extracting. 2. The use of anaesthetics.

eye by forceps. cleansing of the for the bandage.

3. Discarding the use of the eye speculum. 4. Discarding the fixation of the 5. The upward incision. 6. The perfect wound. 7. The substitution of a mask All these improvements, he thinks, contributed to the success of the operation. Dr. Macguire gives a case of episcleritis, by which expression is understood a circumscribed vascular swelling or nodule of a bluish or purplish hue some two to three millimètres from the cornea. He was successful in several cases which he relates with Nux moschata in 3rd and 30th dilutions. Papers follow on "Infantile Mastoiditis," by Buffum; "A Severe Burn of Eye," by Dr. Vilas; "Voluntary Nystagmus," by Dr. Campbell; "Granular Eyelids," by Dr. Lewis; "Cases of Hæmorrhage of Ear following a fall with crepitation heard in external meatus, and engorged papilla, with periodic objective bubbling noise in temporal fossæ," by Dr. Wanstall, a "Case of Otitis Media Purulenta," by Dr. Phillips, and some "Notes on Correction of Anomalous Refraction," by Dr. Wilson. Altogether this volume of Transactions, though small, is interesting and instructive.

75

OUR FOREIGN CONTEMPORARIES.

AMERICA.-In our January number of last year we brought down the journals of this country to June, 1881. On the present occasion we shall survey the remaining numbers of that year. We have already brought down those of the Continent to the same point; and purpose hereafter adopting a somewhat different course in dealing with them, which will enable us to give, at one glance, a view of all that has been noteworthy in the journalism of the past twelvemonth.

North American Journal of Homœopathy.-August.Dr. Straube communicates some curious experiences with what he calls Malandrinum, which is the matter of the grease" (malanders) of horses, potentised to the 30th. He has been employing it in an epidemic of smallpox, both as a prophylactic and a curative agent. Twenty persons who were quite well, and to whom it was given simply as a preventive, experienced symptoms from it not unlike those of the incipience of variola, besides (in several cases) a black, foul-smelling diarrhoea. Fifteen persons who, being in immediate contact with smallpox patients, and displaying symptoms of infection, took the drug, rapidly became well. Eleven developed cases were treated with it. The results are difficult to estimate, as most of them had been vaccinated; but it is noteworthy that in none who took it from the beginning was any odour perceptible. It does not, Dr. Straube considers, cover the brain symptoms of variola; but for these, when occurring, he finds Stramonium very efficient.

Nov. We have here the contribution of Dr. S. A. Jones to the Transactions of the World's Convention of 1876, which has been omitted from the published volumes, "On the Erythræmalysis produced by Picric acid." Dr.

Skinner contributes some more of his "Wunder-kuren." Let us take the first among them as a specimen. An American lady consulted him in July, 1878, for severe headaches and acrid leucorrhoea of some standing. "She got one dose of Calcarea, 150м, and all her symptoms disappeared. She returned to America, and I have heard since that the headaches had returned. I was written to about them, and I advised a repetition of the Calcarea in an equally high or higher power. I have not heard of her since Oct., 1878." If Dr. Skinner ranks this among his cures," what must his failures be!

As an appendix to this journal, Dr. Lilienthal here commences a translation of Huber's exhaustive treatise on Mercury, written for the World's Convention, but too bulky to find space in its Transactions.

Hahnemannian Monthly.-Aug.-Dr. McGuire writes on "Veratrum viride in Acute Diseases of the Fundus Oculi." His experience is that it acts in congestions and irritations here as it does in similar conditions at the base of the brain. In Dr. Bushrod James's genial account of our International Convention two misprints should be corrected. In p. 485, 1. 5 from bottom, "test" should be "best;" and in p. 491, 1. 19, for "Hughes " we should read Hayle."

Sept.-Dr. Hooper contributes some satisfactory observations on "The Efficiency of Potentised Drugs in abnormal or deficient Labour Pains." Dr. Reinbaugh sends a good case of senile gangrene recovering under the local use of dry earth, which at once removed all odour.

Nov.-Dr. Neidhard communicates a proving of the golden sulphuret of Antimony, made long ago, but hitherto unpublished. "For many years," he writes, "I have been in the habit of using this remedy in the 2nd trituration with great benefit in cases of acute as well as chronic nasal and bronchial catarrh. In chronic forms I have been particularly successful, having permanently cured with it cases which had lasted for years. indurata it has been my chief remedy. I have also used it in several cases of gleet." Dr. Macfarlan's "Homœo

In acne

As

pathic Medication in Surgical Cases" should be read. he chiefly employs high potencies, his experience is the more unique. In the review of the Transactions of our late International Convention we find Dr. Pemberton Dudley writing thus :-"We have rarely read a discussion had in a medical convention with anything like the interest with which we perused the Minutes' contained in this volume. It seems that almost every member who took part in the discussion had quite pronounced views upon the subjects under consideration, and that these views were based upon experience and individual research and not upon mere book-learning, that their expression was characterised by an evident deference to the opinions of others, and that the whole object and aim of the participants was to advance the honour of homoeopathy and enhance the success and influence of all its practitioners. This may seem like fulsome commendation, but if any one will read the discussions carefully he will be impressed very much as we have been." This is pleasant to read.

Dec. In a discussion on the treatment of post-nasal catarrh, Drs. Knerz and McClatchey concur to praise Nitrate of Sanguinarine as its most effective remedy. The lower triturations are employed.

New England Medical Gazette.-July. We are pleased to see that the City of Boston has made a grant of a piece of land containing 16,000 square feet to our hospital there.

American Observer.-Sept.-In reviewing Dr. T. P. Wilson's "Special Indications for Twenty-five Remedies in Intermittent Fever" (Jan., 1881), we expressed surprise that a physician of his distinction should have made his début in authorship with what was confessedly only an abridgment of another man's (Dr. H. C. Allen's) work. Our surprise is removed, though admiration is not substituted, by what we learn here. It seems that Dr. Wilson's book is a mere reproduction of a prize essay presented by a student at the Pulse Medical College to which he was formerly attached, and which came before him as one of its judges.

Oct.-Dr. Eldridge Price makes here an expression of opinion not very flattering to us. "If all the homœopathic practitioners in England-with a few noble exceptionswere proselyted to allopathy, they would not be perceptibly missed from the ocean of scientific homoeopathy." Dr. Samuel Jones follows with like severity towards ourselves. The article ("A Curious Manuscript") is in his most Carlylese vein; and were it not for its personalities we would gladly reproduce it here. The point it seeks to make is to substitute for the Daltonian conception of material atoms that of Roscovich, which regards matter as a congeries of mathematical points of attraction and repulsion. By this means he thinks we may avoid the conclusion to which recent molecular science seems to force us, that matter is not divisible beyond the point represented by our 11th or 12th dilution. But surely the difference between the two conceptions is a mental rather than a physical one. Whether the impressions we receive from matter are the result of bulk or of force, it remains true that these impressions grow fainter and fainter as we attenuate the substance which gives them, until they cease to be appreciable by ordinary sensation, however assisted. It is an unavoidable inference that the impressions we call medicinal must also after a time diminish and disappear; and this whether it be material atoms or centres of forces which attenuation reduces in number. The word "infinite" is surely an assumption in reference to the one as to the other. We cannot, therefore, allow the validity of Dr. Jones' "superior" criticism of our statement that "the difficulty "-arising from the limited divisibility of matter-" is evaded by some by saying that the atomic constitution of matter is at best only a theory." We must remark, moreover, that the word "evade," which has stirred up so much wrath on his part, was employed by us only in its etymological sense of "escape:" it implied no culpability.

New York Medical Times.-Under this title, as we have mentioned, the quondam "Homœopathic Times " began to appear (with its ninth volume) in April, 1881.