Editor Medical Summary:

Why is it that patent medicine manufacturers advertise their spurious and worthless nostrums in respectable (socalled) medical journals?

Why is it that so-called respectable physicians will give their signatures as an endorsement for such nostrums?

Why is it that ministers of the gospel, no matter of what denomination, allow the use of not only their names, but even their portraits, to be used for advertising the nostrums of useless and frequently harmful panaceas ?

Why is it that such abuse of good printers' ink and pulp paper should be permitted to be defiled with such misrepresentations for the purpose of deluding the unsuspecting public ?

Why is it that physicians in diagnosis and treatment, as well as in serious operations they are called upon to perform, do not use more good common sense instead of worshipping at the shrine of authority and theory?

Why is it that physicians and musicians are always at odds with each other in their own separate professions, and cannot agree as to the harmony of things they use (drugs, tones and chords)?

Why is it that chemistry and adaptability of drugs are so rarely seen in the prescriptions of the average physician, and even if the prescription is properly written according to the precepts of pharmacology it is not appreciated?

Why is it that modern therapeutics are encumbered, not to say overburdened, with the endless new nomenclatures of patent medicines, the use of which is ephemeral and the names of which are unintelligible, unmeaningless and are simply used in a commercial way?

Why is it that physicians allow themselves to be imposed upon by designing

persons who pass themselves off as paupers and are treated as such at the the physician's hands, when if they went into any commercial store they would have been refused an ounce of coffee or tea without the cash on the counter?

Why is it that in the large or even the small cities in these great so-called United States of America there exists a system of unthinking and vicious adversity toward the medical profession by encouraging and supporting, by State as well as United States support, free dispensaries for the treatment of indigent persons where doubtful diagnosis is made and still more doubtful prescriptions are given to patients by inexperienced students, and where rich persons apply, in borrowed, shabby clothes, for treatment free of charge, by the (perhaps) celebrated chief of the clinic ?

Why is it that the State Board of Health of this commonwealth or any other does not pay more attention to the distribution of milk derived from diseased cattle in our populous communities in order to prevent the dissemination of the germs of tuberculosis among both children and adults?

Why is it that not more attention is paid by said Boards of Health to the dangerous infection of anthrax among sheep and cattle, which, according to recent reports, is prevalent in a number of states of the Union.

Why it it that patients and other unscrupulous persons are premitted in our courts of justice against reputable physicians for malpractice or criminal libel without giving a bond for the payment of the costs if they fail to prove their case? (See case of Snuffine vs. Seiler).

Why is it that in such cases the fact that the physician and the patient both enter into a verbal and legal contract the physician should be held responsible if the patient does not live up to his part of the contract by disregarding and disobeying the injunctions of the physician?

Why is it that ignorant, incompetent and sensational newspaper reporters are allowed by their superiors to publish nonsensical and misleading items on medical subjects in the daily papers for the purpose of providing sensational reading

matter, and at the same time needlessly arouse the anxiety of the readers of such items? (Kissing bug.)

Why is it that nurses are not better taken care of as to their food and necessary rest, as well as exercise in the fresh air when attending a case?

Why is it that nurses trained in a training school or hospital should not be trusted to exercise their judgment in case of untoward, unforseen accidents when the attending physician is not immediately attainable?

Why is it that the code of medical ethics in regard to advertising is kept up in theory when no one pays any attention to this provision of the code?

Why is it that there are no means of impelling the members of the medical profession to act honestly and honorably toward each other, as generally understood, instead of stealing patients from one another?

Why is it that respectable practitioners resort to practices calculated to deceive their patient in order to obtain as much money as there may be in the case. CARL SEILER, M. D. 203 Jefferson Ave., Scranton, Pa.

How and When to Administer Quinine....Query.

Editor Medical Summary:

Just a word in regard to Dr. Tucker's reply to my article. I believe with him, as well as with the majority of the best thinkers and writers of the age, that quinine is a true specific for malaria, but while this is true in a broad sense, it is equally true that in certain forms caution in its administration has to be observed. Mind you, I cautioned against heoric cinchonizing, not the withholding of the salt altogether.

Dr. Brodnax has kindly cited to the Doctor an article where he may find just how it produces hematuria. Those of us who have to deal with this affection have by this time learned just what to use and what to avoid.

The regulation of the secretions and the proper administration of a proper amount of cinchona will have a beneficial effect, but to saturate a patient with it, as in complicated intermittent, is to surely

place the patient in a condition from which he cannot emerge. It is not always possible to differentiate between quinine hematuria and true hemoglobinuria, and it frequently becomes necessary to withhold quinine for awhile. This is the experience of the majority of our eastern North Carolina physicians, who see a large number of cases every year. There are many theories which will not bear clinical demonstration.

I would be glad for those of larger experience to contribute to this discussion. The disease is very fatal, and if by relating our experience in the treatment of this malady we can arrive at a definite and positive understanding and opinion our patients will certainly be the gainers.

I think, as yet, many physicians do not know how nor when to administer quinine. Learn this first, and something new of its actions and effects upon the human system will dawn upon you. Read "Thayer's Lectures on the Malarial Fevers" (Johns Hopkin's lectures). They are excellent.

B. RAY BROWNING, M. D.

Littleton, N. C.

About Blood, Meningitis, Etc.

Editor Medical Summary:

Those who have had the pleasure of studying modern medical science and its exposition of the uses of preserved blood, by name, Bovinine, will have seen that there is something in blood beside being the life of the body; that there is a life in the blood itself outside of it being a fluid by which the body is nourished; that there are, as it were, living blood cells and white blood cells, which seem to have a brain and nervous system and capable of voluntary motion and acknowledge of things-their surroundings.

Bilroth ("Surgical Pathology," page 78 to 150), the great German physiologist, explains that in cases of wounds these white cells change from the course they happen to be moving and congregate at the place wounded, thus seeming to be instigated by a knowledge that their constructive services are needed.

It is when the blood gets poor that the white blood cells seem to proliferate as if

to try and remedy the difficulty. Some have said these white cells change to red blood cells. If so, do they change their nature? Do they loose the intelligence that the white cells seemed to have; the brain and nerve force? May it not be that these are retained, and if retained there is a living stream of life-giving power.

Now, it is contended that chemicals, etc., do not make blood; that food and its compounds, by the chemistry of the body, does make blood; that if blood directgood living blood with the life in it-can be furnished it enters into the body and is appropriated as blood and builds up the body.

An interesting article in the June New Albany Med. Herald, page 103, by Dr. W. F. Ball, of Mantua Station, Ohio, gives us an idea how, and by what means the body is built up, constructed and repaired by the organic brain, the solar plexus, and shows that the principle of life and the soul resides in this brain and controls the making of the body through the nerves of this brain.

Now. if blood can be furnished and taken up and appropriated, why not give blood as a food and medicine.

There is another form of blood food, Sanguiferrin (blood and iron) which enters nicely into this mode of food medication, with a small amount of iron to mix with and enter into the circulation. the one, Bovinine, you have the blood; in the Sanguiferrin, blood with a small addition of iron.

In

Many cures have been made with the first named, and as a food medicine it has come to stay. The new candidate for public favor has all of the good qualities of the old with the added one of iron where this is needed.

It is argued that there are about 25 grains of iron in the average body, and that a surplus is not needed and is injurious. In our anemic, bleached people the iron is not in excess, but seems to be badly needed, and the compound seems to be a very happy combination. My experience with it is in two anemic cases. One improved right along and did handsomely. In the other, a little constipated, the iron seemed to intensify this symp.

tom and was stopped for a week or 10 days until the trouble was corrected, then the Sanguiferrin was resumed with very satisfactory results, as the lady is now able to be about and do her own housework. It was in such cases that I have had to substitute nitrate of potassium in the acid iron tonic for iron.

There is some food for thought in this blood building-up of the body, instead of relying on uncombined chemicals to make blood, which at best is slow work.

I would like to hear from those who have used Sanguiferrin as to its further

uses.

Bro. L. H. Cowden writes: "Well, my case of meningitis got well. I discharged the patient in eight days. I saturated him with the fluid extract of gelsemium, which produced relaxation of the muscles. I also gave him sulphate of soda, five grains in a tablespoonful of hot water, every four hours, and all the calomel I could get in endways as my depletor.

I

"You can give this idea to some good medical journal, but no chloroform in mine, for it will protect the case. never treated a case in my life in which I did not have to give either small or large doses of calomel before the disease would yield. You have to keep the secretions in action, and it does not make any difference what kind of a disease you are treating. In the convalescence of this case I gave salicin in five grain doses every four hours, alternated with chloral hydrate and fluid extract of gelsemium."

As to the disease meningitis, I have treated but one case, as it is rather a rare disease in my immediate locality. I used

in that pretty much the same treatment as Bro. Cowden, but used cold water to reduce fever and cold water and whisky cloths on skin to keep down same. Two old doctors who saw the case in consultation gave it out that "nothing can be done," but perseverance in rational ideas of treatment conquered.

Brodnax, La.

BEN H. BRODNAX, M. D.

TO SUBSCRIBERS.-Please examine the wrapper in which your SUMMARY comes, and see the date to which your subscription is paid. If your time is out, a remittance is in order!

will men who live where there is malaria, except in very mild forms, cease to advocate the drug first, last and always, when some who live in malarial sections use it until it brings their patient to the brink of the grave with hematuria.

In this parish in 1898 there were 38 deaths traceable to hematuria brought on by quinine, and no reasonable man will deny that it is the cause of the disease. This is a heavy count against it.

The treatment given above for chronic malaria is equally as good for the acute form, as I tested it last fall to my satisfaction.

New Publications.

Trans

THE ANATOMY OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM OF Man and oF VERTEBRATES IN GENERAL. By Prof. Ludwig Edinger, M. D., Frankfort-on-the-Main. lated from the Fifth German Edition by Winfield S. Hall, Ph. D., M. D., Professor of Physiology in the Northwestern Medical School, Chicago, Assisted by Philo Leon Holland, M. D., Instructor in Clinical Neurology in the Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, and Edward P. Carleton, B.S., Demonstrator of Histologic Neurology in the Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago. The F. A. Davis Co., Publishers, Philadelphia. 1899. Price $3.00.

This neat and profusely illustrated volume of 446 pages is divided into three parts or divisions.

Part one is devoted to an introductory, giving the fundamental ideas accepted at the present time. It takes into consideration also functions, which were not considered in earlier editions.

Part two is devoted to a review of the Embryology and the comparative anatomy of the vertebrate brain.

Part three is devoted to the special anatomy of the mamalian brain, with special consideration of the human brain.

A rather dry subject has been made charmingly interesting.

The additions that have been made to this work since the last English translation increases its usefulness, and the complete index given adds much to the value of the book, both in its use as a text book and as a book for reference.

SUGGESTION IN THE CURE OF DISEASE AND THE CORRECTION OF VICES. By Geo. C. Pitzer, M. D., St. Louis, Mo. Published by the Author. 1899. Price $1.00. We have good reason to believe that the author of this elegant little brochure of 80 pages has had his heart in this work, and that he has honestly endeavored to bring out of suggestion all the good there is in it for the benefit of the profession. His success in the effort is indicated by the popularity of the book. Two editions were exhausted in a very short time and a copy of the third is before us. Every one

interested in the subject should possess a copy of this little book.

A TEXT-BOOK ON PRACTICAL OBSTETRICS. BY EGBERT H. GRANDIN, M. D., Gynecologist to the Columbus Hospital, Consulting Gynecologist to French Hospital, Fellow of the American Gynecological Society, etc. With the Collaboration of George W. Jarman, M. D., Gynecologist to the Cancer Hospital, Instructor in Gynecology in the Medical Department of the Columbia University. Fellow of the American Gynecological Society, etc. Second edition. Revised and Enlarged. Illustrated with 64 Fullpage Photographic Plates and 86 illustrations in the Text. The F. A. Davis Co., Publishers, Philadelphia. 1899. Price $4.00.

We have before us a volume, the contents of which were prepared with the aim of being a guide to practice, presented from a clinical-teaching standpoint. As regards obstetric surgery its key-note is election.

The very flattering reception accorded the first edition has proved an incentive or stimulus to a most thorough revision, with the object in view of maintaining this work in its already high acquired position as the leading exemplifier of practical obstetrics from the modern standpoint.

This is an admirable work upon the subject on which it treats, and should be in the possession of all who labor in this field.

THE MECHANICS OF SURGERY. Comprising Detailed Description, Illustrations and Lists of the Instruments, Appliances and Furniture Necessaay in Modern Surgical Art. By Charles Truax.

This is a large, handsome volume of over 1000 pages, and, although its author is connected with the surgical instrument business, it is free from commercialism. We consider this a valuable work, as it presents just the points sought after, and not easily gleaned otherwise, when one wishes to purchase surgical instruments or appliances of any kind. In fact, the wide-awake practitioner wili want this volume in his office close at hand.

We would like to give it a more extended notice if space permitted.