STATISTICS OF YELLOW FEVER MORTALITY.

563 has no local irritating effect. 3. It does not decompose the 25 per cent., which was considerably lower than the rate for mercurial salt. 4. It excites no general disturbance. In any former year, seeing that since 1882 it had ranged from This improvement Dr. Weiss ascribed to the the same number Touton relates a case in which, a few 32 to 60. hours after the third injection of salicylate of mercury into greater care taken of the cases, and to the intestinal tract the left gluteus muscle, that muscle seemed paralysed, having always been cleared the first or second day by and then tenderness and pain were felt radiating up to the emetics and purgatives. sacrum and lower lumbar vertebrae, but abruptly terminating EXCISION OF THE PATELLA. at the middle line. The pain lasted two days, but twentyfour hours after its commencement there appeared an IN the November number of the Revue llTedircclc de Za; abortive herpetic eruption-i.e., the eruption consisted in Szcisse Pomande, Dr. E. Kummer, formerly assistant topapules, which did not develop into vesicles. It was Professor Kocher, contributes an interesting and successful distributed in three groups of firm papules in the course of case of extirpation of the patella. The patient, a woman the left posterior femoral cutaneous nerve ; and as this aged twenty-five years, had suffered for three years from takes its origin from the lumbar plexus, while the injection multiple abscesses around the patella. In June, 1889, Dr. was in the domain of the sacral plexus, Touton argues that Kummer excised this bone because it contained a tubercular it was reflexly, and not directly, produced by the injection. deposit. The synovial membrane near it was healthy. In closing the wound the ligamentum patellae was united with the fascia lata and the termination of the vastus. THE TRIUMPH OF NARROWNESS AT THE internus. The leg was fixed upon Volkmann’s excision GERMAN HOSPITAL. WE greatly regret to say that the very moderate demand splint, and in three weeks the wound had healed under a. of the active honorary medical staff of the German Hospital first dressing. In the following September this patient was to be represented on the committee has, on a poll, been shown at the Societe Médicale de Geneve. The woman could her leg almost to the normal degree; flexion was. rejected by about two to one. We cannot believe that this extend somewhat interfered with. This gradually improved. The triumph will be a source of lasting pride to those who have woman can now walk four or five hours without limping it is about. It a triumph of narrowness and brought or marked fatigue; she can kneel without pain, and walk and shows an of illiberality, entirely inadequate conception the obligation of the subscribers to the hospital to’those who up and down stairs like a healthy person. Dr. Kummer do its work and support its reputation. It shows besides a claims that resection of the patella may be practised withblindness to the uses of medical officers in administration out altering the power of walking or sensibly hindering the in which from their special experience and their professional movements of the knee-joint. knowledge they could well and practically assist. There THE ANTISEPTIC POWER OF COFFEE. are only two consolations in such an event. The one is that, a and it cannot result; permanent being wrong, express DR. LuDERlTZ has recently made a number of observations the other that it is better for the interests of the hospital on the destructive power of coffee upon various microbes. that the representation of the staff should wait than that it He found that the organisms all died in a longer or shorter should be extorted by pressure and without grace or period-e.g., in one series of experiments anthrax bacilli generosity. were destroyed in three hours, anthrax spores in four weeks, cholera bacilli in four hours, and the streptococcus of STATISTICS OF YELLOW FEVER MORTALITY. erysipelas in one day. It was, however, remarkable that AT the Medical Congress which has recently been held in good coffee and bad coffee produced precisely similar effects. Cuba Dr. Weiss read an important paper on the statistics of He believes that, as previous observers have suggested, the yellow fever mortality. He pointed out the serious fallacies antiseptic effect of coffee does not depend on the caffeineinto which one may fall by judging of the efficacy of it contains, but on the empyreumatic oils developed by any treatment by the published mortality in any small roasting. number of cases, more especially when these are taken all IN THE COURSE OF together as they occur, perhaps in the course of one or two NERVOUS AFFECTIONS WHOOPING-COUGH. months. Not only is it important for scientific purposes to DR. TROITSKI gives in a Russian journal a short record a large number of cases spread over a lengthened period and embracing several outbreaks of the disease, but summary of three cases of whooping-cough accompanied by it is most necessary to state both the exact form the fever mental disturbances, difficulty in or loss of speech, and losstakes and the day on which treatment was commenced. As of power, or even paralysis, of certain groups of muscles The first case was that of a little girl two years old, who, an example of the diversity of published death-rates, he mentioned that in the Hospital San Filipe y Santiago the during an attack of whooping-cough complicated by bronmortality under Dr. Cabrera in July, 1882, was only chitis, was seized after some paroxysms by distortion of the 5 per cent., whereas in May and June of the same year it eyes, blindness, and contraction of the arm flexors, quiet was as much as 45 per cent. A comparison made recently delirium and widely distended pupils, Cheyne-Stokes between the expectant method and Dr. Sternberg’s anti- breathing, diminution of the patellar reflex and of the septic method, the cases being taken during the same sense of touch and of pain. At another time she became epidemic, and being as nearly as possible equivalent to one unconscious, and there were clonic contraction of the facial another, resulted in an identical mortality in the two muscles, and staring eyes, the pupils being dilated and not series-viz., 15 per cent. Regarding the antiseptic method, insensitive to light. Soon afterwards a general eclamptic Dr. Weiss remarked that percliloride of mercury sometimes condition with Cheyne-Stokes phenomenon came on, the gave rise to haemorrhage from the gums, to meloena, and to attack lasting for an hour and a half, and giving place to convulsions similar to those of Jacksonian epilepsy, and stupor which lasted twelve hours, and during which the that doses of from one-seventh to one-fourth of a grain were child could see, but did not understand, and called things. insufficient for the purpose of antiseptic treatment ; beta and people by wrong names. These attacks gradually naphthol, too, though much less poisonous, has only a diminished, and in two months she was convalescent. The sixteenth of the antiseptic power of corrosive sublimate, second case was that of a boy three years and a half old, and it is not well borne by the mucous membrane of the who had severe headache and difficulty in thinking and stomach. The mortality amongst the last 300 cases was speaking during the fourth and fifth weeks of the whooping. -

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