She said: "I have been everywhere; by several I have been advised to have the ovaries removed. One physician advised the removal of uterus and ovaries. I don't know what to do, but I cannot endure the thought of being always sick, neither can I feel willing to give up the hope of having a larger family."

I put her upon galvanism that very day, using a large flat positive electrode over abdomen and the metal ball electrode with negative pole internally. She could not bear hot douches, so tepid water was ordered. At first she took two treatments per week, later she took three. General faradization was used once or twice each week. After the fifteenth treatment she was so much better that she had comparatively no pain during passage of ovum. She entirely escaped the intra-menstrual sickness, began to gain in flesh, and could walk a mile without doing herself any harm. She took in all thirty treatments. The last account from her was: "I am growing stronger every day."

Miss B, a young lady of eighteen years, who had always suffered from dysmenorrhoea because of stenosis, and who had had tents and divulsion used, took ten treatments the negative pole internal, using olive-tipped uterine sound electrode, gradually increasing the size. She has since menstruated without pain. In this case I think the divulsion had done her great good, and I consider the electrolysis a simple adjuvant. It seemed to render permanent the work accomplished before.

Mrs. C― presented a typical case of subinvolution, with lateral displacement, and retroflexion. The uterus was immovable and the left ovary seemed to be held down in the cul de sac, by the fundus, The ovary was enlarged and tender. There had been an abscess five years before, she said, which discharged at irregular intervals for a year. The hardened mass was easily made out. Everything was solid. I do not need to further dilineate her case. You have all seen similar cases. She had been an invalid for seven years or longer, Her spine was tender throughout the dorsal region. Central galvanization was resorted to first in her case; later she had from twenty to thirty treatments; began walking and working. I did not consider her well, but she was so much better that she went home. Her husband writes that improvement has been continual since treatment.

This is the usual record. "I continue to improve." All these cases of uterine troubles are cases of mal-nutrition in a greater or less

degree. Electricity seems to be the thing that oftenest corrects perverted nutrition. In all my cases I have made use of tampons or a support when necessary. I do not use pessaries often.

I could now perhaps say never, for I do not believe I ever will again. The douche is of great help. In those cases requiring intrauterine application, the galvanic current accomplishes the work much better and more safely. In cases of hypertrophic conditions of the uterine muscosa with tendency to hemorrhage, cases for curetting, I have used the galvanic current. The hæmostatic pole when needed, and the negative when that is called for. Patient does not require anæsthetic, and rest in bed twenty four hours is all that is necessary.

Mrs. S, aged twenty-seven, married ten years. A well formed, well developed woman, placed herself under my care last November. She said: "I am never contented unless I am doing something. Had I known my condition, I would never have married. I have repeatedly told my husband I would not in any way contest a divorce." A digital examination was impossible from the unusual development of the sphincter vaginæ. There was no semblance of a hymen closing the small, ring-like opening. I could only introduce the tip of my little finger. With an ordinary silver catheter I explored the vaginal canal as well as I could. It was free and seemed sufficiently roomy. She had always menstruated regularly. Had had this fibrous ring cut in several places and the scar tissue was acutely sensitive. At one time physician took out a triangular section and kept the wound open for weeks. It closed, however, and the contracted condition was, if anything, greater than before. To have this abnormality corrected was the study of her life. She would endure anything. She had the spirit of the Spartan women. She came to me with a new thought that had just that morning suggested itself. Would I dissect away the entire fibrous, ring-like mass, clean down to bone, then it could not close. She was nervous and over-wrought about the matter. I suggested electrolysis. She was more than willing; we began that day. The pains caused were not severe, or did not seem so to her. The negative pole was, of course, the one used for the local application attached to an electrode with an olive tip just large enough to bring slight pressure to bear upon the margin of the ring. A current of mild intensity was used with a sitting of fifteen minutes, the first time, the

strength of the current gradually increased to twenty milliamperes. The eschar formed was moist and non-retractile. I waited five days and repeated treatment with same current continuing twenty minutes. After tenth treatment I could introduce my first finger. The destruction of the tissue proceeded more rapidly later for we could have more frequent seances. After twentieth treatment an ordinary sized speculum could be used. She was the most grateful patient I have ever had. As the treatment progressed, I arrived at the conclusion that it was the hymen I was destroying-a hymen abnormally developed a hard, fibro-muscular hymen. Possibly I was wrong in this conclusion. At parting, she said: "I wonder if motherhood, that crowning glory of a woman's life, is yet to be mine."

Both herself and her husband desired children. Later a letter came. Each word was a sweet strong note of triumph. The coveted blessing was to be hers. The "Angel of the Annunciation" had spoken to her, had folded its white wings over her. "She was with child."

ARTICLE VII.

THE ANTIPYRETIC, AND THE ABORTIVE TREATMENT OF TYPHOID AND REMITTENT FEVERS.

BY J. R. BARNETT, M. D. OF NEENAH, WIS.

Chairman of Committee on Practice of Medicine.

The search for specifics is as old as the history of medicine. From the time of Hippocrates down to the present, the highest aim of the physician has been to shorten disease by as many days as possible; to arrest if possible, the law of its natural evolution, or so amend it as to rob it of its chief inflictions, if not its final penalty. Through all the ages it has been a hunt in the dark, the chances of success and failure being as one to infinity. Hence the alluring pursuit of the older chemists after the panacea-some substance or compound which was to fit in all cases and cure all diseases. A growing knowledge of pathological conditions and of the physiological resources of the system for their removal, notably by cutaneous, renal and intestinal excretion, threw some light upon the search, and so it went on, and as the centuries went by, though hardly with them, one by one a specific was found, and for this malady and then that, a revision of prognosis had to be made, and a rewriting of its mortality tables had to be attended to.

Scientific medicine has seldom disdained to join in the chase empiricism led blindfolded; not always discovering more with her open eyes than empiricism would stumble upon in the dark; but she has oftener been content to accept the dictum that most maladies are self-limited and essentially unalterable in their evolution, and that medical treatment is powerless to do more than mitigate their severity.

But of late years a new science has propounded to medicine a new problem. Bacteriology has come to the aid of the pathologist and by revealing causes of disease hitherto only dimly surmised, has not

only sanctioned the old pursuit of what often seemed a chimera, but has led it into wider fields and for larger purposes. It has also imposed new responsibilities. It is not enough now to cure the sick man, or help him to survive his sickness. It is demanded that the specific cause be determined at the outset and stamped out before the germ has taken root; or, when this is impossible with the existing knowledge of pathological micro-organisms and their appropriate germicides, the alternative is suggested, when practicable, of so sterilizing the soil in which they have implanted themselves as to inhibit their development, or, again, of rendering innocuous to their host the cadaveric substances their life, development, death and decay have engendered.

It is not necessary to point out the eagerness with which the medical profession has entered upon the solution of this problem, which the success of surgical antisepsis seemed to promise as so easily practicable; but it is certainly not reassuring to contemplate the wide differences in results. Still, it is well to reflect that medical antisepsis has its limitations which surgical has not. The latter is purely local in its purposes, being addressed only to the open wound, which alone is vulnerable to the attack of the surgical microbe, and which will bear without danger the presence of antiseptic agents which, if introduced into the general circulation, would prove speedily fatal. Without this limitation imposed by the paramount consideration of the patient's safety, it is highly probable that most, if not all of the specific diseases would have an aborting remedy in corrosive sublimate, or carbolic acid, or iodine, not less sure in result than they prove in the field of surgery. And with this limitation, their effect upon the normal evolution of some diseases is such as to entitle them with few qualifications, to the name of specifics.

Standing easily first in the interest of the profession in the search for a practical and reliable germicide is typhoid fever. This would be expected from the wide diffusion of the disease over both hemispheres, and its great fatality. More than this, the universal acceptance of the doctrine of its bacillary origin has afforded a common ground on which all investigators can work in harmony to a common purpose. It is true all are not agreed as to the identity of this specific micro-organism; nor is it essential that they should be. There is no reason to believe that these organisms differ so widely in their resistance to germicides that the practical physician should be