thing to remove engorgements of the uterus. But we found on further investigation that elaterium is the most active and certain of known hydrogogue cathartics; causing colic, nausea, vomiting, prostration, and sometimes collapse. We feared the use of the drug on this account, but after reflection concluded that it could be prepared by graduation so that it would produce the flow of serum without causing any of the dangerous or unpleasant effects upon the system. We procured one grain of elaterium and mixed it in the mortar with ten grains of sugar of milk, and then mixed it with one drachm each of glycerine, lard and cocoa-butter, and consolidated by a gentle heat. There was a case of sub-involution which we had been treating for some time according to the old method of applying iodine, glycerine, hydrastis, etc., without any prospect of improvement. The patient was a great sufferer from backache; headache; dragging, heavy, bearing down sensations in the sacrum; constipation, and profuse leucorrhea. We determined to apply the elaterium as prepared, which was done by introducing a bolus about the size of a common playing marble into the vagina and smearing it over and about the cervix. The next morning we were called upon to visit the patient, as she was unable, on account of some obstruction about the meatus urinarius, to pass water. The obstruction was found to be a hardened substance or exfoli ation something like the membrane adhering to the shell of a hard-boiled egg. It adhered tightly to the membrane about the meatus, clitoris, and labia, and required some force to remove it. The same membrane (but not so tough) was found adhering to the vaginal walls, which, when removed, gave an exact mould of the vagina, cervix, os, and cul-de-sac. One would have supposed that the medicine had cooked and destroyed the mucous membrane of the parts, and it had come away leaving the vagina walls like a raw piece of meat, but on exa nination the membrane was found intact, and as clean as could be. We then applied a weak solution of hydrastis, and left the patient comfortable. On visiting her next day, we found more of the pseudo membrane, which showed that the elaterium had not com pleted its work when the former attachment was removed. This additional collection was removed, and more solution of hydrastis applied. The following day (the third) we found the patient feeling much better in every |