This liquid must be injected under the skin, not pure, but one-half diluted with water recently boiled and cold. If the injection be painful, the liquid should be further diluted with water (10 to 40 drops). All vessels employed, as well as the syringe, cannula, skin of the patient, and fingers of operator should be carefully washed in 2-per-cent. car bolized water before and after injection. At least 2 grammes of the diluted fluid should be daily injected, and even 5, 6, or S grammes, diluted, or else 4 to S grammes should be injected in several places twice a week, preferably into the abdomen, between the shoulders, or into the buttocks. The treatment should be continued three weeks, and for some affections, such as myelitis and sclerosis of the cord, the time cannot be limited, but may be two or three months. Water should never be added to the liquid in the flask. The injections should be sus pended if untoward effects are observed. The remedy may also be given per rectum, but diluted with water to avoid local irritation.
Another method of preparing a steril ized liquid is the following: The tes ticles are macerated in glycerin for twenty-four hours, and then filtered into a second apparatus through Chardin paper, which has been sterilized in car bon dioxide under a pressure of fifty atmospheres for three or four hours. It is not certain that the combined action of concentrated glycerin and carbon dioxide under a pressure of fifty atmos pheres will result in perfect sterilization; therefore the use of extracts heavily charged with glycerin is persisted in. The new extracts are more active, as has been shown by experiment. The liquid should not be injected pure, but diluted with two or three times its volume of 1-per-cent. salt solution, or carbolized water, 1 per 1000. This solution should be made very slowly, so that an intimate mixture may be made. (D'Arsonval.) Physiological Action. — Beyond the fact that it is capable of acting as a stimulant of vital energy and thus, per haps, antagonize, to some extent, the de bilitating influence of morbid processes, it is probable that suggestion plays the most important role in the results ob tained. This, at least, is the opinion of the great majority of clinicians.
In the great majority of cases the or ganic extracts act, only by suggestion; sterilized water produced exactly the same effects as brain-substance, when injected in neurasthenia and hemiplegia.
Negel (Bull. de la Soc. des Mad. et Nat. de Jassy, Nov. 1, '92).
If the injections were followed by the use of neutral glycerin an improvement took place. The same was the case in patients treated only by injections of diluted glycerin or of phosphate of soda, as well as in those to whom the broiled organs were administered at meals. Is not this the best proof that the effects are due to suggestion? Guelpa (Le Bull.
Apr. 16, '93).
Experiments with transfusion of nerv ous extract according to the methods of d'Arsonval and Constantin Paul, in ten patients in the asylum at Reggio. These patients were all of the curable class, and in no case was there recovery, and in only one any permanent improvement under the treatment. The greatest effects from its use are to be looked for in those cases where a physical element comes in play, and that its action is mainly through mental suggestion: an opinion vigorously sustained by Massa longo. C. Rossi (Rivista Sperimentale di Freniatria, etc., vol. six, No. 4).
The method acts mainly by suggestion. The eases in which benefit had been ob tained were rare and did not prove the antidotal virtue of the medication. Sper min is a vital principle scattered through the entire organism. The introduction of spermin into the system would be indi cated when the elements of the economy contained it in smaller quantity than normal. Fiirbringer (Deutsche med. Zeit., Mar. 15, '941.
[Suggestion plays a considerable role in this method, when the patients to whom it addresses itself are considered. Its author is wrong in exaggerating its value. It has been said to cure tabes, then cholera, then cancer of the stomach, not to mention a trifling disease like diabetes. Charcot, however, waited in vain for the cure of a single ease of true ataxia in his service. How could it be otherwise where such organic lesions were concerned? That which is de stroyed is lost, and all the organic liquids are of no avail. Besides, even the exact agent of these liquids is to such a point unknown that, according to some, it is the phosphate of soda and according to others phosphorus. The truth is that injections of organic liquids have generally a tonic effect, but here their ambition should end. DUJARDIN