PILLS

We can manufacture in no smaller quantities than 3000 with a sugar coating, or 1000 gelatin-coated.

FILLED CAPSULES

Either hard or elastic, in quantities of 500 and upwards-5- and 10-minim, and 22, 5-, 10- and 15-gramme capacity.

TABLET TRITURATES

We are prepared to furnish of any special formula, provided the quantity is not less than 1000 tablets, and the amount of the medǝcament does not exceed 3⁄44 grain in each tablet. This rule, however, is necessarily elastic, and depends considerably upon the nature of the proposed medicament.

LIQUID PREPARATIONS

Such as Fluid Extracts, Elixirs, Wines, Syrups, etc., we can handle in quantities. of three gallons and upwards.

COMPRESSED TABLETS

We can prepare for you in as small lots as 1000, and from 1⁄2 grain to 180 grains in weight.

HYPODERMIC TABLETS

Will be provided in accordance with any formula submitted, in quantities of 1000 and upwards. Due care should be observed that the dose be not too large for the size of the tablet. which, when finished, weighs 1⁄2 grain.

We should, in a word, be glad to submit quotations
upon the manufacture of

Any Legitimate Pharmaceutical Preparation.

Your Private Formula will leave our laboratory with a guarantee not only as regards the quality of the ingredients, but, furthermore, that they were manufactured in strict accord with the formulæ submitted.

With formulæ containing quinine you will not find upon analysis that some cheaper alkaloid of cinchona was substituted; or where quinine, 2 grains, was specified, you will not find that only a fractional part of that amount was used. With your pills, for example, it will not be possible for you to sum up the total number of grains according to your formula, and then find upon weighing, with excipient, coating, and all, that the weight is not more than should be the weight of the active ingredients alone before being incorporated into the mass. We say this advisedly, for in several instances where we were underbid we have had such facts directed to our attention.

Our Prices are not always the lowest, but with our quotations goes the guarantee alluded to above, and furthermore absolute secrecy in connection with your formulæ.

Drop a Card for our Brochure entitled "Special Preparations,”

London, Eng., and Walkerville, Ont.

547

Two Cases of Traumatic Cataract in Children: Extraction; Successful Results.

BY JAMES MOORES BALL, M. D., ST. LOUIS, MO.

Professor of Ophthalmology and Otology in the St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons; Corresponding Member of the Medico-Legal Society of New York; President of the TriState Medical Society of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri,

[ECENTLY two cases of traumatic cataract occurring in children, have been under my care. Both cases were kindly referred by Dr. W. E. H. Bondurant, of Downing, Mo.

Case 1.-Traumatic Cataract; Extraction of Lens; Successful Result.— J. H., boy, aged nine, was struck in the eye by a needle, which pierced the cornea near its centre and entered the lens. Opacity of the lens developed gradually, the lens substance protruding through the puncture into the anterior chamber, forming a rounded mass with a well-defined pedicle. Four days.before consulting me inflammation developed; the eye became hard and painful. A careful examination under atropine and oblique illumi

nation showed the condition described above.

Here was a case in which the classical operation for traumatic cataract --viz., linear extraction-was evidently out of place. Much of the lens was not softened; nevertheless, the eye showed increased tension, and this, unless soon relieved, would destroy vision. Since it was evident that the greater portion of the lens could not be removed by the linear method, I immediately made an extraction, passing a Graefe knife at the apparent corneo-scleral junction and severing about two-fifth of the circumference of the cornea. The lens was then extracted through a natural pupil, the eye dressed antiseptically, and the dressing kept constantly moist with a solution of bichloride (1 to 300). Healing followed rapidly, and at the end of sixteen days the boy's vision in the affected eye equalled 18.

Case II.-Traumatic Cataract; Extraction; Great Loss of Vitreous; Successful Result.-A few weeks after the discharge of Case I another boy, aged eleven, was brought to me with the statement that the thorn from some kind of a "creeper" had injured the eye a few weeks previously. Examination showed a congested conjunctiva, a faint corneal opacity marking the point of injury, dilated vessels in the peri-corneal zone, the anterior chamber almost obliterated by the pressure of a swollen lens, and great increase of intra-ocular tension. The eye had been painful for three days. At the time of the accident and for several weeks following there was no pain.

Mae ( THE MEDICAL HERALD KERA

548

This was a case of linear extraction, and yet I was sure that much of the lens was still unsoftened and could be removed by the linear operation only with great difficulty, if at all. Consequently, I again used a Graefe knife, great care being taken lest the knife pierce the iris and cut out a section of that diaphragm. The section was made as in the previous case, with this difference, that the line of incision was about one millimetre in advance of that in Case I. The greater part of the lens was softened and followed the knife. I was gently pressing with the cataract-spoon opposite the incision and working out some fragments of cortical matter, when suddenly there was a gush of vitreous. Immediately the protruding vitreous was cut off with scissors, only to be followed by more and more vitreous. The specculum was removed, the lids gently but firmly closed, and an antiseptic dressing applied. It was feared that infection might take place, owing to the fact that a large bead of vitreous was necessarily left between the lips of the wound. The following morning the corneal wound was found to be closed, the anterior chamber restored, and the conjunctival cul-de-sac filled with floating beads of vitreous. The pressure had cut off the extra- from the intra-ocular vitreous. The case progressed favorably, and at the end of the fifteenth day the child's vision equalled 18.

The successful issue of two such unfavorable cases of traumatic cataract, treated in a manner not described in the books, leads me to believe that the commonly accepted treatment (linear extraction) is a mistake. I believe that extraction through a large wound made by the Graefe knife, thus permitting the removal of every portion of softened or semi-softened lens substance, will prove a better procedure than linear extraction. 810 Olive Street.

Alleged Poisoning by Potatoes.--The Saint-Ambroise quarter in Paris was recently thrown into a great state of excitement by a report that some dozen or fifteen people had been poisoned in a restaurant. First of all the Seine water was held responsible for the catastrophe, but as one after another the victims came forward with their tales of woe, and their demands for redress, the proprietor was forced to refer the matter to the police authorities. An enquiry was then instituted, when it soon came out that the incipient poisoning was due to a dish of fried potatoes that, cooked the previous day, had doubtless undergone fermentation by reason of the heat. The copper saucepan in which the potatoes were prepared was seized by order of the Commissary, who speedily detected the fact that the vessel was worn through in two places, and that the holes had been tinkered up by the keeper of the eating house himself, who had used for the purpose a kind of solder resulting from the melting down of old provision tins.

549

Materia Medica; Its Present Status.

BY O. F. SEARL, M. D., SOLOMON, KAS.

READ BEFORE THE FALL MEETING OF THE GOLDEN BELT MEDICAL SOCIETY, HELD AT ELLSWORTH, KANSAS, OCTOBER 4TH, 1894.

T IS impossible to go into a detailed statement of the present condition of this all-important branch of our profession. And I shall only attempt, in a very general way, to call your attention, in a brief manner, to some of the recent and real advancements made; and to point out what seems to me some glaring defects and uncalled for errors, that we are falling into in practice, that are greatly retarding the true progress we should be making.

In materia medica with the aid of the pharmacist and manufacturing chemist, we have made and are still making rapid and commendable progress. Our medicines and remedies are put into our hands in elegant forms. In place of the crude drugs, the decoction and the infusion, we have the extracts, the elixirs, and the syrups, the active principle refined and concentrated, and in form easy of prescription, in definite dosage, and we can depend with fair assurance upon, the result of their action.

We have also many new and valuable remedies, the physiological and pathological effects of which have been proved and established on a sound basis. And our knowledge of old remedies, in new forms, has been advanced and their therapeutic value so tested and extended that if skilfully prescribed, combined and administered, we have the means of alleviating suffering to an extent heretofore unknown. To the pharmacist and manufacturing chemist is due much of the credit of this great progress, and while I may criticize some of their methods, I admit that we cannot do without them; but they, like ourselves, should be admonished to keep within their legitimate sphere.

They, to a great extent, are responsible for the flood of new remedies being thrust upon us in bewildering profusion-good, bad and indifferent, and to such an extent that the rubbish and chaff so cover the kernels of wheat that it is almost impossible to gather from the mass enough to pay for the trouble and vexation of the search. Compound and compounded compounds are thrust upon us ad nauseam; some of them combined with some show of reason and common sense, but others a conglomeration of heterogeneous substances, the result of the administration of which no man under the sun could from theory or reason, form the remotest idea of their