Editorial Department. NEWMAN T. B. NOBLES, M. D., Editor. MISS R. H. TOMPKINS, Business Manager. 818 ROSE BUILDING. Published at 818 Rose Bldg., Cleveland, O. Price $1.00 per year Entered as second-class matter at the Post-office at Cleveland, O., under the Aot of Congress, March 3d. 1879. THE DETROIT SESSION. Taking it all in all, we believe we are justified in saying that the outlook for splendid results at the coming Detroit session is more promising than at any former meeting. While the local profession and the citizens of Detroit are making special efforts to assure a most enjoyable time for those who attend, and while the locality and its environs are admirably adapted for rest and recuperation, still after all, the scientific part is the most important. A casual glance over the section programs, will show that the scientific work will be fully up to the high standard of recent years. All of the programs are excellent. Detroit is one of the most attractive cities in this country. It is an ideal city for a summer session, there being always a cool breeze from the nearby lakes and rivers. Belle Isle, the famous park is well worth a long journey to visit. There will be considered, this year, several important subjects. One that has aroused much discussion is the Institute Journal. There seems to have arisen much opposition to the journal, as at present conducted. Not that the journal is not fulfilling its mission; but that at the present time is rather an expensive proposition. Some means will undoubtedly be taken to alter the contract with the publishers so that the expense to the Institute will be substantially lessened. Someone has stated that the policies of the Institute are more or less controlled by a so-called "ring." If this is a fact, it implies an unhealthful condition of affairs which will require the best attention of several doctors to relieve. Politics have no place in the Institute. It rather seems to us that it is the duty of every member to satisfy himself on this particular point. If there is a coterie of men who are self appointed leaders and who dominate the affairs of the Institute they should be shown up and promptly squelched. The best interests of the organization demand that politics be eliminated from the Institute. This year there appears to be an an unusually large crop of candidates for the office of President. The REPORTER feels that all of the candidates are most worthy gentlemen. It is very probable they would fulfill the duties of this important office equally well. Dr. Gaius J. Jones of Cleveland, however, is peculiarly fitted for the position. His life work has been the training of doctors. He has given hundreds of students, for a period of forty years, the best kind of medical instruction. He has sacrificed much in order that his classes might have the best. From far and near has come the cry of "Jones for President of the Institute." The Cleveland alumnae are loyal to their teachers. They and their friends will elect Dr. Jones to this important place and he will honor the position. Dr. Jones is not the "Ring" candidate. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. This alliterative title of one of the most famous of Jane Austen's delightful stories of a century that has passed away well describes the difference between the attitude of the two parties to the present controversy concerning animal experimentation. Both parties are sincere, but sense governs the disputants on one side, sensibility on the other. It is Elinor and Marianne translated from the pages of Miss Austen to the legislative chamber. Sensibility, however, too often becomes impressionability, and causes the heart strings to jangle in faint discords like the Japanese æolian harps we hang in our doorways which reverberate in the slightest breeze or to the feeblest contact. The good, the amiable, but impulsive folk who are crowding the lobbies and committee rooms have sensibilities which are as easily stirred. A zephyr is to them. a tempest. They shut their eyes to the woes of their fellow creatures, but grow pathetic over the poor guinea pigs. With happy inconsistency they weep over the dire fate of the prisoners of the laboratory, but wear hats with waving plumes which tell of despoiled nests and starved birdlings. They weep over the rats and mice, but keep dry eyes for the children who perished of diphtheria and cerebro-spinal meningitis before the days of Behring and Flexner. Their heart strings jangle to the slightest breath of a mouse's squeak, but their ears are deaf to the cry of the children and the exceeding bitter cry of Rachel mourning for her children which are not. What is the empty cradle to them, the little broken toys stowed tenderly away in some carefully guarded nook soon to be swept over and again put out of sight? Thousand of people to-day are perishing of cancer. Two of our great surgeons, men who had devoted their lives to the amelioration of human suffering, died within the year of the same terrible and mortal disease, for which there is no remedy. These people of delicate sensibility would put a ball and chain round the feet of that science which is now in steadfast pursuit of the rider on the pale horse seeking to wrest from him his sharpest dart. What matter is it to them that this form of death involves suffering, physical and mental, the most terrible which the sons and daughters of Eve are ever called upon to bear? One poor woman who dies of cancer of the uterus, or a recurrent cancer of the spinal canal, suffers more agony than the animals in a hundred laboratories. Let us, however, weep for the mice and the rats and cats consigned to untimely graves and turn a dry eye to the men and women of our own race who go down to their graves in darkness, misery and despair. Let Rachel weep for her children, but spare the poor animals even the needle's prick. Disease causes almost as many wrinkles as fashion. Howell "Did you have double pneumonia ?" Powell "I guess so; the doctor charged me twice as much as I thought he would." A distinguished specialist in Washington was called upon a week or two ago by an eminent government official for treatment for a nervous ailment. "The first thing you must do," said the physician, after an examination, "is to give up both smoking and drinking." Whereupon the eminent official became real peevish. "Look here, doctor," he burst out, "now you're talking just like my wife!" "Who," shouted the impassioned orator, "who among us has any cause to be happier than his neighbor on this glorious day of the nation's birth?" A man with his head bandaged and both arms in a sling arose in the rear of the hall, and exclaimed: "The doctors!" 278 Clinical Department. A NOTE ON BARYTA MURIATICA IN THE RESPIRATORY SPHERE.-On several occasions I have been much struck with the power of barium chloride in bronchial affections of old people. Some years ago I first used the remedy in a case of chronic bronchitis and dilated heart, in a patient aged 76, who had run the gauntlet of all the ordinary medicines. I gave it more as a heart tonic than with any idea of helping the bronchitis, when, to my surprise, it markedly relieved the cough by facilitating expectoration, the patient expressing herself as having found more benefit than from any other medicine. Since that time I have used baryta mur. in cases where there is a great accumulation and rattling of mucus, with a difficulty in expectorating it, and it has rarely failed in promoting a free expulsion of phlegm. Just lately I gave the medicine to a lady, aged 79, suffering from recent hemiplegia, with a chronic tracheal catarrh and much rattling of mucus, so that she felt at times as if she would suffocate. The expectoration was scanty, white, and very stringy, and had been helped previously by kali bich., but this now failed to relieve. On giving her baryta mur, 2x trit, every three hours, the mucus was brought away easily in large quantities, and in a few days the constant rattling in the windpipe had completely ceased.-Stanley Wilde, L. R. C. P., L. R. C. S. Edin. OPIUM. The use of this valuable drug in accordance with homeopathic law is one of the best illustrations of the value of the law itself. The effects of opium and of its alkaloid, morphine, are too well known in grosser doses to need a full recital here. It will suffice to cite a few cases cured in the application of our law by the higher potencies of the drug. Mr. E. L. P., past middle life, was found one afternoon in a profound stupor, warm, relaxed, showing no attention to efforts at awakening beyond a surprised way of opening the eyes and murmuring, only to lapse into renewed slumber. It was not natural sleep, nor alcoholism, nor effect of any drug. The pupils were well-contracted and there were movements of both arms and legs, showing absence of paralysis. The patient having previously had a slight cerebral hemorrhage the diagnosis of recurrence, without paralysis, was made, and one dose of opium 200 placed on the tongue; in ten minutes a few drops of the same in solution was given, with swallowing, and prompt return of consciousness, but with marked debility and headache, with throbbing whenever position was changed, especially on lying down. These symptoms persisted for several days, always relieved by the opium 200. The outcome of the case is, of course, uncertain, but the present relief is very real. A child of six months passed into a state of coma following exhaustive diarrhea. Pupils contracted, heat of head, impossibility of rousing attention. Opium c. m. on the tongue helped inside of two hours, followed by cure of the case. A young woman of eighteen years just delivered of her second child after a not severe labor suddenly lost consciousness, with stertorous breathing and eclampsia of a violent type; it looked for a few minutes as if every breath would be her last. Opium 200 on the tongue, every two minutes, restored a normal condition within ten minutes. A case much like this, in which opium was not administered, died on the second day. Without going over any more particular case I will state that I have found opium useful in the 30th and higher potencies in constipation, in retention of urine, in bad dreams or "night terrors," in protracted wakefulness, like that which follows the abuse of morphine and its withdrawal; in the somnolence of fever, with contracted pupils and dry mouth; in the lethargic state that often prevents the chosen remedy for other conditions from acting, and in delirium, with idea of being away from home. The sphere of opium is not large, but exact, and it is a pleasure to see its prompt action when duly indicated.-Edward Crouch, M. D. THUJA is hardly known in general medicine. It has, in poisonous or large doses, produced abortion and gastro-enteritis, and has been found to have a special affinity for warts and condylomata. Thuja was proved by Hahnemann and re-proved by the Austrian provers. Its main influence is on the genito-urinary organs. It produces inflammation of the urethra, and pains in the genital organs, sweat of the genitals, warts and condylomata. There may be pus in the urine, and even sugar. The prostate is inflamed and there is irritation at the neck of the bladder; urine comes in a small stream. Thuja has an affinity for acrid leucorrhea. The periods are scanty and tend to come on too soon; there is pain in the left ovary, worse on the first day. Burning pains and itching round the anus, fig warts and condylomata. Dr. Dudgeon proved thuja on himself, and it produced an acute urethritis resembling gonorrhea. In the skin thuja causes warts, tuberous growths, and papillomata. It has been used for warts and new growths in the skin, even for epitheliomata. It may be applied locally to warts as well as given internally. Marshal Radetsky was cured of cancer in the thigh by means of thuja. Brown stain of the skin. It has some relation to small-pox, having produced a pustular eruption resembling that of small-pox, for which complaint it was first used by Boenninghausen. Dr. Burnett disclosed a close relationship between thuja and vaccinosis, especially chronic disorders resulting from vaccination. Its relationship to gonorrhea and to warty growths has placed thuja in the front rank of antisycotics. Gonorrhea is considered to be a true chronic miasm which corresponds to the sycosis of Hahnemann, and Dr. Allen holds that vaccination is a means of spreading this sycotic taint through the community, and that when thuja antidotes the effects of vaccination, it does so through its antisycotic powers. As illustrating the value of thuja in cases of vaccinosis, Dr. Wheeler related the case of a child suffering from long-standing eczema of a very severe type, which first appeared shortly after vaccination, and to whom thuja 30 was given with immediate beneficial result. At the end of a week thuja was given again in a much lower dilution, with the result that a violent aggravation of the eczema occurred. On leaving off the thuja the aggravation subsided, and the eczema was in a short time entirely cured. Thuja is in the main a left-sided remedy. It is a chilly remedy. The symptoms are worse in the morning after rising, worse for wet and cold. It will produce rheumatism similar to gonorrheal rheumatism, affecting most the larger joints, which creak and are worse from warmth. The movement of extension in the joints is hindered. The patient is cachectic or waxy-looking. He has dreams of falling. The secretions are offensive, especially the sweat, notably the sweat on the genitals. The pains are apt to be in small limited spots, e. g., the "headache as if a nail driven in." The catarrhs of mucous membrane are of a chronic character, as they are also in the subjects of gonorrhea. The mind is dejected, morose, quarrelsome; fixed ideas. The pains in the head are frontal or occipital, in spots, mostly left-sided, and are better in the open air. Scurfiness of the scalp. In the eye, conjunctivitis, tumors of the eyelids. Clinically it has been found useful in syphilitic iritis. Polypus of the meatus of the ear. Chronic catarrh of the nose with greenish and fetid discharge. In the teeth, the base of the teeth close to the gums is the part that decays; pyorrhea alveolaris. Epulis. Ranula. Condylomata and mucous patches in the throat. No appetite for breakfast and unpleasant taste in the mouth. Dr. Cooper hs worked out its sphere in gastro-intestinal disorders, and finds thuja indicated in dyspepsia in which there is flatulence, pain after food, sinking sensation at epigastrium before food, thirst, a clean tongue, and constipation. Dr. Clarke finds its sphere in dyspepsia the result of tea-drinking, and considers it an antidote for tea-poisoning in general. Thuja has been employed for polypus of the vocal cords, and also for asthma which is the result of chronic disease and where there is associated thirst.-British Homeopathic Review. |