He informed me he had consulted two of the allopathic physicians of the town, and was then applying a wash ordered by one of them, which proved to be Arg. nit. gr. x; Aquæ ij. I told him if he would call at my house, I would give him some medicine for the lip. On the 25th of May, he called and received a package containing twenty powders of Arsenicum, 3d decimal trituration, and was directed to take three per day. Knowing that so simple a prescription would never satisfy him, and also to prevent any injurious application, I ordered one drachm of simple cerate, and directed him to apply it by smearing over the lip or upon thin linen, as might prove to be most convenient, telling him to report to me in one week.

I never heard from him till December 4, when I was called to see a child sick of scarlatina. The father of the child met me, and said: "Doctor, I have sent for you, because you had such good luck with my lip." I did not remember the case, not recognizing him. He said "the salve healed it right up, and I had no occasion to come to you again." The lip appears healthy.

This case is not reported as cancer of the lip, and without saying a word as to the diagnosis, it is evident that his medical advisers had regarded it as serious enough to require active treatment externally and internally.

Commenting on this case, Dr. Sanguine will say the pathogenesis of Arsenicum so clearly indicates it, and there are already so many well authenticated cures recorded as to render it a work of supererogation to record a single additional case.

Dr. Doubtful will say if such cases never got well without Arsenicum, it would be a perfectly clear case; while possibly our allopathic friends will claim the cure with equal propriety, and on the same ground as one did in a case of scarlatina, given up to die with suppression of urine. I was called in the afternoon, prescribed Apis mel 6th decimal in water, and gave orders to report to me, even in the night if the boy passed any water, or there was fulness in the region of the bladder. At midnight my door bell was rung and a messenger announced that the boy had streamed off quite a quantity of urine. From this dated convalescence. The Doctor who had been discharged saw the father and claimed the cure, saying,

"you know those homœopathists give such little doses, you cannot believe those had anything to do with it. It was the medicine I had given for several days."

In the present case, "several days" might read several years. Should they admit over-stimulating the lip, they would undoubtedly claim that it was a healthy and curative reaction when all medication was suspended and deny that the Arsenic had anything to do with it. Unfortunately, however, for this theory, there had been frequent intermissions during the treatment in which such curative reaction might have occurred, but did not. Lastly, T. M. did not smoke.

CAPSICUM ANNUUM.

BY DAVID HUNT, JR., M.D., OF WORCESTER, MASS.

CAN cayenne pepper in toxical doses produce an inflammation of the derma?

On Wednesday, November 18, I was called to see Mrs. T., American, aged seventy-four; I found her sitting up, dressed, but from her neck to her knees she was covered with a papular eruption; it was accompanied by an intense itching and burning, worse at night, but towards morning she would grow quiet and sleep from five until eight or nine o'clock, continuing more comfortable all day until the nightly aggravation again occurred; on first waking from sleep she would be confused for a few moments. Her pulse was eighty or eighty-four; (I counted the quarter minute.) By inquiry I elicited the following history:

On Friday, November 13, she went out to a butcher's cart and stood some time in her slippers. On Saturday she found that she had taken cold; had some difficulty in breathing, and soreness of the chest; she is subject to this form of cold, and during the previous attacks has been slightly delirious at night, otherwise is a remarkably strong, healthy old lady. Saturday night, for the cold, she took one teaspoonful of pure cayenne pepper in solution. Sunday morning, at her request, her son gave her two more doses of a teaspoonful each; the last of these doses was followed by

vomiting and purging; as soon as this ceased, in the afternoon, she commenced treatment again, and took two doses of at least a teaspoonful each. About the size of the doses that she prepared for herself there is some doubt; she stated that they each contained two teaspoonfuls, but her son says they contained but one. After these doses there was no vomiting or purging, but she began to pass a great quantity of urine, which she could not wholly control. Monday her skin began to burn and itch, and Tuesday upon helping her to bed, her daughter, Mrs. P., found the eruption as I have before described.

Thursday I found the papular eruption filled in with a bright erythematous redness, and on this afternoon, I believe, vesicles commenced forming; they were most abundant wherever the perspiration would be confined, as in the folds of the axillary region, where the bindings of the skirts would come, etc. She had passed but a small quantity of high colored urine since yesterday. This afternoon she had a chill which lasted some time, perhaps half au hour, or an hour, during which she lay before the fire warmly covered; after the chill her skin burned and itched more than before. Mrs. P. (her daughter and nurse) informed me that after having her hands in contact with the patient's skin they burned and tingled for some time, so that she had repeatedly soaked them in water to ease them; her brother, Mr. T. notices the same facts in regard to his own hands. The eruption has spread upwards to the scalp, and downwards to the soles of the feet; and is accompanied by considerable intumescence, but the features are not much disfigured; the swelling consisting more of a bagging of the cheeks and neck; the left side of the face was more affected than the right, and the left ear was twice the size of the right, which was but slightly enlarged; there was no peculiarity of position to account for this, and it did not hold true of the body. Friday, Saturday and Sunday she steadily grew worse; the remedies, which were Acon., Bell., Camphor and Rhus tox., seeming to have no effect; the pulse did not exceed one hundred at any time, while under my observation, and was of fair volume and strength until Sunday.

Sunday, Dr. Nichols saw the case with me; at the request of Mr. T. (the patient's son), Dr. S., old school, was also present.

Dr. S. regarded it as a case of erysipelas. Dr. Nichols agreed with me that it was a case of poisoning by capsicum.

All day Sunday she was drowsy; Monday she lay comatose all day; I gave a hopeless prognosis; then Dr. W., old school, was called; he regarded the case as erysipelas, and thought that saline. draughts and bathing in soda-water would give about one chance in a thousand, but in spite of this the patient died Tuesday or Wednesday; I cannot say which day, as I received no other announcement than that in the daily paper of Wednesday.

I excluded erysipelas for the following reasons: up to the second day of the eruption there was scarcely a fever symptom, her pulse for the first four or five days did not exceed ninety, and at no time while under observation went above one hundred; there were no premonitory rigors, there was scarcely any depression, and Thursday, the fifth day, she was out in the kitchen and partook of a boiled dinner; which, on my questioning her during my call, she said did not distress her in the least; there was no sore throat, no swelling or tenderness of the lymphatic glands of the neck, but she did have soreness all over like rheumatism, that made her dread walking much; up to Sunday she acted and appeared as a person might, affected with a troublesome but not severe urticaria; she looked very much like a bad case of rhus poisoning; the eruption appeared first as distinctly papular, then the papules were filled in with the erythematous redness, then vesicles appeared that did not change their character, excepting that where the perspiration was confined, the skin was raised and broken just as if the parts had been scalded. The perspiration was so acrid that it caused the hands of any person brought in contact with the patient's body to burn. and tingle decidedly; I experienced the sensation repeatedly, and Dr. Nichols also felt it on Sunday, although it was not at that time as decided as it had been two days previously. Mrs. P., who is a strong, healthy, and anything but a fanciful lady, besides complaining often of the tingling sensation, had a distinct papular eruption developed on both hands, which disappeared in a day under the use of cold water, upon her restraining herself from direct contact with the patient.

I think that the vomiting and purging on Sunday, and the in

crease of urine afterwards, were nature's efforts to eliminate the capsicum dissolved by the alkaline juices of the liver and pancreas, and that the cessation of the vomiting and purging and afterwards the almost suppressed action of the kidneys, threw the work of eliminating the pepper, and perhaps some urea, upon the skin; that the perspiration, rendered acrid by this cause, inflamed the derma and produced a pathological condition similar to erysipelas; in fact it was but an advance on the process that causes the glowing of the skin from capsicum, which is mentioned in Stille's Materia Medica, the United States Dispensatory, and I believe in King's American Dispensatory.

I have not been able to find an instance of erysipelas vesiculosum covering the whole body. Wilson, speaking of the simple form says, that cases are on record of its covering the whole body, but that they must be exceedingly rare; he does not describe one.

Hahnemann's Materia Medica contains the only record that I have been able to find of an eruption caused by cayenne pepper taken internally.

The New England Medical Gazette.

BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1869.

ONE of the most important discoveries of modern medicine, and which, if fully substantiated, will eradicate a very troublesome as well as common affection, was presented at the meeting of the Boston Academy of Homœopathic Medicine, on January 25, 1869.

Dr. D. G. Woodvine exhibited under the microscope, some beautiful specimens of the ova or eggs of the oxyuri, or common pin worms. By careful investigation, he has ascertained that these eggs require light and air to hatch them. For this purpose, they are always deposited outside of the sphincter ani, where in a very few hours they are hatched, and the worm then makes its way into the bowel. Now, by keeping the parts for an inch or two around the anus covered with a thin layer of lard, the oxyuri cannot deposit their eggs, and as the life of the animal does not exceed seven days, they can be wholly