are exceedingly offensive and poisonous. In books on microscopy I have found the statement, that specimens mounted in glycerine must be sealed up, because the cover-glasses will slip off when the slides are not in a horizontal position; but I hardly ever fasten the covers, and have never yet seen one displaced in the least. I prefer not to seal them to the slides, as it is very easy, if necessary, to remove them for cleansing, or any other purpose, and put them back into their place without injuring the

sections.

The combination hæmatoxylon-picrocarmine gives an exceedingly pretty stain, but is not simple enough for common use.

Of aniline dyes I have used chiefly Bismarck brown, fuchsine and acid-fuchsine, methyl green, orange G, and methyl blue. Bismarck brown stains very well in watery solution, the superfluous color being removed by washing with alcohol. The effect is different, however, with the same coloring matter from different manufacturers. I have tried three different makes, and like best that from Grübler, Berlin. Acid-fuchsine, methyl green, and orange G in saturated watery solution, mixed in the proportion of 2:5:10 (Ehrlich-Biondi) give an excellent stain. This fluid is not to be filtered, and can be used diluted with water or concentrated for any length of time; the superfluous color is removed by washing in alcohol. I have used this stain alone, and as second stain, with hematoxylon or Bismarck brown-the combination with hematoxylon is especially good; but still better results can be obtained if sections, stained either with the threecolor mixture alone, or with hematoxylon first and then with the three colors, are treated with ammonia and picric-acid solution. If a section stained with the three-color fluid is immersed in a mixture of ammonia and alcohol it is completely decolorized in a very short time. If it is then transferred to alcohol the color returns partly; but if picric-acid solution is used instead of the pure alcohol the whole section will grow red. If, however, the decolorization by ammonia has been intense enough only the red will return in pure alcohol; and the same will take place in picric acid, only more intensely. Now the parts stained red originally are the connective tissue and horny parts of the skin, and after the section has been treated with ammonia and picric acid, these only will be stained, and stained red. This is a valuable means of differentiating connective and muscular or nerve tissue. If hæmatoxylon is used first, and then the abovedescribed process is gone through with, the hæmatoxylon stain will be partly retained, and the distinction will be easier. Sections of the uterus, e. g., show the cells of the lining membrane and glands colorless, with blue nuclei, the connective tissue red, and the smooth muscular fibre green. In sections of

nerves the axis cylinders are blue and the neurilemma red, while everything else is colorless. In sections from an epithelioma of the hand the neuclei of the cells in the cancer nests and stroma were stained purple; those of the sweat glands blue; in the epithelial pearls the horny centres were deep red, and the zone around them, where the cells had changed only partly, yellow. Evidently it is the red acid fuchsine which stains the connective tissue; but it is not possible to use it alone for that purpose, for if used without other colors it will stain the cell nuclei, the protoplasm, etc., the same as the connective tissue, and no amount of ammonia will take out the color from the other tissues and leave it in the connective tissue alone. But if the acid fuchsine is used with the other colors, it can stain the connective tissue and horny parts of the skin only, because the other tissues have a greater affinity for the other stains, and therefore do not take the fuchsine stain. If afterwards ammonia is used this will destroy the other colors faster than the fuchsine, and in that manner make it possible to obtain sections where only the red stain is left in the fibrous and horny parts.

This property of ammonia to decolorize tissues stained with aniline dyes can be used in other ways. I have lately taken ammonia instead of acids or fluoresceine to decolorize specimens stained with carbolic-acid-fuchsine and to be examined for tubercle bacilli, and have had very good results. I use as decolorizing fluid a mixture of ammonia and alcohol, and wash the cover-glass with the specimen in it, till almost all the red color has disappeared. If examined then everything appears very faintly red, while the tubercle bacilli are brightened. On afterstaining with methyl blue the tubercle bacilli alone retain their red color, while other bacteria cells, etc., become a blue. The specimens prepared in this way are very clear, and as the only drawback to ammonia is its pungent smell, while it has no color and never causes sections to shrink, it is decidedly better than acids in the preparation of specimens for examination for tubercle bacilli.

Lastly, I will mention a little practical use of ammonia. I find it the best and speediest means to remove any stains of aniline dyes from the hands. Every one who ever has tried to get the fuchsine color from the skin of his hands, will be able to appreciate this.

LACTATION INDUCED BY MASSAGE. - The patient had had four children, and had never been able to suckle any of them properly (Frauen Artzt). On this, the fifth occasion, the breasts were quite undeveloped, and allowing the child no suck, the dry nipples caused the mother great nervous irritation. Masssage was practiced, the breasts steadily increased, and on the seventh day the child was suckled. She was delivered in September, and five months later the mother was still suckling her child, and both were doing well. - Weekly Med. Revice.

THE NERVOUS SYMPTOMS OF HElleborus NIGER.

BY E. P. COLBY, M. D., WAKEFIELD, MASS.

[Read before the Hughes Medical Club].

Hellebore at one time acquired a reputation as being curative in hydrocephalus; but modern pathology makes us more than doubt the correctness of the claim; at least to doubt its efficacy in all cases where there was true hydrocephalus, originating, as this does, in tubucular deposit in the ependyma. It may and undoubtedly is beneficial, and possibly curative, in those cases occurring in young children, where, from a disturbance of blood pressure, the cerebral vessels become engorged and a transudation of serum into the ventricles produces the well known symptoms of cerebral compression; this pressure resulting both from the intraventricular fluid and from the enlarged vessels. If this be sufficiently severe and long continued we may get an exudation of leucocytes and the establishment of cerebritis and the hellebore still be indicated. Such were, probably, many of the instances of so-called hydrocephalus.

It has proved useful in cases of otitis media with extension of inflammation to the adjacent cerebral membranes. Many of us can, undoubtedly, remember some case in our early practice which had, to us, every appearance of severe cerebral disease, with severe headache, delirium, convulsions, and subsequent coma, presenting also strabismus and the peculiar cerebral cry; all of which subsided when the child seemed to be just at the point of death, upon the appearance of a discharge from the ear. These cases would now be earlier and more correctly diagnosed; but it is in such examples that hellebore has earned a wellmerited reputation.

This brings to my mind another condition peculiar to childhood, and marks the intimate relation between the pulmonary organs and the higher nerve centres. In young children we sometimes have a rapidly developed pneumonia, and at the same time all the symptoms of ependymal meningitis. The two conditions. are developed so synchronously as to lead us to entertain the possibility of true pneumonia of cerebral origin.

I can recall more than one instance in which the cerebral preceded the pulmonary symptoms by several hours, and were not the usual nervous symptoms marking the onset of most acute diseases in childhood. This may certainly have been only the manifestation of increased blood-pressure upon the vessels in the choroid plexus in very susceptible children. In these cases hellebore has produced its best results, and has helped to a happy termination many a bad case. Arguing inversely, it is found to be useful where pneumonia, or even bronchitis of the smaller

tubes, so interferes with the circulation as to induce serious cerebral complication. Pneumonia, or capillary bronchitis, in children usually causes sufficient cerebral disturbance to excite our anxiety, and is not seldom the direct element in the fatality of the case.

The remedy has proved quite reliable in the convulsive and. nervous symptoms occurring in children who have become seriously and rapidly reduced by diarrhoea or cholera infantum.

As will be seen, the remedy finds its widest field of usefulness in the irritable and immature nervous system of early childhood; and in attempting an explanation of its mode of action I can only say that it is probably through its control of the cerebral vascular system. I have never seen any results indicative of its action below the fourth ventricle, nor any showing a marked influence upon the cerebral convexity.

SOCIETIES.

-0

HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY OF WESTERN

MASSACHUSETTS.

The regular quarterly meeting of the Homoeopathic Medical Society of Western Massachusetts was held at the Cooley House, Springfield, Mass., on June 8, 1892. First Vice-President P. R. Watts, M.D., in the chair.

The records of the last meeting were read and approved.

The resignation of A. S. Oliver, M.D., was read and accepted. It was then moved and seconded that Dr. Oliver should be made an honorary member, which motion was carried.

G. F. Forbes, M.D., read a paper on the "Contagious Character of Tuberculosis," which was thoroughly discussed.

B. A. Sawtelle, M.D., reported a case of sarcoma of the right breast; after a short discussion of which, the meeting adjourned. H. L. CLARKE, M.D., Secretary.

THE meanest man in Great Britain has been found. His discovery was due to a suit to recover the amount of a bill for medical services brought by his physician. The man had ample means, and held several official positions in the county and town administrations. But it appears that he was connected in some way with some extensive quarries in the place, and had been made an honorary member of the quarries' benefit club, of which his family physician was surgeon. His defence was that he was entitled to the services of his family physician free, as being an honorary member of this club, although he paid very much smaller dues than the regular members. The court very promptly overruled this defence, and then he put in a more valid, but equally mean, plea, and finally succeeded in avoiding the payment of about seventy-five per cent. of the claim. - Medical Record.

GLEANINGS AND TRANSLATIONS.

:0:

LILOIR, on checking obstinate hiccough by compressing the phrenic nerve, says: "The left phrenic nerve was strongly compressed for three minutes with the finger between the two sterno-clavicular attachments of the sterno mastoid muscle. The first case was that of the little girl, twelve years old, who, for a year and a half, had suffered from intractable hiccough." A cure was made in a single sitting, and never returned.— American Journal of Medical Science.

HOW TO DRINK MILK. Some complain, says a contemporary, that they cannot drink milk without being "distressed by it." The most common reason why milk is not well borne is due to the fact that people drink it too quickly. If a glass of it is swallowed hastily, it enters the stomach and then forms in one solid, curdled mass, difficult of digestion. If, on the other hand, the same quantity is sipped, and three minutes at least are occupied in drinking it, then on reaching the stomach it is so divided that when coagulated, as it must be by the gastric juice, while digestion is going on, instead of being in one hard, condensed mass upon the outside of which only the digestive fluids can act, it is more in the form of a sponge, and in and out of the entire bulk the gastric juice can play freely and perform its functions.

ALTERATIONS OF THE PERIPHERAL NERVES IN DIABETES. — Auché reviews the opinions of different authors upon the cause of the implication of the nervous system in diabetes, and finaly adopts that which holds the peripheral nerves as the seat of the nervous disturbances in this disease, for which theory, however, strict anatomical testimony was, until now, wanting. This testimony the author endeavors to furnish. In his comparison of symptoms he shows that the upper extremities are less frequently paralyzed than the lower. The paralysis may be one sided or bi-lateral. Rectum and bladder are always intact. In the paralyzed muscles atrophy with reaction of degeneration appears. The disturbances of sensibility in the disease may appear alone or may precede or accompany the motor troubles, and consist of pains, paræsthesia, hyperæsthesia and anæsthesia in different degree. The vaso-motor disturbances are local hyperidrosis, oedemas, glossy skin and ecchymoses; the trophic changes are perforating ulcer, localized atrophy of the skin, deformity and spontaneous shedding of the nails, gangrene, etc. The loss of