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THE GERMICIDAL PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO SMOKE.
406 and piously done, while many of the pregnant tender on the slightest pressure. It extended almost to the quoted should inspire the reader to consult the mid-line, above the umbilicus, and reached from the left originals from which they have been taken. Says Thring, hypochondrium into the left flank. There were definite for example : "I do not mind whether things go entirely indications that the tumour growth was compressing the right or not. Nothing goes entirely right. Any fool can lower lobe of the left lung. On Sept. 1st the little patient find fault. And road-makers cannot be so clean as those was operated on, and the mass was found to be a suprarenal who walk on the roads they have made." Was ever the tumour which almost completely surrounded the left kidney, position of the mere critic compared in a happier way with making it impossible to remove one without the other. The that of the inventor, with, be it noticed, no undue laudation suprarenal tumour was of a curious yellow ochre colour, very of the latter ? This little book is full of similar aphorisms. vascular and very soft. Although it was creeping down all over the capsule of the kidney, it did not invade the latter in THE GERMICIDAL PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO any way. The kidney itself looked perfectly normal. The child died a few days later, when numerous secondary SMOKE. IT is not surprising to learn that tobacco smoke is deposits, all yellow ochre in colour and varying in size from inimical to the activity of micro-organisms, since it con- small dots to growths half an inch in diameter, were found tains, amongst many other things, pyridin, which has been scattered through the lungs. The uterus and ovaries were Definite experiments perfectly normal. Sections of the growth showed columns shown to be a powerful germicide. have recently been made which show that tobacco smoke of large polyhedral cells, mostly arranged in a perivascular It may be described as a perithelioma of mesoblastic rabidly destroys in particular the comma bacillus of cholera. fashion. A good many years ago it was reported by the senior origin rather than a carcinoma.
judiciously sentences
medical officer of Greenwich workhouse that the tobaccosmoking inmates enjoyed comparative immunity from epidemics, and tobacco-smoking was believed to have had a disinfectant action in cases of cholera and other infectious diseases. Again, during a cholera epidemic at it was reported that not a single workman engaged in the cigar factory in that city was attacked by the disease. Later it was stated that amongst a body of 5000 cigarmakers only 8 cases and 4 deaths from cholera occurred. Subsequent experiments proved that tobacco smoke destroyed the bacilli of Asiatic cholera as well as pneumonia, and there was some evidence also that tobacco smoke was preventive of some forms of nasal catarrh. It is interesting to note that pyridin is official in the French pharmacopoeia, and in France it has been employed in the form of inhalation in asthma, emphysema, and angina pectoris, and mix ed with peppermint in diphtheria. Excessive tobacco-smoking, of course, may easily give rise to constitutional effects which diminish the resisting power of the body to disease, in which case it is probable the habit would afford not only no protection but an opening for invasion.
KERATODERMIA i
Hamburg
-
ADRENAL HYPERNEPHROMA IN A YOUNG GIRL, WITH PRECOCIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF SEXUAL CHARACTERISTICS. IN the recently issued annual volume of Guy’s .Hospital Reports is a brief paper by Dr. Herbert French on a rare condition, of which up to the present less than 20 cases have been recorded, where a tumour of the suprarenal cortex has been associated with abnormal development of the external genitalia and the characteristics of sex. Dr. French’s patient was a little girl of 6 years, who was ad1910. She had mitted to Guy’s Hospital on August always been a very healthy child, except that since she was 12 months old she had been subject to periodic attacks of vomiting several times a year, attacks which were gradually becoming more intense. In this little girl pubic hair began to develop when she was eight months old, and it increased in amount steadily for some years. There was none in the axillse or on the face. For six months before admission she complained of pain in the left side of the body. She was found to be a healthy looking child, bright and intelligent, not unduly fat, with undeveloped breasts, but with a remarkable development of pubic hair and with an equally remarkable hypertrophy of the clitoris, which projected between the labia and separated them to a notable extent. A relatively large tumour was felt with ease in the left side of the abdomen, moving up and down with respiration, smooth and free from nodules, but very
18th,
BLENNORRHAGICA.
Swift, of Adelaide, has given an account of a case of gonorrhoeal keratodermia, the first recorded in Australia as far as he is aware, in the A tcstrcelccsian Medical Gazette of Nov. 30th, 1912. It is an extremely rare condition. The first example recorded in England was a patient of Dr. J. H. Sequeira, brought before the Royal Society of Medicine in March of last year. Dr. Swift’s patient was a man, aged 35, who was admitted to hospital suffering from gonorrhoea with polyarthritis for the second time in six years. On the dorsu of each foot were a few discrete pustulous spots one-third to three-quarters of an inch in diameter ; in the most recent the outer margin of the area of cuticle involved was raised very slightly by a thin layer of cloudy serum. The centre was yellow, convex, and raised, being in the process of becoming hardened. Later, the cuticular rim became broken, the centre being raised into a clear horn-like projection. Later still this centre became opaque, having an appearance not unlike that of a rupial crust. In their subsequent course these pustular areas displayed the tendency to incrustation in a very marked degree, and they also increased in size centrifugally. Fresh pustules produced on the shins and elsewhere by extrinsic causes took on similar keratotic characters. Attempts at discovering the gonococcus in the discharge from these cutaneous lesions proved abortive, and treatment by injection of stock gonococcus vaccines was quite futile. The patient’s urethritis was, however, very persistent, and the condition conforms in all essentials to that described by other dermatologists as occurring in connexion with severe and generalised gonococcal infections. Treatment is usually unsatisfactory, though in one case, that recorded by Dr. Sequeira, the use of gonococcal vaccines proved highly effective in inducing a cure. Dr. Swift remarks on one curious point, the offensive smell of the patient’s skin. This was so extreme that the man ha3 to be isolated, and local applications of formaldehyde were necessary in order to mitigate the odour. Dr. H.
A DISCUSSION on Ventrifixation of the Uterus has been to take place on Thursday, March 6th, in the Obstetrical and Gynsecological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. The subject will be divided into three parts: (1) Indications for the Operation, to be opened by Dr. W. S. A. Griffith ; (2) Varying Technique of the Operation, to be opened by Professor Henry Briggs (Liverpool) ; and (3) Clinical Results of the Operation, to be opened by Dr.
arranged
judiciously sentences
medical officer of Greenwich workhouse that the tobaccosmoking inmates enjoyed comparative immunity from epidemics, and tobacco-smoking was believed to have had a disinfectant action in cases of cholera and other infectious diseases. Again, during a cholera epidemic at it was reported that not a single workman engaged in the cigar factory in that city was attacked by the disease. Later it was stated that amongst a body of 5000 cigarmakers only 8 cases and 4 deaths from cholera occurred. Subsequent experiments proved that tobacco smoke destroyed the bacilli of Asiatic cholera as well as pneumonia, and there was some evidence also that tobacco smoke was preventive of some forms of nasal catarrh. It is interesting to note that pyridin is official in the French pharmacopoeia, and in France it has been employed in the form of inhalation in asthma, emphysema, and angina pectoris, and mix ed with peppermint in diphtheria. Excessive tobacco-smoking, of course, may easily give rise to constitutional effects which diminish the resisting power of the body to disease, in which case it is probable the habit would afford not only no protection but an opening for invasion.
KERATODERMIA i
Hamburg
-
ADRENAL HYPERNEPHROMA IN A YOUNG GIRL, WITH PRECOCIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF SEXUAL CHARACTERISTICS. IN the recently issued annual volume of Guy’s .Hospital Reports is a brief paper by Dr. Herbert French on a rare condition, of which up to the present less than 20 cases have been recorded, where a tumour of the suprarenal cortex has been associated with abnormal development of the external genitalia and the characteristics of sex. Dr. French’s patient was a little girl of 6 years, who was ad1910. She had mitted to Guy’s Hospital on August always been a very healthy child, except that since she was 12 months old she had been subject to periodic attacks of vomiting several times a year, attacks which were gradually becoming more intense. In this little girl pubic hair began to develop when she was eight months old, and it increased in amount steadily for some years. There was none in the axillse or on the face. For six months before admission she complained of pain in the left side of the body. She was found to be a healthy looking child, bright and intelligent, not unduly fat, with undeveloped breasts, but with a remarkable development of pubic hair and with an equally remarkable hypertrophy of the clitoris, which projected between the labia and separated them to a notable extent. A relatively large tumour was felt with ease in the left side of the abdomen, moving up and down with respiration, smooth and free from nodules, but very
18th,
BLENNORRHAGICA.
Swift, of Adelaide, has given an account of a case of gonorrhoeal keratodermia, the first recorded in Australia as far as he is aware, in the A tcstrcelccsian Medical Gazette of Nov. 30th, 1912. It is an extremely rare condition. The first example recorded in England was a patient of Dr. J. H. Sequeira, brought before the Royal Society of Medicine in March of last year. Dr. Swift’s patient was a man, aged 35, who was admitted to hospital suffering from gonorrhoea with polyarthritis for the second time in six years. On the dorsu of each foot were a few discrete pustulous spots one-third to three-quarters of an inch in diameter ; in the most recent the outer margin of the area of cuticle involved was raised very slightly by a thin layer of cloudy serum. The centre was yellow, convex, and raised, being in the process of becoming hardened. Later, the cuticular rim became broken, the centre being raised into a clear horn-like projection. Later still this centre became opaque, having an appearance not unlike that of a rupial crust. In their subsequent course these pustular areas displayed the tendency to incrustation in a very marked degree, and they also increased in size centrifugally. Fresh pustules produced on the shins and elsewhere by extrinsic causes took on similar keratotic characters. Attempts at discovering the gonococcus in the discharge from these cutaneous lesions proved abortive, and treatment by injection of stock gonococcus vaccines was quite futile. The patient’s urethritis was, however, very persistent, and the condition conforms in all essentials to that described by other dermatologists as occurring in connexion with severe and generalised gonococcal infections. Treatment is usually unsatisfactory, though in one case, that recorded by Dr. Sequeira, the use of gonococcal vaccines proved highly effective in inducing a cure. Dr. Swift remarks on one curious point, the offensive smell of the patient’s skin. This was so extreme that the man ha3 to be isolated, and local applications of formaldehyde were necessary in order to mitigate the odour. Dr. H.
A DISCUSSION on Ventrifixation of the Uterus has been to take place on Thursday, March 6th, in the Obstetrical and Gynsecological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. The subject will be divided into three parts: (1) Indications for the Operation, to be opened by Dr. W. S. A. Griffith ; (2) Varying Technique of the Operation, to be opened by Professor Henry Briggs (Liverpool) ; and (3) Clinical Results of the Operation, to be opened by Dr.
arranged