MEDICINE, ADVANCES IN. 



381 



pared with the starches, sugars, and fats, and not 

 at all with the nitrogen-containing foods, such as 

 meat. 



A series of experiments were conducted on 3 

 young healthy men, 2 of whom had always been 

 abstainers. The alcohol was taken in small 

 quantities 2J ounces per day in 6 doses equiva- 

 lent to 6 ounces of whisky or a bottle of claret. 



It is expressly stated by the authors that their 

 conclusions have no bearing whatever on the 

 effects of long-continued drinking, nor of the 

 effect of alcohol drinking on the ability to do 

 hard muscular work. 



They found that over 98 per cent, of the in- 

 gested alcohol was oxidized (which means util- 

 ized) in the body. Compared with the ordinary 

 food substances as heat-producers, the following 

 figures were obtained: 



FUEL VALUES 



The proportions of food and the several kinds 

 of nutrients digested and made available for use 

 in the body were practically the same in the ex- 

 periments with and those without alcohol in the 

 greater with the alcohol diet than with the ordi- 

 nary diet, but the difference was extremely small. 



The potential energy of the alcohol was trans- 

 formed into kinetic energy in the body as com- 

 pletely as that of the ordinary nutrients. The 

 efficiency of alcohol in the protection of body fat 

 from consumption was very evident. Its effi- 

 ciency in protecting body protein was evident, 

 but it was not fully equal in this respect to the 

 isodynamic amounts of the ordinary nutrients. 

 The results, however, were not the same with 

 the different subjects. An increased excretion of 

 nitrogen at first occurred in the men unaccus- 

 tomed to the use of alcohol ; this, however, disap- 

 peared in the course of five or six days. 



" That a part of the potential energy of the 

 alcohol was transformed into the kinetic energy 

 of muscular work these experiments do not prove, 

 though they make it highly probable. We re- 

 peat," say the authors in closing. " that there is 

 a very essential difference between the transfor- 

 mation of the potential energy of alcohol into the 

 kinetic energy of heat, or of either internal or ex- 

 ternal muscular work, and the usefulness or 

 harmfulness of alcohol as a part of ordinary diet. 

 Regarding this latter question, the experiments 

 bring no more evidence than they do regarding 

 the influence of alcohol upon the nervous system, 

 or its general effect upon the health and welfare." 



Surgery of the Heart. Dr. H. M. Sherman, 

 of San Francisco, has collected the records of 34 

 cases of surgical operations on the heart. Of 

 these, 5 died on the operating-table from hemor- 



AUOLF LORENZ. 



rhage; 10 died soon after leaving the table; 6 

 died later from blood-poisoning; and 13 recov- 

 ered. The ventricles, owing to their much thicker 

 walls, may be more successfully sutured than the 

 auricles. Sir Lander Brunton, as the result of 

 experimental work on heart-wounds, suggests 

 that it may be possible to treat mitral stenosis 

 (a form of heart-disease caused by the gradual 

 closing of the mitral valve) by surgical means. 



Surgery, Bloodless. Dr. Adolf Lorenz was 

 born in a small town in northern Austria forty- 

 nine years ago. His father was a watchmaker, 

 and was poor. The son entered the University 

 of Vienna in 1875; 

 soon won an en- 

 dowed scholarship, 

 and with the aid of 

 this and what he 

 could make by tu- 

 toring managed to 

 complete the course, 

 and obtained his de- 

 gree in medicine in 

 1880. He soon be- 

 came clinical assist- 

 ant to Dr. Albert, 

 Professor of Surgery. 

 His ambition was to 

 become a general 

 surgeon, but a spe- 

 cial sensitiveness of 

 his skin to the anti- 

 septics that were 

 then coming into use 

 in surgergy car- 

 bolic acid and bi- 



chlorid of mercury so seriously hampered him 

 that he was obliged to stop his clinical work. 

 Prof. Albert advised him to devote himself to 

 orthopedic surgery, and to this he reluctantly 

 turned. He is 6 feet 2 inches in height, and mus- 

 cular in proportion. 



Prof. Hoffa, a surgeon of Wiirzburg (since re- 

 moved to Berlin) devised, about 1890, an operation 

 for the cure of congenital hip dislocations, which 

 now goes by his name. Dr. Lorenz, after oper- 

 ating according to Hoffa's method several times, 

 modified and improved it by considerably redu- 

 cing the cutting, and the operation became known 

 as the Hoffa-Lorenz method. Dr. Lorenz per- 

 formed this operation several hundred times in 

 Vienna, and out of the experience thus gained 

 came his so-called bloodless method. This he per- 

 formed for the first time in 1892, on a little 

 Viennese girl. It proved successful, and he used 

 it in other cases, improving the technique on each 

 occasion. The operation was first called to the 

 attention of the profession at the twenty-fifth 

 Congress of the German Association of Surgeons 

 at Berlin in May, 1896. It was then generally 

 conceded that a new and valuable principle of 

 treatment had been discovered. Paci, an Italian 

 surgeon, declares that he discovered and an- 

 nounced the same operation as early as 1888. 

 But there is considerable difference between the 

 two methods, although both are bloodless. The 

 Paci operation is apparently much less thorough, 

 and consequently less effective. The Lorenz oper- 

 ation was first performed in the United States 

 about six years ago by Dr. George R. Elliott, a 

 pupil of PVof. Lorenz, on a girl of five yeur>. 

 who presented a typical congenital dislocation of 

 the right hip. Other American surgeons .have 

 since performed the operation in several cases, 

 with varying success; and, in fact, it was tried 

 unsuccessfully in the case of the Armour child 

 before Dr. Lorenz was sent for. She had a double 



