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this question is somewhat different. My impression is that at least one-half the population suffer from magnesium poisoning, and that this results in spinal irritation, gastric disorders and likewise eye-strain. As a proof of this statement should be mentioned the fact that patients who wear glasses for eyestrain promptly recover when the lime depletion is corrected and the acid diathesis removed. They also recover from spinal irritation, as well as spinal curvature, but for the latter condition it is necessary to resort to exercise, or special manipulation, or even both. This latter condition (spinal curvature) has obtained such wide-spread prevalence that an entirely new system of therapeutics has been developt under the name of osteopathy.

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I have referred above incidentally to general debility, meaning, of course, the debility incident to senile decay; and I bring this subject up here for the purpose of emphasizing the claims which I advocate, since it is well known that as age advances there is calcareous deposit in the arteries, and along with this we find the magnesium. Here is a combination which interferes with the normal function of the cells, hinders the transmission of nerve impulses, and leads finally to rupture of a blood vessel, which we call apoplexy. Now, I insist that apoplexy is as much an accident as death from a railroad collision; and I know that this condition can be arrested if taken in time and the subjects enabled to live out their normal existence.

That was an exceedingly interesting and suggestiv communication in the June number of THE WORLD (page 228) from Dr. W. E. Bartlett, of Kirkmansville, Ky., who suffered from an ununited fracture for a period of about eight months (estimated), but secured fairly good soft union in less than one month from using calcarea phos. 6x-each grain of this preparation, it should be stated, contains one-billionth part of the drug. I have referred to this report merely for the purpose of showing how important are the little things to be borne in mind in the treatment of disease. I do not presume that the infinitesimal dose supplied the system with the material actually demanded, but it must be apparent that its catalytic action produced the desired result, since the patient has apparently made a complete recovery.

In conclusion, I want to say a word in regard to the employment of lime in the treatment of pneumonia. A few years ago Dr. Longcope, of this city, made a series of investigations in the case of pneumonia at the Pennsylvania Hospital, and his report shows that in some occult manner the pneumococcus combined with some substance in the human system to produce acid, and that this acid combination proceeds pari passu with the disease, disappearing gradually after the crisis. Unfortunately, this scientific fact has not yet

been recognized, as shown by recent contributions on this important subject. Thus, Dr. H. P. Loomis, of New York (Therapeutic Gazette, February, 1906), says nothing about it, altho he admits that he found an exceedingly valuable cardiac stimulant in "liquor ammoniæ acetas," first brought to his attention while attending a medical society in western New Jersey. He makes the following observation: "The drug, as we all know, is a good diuretic and diaphoretic, affects temperature, and acts as a mild stimulant. I claim no specific action for it, but if it does not do any good, it will do no harm, and I would like to bring it to the attention of the members of this society."

I would like to add my own interpretation of the value of "spirit of mindererus." It is an alkali, increasing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood, and is antipathic to the acid condition demonstrated to be presented by Dr. Longcope. Dr. Loomis is in a quandary as to what improvements can be introduced to lessen the mortuary statistics from this disease, which under the best hospital treatment ranges from 35 percent to 40 percent, and he makes inquiry whether the local conditions favoring its development are worse than formerly, whether the type of the disease has increast in severity, and whether there has been any advance in the treatment of the disease.

The whole secret of failure in the modern treatment of pneumonia lies in the presence of magnesium poisoning, and I am convinced beyond question that the addition of lime to the treatment, combined with the employment of remedies which neutralize acidity, will mark a new era in the statistics of this disease. Our patients nowadays are subject to the magnesium regime, and this electroplating process affects not only the digestiv system, but the liver and kidneys and pulmonary apparatus, as well as the cerebral structures, and in addition, we have the magnesia heart. Dr. Meltzer's investigation on magnesium sulfate proves beyond the peradventure of doubt that my claims are fully warranted; he has demonstrated that when injected into the spinal canal it produces an analgesic effect to the point of anesthesia, so that major operations of the lower extremities and abdominal operations can be conducted without ether or chloroform; also that when a nerve is exposed and a saturated solution applied thereto, the transmission of the electric current is arrested; and further, that applied locally to the exposed nerves it annuls pain, thereby making it an antipathic analgesic. Acting upon this scientific information, brought forward by Dr. Meltzer, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, surgeons have already made practical tests of its utility and reports are now available in medical journals. It remains now for the surgeon to adopt measures for the purpose of ridding

the system of the accumulated magnesium, and when they have accomplished their task no doubt the medical profession will be compelled to believe what is written above concerning the magnesia heart.

Philadelphia, Pa. JOHN AULDE, M.D. [The above is important if true. While Dr. Aulde's arguments are interesting, the "magnesia heart" is such a new and original proposition that we must await other testimony before accepting it. It is true that "heart failure" is far too often given as a cause of sudden death. It more often expresses our ignorance of the true cause than being the true cause. We have long thought that a majority of the sudden deaths attributed to the heart are brain deaths rather than heart deaths. We will welcome any light that may come on the cause of sudden deaths. - ED.]

Test a Definit Line of Treatment for Pneumonia, and Report Statistics.

Dear Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-In August WORLD (page 308, second column), Dr. A. F. Burkard suggests that you take the lead in getting the collectiv testimony of a great many physicians in regard to the success of the Galbraith treatment of pneumonia. If you will read my article on page 9 of WORLD for last January, you will see that I advised the same thing, and at the same time reported one case. I hope you will make a special effort to get this collection. Just your saying that you agree will not do it. Make it conspicuous. The idea is, that it takes one physician years to prove such a thing alone, but if 1000 physicians reported that they had been successful with a certain line of treatment, each with 5 to 7 consecutiv cases, it would mean that we had found a treatment for pneumonia that would surely lower the mortality percentage.

I can now report 10 consecutiv cases that recovered under the use of the injection of from 7 to 10 grains of the muriate of quinin, which is essentially the same as the Galbraith treatment. In these cases I used calomel and podophylin to keep bowels free, veratrin to quiet the heart, and in some of the cases the tinct. of iron, as suggested by Galbraith. I can send you charts for 7 of these cases and I think I can send 8. I will send these if you wish me to. Last winter was the first winter, since I have been doing much business, that I have not lost from one to three cases of pneumonia. Last winter I did not lose a

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of this subject as strongly as I could do. We have not room for charts of individual cases, but we would like to present from many members of the profession statistics of their actual experience with some definit method of treating pneumonia, and the method above referred to would be a good one to begin with.-ED.]

More About Dr. Parker's Plan.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-I do not put my medicins in drug stores for sale to the public, and this is where the line is drawn between private and "patent" medicins. I do not "line my pockets" with money from their sale, but find my method convenient to me and both beneficial and economical to my patients.

Following are some of my remedies, and the name at once suggests the use : Gastrotone, Hepatonic, Cystotone, Vitaline, Pharyngitone, Cuticon.

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Now, when you select a name for a remedy and get your label, do not say "a cure for " guaranteed to cure," but put it, "a superior remedy for." Then the directions. Of course, each doctor can use his own judgment as to formulas, but he ought in each case to try to get a good remedy, and he can vary it as he chooses and to suit different cases. I will give one suggestion here: Acid mixtures seldom agree in stomach derangements.

I want now to submit to the editor a question of professional etiquet. Ought I be expected to give to the profession the free right to the use of the above names, or to furnish the formulas to doctors at a distance and whom I do not meet in consultation? Again: Would it be unprofessional for a doctor to make up the remedies and put them in drug stores for sale?

As to the question whether the plan will injure proprietary manufacturers, I think not. There is one proprietary remedy I used to get by the pound, and now buy it in fivegallon lots and bottle it under my own special H. J. PARKER.

name.

Clayton, Ill.

[What difference if doctors in other parts of the country use the same names that you use? Your method, as you have led us to understand it, consists of the use in one's practise of ready prepared remedies from stock formulas. This is done very largely in hospitals, as a matter of convenience; but we think in hospitals numbers are used instead of fanciful names, and this is preferable. We think it would be better taste that doctors who use your plan should not use your names; but it is only a matter of taste, as the use of the same

names in distant parts of the country would not injure you.

You should furnish formulas and everything else in your knowledge to the profession thru its literature, the medical press. You owe to the medical profession, in knowledge, more than you can ever hope to repay. No doctor, however great, has ever given to the profession more than he got from the profession. Medical science has been built up during the centuries by those who honored themselves by placing the results of their best endeavors upon the altar of science. It should be the ambition of every doctor to leave his profession better than he found it, even if only in some minor detail. Above all, don't be afraid of doing something for the profession.

If you place your remedies in drug stores for sale, you go at once from professionalism to commercialism. Such a course would meet the immediate and justifiable opposition of your local practicians.-ED.]

Dr. Parker Comes Back.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-I am glad you publisht the communication from Dr. F. L. Kelly (page 306), in which he says I ought to be expelled from the medical societies because I put a printed label on my medicins, so that people will not make any mistake as to what it is for, where it is from, and how to take it. There are many kinds of doctors, but Dr. Kelly is the first one I have found who thinks that because I give my patient medicin with a printed label on it, he will become a "drug fiend."

In the first place, I give medicin just as Dr. K. does; the best I can put up for the case, and the remedies I use are those prescribed by the greatest living regulars in their daily practise.

In the second place, the doctor knows that one of our greatest troubles is in getting the patient to stay long enuf under treatment, and my method is calculated to create confidence, and therefore to hold the case till I get results. Take a case of syphilis, for instance. It is very difficult to hold the patient on treatment after the primary sore is healed. I have seen doctors mix nasty drugs with water, and in any old bottle they could find around the house, put in a paper wad for a stopper, and write the directions with a lead pencil and on a crumpled margin of a newspaper, and when the looks of it and the taste of the first dose made the patient puke, and another doctor was sent for, old slow would of course be offended because the patient stood "for decency and respectability."

I am a regular of nearly forty years' practise, am a licensed attorney and ought to know what is proper. The man doesn't live who can call me down on professional honor; but I am waiting for Dr. K. to "show me" or apologize for his rashness.

Since Dr. Kelly just "couldn't help commenting," I suppose I shall have to excuse the seeming excited state of his mind. But, if anybody ought to feel ashamed, it is a juryman who would hang a man before all the evidence is in; and if the doctor persists in calling me a "nostrum vender," with the prefix "unscrupulous," I shall have to insist that he take the belt from that great historical character who has been wearing it because he beat the devil spinning yarns.

Dr. Conly (same page) thinks my medicin is a 66 patent" because it has not the formula printed or written thereon. In all of the doctor's prescribing, I wonder if, in a single case, he ever put the formula on the package. In reply to the doctor's contention that we ought to draw the line closely between price of medicin and price of our services, it may be said that a doctor cannot do this when he furnishes the medicin himself. Clayton, Ill.

H. J. PARKER.

More About Dr. Parker's Method. Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-I have received a number of inquiries; one is a legal one: "Has one the legal right to rebottle and name and sell a proprietary medicin?"

Yes. You can buy anything on earth and use it as you please, except for criminal purposes, and provided you do not use the same name on your bottle. The rights of a "patent" or a proprietary medicin end with the name. You can use it as it is, mix it with other medicin, color or condiment it, name the kid and call it your own. You can "rock another man's child," so long as you call it your "own."

However, I make most of my remedies, or have a chemist to manufacture them. Don't make too big a batch until you know you have a smooth-looking mixture; and you should take the precaution to make it so it will keep and not throw the cork or break the bottle. I have paid for some accidents here, and I had a big smash up by placing a large quantity on loosely constructed shelves.

Illustration as to how I make and use some remedies: The following is one of my labels:

PARKER'S BLOOD REMEDY.

For diseases of the blood, chronic rheumatism, scrofula, threatened consumption, etc.

DIRECTIONS.-Teaspoonful three times a day; gradually increase to double the quantity. DR. H. J. PARKER, CLAYTON, ILL.

Of course you can leave your name off or call it by some special name.

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You can increase or decrease or leave out any ingredient and thus use the same label in a great variety of cases. The formula is especially adapted to the strumous diathesis. If the case is syphilis, double up on potas.; if consumption, crowd the mercury to toleration and leave out potash, if you wish, etc. If a neighbor calls for a bottle of the "medicin Mrs. Smith got," and you see she needs something different, tell her she needs it a little weaker or stronger, and so the same label and same dose does. If you make up the medicin in different strengths, put a pencil mark on to designate: 1, 2 or 3, etc. Clayton, Ill. H. J. PARKER.

An Attempt to Harmonize the Schools. Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-I was interested in the letter of Dr. Vincent in your August issue, pages 312-314. He clearly pins his faith to the law, similia similibus curantur, and yet has gotten beyond some of his homeopathic confrères inasmuch as he believes in removing "any mechanical or other exciting maintaining cause" of disease as a preliminary.

Having done this and the trouble persisting, he believes the patient is ill, and not the organ thru which this illness manifests itself in the patient. He also makes the point that it is the vital force that is at fault, and if health is to be restored it is this vital force which must be brought to the normal.

These views are all correct, and with the exception of the shibboleth, similia similibus curantur, have no exceptions. This vital force is either normal or constantly tends to become so when a deviation has taken place; but this tendency is frequently inadequate, and the patient dies or, chronic disease is set up. Surely it is our office as physicians to assist this vital force (the vis medicatrix naturae of our fathers) so that life may be preserved, or the illness shortened, where life is not immediately threatened.

Without, at this time, going a step further to ask your readers to differentiate between "mine own particular fad" that the vital force is generated in the ganglia and distributed by the nerves of the sympathetic or trophic system as differentiated from the cerebro-spinal, and the view that it arises and resides in each cell, let us look at this idea. While the vital force of a given organism is normal that organism is in health, is an old truth which at this time of our history will bear restating; and it is a mere corrollary that any departure of this vital force from the normal spells ill health. Broadly speaking, this vital force can only deviate from the normal in three ways: It may be

deprest or sedated, irritated or stimulated, changed in character or altered.

Following Dr. Vincent in removing, as a preliminary, any discoverable cause of these deviations inducing ill health, let us in the present instance confine the discussion to drug therapeutics. Tradition as well as modern research have provided us already not only with general sedativs, stimulants and alterativs, but those which act upon particular viscera. To the writer it seems like trying to teach the alphabet to a learned profession to insist upon the fact that when the vital force is deprest, stimulants; when excited, sedativs; and when changed, alterativs should be exhibited to restore its equilibrium and health as a consequence; for it seems axiomatic; and yet a truth, so plain when thus baldly stated, is frequently lost sight of.

This obscuration is not confined to one school; and it has been, and is, the direct cause of their separation from, and bitterness toward, each other. How pueril such separation and bitterness are is evident as soon as the subject is studied with an absence of mental bias.

Confining the discussion to its effect upon the intestinal tract, we will take our old friend ipecacuanha, because we find the old school authority, Hare, the homeopath, Hughes, and the eclectic, Ellingwood, each declaring it to be an irritant or stimulant to the gastric mucous membrane, that in large doses it will produce moderate emesis, in the minute dose cure emesis in deprest conditions, and in doses much larger than required to produce emesis, it will be retained and cure dysentery. Notwithstanding the unanimity of these authorities, their position seems a paradox, but only seemingly so.

Ipecac is a specific stimulant to the stomach because it produces its effects when introduced into the circulation hypodermically.

If the vital force supplied the stomach is below the normal and emesis is present, the latter will be removed by minute doses of ipecac frequently repeated, which act as a "bracer" to raise the vital force to the normal. In this instance the acme of therapeutic skill is to use just enuf of the drug just long enuf to attain and maintain the object aimed at. The statement that, if the stomach is in a normal condition a larger dose of ipecac would produce emesis thru its stimulating effect, requires neither confirmation nor explanation. But ipecac being a stimulant, how explain its retention by the stomach in doses much larger than are necessary to induce emesis, and the effect of these large doses in curing dysentery, which is a violent irritation or stimulation? Why it is simply over-stimulation persisted in until paralysis is induced, as occurs when alcohol and strychnin are used in an analogous manner.

I have selected ipecac because it is a drug in the use of which all three schools agree,

as I have already shown; because the adoption of its use in the homeopathic manner, thru Ringer's influence, by the old school, is one of the former school's greatest triumphs, as all must appreciate; and because its accepted use in the minute, medium, and enormous doses is positiv proof of the absolute failure of similia similibus curantur and the minute dose, where the deviation of the vital force from the normal is due to stimulation instead of depression. For in the event of irritation being present a dose large enuf to overcome the condition must be used to get results, no matter what drug is used; just as is the case when ipecac is used to combat the state of irritation known as dysentery.

This compilation of these ideas is, as far as I am aware, original with me; but the ideas are not, for Hare says (Practical Therapeutics, sixth edition, page 235): "In obstinate vomiting small doses of ipecac will act as a most successful cure, provided that the vomiting is due not to inflammation and excitement, but to depression. The irritant effect of the ipecac stimulates the deprest stomach up to a normal tone. The proper dose of ipecac for this purpose is one-quarter grain or less."

Hughes says (Manual of Pharmacodynamics, fifth edition, page 565): "To Dr. Ringer's catalog of the forms of the trouble in which it (ipecac) is useful or useless we can mainly subscribe. The former embraces the vomiting of pregnancy, suckling, and menstruation, that of acute catarrh and cancer of the stomach, of whooping cough, of chronic alcoholism and of simple debility."

Ellingwood says (Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, page 276): “Persistent nausea and vomiting, with pale relaxt membranes will often yield most readily to minute doses (one-tenth of a drop) frequently repeated."

To me the situation seems so clear that I cannot conceive of any thoughtful confrère failing to see the far-reaching effects of a general acceptance of these views, once they are presented to him or her. If old school men would accept the statement of one of their greatest authorities (Hare) and experiment with drugs other than ipecac, they would be convinced that when a deprest vital force is present, similia similibus curantur and the minute dose is the ideal of drug therapy. If homeopaths would be content to limit the law similia similibus curantur and the minute dose to the cure of disease when deprest vital force is present, admit that it fails in the presence of other conditions, and like Dr. Vincent, consent to use other measures when the other and possibly antagonistic conditions occur, there would be nothing left to invite recrimination.

That this is a solution of the century old difficulty between the old school and the followers of Hahnemann, as well as the truth about the law, similia similibus curantur,

cannot be successfully questioned. Without doubt, if the claim of universality for this law had been as true as is that portion of it herein admitted to be true, long ere this it would have been universally accepted, just as the efficiency of the minute dose of ipecac in vomiting from depression has been. It is hoped these crude notes will tend to remove school prejudices still in the minds of some. With an absolute faith in the old adage, truth will prevail, I remain faithfully and fraternally yours, GEO. M. AYLSWORTH. Collingwood, Can.

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MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE Co., of New York.

Gentlemen:-I herewith hand you policy No. 1666024 and your letter. You will confer a favor by notifying your agent to at once get a new examiner for your cheap John" company. Some of us will have to be more hungry than we have ever been to stand between you and your losses for the paltry sum of $3. The scheme is quite clear; i. e., you cut down the examiner so your president can ape Mr. James Hyde. Fortunately there are a number of companies who are quite solvent who can yet stand for the old fee. You will therefore recognize a fact when I say if you can't stand for more of a fee, then you are not in condition to pay my policy when it becomes due.

With best wishes, knowing that all fools are not yet dead, I fully realize that you can get examiners (galore) for the fee, I remain very truly, P. HAMILTON,

Champion City, Mo.

[Medical societies in various parts of the country are continuing to pass resolutions in favor of keeping the fee for insurance examinations up to $5, and individual physicians continue to send in copies of letters sent to insurance companies declining to work for a

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