M i:t;i-:i;y AND MKDK INK. KI:< K.NT ADVANCES IN. 



701 



SUIUKRY AM) Ml Pli IM . KKCKNT 



A.DYANCE8 IN. The discoveries ,,f tin- ninth 

 decade 'f the century inaugurated an ama/.ing 

 ( -pitch in the development of tlio medical sci- 

 ence- and of the art of healing. It lias liecn like 

 n sunrise, but its sun is not yet half above its 

 hori/on; and great as the achievements have 

 Iieen in both science and practice, it is univer- 

 sally felt that they are but as dawn to high noon 

 in comparison with "the promise and potential- 

 ity " of the vital secrets now opened ana opening 

 before the medical profession. The development 

 of micro-biology under the lead of Pasteur and 

 Koch has made of pathology a new science, and 

 laid the foundation of a new art of healing. 

 Although the first enthusiastic expectations of 

 victory over that almost ubiquitous demon of 

 disease, the microbe, have been damped, and 

 even its true relations to disease are in dispute, 

 it is undisputed that careful specialists have 

 used the new knowledge to good purpose as an 

 auxiliary in the treatment of plagues like con- 

 sumption, Asiatic cholera, diphtheria, etc. ; while 

 the vantage acquired through bacteriology for 

 tracing their sources, arresting their spread, and 

 repelling their invasions needs only to be uni- 

 versally employed, as it is beginning to be in 

 some places, to make an enormous reduction in 

 the bills of mortality. The Pasteur Institute of 

 Chicago reports a total of 230 patients bitten by 

 undoubtedly rabid animals, besides 72 strongly 

 suspected, with only one case of hydrophobia ; 

 and this corresponds closely with the results in 

 Paris, New York, and other cities where the 

 treatment has been established. But the most 

 decisive results thus far attained through the 

 science of bacteriology will be noted further on 

 in the department of surgery, after mentioning 

 important medical applications recently made of 

 certain other modern sciences. Among these, 

 electricity and phonography are doing valuable 

 service in diagnosis. The illumination of the 

 internal cavities and passages of the body by the 

 electric light, together with optical apparatus 

 for their observation from without, now often 

 enables the physician or surgeon to proceed with 

 certainty and promptitude where of late he 

 would have had to act upon imperfect knowl- 

 .edge, upon doubtful conjecture, or after too long 

 awaiting of developments. Interior ausculta- 

 tion by means of a conductor analogous to the 

 common speaking tube (aided, perhaps, by the 

 macrophone) affords further aid by more accu- 

 rately detecting or distinguishing symptomatic 

 sounds of the heart, lungs, and some organs 

 which have never before given testimony to 

 their condition in this way (Dr. Benjamin W. 

 Richardson). At the same time the phonograph 

 records these audible indications, both of the 

 original and succeeding conditions of a case, for 

 the most deliberate and critical consultation 

 that may be at any time desirable (Dr. J. 

 Mount Bleyer, New York). Electricity as a 

 stimulant and as-a reducer of morbid growths 

 has advanced notably of late into scientific han- 

 dling by cautious and discriminating physicians. 

 A great number of potent antiseptics, anti- 

 pyretics, aiwsthetics, and anodynes have been 

 added to the pharmacopoeia, exciting sometimes 

 high expectations by their remarkable powers, 

 but their realized utilities have been mostly con- 



fined tn preventive medicine and surgery, where 

 .-oiiic of them arc e--ential factors in achieve- 

 ments that seem to approach more nearly to the 

 miraculous than perhaps any others in the his- 

 tory of human progress. 



The inoM substantial and unequivocal prog- 

 re in the healing art proper, and that which is 

 indeed truly wonderful and novel, is found not 

 in the administration of drugs, or even of hy- 

 gienic, regimen (though something might be 

 claimed in each of these directions), but in the 

 discovery or more extended application of meth- 

 ods for supplying or supplementing the grand 

 physiological process which is the practical basis 

 of life, and therefore of successful resistance to 

 disease. To build against the waste and de- 

 struction of disease is the great medical achieve- 

 ment of the present and, so far as can be seen, 

 of the future. Heretofore the best that had 

 been known on this line consisted in assistance 

 to the digestion, assimilation or absorption of 

 nutriment, by means of preparations of food 

 prcdigested or otherwise specially adapted, to- 

 gether with artificial or natural digestive fer- 

 ments and stimulants, and, above all, the impar- 

 tation of motion to all tissues and fluids by 

 mechanical massage, exciting tissue nutrition 

 by tissue waste and circulation. It is to be 

 placed, in passing, to the credit of the immedi- 

 ate period under survey, that the invaluable 

 agency of massage, as applied mechanically by 

 Drs. George II. Taylor and George H. Patcnen. 

 of New York, is much more widely recognized 

 than ever before ; and also that nutriments of 

 peculiar value, for patients who are not past as- 

 similating food, have been provided in forms 

 available everywhere and for all. But the vital 

 discovery of the day, not to be ranked with 

 mere improvements, however ameliorative, is 

 the importation of vital fluids in their living 

 state from the systems of the most vigorous 

 animals to supply corresponding deficiencies in 

 the sick and even moribund human subject. 

 Extracts of the nerves and of various glands 

 (chiefly the reproductive) have shown too much 

 promise and held their own too well in the prac- 

 tice of Drs. Brown-Sequard, William A. Ham- 

 mond, and others, to be passed entirely without 

 notice, although the extent of their utilities re- 

 mains in question. 



Hannatnerapy. The one really established 

 "rejuvenator" now finding its war into degen- 

 erating or failing tissues of every kind, and un- 

 der almost unlimited conditions of disease, is the 

 living blood cell, or corpuscle. Transfusion of 

 blood from one person to another had long ago 

 been resorted to with success in cases of extrem- 

 ity, but the conditions necessary for this process 

 are rarely available, and the process at best 

 would scarcely be applicable to one in a thou- 

 sand of the cases where the vital blood element 

 is now found to be the effectual desideratum. 

 This kind of cases has rapidly grown to a multi- 

 tude, and multiplies with every day's experience, 

 demonstrating a range and power of cure be- 

 yond all comparison in the previous history of 

 medicine. Space here would fail to catalogue 

 the conditions in which the live blood extract 

 (designated commercially as Ix.vinine) is already 

 applied with results incredible until witnessed. 

 The corpuscles having been preserved unchanged 



