THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. MEETING AT IPSWICH.

THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

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from the Pathological Laboratory, Cambridge, and amongst them one showing glanders of the human lung. Miss E. M. Vaughan, M.D. Lond., showed a good series of BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. specimens from the museum of the Royal Free Hospital, London, and of these we may refer specially to a number MEETING AT IPSWICH. of preparations showing morbid conditions of the vermiform appendix. Mr. Joseph Griffiths exhibited four specimens THE members of the Association would fail in their duty from Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, one of these being if they did not discountenance the habit of self-drugging by an example of an aneurysm in a child aged 10 months, and the public and we are sure that they will agree with us on another of a ruptured aorta in a boy 17 years of age. Dr. this point. Yet this reprehensible practice is to some extent Patrick Manson (London) exhibited an excellent series of encouraged by the fact that the public are admitted to the slides showing the malaria parasite, and another series exhibition of drugs at the annual meeting. At the meeting showing the filaria sanguinis hominis. Mr. T. H. Morse held at Ipswich we found that some of the exhibitors were (Norwich) submitted six examples of tubal pregnancy. Altogiving away specimens of all kinds of drugs to lay men and gether the exhibition was fully up to the average, but we are women who were assured of such-and-such a powder being inclined to suggest that it would be a good method to choose a sovereign remedy for sleeplessness, headache, sea-sickness, for each exhibition one pathological condition, or at the and so on; and these persons went away with an expression most two, which should be illustrated by the specimens upon their faces implying that they had picked up a good exhibited. If this were done, the annual pathological thing, and the number of remedies, usually synthetics, which museum would probably excite even more interest than it they carried away was enough to form a druggist’s shop in does at present. For instance, urinary calculi would have miniature. Emphatically this should be stopped and the formed a most suitable subject for the Ipswich meeting. Organising Committee might bear these facts in mind on a future occasion. THE

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THE SECTIONS. An excellent demonstration illustrating the recent advances made in the application of the x-ray methods in surgery was given by Mr. Mackenzie Davidson in the lantern room of the Masonic Hall, Soane-street, on Friday, August 3rd. Difficult as it is to demonstrate x-ray phenomena to an audience, Mr. Davidson succeeded in convincing those present of the value of bringing the shadows into relief or of gaining stereoscopic effect for the purpose not only of localising foreign bodies but of making also a diagnosis of any abnormality. The simplest method, perhaps, is to view two photographs in the mirror stereoscope. The results are most instructive. But Mr. Davidson has also devised an apparatus by means of which it is possible to get directly a stereoscopic view of the interior of the human subject or other objects. For this purpose two tubes are used, and by an exceedingly ingenious mechanical arrangement an excellent stereoscopic effect is obtained which enables the operator to place the point of a probe exactly This was proved by trying a probe on the foreign body. a mass of soft material. in It could be hidden a bullet upon was in front of or behind needle the seen whether distinctly the bullet, and thus the exact locality and position of the missile could be found. Needless to say the demonstration was watched with considerable interest.

MEDICINE.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3RD. Headaches and other Nervous Symptoms in Relation to Nasal Adenoids. Dr. DAVID McKEOWN (Manchester) read a paper on this subject. The usual explanation of the headaches, he said, and of other nervous symptoms due to this cause was that they were caused by imperfect aeration of the blood which in its turn was caused by the narrowing of the nasal respiratory channel by the encroachment of the post-nasal and pharyngeal growths. Combined buccal and nasal respiration gave plenty of oxygen during the waking hours, but it had been found that during sleep nasal respiration only was employed and even if the mouth were open no buccal respiration took place. To this Dr. McKeown objected, first that the same symptoms often occurred when the growths were clearly too small and few to cause any obstruction to respiration, and submitted these further considerations:e that adenoids were only an accentuation of the normal condition of the naso-pharynx ; that the symptoms were the same in many cases though the extent of the growths varied greatly ; that the capacity of dilatation of the nasopharynx determined the amount of obstruction and that this varied greatly ; and that in any case the amount of adenoid growth rarely if ever prevented an amount of air reaching the lungs physiologically sufficient for the perfect aeration of the blood. He thus concluded that imperfect aeration was not the cause of the symptoms. He further stated that the headache and other symptoms were cured by operation. Immediately patients came round from the anaesthetic they said that the headache had gone. In cases where adenoids were present and no unpleasant symptoms were complained of patients still expressed themselves as feeling better after an operation for the removal of the growths. In both these instances it was hardly possible that if the symptoms were due to imperfect aeration they should have been relieved so rapidly. Again, headaches were often cured by epistaxis. The pathological connexion between the nasal fossas and the cranial contents was an intimate one. Hyperasmia was often intense in these complaints and the nasal fossæ were very near the brain. There was headache in nasal catarrh similar to that above mentioned. Symptoms in the same case varied in degree from day to day, perhaps according to the condition of vascular engorgement of the mucous membrane. He thought the true explanation to be either reflex action or some blood change they did not understand, but not mal-oxygenation.

The museum of pathological exhibits was located in the chemical laboratory of the Ipswich Higher Grade School. It was a large, well-lighted room and was very suitable for the purpose. There was a fairly large number of specimens on view and nearly half of them came from the museum of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. They were exhibited by Dr. Sydney H. Long, physician to the hospital. Among the many interesting cases we were naturally (in view of the locality) chiefly attracted by the calculi. There was a good collection of these, and especially worthy of notice was an exceedingly large renal calculus in situ,. this is unsurpassed by any specimen in any museum with which we are acquainted. The collection of old lithotomy instruments at one time used at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital was also of great interest. Space does not allow a description of all the specimens from this hospital, but we may mention an excellent specimen of varix The Diastolic Expansion of the Ventricles as a Factor in of the stomach. Dr. H. H. Brown showed some speciCompensation for Disease of the Mitral Valve. mens from the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital, amongst Dr. STACEY WILSON (Birmingham) read the following paper. which was a good example of a carcinoma of the cascum. Mr. i There was evidence, he said, that the heart had power to Strange ways Pigg (London) exhibited a number of specimens enlarge its chambers and fill itself (aspiration). Cobnheim