Dietetic Value of Pineapple Juice.

Some time ago the late Dr. V. Marcano, of Venezuela, noted that pineapple juice contained a proteid digesting substance. Recently Prof. R. H. Chittenden, assisted by Messrs. E. P. Joslin and F. S. Meara, have investigated the matter fully, and announce facts which are likely to give to the succulent pineapple a prominent place in dietetics.

Pineapple juice is an acid fluid of specific gravity of 1.043. An ordinary pineapple yields 600 to 800 cubic centimetres of it. The proteid-digesting power is quite remarkable in its intensity. Three ounces of the juice will dissolve ten or fifteen grains of dried albumin in four hours. The action takes place in acid, neutral, or even alkaline media, thus resembling trypsin more than pepsin. It acts best in neutral solutions. The pineapple juice contains also a milk-curdling ferment.-Med. Age.

Camphoric Acid for the Night-Sweats of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Probably there is nothing so unpleasant or aggravating in tuberculous patients as the profuse sweating that occurs either in the morning or during the entire night. The depression following it does not seem to be due to the sweating itself, but rather to the effects of a gradual increase in the quantity of carbonic acid gas in the blood, incident to the difficult interchange of gases in consequence of the pulmonary affection. It is well known that in normal respiration the blood does not contain so continuously a high percentage of carbonic acid gas as will cause a less sensitive condition of the centers governing respiration. But in pulmonary tuberculosis, when the energy used in the daily exertions, from excessive coughing or other physical causes, more than exceeds the supply of energy and nutrition that can be furnished by the body, the respiratory centers are greatly depressed, and are not stimulated so quickly by a percentage of carbonic acid gas that normally would affect those centers. The centers presiding over the functions of the sweat-glands, not being affected by the physical causes, respond to the increased stimulation and pour forth their secretion abundantly. The proper therapeutic mode of combating this functional perver

sion would seem to be to use such a drug as shall stimulate the respiratory centers, and thereby cause the elimination from the blood of more carbonic acid gas, and in this indirect manner act as an anhidrotic.

Camphoric acid seems to effect this object with less derangement and more satisfactory and lasting results than any other drug. This remedy is best given in doses of twenty grains from four to six hours before the period of sweating is expected. The best method of administration is dry on the tongue, and washed down with a little water. The taste of the drug is not unpleasant; neither does it produce the gastric irritation so frequently experienced with many medicinal agents used under like conditions.

Cases are given in detail illustrative of the effects of the remedy.-J. Wood, in Phil. Med. News.

The Decadence of the Graduation Thesis.

The Progres medical and the Gazette des hospitaux are favoring the discontinuance of the custom of requiring a graduation thesis from candidates for the Paris medical decree. There is much to be said for and against the requirement. We are under the impression that it was done away with several years. ago by the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the action of the school does not seem to have worked to anybody's disadvantage.-N. Y. Med. Jour.

Drainage after Laparotomy.

Dr. Rufus B. Hall advocates drainage after all cases of abdominal section. He believes drainage as now used is a comparatively harmless procedure. He uses only the small perforated tube suggested by Dr. Price, and has never seen harm result from it. In two cases in which hernia resulted in the line of the cicatrix, it was at some distance from the point of drainage.—Med. Record.

FORMULA.

Memphis Medical Monthly

[FORMERLY MISSISSIPPI Valley Medical MONTHLY.]

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F. L. SIM, M.D., EDITOR,
Memphis, Tennessee.

UNNATURAL LOVE.-We have purposely avoided giving any account of the case of unnatural love and its not infrequent sequence-homicide-that occurred a short time back in Memphis. Nor do we now propose to indulge in any remarks intended to apply directly to this case. The laity, especially such as are connected with the newspaper arena, often promulgate very curious ideas in regard to insanity, in whatever channel it may run, whether it be harmless, suicidal, or homicidal. They appear to draw no lines of demarkation, and, as of old, regard insanity as synonymous with depravity, viciousness, willfulness and ungovernable passion. In consequence, that class of unfortunates who are dominated by a nuptial love for one of their own sex, and consequently commit suicide or, homicide on account of disappointment, are too often regarded as the subjects of depraved sexual appetites and disintegration from indulgence.

In the case of Miss Tipton, who shot herself at her home in Altamount (an account of which we publish below), there appears no evidence of any but the purest and noblest-but unnatural-affection for her affiancee. Indeed, this class of suicidal and homicidal insane could hardly be otherwise than free from sexual debauchery, as the latter would weaken all, in lieu of accelerating the functional activity of a part of the brain cells, and thus develop mental torpidity and cultivate the animal propensities at the expense of the brain, humble and lower the individual, and rob him or her of the normal pride which forms the safeguard of persons and of society. In the VOL. XII- 15

sub.

mental alienation of that class to which Miss Tipton properly belonged, with its suicidal and homicidal tendencies, morbid sensibility is rendered keenly acute. Many, if not all such neuropathies occurring in the female, during adolescence, are, we believe, purely psychical, due entirely to original brain pathologies, wholly unconnected with and consequently etiologically uninfluenced by sexual debauchery in any of its forms. On the other hand, the nymphomaniac and the erotomaniac (conditions regarded as one by some of our best authors,) are as a rule, persons without pride, resentment, or lofty aim, and without just appreciation of the normal, life-lasting, God-given connubial affection that rests life and all that life is, in this direction, upon the love which but obeys the scriptural injunction in relation to sexuality, "Multiply and replenish the earth." Connubial love, uncontaminated with the depravity of an ungoverned appetite, is, without doubt, psychical in origin, is perpetuated by the brain, and is subject to mental control. It is a normal affection emanating from the healthy brain, and the sexual organs are in abeyance to the moral tendencies of the mind and its will power. The degenerate in mind, by reason of natural or unnatural sexual over-indulgence, should alone form, and do properly form, the class whose infirmity is due to nymphomania in the female and satyriasis in the male, or erotomania in either. It is not proper, therefore, that such neuropathics should be aligned with those who suffer from mental alienation due to other causes and having a psychical origin. The class to which Miss Tipton and the Memphis girls properly belong, presents an insanity without evidence of sexual depravity. Indeed, all such who reached a point of high-handed destructiveness have left evidences of purity of character and freedom from sexual depravity that is convincing to those who have devoted any considerable thought to the condition. They show other etiological factors, factors entirely distinct, originating with the brain, and, in many instances, involving pathological atavism, or perhaps direct heredity. Such persons as those alluded to, should be regarded as insane primarily, and under the guide of ideational cells unequal to the necessities of the subject, follow devious and unnatural lines of thought and affection-anomalous feelings