PROCEEDINGS OF MEDICAL SOCIETIES. PORTLAND, IND., JULY 17, 1869. The Jay County Medical Society met pursuant to adjournment. The President, Dr. Wm. Freeman, in the chair. The Secretary called the roll. Members present: Drs. C. L. Arthur, G. W. Shephard, T. L. Shephard, T. A. Cox, Jos. Watson, B. R. Freeman and J. E. Markle. The minntes of the previous meeting were read and approved. The credentials of W. G. Smith and L. G. Ralston having been examined and reported favorably upon by the Censors, they were unanimously elected to membership. Reports of committees were then read and thus disposed of: Dr. Brewington, on Pathology of Dysentery, not present. Dr. T. A Cox on Diagnosis of Acute Rheumatism, was continued. Dr. T. L. Shephard read an essay on Pathology of Acute Rheumatism. Dr. Jos. Watson read an essay on Treatment of Acute Rheumatism. The different essays were discussed at some length, and, on motion, they were placed on file. age, Dr. W. G. Smith presented a patient, male, fifty-five years of who was examined by the Society; phthisis pulmonalis was diagnosed; treatment recommended, alcoholic stimulants, cod liver oil, syrup iodide ferri, open air and exercise. Dr. C. L. Arthur made an oral report in the case of a lady he was called to attend. She had been delivered by a mid-wife. Immediately after her delivery they placed her in a tub of cold spring water and bathed her all over. This treatment was continued for seven days, with the addition of cold water injections into her rectum and vagina. (The husband was sick at the time, and knew nothing of her treatment.) I was called to see her the seventh night after her confinement. Found her with puerperal mania; pulse one hundred and eighty; pain and tenderness over the abdomen; the lochia had ceased and the bowels were confined; took four men to hold her in bed. Gave a purgative, which operated freely; used hypodermic injection of morphia every hour for three hours, when she became quiet and went to sleep. Returned next day; found her as bad or worse than on the previous day. Gave her a hypodermic injection of one and a-half grains of morphia, with no effect; repeated in two hours, when she became quiet and slept soundly for four hours, when she awoke and her reason was restored in a great measure, and continued quiet until the next day two o'clock, when she expired, the victim of officious old women. An election of officers was held and resulted as follows: For President, Dr. J. E. Markle; Secretary, Dr. G. W. Shephard; Treasurer, Dr. C. D. Arthur; Censors, Drs. Wm. Freeman, C. L. Arthur. and T. L. Shephard. The President made the following appointments for essays to be read at the next meeting: Dr. C. L. Arthur, Diagnosis of Pneumonia. Dr. G. W. Shephard, Pathology of Pneumonia. Dr. Joseph Watson, Prognosis and Treatment of Pneumonia. Drs. B. R. Freeman, T. L. Shephard, W. G. Smith, L. G. Ralston, and Wm. Freeman essays on subjects of their own choosing. The Secretary was ordered to prepare and furnish a copy of the proceedings for publication in the Western Journal of Medicine. On motion, the Society adjourned, to meet on the 9th day of October, 1869, at New Mount Pleasant, Ind. J. E. MARKLE, M. D., Secretary. BRAINARD MEDICAL SOCIETY. The Society met in Winamac July 7th, 1869. Proceedings read and approved. Dr. J. H. Smith presented a patient for examination, who was examined and the treatment discussed. Dr. W. T. Clelland read a paper on surgery; Dr. A. R. Thompson one on the mechanism of parturition. Dr. Eaton, chairman of the section on Materia Medica, Therapeuties, &c., presented a paper on bitter tonics in general and Euonymus Atropurpureus in particular. A communication was read from Dr. G. V. Woolen, secretary of the State Medical Society, asking the members to forward their names and remittances, if they wished the Transactions for the year. The Western Journal of Medicine was selected as the organ of communication for the Society. nal. Dr. J. W. C. Eaton raised a club of five for the above named jour Adjourned to meet in Winamac August 4th, 1869. I. B. WASHBURN, M. D., Secretary. CORRESPONDENCE. CINCINNATI, JULY 25, 1869. MR. EDITOR: In the July number of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences Dr. Edward Hartshorne, of Philadelphia, thus alludes to my correction of what I believed, and still believe, to be an error in his comments on the earliest historical notice by British writers of "weight extension" in the treatment of fractured thigh: "Dr. Geo. C. Blackman (Western Journal of Medicine, May, 1869,) presents the following note with a quotation from the Chirurgical Observations and Cases of William Bromfield, a well-known contemporary of Pott, and surgeon to St. George's Hospital in London, in order to correct an imaginary error he attributes to me in my comment on the mistake of Heister, then of Bell, and afterwards of others, in regard to the pulley-extension adopted and recommended by Fabricius Hildanus as the method of Ambrose Pare." Now, in our brief remarks on Dr. Hartshorne's most excellent paper we had but one object in view, and that was to show that Dr. H. was in error in stating that "the first European writer, out of the continent at least, who definitely speaks of this mode of fractured thigh, &c., &c., is John Bell. (Principles of Surgery, fourth edition, Edinburgh, 1801)." We regret that Dr. H. did not place the extract just quoted from his paper in connexion with the copy of our remarks which he has published in the July number referred to, as we think the majority of readers would have agreed with us, that our comments were intended only for his statement that John Bell, in 1801, was the first to notice the weight extension. Nor are we willing to admit that Bromfield's allusion to the practice is so very "vague," when in his Chirurgical Observations and Cases (London, 1773), referring to different methods, of treating fractured thigh then in vogue, he adds: "As short splints and stretched out limbs are, by them, thought the best method of practice, and even a large weight hung from the ankle-joint, to keep the muscles of the thigh extended when the femur is fractured, is not every where exploded.”—P. 112. Again, Dr. Hartshorne remarks: "I trust enough has been said to show that Dr. Blackman's collation of one sentence of mine with one of Bromfield's affords no evidence of hasty compilation in what he is pleased to call an "elaborate paper." On the contrary, nothing was further from our thoughts than to attempt to furnish such evidence; for it is seldom that we have an opportunity of perusing a paper presenting such careful research, and which, in our humble opinion, seems so exhaustive. In conclusion, he adds: "If Dr. Blackman will take the time and trouble to follow the same course of inquiry, really at first hand, as I certainly did in the course of an investigation for another and more important purpose, I think he will agree with me in the conclusion 'that Heister mistook Hildanus, thus committing "erroneous compilation," and that John Bell and others must have been misled into the same mistake through "second hand quotation." To this we can only respond, that it is not very probable that any one who has perused Dr. Hartshorne's truly elaborate papers, will deem it necessary "to take the time and trouble to follow the same course of inquiry"-nor will any one, we think, be disposed to dispute the conclusions to which he has arrived in reference to the "erroneous compilations," which have been committed through "second hand quotations." Truly Yours, GEO. C. BLACKMAN. SPRINGFIELD, OHIO, JUNE 29, 1869. EDITOR OF JOURNAL-Dear Sir: While every person, especially every physician, should rejoice at the appearance, and herald the triumphs of any agent which relieves human suffering, yet I think it as much a duty to expose cheats and denounce pretended discoveries, which only gull the profession, and through them the public. For this reason I beg leave to speak of my "findings" in the trial of local anæsthetics. I purchased last winter of Max Wocher, of Cincinnati, a fine apparatus and began to use it to some extent in my practice. I used pure sulphuric ether in my experiments; but as my objections apply to the freezing, they would be the same for rhigolene or any other agent adapted for use in the instrument in question. In the first place, the application of the agent is attended with most unpleasant sensations. In anesthetizing an abscess my patients would generally kick around and screech more than if I had plunged a lancet in without any previous process. After freezing, the cutting was not felt much, of course, though as a general thing, the patient refused utterly to tolerate the spray until the parts were in condition for a painless operation. But the tug of war comes when the tissues begin to thaw out. If you want to have a realization of a howling dervish of Khurdistan, just anæsthetize a felon on a poor fellow's finger and wait till sensation begins to return. Did you ever, when a boy, snow-ball for an hour, and then stick your fingers into the blaze of a hickory fire? That's something like it. Or, in running bullets, did you ever run one into the palm of your hand? If so, you can realize the delights of local anesthesia. I paid Mr. Wocher fourteen dollars for my instrument. It can be bought at a bargain now. A floriculturist might use it to squirt tobacco-water on his plants to kill lice, or an oculist might freeze pig's eyes with it for dissection; but I can never have the face to ask a patient of mine to submit to its tortures again. Yours very truly, H. S. FULLERTON. PHILADELPHIA, JULY 15, 1869. A calm pervades the medical portion of our community. The summer sessions of our medical schools have terminated, and those zealous students who remained to avail themselves of the opportunities afforded in the practical courses of the University, and of the Jefferson Medical College-in the numerous and varied clinical courses in our hospitals, and in the greater advantages offered for extended and careful anatomical investigations in the less crowded dissecting amphi |