96 



POPULAR SCIEl^CE I^EWS. 



[June, 1888. 



gested by the housewife. " No, indeed I " said I, 

 " not this time: I am nearly home. But if you have 

 any buttermilk, I will take a drink of that to stay 

 my stomach." A good, kind-hearted woman, she 

 soon brought up a pitcher of buttermilk from the 

 cool spring-house, while I examined my patients 

 and prescribed for them. Perhaps a pint was 

 drank daring the stay of nearly an hour. For 

 months indigestion had held his unfriendly grasp 

 on my stomach. From that notable day forward 

 his reign was broken ; my stomach was healed, and 

 I could ride all day, if necessary, without feeling 

 so woebegone from the lack of food as before the 

 drinking of the buttermilk. 



There are people, however, who cannot use but- 

 termilk at all, and some who cannot use milk of 

 any kind, nor butter; but to others it proves both 

 food and medicine. 



THE PROGNOSIS OF VARIOUS DISEASES. 



Dr. Pye-Smitii sums up the conclusions arrived 

 at in his paper in the following pi'ognostio apho- 

 risms : — 



Epidemic diseases are most fatal when first intro- 

 duced; acute diseases, following upon chronic, are 

 the most dangerous ; a degree of pyaemia which is 

 of slight importance in a child, is grave in an adult, 

 and imminently perilous in an old man. 



Typhus fever is most dangerous to persous who 

 have passed their sixtieth or fiftieth year, less so 

 to infants and those between thirty and fifty-five, 

 and least dangerous to children about five and to 

 young adults. 



Smallpox in these particulars closely resembles 

 typhus. Whooping-cough is dangerous during in- 

 fancy, and benign after five years of age. Scarlet- 

 fever seldom takes on a malignant form when it 

 attacks adults. Acute lobar pneumonia has usu- 

 ally a favorable issue in youth, and is usually fatal 

 in advanced years. In young adults pneumonia is 

 rarely fatal unless the patient has disease of the 

 kidneys or of the heart, or is of intemperate habits. 

 Pneumonia is also a dangerous complication of 

 fevers or acute rheumatism. Acute lobar pneu- 

 monia, when not fatal, leaves the lung uninjured 

 after recovery, and the patient in good health. It 

 is seldom or never followed by phthisis, even when 

 it attacks the apex. Primary acute pleurisy is not 

 fatal unless it is accompanied by pericarditis. 

 Pleurisy, if under treatment it ends in death, is 

 secondary to tubercle or to cancer, or to disease of 

 the kidneys. CEdema of the larynx is very seldom 

 dangerous; cedema of the lungs is usually so. 

 Acute bronchitis is a frequent cause of death in 

 young children and old people. Fatal bronchitis 

 in persons between ten and sixty years of age is 

 either capillary, or secondary to tubercle. Phthisis 

 is most pernicious when it is hereditary. Con- 

 sumptive patients, who lose flesh and color and 

 appetite, with but little signs of disease in the 

 lungs, are in a worse case than those who have 

 marked local symptoms, but whose appetite and 

 nutrition are good. Haemoptysis, even when co- 

 pious, is not always of ill omen. 



It is rare for hemorrhage from either the lungs 

 or the stomach to be immediately fatal, except it 

 proceed from aneurism. Chronic valvular dis- 

 ease of the heart, when it complicates phthisis, 

 does not aggravate the latter, — rather, it checks 

 its progress. Sudden death is more frequent from 

 aortic than from mitral lesions, in regurgitant 

 than in obstructive disease of the aortic valves, and 

 in stenosis than in dilatation of the mitral orifice. 

 Apoplexy, when ingravescent, is commonly fatal. 

 In apoplectic attacks the ultimate prognosis de- 

 pends chiefly upon the degree and continuance of 

 unconsciousness, the immediate prognosis upon the 

 degree in which respiration is afflicted. Chronic 



diseases of the spinal cord are more likely to end 

 favorably in women than in men. Chorea is only 

 fatal when the patient cannot sleep. Malignant 

 tumors are more rapidly fatal in the young than 

 in the old. Cancers in the aged are exceedingly 

 slow in their process, and may even, in rare cases, 

 atrophy. Stone in the kidney may frequently be 

 cured without operation. The opposite is true of 

 stone in the bladder. Diabetes is rapidly fatal 

 when it occurs in voung men, more curable in 

 middle life, and of little danger in later years. 

 Diarrhoea is dangerous only in infants and in 

 persons above sixty years of age. — London Medical 

 Recorder. 



URUG-STORES IN GERMANY". 

 The drug-stores have a curious way here of 

 shutting up just about the time you want them. 

 And as soon as it begins to grow dark, down go the 

 shutters ; and if you need any thing, you go to a lit- 

 tle bell-handle outside of one of the iron shutters, 

 and ring it. Then you hear some one at a crank in- 

 side; the ma.ssive frame rolls up, and a head looks 

 out of the window. Finally the man or boy inside 

 opens part of the window, and you talk through 

 a pane of glass, and make known your wants. 

 Instead of getting angry at being aroused, the man 

 begs your pardon for keeping you outside, and says: 

 "1 thank you for your order." If you have not 

 the exact change, and the man inside is in the 

 same predicament, he will beg you most politely, 

 and thank you, to allow him to change it. Having 

 done so, he will thank you for calling (evidently 

 taking the visit as a social one), bow, close his lit- 

 tle peep-hole, bow again, and then smile sweetly 

 as he grinds down his iron shutter, and his smiling 

 face is lost to view. How different from the drug- 

 gists in America! I remember I once woke one 

 up in the States, and he came down-stairs with a 

 shotgun after me. But, as I remarked before, they 

 have a curious way of doing things in Dresden.— 

 Exchange. 



— • — 



HOW TO TREAT CRAMPS IN THE LEG. 



Many persons of both sexes are greatly trou- 

 bled with cramps in one or both their legs. It 

 comes on suddenly, and is very severe. Most peo- 

 ple jump out of bed (it nearly always comes on 

 either just after going to bed, or while undressing) 

 and ask some one to rub the leg. I have known it 

 to last for hours, till in despair they would send 

 for the family physician ; and even then it would 

 be hours before the spasm would let up. 



There is nothing easier than to make the spasm 

 let go its hold, and it can be accomplished without 

 sending for a doctor, who may be tired and in need 

 of a good night's rest. When I have a patient who 

 is subject to cramp, I always advise him to pi-ovide 

 himself with a good strong cord. A long garter 

 will do if nothing else is handy. When the cramp 

 comes on, take the cord, wind it around the leg 

 over the place that is cramped, and take an end in 

 each hand, and give it a sharp pull, — one that will 

 hurt a little. Instantly the cramp will let up, and 

 the sufferer can go to bed assured it will not come 

 on again that night. For the permanent cure, give 

 about six or eight cells of galvanic battery, with 

 the negative pole applied over the spot that ci'amps, 

 and the positive pole over the thigh. Give it for 

 ten minutes, and repeat every week for a month. 



I have saved myself many a good night's rest 

 simply by posting my patients subject to spasm of 

 the legs how to use the cord as above. I have 

 never known it to fail, and I have tried it after 

 they had worked half the night, and the patient 

 was in the most intense agony. Even in such 

 cases, at the first jerk of the cord all pain left. — 

 R. W. St. Claik, M.D., in Medical Age. 



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