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same principle; leaving to itself the inaccessible occasional morbific cause it deals with the constitutional cause, and ensures to the organism immunity from the infection that threatens it.

Before concluding I must in the interests of truthfulness allude to two cases which under my sole treatment terminated fatally.

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These two cases make the statistic account of my treatment of diphtheria with Cyanuret of Mercury show a mortality of scarcely 0.666.. per cent., which is about as favourable as could be imagined. One of these cases serves to place not only the vis diphtherifuga of this remedy but also the dynamico-potential power of specificity in general in an even clearer light than successful cases.

This one case was that of a girl of ten years, who, when I first saw her had been already three days ill. The wellknown local signs of diphtheria had consequently had time to develop themselves to a great extent. This circumstance alone would not have caused me to make an unfavourable prognosis; but what struck me at my first visit was the vanishing smallness and emptiness of the pulse together with indistinctness of the heart's sounds and excessive quickness of its action. My second visit furnished me with the key to this phenomenon. On my arrival I observed that the patient had lost blood from the nose, and on inquiry I found that since her sixth year, consequently for four years, she had been subject to frequent attacks of profuse epistaxis that could with difficulty be subdued. When, contrary to my custom and principles, I was searching for some remedy, in addition to the Cyanuret of Mercury, to meet this serious complication, there occurred on the third day of treatment the spontaneous expulsion of a nasal polypus the size of a hazel nut, whereupon the hæmorrhage entirely ceased. Thereupon under the sole use of the thirtieth dilution of Cyanuret of Mercury, the cure of the diphtheria went on more rapidly, and on the fifth day of the treatment the treatment could be considered as ended. Sleep and appetite were satisfactory, but all the

signs of a high degree of anæmia persisted, which, as the Cyanuret of Mercury seemed to me to be now superfluous, I sought to meet by China. In the meantime the younger brother of the patient also got diphtheria, and I thus had the opportunity while seeing him daily to keep the sister also under observation. The appetite which had just begun to revive, went off after twenty-four hours, whether in consequence of some error in diet, I could not ascertain. Fever again made its appearance, accompanied by nausea, headache, and pain on swallowing. On inspecting the

throat I was astonished to find a recurrence of the local diphtheric symptoms. I of course changed the China for Cyanuret of Mercury. Under the exclusive use of the lastnamed remedy the local as well as the general symptoms of diphtheria again completely disappeared after the unusually long period of another five days, but left behind profound apathy with complete absence of pulse. The appetite did not return. In two days more the patient died under my eyes; during this time I sought in vain for any revival of the pulse and heart's beats.

On carefully considering the course of this disease, of which I have only given the main features, I must ascribe this fatal issue not so much to the two attacks of diphtheric morbid process, within twelve days, as to the effects of the anæmia resulting from the epistaxis of several years' duration. The case at the same time shows the irresistible curative power of minute doses of Cyanuret of Mercury.

The next case is different. At my first visit to the patient whose case I have just related, I spoke to the mother of the extremely unfavourable hygienic situation of the apartment. It was the first story of one of the oldest and smallest houses in the narrowest street in the town. The back windows looked into a small, dark, and fœtid courtyard. The air one breathed gave one the impression of a cellar. The little brother, aged 7, had from his first year been affected with hard swellings of his submaxillary and cervical glands. I directed that he should smell daily at Cyanuret of Mercury 30, and though he made no complaints, his mother, finding him in the way, sent him off to

some relations outside the town. But scarcely had the girl recovered from her first attack of diphtheria when the mother brought the boy home again. He had no sooner got away into the country than he fell ill, and insisted on being taken back to his mother. When I got him under my care the diphtheria was in the fourth day of its development. The infiltrated glands had increased to a great size, and caused him such pain to open his mouth that it was impossible for me to make an inspection of his throat, so violently did he resist. An overpowering fœtor oris

told what was the matter.

There was enormous salivation

of a corpse-like odour which filled a large basin one-third full in twenty-four hours, and entirely prevented sleep. It was impossible to get him to take either food or drink, and even the globule of medicine placed within his lips was ejected with a splutter. The fever was proportionate to the severity of the other symptoms. For the first time since my acquaintance with diphtheria I failed to notice after twenty-four hours any effect from the Cyanuret of Mercury indicative of amelioration, but the obstinate resistance of the patient makes it doubtful if he really got any of the medicine. In a wonderfully short time the glands swelled to such a monstrous size the patient's skull resembled the dot on the letter i. Death occurred on the 3rd day of the treatment, the 6th or 7th of the disease.

The father of these two children died in the prime of life of syphilitic pleurisy and mercurial dyscrasia, and nine of the brothers and sisters succumbed to children's diseases. Such cases show the limits that are set to the healing art.

THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT LIVERPOOL.

By JOHN H. CLARKE, M.D.

WHAT is the raison d'être of the British Medical Association? It would appear to be twofold. One main object of the existence of the Association is clearly the making of speeches from time to time setting forth that the profession is endowed with all the cardinal virtues and a few others in a degree far surpassing all other professions; that, in spite of this, in our once happy islands this right worthy body labours under grievous disabilities and wrongs; that in the House of Commons it has few representatives, whilst in the House of Lords-the home of nobility-the profession which all the world allows is "noble," has no representative at all! The other and scarcely less important object of the Association is, as it appears, to formulate from year to year the feelings of the dominant section of the medical profession in Great Britain on the subject of homoeopathy, and to draw up rules for the guidance of the members of the Association as to how they ought to behave themselves towards those who have tried and proved the value of Hahnemann's rule.

It will be seen that either of these objects forms in itself a sufficient reason for the Association's existence, and in itself affords occupation of a never-ending kind. The chief pontiff of the Association who pulls the wires and conducts the organ, need have no fears of his labours being brought to a premature close.

Before fixing our attention on the Liverpool meeting and showing how well these two objects were there kept in view, it may be advisable to recall the principal incidents of the two previous meetings. It will be remembered that at the Ryde meeting in 1881, Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson and Dr. Syers Bristowe-two of the largest-minded men in the profession-and with them, though somewhat less decidedly, Mr. Barrow, had the courage to propose that the

conduct of members as regards homoeopathists should be regulated on broad principles of common justice and common sense. Needless to say, their advice was rejected with scorn, and their presumption condemned in no measured terms. The following year, at Worcester, the President, Dr. Strange, after duly setting forth the "nobility" of the profession in general, and of the Association in particular, and the high degree in which "the great christian virtue " of "liberty" was possessed by the latter, proposed that a High Court of (medical) Equity and Ethics should be founded to decide the question of homoeopathy and other matters on principles more in accordance with British Medical sentiments than those advocated by Mr. Hutchinson and Dr. Bristowe. It was accordingly resolved that measures should be taken to render it impossible for a professing homoeopath to enter the Association. Honesty and candour were to count for nothing; members of the profession notorious for their belief in the law of similars, and their adherence to it in their practice, were to be welcomed as previously, provided they were too cowardly to acknowledge their belief. But this was not enough for some zealous British medicals. There were professed homœopathists already in the fold. It was proposed by a Mr. Nelson Hardy that the fact of their being homœopathists should of itself disqualify for membership. This was objected to by Mr. Husband of Bournemouth,-not because he loved homœopathy or common justice, bnt because he loved and believed in neither. The proposal of Mr. N. Hardy, he thought, would have the effect of causing expelled homœopathists to appeal to law, and for aught he knew the Lord Chief Justice might be a homœopath, and then, according to British Medical ideas of justice, the Association could not expect to receive fair play from the British Judicial Bench! Mr. Hardy's amendment was therefore lost.

But Mr. Hardy's soul did not find peace. The rejection of the amendment was an ignominious sacrifice of bigotry to expediency; and in the British Medical Association this was a disgrace not to be endured. Bigotry

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