pendulum has swung too far and must return! The hand upon the dial is approaching twelve, and the mask must be torn aside in order to establish the identity of him who for the past fifteen years has been recklessly invading the most sacred cavity of women and dragging forth one or more of an unwilling trio which the Maker in tended to remain intact until the end of time.

I am far from depreciating the noble, useful and painstaking man who corrects pathological conditions. I speak of the man who, when he discovers a human being of the female persuasion, recognizes only a uterus and a pair of ovaries, one or all of which must be sacrificed upon the altar of antisepsis!

I thank the essayist for the pleasure of having heard his paper. His teaching is sound and his practice should be emulated by those who desire to attain the goal in the practice of medicine.

DR. ZINKE: I have never thought to trifle with what was before the Academy, and have always eliminated any thing of a trifling or frivolous nature from my remarks. What has called forth some of the remarks I cannot say, but in reference to the sound I desire to make my statement broader-that it should not be used by anyone. The sponge tent and what the pioneers taught us we appreciate and bow our heads in reverence to them, but we should not stand aside and speak of the great skill of our forefathers, for there are those of the present who excel those of the past, and, while those of the early days were great, there are those of the present who are equally great.

DR. MARSH: It was not the intention of my paper that the impression should be given out that I was opposed to antisepsis and asepsis. I emphasized that the sponge tent and sound should be used with strict antiseptic and aseptic precautions. I was among the early practitioners who favored these measures, but would protest against the inconsistencies of the ultra-fashionable school of asepsis which confines the practice to practically nothing or some major operation, and I must differ from those who seem to contend that asepsis

I fail to see how the sound can be considered such a barbarous instrument, and also fail to see that it is so dangerous if properly used.

In reference to the sponge tent, I did not advocate its indiscriminate use, but am of the full belief that it would be useful, where the patient would not submit to an operation, as a good means of curing endometritis. I have never seen a patient die from the use of the sponge tent, but have seen them die from an anesthetic.

In reference to opium in labor, I would not advise Dr. Tate to give it when labor is well established to arrest the same, for in full doses, when well established, while it quiets the woman, if you examine her later you will find the os not only soft and dilatable, but also dilated. I have never had a hemorrhage following its use. Under its use the uterine condensation is comparatively quiet and effective.

Castration for Rape.

The House Committee on Public Health of the Kansas Legislature has made a favorable report on a bill which does away with a penitentiary sentence for men convicted of assaulting women and substitutes castration. The Social Purity League of Topeka has been urging the passage of this bill, and the leaders in the league claim enough votes in both houses to pass the law, and have secured the promise of Governor Leedy's signature. They say that, following the lead of Kansas, ten other States will have the same law at the next session of their Legislatures.N. Y. Med. Record.

LINSEED oil is a good thing for corns. A piece of lint damped with the oil should be wrapped round the part and kept constantly applied. It gives great relief where the corn is soft, and is not long in eradicating it.

THE SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL

RESEARCH.

The second regular meeting occurred on Thursday, March 4, in the Cincin nati Medical College building. There were present Drs. Julius Eichberg, Langdon, Schenck, Freudenberger, Ashburn, Freiberg, Rothenberg, Bettmann, Kramer, Ransohoff, Ravogli, Wolfstein, Whitacre, Grandjean, Ayres, Crane, Jos. Eichberg, Walden, Stricker, Dunham and Zenner. Dr. Kramer presided. Demonstrations were made by Drs. Crane, Eichberg, Langdon and Bettmann. Four new members were voted upon favorably by the society, making its present membership number twenty-eight. The proceedings are appended.

Presentation of Specimens of a Quadri.

Urate and Glycuronic Acid.

DR. CRANE: The specimen which I have placed under the microscope, to illustrate the decomposition of a quadriurate by the action of water, is the urine of a snake. It is a white, chalklike substance, with a rather characteristic odor, and consists largely of ammonium quadri-urate. Under the microscope it appears as translucent spherules, or crystalline globules, with a radiating structure, which show a black cross with polarized light. If the specimen is examined in water, after five or ten minutes it is evident that the rounded bodies are beginning to disappear, and the field shows sharply-pointed crystals of uric acid, which increase in number and in size, until the quadri-urate has entirely decomposed. A bi-urate is formed simultaneously, but, owing to its gelatinous condition, is not visible.

As is well known, the normal urates (M,CH,N,O,) are produced only by laboratory methods, while the bi-urates (MHC,H,N,O1) are the result of pathological conditions. The quadri-urates (MHC,H,N,O,H,C,H,N,O,) represent the uric acid as it exists in normal urine. They are deposited in an amorphous condition, as the brick dust or fawn-yellow sediments. The decomposition which eventually precipitates

the colored crystals of uric acid is prevented in a measure by the salts and the urinary pigments.

My attention was first called to these globular quadri-urates in examining a saffron-yellow precipitate from the urine of a case at the Cincinnati Hospital. It consisted of small, rather highly refractive spheres, which showed a black cross with polarized light. After washing some of the deposit with alcohol and drying it, preparatory to a chemical examination, I placed a portion of it under the microscope, in a drop of distilled water. The same decomposition took place which is shown by the snake's urine, but the crystals of uric acid which formed were almost as regularly hexagonal as cystin plates.

The glycuronic anhydride, which I have placed under the next microscope, was prepared several weeks ago for class demonstration from the watercolor known as "Indian yellow." The purrée of commerce, from which Indian yellow is prepared, is obtained from the urine of camels and cows which have been fed on the leaves of the mango tree. In addition to a certain amount of magnesia and lime, it contains a large quantity of euxanthic acid, from which glycuronic acid is easily prepared. Following the method recommended by A. H. Allen ("Commercial Organic Analysis," vol. iii, part 3), the Indian yellow is reduced to a powder by grinding it in a mortar with sand. This is treated with dilute hydrochloric acid to remove the calcium and magnesium. The residue containing euxanthone and euxanthic acid mixed with sand is washed with water and extracted with ammonium carbonate solution, which removes the acid and leaves the other substances undissolved on the filter. The euxanthic acid is thrown down from the filtrate by the addition of dilute hydrochloric acid, and the washed precipitate is heated with water in a closed mineral-water bottle for ten hours at a temperature of 125° C. This is most easily done by immersion in a paraffin bath. The resulting liquid is shaken with ether to remove traces of euxanthone and evaporated at a temperature below boiling point to a small

Glycuronic anhydride forms needlelike crystals, with a slightly sweetish taste, which melt at 160°. The solution acts in a similar manner to that of glucose in preventing the precipitation of cupric hydrate when an alkali is added to copper sulphate solutions containing it. It reduces solutions of copper

and bismuth in an alkaline medium almost as perfectly as glucose, and of all interfering substances occurring in urine glycuronic acid and its salts are the most deceptive in their behavior with the tests employed for the detection of sugar.

In order to demonstrate its reducing power, I shall use diluted Fehling's solution, as it is the most commonly employed of the copper solutions. With a single drop of the solution of glycuronic anhydride there is a prompt reaction, and the red cuprous oxide appears without the intermediate salmoncolor so often seen in testing diabetic urine. With neither creatinin nor uric acid is the reduction so prompt or so perfect. Crismer's solution of safranin, which makes an excellent test for glucose, because it does not respond to creatinin or uric acid compounds, is promptly reduced by glycuronic acid.

Glycuronic acid exists in urine as a ureide, and also in combination with indoxyl and skatoxyl. After many drugs, as is well known, such as chloral, chloroform, naphthol, salol, morphine, camphor, nitro-benzine, orthonitrotoluol, the amount is increased. It is unquestionably often mistaken for sugar. In a case of doubt the fermentation test could be used, for glycuronic acid does not undergo alcoholic fermentation. This test, of course, is not suitable for traces of sugar, but if enough reducing substance were present to cause a marked reaction with copper solutions, and the urine should not ferment with yeast, the presence of glycuronic acid would be more than probable.

reaction takes place in an acid medium. The precipitate is not acicular, but consists of brown globules.

The close relationship of glucose and glycuronic acid is best shown by their graphic formula:

DR. BETTMANN: Would it not be possible to differentiate clinically the phenyl-hydrazin compound of sugar from that of glycuronic acid by the higher melting point of the former? And also by the polariscope? Glycuronic acid is dextro-rotary, but its compounds are sinistro-rotary.

DR. CRANE: When I spoke of the fermentation test, as a means of differentiation between glucose and glycuronic acid, I had in mind the methods which could be employed by the average practitioner. The phenyl-hydrazin test is not in general use, in America at least, and the saccharimeter could only be used by one who had the facilities of a well-appointed laboratory.

The phenyl-hydrazin compound, as I think the specimen shows, could not be mistaken for phenyl-glucosazone, even in the amorphous condition in which the glucose compound is not infrequently precipitated. Its color alone would distinguish it. It is true, as the gentleman has said, that the melting point is very much lower. Phenylglucosazone melts at 2050, phenyllactosazone at 190°, and the maltose compound at about 200°, while the melting point of the specimen under the microscope is about 115°. If potassium glycuronate is heated with phenylhydrazin alone, yellowish needles form which are very like the glucose compound except in melting point. It is said by competent observers that phenylhydrazin shows the presence of both dextrose and glycuronic acid in "normal urine."

pure solutions, but normal urine is sinistro-rotary, and almost all of the interfering substances, such as creatinin and other extractives, albumen, cystin, pseudo-butyric acid, various alkaloids, also turn the beam to the left. I do not know what the rotation is of the phenyl and indoxyl compounds of glycuronic acid, but the optical determination of glycuronic acid would not be free from objection. In a case in which dextrose and glycuronic acid compounds occurred together, their separation would be a matter of no little difficulty. The amorphous barium salt is the one which is em ployed usually for the isolation of glycuronic acid. In normal urine a large amount of the secretion is required.

DR. KRAMER: How about the reducing substance in the urine after head injuries and the administration of phloridzin?

DR. CRANE: With reference to the question of the glycosuria produced by phloridzin, it seems probable, from what is known of the action of salol and other drugs, that the reducing substance in the urine may be glycuronic acid and not dextrose. This has been proven to be true in some of the experimental "glycosuria," as in the work done by Ashdown. It is also claimed that the reducing substance produced by the experiments of Claude Bernard was glycuronic acid. In a case of head injury mentioned in Walsham's text book, mention is made of the fact that the reducing substance which was noticed in the urine did not ferment.

Liver Specimens.

DR. JOSEPH EICHBERG demonstrated gross and microscopic sections of the liver shown at the previous meeting. The gross specimen had the appearance of an artificially injected liver. The microscopic section was unstained, and showed the peculiar distribution of pigment insisted upon by the demonstrator at the previous meeting. The pigment was located not around the bile ducts, as would be expected from the history, but conspicuously about the central veins of the lobules. Dr. Eichberg had no theory to present, but wished merely to call attention to the very peculiar

manner in which the pigment was deposited. He also referred to the small necrotic areas which are found in the livers of animals whose common ducts have been ligated. In the liver presented there were no necrotic areas, although the common duct was totally occluded. He explained this fact by the gradual occurrence of the occlusion, allowing of some accommodation on the part of the liver.

DR. WOLFSTEIN stated that he had had the opportunity of studying numerous sections of the liver under consideration, and agreed with the essayist that the distribution of pigment was not to be explained; that it certainly was most pronounced about the central veins of the lobules.

DRS. WHITACRE and FREIBERG agreed to the same. The latter called attention to specimens of a liver in his possession which showed small necrotic areas. The patient had died of a carcinoma of the pancreas and bile ducts; in this case, although the occlusion of the bile ducts was gradual, as in the case of Dr. Eichberg, nevertheless the necrotic areas were present.

Specimen of Syringomyclia.

DR. LANGDON exhibited a section of cervical cord from a case of syringomyelia, remarking that the pathology of the disease was not yet a closed chapter, as the statements of many of the text-books would lead us to infer. A recent digest of the subject by Dr. Allan Starr shows that the condition may be due to any one of five distinct groups of processes, namely, (1) simple dilatation of the central canal; (2) congenital malformations, as double canal and unclosed canal; (3) softening, with subsequent cavity formation from vascular disease or inflammation; (4) gliomatosis, with subsequent necrotic softening; (5) specific bacterial infection.

The specimen under consideration appears to belong to the glioma group.

DR. JOSEPH EICHBERG commented on the specimen, concurring in the diag nosis of gliomatosis.

I Journal Nervous and Mental Disease, February, 1897.