ing is entirely clinical, bedside instruction being a prominent feature. Other similar schools have been established in New York and other large cities. It is now possible and necessary for all physicians to keep in frequent touch with the newest developments in medicine and surgery.

SOME NOTES ON THE SWEDISH MOVEMENTS
AND MASSAGE.

BY OTTO R. LOFSTEDT, MEDICAL GYMNAST.

Some physicians have the impression that by Swedish movements are meant ordinary, active gymnastics, and that massage is a kind of magnetic treatment, or perhaps little more than thorough rubbing. Swedish movements and scientific massage, however, are based on accepted physiological laws, and their application is possible only by those who are rightly instructed in these basic principles. The movements have nothing in common with ordinary gymnastics; nor has scientific massage with magnetism or rubbing. Finally, the expert medical gymnast and masseur never claims to cure all kinds of diseases by his methods. He knows this to be impossible, but he also knows there are some diseases which can thus be cured more quickly than by any other means. In most cases, however, to effect a cure, medical treatment must be used in connection with the Swedish movements and massage, just as it is used in appropriate cases in conjunction with electricity, baths, etc.

The question is often asked, who shall apply the auxiliary treatment? The answer to this is that with a little study and practice any physician may become competent to treat neurasthenia, insomnia, acute muscular rheumatism, sprains, etc.

Other cases, such as sciatica, ankylosis of years' standing, chronic constipation, heart disease, or spinal curvature require the attention of a specialist. The medical gymnast who has obtained his training in Sweden, the birthplace of

the system under discussion, has taken a long and arduous course, covering a period of three years, and thoroughly grounding him in anatomy, physiology, pathology, hygiene, diagnosis, principles of the movement treatment, and the use of exercises for general and local development. He is indeed a specialist in his department, and peculiarly fitted to deal successfully with the diseased conditions enumerated, not to the exclusion of the physician, but rather in co-operation with him. The medical gymnast has not only the dexterity, patience, time, and special facilities requisite, but also the advantage of a wide experience which prevents his being discouraged by any apparent lack of success in a given case, this apparent failure sometimes persisting for months. He knows what he has accomplished; he has the confidence born of knowledge and previous satisfactory results.

My own work extending over a period of nine years in Boston, during four of which I have served as masseur and gymnast in the Homœopathic Dispensary's Orthopaedic Department, has made me feel that there is a great need for a more general understanding among physicians of the benefits derivable from a judicious resort to the Swedish movements, with or without scientific massage. Many cases which have come to seem hopeless may often be wholly cured or markedly benefited by these methods. I find that even when they are resorted to, physicians not infrequently make the mistake of recommending their patients to try movement or massage treatment only two or three times a week, on the ground that such patients are too weak to receive treatment oftener. This is a mistake, as the weaker the patient the more frequently should treatment be given, say once or even twice a day. The effect derived from one treatment should not be lost before the next is given. It is the treatment which renews the patient's strength, but when the effect is allowed to wholly pass off a stiff or tired feeling may be experienced, causing the patient to conclude that no benefit is being derived or that actual harm is being done.

It is impossible to report at length the results which have been obtained by the expert use of the Swedish movements, especially in spinal curvature. At my studio I have many photographs of cases of this kind cured in from three to six months, the ages of the patients being even as advanced as twenty years. But my chief desire is to enlarge the acquaintance of the profession by these brief notes, with the genuine assistance in their work derivable through the Swedish movements, and to increase their interest in this scientific and reasonable curative method in properly selected

cases.

AN EXPERIMENT..

SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

Editors of New England Medical Gazette:

I have a good many times told how I was cured of a bad punctured wound in my foot, caused by stabbing a fork tine into it, and how I have many times during the past forty-six years cured such wounds caused by rusty nails, etc., and never a failure, by splitting a common white bean, such as Bostonians cook, and binding the flat, split side dry on the wound. I am willing to warrant a cure. A few evenings since, a young man came into my office and said two or three days before he had stuck a nail into his wrist, near his hand. The hand and wrist were swollen and inflamed. He was in such pain he carried that hand on the other and walked the room, groaning, and the pain extended up the arm to the shoulder. I thought he might have to go to the hospital in the morning. He had poulticed it. I gave lachesis 200 every half hour that evening, and gave him a dose of phaseolus nona tinc.; told him to have another bread and milk poultice, and wet the poultice with the phaseolus. I have not seen him since, but a member of the household told me that he put on the poultice as ordered, went to bed and slept well, and went to work all right the next morning.

A. M. CUSHING.

EDITORIALLY SPEAKING.

Contributions of original articles, correspondence, etc., should be sent to the publishers, Otis Clapp & Son, Boston, Mass. Articles accepted with the understanding that they appear only in the Gazette. They should be typewritten if possible. To obtain insertion the following month, reports of societies and personal items must be received by the 10th of the month preceding.

VIRCHOW.

The death of Professor Rudolph Ludwig Karl Virchow, which occurred in Berlin, September 5, 1902, closed one of the most brilliant careers in medicine of modern times. Several months previous he had been injured in a street accident, after which he never regained his old time vigor. Although this may have served as an exciting cause, his death was due more to the infirmities incident to old age, rather than to any particular disease. Virchow, indeed, must be classed with the immortals, for the great discoveries which he made will remain valuable long after many of the current theories which now stand in medicine have passed from the minds of men.

Professor Virchow was born on October 13, 1821, at Schivelbein, in the Province of Pomerania, Germany. Here he lived until his thirteenth year. At this age he entered the gymnasium of Köslin where, among other accomplishments, he obtained a thorough knowledge of Latin. In 1839 we find him registered at the Friedrich-Wilheim Institute, with the avowed purpose of studying medicine later, which he did. He received his doctorate in 1843, and from then until the time of his death he enriched the science of medicine by his numerous and valuable contributions. His work was valuable, not only for the new truths which he revealed, but for what is of equal importance, the varied suggestive influences which it had.

In the allied sciences anthropology, of which he was a founder, in ethnology, and in public hygiene he was no less distinguished. Add to these his brilliant services as a legis

lator for forty years, where, in matters of education his influence was paramount, and equally as great in shaping the present excellent financial policy of the German Empire, and we have a combination of achievements, any one of which is sufficient to secure for him imperishable fame.

men.

It is, however, by his work in the field of pathological anatomy that he will be best known and revered by medical As a pupil of the great Johannes Müller, his earlier achievements and aspirations were, perhaps, influenced to a great degree by this master mind. Of Müller, Haeckel writes, "he is the only great scientist of modern times who has equally cultivated these two branches of research, anatomy and physiology, and combined them with equal brilliancy.

After his death his vast scientific kingdom fell into four distinct provinces, which are now always represented by four or more chairs-human and comparative anatomy, pathological anatomy, physiology, and the history of evolution." As a result of this sub-division the field of pathological anatomy was cultivated most successfully by the subject of this sketch.

It was another pupil of Müller's, Schwann, who, after the botanist Schleiden had taught that the cell was the elementary organ of all plants, and had shown that the different tissues of plants were simply combinations of cells, extended the investigation to all animal tissues. Schwann's results were published under the title Microscopic Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Plants and Animals. This work gave a new conception to physiology and anatomy, and may well be considered the starting point of our present system of scientific medicine. In 1854 Virchow announced, as a corollary to this great work of Schwann, his Cellular Pathology.

After his graduation Virchow was appointed prosector of anatomy at the Berlin Charité and a lecturer in the University. It was during this period he founded the greatest of all journals dealing with pathological anatomy, Archiv für Pathologische Anatomie, which is now known the world over