COLCHICINE.-According to MM. Mairet and Combemalle, this drug acts, according to the dose, either as a diuretic or a purgative. The effects produced are more rapid when colchicine is administered subcutaneously. The dose should be from two to three milligrammes to produce diuresis, and five milligrammes when given as a purgative. Colchicine increases the excretion of uric acid, and diminishes the quantity of uric acid in the blood. Its accumulation in the system, however, and its highly poisonous nature, make it necessary to use it cautiously.

TAURAT'S FORMULA FOR TERPINOL.

R. Terpinol,

Benzoate of soda, āā........

Sugar, q. s.

gr. 1%

M. Ft. One pill. Sig. Six to ten pills a day in pulmonary catarrh. Terpinol is eliminated chiefly by the pulmonary surface and gives its special odor to the breath. The sputa become more fluid, their bad odor disappears and expectoration is facilitated.

ANTIPYRIN IN HEMICRANIA.-Ungar states that antipyrin is more rapid and certain in its effects in hemicrania than the salicylate of sodium. Taken in the beginning of the attack the remedy is abortive, and has a most favorable effect when the attack has developed considerable intensity. It will not relieve, however, in all cases, nor does it always prove beneficial in the same case, on repeated occasions. Fifteen grains given once, and if good effects are manifested in one hour, this dose repeated, rarely failed. In Ungar's cases it was ordered in capsules or wafers.

PILOCARPINE IN DIPHTHERIA.-Dr. Lax reports good results with pilocarpine in ten cases of diphtheria. The following is the formula employed by the writer:

R. Pilocarpin hydrochlorate.......

Pepsin..........

Hydrochloric acid......

Distilled water.......

gr. to g.
gr. x to xii.
gtt. ij to iij.
3xvijss.

A teaspoonful or tablespoonful taken in wine, and warm fomentations applied to the throat. At the end of the third day the diphtheritic membrane upon the tonsils and pillars of the fauces had disappeared. Guttmann has treated in a year and a half eighty-one cases of diphtheria by pilocarpine without the loss of a patient.

OSMIC ACID IN NEURALGIA.-Dr. Schapiro uses the following solution:

R. Osmic acid........
Glycerin.......

Distilled water...

0.455 parts.

14.20 parts.

24.60 parts.

This solution should be kept in a black bottle, and if carefully sealed will keep for two or three weeks. For neuralgic affections five drops of the above solution are injected hypodermically near the seat of pain. In some cases the injection must be renewed, but does not produce any dangerous results.

"SALOL" PILLS.-We have received from the manufacturers, Messrs. Schieffelin & Company, a number of pills composed of "salol" or "salicylate of phenol." This substance was first produced by Professor Von Weuchi, of Berne, and brought to the attention of the medical profession by Dr. Sahli. By the action of the pancreatic fluid in the intestine it is divided into its component parts, phenol and salicylic acid. In an article on the subject by Mr. Moss, published in the British Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, salol is described: "Salol is a white crystalline coarse powder, rather like damp table salt. The odor is very marked, and is identical with that of oil of wintergreen, which is chiefly salicylate of methyl. When taken into the mouth a fainter impression of the smell is received on the palate, and the taste of carbolic acid is just suggested. The advantages which are claimed for salol over salicylate of soda, for which it is prepared as a substitute, are dependent first of all on its insolubility in water and the juices of the stomach, and secondly on the ease and completeness with which it is decomposed after passing the pylorus. Being insoluble in water, it is free from the repellant and nauseating effects of salicylate of soda, which some patients find so objectionable that even syncope has sometimes supervened on ingestion. Passing through the stomach unaltered, it undergoes decomposition in the duodenum, where it comes into contact with the pancreatic juice and is broken up into salicylic acid and phenol. Sahli has used 'salol' with good effects in all rheumatic affections, in chronic urticaria, in sub-orbital neuralgia, as an antipyretic, in diabetes, in intestinal catarrh, in typhoid fever, in cholera, against intestinal parasites, in catarrh of the bladder, in ozona, in otorrhoea, as a local application in gonorrhoea, and as a mouth wash."

BY AMBROSE L. RANNEY, M. D., NEW YORK CITY,

Professor of the Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in the New York PostGraduate Medical School and Hospital; Professor of Diseases of the Mind and the Nervous System in the University of Vermont.

HISTORY OF STATIC ELECTRICITY.

We owe to the ingenuity of Otto V. Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, the first electrical machine where friction was employed as the exciting agent. It consisted of a ball of sulphur which was turned upon its axis by hand-power. An assistant grasped the ball with his hands, and, by so doing, served as a conductor for the escape of the positive electricity to the earth. This primitive affair gave feeble sparks, which could only be seen in total darkness:

Hawksbee substituted later a globe of glass for the ball of sulphur. He obtained more satisfactory sparks with the positive electricity thus generated.

Later still, glass tubes were used, with hand rubbing; and they entirely superseded the globe as generators until the middle of the eighteenth century.

In 1767, Hawksbee's original machine was revived in a modified form by Professor Boze, of Wittemberg; and for a time it came into general use. The accompanying cut of this machine is taken from the Leçons de Physique of Abbé Nollet.

The collector was hung from the ceiling by silken cords; and the hands of an assistant were used as rubbers upon the globe of glass.

FIGURE 1.-Hawksbee's original electrical machine (from Leçons de Physique of the Abbé Nollet, published in 1767). The globe is of glass, and positive electricity is collected upon a conductor suspended by silken cords from the ceiling.

FIGURE 2.-Ramsden's electrical machine (invented in 1768). It has

sector-shaped pieces of oiled silk to prevent a loss of electricity from the glass plate while passing from cushion to cushion.

In 1768, Ramsden, of London, invented the so-called "platemachine." The glass plate was supported by wooden uprights, and the friction was made by means of two cushion-rubbers. The collectors were of metal; and two combs of metal were employed to draw off the electricity from the glass plate. The cushions were "grounded" by means of metal supports, so that the negative electricity which accumulated upon them could escape to the earth. In 1776, Von Marum modified Ramsden's apparatus so as to obviate this loss.

Nairne next modified the machine of Ramsden by substituting a cylinder of glass for a single glass plate and by adding an attachment for collecting the negative electricity by means of

FIGURE 3.-Nairne's electrical machine. The cylinder of glass revolves between two separately insulated conductors-one attached to the rubber and the other to a metal comb.

an insulated conductor placed in communication with the rubbers. This was the first machine that satisfactorily furnished both positive and negative static electricity.

Probably the first electrical apparatus which can properly be said to have been a true "induction-machine" was described as early as 1788, by W. Nicholson, before the Royal Society of London. He called it the "electric-doubler." It was built somewhat upon the plan of the machine now known as the Toepler-model. It had three discs, attached to a common hub. These touched upon pins of metal at two points during each revolution, and passed between two pairs of insulated metal