3. The four cinchona alkaloids are very nearly equal in antiseptic power. Arranged in the strict order of their efficacy, they stand thus: Quinia quinidine; next comes cinchonidine; last, though at no great distance, cinchonia.

4. It is a singular circumstance that this order corresponds to that in which the four alkaloids are arranged in the Report of the Madras Cinchona Commission in 1868, with reference, not to their antiseptic, but to their antiperiodic power, as determined by clinical experience. This report establishes:

(a.) That quinidine equals quinia in febrifuge action.

(b.) That cinchonidine is only slightly less efficacious.

(c.) That cinchonia, though somewhat inferior, is, notwithstanding, a valuable remedial agent in fever.

This agreement may possibly be due to coincidence; if not, it seems to afford some countenance to the zymotic theory of the paludal miasm; or it would perhaps be more correct to say that it does not oppose it. It really shows no more than that the one property is in some way correlated with the other; it does not prove their identity.

5. Among reputed antiperiodics, the sulphate of beberia seems to equal quinia in antiseptic power.

6. Among reputed antiseptics, sodic sulphocarbolate and strychnia have a decided value, though they stand some way below quinia.

7. Sodic sulphite has a feeble, though decided, antiseptic power; sodic hyposulphite little or none.

8. Berberin and æsculin are hardly, if at all, antiseptic.

9. Potassic picrate is a strong antiseptic, almost, if not quite, equal to quinia. It is doubtful, however, whether it can be administered in sufficient doses without danger to life.

10. The action of inhibitory drugs on the vitality of microzymes affords no clue to their action on Penicillium. Substances like mercuric chloride, which are immediately fatal to the former, arrest the growth of the latter when employed in the same minute proportions.

The toxic action of quinia on the colorless corpuscles of the blood was first noticed by Professor Binz; and his observations have since been extended and corrobarated by other investigators. This effect of alkaloids acquires a special significance in view of recent doctrines of inflammation and suppuration; the emigration of leucocytes from the vessels into the inflamed tissue giving rise to the whole, or a varying fraction of the total inflam

matory exudation. Any substance capable of arresting or retarding the movements of the corpuscles might therefore be expected to arrest or retard the local consequences of tissue-irritation; and it is probable that the proliferative activity of the autochthonous corpuscular elements, depending as it does on properties common to them with the white corpuscles of the blood, may be restrained by the same means that are found effectual in checking the migratory propensities of the latter. It seemed desirable to ascertain if the other cinchona alkaloids were endowed with similar propties in an equal degree.

Experiments seem to show that the four cinchona alkaloids are able speedily to arrest the migratory movement of the colorless corpuscles of newt's blood, in the proportion of 1 in 1,500. That the quantitative differences between them are not well marked, quinia appearing to stand first in the order of power. That the proportion of the alkaloid necessary to arrest the movement of the waxy protuberances is much larger than that which arrests migration and the putting forth of filamentous processes. And this would lead us to expect that it may be possible to check the migratory propensities of the colorless corpuscles while in the body, without impairing, or permanently abolishing, their vitality that they may be narcotized, so to speak, without being killed.

.Sulphate of beberia, which approaches the cinchona alkaloids so closely in antiseptic power, is thus seen to rival them in its inhibitory action upon the migratory movement of the colorless corpuscles. The effect of its solutions in defining the nuclei of the red discs-an effect not produced by the cinchona alkaloidsleads one to suspect that the mode of action is somewhat different in the two cases. Strychnia has some influence upon the colorless corpuscles; but it stands very far behind beberia and the cinchona alkaloids.

Experiments seem to show that potassic picrate, standing almost on a level with the cinchona alkaloids in antiseptic power, exerts a comparatively feeble influence over the spontaneous movements of the colorless corpuscles. It cannot, therefore, be asserted, at present, that the antiseptic and the antiphlogistic actions of a drug are necessarily connected with each other.

Experiments with æsculin prove that it exerts no very marked effect on the migratory activity of the blood corpuscles.

CERTAIN SKIN DISEASES AND THEIR TTEATMENT.-By Edward B. Gray, M.D.-ECZEMA.-In 1864-5 an undergraduate, aged twenty, consulted me occasionally on account of a moist eczema, shifting about the forehead, but showing a preference for one or other supra-orbital region. I could never find anything wrong in his general health or habits.

His eczema supervened slowly on the subsidence of spasmodic asthma, which had troubled him very frequently from early boyhood. For the first twelve years of his life he had pretty constant nocturnal incontinence of urine. He is now in perfect health, with one exception-that when over-tired, or worried, he gets rather severe clavus-headache on one side.

The sequence of events in this patient's case, read in the light of his family history, makes it, to my mind, in the highest degree probable that this frontal eczema, supervening on asthma, was simply a "transmutation of neurosis" (Trousseau) from his vagus to his trigeminus nerve.

Looking back at my treatment of this case, I fear it was wrong. It was the old-fashioned combination of mild tonics and alteratives. Had the patient's strong neurotic taint been from the first known and kept steadily in view; in other words, had all my efforts been directed to feeding and toning up his nervous system with such remedies as cod-oil and arsenic, his eruption would probably have got well much sooner than it did.

Acute Syphilitic Lichen may so closely simulate the primary stage of small-pox eruption as to render the diagnosis at first a matter of difficulty. In 1863, Mary H, aged twenty-two, came from a neighboring village into the Radcliffe Infirmary, under my care, with moderate swelling and redness of one side of the fauces, and inflammatory enlargement of the glands beneath the corresponding jaw. The throat affection was of three weeks' standing; but she had suffered from general malaise since suppression of the catamenia, three months before. There was nothing in the throat affection, nor in her general condition, to raise any suspicion of syphilis. After three or four days of sharp febrile symptoms, with much pain in back and limbs, an abundant supply of small, hard, red papules appeared, chiefly on face, neck and forearms. Had small-pox been prevailing at the time, few would, I think, have hesitated in pronouncing this to be a case of it, so closely did the eruption and premonitory symptoms resemble those of variola. As, however, there was no small

pox about, careful search was made for some clue to the real nature of the eruption. Some hard and rather enlarged glands were now discovered in one groin. Very soon she began to have severe nocturnal pains in both clavicles. The papules desquamated and cleared away, leaving behind them dark coppery stains, so that, altogether, the syphilitic origin of the eruption seemed beyond reasonable doubt.

Ringworm (tinea tonsurans) in the scalp is often hard to cure, and, without very elaborate and repeated microscopic examination, beyond what one can often find time to make, it may be hard to say when it is cured. A child has a patch of ringworm on its scalp. You have applied iodine, perchloride of mercury, or some one of the ordinary parasiticides. At the end, say, of a fortnight, the place looks better, but is still somewhat scurfy, and the skin perhaps thicker than natural. How much of this irritation is due simply to the remedies you have been using, and how much to a still vital remnant of the disease, is now and then a hard, and at the same time a pressing, question to settle; as, for instance, when the disease is keeping a boy away from school, greatly to his parents' disgust and impatience. In pale, delicate children I have many times seen the skin of the tinea patch remain thick and scurfy, long after repeated and careful microscopic examination had ceased to find any trace of the parasite. In such cases, if the scalp be allowed entire rest from all local treatment, washing included, for a week or so, it will probably have. got nearly or quite sound.

OXIDE OF ZINC IN DIARRHEA.-By William Berry, M.R.C.S.— Oxide of zinc having been recommended by Dr. Brakenridge of Edinburgh, and Dr. Mackey of Birmingham in the treatment of infantile diarrhoea, as may be seen in the Medical Times and Gazette of February 15, and the British Medical Journal of July 12, I resolved to give it a fair trial, not only in children, but also in the autumnal diarrhoea of adults. So far I have every reason to be satisfied with it as a remedy for diarrhoea in children, especially in those in which the cause appears to be some irritation of the nerve centers presiding over the alimentary canal. In adults I have found it useful in cases of lienteric diarrhoea, but not so beneficial as the aromatic chalk powder of the pharmacopœia in ordinary cases.

THE EMPLOYMENT of Mint FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE MILK.— Dr. Dasara observes that the knowledge of the anti-lactiferous properties of mint appears to have been possessed in very ancient times, since Dioscorides mentions the fact in his works, and subsequent writers have only confirmed his statement.

1. It is an established fact that mint has the power of suppressing the lacteal secretion. 2. The suppression of the secretion takes place at whatever period of lactation the mint is employed. 3. The effect takes place in a very short space of time; according to his experiments, in from three to five days. 4. The suppressive action of mint can be localized to one breast. 5. No danger, nor even any inconvenience, arises, either to the mother or child, either from the use of the mint or from the sup"pression of the secretion.

TREATMENT OF WHOOPING-COUGH WITH QUININE.-Dr. B. F. Dawson has recently read a paper before the Medical Library and Journal Association of New York, on "The treatment of Whooping-Cough with Quinine," of which the following is a sum

mary:

In regard to the administration of so disagreeable a remedy, he found that, though frequently there was some difficulty in getting the children to take it, yet it was exceptional for them to resist after the first two or three doses, and in only a very few did it cause vomiting. The direction to give the children a piece of an orange, or a little sugar five or six minutes after taking the quinine, had doubtless much to do with their seeming willingness to take the "bitter medicine." For his own part he accepts the fungus theory of Dr. Letzerich as the correct explanation of pertussis, and in consequence considers it an affection of the mucous membrane of the pharynx and larynx, and the whooping as simply reflex, and the fact that almost all remedies given for other than their local effects have either signally failed or but partially succeeded, he thinks strengthens this hypothesis.

In conclusion, the speaker felt convinced that if the following rules are carefully observed, few, if any, will be disappointed in their results: