188 
POPULAE SCIEl^CE NEWS. 
[December, 1891. 
flTedieiRe and phapmaog. 
tSpecially Compiled for Populak Science News.] 
MONTHLY SUMMARY OF MEDICAL 
PROGRESS. 
by maurice d. clarke, m. d. 
Hypnotic Effect of Warm Bandages. — 
Warm baths, as is well known, produce a calming 
effect, and tend to bring on sleep, and Alldorfer 
has attempted to apply such a method in patients 
where a sedative effect is desired and yet where a 
bath is inapplicable {Jour, de Med. de Paris, March 
9, 1890). His method consists in wrapping the 
lumbar region and belly with liuen cloths soaked 
in warm water, and then covering them with 
oiled silk or rubber cloth, so as to prevent evapo- 
ration, while the whole is kept in place and loss 
of heat prevented by a flannel cloth. 
This procedure is of ready performance, and 
the author says that by this simple means he has 
obtained the most astonishing results in the treat- 
ment of insomnia. 
Ptojiaines and Bacteria in Canned Meats. 
— Dr. Cassedebat (Mbniteur de L' Hygiene Pub- 
Uque) has examined four cans of meat to which 
his attention was drawn by an outward bulging 
of the cover, indicating more or less fermentation 
since sealing. He removed portions of the con- 
tents of each tin under strict aseptic precautions 
and found numerous and various kinds of bac- 
teria. Of the twenty-six varieties of bacteria 
found eleven only gave any result when inoculated 
on animals. 
The liquid itself, if inoculated, always caused 
poisonous symptoms ; and just such symptoms as 
have been observed at times after the use of 
canned meats. 
This fermentation, according to Dr. Cassedebat, 
can be easily avoided by using a little care in pre- 
paring the meat. Still greater care, however, 
should be used to choose perfectly healthy cattle 
for killing, and to preserve only fresh meat. If 
meat, when canned, is infected with bacteria or 
spores which have not yet acted upon it, no harm 
will result, for the heat to which the tins are sub- 
jected is high enough to render bacteria harmless. 
If, however, ptomaines are formed, the high tem- 
perature is of no avail, and the meat remains poi- 
sonous. Cassedebat is of the opinion that 
carelessness and not infected meat is the cause of 
the trouble in most cases. 
Dermatol.^ The list of new synthetical reme- 
dies has recently been again increased by an iodo- 
form substitute which, if it do all that is claimed 
for it, will prove a very valuable addition to our 
list of vulneraries. Dermatol is chemically a sub- 
gallate of bismuth, insoluble in water, alcohol, 
and ether. It forms a yellow powder similar in 
appearance to iodoform, but in contrast to this, 
perfectly odorless. Further, it is said to be sta- 
ble and unaffected by exposure to light or air; it 
can even be sterilized by steam either as substance 
or in tlie form of gauze, without decomposition. 
In surgery dermatol is to prove valuable as an an- 
tiseptic, astringent, and as an eminently drying 
agent. By virtue of this last property it has 
proved an excellent vulnerary, especially where 
the wounds are characterized by profuse secre- 
tion — in eczema, burns, ulcers; for the same rea- 
son it is successfully applied in the treatment of 
diseases of the eye and ear. This subgallate of 
bismuth has been already tried in the clinic of 
Professor Fritsch by Dr. Glaeser, according to 
whom the remedy has a specially beneficial effect 
upon wounds, whether recent or old (laparoto- 
mies and other operations) . It diminishes symp- 
toms of irritation, lessens secretion, furthers the 
formation of granulations, and thereby leads to a 
strikingly rapid healing-over of the wound. In 
hundreds of cases it proved itself perfectly non- 
poisonous. In its application it has to be remem- 
bered that being insoluble it cannot be substituted 
for soluble and penetrating antiseptics. The 
author believes that it has so many advantages 
over other similar remedies "that it does not 
seem too bold to prophesy for it a great future." 
— Provincial Med. Jour. 
Foreign Bodies in the Eye. — Dr. David Web- 
ster lays down the following rules : 
1. Always search carefully for foreign bodies 
on the cornea and on the conjunctiva, in cases of 
inflammation of one eye coming on suddenly and 
without apparent cause. 
2. Remove them, when found, with as little 
injury as possible to the surrounding parts. 
3. When a foreign body is lodged within the 
eyeball, especially in the ciliary region, the pa- 
tient is in danger of losing the fellow-eye by sym- 
pathetic inflammation, whether the foreign body 
is removed or not. The removal of the foreign 
body greatly lessens such danger. 
4. If the foreign body has already destroj^ed 
the sight, the eye should be enucleated without 
delay. 
5. If sympathetic inflammation sets in, the 
sooner the eyeball containing the foreign body is 
enucleated (unless it has serviceable vision. — H.) 
the better ^^■ill be the patient's chances of retain- 
ing useful sight. 
6. If the fellow-ej'e is attacked with symptoms 
of severe sympathetic irritation, the eye containing 
the foreign body should be enucleated without 
waiting for actual sympathetic inflammation. 
7. The magnet is serviceable in cases where 
the foreign body is of attractable material and can 
be seen, and is not firmly imbedded in the eye-wall, 
or encapsuled with organized lymph. 
8. Where the foreign body is small, and its 
lodging-place is uncertain, the introduction of a 
magnet into the eyeball is generally to be depre- 
cated. 
9. After the foreign body has been extracted 
from the interior of the eye, the patient should be 
warned that sympathetic inflamm.ation maj' occur, 
and, in such a case, should not be neglected. — 
Medical Becord. 
Intubation versus Tracheotomy.— Dr. W. 
H. Whytc {North American Practitioner) does not 
believe that the hope lias been fulfilled that intu- 
bation would, on account of its simplicity, take 
the place of the knife and add materially to the 
resources of the profession. The operation re- 
quires a degree of manual dexterity which the 
average physician, with his few opportunities, is 
not able to acquire. The objection .is that the pa- 
tient is subjected to a certain amount of exhaus- 
tion which can be ill borne in one suffering from 
diphtheria, lie thinks one cause of death from 
intubation has not been given sufficient promi- 
nence — viz, pneumonia, resulting from the en- 
trance of liquids at the air passages. The great 
advantage possessed by tracheotomy over intuba- 
tion is that the surgeon or nurse can easily remove 
and replace the tube without pain or discomfort 
to the patient. He thinks country practitioners 
do not perform tracheotomy early or often 
enough; it is an operation which any country 
practitioner with a cool head and some surgical 
experience can perform. 
Two Cases of Dislocation op the Ulnar 
Nerve. — These two cases were treated at St. 
Thomas's Hospital, London. The first was a 
woman aged twenty-eight, and the accident was 
caused by a fall on the elbow. There was pain in 
the inside of the elbow extending to the fingers 
whenever she flexed her arm, caused by the ulnar 
nerve slipping over the internal condyle when the 
elbow was near a right angle. There was no local 
tenderness, loss of power or sensation, or wasting 
of the muscles. The nerve was exposed by a 
semilunar incision and the nerve sheath stitched 
to the inner margin of the triceps tendon, and he 
finally attached the edge of the muscle to the 
periosteum covering the internal condyle, thus 
embedding the nerve. The arm was then fixed in 
the extended position. The day after there was 
numbness, and, later, absence of sensation in the 
fifth finger. The wound healed by first intention, 
and sensation gradually returned. On discharge 
from hospital there was no pain on flexion, and 
the function of the nerve was completely re- 
stored. The second case was a man aged thirty, a 
book-keeper, with much writing to do, and for 
the last two years he found his arm getting 
weaker, preventing him from holding a pen for 
any length of time. He noticed that something 
slipped forwards on the inner side of the elbow. 
There was no history of injury. The patient was 
operated on by Sir Wm. MacCormac. The nerve 
was exposed and fixed by two kangaroo tendon 
loops passed thi'ough the inner margin of the tri- 
ceps tendon and somewhat loosely round the 
nerve. The arm was extended. Tliere was no 
loss of sensation, and on discharge from hospital 
the nerve was quite fixed in its normal position, 
and the patient could write fairly well. — Lancet 
Hospital Mirror. 
The Removal of Gall-stones by Ether So- 
lution. — Dr. J. W. Walker had removed several 
gall-stones from the same patient by cholecysto- 
tomy when, a fistula still remaining, severe ab- 
dominal pain came on, caused by another stone 
trying to pass along the cystic duct ; there was no 
jaundice. The stone could be felt by a probe 
passed through the fistula into the duct, and ap- 
peared to be about the size of a split pea. He 
endeavored to extract it with forceps, but failed 
to do so. He then washed out the gall-bladder 
with a warm borax solution, and having drawn 
one drachm of a mixture of equal parts of ether 
and glycerine into a small glass tube attached to a 
syringe, passed the tube directly on to the stone, 
which he could distinctly feel, and injected on to 
it the ether glycerine, drop by drop. This gave 
rise to a burning sensation for some time, and the 
patient felt very exhausted during the remainder 
of the day, but the pain gradually lessened, and 
on the second day later he carefully examined the 
gall-bladder and duct with a probe, but could not 
feel any stone, and the patient has been absolutely 
free from pain since. 
He believes that the stone which gave rise to 
this last attack must have passed on towards the 
gall-bladder at some period ulterior to the opera- 
tion, as he very carefully washed out that viscus 
with boric solution at the time and could not feel 
anything left behind. The author questions 
whether the plan of dissolving stones in situ has 
been before attempted by injecting ether ou to 
them, as in this case; if the wound had closed, it 
could not easily have been undertaken. He in- 
jected the ether very slowly, and there was suffi- 
cient space by the side of the glass tube for any 
vapor to escape; no bad symptoms followed the 
injection. — Lancet. 
