In dysentery of the newborn suiall doses of calomel, flushing the colon with a weak solution of creolin, and giving the child nothing but pure cold water prove rapidly effective. Gibson (St. Louis Med. Era, Sept., 1900).
In Natal success attended the use of mercury perchloride in mixture with bis muth and opium. Milk was found un suitable. Beef-tea ancl bread with butter satisfy, and leave a residue which ap pears to cause but little colic or rectal irritation. Post-mortem observations show that great risk must frequently accompany the giving of rectal injec tions, especially when combined with abdominal massage. The co-existence of enteric fever with dysentery was more than. once unexpectedly disclosed in the mortuary tent. W. Watkins Pitchford (Brit. Med. Jour., Nov. 1, 1900).
For any of these measures to be effect ive in amcebic cases, they must be tinued until the amcebre disappear. In order to decide this an intermission of a couple of days is made in the treat ment. If at the end of this time amwbaa are still present the procedures must be renewed. In the gangrenous cases little good can be looked for from the injec tions, and, indeed, they are not without danger of precipitating a fatal tion by causing perforation of the al ready-much-injured intestine.
When tenesmus is slight an enema of thin starch containing 11, to 1 drachm of laudanum affords great relief; for the more severe tormina and tenesmus the hypodermic injection of morphine is the only satisfactory remedy.
Case of colostomy- for the cure of dys entery. The idea. of the operation is: (1) to give the bowel a complete rest by not allowing the keen] mass to pass over it, and (2) irrigation can be carried out with better success. Previous to the
operation the patient suffered consider able pain, with high fever; these sub sided two days after the operation, and ameba eon also disappeared. W. N. Sullivan (Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., Dee. 8, 1900).
During the period of convalescence tonics containing some form of iron and a nourishing, but unirritating, diet are to be ordered. The recuperation of the patient's strength is to be facilitated by these and other well-known means.
_Method of obtaining and testing therapeutic SC1'11111 for use in dysentery. The borse or ass WILS used as the im mune animal, an antiseptic (carbolic acid) was added to the serum, and the testing was carried out on guinea-pigs and mice. The author has treated 470 eases of dysentery since 1897; of these, 258 had the serum. It was injected into the side of the chest, and the dose varied frotn 6 to 10 cubic centimetres in mild eases to 15 to 20 cubic centimetres in serious ones. Usually the site of the injection showed no change. An erup tion around the site occasionally fol lowed (37 per cent.); this was very rarely found all over the body (2.5 per cent.), and sometimes there was pain in the joints (knee, elbow, wrist). If the treatment was carried out in the early stages of the disease, the diarrlura dis appeared and in two or three days nor mal stools were passed; but, if it was given at the time when the stools were nmeo-sanguineous, the diarrhcea was only diminished, and the duration of the illness was somewhat shortened. With the serum the mortality was from 12.5 to 8.5 per cent.; with medicinal treat molt it was 35.6 per cent. K. Shiga (Brit. Med. Jour., from Sei-i-Kwai Med. Jour., June 30, 1901).