Rarefying Osteitis, etc. 583 



presence of the hypothetical microbe. Millet is not the sole nor 

 common canse of osteoporosis, bnt there is reason to suspect 

 that it is at times an important accessor}' canse. 



Of all prejudicial conditions none is to be .so dreaded as timvhole- 

 some stables. Of 200 cases reported by Berus, in Brooklyn, al- 

 most all were in cellar .stables or those with floors laid on the soil. 

 Meyer finds that " most all cases can be traced to an unwholesome 

 atmosphere, or gases arising from vaults, .sewers, cellars, filthy 

 streams, or from a hollow space under the floor. " Harbaugh 

 says every case was stabled in damp, ill-drained, unventilated and 

 badly liglited buildings. The worst outbreak was in a basement 

 with a damp wall, on one side, and none suffered except those 

 that stood next to this wall. The horses standing on the opposite 

 side, which was on a level with the ground outside, escaped. 

 Removal from a cellar stable to tlie floor above, put a sudden stop 

 to the appearance of tiew cases. James, of St. Louis, found 20 

 successive cases in a stable on a dirt floor, and Jasme, of Charles- 

 town, finds nearly all his many cases on earth floors in malarial 

 regions. 



Malaria has been blamed, especially by southern observers, ac- 

 customed to see the disease on the warm alluvial .seaboard and 

 river bottoms That this environment predisposes to the disease, 

 by undermining the health, is doubtless the case, but in spite of 

 occasional remissions in the symptoms, malarial germs cannot be 

 set down as the constant cause. One of the worst cases I ever 

 saw, with every bone in the body soft, spongy and light, developed 

 at Inglis Green laundry, Kdinburgh, where malaria is absolutely 

 unknown, but where the brook received large quantities of 

 chlorine. 



Cold is an undoubted factor, though the disease is most prevalent 

 in our warm southern states. Many veterinarians have noticed its 

 coincidence with rheumatism, in which cold is so often the dom- 

 inating accessory cause. Some have even suspected that it is only 

 a modified type of the rheumatic condition. Hinebaucli found 

 his cases of millet disease in cold basement barns, or with leaking 

 roofs, so that the floor and bedding were con.stantly wet. He 

 found that cold always aggravated the disease, and bad air even 

 more so, while salicylates seemed to have a marked curative in- 

 fluence. 



