large doses of quinine given internally. Notwithstanding this treatment, her pain was as bad as before. In consequence of the machine, her shoulders have been raised, and her chest was very flat. When I inquired into the anamnesis of this case, it turned out that since her twelfth year the general health began to fail, that she had suffered from leucorrhoea and chlorosis before she was married, and that during her first pregnancy the intensity of the pain had considerably increased.

In another similar case, where a slight spinal curvature was the concomitant symptom of a uterine complaint, I had repeatedly to urge the incredulous relations of the young lady to have another opinion; and only after Sir Charles Locock had confirmed my diagnosis, my advice to attend first to the uterine complaint was followed. When this was removed, the curvature was cured in the course of four or five months.

Cold compresses and dry cupping at a short distance from the painful place, as well as longitudinal frictions, only in the downward direction, relieve, as a palliative, the pain; but, without removing the uterine complaint, neither the pain nor the curvature will be radically cured.

There are other painful abdominal complaints, where the patients have been for months almost immovable in stooping positions. The posterior muscles of the spine are relaxed, those in front are contracted; the intervertebral substance is compressed, either in its anterior or one of the lateral segments, according as the patient is either bent forwards or sideways, in order to relieve, at least in some degree, his pain. The curvatures formed in these positions are mostly combined with a considerable amount of rigidity of the spine, deficient assimilation, and consequently emaciation of the body. When the original complaint has ceased, the deformity still continues; and besides the suitable hygienic treatment, the passive and active operations of medical gymnastics are first very cautiously used, and then continued for a period which is more or less long in proportion to the duration of the original complaint causing the curvature.

A young lady suffered from herpes circinatus, and was overdosed with a solution containing Arsenicum, which produced a painful intestinal irritation, from which she suffered for five or six months, during which time she was always in a crouching position, and lost flesh to such an extent that she had the old woman's face so frequently seen in children suffering from mesenteric disease. Her spine, curved in one arch forwards, was in its whole length rigid, and it took almost one year and a half to recover her previous strength, and the natural form and power of the spine. Inflammation of the lungs or pleura produce also frequently lateral and other curvatures. In these cases, respiratory movements in different positions of the arms and body, in combination with those which affect the spine, effect often a beneficial result. These means can be used even in infants; and I remember a little boy, three years old, who was under Dr. Dudgeon and Dr. Hughes' care. The latter placed him under my treatment, because he had a lateral curvature in consequence of pleurisy, and was also much weakened by diarrhoea. Although the little patient was very thin, weak, had a very flat chest, and was scarcely able to stand on his legs, simple hygienic means, first passive manipulation, and later active movements with resistance either on the part of the patient or the operator, restored him in the course of four or five months perfectly.

Curvatures after Paralysis.

Paralytic affections of the limbs, or of a larger or smaller group of muscles attached to the vertebral column, cause a great variety of combinations of lateral and anterior curvature. In these cases the plan of treatment must vary according to the character of the paralysis, which is either central or peripheric, rheumatic, gouty, traumatic, or produced by congestion or inflammation of parts adjacent to the sheaths of the spinal column. Where actual disease of the brain or spinal marrow is the cause of the complaint, nothing, or scarcely anything, can be done; but in the other so-called

paralytic deformities of the spine, very considerable improvement, and in many cases even cure, can be effected, by attending to the pathogenetic cause of the paralysis-by preventing, through passive movements on the paralysed parts, their wasting, and, finally, by training the will of the patient to influence the weakened muscles.

To the class of traumatic curvatures I would add those which are produced by the injudicious application of leg-irons with steel waist-bands, used under the impression, or rather illusion, that they will cure various deformities of the legs, originally caused by partial paralysis of the abductors or adductors. In several strumous complaints of the knees, it is also the fashion to apply leg-irons which are connected with crutches. The patient is obliged by this mechanical appliance either to stoop to lean on the crutch, or to raise the shoulders to prevent his being hurt by the pressure: besides the stooping position of the body, the head is sinking between the shoulders, and the chin poking forwards in a horizontal position. I have just such a case under treatment, where a strumous and imperfectly anchylosed knee was treated for several years by the support I have named, and which produced the additional weakness and curvature of the spine. Conclusion.

My object in publishing these few notes is—

I. To counteract the prevalent opinion, or rather illusion, (a.) That spinal curvatures are merely mechanical aberrations of form, and have no relation to the affection which caused them.

(b.) That any plan of treatment based upon the solitary fact of a (mechanically) bent spine can cure a curvature.

(c.) That there is no harm in neglecting the treatment of beginning curvatures.. And,

II. My second object is to induce my professional brethren (a.) Not to trust too much to spinal doctors and their orthopedic adjutants.

(b.) To enter fully into the anamnesis of each spinal

curvature.

(c.) Not to neglect the hygienic and medicinal treatment of patients suffering from spinal curvatures.

(d.) To make themselves acquainted with scientific medical gymnastics, which is "surgery without a knife," and for which I claim the following, from Mr. Bowman's address on surgery at the last meeting of the British Medical Association:—

"It is the hand of God. the human hand permitted now, through insight into God's laws, to be the saving instrument of earthly life and organisation."

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REVIEWS.

Lectures Publiques sur l'Homœopathie faites au Palais des Facultés de Clermont-Ferrand, par A. Imbert-Gourbeyre, Professeur de Matière Médicale à l'Ecole de Médecine de Clermont-Ferrand, &c. &c. Baillière.

DR. IMBERT-GOURBEYRE is already well known to the readers of this Journal. Professor of Materia Medica in an allopathic school of medicine, free to write in the pages of allopathic journals, he has devoted his pen for these fifteen years past to the cause of Homœopathy. His thesis for the doctorate was an account of the pathogenetic and therapeutic action of Orange-flowers, as an instance of the working of the law of similars; and his labours have been concluded, down to the present time, with a most elaborate survey of the action of Arsenic in health and disease, designed to illustrate the same great truth. In an early volume of this Journal, we gave an account of the thesis on Orange-flowers; and in later volumes we have translated the memoirs On Arsenical Epistaxis (vol. xxii, p. 519), On the Action of Arsenic upon the External Genitals (vol. xxiii, p. 77), and On the Febrigenic Properties of Arsenic (vol. xxiv, p. 72). In vol. xix, p. 367, also appears a version of a study of Antimonial Eruptions by the same author. Our readers are thus prepared to welcome any farther production of so able and industrious a worker in our cause.

The volume now before us, however, rather sustains the reputation of its author than adds to it. The phrase "Lectures Publiques" hints that we have not to expect anything very scientific; and we do not proceed far before we find that he is addressing a popular audience, and accommodating himself to its needs and capacities. We have not, what we should most desiderate, Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre's