SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. 125 



ty, thoroughly washing it with tepid water, and get an opening into the 

 pulj) chamber. This alone will often cure it. Paint the gum freely all 

 around the tooth with strong tincture of iodine, first drying off the moisture 

 from the gum. Hold ice-cold water or lumps of ice continually in the mouth, 

 but should you start on this cold water method of treatment you must keep 

 it up for several hours, or it will be worse than useless. Hot foot-baths 

 and saline cathartics. Let the tooth alone, do not keep feeling of it, thus 

 keeping up the irritation which you are trying to allay. Eemember that 

 this form of treatment is not applicable to an exposed living pulp, but only 

 in cases where this organ is dead. Cold water applied to an inflamed living 

 pulp would only increase your agony. Should you find that you cannot ar- 

 rest the inflammation after sufiicient trial, you will have to take the other 

 course, and that is, to hasten suppuration by warm applications directly to 

 the ]part. For this purpose nothing is better, than a split fig, roasted and 

 laid ©n the gum. Warm fluids held in the mouth will sometimes aftbrd re- 

 lief. But it is wiser to go at once to a competent dentist, as serious trouble 

 often arises from this form of disease. Never on any consideration apply 

 poultices on the outside of the face, for should the abscess point and break 

 there, a permanent and unsightly scar would be the result. 



In closing I would say that as "an ounce of prevention is better than a 

 pound of cure," it would be much better to attend to your teeth in time, be- 

 fore the pulps become exposed, and save your teeth and yourself all this 

 pain and trouble. You will never find any artificial teeth that will be the 

 source of as much comfort as your own natural organs properly taken care 

 of. — GrEO. L. Parmelb, M. D., in Boston Journal of Chemistry. 



The French Vine Destroyer. — A correspondent of the Pall Mall Ga- 

 zette^ writing from Cognac under date of October 13, says : " Five years 

 ago the French Minister, of Agriculture offered a prize of 20,000 francs for 

 the discovery of a means of ridding France of so disastrous a scourge (the 

 phylloxera). Small as the prize was in comparison with the great interest 

 at stake, it was sufficient to quicken the zeal alike of savans and empirics. 

 Insecticide powders innumerable were brought into requisition ; manure 

 mixed with plaster, lime, sulphur, salt, soot and tar was successively tried ; 

 experiments were made with carbolic, arsenious and sulphuric acids, with 

 sulphuret of carbon, creosote, ammonia and peti'oleum ; the roots of the 

 vines, too, were swaddled in green tobacco leaves, and in some localities at- 

 tempts were made to eradicate the pest with fire. Some of these agents oc- 

 casionally revived ailing plants, but failed to annihilate the phylloxera. 

 Out of one hundred and forty supposed remedies which the Agricultural 

 Society of Montpelier put to test, thirty-four produced some slight beneficial 

 results, nine either injured or killed the vines, and the remaining ninety - 

 seven exercised no influence whatever either for good or evil. 



^^ Submersion of the vines under water appeared to be the only economic 



