Vol. XXV. No. 10.] 
POPULAE SCIENCE NEWS. 
157 
foreign body was a cork that swelled and became 
tightly impacted. — Medical Becord. 
Wild Thyme as a Remedy for Whooping- 
cough. — In a Finnish monthly Dr. Neovius, of 
Joensuu, writes that he has tried the wild thyme 
(Thymus vulgaris) in a considerable number of 
cases of epidemic pertussis, one of the patients 
being a little child of his, aged one and one-half 
years. The remedy was employed in the form of 
an infusion, made of one hundred grammes of the 
herb, seven hundred of water, and fifty of syrup 
of mallow (syrupus malvce), the dose varying ac- 
cording to the child's age, from a teaspoonf ul to a 
tablespoonful, from eight to twelve times a day. 
The results, obtained from the single treatment, 
surpassed the author's highest expectations, every 
one and all of his patients making a rapid and 
complete recovery. The chief corollaries deduced 
by him from the observations may be given as 
follows : 
1. The thyme affords the best remedy for 
whooping-cough yet known. 
2. It should be administered, however, in the 
doses stated above. 
.3. When employed in sufficient quantities, the 
remedy almost invariably brings about a complete 
cure within fifteen days. 
4. All piiinful symptoms, accompanying the 
affection, subside in one or two days from the 
beginning of the treatment. They reappear, how- 
ever, if the administration is suspended before the 
end of a fortnight. 
5. While rapidly decreasing the violence and 
frequency of cough paroxysms, and cutting short 
the course of pertussis, the remedy prevents all 
usual inflammatory complications or sequels of 
the disease. 
6. It never gives rise to any disagreeable ac- 
cessory effects, except some diarrhoea which ap- 
pears regularly on the second or third day of the 
treatment, and which, after all, may depend upon 
the mallow syrup, and not upon the thyme itself. 
7. To secure the beneficial results, a perfectly 
fresh plant must be used. 
8. As to the active or curative principle of the 
herb, it is just possible that it is constituted by 
thymol. 
from the target the more he necessarily elevated 
the muzzle of the rifle, and consequently the more 
did the upper end of the butt rest upon the clavi- 
cle, until at 600 yards so entirely was this the case 
that the bone gave way under tlie concentrated 
force. — Edinburgh Med. Jour. 
Fracture of the Clavicle Due to the Re- 
coil OF A Rifle. — D. M'D., slate quarrier, aged 
thirty, strongly built, medium height, joined our 
rifle club last season, writes Dr. J. H. Simpson. 
On going to the range and firing at 200 yards, he 
felt his rifle " kick," but it did not cause actual 
pain. At 500 yards he fired several shots lying 
down resting on his elbows, and found the " kick " 
of the rifle very painful. At GOO yards, firing in a 
similar position, the first shot disabled his right 
arm altogether, and he had to leave the range. I 
found a transverse fracture of the right clavicle, 
about an eighth of an inch from the acromial end 
of the center of the bone. There was little dis- 
placement, but crepitus was easily obtained. 
Treated according to Sayre's method it healed 
well. When he recovered I asked the man to 
show me how he held his rifle while firing at 500 
and 600 yards. On his raising the '-sight" and 
lying down and taking aim, the explanation of 
the fracture was clear. Instead of holding the 
butt of the rifle well on to his shoulder, he rested 
the upper end of the butt directly on the most 
prominent part of the clavicle. One could easily 
pass one's hand between the lower two-thirds of 
the butt and the man's chest, and it was therefore 
clear that when he fired all the force of the recoil 
came upon the clavicle. I'he farther he retired 
Cholera Infantuji. — Lesage has found a germ 
which he believes is concerned in the pi-oduction 
of cholera infantum. When cultivated in gelatine 
or bouillon an alkaline product is obtained having 
a distinctive odor which it retains many months. 
It is more tenacious of life than the cholera bacil- 
lus and is more resistant to external agents. Iso- 
lated, it is capable when injected into animals of 
producing choleraic symptoms. Its connection 
with the disease seems to be proved by the follow- 
ing facts : 
1. It is found only in cases of cholera infantum, 
the numbers sometimes being very large. 
2. It produces experimental cholera. 
3. It produces a substance identical or similar 
to that produced by the common bacillus. It 
causes death in certain doses and in smaller doses 
toxic symptoms. 
4. It produces choleraic intestinal lesions. — La 
Semaine Med. 
[Medical Becord.J 
CUTANEOUS GEROMORPHISM. 
In the Nouvelle Iconographie de la SalpHriere, 
Drs. Souques and Charcot descril)e, under the 
novel title of " Geromorphisme cutano," a unique 
affection, producing changes in the skin of a 
young girl which gave to her the appearances of 
old age. 
The case first came under the observation of 
Dr. Laurand in 1881, when the patient was eleven 
years of age. At that time the changes in the 
skin, which were already remarkable, were attrib- 
uted by the parents to a severe fright. Tlie face 
was most noticeably changed, and suggested a 
facial paralysis from the obliteration of the natu- 
ral lines and lack of facial expression. The skin 
hung in loose folds, such as are sometimes seen in 
extreme age, and appeared as though it had been 
overstretched from some preceding cedema and 
had remained too flabby and loose in consequence ; 
but there was no history of (edema having t)een 
present. The skin was neither thickened nor in- 
durated, and the condition was plainly not one of 
elephantiasic enlargement. 
Preceding the changes which have been de- 
scribed an eruption had appeared upon the trunk 
and extremities. Lasting for several months, and 
coming out in crops. The nature of the disease 
was not made out at the time, but, from the de- 
scriptions given, might well have been a form of 
urticaria. Later on, after the patient had entei'ed 
the hospital, there occurred another eruption, re- 
sembling in appearance and course an erythema 
nodosum. This rapidly disappeared without ap- 
parent influence upon the chronic changes, which 
had already become well established, and h.ad 
altered the features of an intelligent and pretty 
child of eleven years into those of an old woman. 
Xo diagnosis was made and no improvement 
took place. Ten years later, at the age of twenty- 
one, the patient again entered the hospital and 
came under the observation of the authors. 
Time had only served to intensify the changed 
appearance of the whole body. There was no 
evidence of (jcdema, abnormal pigmentation, or 
eruption. The skin had simply lost its consist- 
ence and elasticity. If lifted up, folded over, 
twisted, or displaced in any way, the portion of 
skin thus treated would keep the new position in 
which it was placed, or return very slowly to its 
original form, thus resembling the skin of a ca- 
daver. The functional activity of the skin was 
not interfered wiili, and the surface was neither 
dry nor scaly. Perspiration was, however, di- 
minished. 
The hair, nails, and teeth were in normal condi- 
tion. There was no pain nor pruritus in the skin, 
and no evidence of trophic or vaso-motor disturb- 
ance. The skin liad, in a woi-d, become too large, 
falling in folds, and becoming wrinkled and fur- 
rowed, and abnormally movable upon the subcu- 
taneous planes. Tlie changes are seen to be prin- 
cipally in the dermic, lathcr than in the epidermic 
portions; but as to just what has brought about 
these changes the authois do not feel justified in 
concluding from tlieir study of the case so far 
made. 
The condition appears to le a special pathologi- 
cal one, without analogy among the recognized 
dermatoses. Precocious senility is out of the 
question, as in the latter the hair and teeth are 
implicated, the digestive functions are impaired, 
the respiratory acts are diminished, and the mus- 
cular system is weakened, which was not at all 
the ease in the instance described. 
The parents were found to be healthy, and 
nothing in the family history pointed to anything 
analogous, or aided in the solution of what cuta- 
neous geromorphism leally is. 
[American Naturalist] 
THE NATiniAL SIZE OF THE \VAIST. 
AMON(i the many uncritical propositions urged 
by would-be reformers in reoi-nt years, few are 
more so than some of those anent the interesting 
subject of women's waists. We are repeatedly 
told that a narrow waist is a deformity produced 
by artificial compression, and that the just model 
for the healthy normal woman is the robust and 
matronly Venus of Milo. Xow the anthropologist 
knows that this general assertion is not true as 
applied to the civilized white woman. It is espe- 
cially characteristic of the highest types of woman 
of the Indo-European race to have wide hips and 
a narrow waist, up to the age when adipose tissue 
flils to greater uniformity of outline the graceful 
curve which is so generally admired. It is well 
known that the fiirni of the pelvis diflcis in the 
difterent races, so that in the white race the female 
pelvis diflcrs from that of the male more than is 
the case with the African. In the latter the fe- 
male pelvic strait is as in the male, longer in 
anteroposterior than in transverse diameter; iii 
the female .Mongolian the strait is subquadrate in 
outline, while in the Indo-European the strait is 
oval, with the transverse diameter greater than 
the anteroposterior. Thus the white woman has 
wider hips than the woman of inferior races, and 
she is in so far more unlike the male than they. 
The larger pelvic cavity of the female is an adap- 
tation to the increase in the bulk of its contents 
incident to gestation ; and it follows that when 
this cavity is not so occupied, the moveable vis- 
cera fill the space. From this results the contrac- 
tion of the abdominal walls innnediately above 
the pelvis, known as the waist. It is then clear 
that the diameter of the waist is inversely as the 
diameter of the pelvis, and the differential of 
diameter is greatest as the transverse diameter of 
the pelvis exceeds the anteroposterior. 
The cause of the increased transverse diameter 
of the Indo-European pelvic strait is probably 
mechanical. It may be due to anteroposterior 
pressure on the pubic arch. This in turn may be 
