THE BRITISH GYNÆCOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

17 Sir ANDREW CLARK said- that the Society was to be congratulated on the way in which the discussion had beert initiated, continued, and completed. It had been a mosiI interesting and important discussion, for more varied anc distinguished visitors had never joined in a debate. It was further a pronouncement of English opinion, and communicated to the busy practitioners accurate, extensive, and important information. Moreover, he hoped that it would dc justice to a distinguished foreign physician to whom WE owed so much. It might be interesting at this period tc pass in review the opinions of the various speakers but that this had already been so ably done by one of the medical journals (THE LANCET). Another method of studying the debate was to collect and contrast the ideas which have been evolved during the discussion. Despite the wish of Dr. Broadbent and others, Sir Andrew forbore to take further part in the discussion, averring that he considered it inconsistent with the functions of the Chair. Mr. MoRRANT BAKER said that he should not reply seriatim for fear of being accused of "emptying the church down to the sexton." Chronic osteo-arthritis was neither rheumatism nor gout. He considered Charcot’s disease was a fairly definite disease, and cliaracterised by the same pathological changes as chronic osteo-arthritis. It was not fair to take out-of-the-way cases. If typical specimens of the affections were taken, no real distinction could be found He did not think that Charcot’s to exist pathologically. disease was an accidental combination of chronic osteoarthritis with tabes dorsalis. It was impossible that we could expect the clinical symptoms to be the same in all cases. He referred to a case under Mr. T. Smith’s care, in which the hip-joint was diseased in a manner precisely like that of Charcot’s disease, but there were no symptoms whatever of tabes dorsalis. He had had the rare experience of finding Charcot’s disease in cent. per cent. of the cases of locomotor ataxy which had come under his care. In Charcot’s disease the smalljoints were affected; there might be eburnation of bone and fibrous degeneration of cartilages, so that he could not agree with Mr. Barwell. He did not concur in the belief that the disease was a new one. The differences from chronic osteo-arthritis were not so startling, and he believed that Charcot’s disease had been overlooked because it was -

The rare specimens might have been thrown Lucas’s showing. With Mr. Hutchinson’s view on premature senility he fully agreed. The term rheumatic arthritis" might with advantage be discarded. Words were made to be our servants, but after they were once created they might become our masters. He would like to see invented a term which would imply " decay without repair"without ambiguity. In many of the cases the joints had not been subjected to any unnatural friction, and so he opposed the theory advanced by Dr. Moxon and others. He believed that the disease had nothing to do with syphilis. It was said by Dr. Moxon that the charm of genius was to play around the ordinary, and he considered that the speech of the author of that phrase was He thought with Mr. an admirable example of its truth. Hopkins that injury had something to do with the causation of Charcot’s disease, and fractures of bones in tabetic patients. It was not for him to dogmatise, but he still maintained that Charcot’s disease was most probably an osteoarthritis occurring in tabes dorsalis. uncommon. away on Mr.

THE BRITISH GYNÆCOLOGICAL SOCIETY. WE are asked by one of theSecretaries of this new Society Dr. Fancourt Barnes, to publish the following :At a meeting held on Dec. 27th, at the rooms of thl Medical Society of London, under the Presidency of Dr Routh, the British Gynaecological Society was institute( after some discussion. The following is a list of theomcerf who were unanimously elected by the meeting: -Honorar3 President: Dr. Robert Barnes. President: Dr. A. Meadows Vice-Presidents: Drs. Aveling, Granville Bantock, Routh Protheroe Smith, Mr. Lawson Tait (Birmingham), Professot A. R. Simpson (Edinburgh). Council: Dr. Sinclair Coghill (Ventnor), Dr. Grigg, Messrs. T. Nunn, Noble Smith. II. A. Reeves, Drs. Walter and Lloyd Roberts (Manchester). Dr. Purefoy (Dublin), Mr. Paul Swain (Plymouth), Drs. Macwhirter Dunbar, A. Sheen (Cardiff), T. More iltadden (Dublin), John Wallace (Liverpool), John Thorburn (Manchester), with others to be added at the first general meet-

Treasurer: Dr. A. W. Edis. Hon. Secretaries: Drs. Heywood Smith and Fancourt Barnes. The first meeting of the Society will be held in April.

ing.

SHEFFIELD

MEDICO - CHIRURGICAL

SOCIETY.

A MEETING of this Society was held on Dec. 18th, 1884, Mr. W. A. Garrard, President, in the chair. Dr. KEELING introduced a patient whose Scapula had been removed nearly two years before for a Tumour involving the Bone and surrounding Muscles. There had been no return of the disease and the arm was a fairly useful one. Dr. KEELING also showed a youth whose Left Arm had been nearly torn off and his Skull Fractured by a machinery accident. After necrosis of two inches and a half of the shaft of the humerus the ends of the bone had been tied together with wire, and splints applied. Complete recovery has taken place, the patient being now able to work at his trade as usual. Dr. KEELING exhibited a woman in whom one half of the Scalp had been torn off in consequence of her hair being caught by a revolving machine band. The complete healing of the raw surface had been much aided by repeated skin-

grafting.

Dr. DYSON exhibited a patient with Aortic Disease. His age forty-five, and he was a brewer’s drayman. The interest of the case consisted of a loud high-pitched musical diastolic murmur, the maximum of intensity being over the lower part of the sternum; the murmur was audible all over the front of the chest and in the back, also in the large arteries. There was also a systolic aortic murmur. A thrill of the same distribution as the murmur was also present. Signs of the above commenced last Easter, but it was not until Dec. 1st that the patient left off working. On that day he had a sharp anginal attack.-Remarks were made by the President, Dr. Banham, Mr. Barber, Dr. Porter, Dr. Keeling, and Mr. Baldwin. Dr. DYSON showed a Heart from a man aged twenty-five. History of rheumatic fever many years back, but only subjective symptoms of heart disease for four years. The heart, which weighed nearly two pounds, showed signs of pericarditis, dilatation, and hypertrophy of the left auricle and left ventricle, disease of the aorta and aortic valves, also well-marked mitral stenosis. The prominent symptoms and physical signs during life pointed to aortic incompetency. A mitral murmur was present but not well defined. The kidney also was shown; it was large and cirrhosed. The liver and spleen were immense. Convallaria was administered in this case, and seemed to act quite as well as digitalis. The urine was albuminous.-Dr. Porter and Mr. James made observations. Dr. BANHAM introduced a patient whom he considered was suffering from Tumour of the Brain. There was partial hemiplegia with some anaesthesia of the left side, slight paresis of the right side, deafness of the left ear, nystagmus of the left eye, and atrophy of both optic discs, especially of the left. Headache and vertigo were also occasional symptoms. The defect of sight and hearing had been progressing for the last four years, but no paralysis beyond slight weakness of the left arm appeared until January last, when one night he was suddenly seized with cramps and rigidity of the limbs, followed in a few hours by left hemiplegia. The affection of the right side had slowly developed since. The history of the patient and the negative results following specific treatment were entirely opposed to the hypothesis of the syphilitic nature of the disease, and Dr. Banham inclined to the opinion that there was a tumour of the pons Varolii, implicating also the cerebellar peduncles, and that the sudden augmentation of his symptoms in January last was due to haemorrhage in connexion therewith. Dr. BANHAM also gave brief notes of a case of Urticaria, occurring in an intelligent woman of twenty-five years of age, which had recurred almost daily for two years past, and which had been accompanied frequently with dysphagia to such a degree that when she sat down to a meal swallowing was often found impossible, and the attempt induced such serious attacks of choking as greatly to alarm those about her. The patient had never given any indications of llysteria. He saw this patient for the first time three weeks ago, gave her careful directions in regard to diet and the ’egulation of the bowels, and ordered her a mixture of bismuth and nux voiica, to be taken before meals. Within was