pleura renders the function of the diaphragm and the lungs possible. After the sutures have been made it is necessary to remove the air contained in the pleural cavity as it has been restored.

TUBERCULOSIS OF ALIMENTARY ORIGIN.-M. Arlong, director of the Veterinary School of Medicine at Lyons ("Progrès medical," December 28, 1901), strongly opposes the doctrine sustained at the Congress in London, by M. Koch, on the absence of danger from the use of milk and meat taken from tuberculous animals. The facts and the demonstrations that he presents are very conclusive proofs of the position he has taken. The doctrines of Koch are entirely inadmissible in a prophylactic point of view, and would be, if accepted, productive of grave danger.

RENAL TUBERCULOSIS.-M. Albaran presented to the Société de Chirurgie ("Gazette hebdomadaire," October 20, 1901) a very interesting case of renal tuberculosis, in which the diagnosis was made after a careful catherization of the ureter, which was followed by a successful operation of nephrectomy. The symptoms were exceedingly insidious; careful observation showed the presence at distant intervals of hematuria, which returned only after long intervals. Later on the presence of pus was found in the urine; there were also bacilli in the pus.

A very careful examination of the lumbar region gave absolutely nothing; there was no pain, not even tenderness, and no swelling.

It then became necessary to resort to a methodical endoscopic examination in order to arrive at a diagnosis. The endoscopic examination of the bladder showed that it had no part in producing the disease. In the catherizing of the ureters, the left was found to be closed, and in the matter retained bacilli were found in abundance. The examination of the urine taken from the other kidney showed that the quantity of urea was sufficient. The removal of the diseased kidney was then justified, since the opposite one sufficed.

When the kidney was removed, extensive disease was found in the kidney and its immediate surrounding. These lesions were not, however, of any diagnostic value from a clinical point of view; the catherization of the ureters alone gave an early and precise diagnosis.

MALFORMATIONS CAUSED BY CORSETS.-M. Hamy presented ("Le Progrès médical," December 28, 1901) a skeleton of a

woman, showing in a most distinct manner the great deformities of the bones produced by the use of corsets.

ARTHROPATHIES AND DYSENTERY.-M. Claude presented to the Société Médical des Hôpitaux ("Le Progrès médical," December, 1901) the case of a patient whom he treated and on whom he made an autopsy, who was about fifty years of age and had suffered at first from arthropathies having all the appearance of rheumatism. The pains in the joints were removed by the use of salicylate of soda. The patient was then attacked with diarrhoea, attended with intestinal hemorrhage; death soon followed, caused by peritonitis and perforation of the intestines. At the autopsy all the lesions characteristic of dysentery were found. M. Claude was not able to isolate the microbe pathogenic of this disease, because the autopsy was made too late.

M. Chanternesse remarked that in the alvine discharges in the patient of M. Claude there were no amibes. He referred to a microbe which he described with M. Widal about fourteen years ago, which was of the group bacterium coli.

M. Simonin, in an epidemic of dysentery nostras, found bacterium coli and enterococcus in great quantity, but did not find any amibes.

WOUND IN THE NECK.-M. Mathieu, a military surgeon, presented to the Société de Médicin, for M. E. Giss, of Thionville, the case of a man wounded with a knife at the sixth cervical vertebra, three centimeters from the median line ("Gazette hebdomadaire," October 13, 1901). Less than thirty-six hours after the wound a very abundant discharge of a serous fluid flowed from the wound, and at the same time phenomena resembling paresis appeared in the right arm. M. Giss diagnosed it as a wound entering the spinal column with discharge of cephalo-rachidian fluid, and found a part of the blade of the knife in the wound, at a depth of about four centimetres. This piece of knife-blade was then extracted without pain; it measured 7 cent. 05 in length. At certain times the quantity of cephalo-rachidian liquid discharged was estimated at three or four litres in twenty-four hours. This discharge ended by ceasing spontaneously at the end of about five weeks. M. Giss has estimated that at least thirty litres of cephalo-rachidian liquid was discharged in that time. Convalescence was long; the cure remains, two years having expired.

SMALL BULLET IN THE SPINE.-M. Loison made a report to the Société de Chirurgie in October last of a case in which a bullet of small calibre entered the spine. On the third of June last a soldier was brought to the hospital of Val-de-Grâce who had received in his back a ball of a carbine Flobert. There was but one orifice by which it could enter; the radioscopic examination gave no satisfactory result; the radiographic test showed that the projectile was located in the sacral region at a depth of about two centimeters. Judging from the situation of the point of entrance we might suppose that the ball had entered the spinal canal between the second and the third lumbar vertebra, and had fallen from there, by its own weight, to the bottom of the rachidian cul-desac; experiments on the cadaver have proved that this course was entirely practicable.

ball.

Trephining done by M. Meignon did not enable him to find the This disappointment was explained by a new application of radiography, which showed that the ball was movable.

M. Loison then followed the method of M. Contremoulin, by a new operation on the 23d of September. The ball was finally removed. The result has not so far been stated; appearances were in favor of its success.

SYPHILIS AND GONORRHEA.-"Highly fatal contagious diseases," "American Medicine" forcibly remarks, "are ignored in the health reports and by the people. A contemporary estimates that 100,000 new cases of infection occur annually in one American city. So long ago as 1874 a competent statistician estimated that there were nearly two millions of such diseased persons in England, and Mulhall thinks that the number of soldiers in Europe ill with the disease averages 19 per cent. of the forces. Czerny thinks 50 per cent. of all sterility is due to this cause, and the reports of twenty-four specialists have shown that 41 per cent. of all pelvic inflammation is traceable to it. Is the policy of ignoring a wise one? We are straining every nerve to reduce the mortality of diseases not one-tenth so fatal. We are deporting consumptive immigrants and are unconcerned about the importation of diseases infinitely more loathsome and lethal. And the consumptive is not a sinner; is this the reason we are so lenient toward him? We are compelling notification of cases of small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc., and smile carelessly at the ravages of diseases that maim and kill far more than all these put together. When will civilization learn to grapple with its real evils?"

MILK DRINKING AND TUBERCULOSIS.-Biedert ("Berliner klinische Wochenschrift," November 25, 1901; "American Medicine," January 11, 1901), after calling attention to the fact that in 1883 he published his belief that tuberculosis is seldom if ever transmitted from cows to human beings by milk-drinking, goes on to cite the conditions as existing in the Bavarian Highlands, and to some extent throughout Bavaria, as proof of his theory. In the former region almost the entire population subsist for the most part upon milk and cheese. Tuberculosis is known to exist among the cattle, but the disease is a comparative rarity among the human population, in spite of the consumption of large quantities of undoubtedly tuberculous milk. Biedert calls upon the German Government to collect further statistics among the dairy population of the Alpine provinces to aid in the settlement of the present Koch controversy.

IN THE TREATMENT OF NASAL CATARRII, Dr. Eugene C. Underwood, surgeon B. & O. S. W. R. R., Louisville, Ky. ("St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal," July, 1901), says that "in a case attended with no constitutional disease nothing is necessary beyond having the patient spray the nasal mucous surface with a solution composed of equal parts of water and hydrozone every three hours. If the case has persisted some time and the patient. has an amount of mucous discharge, I have him take twenty drops of balsam of copaiba four times daily. The hydrozone is not only a disinfectant and germicide, but its curative action on the inflamed mucous membranes is speedy and is not equaled by any other drug I have ever used. When the patient is anemic I have him take iron, and any other drug is used when it is called for by any associated discase or morbid condition, but the hydrozone spray is used in all cases.

"In the atrophic variety we shall have to use the same local application. The hydrozone at once overcomes the offensive odor and takes off the purulent crusts. These cases must be treated with cod liver oil, iron and such other remedies as will bring up the general health.”

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SANITARIAN, FEBRUARY, 1902.

All correspondence and exchanges, and all publications for review, should be addressed to the editor, Dr. A. N. Bell, 337 Clinton St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE.

Attention is invited to the bill recently introduced into Congress for the establishment of "The United States Health Service," printed in full on other pages of this number. It very completely comprehends the conditions evolved by the work of the Marine Hospital Service, for which THE SANITARIAN has contended for several years. It deserves the support of the medical profession and all sanitarians who would have a thoroughly efficient health service, wholly free from the complications and embarrassments contemplated and undertaken by previous propositions. It has some opponents, who continue to harp upon the original purpose of the Marine Hospital Service, for the mere care of sick mariners, a hundred years ago, to which duty they would now relegate and restrict it, with a singular purblindness to the efficiency with which it has expanded during recent years, contemporaneously with the national needs for the prevention of epidemic diseases. This was particularly manifest during the Spanish-American War by the deference shown it, as the sanitary service, by both the military and naval forces; and markedly since by Congressional action authorizing the equipment of a national laboratory and the estab lishment of the yellow fever institute in connection therewith, under its direction. Indeed, the Marine Hospital Service for sev eral years has but lacked the name with which the bill referred to now dignifies it. The bill, as a whole, utilizes the qualifications of an exceptionally competent personnel, trained on a strictly military basis, with an already established esprit de corps in sanitary service. The superior competency of this corps to grasp and administer the new duties devolved upon it by the bill, as compared with the heterogeneous personnel, wedded to respective State interests, as proposed by the Spooner bill, can hardly be called in question by any sanitarian who would unify the service for strictly impartial administration.