THE “MISSING LINK.”-Mr. Chas.Dawson, of Lewes, England, had discovered the remains of a creature which some members of the Geological Society think is the “missing link ” that Darwin could not find. The find “links modern man in some respects very closely with anthropoid apes.” The missing link in the doctrine of evolution is the fact that if evolution is a natural law it must be always operative and we should find it at work all about us-but we dont neither did Darwin.
A CASE OF ARNICA POISONING.-Dr. Proctor-Sims (Br. M. J., Dec. 21) writes of a young married woman who came to him “with a history of having fallen a few days previously whilst going downstairs. A sympathetic friend advised an application of tincture of arnica to the bruised parts, and the treatment had evidently been carried out with great thoroughness. When seen by me the lumbar and sacral regions were covered with a red, angry, and extremely irritable erythematous rash. One side of the face was puffed, and there was a rash there in a appearance very like urticaria.
There was a similar rash on one forearm.I was assured that none of the arnica had been applied to these latter two parts. The rash and irritation subsided in a few days under combined treatment by saline purges and a sedative ointment. I thought the case of interest because though arnica has been expunged from the Pharmacopoeia as an uncertain and often dangerous remedy, it seem still to linger in the minds of some members of the public as a specific in certain forms of injury.”
Arnica is very useful, internally (3d) and externally, for heavy blows or concussions. When used externally it should be diluted with twenty parts of water. For cuts, bruises, lacerations or any bleeding surface Succus Calendula is far better; it can be applied freely, undiluted, with entire safety and splendid results, being at once very healing and preventing suppuration far more effectively than bichloride, etc.,
DOCTOR AND PATIENT.-When a man puts forth something more than a platitude we like to report it. This man had been in the swim for twenty years or more; knew allopathy, homoeopathy and all the rest. A case was mentioned in which the hypodermic of morphia had seemed to make the case worse.
Some one said, “Why not let the patient fight it out under the indicated remedy?” You cant do it,” was the reply of the experienced one, they demand quick relief and if you dont give it some other fellow will. Youve got to live.” “Then it is a question of bread and butter,” “Yes” “what of the high ideals?” A shrug of the shoulders was the answer. And yet we believe they are not dead in any school of medicine.
THE EARLY DAYS OF OHIO VALLEY MEDICINE.-Otto Juettner, who writes “M.D., F.R.S.M. (Eng).” after his name, recently real a paper on this subject before the Ohio Valley Historical Society that is interesting. One of the noted men was Benjamin Winslow Dudley, who was born in Virginia in 1785, but emigrated to Kentucky when one year of age. He was the founder of the medical department of the Transylvania University, at Lexington, Ky. Transylvania was the original name for Kentucky.
He studied at the University of Pennsylvania (Benjamin Rush was then in the Faculty) and, after some adventures, studies surgery at Paris, France. Returning to Kentucky he was in at the founding of the medical school at Lexington. In time he had a quarrel with a brother professor-what barbarous times-and fought a duel with him in place of back-biting. Dudley was missed, but his bullet severed an artery of his opponent, and then the surgeon in him came to the force and he saved the life of the man he had shot, and they were afterwards warm friends.
But what we are leading up to is the fact that he performed over 600 this percentage in mind one will read the next fanfare of modern surgery in a slightly modified light. Each generation ought to be better, for it has light of all the preceding generation to guide it, but this is not always utilized. We are too apt to think we know it all simply because we are part of the temporary “latest.”
THE RISE, SPREAD AND FALL OF DISEASE.-Each decade sees the rise of some new disease, or the appearance of an old, old one in new trappings. At present it is poliomyelitis. As is always the case, the learned ones are looking about for the causes of the trouble. Pretty much everything has been accused of carrying these invisible germs-the pesky Musca domestica, the Culex sollicitqans, Pediculus vestimenti, Cimex lecturelarius, cats, dogs, human beings and nearly every thing else.
Now, Claude, this is not “knocking” the Professor, but only a statement of fact. It seems, to some, at least, that such “epidemics” are like the wind-whence they come and wither they go we know not. There is a big unexplored field awaiting you, Claude, but you must go beyond microbes and other bugs to things or causes back of them. You must get closer to great elementary causes. A greater field than Darwins lies shrouded before you.
VIS MEDICATRIX NATURAE.-In olden times the allopaths said that nature cured those entrusted to homoeopathic treatment. The was-and is-the fact that more got well under vis medicatrix naturae than under the orthodox treatment, which fact presented the obvious horns of a dilemma. On this point the following from a letter by Dr. A. F. Millar (Br. M. J., Dec. 28) is illuminating:
“You no doubt had in mind a passage in Professor Huxleys essay, The Struggle for Existence in Human Society. Huxley was talking with Sir William Gull on this subject, When Stuff! said Sir William, in nine times out of ten nature does not want to cure the man; she wants to put him in his coffin.
“Nine times out of ten seems rather a tall order; and I have always been suprised that Huxley accepted the statement without question.
Most of us feel rather proud if we think that we have defeated the evident intentions of nature, when those intentions are malignant, in one case out of ten.-I am, etc.”
A NEW ORDER PROPOSED.-The following is clipped from the Eclectic Review for January:
“The Health authorities in several States seem to favor abolishing small-pox quarantine, taking the position that a small -pox patient is harmless to those who have been successfully vaccinated, and that there need to be no sympathy wasted on persons who decline to be protected. The patients house is, of course, to be placarded to warn the public. Some people are beginning to get rather tried of protecting those who refuse to protect themselves. This feeling is especially noticeable among taxpayers who are obliged to support pest houses.
The anti- vaccinationists are taunting the health authorities with inconsistency, and ask: IF Vaccination does protect your children, why are you so afraid of mine? This is a question which will sooner or later have to be satisfactorily answered, or the whole compulsion system must collapse. In pointing out these facts American Medicine sensibly asks:”
” Why would it not be a good plan to ignore the antis, and then if the unvaccinated children get small-pox, put the parents in jail for criminal neglect? These abnormal people have “fixed ideas,” Which cannot be eradicated. They resent force and will ignore compulsory laws as they always have done. They have enough influence to defeat such bills in legislatures and the only thing to do is to insist on punishment when the neglect causes disease. Prevention has proved impossible.”
Try it on, brother sinner, try it on!.
