failure can be held as true results until after repeated re-trials under varying conditions and the study of individual peculiarities or idiosyncrasies.

In the lesser works of Abderhalden these questions are alluded to, more especially in the little work entitled "Abwehrfermente,' in the larger one on physiology, "Lehrbuch der physiologischen Chemie," and in "Conceptions nouvelles sur la structure et le métabolism de la cellule." In these works the difficulties are by no means overlooked, in fact they loom large, but, unfortunately, the present war and new investigations, more particularly into the origin, character and distant effects of hormones or internal secretions, have diverted the interest and energies of this rare experimenter. What a blessing to us as reformers had he continued to devote his life to the problems he has propounded and laid before the profession! It is to be feared that he, too, like so many others in all nations, has found himself pursuing an inquiry giving new force and actual support to a hated and despised practice, before which he decided for the sake of his position to call a halt. He has left to others the important and exhaustive labor of extending and fortifying what, long before his day, others had seized upon and endeavored to realize, though in an imperfect and one-sided fashion. One thing is certain: a scientific truth once uttered, and demanded by a suffering laity and a profession ever conscious of its imperfections and short-comings, will never die. Unripe as ours may be, and thus an inviting mark for criticism, invective, and opposition from the highest to the lowest, it will never fail to rise again in new forms, with new and better equipped adherents. No matter how many of its votaries may have suffered and fallen by the wayside, some way will be found to bring to fruition that reform for which, despite all misunderstanding and misconstruction, its originator hoped.

This brings me to the questions now before the faculty of Boston University School of Medicine and to which I, though no longer an active member of the faculty, replied essentially as follows:

1. A sectarian school appears to me an anachronism; hence I do not give my opinion in its favor. Nevertheless, the introduction of "old school" teachers into the faculty cannot do otherwise than place this school in a secondary position.

2. The teaching of homoeo-therapeutics should be conducted in Boston University School of Medicine in no way save by a postgraduate course of sufficient extent. This I favor, since from the outset I have contended for lectures on this specialty to doctors only. But how this would tend to meet the problems now raised, I fail to see. The founders of the school had in view the teaching of homœopathy, and the funds originally given were for this pur

pose. Hence, moral and legal questions now arise to complicate the scientific one proposed.

It was most difficult for me to express my doubts and the uncertainties of the problem confronting us, in the few words stipulated in the questionnaire. I therefore venture to explain my position more at length. My plea may be beside the mark, but is the result of what has been in my mind for many years and follows directly what I have already said.

At the outset it appears to me that, taken by themselves, nothing is to be gained by affirmative answers to the questions before the faculty, although I have acquiesced partially in the sentiments of the majority. The two propositions, viz., the elimination of the sectarian denomination of the school, and the introduction into the faculty of one or more teachers of the current therapeutics, and perhaps, also of the modern pathological views, seem to me, while most plausible and even unanswerable as stated, to be of doubtful effect in producing the results intended, chiefly for the following reasons:

I cannot consistently, after a life devoted to the cause and the aims expressed above, throw over the denomination of our system, in view of its past history or the present state of all our organizations. I must make a distinction between the needs and position of our faculty and the dominant name of our theory and practice. It would be yielding too much, and by yielding, our faculty would confess our school to have accepted a secondary position.

Our students have entered our portals for reasons powerful with lay applicants but possessing no professional weight. A predilection in favor of the law of similars and for harmless small doses is ever apparent among those coming to our standard; but in the pursuit of the further curriculum these early considerations are easily overborne and set aside by the instruction offered. Not resting on well grounded information, these earlier convictions are confessedly seen to be quickly neutralized by pathological views and the therapeutic practices of an all-powerful dominant school, which readily impress themselves on the reason and consciences of growing and plastic minds. Therefore, it is these which become the practical acquirements of later professional life, and it is here that our peculiar, not to say false position becomes apparent.

Side by side with the generally recognized essential foundations for future practice, we have attempted to instill instruction as to the meaning of the law of similars, of the nature and importance of symptoms, and of homœopathic materia medica. In this way the students' heads have been unintentionally confused. As these disciplines represent to the nascent medical mind a life, a whole life, of close study and observation, covering a wide field and constituting in reality a hardship, it is most natural that by the great

majority the course of least resistance should be chosen. This course promises respectability, general scientific acknowledgment and a certain freedom from responsibility; from which follows an ease of professional existence not vouchsafed by a more close adherence to homeopathic doctrines. In this way it has gradually come about that in lay as well as in medical circles, the legend has arisen that no difference actually obtains between the practices of the two schools. The dominant school has not been slow to raise this ethical point and thus to cast a slur on those calling themselves homœopaths.

When to this is added that, at the very outset, help was sought through the diploma of a university unsympathetic to and unacquainted with the aims and methods of the founders of the Boston University Medical Faculty, it was inevitable that the good reformatory blood of a special but undeveloped scientific system should, in the end, have been sucked by an institution founded not on necessity but on purely altruistic and educational emotionalism.

It is recognized that so many elements have now conspired to give direction to the questions before the faculty for determination, that no adequate opinion can be briefly expressed. Not the least of these elements is the social and professional success of graduates of our school; but I am forced to declare my conviction (held from the start of my entering the faculty, nearly half a century ago) that those who have succeeded would have done so if graduated from any other good school, and that we have been wrong in our policy. My contention from the first has always been for a limited school for those who had gone through their preliminary training in a well established institution, had practiced for several years a method affording them no satisfaction, and had thus come to us, striving with open minds to enlarge their field of usefulness.

My proposition, therefore, is that, since I cannot consent to the present status and at the same time want the school open to the new teaching, the feasibility of establishing a post-graduate school or course of homoeo-therapeutics be considered. Out of this it will, to my mind, be far more dignified to graduate annually one or two men and women who know their own minds, rather than, as now, a large class of doubters or people who profess according to the name attaching to them.

In this way it would be possible to save the diploma of our school to past and future holders and thus to eliminate the ethical issue now crept in to raise grave doubts in the minds of many. For it cannot be denied that the early funds devoted to the school were given, as were those to the hospital, for the teaching and spread of homœopathy. This ethical and legal question we are not permitted to leave out of sight, necessary as it has become to contemplate the introduction into the faculty of elements opposing the original views and aims of our not-to-be-forgotten founders, 17 Scott St.

INTRAVENOUS INFUSIONS OF ISOTONIC DEXTROSE SOLUTIONS IN THE TREATMENT OF PUERPERAL SEPTICEMIA. PRELIMINARY REPORT*

HELMUTH ULRICH, M.D., Boston, Mass.

Research Associate in the Evans Memorial for Clinical Research and Preventive Medicine.

AND

HENRY FISK ADAMS, M.D., Boston, Mass.

Laboratory Assistant in the Evans Memorial for Clinical Research and Preventive Medicine.

During the pursuit of special hæmatologic studies, the results of which are to be published later, it was found by one of us that many cases of puerperal sepsis showed no or only slight leukocytosis, and that the severity of the disease, as evidenced by clinical manifestations, was not always adequately expressed by commensurate leukocytogenic reaction.

This observation led to a search for stimulants of leukocyte production, the use of which might be expected to exert a secondary and salutary effect upon the diseased, and it was found that intravenous infusions of isotonic sugar solutions had been used for this purpose by Audain and Masmonteil' in the treatment of septicemia after war wounds.

According to these authors a leukocyte count of 5,000 or 7,000 before infusion was raised to about 25,000 in less than thirty minutes afterward; the temperature rose a little, and there was chill and sweating. The amounts injected varied between 300 and 500 cc. per dose, repeated several times daily, if necessary, until the desired result was accomplished. No untoward after-effects were noticed.

Charts I and II illustrate the effects of the sugar infusions upon the temperature and leukocyte curves of cases of post-partum infection, in which the total leukocyte count was low. In these charts the dominant curvesre present temperature variations, and the lesser curves depict changes in total leukocyte counts.

In case I a direct effect upon the temperature is not apparent, but in case II, where the temperature fell almost as precipitately as it rose, there can be but little doubt that the sugar infusion was responsible for the disappearance of fever. No other case of our series responded as promptly as this one.

Contrary to our expectation, we found that the leukocyte counts also fell slightly within an hour after each injection; so that, although most of our cases were benefited by the dextrose, it is evident that this improvement was not due to induced leukocytosis.

To determine whether these results, quite different from those obtained by Audain and Masmonteil, were due to possible differences of technic or whether they were peculiar to puerperal cases,

From the Evans Memorial Department for Clinical Research and Preventive Medicine and the Robinson Memorial Maternity Department of the Massachusetts Homœopathic Hospital. 1 Presse Medicale, xxv, 641.