Gross.] 186 [November. 



occasion. The whole question relative to this subject is still an open 

 one. 



A case of paralysis of the kidneys occurs in the third volume of the 

 Journal. At the time this case was published only a few examples 

 of this singular disease, described by Dr. John Mason Good, the cele- 

 brated author of the " Book of Nature," and of an erudite treatise on 

 Medicine, under the name of parvria inops, had been recorded. The 

 late Dr. George Hay ward, of Boston, was the first to call attention to 

 it in this country. An instance of it had previously been published 

 by Sir Henry Halford, physician to George IV. 



Another case of disease, deserving of brief mention, was one of 

 polyp of the face, successfully treated by tartar emetic. The cure 

 seems to have been perfect; for the woman, when last seen, three 

 years afterwards, was entirely well. The tumor, apparently seated in 

 the antrum, involved the upper jaw, and had assumed quite a threaten- 

 ing aspect when the patient was put under treatment, consisting of 

 the internal use of a weak solution of tartrate of antimony and potassa, 

 steadily persisted in for six months. 



In 1824, Dr. Short had the misfortune to lose his venerated pre- 

 ceptor and early friend. Dr. Frederick Ridgely, of Lexington, Ken- 

 tucky, and soon after this event he published a beautiful and well- 

 merited eulogy upon his life and character. A native of Maryland, 

 from which he had early emigrated to the West, Ridgely had been 

 a surgeon in the Continental army, and for more than thirty years an 

 eminent practitioner at Lexington. He was present at a number of 

 the battles of the Revolution, possessed uncommon professional skill, 

 had a well-cultivated mind and the most agreeable manners, and was 

 especially noted for his charitableness to the needy and his unrequited 

 services to the poor. Many of the most distinguished physicians of 

 Kentucky, in his day,' were his private pupils. Dr. Short was not 

 only warmly attached to him, but loved him with filial affection. 



In 1835, he published "A Brief Historical Sketch of the Origin 

 and Progress of Cholera Asphyxia," based upon information mainly 

 derived, as he himself states, from accounts of this disease in professed 

 treatises and the reports of physicians and boards of health in various 

 parts of the world. He traces the march of this frightful distemper 

 from its first appearance in the Delta of the Ganges in 1817, to its 

 irruption in June, 1833, at Lexington, whose population it completely 

 decimated, carrying off more than six hundred persons in the space 

 of a few weeks, in a city, which, up to that time, was regarded as so 

 salubrious as to induce the belief in the minds of its most enlightened 

 physicians that an outbreak of the epidemic would be a matter of 

 impossibility. 



