To illustrate, I will take a case of destruction of the left labyrinth due to mumps. Patient, a school boy of thirteen, was in bed ten days with mumps. Upon attempting to arise from bed, he was seized with an attack of vertigo and noticed dimished hearing in the left ear. He had several violent attacks of nausea, vomiting and dizzi ness. Examination. Patient was found lying upon the right side. Spontaneous nystagmus to the right. Quick movement of the head increased the nystagmus and caused vertigo. Had had several attacks of nausea and vomiting lasting for an hour or more. Falls to the left. Turning test not done. Caloric negative on the left side. Galvanic not used. Fistula symptom negative. Nausea and vomiting present. Almost complete deafness in left ear. Temperature normal. No headache. Examination Ten Days Later. Spontaneous nystagmus to the right, but weaker. Dizzy spells upon quick motion of the head lasted about three days. Dizziness practically gone, No spontaneous falling. Turning test. Nystagmus of ten seconds to the left. Twenty seconds to the right. Examination Four Months Later. Spontaneous nystagmus gone. Attacks of dizziness gone. Turning test, nystagmus lasting 15 seconds to left. Nystag mus lasting 20 seconds to right. Caloric negative, left; diminished, right. Galvanic diminished, left side. Fistula symptom, negative. No vomiting. Deafness left ear. 412 State Bank Bldg. Diagnosis of Nephritis Engelbach in concluding his paper draws the following de ductions: 1. Urine analysis alone is no criterion for the lesion or function of the kidney. 2. In many cases of nephritis having marked urinary findings the function of the kidney is not greatly diminished. 3. In probably 50 per cent of the cases of secondary contracted or interstitial kidneys in which the urine may be practically normal, there is a marked decrease of renal sufficiency. 4. A diagnosis of nephritis or exclusion of such a diagnosis should never be made on the urinary findings alone. 5. Secondary changes in other organs due to nephritis are frequently diagnosed and treated as the primary lesion. 6. Complete general and physical examination, functional tests of the kidney, the course and the reaction to treatment should all be given consideration in the diagnosis of this dis ease. The latest serum "which successfully combats tuberculosis" is one prepared from the blood of pigs, proposed by Dr. J. H. Burgan of Minneapolis. It is claimed that this has been found, efficacious in 300 cases. We understand that the doctor is a physician in good standing, a member of the Hennepin County Medical Society. ABSTRACTS. Burn From Golf-Ball Contents. L. W. Crigler, New York (Journal A. M. A., April 26), tells about a boy of ten who, while dissecting the contents of a golf ball, punctured the contained rubber bag and some of the fluid spurted into his right eye. The result was a typical caustic burn of the cornea and conjunctiva going on apparently to softening and destruction of the eyeball. Improvement, however, followed on the relief of the more aggravated symptoms and the cornea became more transparent and the necrosis of the conjunctiva cicatrized. An analysis of the paste in the center of a golf ball, said to be similar to the one causing the accident, showed that it consisted of a mixture of barium sulphate, soap and a free alkali (sodium hydroxid, 2.4 per cent.) Dixon's Tuberculin. According to Dixon a peculiar branched form of the tubercle bacillus develops when the bacillus is grown at an elevated temperature. Grown under these circumstances the tubercle bacilli may become non-acid-fast, which is ascribed to loss of the waxy envelope. According to Dixon experiments on guinea-pigs show that the branching, non-acid-fast forms are less virulent than the original cultures from which they are produced and that they induce the development of marked resistance to lethal doses of virulent tubercle bacilli. Dixon has developed tuberculins for practical purposes consisting on the one hand of watery extracts of tubercle bacilli and on the other of suspensions of "degreased bacilli," the theory being that in this way are obtained antigens of little toxicity, but of good antigenic virtue. Jour. A. M. A., March 20, 1913, pp. 993 and 1002. Parasite of Syphilis. A. K. Detweiler, Omaha (Journal A. M. A., April 19), notices the recent publication by Ross (Brit. Med. Jour., Dec. 14, 1912, p. 1651) of his "jelly method" and its findings and says that he has repeated the technic and found the parasites and followed most of the phases as described by Ross. When lymph scrapings from chancres can not be obtained the examination of the peripheral blood will suffice, though it takes more time and the organisms are not so numerous. The picture is quite different from the ordinary blood-picture otherwise obtained from syphilitics. The parasites appear as small round, oval or pear-shaped copper-colored bodies containing fine granules, more or less deeply stained and having at times a so-called vacuole or nucleus. The jelly is made as follows: "agar 1 gm., sodium chlorid 0.5 gm., distilled water 100 c.c.' Boil, filter and add 4 c.c. Unna's polychrome methyleneblue (Gruebler) and keep in test-tubes. When required for use, melt, pour a small quantity on a microscope slide, spread into a thin film and allow to cool and set. Take a drop of the material to be examined on a cover-glass and mix with the same quantity of a 3 per cent. solution of sodium citrate and invert on the hardened jelly. After several minutes the leukocytes and organisms take up the stain rather suddenly and the slide is ready for study with the oil immersion lens. The activity may last for an hour or more but finally the color fades and they die away." The article is illustrated. Alcohol and Racial Degeneration. Most discussions of alcohol are frankly partisan and therefore partial. An account may be entirely accurate and yet fail to be just, because of what it leaves unsaid. In any event propaganda must be preceded by facts and these must, in turn be considered in a spirit of fairness and with due regard to conflicting possibilities. One of the important and widely discussed phases of the question involves the effect of alcohol on the offspring. Records of degenerates, statistics on insanity and other diseases have been gathered in abundance and contributed as evidence in one way or another. Statistics are proverbially uncertain unless they are collected with due intelligence and interpreted with reasonable precaution, hence it is always gratifying to have observations substantiated by properly controlled experiments on lower animals. For this purpose, Professor Stockard of the Cornell University Medical College, New York, has undertaken a study of racial degeneration in lower animals treated with alcohol. In Stockard's experiments alcoholic treatment was given to guinea-pigs by an inhalation method .Alcoholic males were then mated with normal females. In the maternal test alcoholic females were paired with untreated males. The outcome of these investigations, says The Journal of the American Medical Association, has been convincing in their demonstration that alcohol may affect the offspring through either parent. Though the animals were never completely intoxicated, they were in a state of chronic alcoholism. Nine matings of normal animals in the same group gave nine living litters of seventeen vigorous individuals. Out of forty-two matings of alcoholized animals only seven young' survived and five of these were runts. In the paternal tests there were abortions, still-born litters and early deaths; the maternal test resulted much the same; when both parents were alcoholic, in most cases the matings resulted in no offspring, very early abortions, or still-born litters. The single offspring born living from fourteen matings of alcoholic parents died in convulsions at an early age. In general the deaths of these unhealthy young followed symptoms of nervous disorders. Commercial Sodium Salicylate. W. S. Hilpert, Chicago (Journal A. M. A., April 12), gives the results of the investigation made by the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association on the purity of commercial sodium salicylate. These investigations have been made because some manufacturers have claimed superiority for that made from oil of wintergreen or oil of birch, and some physicians have endorsed these claims. "Thus far two reports have been published: (1) the critical review of the literature by Eggleston, which showed that in spite of the claims and intimations of some manufacturers the evidence in favor of salicylates made from natural oils is actually very slight and that the evidence against artificial salicylate is even less: and (2) the pharmacologic study by Waddell which showed that there is no difference in the physiologic action of the synthetic and "natural" sodium salicylates. In this paper, the author explains the method of investigation and states that results indicate that except for some difference in color of aqueous solutions, all brands examined are essentially alike in properties and composition and "seem to warrant the conclusion that the cheapest commercial synthetic sodium salicylate is the equal of the higher-priced brands of the synthetic kind or the costly "natural product." The Mentally Defective Child. (By Sidney I. Schwab, M. D., in Pediatrics, March 1913.) In looking over the history of idiocy and inbecility, we are struck with this fact: That the two most important factors in |