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"THE BATTLE OF THE CLUBS."
132 of Diamandi, from his mental picture of the figuresvisual memory. Besides these four visual memories there is word -blindness, which seems to fill the place of Dr. Gall’s sens des mots, sens des noms, mémoire des mots, memoire verbale, or verbal memory. In my book on Phrenology I have illustrated (p. 66) verbal (visual) memory by a marked case in this town. The instinct is characterised by prominent eyes showing a large amount of the white portion of each cornea. The woman from whom the sketch was taken-and it is so good a likeness that she has the original drawing hanging framed in her
of two
quiescent and unrecognised cerebral
ease
existence
a
abscesses, of which the second produced no symptoms until the brain was disturbed by the operation on the first, a con-
dition which I thought might explain other cases where the draining of a cerebral abscess was followed by an unfavourable result, or where fatal coma occurred unexpectedly in various cerebral derangements. Now I see recorded in the current St. Thomas’s Hospital Gazette a case in which Mr. Anderson drained in the usual way a cerebral abscess following mastoid disease, with complete relief of symptoms, even to the clearing up of optic neuritis, but ending in fatal coma in the second week, and at the necropsy there was found an inch deeper than the first abscess cavity-which was undergoing a perfect process of cure-a second old thick-walled abscess, unsuspected during life and presumably the cause of death. In both cases, it will be noticed, there was no question of the second abscess being of pyasmic or embolic origin. They are both cases proving to. be double cerebral abscess, in which the discovery of one abscess fully accounted for all symptoms, the second being unthought of. May I once more, through your columns, draw attention to this point, surely one of sufficient practical importance, and on which I shall be glad of the opinion of those better qualified than myself to speak ? I am, Sirs, yours truly, CAMERON KIDD. Dec. 1895. 26th, Bromsgrove,
"THE BATTLE OF THE CLUBS." To the Editors of THE LANCET. SIRS,-Some time back I was called upon and asked to take charge of a medical the town where I lived ; the
about to be started in of men in good practice in my neighbourhood were mentioned as of those holding similar appointments. I had no knowledge of the working of the society and was too busy at the time to go into it, and therefore consented. Lately, my attention being drawn in the medical papers to the abuses introduced by medical aid societies, and the way in which they degrade medical service and those who render it, I determined to give three months’ notice and sever all connexion with them. My time expires at the end of this year, but already my place is filled up by a new arrival. What has been the use of my resignation? I only help another to oppose me, which in a small place is unfortunate. Until some concerted action is taken we are powerless ; the profession is so flooded, there will always be found some only too ready to take the smallest chance that offers of comI am, Sirs, yours faithfully, mencing practice. DISGUSTED. December, 1895.
society names
room-has an exceedingly good memory for what she has read. She can repeat word for word, she and her husband have told me, anything she has read once in a newspaper. She tells me that she cannot account for her extraordinary memory-that, when repeating, she does not see the printed words before her. It will be noticed that the phrenological enlargements for (1) locality, (2) form, (3) colour, and (4) number have all been A CRITICISM OF THE RECENT SURGICAL located in close connexion with the eyes; that (5) verbal TREATMENT OF MALIGNANT DISEASE memory is a condition of the eyes themselves ; and, further, OF THE BREAST. that Dr. Gall located them long before these visual memories, To the Editors of THE LANCET. each having "its own special domain" in the brain, were I am, Sirs, yours faithfully, thought to exist. SIRs,-The "disappointing results"of the surgical treatPUGIN THORNTON, THORNTON. ment of malignant disease of the breast are not wholly Canterbury, Dec. 27th, 1895. accounted for by the intimate connexion of the lymphatics of the breast and neck which Dr. Robert Sanderson describes in THE LANCET of Dec. 21st, 1895. His reminder DOUBLE CEREBRAL ABSCESS. that the lymphatics freely cross over the clavicle from the To the Editors of THE LANCET. breast to the neck and also enter the posterior triangle SIRS,-In THE LANCET of Feb. 2nd, 1889, you published for through the axillary apex is a wholesome one for me a case of convulsions with increasing coma in a boy aged operative surgeons. But, according to the anatomical fourteen, with a history of a kick from a horse three years investigations of Stiles of Edinburgh and others, lympreviously, leaving a scar on the forehead, through which I phatic vessels also dip down into the pectoral fascia and trephined and drained a large old-standing abscess in the muscles, course along the intercostal spaces, and enter theleft frontal lobe with almost entire relief of symptoms and thorax to join the mediastinal glands, while others run every promise of complete success until the fifth day, when in the suspensory ligament across the sternum to join the Post mortem a lymphatic system of the opposite breast. Upon the theory coma again supervened, followed by death. second old thick-walled abscess (two ounces) was found in of local origin and subsequent infection of the neighbouring the opposite temporo-sphenoidal lobe, of the existence of lymphatic glands wide and extensive operation is clearly which there had been no hint during life, no middle-ear indicated. Sir Benjamin Brodie used to leave cases alone disease being found post mortem. This quite unsuspected when the axillary glands were affected. Sir Joseph Lister abscess was difficult to account for, the only possible origin advised removal of the enlarged glands along with the seeming to be a contrecoup at the time of the original injury. breast. Mr. Banks tells us that an imperfect operaI did not hazard this unsatisfactory explanation of the tion leaves a patient in a worse plight than if she had pathology of the case and was disappointed in any hopes of been left alone, and advises a "clean sweep" of both ______________
enlightenment from your correspondents, but the point which seemed to make the case worthy of record was the 1 Heads and What
They Tell Us. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London.
breast
affected
general phatics
and
whether the glands be obviously Yet it is still questionable whether the recognition of the intimate connexion of the lym of the breast witb all the neighbouring glands or
axilla,
not.
of two
quiescent and unrecognised cerebral
ease
existence
a
abscesses, of which the second produced no symptoms until the brain was disturbed by the operation on the first, a con-
dition which I thought might explain other cases where the draining of a cerebral abscess was followed by an unfavourable result, or where fatal coma occurred unexpectedly in various cerebral derangements. Now I see recorded in the current St. Thomas’s Hospital Gazette a case in which Mr. Anderson drained in the usual way a cerebral abscess following mastoid disease, with complete relief of symptoms, even to the clearing up of optic neuritis, but ending in fatal coma in the second week, and at the necropsy there was found an inch deeper than the first abscess cavity-which was undergoing a perfect process of cure-a second old thick-walled abscess, unsuspected during life and presumably the cause of death. In both cases, it will be noticed, there was no question of the second abscess being of pyasmic or embolic origin. They are both cases proving to. be double cerebral abscess, in which the discovery of one abscess fully accounted for all symptoms, the second being unthought of. May I once more, through your columns, draw attention to this point, surely one of sufficient practical importance, and on which I shall be glad of the opinion of those better qualified than myself to speak ? I am, Sirs, yours truly, CAMERON KIDD. Dec. 1895. 26th, Bromsgrove,
"THE BATTLE OF THE CLUBS." To the Editors of THE LANCET. SIRS,-Some time back I was called upon and asked to take charge of a medical the town where I lived ; the
about to be started in of men in good practice in my neighbourhood were mentioned as of those holding similar appointments. I had no knowledge of the working of the society and was too busy at the time to go into it, and therefore consented. Lately, my attention being drawn in the medical papers to the abuses introduced by medical aid societies, and the way in which they degrade medical service and those who render it, I determined to give three months’ notice and sever all connexion with them. My time expires at the end of this year, but already my place is filled up by a new arrival. What has been the use of my resignation? I only help another to oppose me, which in a small place is unfortunate. Until some concerted action is taken we are powerless ; the profession is so flooded, there will always be found some only too ready to take the smallest chance that offers of comI am, Sirs, yours faithfully, mencing practice. DISGUSTED. December, 1895.
society names
room-has an exceedingly good memory for what she has read. She can repeat word for word, she and her husband have told me, anything she has read once in a newspaper. She tells me that she cannot account for her extraordinary memory-that, when repeating, she does not see the printed words before her. It will be noticed that the phrenological enlargements for (1) locality, (2) form, (3) colour, and (4) number have all been A CRITICISM OF THE RECENT SURGICAL located in close connexion with the eyes; that (5) verbal TREATMENT OF MALIGNANT DISEASE memory is a condition of the eyes themselves ; and, further, OF THE BREAST. that Dr. Gall located them long before these visual memories, To the Editors of THE LANCET. each having "its own special domain" in the brain, were I am, Sirs, yours faithfully, thought to exist. SIRs,-The "disappointing results"of the surgical treatPUGIN THORNTON, THORNTON. ment of malignant disease of the breast are not wholly Canterbury, Dec. 27th, 1895. accounted for by the intimate connexion of the lymphatics of the breast and neck which Dr. Robert Sanderson describes in THE LANCET of Dec. 21st, 1895. His reminder DOUBLE CEREBRAL ABSCESS. that the lymphatics freely cross over the clavicle from the To the Editors of THE LANCET. breast to the neck and also enter the posterior triangle SIRS,-In THE LANCET of Feb. 2nd, 1889, you published for through the axillary apex is a wholesome one for me a case of convulsions with increasing coma in a boy aged operative surgeons. But, according to the anatomical fourteen, with a history of a kick from a horse three years investigations of Stiles of Edinburgh and others, lympreviously, leaving a scar on the forehead, through which I phatic vessels also dip down into the pectoral fascia and trephined and drained a large old-standing abscess in the muscles, course along the intercostal spaces, and enter theleft frontal lobe with almost entire relief of symptoms and thorax to join the mediastinal glands, while others run every promise of complete success until the fifth day, when in the suspensory ligament across the sternum to join the Post mortem a lymphatic system of the opposite breast. Upon the theory coma again supervened, followed by death. second old thick-walled abscess (two ounces) was found in of local origin and subsequent infection of the neighbouring the opposite temporo-sphenoidal lobe, of the existence of lymphatic glands wide and extensive operation is clearly which there had been no hint during life, no middle-ear indicated. Sir Benjamin Brodie used to leave cases alone disease being found post mortem. This quite unsuspected when the axillary glands were affected. Sir Joseph Lister abscess was difficult to account for, the only possible origin advised removal of the enlarged glands along with the seeming to be a contrecoup at the time of the original injury. breast. Mr. Banks tells us that an imperfect operaI did not hazard this unsatisfactory explanation of the tion leaves a patient in a worse plight than if she had pathology of the case and was disappointed in any hopes of been left alone, and advises a "clean sweep" of both ______________
enlightenment from your correspondents, but the point which seemed to make the case worthy of record was the 1 Heads and What
They Tell Us. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London.
breast
affected
general phatics
and
whether the glands be obviously Yet it is still questionable whether the recognition of the intimate connexion of the lym of the breast witb all the neighbouring glands or
axilla,
not.