1. What is the botanical and the common name of hyoscyamus? What is its physiological action and the dose?

2. What are antispasmodics? Name three and give their respective doses.

3. What is the physiological action of aconite? In what form is it chiefly used and in what dose?

4. What is guaiacol? From what obtained? How used and in what doses?

5. What are the properties of nitrate of amyl? How is it used? To what class of remedies does it belong?

6. Name the two chief alkaloids of cinchona. What are their medicinal uses?

THERAPEUTICS.

1. What are antipyretics? Name three of value.

2. What are the therapeutic effects of phosphorus? Describe the effects of a poisonous dose.

3. What symptoms would be produced by an overdose of veratrum? To what class of remedies does it belong?

4. Give briefly the symptoms of opium poisoning?

5. What is the physiological action of copper, and what are its therapeutic uses?

6. What is the physiological action of strophanthus, and what is its therapeutic effect? To what class of remedies does it belong, and from what source is it obtained?

MEDICAL PROGRESS.

TREATMENT OF FIBROIDS OF THE UTERUS.-Dr. O. S. Phelps of New York (American Medico-Surgical Bulletin) reports an unusually complicated case of uterine fibroid in a girl 17 years of age, who came under his care in July, 1894. She was sent from the West to New York by the family physician to have a hysterectomy performed, and came directly to his sanitarium. The tumor was 8 to 10 centimeters in diameter, and crowded the uterus well over to the left side. The uterine cavity meas

ured five inches and the organ with its appendages was surrounded and bound down by an inflammatory exudate. The bladder was impinged upon so that it could not hold more than one or two ounces of urine, causing the patient great agony to evacuate it. The whole mass including tumor, exudate, uterus, and appendages, filled the pelvis and rose well up in the umbilicus. The patient was much emaciated, weighed 90 pounds (normal weight 125 pounds), could not stand or walk, nor could she turn in bed without great pain. Temperature 100° to 101°. Dr. A. H. Goelet was called in consultation and confirmed the diagnosis; he also agreed that no operation could be considered at that time, but thought ligation of the uterine arteries might be resorted to later.

The treatment adopted was the high tension faradic current, 15 minutes thrice daily, vagino-sacral, and abdominal. At each seance the temperature was reduced 1⁄2 to 1 degree, lasting 1 to 2 hours. A system of feeding was adopted under the guidance of microscopical observations of the blood and secretions to determine the correct choice of food. In two months the temperature remained normal and the weight had increased 30 pounds. Galvanism was then used with anode to tumor per vaginam, by means of a special clay electrode with cathode closely adopted to tumor over abdomen; 20 to 30 milliampères of current, 7 to 10 minutes, every five days. January 15 tumor was reduced to a mere nodule, about the size of a walnut, exudation gone, uterine cavity measured 234 inches. Patient's weight was then 125 pounds.

Conclusions:-The writer ascribes the favorable results in this case.

First-To a systematic plan for restoring the nutrition, under such favorable conditions as are afforded by a sanitarium.

Second-To the persistent use of the high tension faradic current to allay pain, reduce inflammation, and induce absorption.

Third-To the galvanic current, so applied as to concentrate its action upon the fibroid growth.

DAMAGE TO VISION FROM THE SUN.Dr. James W. Barrett of London reports in the Ophthalmic Review the case of a girl of 17 who watched an eclipse of the sun for about fifteen minutes. She used for protecting her eyes four pieces of colored window glass, two being dark blue, and the others red and yellow respectively. These she placed one over the other before her eyes, and with both eyes watched the eclipse. She is certain that she did not look at the sun except through the pieces of glass. For an hour subsequently she was unaware that there way anything the matter with her sight, and then by accident discovered that there was a mist before the left eye. She ascertained that there was no disturbance of the right. She did not notice anything in the way of an afterimage, nor feel any pain or discomfort. A fortnight later she came to the hospital complaining that there was a haze before the left eye, and that when she looked at a word some of the center letters seemed to be missing.

The right eye and its vision and field were normal; with the left eye V. partly, and spells out Cowell, 1., the center letters of the line being left out and represented by a dark space.

The field, as tested by the perimeter, was normal except for the presence of a very small central scotoma, which measured at 50 cm. vertically 4 mm., and horizontally 3 mm., and at 5 meters 6 cm. by 5 cm., and had the shape of a nearly circular oval. At 50 cm. for a distance of 2 mm. around the scotoma, macropsia was noticeable.

The pupils acted normally, and the media were clear. The fundi were healthy. The yellow spot in the left eye was a little larger than in the right and a little darker in color, but hardly of a pathological appearance.

Three months afterwards there was no change. The defect of vision, the size and shape of the scotoma and the macropsia had not altered. With both eyes open, patient experienced no discomfort from the condition, as she was able to entirely to ignore the scotoma.

Cases like this are not common,

although after every eclipse a few come under treatment, the occurrence of the eclipse inducing a number of people to gaze at the sun.

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SURGICAL TREATMENT OF EXOPHTHALMIC GOITER. — Dr. Tuffier gives in the Lancet an interesting account of a case where surgical interference caused complete disappearance of all symptoms of the disease, which had resisted all other kinds of therapeutic treatment. The patient was a young woman aged twenty-seven, who had suffered with the malady for seven years and its beginning was marked by a cystic enlargement of the right lobe of the thyroid gland, which was soon accompanied by severe exopthalmos and the other usual symptoms. Iodine injections, tapping, and electrical treatment were all tried in vain, and the patient became so ill that she could not work, and in addition, showed signs of distress from the pressure which the enlarged thyroid gland was producing on the trachea. It was then decided to perform partial thyroidectomy, and this was successfully accomplished, with the result that the general symptoms rapidly disappeared, the woman now being in good health and able to work. The exophthalmos also almost entirely disappeared and no other unpleasant symptoms have followed.

* *

*

THE THREE CAUSES OF WOMEN'S DISEASES. Dr. Balls-Headley finds, says the Medical Record, in our social system three great causes of disorder of the female generative organs Mental culture, by which physical development is often sacrificed to mental training; female dress, the faults of which it is needless to particularize; and unsatisfied sexual desire. The latter includes, of course, the unsatisfied desire for maternity. In civilized communities more that half the women under thirty years of age are unmarried; in other words, the sexual instinct, during the first half of its existence, is in most women ungratified. Hence spring, in Dr. BallsHeadley opinion, many sexual disorders.

MARYLAND

ought to be classified as criminals. Our modern educational system is in some degree re

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Room 22 Washington Loan and Trust Co. Building.

BALTIMORE, JUNE 15, 1895.

THE drug and liquor habit is too often the fault of the physician who in a moment of

laziness or carelessness prescribes Drug Habits. that which will soothe instead of striking at the root of the trouble and avoiding dangerous treatment. It is when the body is weak that yielding to temptation is easy, and even when conscious of doing wrong in taking some powerful opiate or alcoholic, the patient may feel that the physician's advice and orders demand obedience and thus many a habit is taken on, until the body is too weak to cast it off and in time the patient becomes a wreck and a slave.

None but those who have been subject to these habits knows how hard it is to give them up and reform. They are very often combined and the strictest discipline is needed to bring such a case to a successful termination.

As an exchange says: "The unintelligent physician is not a close enough observer to determine the existing cause which produces a certain pain and not knowing what else to do prescribes morphia. Thus temporary relief is afforded. Physicians of this caliber

number of the physicians from medical colleges are men wofully lacking in fundamental education. A host of these incompetents is turned loose every year, and their ranks are being constantly augmented. There are too many medical colleges in this country. These must necessarily have students to sustain them. Therefore they enroll nearly every applicant for admission."

It is further stated that these incompetent men leave college with little knowledge beyond the use of the hypodermic and go about working their deadly mischief. They flourish in the far west and make many a patient a slave to the drug habit, and the sanitariums for the cure of this habit prove by their figures that their inmates come from the west.

This may or may not be true, but it is certain that the cities furnish a larger number of such inmates than the country.

It is difficult to stop this pernicious work for no city or State can control or govern the manner of practice of any physician unless his mistakes be very flagrant, but medical colleges can be careful about those students who knock at the doors for permission to study and point out the dangers of starting such habits which wreck both body and mind, kill the soul and drag down the body as a burden to the community.

***

WHEN the weather grows warm the street cars, especially the open ones running to the

Street Car Sanitation.

suburbs, are used by those who wish to go out beyond the hot city

limits and get a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of the grass and trees. This fact appeals so strongly to the street car travel at this season of the year that many companies have taken especial pains to see to it that their cars are kept as clean as possible. One way in which cars become filthy is by the constant expectoration of the tobacco chewers and others who through habit or some other reasons must need pour out their saliva in the presence of the more sensitive traveling public.

Car companies have placed notices conspicuously on many of the lines calling attention to the fact that it is against the rules to ex

pectorate on the floor of the car. The conductor is a busy man and rarely has time with his multitudinous duties to see that this rule is kept unbroken. It is said that such a habit in the case of tuberculous persons helps to spread that disease enormously, and this is probably true; but aside from that, the habit is filthy and disgusting and should in every way possible be discouraged.

In Pittsburgh, the energetic women of that city started a crusade against expectoration in the cars and elsewhere and their work, as woman's work usually does, made a great impression on the public so that promiscuous spitting became less and less frequent and even the most hardened men tried to curb their offensive habits. Some persons make the excuse that although not users of tobacco, they must occasionally expectorate on account of a post-nasal or pharyngeal catarrh. This may sound plausible, but those same persons would probably find some way to restrain themselves in a parlor and if catarrh is prevalent at all surely the women have their share and yet it is rare, fortunately, to see a woman commit this act. Expectoration is in many cases simply a matter of habit and can be stopped as easily as other habits. The women have been able to advocate and enforce many good reforms, and what has been done by them in Pittsburgh and in other places can be done wherever filthy habits are indulged in. A little effort on the part of a determined body can exert a powerful influence on a large community.

WHILE it is extremely important to make a careful selection of risks for life insurance,

there is great danger, the Life Insurance Baltimore Underwriter points Examinations. out, in over-refinement and attention to details in this work. The life insurance companies are in business for the benefit of the insured, the person for whom the insurance is taken and for the stockholders, and while great caution is needed that no poor risk is admitted, still it is absolutely necessary to receive new applicants, else all revenues of the company will cease. Over-refinement works against the interests of a company just as much as carelessness. In the examination of recruits for the army, the greatest stringency is exercised and the candidate is stripped without reference to considerations of delicacy, and his

body is searched for fault or defect. Such a procedure is advocated in books written for the guidance of the life insurance examiner, but let the ordinary city examiner try it and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the applicant, even if he be very anxious for insurance, will refuse to be stripped and will seek the company or the examiner who is not so thorough in his work. Many examiners even take the applicant's statement as to weight and height.

In so many cases there is absolute ignorance of the family history back of one generation, and the frequent reply "don't know" is all that can be elicited from the applicant. The teeth are rarely examined and the eyes and ears receive almost no attention. As for the urine, that is examined for albumen and sugar by the most common tests. If the urine were examined by the critical tests of the expert chemist possibly a trace of sugar or albumen which meant nothing would end in the rejection of so many applicants that the company would wind up its business.

The life insurance examiner should not only be thorough but should possess that common sense and tact which can rarely be acquired. Besides the examination, the general appearance of the applicant should count for something. No examiner should be subject to an agent as is so often the case, and he should never allow anyone to dictate to him, as many an agent, fearful of the loss of a possible commission, is so liable to do; but he should conduct his examination in the presence and hearing of no one but the applicant and himself.

There should be a happy mean between thoroughness and respect for the applicant's feelings and the company's interests. So many applicants are caught against their wills, as it were, and can only be examined when they are in the humor for it, that all such attempts at measures adapted to the army recruit would defeat the object and frighten away the applicant. As the Underwriter says:

"If the over-refiners wish to satisfy their scrupulous conscientiousness, conformity of the rules for examinations for life insurance to those for the recruiting service will fill the measure of their ambition. But as mankind in general would object to such relentless investigation, its requirement would close the doors of the life companies, and the occupation of the medical examiner would be gone."

A convention of bacteriologists will be held at the New York Academy of Medicine, June 21, 1895.

Dr. Harrison Allen has resigned from the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania.

The New York Medical Journal, in an editorial on "Medical Centers," omits all reference to Baltimore and Washington.

The Medical Society of the State of West Virginia will hold its twenty-eighth annual meeting at Davis, W. Va., June 26, 27 and 28, 1895.

Esmarch of Kiel was elected a correspondent of the Academy of Medicine of Paris, but Pasteur has refused a decoration from the German Emperor.

The California Legislature, just adjourned, has appropriated $250,000 to erect a building in San Francisco for the professional departments of the University of California.

Dr. L. Gibbons Smart, assistant physician at the Sheppard Asylum, has been elected Superintendent of the Home for Feeble-Minded Children, at Owings Mills, to succeed the late Dr. B. A. Turner.

Beginning with July 1, the American Medical Publishers' Association will issue a monthly bulletin for the benefit of members of the Association. It is to be edited by Drs. P. H. Fairchild, J. MacDonald, Jr., and Ferdinand King, New York City; Dr. J. C. Le Grand of Anniston, Alabama, and Charles Wood Fassett of St. Joseph, Mo.

At the meeting of the American Surgical Association the following officers were elected for the ensuing year: President, L. McLane Tiffany, M. D., of Baltimore; Vice-Presidents, Christian Fenger, M. D., of Chicago, W. H. Carmalt, M. D., of New Haven; Secretary, M. H. Richardson, M. D., of Boston; Treasurer, N. P. Danbridge, M. D., of Cincinnati ; Recorder, De F. Willard, M. D., Philadelphia.

Messrs. D. Appleton will issue in the fall the second thoroughly revised edition of Osler's Practice of Medicine. There will be changes throughout the text and several of the chapters, as that on diphtheria, the section on nervous diseases and other parts, have been entirely rewritten and new plates have been provided. Up to the present time four editions of this work have appeared of five thousand each, and of these a large number have found their way to Canada, England and Australia.

At the last meeting of the Medical Examining Board of Virginia, of 8 applicants from the University of Maryland, 6 were licensed and 2 rejected; of 7 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 5 were licensed and 2 rejected; of 4 from the Baltimore Medical College, all were rejected. Since the organization of that board, January 1, 1885, to October, 1894, of 124 from the University of Maryland, 93 were licensed and 30 rejected; of 109 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 84 were licensed and 23 rejected; of 25 from the Baltimore Medical College, 8 were licensed and 16 rejected; of 7 from the Baltimore University School of Medicine, all were rejected.

The entire new staff of the Western Maryland Home met at the office of Dr. Wilson and elected the following officers: President, Dr. J. Jones Wilson; Vice-Presidents, Drs. J. M. Spear and W. W. Wiley; Secretary, Dr. C. A. Brace; Treasurer, Dr. H. W. Hodgson; Active Staff, Drs. Spear, Fotchman, Carpenter, Wilson, Brace, Wiley, Duke and Craigen; Board of Censors, Drs. Twigg, Carr, Doerner, Hodgson and Porter. The General Staff meeting then adjourned, and the Active Staff convened and elected Drs. Spear, Brace, Craigen and Wiley as surgeons, and Drs. Carpenter, Duke, Wilson and Fotchman as physicians. Drs. Spear and Carpenter were elected to be respectively the visiting surgeons for the first three months. The resi dent physician is Dr. John A. Twigg.