The Protean Forms of Grip. Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-Is there any proper name for the sickness that is so prevalent this winter? The cases we have mostly in adults come on with chills and severe aching pains through the body, severe gastro-intestinal pains to start with, temperature 102° to 105°, and in adult females they usually terminate with genito-urinary troubles, and especially where there is a foul breath and rough coating of tongue they linger three to four weeks. They all show a red tongue, especially the point and edges, with excess of water on point of tongue and sides. B. PHILLIPS. KELLOGG'S RED DROPS. Take of Spirit of camphor Spirit of origanum Oil of sassafras. Oil of turpentine . Color mixture (about). Mix.-Pharmacist and Chemist. GROVE'S TASTELESS QUININ. This antifebrile powder is represented to be made from pure P. & W. quinin, 1 grain of which is equivalent to 1 grain of the pure sulfate. It really is practically tasteless, provided it is not followed by an acid or spirituous liquid, by which a bitter taste is developt. Chemists testify to the fact that the powder does not contain quinin as claimed. We may report on this Current Medical Thought. The Medicinal Properties of Onions. According to the Manitoba and Northwest Canada Lancet, onions are a kind of all-round good medicine. A whole onion eaten at bedtime will, by the next morning, break the severest cold. Onions make a good plaster to remove inflammation and hoarseness. If an onion is masht so as to secure all the juice in it, it will make a most remarkable smelling substance that will quiet the most nervous person. The strength of it inhaled for a few moments will dull the sense of smell and weaken the nerves until sleep is produced from sheer exhaustion. Is Diabetes Contagious? M. Ledieu answers this question in the affirmative in his thesis of the faculty of medicine of Paris. He bases his opinion on cases of conjugal diabetes, as well as on those of persons becoming diabetic as a consequence of daily intercourse with diabetics, or handling things made use of by them. He enumerates these cases of contagion of diabetes which have for the most part been already publisht in the recent work of M. Boisameau.-N. Y. Med. Jour. The Influence of Coitus with White Men in Inducing Sterility in Aborginal Women. Dr. Sarsfield Cassidy, of New South Wales (Medical Council), says that it is well known in that country and establisht beyond doubt that an aboriginal native woman of Australia will never bear children to an aborignal man after she has once had offspring by a white man. It has been tried in vain to find an instance where the aboriginal woman, having returned to the black man's camp, though sound in mind and body and absolutely free from any disease whatever, and having lived there with black men whose power of reproduction was beyond dispute, did not nevertheless remain absolutely barren. If, says Dr. Cassidy, the diseases of civilized life were communicated to the woman before her return to the gunyah of the black man, thereby placing her hors de combat in the work of reproduction, the problem might be easily susceptible of solution; but it has been proved, he says, over and over again that the women being absolutely sound and the man entirely able, no results follow their union even under the most favorable circumstances. Should she, however, return among white folks, she conceives with evident ease. The black man does not taboo her during her stay with him, but, on the contrary, on account of her mixing with the whites, he treats her with special friendship and ardent affection. Such is also the case on the west coast of Africa, where the black woman who has lived with a white man is especially favored by the native males. Menstrual Troubles and Heart Disease. Dr. Guilmard (Revue Médicale), has just publisht a work demonstrating the influence of heart disease on the menstrual function, which influence has been denied. Mitral stenosis is found to be most often a cause of dysmenorrhea, menorrhagia and metrorrhagia. Next in order come mitral insufficiency and disease of the aorta. He is said to have establisht the fact that menstrual troubles of cardiac origin are met with in more than half the cardiopathic patients, the cardiac trouble being first manifested at puberty. If the young girl is affected with simple mitral stenosis, which is the most frequent cardiac affection at this age, the lesion has in most cases remained unnoticed up to this time. The establishment of menstruation is difficult, and, according to Mathieu, there are often excessive losses, amounting to veritable metrorrhagia, with dysmenorrhea. These symptoms commonly attract attention to the generative organs rather than to the heart, if there is not at the same time chlorosis. One should not, therefore, make a hasty diagnosis without carefully auscultating the heart. After some regular menstruations, or even at times after the first three, supervenes a period of several months of amenorrhea, followed by a sanguineous flow, sometimes abundant, often scarcely appreciable, and of such irregularity that the girl does not know whether it corresponds to her period or not. During her entire sexual life, the cardiac sufferer is exposed to various accidents. Two conditions are essential to the production of hemorrhage: First, a relatively good general health; and, secondly, a heart vigorous enough to wrestle successfully with the lesion. So soon as the heart begins to fail, and edema and dyspnea appear, the patient falling into an asystolic condition, not only the hemorrhages, but the menses themselves are suppresst, giving place to amenorrhea, to reappear later when the crisis of asystolia shall have passt and the heart shall have regained the upper hand. It is difficult, according to the author, to state whether the menopause is modified by the existence of cardiac lesion. Duroziez's statistics, however, tend to show that the menopause is hastened when the mitral valve is involved, and is normal or retarded in all other cases, the retardation being especially remarkable in lesions of the aortic orifice. Moreover, cardiac patients are exposed at this period to considerable and repeated losses of blood, so that some time after the menopause metrorrhagias occur, influenced exclusively by a cardiac affection. The conclusion drawn by the author is, that whenever one finds menstrual irregularities whose cause is not obvious, auscultation of the heart should be practist with great care; for while there may coexist uterine affections, the heart needs special attention. In short, metritis is at times the intermediary between cardiac influence and hemorrhage, whether of alien origin or directly provoked by the cardiac lesion. Coryza, Apparently of Dental Origin. E. P. Collett (Journal of Ophthalmology, Otology, and Laryngology), records the case of a physician who suffered from persistent coryza, principally unilateral, for three or four weeks. Examination demonstrated no physical cause except some stigmata on the middle turbinated bone, associated with general vasomotor dilatation of membrane. Neuralgic pain in temple, malar bone, and subsequently behind right ear, supervened. Local treatment proved of no avail. The writer found a periodontitis of the first maxillary premolar, which he extracted-no pus was evacuated. The neuralgia was cured next day and the coryza in three days. The Ethics of Low Fees. To take a small fee, says the Indian Medical Record, because the patient cannot afford a large one, is to act up to the true principle of the profession and to keep up, in its strict form, the honorarium which the fee professes to be. To charge a low fee, in order to attract practice, is a suicidal policy. It degrades the practitioner who does it to the level of a huckster, and it pauperizes the person to whom the charge is made, and leads him to put a purely commercial estimate upon the services rendered. Alkaloidal Treatment of Pneumonia. A brief outline of the alkalometric treatment of pneumonia may be stated as follows: 1. See to the hygiene of the house, its surroundings, the sick-room and the pa tient. 2. Empty the bowels thoroly by giving a teaspoonful of saline laxative every two hours until the stools are light-colored and odorless. 3. Disinfect the alimentary canal by giving from four to ten W-A intestinal antiseptics or their equivalent daily. 4. Give digitalin enough to steady the heart, beginning with gr. 1-67 every halfhour. 5. Give aconitin enough to subdue congestion, relax cutaneous vaso-motor spasm, and thus "equalize the circulation" and moderate the fever. Begin with gr. 1-134 every half-hour. 6. Apply wet or dry heat to the chest, hot mush jackets, water-bags, "flap-jacks," mustard and molasses, or flannels sprinkled with turpentine. 7. The preceding rules apply to all forms of the malady. We now come to the question of sthenia. For sthenic cases add veratrin, gr. 1-134, every half-hour. 8. For asthenic cases add to the digitalin and aconitin strychnin arseniate, gr. 1-134, every half-hour. 9. For aged patients increase the strychnin as may be needed, giving any quantity provided the effect is produced. 10. For drunkards give strychnin for effect, as for the aged. 11. For hemorrhagic cases give ergotin, gr. 1-6 to 1-2 every half-hour; or relieve the vascular tension by dilating the cutaneous capillaries with atropin, gr. 1-500 every half-hour. 12. For infants, paint the chest with tincture of iodin and treat as above. 13. Be ready to change from veratrin to strychnin or vice versa as occasion requires. 14. Do not let any patient die, unless he is in the last stages of some incurable disease and nature simply sends him pneumonia as a means of putting an end to his sufferings. Alkaloidal Clinic. In the case of mild recurrent piles, Bulkley has obtained excellent results from the internal administration of ichthyol, ten to fifteen minims after each meal, sometimes combined with the external application of the remedy. Our Monthly Talk Do you know what a "trust" is? The comic opera definition of mascot is: "A mascot is a mascot." And we are usually told that a trust is a trust. Selfish schemers are shrewd, even to the choosing of names. Hence the "goodygoody" name "trust" was chosen for the acme of villainy. A "trust" is a combine. This combine is entered into to crush competition, sustain prices and cheapen production. Competition is crushed in this way: The victim is chosen and his trade is located; then ruinously low rates are offered to his patrons-below cost of production if necessary—until the victim's trade is demoralized, and his patrons all taken from him. The trust being strong and powerful, can continue this program until the individual manufacturer is ruined, or forced to sell his plant to the trust at only a fraction of its value. Then the price of the article goes up again higher than before, and the former patrons of the ruined producer must begin to pay tribute to the monster. But all this time the prices have been high in other places; so while the trust was losing tem porarily in one place, it was getting abnormal profits in other places, so it could have continued this warfare indefinitely, and the individual oper ator was doomed to certain destruction sooner or later. Thus one by one the victims are markt and exterminated. If the goods are a kind that can be shipped to various parts of the country, the victim's wings are clipt short by discriminating freight rates, and in many instances this is the only weapon that the trust needs. For a graphic presentation of this feature of trust operations, read Henry D. Lloyd's great book, "Wealth against Commonwealth."* On account of this great public evil a law was passt establishing the Interstate Commerce Commission, to make transportation rates uniform, and prevent discrimination. The Commission has been in existence a number of years, yet in its recent report it says: "There is probably no one thing today which does so much to force out the small operator, and to build up those trusts and monopolies against which law and public opinion alike beat in vain, as discrimination in freight rates." Competition being thus crushed, prices can easily be raised and sustained. It is impossible for "hard times" to come to a successful trust. Necessities, as sugar, are usually chosen for trust operations. The people must have necessities, Price, $1-one of the *Published by Harper Bros., N. Y. biggest one dollar's worth in literature. |