Am'M°aUy'i%rm'}       Echinacea— Reply  to  Dr.  Beat.  327 
Of  forty-two  guinea  pigs5  which  were  given  the  same  doses  of 
tetanus  toxin  and  tetanus  antitoxin,  the  first  died  in  two  days  and 
twenty  hours ;  the  last  in  six  days  and  nineteen  hours. 
■Botulism. — Five  animals  were  given  the  culture.  Three  were 
treated  with  echinacea  and  two  were  reserved  as  controls.  The 
controls  died  in  one  and  three  days,  the  treated  animals  in  one,  three 
and  three  days.  The  average,  of  course,  favors  the  echinacea  prob- 
ably because  there  were  not  three  controls.  It  is  significant,  how- 
ever, that  no  control  died  before  a  treated  animal  and  no  treated 
animal  survived  the  controls. 
Septicemia. — The  experimental  work  here  is  complicated  by  the 
well-recognized  resistance  of  the  guinea  pig  to  subcutaneous  infection 
by  the  hemorrhagic  septicemia  organism  and  on  this  account  non- 
varying  results  were  not  expected.  The  experiment  was  only  under- 
taken through  the  great  desire  of  the  authors  to  test  the  remedial 
value  of  the  echinacea  against  a  septicema  or  what  in  common  par- 
lance would  be  termed  a  "blood  poisoning."  The  results  demonstrate 
the  expected  variations.  Of  thirteen  animals  which  were  given  the 
culture,  all  became  sick,  eleven  died  and  two  recovered.  Of  the  con- 
trols, one  survived  and  two  died  in  three  days ;  of  the  animals  which 
were  treated  with  echinacea  two  died  during  the  first  day,  two  on 
the  second  day,  two  on  the  third  day  and  of  the  remaining  four  one 
recovered,  and  the  others  died  in  five,  six  and  twelve  days.  Thus,  40 
per  cent,  of  the  treated  animals  had  died  before  any  of  the  controls, 
and  60  per  cent,  of  the  treated  animals  were  dead  when  66  per  cent, 
of  the  controls  had  died.  Furthermore,  the  five  animals  which  are 
grouped  in  experiments  1  and  3,  and  of  which  four  survived  the 
controls  (one  recovering)  had  received  no  echinacea  for  eleven  days 
before  the  injection  of  the  virulent  culture.  What  the  meaning  of 
the  survival  in  the  last  case  is  we  do  not  know,  but  we  are  certain 
that  an  average  of  such  data  is  not  only  meaningless,  but  is  actually 
misleading. 
It  is  to  be  observed  that  33  per  cent,  of  the  controls  recovered 
without  treatment,  while  but  10  per  cent,  of  the  treated  animals  sur- 
vived; would  the  clinician  argue  therefore  that  it  is  better  not  to 
treat  this  disease  since  more  cases  recover  without  treatment  than 
with? 
5  Table  No.  2,  pp.  9-10. 
