Vol. XXIV. No. 4.] 
POPULAE SCIENCE NEWS. 
63 
apply to each Temple the thin yellow Rind of a 
Lemon, newly pared ofl". Or, keep your Feet in 
warm Water a Qiiarter of an Hour before you go to 
Bed, foi* two or three Weeks; — tried. Or, wear 
tender Hemlock-leaves under the Feet, changing 
them daily. Or, order a Tea-kettle of cold Water 
to be poured on your Head every Morning in a 
slender Stream. 
TJie Heart-burning. — Drink a Pint of cold Water. 
Or, cliew five or six Pepper-corns a little; then 
swallow them. Or, chew P'ennel or Parsley, and 
swallow your Spittle. Or, a Teaspoonful of Crab's 
Eyes, ground to an impalpable Powder. 
Hypochondriac and Hysteric Disorders. — Use 
cold Bathing. Or, take an Ounce of Qiiick-silver 
every Morning. 
Iliac Passion. — Hold a live Puppy constantly on 
the Belly. Or, Ounce by Ounce, a Pound or a 
Pound and a half of Qj^iick-silver. 
The Itch. — Steep a shirt an Hour in a Qiiart of 
Water, mix'd with half an Ounce of powder"d 
Brimstone. Dry it slowly and wear it five or six 
days. 
Old Age. — Take Tar-water Morning and Even- 
ing:— tried. Or, be Electrified daily. 
The Plague.— Cold Water alone, drank daily, has 
cured it. Or, a Draught of Brine as soon as seized ; 
sweat in Bed; take no other Drink for some Hours. 
Pleurisy— Take half a Dram of Soot. Or, of 
Decoction of Nettles. Or, a Glass of Tar-water. 
To restore the Strength after a Rheumatism — 
^[ake a strong Broth of Cow-heels and wash the 
I'arts with it warm twice a Day. 
Ring-worms. — Apply rotten Apples. Or, apply 
Garlic pounded. Or, ru'->.^liem with Oil of Paper. 
Scurvy. — Live on Tun.ips for a Month. Or, 
lake Tarwater Morning and Evening for three 
Months. Or, a Decoction of great Water-dock. 
Or, u.se as a common Drink, Water made very 
sweet with Treacle. 
A Broken Shin. — Bind a dry Oak-leaf upon it. 
To cure the Tooth-ach. — Be Electrified through 
the Teeth. Wash the Mouth withcold Water every 
Morning, and rinse them after every Meal. Rub 
the Teeth often with Tobacco-ashes. Or, apply to 
the aching Tooth an artificial Magnet. Or, rub the 
Cheek a Qiiarter of an Hour. Or, put a Clove of 
Garlic into the Ear. Or, keep the Feet in warm 
Water, and rub them well with Bran, just before 
Bed-time; — tried. Note: There is no such thing 
as Worms in the Teeth. Children's using Coral is 
always useless, often hurtful. The constant use of 
Tooth-picks is a bad Practice. Constant Smoaking 
of Tobacco destroys many good Sets of Teeth. 
To prevent the Bite of a Viper.— Rub the Hands 
with the Juice of Radishes. 
Worms. — Take Filings of Tin and red Ccnl. of 
each an equal C^iantity. Pound them togetli,.r in a 
very fine Powder, of which one Dram made into a 
Bolus with Conserve of the Tops of Sea-weed, it 
to be taken twice a Day. 
EXIT JOHN WESLEY, 
amidst the plaudits of an appreciative nineteenth 
century audience, who regard the speaker as a sort 
of Mark Twain or a Bill Nye. 
And yet, incredulous reader, John Wesley was a 
man much reverenced in 1747 and thereabouts for 
the cleverness of compiling a book of simple cures 
, for common sicknesses. It is but just in me to tell 
you that many of the remedies suggested were trulv 
beneficial,- simple herbs entering largely into their 
composition, and I have only quoted those cures 
that seemed utterly absurd according to my 1SS9 
ideas. 
So we will close the well-thumbed volume once 
more, and, laying it away with some other relics, 
we will lift up our hearts in deveut gratitude that we 
have progressed a little in the treatment of diseases. 
It may be all an illusion, but it is a happy one, and 
we will believe in it. 
] Specially Compiled for Popular Science Xeios.] 
MONTHLY SUMMARY OF MEDICAL 
PROGRESS. 
BY C. E. WASHBURNE, M. D. 
Oper.\tion Under Hypnotism. — Dr. Edward L. 
Wood, resident surgeon, St. Barnabas Hospital, 
Minneapolis, Minn., relates {Medical liecord) a very 
interesting case of the successful performance of a 
severe, protracted, and painful operation, in which 
hypnotism was the sole means used to effect anaes- 
thesia. The operator was Dr. Hugo Toll, of Min 
neapolis. The patient, a young Scandinavian, aged 
seventeen, was suffering from osteo-myelitis of the 
upper third of the humerus. There were three 
fistular openings : one into the axilla, one above th^ 
insertion of the deltoid, and a third above and back 
of the second. The adjacent soft parts were consid 
erably swollen and quite painful, and motion at the 
shoulder and elbow joints was considerably im 
paired. In order to bring the patient under better 
hypnotic control, he was hypnotized six times 
during the three days prior to the operation. On 
the morning of the operation, he was hvpnotized in 
bed and led to the operating table. The fistuht 
were first explored, scraped out, and washed out; 
then the bone was laid bare by an incision four 
inches long, and an opening three inches in length 
by a quarter of an inch in width was made, with a 
chisel, to the medullary canal. The bone-chiseling 
was rendered the more difficult by the presence of 
osteo-sclerosis. Into the two fistula' which did not 
connect with the incision, drainage-tubes were 
inserted, and the recent wound was packed with 
iodoform gauze. The operation, which, from the 
first, was performed under thorough antiseptic pre- 
cautions, was greatly facilitated by the patient hiin- 
self, who, although in a thoroughly cataleptic con- 
dition, was nevertheless able to turn from side to 
side, sit up, or otherwise to shift his position, in 
accordance with the directions given him by the 
operator. At 9 50 A. .M. he was led back to his bed, 
and told that at iz o'clock he might have something 
to eat. The attendants were cautioned not to di.s- 
turb him meanwhile. He was perfectly quiet till 
the time mentioned, but, on the arrival of that hour 
— sharp, he sat up in bed, and, stretching his well 
arm, said: "Dr. Toll said I could have something 
to eat at 12 o'clock." 
"Amputation above the elbow," says the writer, 
(a witness and assistant), "would certainly not 
have been more painful than this operation ; yet the 
hypnotic condition was preserved through it all, 
with a loss to the operator of not more than a 
minute and a half, all told. I have seen several 
minor .operations done with the patient in a cata- 
leptic condition, but, to me, this case was a revela- 
tion, as I think it will be to many of my fellow 
practitioners, throwing, as it does, a flood of light 
upon what it is possible to do with a favorable 
subject." 
The Hour at Which Death is Most Apt to 
Occur. — Dr. John Francis Burns, senior assistant. 
Charity Hospital House Staff, New York City, in 
an interesting article on this subject, (A'ew York 
Medical Journal), states that the opinion prevalent 
among physicians, as also among laymen, that 
death occurs oftener during the small hours of the 
morning than at other periods of the twenty-four 
hours, — a doctrine endorsed by medical books and 
medical teachers, — is not borne out by the records 
either of the Charity Hospital or of the New York 
Board of Health. For the past ten years, of the 
total number of deaths from all causes in the large 
hospital referred to, — one of the largest on this 
continent, — there have been sixty-six more deaths 
during the period from 2 to 6 P. M. than during the 
corresponding hours of the early morning; further- 
more, there have been twenty-seven more during 
the day (6 A. M. to 6 P. M.) than during the night. 
Such, in brief, is the showing from more than four 
thousand hospital cases, despite the fact that in a 
hospital there are other reasons than alleged low- 
vitality which, seemingly, would tend to increase 
the liability to death at night,— as, for instance, the 
vitiation of the atmosphere of the wards during the 
night hours, when all the patients are, of necessity, 
in their respective wards, and when proper ventila- 
tion is most apt to be neglected. Of the deaths 
from acute contagious diseases, for two years, 
reported to the New York Board of Health, — 
numbering 10,609, — O"^ hundred and sixty-nine 
more occurred during the day than at night, and the 
hour at which the most deaths were reported to 
have taken place .was 1 1 A. M. From the fifteen 
thousand cases tabulated by Dr. Burns, taken both 
from hospital and private practice,— the tables 
showing the deaths for each hour of the twenty- 
four,— it would appear that death occurs without 
any special predilection for any particular hour. 
The conclusions drawn by Dr. Burns are : i. That 
the belitf that more deaths take place during the 
early morning hours is erroneous. 2. If stimulants 
are to be pushed at those hours, the practice must 
be justified on some other ground than the preva- 
lent but unwarranted opinion. 3. That human 
vitality in disease is not regulated by the same 
influences or subject to the same laws that obtain in 
health, the normal relation observable in health 
between the mental and physical states being 
altered. 
Dr. J. L. Napier, of Blenheim, S. C, reports 
( Transaclions of the South Carolina Medical Associa- 
tion for ISSO) several cases of epilepsy and other 
convulsive disorders, which were treated by him 
with marked benefit by the use of Solanum Caro- 
li'iense, or "horse-nettle." During the summer of 
1SS7 he had read of this agent, and had heard of its 
use among the negroes for fits and epilepsy. Deter- 
mining to test its efficacy, he employed it in the 
case of a woman who had had epilepsy most of her 
life, and who, during her menstrual periods, was 
generally in an epileptic condition. The various 
remedies for epilepsy were first tried, without relief. 
Horse-nettle, steeped in whiskey, was then given 
her — a tablespoonful three times a day. This treat- 
ment was continued for months. Three days after 
the use of the remedy was begun, she was threat- 
ened with a seizure, but did not have it, nor has she 
since had a single convulsion. He had also used it 
in four other cases with marked benefit. In two 
cases there had been no return of the convulsions. 
Another case was that of a dwarfed, deformed child, 
a victim to epilepsy all its life. The bad effects of 
the disease had been heightened by a course of 
typhoid fever, from which the child had never 
entirely recovered. Subsequent to the fever, the 
epileptic attacks were more severe and recurred 
oftener — " repeatedly during the twenty-four hours." 
The bromides had been used, but they had had no 
effect at all. This most unpromising case was put 
upon the tincture of horse-nettle, which entirely 
stopped the convulsions. In the case of a pregnant 
woman with convulsions due to albuminuria, he 
had used the remedy with marked benefit, as also in 
the case of a woman suft'ering from hysterical 
seizures during her catamenia. 
