same family, the boy had a follicular swelling in the external meatus of the ear, and the girl a catarrh of the middle ear with hardness of hearing. The latter was cured by a repeated employment of Pollitzer's treatment. Finally, I may mention a case of measles (in a boy of three), where there remained as a sequela a violent bronchitis, and, after this was removed, such an irritability of the mucous membrane of the stomach that anything he took was at once rejected. In this case Ipecac. 1 proved specific. Two days afterwards I found my little patient not only sitting up, but eager to participate in the dinner of his parents. Nux vomica in Pneumonia. By Dr. HAUSTEIN.* On the 21st February, 1858, I was called to see a pregnant lady, 38 years old. She had been ill for four days, and the allopathic physician in attendance pronounced her disease to be pneumonia. She was suffering from a violent pain shooting inwards in the right side of the chest, which was aggravated by breathing deeply, turning in bed, speaking and lying on the painful side; her breathing was short, and she was teazed with a cough, with tenacious, frothy, bloody expectoration. When she coughed, the urine passed involuntarily, and the ejected blood was of a brownish colour. She complained of tearing in the right shoulder, increased by moving the affected part, and of aching and tearing in the head. She was weak, apparently owing to her night's rest being so much disturbed: she has frequent chills, with rigor and goose-skin, and sour-smelling perspiration, great thirst, rapid pulse, no appetite, a furred tongue, and peevish and dejected spirits. I prescribed a drop of Nux vom. 3 every three hours, and in twelve hours she was much better. On the 26th February her husband gave me a report of her state, from which I could learn that under the continued use of Nux vom. the disease had disappeared, all except a slight remnant, which was entirely removed by a few doses of Bryon. 3. Arsenicum in General Dropsy. By Dr. HAUSTEIN.† A woman, æt. 27, affected with leucorrhoea of a yellow colour, had for a week symptoms of general dropsy. The disease began *Allg. hom. Ztg., July 23rd, 1866. + Ibid. with weakness and sore throat felt on swallowing. The face, abdomen, and all the limbs, especially the legs, were dropsically swelled. The patient was unable to lie down for an instant the last four days; on attempting to do so, such difficulty of breathing came on that she nearly died of strangulation. Yesterday she had an attack of weakness, unconsciousness, rattling respiration, and cold perspiration, and death seemed imminent. She is often teazed with a frequently recurring cough, with expectoration of blood, streaked mucus, retching, and vomiting of food and drink, whereby the few minutes of sleep which she can only procure by laying her her head on a table before her are often broken in upon. She has often rigor with goose-skin; has great thirst, and a small, rapid pulse. She is often affected with whirling vertigo: complains of heaviness of head; burning, watering, and sealing-up at night of the eyes; dimness of vision; and stuffed cold, with loss of smell. She has a furred tongue, bitter taste, pressure as of a weight and trembling in the pit of the stomach, and a painless, fœtid diarrhoea. Arsen. 6, a drop every six hours, and, as amendment went on, only every night and morning, effected an improvement after a few doses, and in four weeks a perfect cure. Case of Primary Chancre. By Dr. H. GOULLON.* On the 16th April, a journeyman mason, about sixteen years old, came to me on account of having become infected about a week before. On the glans penis there were already three characteristic chancre sores of various sizes, but all with a tendency to spread. No pain, no swelling of penis, testicles, or epididymis. General health not disturbed. What would be the treatment pursued by an allopath in such a case? "A recent sore of undoubted character, and without inflammatory surroundings, should be at once and thoroughly destroyed by caustic (the Vienna paste or nitrate of silver), and thereafter treated as a simple cauterized wound. If one cauterization is not enough, it may be repeated." (Wunderlich, Outlines of Special Pathology, p. 800.) Homœopathy has the great merit of having upset such deeply rooted ideas as this of the indispensable necessity of cauterization, and of having proved their nullity by her brilliant success. In the * Allg. hom. Ztg., July 23rd, 1866. present case the patient got every night and morning five grains of Merc. viv., trit. 2. The sores were at the same time dressed with an ointment made with a very small portion of red precipitate. Respecting the so-called antisyphilitic general treatment, which many still regard as indispensable even in the first stage of syphilis (see Burger's Manual of Surgery, p. 140), Wunderlich says very sensibly, "So-called specifics for syphilis are needless whilst the primary sore is there; still, it is advisable, in cases of hardness of the sore or of its cicatrix coming on or remaining, to give for some time small doses of mercury." There was, of course, no question of a general treatment in the case I have related. [It appears to us that the author employed both general and local treatment.-Eds.] I may further remark that the patient had to walk nine miles every day to and from his work during the whole treatment, which lasted a week and a half, till he was perfectly cured. Who knows but that the symptoms of severe irritation, and even the occurrence of buboes, are not often the consequence of that unfortunate cauterization ? "Nitrate of silver," says Devergie (Universal Lexicon d. Med. u. Chir., Leipzig, art. Syphilis), "stands in no specific (physiological) relation to the syphilitic dyscrasy; it cannot act here as a remedy. The disease that was considered local spreads as a general disease, and that all the more virulently that it has been deprived of the organ employed by the system to free itself from the contagious matter to which it owes its existence." Podophyllin in Dysenteric Diarrhoea of Children. Sept. 5th, 1866.-At about 3 o'clock this afternoon I saw a little boy, between two and three years old, who had been taken ill at noon. From that time till now he had been seized every quarter of an hour with severe pain in the abdomen, followed by passing of a small quantity of mucus and blood. There was no vomiting or fever. I have nearly always given Podophyllin in such cases, but have looked upon the occurence of prolapse of the rectum at each stool as pathognomonic of the remedy. The absence of this symptom in the present instance, and the prominence of the colic, led me in preference to Colocynth, of which I gave a drop of the second dilution every two hours. VOL. XXIV, NO. XCVIII. -OCTOBER, 1866. X X Sept. 6th, 11.30 a.m.-No improvement whatever; the pain and purging have continued every quarter of an hour or so during the night, and the poor child looks much exhausted. I now fell back on the tried remedy, and gave half a grain of the third trituration of Podophyllin every two hours. Sept. 7th.—The little boy came walking into the room to see me to-day, looking quite himself again. The mother informed me that after the third dose of the new medicine (i. e., in four hours after beginning its administration) the pain and purging had both ceased, and had never returned since. He continues well. Chronic Albuminuria. By Dr. NOACK, Jun.* Albuminuria, that most complex morbid state, whether we look at it in its symptoms and progress, or study it in its pathogenesy, has formed the subject of many essays in which each author has regarded it from his own exclusive point of view. Hence has resulted an incoherent assemblage of doctrines, in the midst of which the reader becomes confused, to the great detriment of the therapeutics of the disease, which, we may say, have been completely shipwrecked. Such must necessarily be the case as long as the microscope and chemical analysis are all in all, and until a wholesome study of the disease shall be substituted for that of its lesions and their faulty interpretation. It was reserved for the school of the Art Médical to point out this error, and for some time past its voice has been loudly raised in the debate. In an excellent article by Dr. Dufresne (Art Médical, ii, 1865, p. 124 et seq.), the question is placed on its true clinical basis, and solved in a truly medical sense. These ideas have borne fruit, for the essay of M. Jaccond on Albuminuria (the most complete summary of this important question) is an eloquent appeal in favour of sound pathological ideas. To convince ourselves of this, it will suffice to peruse pp. 126 and 127 of the work alluded to: we could almost imagine them to be taken from the Art Médical, the author seems to be so imbued with its doctrines. One thing only is wanting, the name of Jean-Paul Tessier, their illustrious propagator. In defining albuminuria " a deviation from the normal type of nutritive action, consisting in a temporary or persistent perturbation * Art. Médical, July, 1866. in the phenomena of the assimilation or disassimilation of the albuminoid matters;" in proposing, very properly, to substitute for the the term Bright's disease, the expression Bright's acute or chronic affection, M. Jaccond has the advantage of fixing the real nosological place which this group of phenomena should occupy, in as far as it is a morbid symptomatic state. He has by this at once simplified and limited the therapeutic question. As Dr. Dufresne (loc. cit., p. 210) has well observed, our homœopathic Materia Medica offers us precious resources, though they are still limited, especially in the chronic forms of albuminuria. In publishing the following case of real cure obtained by medicines given on the principle of similia, we at the same time attest the action of infinitesimal doses, and prove the value of the above general considerations. H. M. X.—, residing near Lyons, 28 years of age, of bilious sanguine temperament and excellent constitution, had always hitherto enjoyed good health. Passionately addicted to fieldsports, he devoted himself to them, and had thereby contracted several catarrhal inflammations, which had gradually caused derangements of the digestive functions. In September, 1865, he imprudently slept for a long time in a damp place; two days afterwards enormous general swelling came on, and on the 2nd October he took to his bed, from which he did not rise for four months. He was attended from the commencement by two allopathic colleagues, who diagnosed acute Bright's affection. He was subjected by them to various kinds of treatment, such as saline purgatives, powerful diuretics, Tannin in large doses. Dr. P—, of Lyons, was consulted, and recommended powdered Scammony, which, far from benefiting the patient, set up such a severe attack of gastro-enteritis, that, despairing of the issue, our honourable colleague gave the patient up, and announced to his family the impending fatal result. Under these circumstances, my father was requested to give his advice to M. X-, and I have drawn up this history of the case from his notes. State of the patient on the 10th November.-General and great anasarca; abdomen distended, sensitive to the touch, and showing distinct fluctuation; skin pale, flaccid, dry, without elasticity; lips dry and red; tongue pointed, dry, of a scarlet red colour, with elevated papillæ (scarlatina tongue), and a brownish streak in the centre; teeth covered with sordes, great thirst, complete anorexia, nausea; vomiting after partaking of thin soups or |
