ON CATCHING COLD.-This abstract is part of a popular lecture recently delivered in London by Dr. E. Symes Thompson, clipped from the Evening Post. Physicians have much to answer for from their neglect to explain in familiar ways the principles underlying the etiology of ordinary catarrhs. If more stress were laid on the risk of going into overheated rooms, instead of coming out of them, people would become wiser and healthier. Ninetenths of the ordinary annoying colds are taken in that way.

"In regard to prevention, he deprecated too much fear of catching cold and the dread of the least exposure to cold air, as being very likely to bring about that tender hothouse-plant condition so favorable to inducing the evil one wished to avoid. Exposure to cold air, he insisted, does no harm, except under the condition of its moving rapidly in a small space. Thus exposure to strong wind in the open air does no harm, while a Portugese proverb said with a great deal of truth, if you catch cold from a draught through a keyhole you had better make your will. It was draughts coming with great rapidity through small openings which were so especially injurious. Living constantly in very impure air made people very sensitive to cold, and ill-ventilated bed-rooms had much to answer for in this respect. It was a mistake to suppose that night air, except in aguish places, was obnoxious, and every one, while avoiding a direct draught, should keep the bed-room window slightly opened. In clothing, vary the character and amount according to the season, avoiding the extremes of always being swathed in flannel no matter what the temperature; or of never wearing flannel at all. Of the curative treatment the "dry method" had once been in great vogue. This consisted of abstaining from all fluids for twenty-four, thirty-six, or forty-eight hours, and where rigorously followed at the outset the cold was generally stopped. He would not recommend this treatment to any but those in thoroughly good health, for in the delicate or the sickly the derangement of the vital organs, especially the liver and the digestive organs, by this abstention from fluids, brought about evils more serious than the cold. Another method was the maintenance of an equable warm temperature, and where this could be done the skin was soon restored to a more natural condition, and the evil was relieved. The mucous lining, however, could be more rapidly relieved by inducing the skin to perspire vigorously, and if this was done at the outset the cold would be checked. This could be done by a hot bath; VOL. XII.-No. 12.-90.

or, very much better, by a Turkish bath, for while in a hot-water bath it was not possible to endure a greater heat than 100 to 103 degrees, in a Turkish bath a temperature of 150 to 200 degrees could be sustained without discomfort. Vigorous perspiration was thus induced, the blood was drawn from the internal organs to the surface, much of its impurity eliminated, and if the cold douche was avoided and the skin was got thoroughly to work, the patient walked away in an hour, well."

The writer once relieved a violent coryza in his own case in this way. On rising he swallowed a full saline cathartic, inducing watery stools. During the day he reduced the fluids ingested to the minimum. In the afternoon he took an ordinary hot bath, keeping the temperature up to the highest endurable point and remaining in the water to the verge of faintness. Vigorously rubbing himself dry completed the cure.

CREMATION.-The New York Evening Post published the following editorial, October 24, 1855. During the twenty years that have elapsed, the idea-which, on sanitary grounds, certainly is commendable-has gained adherents. As the argument is as sound now as then, and as the style is charming, we reproduce it:

"The burning of a dead body at Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, as a preliminary to sepulture, seems to have occasioned a good deal of excitement at that place, and one of the Milwaukee daily prints inveighs against the act as if it were a crime. We have never heard of any other example of such a mode of disposing of the dead in this country, by the act of man; although Providence sometimes sees fit, in the conflagrations which occur in cities and elsewhere, to permit human bodies to be reduced to ashes by fire.

"For our part, we are very far from viewing the subject in the light in which the Milwaukee print regards it. It seems to us that any mode of disposing of the remains of the dead, which is convenient, which is not prejudicial to the public health, nor inconsistent to the solemnity of death, is perfectly proper, and cannot be rightfully interfered with. At sea the practice is to attach weights to the dead, and sink them to the bottom, there to become the prey of the creatures of the deep. On the land they are placed in vaults, to be devoured by worms, or laid deep in the earth, to be resolved into the elements by a slower decom

position. Either of these methods has something in it at which the imagination revolts, and which invests death with certain physical horrors, diverting the mind from the more important aspect in which it should be regarded-the great spiritual change it brings with it. The process of cremation comes in, immediately after life has departed, to intercept chemical decomposition and the ravages of inferior living creatures. It resolves the body into the elements to which it must finally return, by a more rapid change, which is neither offensive to the senses nor shocking to the imagination. There is nothing in it incompatible with the reverence which the heart naturally yields to the spectacle of death, nor with the affection with which we regard the remains of our friends. The ancients gathered the ashes of the funeral pyre into an urn, which was as dear and as sacred to the surviving friends of the dead as a grave is now.

"The most civilized and polished nations of antiquity practiced the mode of cremation, and there are still many who hold that they were guided to it by the same good sense and fortunate combination of the mental faculties which achieved their civilization. How it happened that in embracing Christianity they laid this custom aside and adopted that of a ruder nation is easily explained. Their first Christian teachers, who conducted their funerals, were of the Jewish race, and would naturally prefer the mode of sepulture common in their native country.

"Another reason is sometimes given, namely, that the early Christian converts were in daily expectation of the end of the world, and of the resurrection, and could not think of consuming by fire a frame into which the breath of life would again be so soon breathed. They laid away in chambers of the rock those who had fallen asleep, in the hope of a speedy re-awakening. There is nothing, however, in the process of cremation inconsistent with any of the doctrines of Christianity, as the western journalist whose invectives we have quoted in this sheet strangely seems to suppose. If there be, what shall we do with the ashes of the martyrs and confessors of the Christian faith who have perished at the stake, and whose mode of death the church counts among her glories? Their ashes, and the ashes of those who from time to time are destroyed by the conflagration of dwellings, are as much in God's hand as the dust of those who decay in their coffins.

"If the practice of cremation had been general we suppose

there is no doubt that the health of the large towns of the Old World would have been more secure than it has been for centuries past. Crowds of the dead, festering in church-yards and cemeteries, amidst inhabited dwellings and beside thronged streets, have been a potent cause of distempers, which is now generally recognized. The law interferes and bids the citizen bury his dead at a distance from the haunts of men, except, perhaps, at certain seasons of the year, when there is supposed to be less danger. Here there is a clear recognition of the common mode of burial as dangerous to public health. The ordinary process of animal decomposition is nauseous, unwholesome, infectious. Graves casually or purposely opened have smitten down with their exhalations those who opened them, and diffused pestilence. The process of decomposition by fire, on the other hand, is a cleansing and purifying process.

"We have put these considerations together as some antidote to the unreflecting intolerance which so violently condemns the example set the other day in Milwaukee. It is not an example which is likely to be followed, and the aid of legislation, which is invoked to prevent it from being copied, is quite unnecessary. Mr. Pfeil, when about to place the body of his wife, in compliance with her dying request, on the funeral pyre, remarked that there was no law in Wisconsin forbidding the act. We are not aware that the practice of cremation is against the law anywhere. The body of Shelley was burned on a funeral pyre in despotic Tuscany, without any interference from the authorities. If it be intended to attract attention to the practice and awaken inquiry and open the way for making it eventually a frequent one, the most effectual means will be to pass laws prohibiting it, for the question could hardly be investigated without some persons becoming persuaded that the ancient method of the Romans is most conformable to civilized ideas."

VERTIGO AS A BRAIN SYMPTOM.-Vertigo is considered an early indication of several cerebral affections, but it is well to remember that at a recent meeting of the Clinical Society of London (Brit. Med. Jour., Oct. 31, 1874,) Mr. Carter and Dr. Hughlings Jackson adduce cases showing that this symptom, with others simulating brain-disease, may be caused by overstrained convergence of the eyes in short-sighted persons reading much without spectacles.-Medical Record, Feb. 6, 1875, p. 93.

BROMIDE OF POTASSIUM IN HYPERTROPHY OF THE SPLEEN.-New Remedies, Jan., 1875, p. 23, quotes from The Clinic of Sept. 15, 1874, an article by Dr. Ch. Bernard in Bul. Gen. Therap. of which the following is an abstract:

Enlargements of the spleen are very common in malarial districts in Algeria, often compressing the intestines, embarrassing the circulation and determining serious accidents, sometimes death. The disease is also very obstinate, resisting every form of medication known to the present day. The following treatment has not failed once in the thirty-eight times it was used:

The volume of the spleen augments not only after the access of fever. There are hypertrophies which have never been preceded by the least febrile movement. In these quinia produces no effect. There are others caused by and subsiding with intermittents, which, however, do not arrive at a perfect cure, and each recurrence increases the splenic engorgement. In these we cannot rely on febrifuges but must have recourse to a medication degogeante, resolutive. There are also cases where quinia entirely cures the fever but in which the engorgement remains untouched.

Splenic intumescence sometimes is enormous, hard, painful to pressure, even to touch, gives a sense of resistance, reaches beyond the linea alba, crowds back the intestines, pushes up the heart and left lung, sometimes interfering with their functions, takes up the whole left hypochondrium and occasionally a great part of the pelvis. The following case furnished M. Bernard the indications that led to his new treatment, after he had frequently failed in obtaining satisfactory results:

M. A, a very intelligent man, had inhabited the plain of the Mitidja for fifteen or twenty years, during which he had often been attacked with intermittent fever, which had exhausted his constitution. He had several relapses with cerebral accidents, very painful and very disturbing, with delirium, nervous agitations, etc. The spleen was enormous, hard and greatly hypertrophied. Different kinds of treatment had often been ineffectually tried.

In the last year he was seized with an accession of very violent nervous attacks, for which three grammes (forty-five grains) in one potion was given daily. On the tenth day the spleen was diminished one-half. The treatment was continued twenty-five days up to complete restoration of spleen. In repeating the experiment the same result was always obtained.