The rest

The Cure and Treatment of Epileptics. We have ever groped in comparative in comparative darkness in regard to that affliction known as epilepsy. Localized surgery has done. much for cases of a certain character, dependent upon discoverable brain lesions. Alterative and nerve sedative treatment has also rendered some service in other classes of cases. Beyond that it still remains a fact that we can do but little for confirmed epileptics. These unfortunate persons are deserving of our deepest sympathy end every intelligent effort we can put forth for their relief. Just now there are several new ideas put forth in promise of more frequent cures than we have been accustomed to obtaining, among which is the chloride of ammonium treatment, given by Dr. H. J. Coon, of Colfax, Ind., in August World.

A new and excellent idea is to group these paients together in a self-supporting community, where they may be scientifically studied and classified, properly treated with the best prospects of success, and humanely cared for. Such an institution is the Craig Colony for Epileptics, Sonyea, N. Y., Dr. William P. Spratling, Medical Supt.

The Colony consists of 1856 acres of land, in Livingston County, New York. There are upon it 35 or 40 buildings, which are being put in order for the accommodation of patients. The law establishing Craig Colony was passed in the spring of 1894.

The object of the Colony is to provide for the four great needs of epileptics which are not satisfied elsewhere:

Ist. To give them schools where they may attain any degree in education.

2d. To provide industrial training of all kinds, for there is no vocation which some epileptics may not follow.

3d. To give them a home, when all other doors are closed to them.

4th. To see that each and every case is carefully studied and treated by the best scientific methods the world affords.

Such objects can only be attained in a community, village or colony, devoted to this particular class of cases. There are several such colonies in Europe, but none in this country.

It is only during the fits that epileptic patients are incapacitated. At other times they are well and strong and healthy-looking, and quite as able to work and study as are other people. But the fact that they have these fits, no matter how rarely, debars them from many privileges enjoyed by their more fortunate brethren. They will not, on that account, be received into the public schools, and can receive no education. They can not attend church or social gatherings. They are shunned by their playmates, and they become burdensome to their families. When they grow to adult life nobody wants to enploy them, so, although they are able to

learn a trade or profession, the shops and colleges are closed against them No general hospital receives them as patients, and, in fact, there is no place at all which is open to them except an almshouse or insane asylum, and as the insane asylum is better than the almshouse, many patients are sent there, in preference to a poorhouse.

The Craig Colony will not resemble an institution in any particular, but will look more like a country town than anything else. As the patients are received they will be set to work or at study in various ways. They will take care of the farms, gardens and orchards, they will plan and build new houses. There will be among them tailors, shoemakers, printers, bookbinders, masons, iron-workers, carpenters, painters and so on. In fact, every sort of employment, every sort of recreation, everything, in short, that goes to make up the life of any country village, will be found in this colony, the only difference being that the citizens of this community will be epileptics.

People of means having epileptics in their familes will be allowed to erect cottages at their own expense on the Colony grounds, in which the patients can live under the direction and treatment of the physician of the Colony.

We expect to see many "graduates" or cures from this noble institution, the most crucial test of proposed methods of treatment and, in time, perhaps such institutions established in many other States of the Union.

The Care of Persons Found Unconscious on the Street or Public Highway. Some years ago we called attention, in our editorial columns, to the importance of this subject. Such persons are usually at once assumed to be drunk; while, in fact, they are very often not so.

Very many other causes than the use of alcohol produce insensibility or coma. Such persons should always have the benefit of a careful examination and diagnosis and, if found necessary, proper treatment. A very sensible circular upon this subject is sent cut by the Kings Co. (N. Y.) Medical Society, which may be had by addressing the chairman of the committee, J. H. Raymond, M. D., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Prompt Operation in Acute Intestinal Obstruction.

The physician probably feels his responsibility as deeply in this affection as in any which he is called upon to treat. So much can be done, and yet there is so little time in which to examine, judge, decide and act, that it requires rare presence of mind, decision and prompt action to accomplish desirable results.

An account of six cases is given by Dr. A. Morgan Cartledge, of Louisville, Ky., in the International Medical Magazine. The deductions drawn are, the necessity for careful diagnosis and, that being confirmed, an early operation. Opium is just what we should not use. It masks the symptoms without helping the condition. The Doctor concludes his able paper in the following words:

After all, the various causes of intestinal obstruction with their especial characteristic symptoms are useful only to make up the complete knowledge of the subject, and upon which to study and base certain special technique during operations, should we encounter them as the cause of the obstruction.

The burning question now is to educate men to know that action to be successfui must be quick; that timely aid depends upon the man who first sees the case; that when a physician, for any reason, suspects that a patient's bowels will not move, he should drop everything else and centre all his time and attention upon that patient; he should not waste his gray matter by trying to determine if it be a probable intussusception, volvulus, band, diverticulum, or what not; leave that for the operation to determine; it is the most reliable way to find out.

The practical and cardinal points in avoidng a fatal delay and making an early diagnosis are to be found in sudden abdominal pain, a rapidly accelerating pulse, the vomiting of much more fluid in a given time than is taken by the mouth, the greentinged character of this fluid, the anxious expression of countenance when no opium has been used, the fact that although enema

may be stained by colon contents, there is no expulsive movement of the bowels and no passage of gas.

These symptoms should cause a physician. to suspect obstruction of the bowels, and when this suspicion takes possession of his mind, a new obligation is assumed; it is his imperative duty to at least prepare for an operation for himself, or to get some one else in case he does not care to operate; he should never go home to see what to-morrow will bring forth. The pulse is the sole indicator of the acuity of cause and status of the patient in intestinal obstruction. If a patient is seen at two o'clock P. M., and the pulse is found to be 110, to prescribe for such a patient with the determination to operate the following day if he is no better, usually means that while the physician is taking his much-needed rest that night the patient is passing forever beyond the realm of operative relief. The next morning the physician will probably be much surprised. and chagrined to find the pulse 140 and the patient moribund.

Hyperpyrexia.

The normal temperature of the human. body is 98 3-5 degrees F., with a range, in disease, usually, of eight to ten degrees above and two or three degrees below that point. Statements of wider departures from the normal than these are usually received with some feeling of skepticism. However, the number of cases recording excessively high temperature is becoming so great that credence must be given them. We gave a resume of such reported cases in April World, 1893. Another case is now reported by Dr. H. Morgan Miles, Jonesville, Va., in Louisville Medical Monthly for April, 1895. The patient was a girl, six years old, with diphtheria. Under careful and entirely competent observation, the thermometer registered as high as 115 degrees F. Three instruments from different practitioners confirmed the record. The patient recovered.

Original Communications.

Short articles on the treatment of diseases, and experience with new remedies, are solicited from the profession for this department; also difficult cases for diagnosis and

treatment.

Articles accepted must be contributed to this journal only. The editors are not responsible for views expressed by contributors.

Copy must be received on or before the twelfth of the month for publication in the next month. Unused manuscript cannot be returned.

Certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want dowright facts al present more than anything else.-RUSKIN.

READ. REFLECT. COMPARE. RECORD.

Cellular Biology and Physiology.
(Continued from last month).
CHAPTER II.

Tissues. (Cel Compounds).

Tissues or textures (1) should properly include only the solids of the body, but custom has added such fluids as the blood and lymph to the list. The grouping of solids and liquids into one class is correct; but the name tissue is a misnomer, and one of our objectionable heirlooms from a too fanciful past. Tissues are continuous and more or less complex cell aggregates, having a close and uniform anatomical and physiological connection. They may or may not be very extensive. A tissue may also be defined as the material structure of that organ.

A mesh-work of connective tissue cells forms a tissue by itself, but not quite complete, as vessels for the conveyance of nourishing blood and the carrying off of deoxidized blood and waste products are necessary, as well as a co-ordinating nervous system. United connective tissue cells, therefore, with their necessary vessels and nerves, form connective tissue. This is the commonest tissue and it pervades every part of the body, of which it is the great skeleton. Other solid tissues, as a rule, are impossible without it. From this it follows that it must be one of the simplest solid tissues; nearly all the others are more com

plex. Thus, by filling its meshes with a certain kind of cells and arranging them in the best way to meet the demands of the body, we have a higher tissue. If the meshes are filled with bone corpuscles, or osteo-blasts. (2) as they are called, and there is a deposit of calcareous (3) matter, and a certain necessary arrangement, we have bone tissue. Again, suppose the meshes filled with liver