method of treatment.

A sixty per-cent. solution is first used. The drug seems to act both as an antiseptic and deodorizer. Its use causes no pain. It is not poisonous, and is without odor or taste.

THE TREATMENT OF ASTHMA.

(Lond. Med. Rec.) The local use of a five per-cent. solution of cocaine, painted on the membrane of the nostrils, or sprayed into nose and throat, is advocated as abortive treatment. The patient may inhale a few drops of pyroline. Cocaine hypodermically may be used. During the intervals iodide of potassium is recommended. The dose suggested is quite small, being only thirty grains the day. Belladonna and arsenic may alternate with the iodide. When emphysema is largely present the mechanical treatment of compressed air is recommended.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE.

BY E. H. BARTLEY, M.D.,

Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology, and Lecturer on Diseases of Children, Long Island College Hospital.

ADULTERATION IN NEW JERSEY.

According to the Report of the State Dairy Commissioner of New Jersey, for 1889, an analysis of 2,507 samples of various foodproducts showed 43.96 per cent. to have been adulterated or were not standard.

The articles found to show the largest percentage of falsification were lard, 163 out of 437 samples; imported canned goods, 88 out of 107 samples; ground coffee, 40 out of 50 samples; spices, 306 out of 649 samples; extracted honey, 83 out of 111 samples; maple syrup, 12 out of 24 samples; molasses, 38 out of 64 samples; vinegar, 21 out of 37 samples; baking-powders, 11 out of 13 samples; jellies and jams, 159 out of 192 samples.

As an example of the ingenuity used in the preparation of food, the Report describes the preparation of bologna sausage as follows: 'After the meat was chopped and the sausage-meat thus prepared put into the casings, the sausage was boiled in a bath containing a portion of the following coloring agent: Bismarck brown, 14 parts; garnet red, 2 parts; water, 11⁄2 pints. This gave the sausage a brown color. When this process was complete, the sausages were coated with a varnish composed of shellac, resin-oil, and alcohol."

The Report enumerates the following as the articles used to prepare jellies and jams: To give substance: Apple-pomace, apple-juice, starch,

glue, gelatin, and singlass. To flavor: Apple, inferior or spoiled fruit juices, artificial compound ethers, and acetic acid. For coloring, the following aniline dyes: Eosine, fuchsine, Bismarck brown, garnet red, ruby red, and various carmines. These jellies are freely sold in Brooklyn and New York.

The examination of drugs showed that of 1,072 samples examined, 692 (or 64.5 per cent.) were adulterated or inferior to standard.

It should be said that 813 of these analyses were confined to cream of tartar and olive-oil. Of the other articles examined, those showing the greatest adulteration were: Paregoric, 18 out of 22 samples; seidlitzpowders, 15 out of 37 samples; compound spirit of ether, 24 out of 25 samples; spirit of nitrous ether, 23 out of 24 samples; tincture of opium, 20 out of 23 samples; tincture of chloride of iron, 6 out of 10 samples; and tincture of iodine, 15 out of 16 samples.

ZINC IN DRIED FRUITS.

The presence of zinc in bleached dried apples has frequently been proved. The sanitary authorities in Kiel, Germany, found it necessary to destroy a large quantity of American dried apples because of the quantity of zinc they contained, and to issue a decree forbidding the importation of dried apples unless accompanied with a chemist's certificate that each invoice was free from injurious substance. (Pharmaceut. Centralhalle, No. 21, 1889.)

J. Stinde (Wagner's Jahresbericht, 1886, p. 116) often found zinc in dried apples. Prof. S. A. Lattimore (Sixth Report N. Y. State Board of Health, p. 373) found so little zinc, that, in his opinion, it should not excite any apprehension of harm. Prof. Cornwall (in the Report of the State Dairy Commissioner of New Jersey, 1889) found as a maximum quantity, in six samples examined by him, an equivalent of two grains of crystallized zinc sulphate to the ounce of apples.

In a recent Bulletin the Iowa State Board of Health has called public attention to this danger in white dried apples.

The Annals of Hygiene says: "If consumers of dried fruits will insist upon obtaining honest, healthful, unbleached fruit, or none at all, such self-preservative action, added to that of the German government, will soon correct such a fraud as the useless and injurious bleaching of fruits."

GROUND-WATER FROM CEMETERIES.

Dr. E. von Esmarch (Zeitschrift f. Hygiene, Band 7, Heft 1) has examined the question of the dangers of contagion through the drainage from cemeteries. His experiments show that where dead bodies are placed in water or buried, that the water or earth surrounding the

body does not become contaminated with germs. He finds that in the case of anthrax, the bacilli die out very quickly from the dead body. He does not think the disappearance of pathogenic organisms from a dead body is due to the destructive processes of putrefaction, as these same organisms disappear from tissues preserved by antiseptic preservative fluids. He concludes, with several other German observers, that the proximity of cemeteries and the drainage-water from them have no influence in the spread of epidemic or contagious diseases.

He does not tell us whether the typhoid bacillus meets with the same fate as that of anthrax.

STERILIZED MILK.

The Sanitary Commission (Gesundheitsausschusses) of the city of Leipzig has recommended the following scheme for the feeding of infants with sterilized milk, according to the Pharm. Centralblatt, 1889, P. 558:

As an addition it is recommended to add a teaspoonful of Lehman's

conserve.

Prof. Hübner has shown such good results in his clinic from the feeding of infants upon sterilized milk, that the city magistrate has sent a circular to the druggists asking them to prepare and keep for sale at a moderate price sterilized milk.

Hübner is of the opinion that the milk should be prepared with the greatest care, and will be more satisfactory if prepared by an apothecary.

The sterilization of milk (according to the Molk-Zeitung, 1889, p. 137) presents certain difficulties. The heating to 110° to 120° C. (230° to 248° F.), which temperature is necessary to sterilize liquids, causes a browning of the milk. At a temperature of 100° C. (212° F.) the sterilization is not complete, the spores of bacillus subtilis resisting this temperature for six hours. The heating to 75° C., as is done in many of the ordinary methods, does not sterilize, for the above-named spores can withstand this temperature for several days. Even at this temperature milk-sugar caramelizes in forty-eight hours and browns the

milk. The methods of Soxhlet and Engli-Sinclair do not overcome this difficulty, but they hinder the growth for a time, of the microorganisms, already in the milk, and prevent the ingress of others.

Freudenreich has examined milk treated with the Sinclair apparatus and then put into the incubator for twenty-four hours, and has found about four millions of bacteria in a cubic centimetre. He also found that these bacteria were almost exclusively bacillus subtilis, and that the bacterium lactis, which act so disastrously with infants, was almost entirely removed by the sterilization.

PATHOLOGY.

BY JOSHUA M. VAN COTT, JR., M. D.,

Pathologist and Adjunct Professor of Histology and Pathological Anatomy, Long Island College Hospital; Associate Director of the Department of Histology and Pathology, Hoagland Laboratory; Pathologist to the Brooklyn Throat and Nose Hospital.

TUMOR METASTASES THROUGH CAPILLARY EMBOLISM.

Zahn (Virchow's Archiv. Bd. 117, 1889) regards only such cases of secondary growth as due to capillary embolism in which the seat of the primary tumor is on the side of the venous system, with a closed foramen ovale, and in which secondary peripheral nodules are formed from pulmonary metastasis from which it is supposed to be that they have not arisen from "retrograde transportation," but that the tumor cells first passed through the lungs and then plugged the general capillary systems, thus building foci of secondary growths.

Z. cites three cases in illustration: 1. Mammary carcinoma, secondary nodules in the lungs, liver and bone marrow. Here the pulmonary nodules arose by direct, the liver nodules by indirect or "retrograde" embolism. The bone-marrow tumors all arose through direct capillary embolism from the primary tumor, and not from the secondary pulmonary nodule, because of the small size of the latter, and the great size and numbers of the former.

2. Primary alveolar endothelioma of the back of the head, secondary deposits in the soft parts near the carotid, and in the liver. These deposits were the result of the loosening of tumor cells in the vena jugularis, the neoplasm having projected into this vessel, loosening and passing through the pulmonary capillaries, and finally lodging to grow in the locations above described.

3. Primary carcinoma of submaxillary gland, involving also the surrounding soft parts and lower jaw. In addition to this, secondary foci in the right frontal bone, sternum, ribs, and vertebral bodies. These secondary foci could not have formed by "retrograde transportation,"

since the foramen ovale was closed, and no secondary nodules were found in the lungs. The cells loosened from the primary tumor must have passed through the pulmonary capillaries, finally to form metastatic deposits in the bone-marrow. All three cases revealed the secondary nodules on microscopic examination to resemble the primary tumors in structure.

ANGIOSARCOMA PERICARDII.

Redtenbacher (Wiener klinische Wochenschrift, 1889, No. 11) remarks that primary disease of the pericardium offers for clinical diagnosis such great difficulties that the publication of cases exactly observed must always be welcome.

A man, aged twenty-two, suddenly sickened, with pain in his left breast stretching up to his shoulder. Examination revealed the characteristic symptoms and signs of pericarditis. Four weeks later hard cough and expectoration set in, then, gradually following, effusion into the pleural and peritoneal cavities. Aspirated fluid very cloudy; urine contains neither albumen nor casts. Death followed the gradually increasing dyspnoea and anasarca in about four months after admission to hospital.

Clinical diagnosis: "Tuberculosis serosarum."

Autopsy revealed: (a) Primary neoplasm in the pericardium, involving the cardiac base and right auricle, which latter it had perforated, entering the right heart. (6) Multiple metastatic pulmonary neoplasms.

Microscopic examination of the tumor revealed it to be composed of many blood-vessels surrounded by spindle-cells-angiosarcoma.

R. believes the growth to have originated in the blood-vessels of the pericardium. He does not consider it a luxuriant growth of bloodvessels in a tissue previously thickened by chronic inflammation; and this theory is amply supported by the clinical history of the case.

CAN AN EXTERNAL TRAUMATISM PRODUCE ACUTE LOBAR PNEUMONIA? Sokolowski (Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1889, No. 39) reports a case of severe traumatism of head and breast of a boy, aged fourteen, who afterward developed meningitis and pneumonia in the right apex. The breast injury was just over the site of the pneumonia, and S. queries whether the pneumonia was not brought on by the predisposing influence of the trauma on the pulmonary parenchyma, rendering it susceptible to the invasion of the specific germ of pneumonia.

(In other words, S. believes that devitalization of tissues renders them more susceptible to the influence of micro-organisms.-V. C.)