the power of filtering the air passed throught it of its suspended particles. He blew against a beam of condensed light entering a dark room with a pair of bellows having a mass of cotton tied over the nozzle, the result being that the beam elsewhere white from illuminated dust became perfectly black at the part on which the current was directed through the cotton filter, hence the idea naturally suggested itself that cotton wool might be used with advantage as an antiseptic dressing.

Prof. Joseph Lister applied this idea, using cotton wool impregnated with about a two hundredth part of its weight of carbolic acid, in the form of vapor, first washing the granulating sore, or abrasion with a solution of carbolic acid 1 to 40. During the Franco-Prussian war, five years after the close of our civil war, the German surgeons used dry lint dressing in the treatment of gunshot wounds. As this article is only intended to give the treatment of wounds, under my own observation in military hospital practice, at a period antedating a knowledge of antiseptic treatment now so well understood, I will give cases illustrating treatment and results from the method of dressing wounds, simply with their own pus or blood and dry lint, no water being used on a wound or ulcer, avoiding at any rate long exposure to the air. In this way, the wound being dressed only with dry lint and a light pressure being maintained by bandage, incised wounds of considerable extent were brought into a condition nearly as favorable to the reparative process as in true subcutaneous injuries and operations, healing by first intention, while ulcers filled up and closed by heathy granulations.

CASE 1.-J. N., age 24, private Company B, 46 North Carolina Regiment. A farmer, general health good, had a compound fracture of the humerus from a gunshot wound on May 8th. The arm was amputated by the double flap method, in its upper third, on the field. Received in hospital May 10th, with erysipelatous inflammation of the stump and shoulder and serous infiltration of cellular tissue. All sutures were removed on first dressing, followed by the discharge of four or more ounces of foetid pus. The intermuscular cellular tissue presented a sloughy appearance. A solution of arg. nit crystals 40 grains to aq. font-oz. 1, was freely applied over the inflamed cutaneous surface. Only two applications were required. He was given tr. ferri

chloride m.xv, well diluted with water every four hours. The granulations were pale and feeble, presenting a flabby appearance. The flaps were thrown apart and the wound filled with dry charpie, the dry lint dressing was repeated daily, using gentle pressure in applying the bandage to stimulate granulations to healthy action. In five days the granulations were healthy and pus laudable. The flaps were approximated and secured by resinous adhesive strips, and dry lint dressing was applied. Adhesion occurred by first intention with no further suppuration. Furloughed July 14th.

CASE 2.-A. F. S., age 22, Sergeant Company T. Fourteenth South Carolina Regiment, wounded May 5th, compound fracture of the left parietal bone with depression, was received in hospital May 9. Next day complained of severe cephalalgia. Ordered 10 grains of hyd. sub. murias to be given, cloths saturated with cold water applied constantly to the head. Twelfth, during the day seven severe convulsions epileptiform in character occurred, with paralysis of the arm and facial muscles of the opposite side to the injury. Treat: ice to scalp, hyd. sub. mur. 2 grains to be given every four hours. I enlarged the wound and found the bone much depressed, the ball had evidently ricochetted. Thirteenth, operative interference being determined on, the bone was trephined, several spiculae of bone embeded twice their thickness in the cerebrum were removed and the flaps were brought together by adhesive plaster. Dry lint dressing was applied. Seventeenth, the wound was suppurating freely, removed adhesive plaster, filled up the cavity with dry charpie. Eighteenth, continued dry lint dressing, which was repeated every day or two. Cephalalgia ceased in three days after trephining. Recovered entirely from paralysis by June 15th. No convulsions occurred after the operation. Two pieces of the inner table of the parietal bone appeared through the granulations of the ulcer, they had evidently retarded cicatrization. Furloughed July 2nd, well.

CASE 3.-E. J. W., age 21, private Company B, Fifteenth Virginia Cavalry. Farmer, was wounded May 5th, received in hospital May 9th, with compound fracture of the tibia. Exit of the ball behind the internal maleolus. I resected the tibia four inches above the joint, two-and-a-half inches in length of bone

was removed, leaving a thin shell on its posterior aspect, covered with its periosteum. A well padded curved splint was applied to the external aspect of the limb, the limb resting on the splint. Suppuration was profuse and offensive. The cavity of the wound was filled with dry charpie, the dry lint dressing was repeated daily, pus soon became laudable. Callous was freely deposited and was replaced by healthy bone. The wound closed by healthy granulations. No shortening of the limb resulted. Dry lint dressing was continued through the treatment of the

case.

From

J. S., Hood's Texas Brigade, was wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville through the right shoulder, fracturing the head of the humurus and scapula. General health was good. For several weeks he was under treatment preparatory to operative procedure, during which time recurrent attacks of erysipelatous inflammation occurred in the wounded arm and shoulder. the coracoid process of the scapula to the condyles of the humerus, was a suppurating tract with several discharging sinuses. After amputating the arm at the shoulder, the scapula was found to be so much injured and diseased, that it was removed. The patient was one hour and a half under the influence of chloroform. The flaps were sutured and strips of adhesive plaster applied and dressed with dry charpie, adhesion occurred by first intention, except along the line of ligatures. In five days he was walking in his ward, and well. This amputation was performed by my friend, Dr. William Owen, surgeon of the post.

I will state that these cases are given, not from memory, but as copied from my hospital case book.

ARTICULAR RHEUMATISM.-Dr. F. W. Stewart, late assistant physician to Milwaukee County Hospital, reports excellent results from the use of Lambert's Lithiated Hydrangea in the treatment of two cases of complicated articular rheumatism due to excess of uric acid in the system, and which had resisted the remedies usually prescribed in such cases. The lithiated hydrangea was administered in one dram doses, three times daily; the effects were prompt and satisfactory, a complete recovery resulting after two weeks' medication and diet.-Peoria Medical Momthly.

SOME FACTS OF THE HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE MEDICAL SERVICE OF

THE CONFEDERATE ARMIES

AND HOSPITALS.

BY. S. H. STOUT, A.M., M.D., LL.D.,

Ex-Surgeon and Medical Director of the Hospitals of the Confederate Armies and Department of Tennessee. (Continued from October (1902) Number).

XIII.

As my residence and its vicinity became somewhat noted during the war, it may be proper before proceeding with this narrative, to define its geographical position, and relationship to other nearby localities.

Midbridge, in the old staging days prior to the building of the Nashville & Decatur Railrod, was a postoffice at which local mail matter was received twice daily, a daily line of stage coaches running between Nashville, Tenn., and Huntsville, Ala. About three-fourths of a mile south and on the turnpike was the large plantation of William L. Brown, on which was a large residence. This place was occupied after the Federal occupation under the patronage of the Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen, as a corral for white men, women and children from Pea Ridge and other almost barren regionss of North Alabama, who belonged to that class designated by the negroes as "poor white trash." They were generally profoundly ignorant, having "squatted" on the public lands whose sterility was notorious.

Across Richland Creek, about two miles distant, in a southwestern direction, was the large plantation of Hon. Thomas L. Brown. This plantation was taken possession of by the Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen and used as a corral for freed negroes who fled from Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama to get a taste of freedom under Federal patronage. The gentlemen who owned the two plantations appropriated by the Bureau were brothers and nephews of Ex-Gov. Aaron V. Brown, of Tennessee, who died suddenly while Postmaster General in Buchanan's Cabinet. There was a spice af spitefulness in thus appropriating these two

plantations by the Bureau. For Aaron V. Brown had been a prominent Democratic politician, a reputed Warwick in President-making. It a matter of history that he manipulated the nominations of Polk and Pierce in the National Conventions of the Democratic party. But for his untimely death, it is not improbable that he would have received the nomination of the Democratic Convention in 1860.

The possession of those two plantations by the Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen for more than two years and a half of the war, wrought peculiar hardships upon the immediate neighborhood. The corral of the white refugees three-quarters of a mile south of my residence, was an almost daily resort for the officers of Dodge's and Wheeler's commands, stationed at Pulaski and other places in Giles county. The negro corral west of the creek was twice broken up by Forrest and his cavalry. The so-called battle of Pulaski in the winter of 1864 and 1865 as the result of which the Federals were driven into their fortification at Pulaski, began in front of my house. It was not until the inauguration of the Ku-Klux Klan after the war that order was restored, and the negroes deterred from intrusion upon the white people's rights.

The first outrages committed upon the property of a Confederate by the Federals were enacted on my place. It is my intention to make a record of those and other outrages committed in that vicinity to be preserved in the interest of truthful history. I proceed with my narrative touching the medical service in the Confederate armies and hospitals.

Being in doubt as to where I would be assigned, a few days before the expiration of my leave of absence, I went to Decatur, Ala., where Gen. A. S. Johnston was en route to Corinth, Miss. I desired earnestly to be assigned to service in the field. I carried to the General a message from Col. Nixon, commander of scouts in that section. I arrived at Decatur late in the afternoon, and immediately called on the General at his headquarters. I found him alone in his private room, and delivered to him Col. Nixon's message. Soon our conversation turned upon the state of public sentiment in Middle Tennessee, touching the evacuation of Nashville and the abandonment of that section of the State. He remarked during the conversation that the people have no way by