forms have been set aside by the concentrated and elegant preparations of the pharmaceutical chemist.

Within the past few years, the active principles of most vegetable remedies have been isolated, fluid and solid extracts have been brought to a good degree of perfection, and we seem to be rapidly approaching a time when we shall be able to administer remedies with mathematical precision. There are, however, some grave objections to the more common of the modern preparations.

Physicians, generally, complain, and with good reason, of the lack of uniform strength and quality in both fluid and solid extracts. This lack of uniformity, due to a variety of causes which need not be mentioned here, is a serious matter to both doctor and patient. To it may be ascribed much of the deplorable uncertainty in medicine which has culminated in a wide-spread medical skepticism, and it is responsible for the 'disappointment and chagrin which come far too often to the intelligent and careful prescriber.

Alcohol, as a menstruum and preservative, is open to serious objection. Its volatility accounts for the instability of the more diluted preparations, and the continued administration of it even in small doses is fraught with danger. We need then some other agent to take the place of alcohol as a preservative and vehicle, and there are good grounds for believing that we have such an agent in sugar of milk. While alcohol precipitates pepsin and albuminous matter in the gastric juice, sugar of milk promotes rapid assimilation, does not ferment and is gratefully received by sensitive stomachs.

Preparations of all the more important remedies are now being manufactured in this city, in which sugar of milk is used as the vehicle and preservative, the strength being the same as that of a typical fluid extract. We are giving them a trial, and so far have found them most constant and reliable.

We clip from The Pharmacist of June an outline of the process of preparation, with brief mention of their advantages over ordinary fluid extracts:

"Exhaust sixteen troy ounces of a crude drug; evaporate to a solid extract; carefully desiccate and mix same with

sufficient sugar of milk to bring the whole, when powdered, to sixteen troy ounces.

During the operation, the percentage of solid extract should be noted, and, in the case of the more powerful remedies, an estimation of its alkaloids resorted to.

"The advantages of these extracts over ordinary fluid extracts would appear to be the following:

They would be of uniform strength, having the quantity of solid extracts and percentage of active principles ascertained and capable of being prescribed with great accuracy and precision.

"In cases where even a small proportion of alcohol would be objectionable, the extracts would be found of the utmost value, the sugar of milk readily helping in the assimilation process.

"The advantages over the ordinary solid extracts are various, and suggest numerous applications, by reason of the minute state of division induced by the trituration of the sugar of milk with the drug.

"1. They are stable at all temperatures and under all conditions; they will not swell, ferment or waste.

"2. They are always of a uniform and convenient consistence, and are not open to the objection of becoming again solid, as the powdered extracts do.

"3.

Their divisibility is always effected instantaneously, which is very desirable, as saving time and insuring accuracy in dispensing."

MORTUARY STATISTICS.

We have received a circular from Francis A. Walker, Superintendent of Census, inclosing a little book, a copy of which has been sent to each practicing physician in the United States whose name and address are known at the Census office. Those who have not received it are requested to send their address to Washington, and they will be immediately supplied with the book. The purpose of the book is that a record may be kept of all deaths during the year-June 1, 1879, to May

31, 1880-at the close of which the register is to be returned to the census office. The book is arranged so that little labor is required to fill out the blanks, and it is to be hoped that this effort to improve the vital statistics of the United States will be appreciated by the profession and receive their careful

attention.

Any physician who fails to comply with so reasonable a request made in the interest of humanity, and of the profession as well, will be wholly without excuse.

SPERMATORRHEA.

A correspondent writes for the best treatment for the above disease. As the trouble may arise from one or more of various causes, and no two cases are exactly alike, it is difficult, if not impossible, to map out a treatment which will be of general application. We take the opportunity, therefore, to recommend to our correspondent, and to all others who may be interested in the subject, a valuable little work, "Bartholow on Spermatorrhoea," published by William Wood & Co., of New

York.

We have found staphysagria, damiana, gelseminum, belladonna and the bromides to be effective agents in the treatment of many forms of the disease. Most of these, Most of these, with many other agents, are recommended in the work referred to.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Our readers will not fail to remember the very able and interesting article upon "The Cure of Hemorrhoids by the Hypodermic Syringe," by Edmund Andrews, A. M., M. D., in the June number of THE MEDICAL TIMES. The following extract from The Medical Record, in regard to the article, is of interest, as showing some of the characteristics of two widely-differing classes of men. The writer of the first letter is a typical specimen of the bigoted, self-confident, hypercritical regular," to whom truth is unsavory if it comes through any but "regular" channels. The writer of the

second letter, although classed with the same school of medicine, manifests the spirit of a true eclectic. Were all physicians like the liberal, truth-loving Prof. Andrews, the mission: of Eclecticism would be well nigh accomplished.

QUACKS AND REGULARS.

(To the Editor of The Medical Record.)

SIR: The Record of May 10 reports Prof. EdmundAndrews' paper on the treatment of hemorrhoids by injection. The Doctor speaks of having corresponded "with a large number of itinerant doctors-many of them the veriest quacks on this subject, and has obtained statistics of numerous cases. The paper describes the treatment-which I will not recapitulate to have been very successful in the vast majority of cases, and endeavors to prove that we are indebted to quacks for valuable scientific information.

I desire merely to ask if it is customary for "regular practioners to compile their statistics of cases from the records of quacks? Yours truly,

SOLON B. STONE, U. S. Army.

FORT BOWER, A. T., June 9, 1879.

Of course we do, Mr. Editor, whenever the quacks present any truth worth studying. We know that some of the brightest discoveries in medicine were made by empirics, and it is our glory that we seize on them and appropriate them to the benefit of mankind.

Here was a body of quacks possessing a new treatment for hemorrhoids. They acquired an enormous reputation, and made their plan sweep the country with all the power of a great popular movement. They made tens of thousands of experiments with such eclat and success, that in whole regions they almost monopolized the treatment of piles. I saw that this immense mass of experiment was too valuable to be lost, and determined to collect the facts; sift the results, and put the whole on record for the study of the profession. Truth is immaculate, no matter whence obtained.

EDMUND ANDREWS, M. D.

No. 6 SIXTEENTH STREET, Chicago.

CORRESPONDENCE.

CONSERVATIVE SURGERY.

MR. EDITOR,—If you will allow me a sufficient space in your journal, I will give some of the reasons why the "Eclectics," as a rule, cannot boast of their heroic surgical operations. And when they do have to resort to the knife, why their mortification is so great that true surgery failed to restore their patient whole and not maimed for life by the loss of limbs. We can call to mind quite a number of persons who are compelled to go maimed through life that we are just as confident as we can be of anything in the future, that they might have been restored without loss of any important part of the body, had proper surgical skill and time been used, instead of amputation. And, of course, the editors of that particular locality would have been deprived of a paid local by the heroic M. D., who had amputated just in time to save the life of Mr. A or B. Two years ago, in July, a farmer ran a nail into his foot, by jumping out of the mow on the barn floor. He was treated by both doctors and neighbors, who all volunteered, as is generally the case in such troubles. They recommended cat-tail, flag-root, black-cat skins, cow manure-fresh, and the Lord only knows the thousand-and-one other remedies that were applied. The man still lived, but by the beginning of winter, four or more months after, his system began to yield to the influences of the injury. He was admonished that amputation was the last resort. A consultation of allopathic physi

cians so decided. We were called to see him to get our opinion also. The case presented a sad spectacle. The whole foot seemed involved. There was a dark sanious discharge from perhaps half a dozen different places, and some of the metatarsal bones, or fragments of them, partially decayed, were protruding from some of these openings, and new abscesses forming and very painful, besides a general failure of his constitution. Altogether his case assumed a very serious aspect. We knew that if we made a failure our ears would burn for months, as it was in an extra allopathic neighborhood. However,