internal administration of ergot. In the first, a patient fifty years of age, an ointment of ergot was applied locally every two hours, after having washed the swelling with a warm alkaline solution; full doses of ergot were also given every hour. After four or five hours vomiting ceased and twelve hours later the gut returned spontaneously. In the second case, aged twenty-eight, several ineffecual attempts had been made to reduce by taxis. Fifteen leeches were applied over the tumor and ergot administered as in the first case. with success. M. Planat thinks the ergot would act more efficiently administered hypodermically, and especially in the hernial sac itself.

In eleven hours taxis was employed

ATROPIA IN CROUP.-The sulphate of atropia in a one per cent. solution has been used with success in the treatment of a case of croup which threatened a fatal termination. Dr. De Poutènes, of Antibes, reports in L'Union Medicale, that in the third day of the attack, death seemed inevitable, medication having failed to benefit; the epigastrium was retracted, the face and neck swollen and purple; three drops of the solution were injected on the left side of the neck, on a level with the pneumogastric; although there was in a few minutes improvement, in four hours the dose was repeated, amelioration was decided, and in a few days recovery was complete. The suggestion is a valuable one, in such cases as are threaten ing suffocation from other causes than exudation, and which are accompanied by congestion and œdema, resulting perhaps from, or associated with, more or less paralysis of the pneumogastric, to which nerve, belladonna is a special excitant.-Am. Jour. of Med. Sc., and Dublin Jour. of Med. Sc., Jan. 1879.

NITRITE OF AMYL AND MORPHIA IN CONVULSIONS. -Dr. Hays (Engel) relates important results from the use of morphia, subcutaneously, in conjunction with inhalation of nitrite of amyl, in extreme cases of infantile eclampsia. The indications for the use of these remedies being decided paleness of surface, showing an almost tetanic contraction of the arterioles. The amount of amyl inhaled in the severest case, was five drops, administered immediately after the hypodermic use of gr. morphia. The patient was eighteen months old, and subject to severe convulsions, of which three children of the same family had died. This addition to therapeusis in these terrible cases, promises to be most valuable.-Phila. Med. Times.

SCROFULOUS SORES.-A Scotch clergyman states in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for March, 1876, that three grains of corrosive sublimate in a pint of whisky constitute an almost infallible remedy in scrofulous sores or runnings. A rag dipped in this twice or thrice a day should be kept on the ulcers until healed.

SULPHIDE OF CALCIUM IN INFLAMMATION OF THE EXTERNAL AUDITORY MEATUS.-Dr. Samuel Sexton (Am. Journal of Otology, Jan., 1879), has used this preparation with great success in the affection indicated. He confirms Sidney Ringer's statements regarding the efficacy of calcium sulphide in all furuncular inflammations. He gives it in nearly all cases where inflammation of the meatus externus is a symptom, in some stage or other of the disease, but especially in those where suppuration has occurred or threatens to occur. He also employs it in cases where caries of the bone, periostitis or extensive destruction of the tissues have already taken place.

Under this treatment, furuncles in the meatus are frequently observed to abort and dry up without a discharge of pus. In cases where the pain is urgent from distention, or collections of pus too large to be absorbed exist, of course free incisions are to be employed.

He gives "the first decimal trituration" (calcium sulphide, 1 part, sugar of milk, 9 parts well triturated) in doses of one grain every two or three hours in urgent cases; less frequently in those that are subacute. In children, the dose should be less; a grain of the trituration may be diffused in water. The medicine is usually given dry upon the tongue, and the only unpleasant symptom provoked is occasionally nausea, caused by its disagreeable taste.

IATROLIPTIC MEDICATION.-Prof. L. P. Yandell urges the more extensive use of iatroliptic medication, that is, the rubbing into the skin of drugs and nutritious oils. He has had satisfactory results from quinia by mixing it with glycerine, 3 j. to 3j., and rubbing in a sixth or a fourth of this daily. He has cured diarrhoea by rubbing tannic acid and glycerine into the abdomen, and has seen diarrhoea result from the inunction of croton oil. He has great faith in the inunction of cod-liver oil, olive oil, or hog's lard in phthisis and marasmic conditions.-Louisville Med. News.

SALICYLIC ACID ENEMATA IN DYSENTERY.-Dr. Berthold employs an enema consisting of one gram of salicylic acid, three hundred grams of distilled water, and alcohol q. s. In dysentery with tenesmus and bloody stools he administers it every four hours. The tenesmus diminishes, and the number of stools is rapidly reduced, the fecal matters gradually acquiring their normal appearance, the temperature diminishing and the appetite returning.-Union Medical.

COUGH MIXTURE.-J. Milner Fothergill says, in the Philadelphia Times, that hydrobromic acid, with spirit of chloroform and syrup of squill-and if the case be that of a very agreeable lady and a favorite patient, a few drops of spirit of nutmeg might be added-constitutes an excellent and palatable cough medicine.

VOL. II.

Editorial.

MEDICAL EDUCATION.

Fresh interest has been added to this somewhat trite subject by the call published in our last for a convention of the American Medical Colleges, at which an advanced standard of qualification and an extended course of study are to be the special topics for discussion. The colleges have thus, after many weary years and much importuning on the part of the profession, shown a disposition to leave the ruts and to take a step onward. This is a healthful sign, and it matters little whether the schools are actuated by purely pecuniary considerations or by a true desire for the advancement of science. We are constrained to believe that the former has heretofore been the leading obstacle in the way of the much needed reform. The medical schools of the country may be divided into three classes, in so far as the reasons for their existence are concerned. One of these comprises those which are essentially and directly money-making institutions. Located at the great commercial centres, they offer superior advantages to more advanced students, and their patronage is sufficient to yield an income which amply repays their professors for their services, and makes them in a measure independent of practice. second class comprises the schools whose professorial staffs do not expect any profits from the direct returns of the students' fees, but who look for a recompense for their labors in the increased practice which is expected to come through the reputation which their connection with a teaching body gives them. The third class comprises those schools which are supported either by endowment or appropriation from state treasuries. One would naturally suppose that the schools comprised in the first class would be the most interested in any change in curriculum or period of study which would be likely to affect the number of matriculants,

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No. 5

and the fact is that, whether through selfish motives or otherwise we are not prepared to say, the opposition to the oft-repeated demand on the part of the profession, as expressed through the medical press, for a higher standard of qualification, has mainly come from this source. They have not been wanting in arguments to sustain their position, and one of the most specious of these has been that the rapidly growing population has created a demand for physicians which would stand in danger of not being supplied were entrance to the profession made difficult. Recent statistics have completely removed the grounds for this argument; they in fact demonstrate that America is glutted with doctors, having a proportion of physicians to population nearly three times as large as that of any other country, and over four times as large as that of most countries. There is little doubt that the ease with which diplomas have been procured is responsible for this. The necessary funds to secure professors' tickets have in too many instances outranked brains as a qualification for a medical degree. The tendency of this state of things is to induce inferior men to study medicine, and to drive into other channels those who would do the profession credit.

The schools of the first class are more influential than those of the other classes combined, and however much the latter may have been in favor of improvement, the opposition of the former was sufficient to negative all their efforts. It was necessary, therefore, to convince the New York and dard does not necessarily imply diminished Philadelphia schools that an improved stanreturns in the way of students' fees, and it remained for Harvard and the Universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania to practically demonstrate the fact.

The success of the experiments of these ment and in lengthening their courses of schools in raising their standards of requirestudy has doubtless removed the most serious obstacle in the way of reform.

Miscellany.

THE PLAGUE.

Official reports received from European medical officers in China show conclusively that true "bubonic plague" has prevailed extensively in that empire during the thirty years preceding 1873, when it was supposed to be wholly extinct. The reports also show that owing to the meagre facilities for communication with central Asia, virulent epidemics may ravage extensive districts of that country without any knowledge of of that country without any knowledge of their existence extending to Europe. The reports present records of the disease having prevailed in the Province of Yunnan, to which it seems to have been introduced from Burmah, during twenty of the thirty years in question, varying in intensity in different parts of the province and in different years. The appearance of the disease was coincident with the breaking out of the rebellion against the imperial government, which was longer maintained, and suppressed with more violent measures, in Yunnan than in any of the other provinces; conditions which undoubtedly contributed greatly to its virulence, as did also the superstitious practice of refusing to bury the dead, who are exposed on a bier to the sun till completely decomposed. The plague was very prevalent in Yunnan in 1871-2-3, and in the latter year suddenly re-appeared in Mesopotamia and Persia, gradually extending its area until in 1877 it reached the shores of the Caspian sea, prevailing especially at the town of Restch, which has a direct trade with Astrakan. In May and November, 1877, a fever of intermittent type, accompanied with glandular swellings, prevailed in the port of Astrakan, and in Wetlyanka and other villages of that province, and in November, 1878, a similar affection again appeared at Wetlyanka; few deaths had occurred up to this time, but about December 1st the disease assumed the malignant character that has marked the present outbreak.

The report of the Russian medical service of the

interior for 1877, which has just been made public, announces that 241 cases of Siberian plague were reported to the

government during the year, the mortality being 21 per cent.; the principal outbreaks occurred in the provinces of Viatka and Tchernigow, which are at a considerable dis tance from each other, and were contemporaneous with, or occurred soon after, the virulent prevalence of the disease in Persia.

From the above facts, which have been obtained from official sources, and are in the main well attested, it seems proper to conclude that instead of the late outbreak being due to the spontaneous regeneration of the virus of the plague in the valley of the Volga, or at the farthest, in Persia, the disease was re-introduced from China into Persia and thence to Russia, local conditions in each instance probably favoring its development. Of these conditions, no authentic account will be obtained until the International Commisdistrict, make their report. The return of sion of Experts, who are visiting the infected cold weather, combined with the stringent measures adopted by the government, seem to have confined the late violent outbreak to the limited district where it first appeared. The American ministers to Austria and to Russia report that the disease has manifested such an extremely virulent and contagious character that great alarm exists in the whole of eastern Europe, and urge upon the government the necessity of taking measures to prevent the possibility of the introduction of the disease into the United States. The measures already taken by this government for preventing the importation of goods from the infected districts, except under proper precautions, are, for the present, considered sufficient for this purpose, especially if the tary conditions that favor the spread of ports of entry are kept free from the unsaniepidemic disease.

JNO. M. WOODWORTH, Surgeon General U. S. Marine Hospital Service.

MICROSCOPY AND MARRIAGE.-The Cincin nati Lancet and Clinic gives the following to illustrate the ludicrous extremes to which a person may be carried by the enthusiastic pursuit of a special line of study, and is strikingly illustrated by the following paragraph from a really valuable communication to the Archives of Medicine by C. Heitzman, M. D., on "The Aid which Medical Diagnosis Receives from Recent Discoveries in Microscopy:"

*

"In fact, the microscope reveals so much of the general health of a person that more can be told by it in many instances than by the naked eye or by physical examination. * Marriages should be allowed in doubtful cases only upon the permit of a reliable microscopist. Last season a young physician asked me whether I believed in marriage among kindred. He fell in love with his cousin, and so did the cousin with him. I examined his blood and told him that he was a 'nervous' man, passed sleepless nights and had a moderately good constitution. The same condition being suspected in the lady, marriage was not advisable for fear that the offspring might degenerate. So great was his faith in my assertions, that he gave up the idea of marrying his cousin, offering her the last chance, viz., examination of her blood. This beautiful girl came to my laboratory, and, very much to my surprise, I found upon examination of her blood a firstclass constitution. The next day I told the gentleman, You had better marry her.'"

NITRO-GLYCERINE IN MEDICINE.-Strychnine, arsenic, prussic acid and all other deadly drugs heretofore let loose against disease will pale before a combination which a Dr. Murrill has been extolling in late numbers of the Lancet. He has found a solution of nitroglycerine in alcohol (forty-rod) to be of service in angina pectoris. He gives one drop of a one per cent. solution, although a man took fifteen drops without injury. This is rather a homœopathic quantity, but it is sufficient to cause severe headache and a tight, choking sensation. Women are said to be more susceptible than men, as they also are to the solvent in which the explosive is administered. We should think that the acme has now been reached-at least it will "hardly ever" be possible to beat nitroglycerine.

DETROIT MEDICAL COLLEGE.-The eleventh annual commencement exercises of the Detroit Medical College were held at the Detroit Opera House on the evening of the 4th inst. The affair was fully up to the standard of excellence of music, oratory, etc., which have established these occasions among the leading social events. The large auditorium was filled from parquette to the "gods' gallery with the elite of the city. The degree of M. D. was conferred on twenty-nine graduates by President of the Faculty, Dr. E. W. Jenks. Dr. Jerome, of Saginaw, being over forty years of age, received the honorary degree of the college. O. T. Beard gave an address of unusual interest, and the Hon. Levi Bishop delivered himself of a poem adapted to the occasion and remarkable for its length. Speil's orches

Colonel

tra furnished the music. The affairs of the college were reported to be in a very prosperous condition.

At the close of the exercises the Faculty gave a reception at the residence of Prof. Jenks. The profession of the city were out in force, and many were present from the interior of the State. This part of the evening's entertainment was of peculiar interest and pleasure. The caterer's duties were admirably performed, and medical gentlemen gave satisfactory evidence of their ability to place edibles and potables in abundance where they do the most good.

FATAL TERMINATION OF A CASE OF CARCINOMA OF THE RECTUM.-Dr. Lyster reports that the patient upon whom the operation for extirpation of the rectum, for epithelial carcinoma, was made November 11, 1878-a | report of which was published in the NEWS of January 10, 1879, died from carcinoma of the stomach February 5, 1879. Symptoms of carcinoma of the stomach were observed only four days previous to his death. From that time the emesis of anything taken into stomach was constant. The material vomited presented the characteristic appearance to the eye and to microscopic investigation. The rectum, washed out by enemata of warm water, was free from any indications disease.