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taken to wrap the child up warmly in some loose shawl orother similar article which is free from irritative dye.Having regard to these considerations, vaccinators are

urged to discourage the use of so-called " vaccination

shields," and to advise some other means of preventingirritation by means of clothing, where this may be necessary.

INJECTION OF DEFIBRINATED BLOOD HYPO-DERMICALLY.

DR. OscAn SILBERMANN, of Breslau, has published anaccount of two cases of severe anaemia which he treated

successfully by the subcutaneous injection of defibrinatedhuman blood. The first case was that of a little boy ofeight, who after measles and whooping - cough becamevery anaemic, there being a systolic mitral murmur,vomiting, and fainting fits. Iron and other drugs weretried and proved useless, so forty grammes of defibrinatedhuman blood were injected under the skin of the thigh,and a rapid improvement resulted. The injections weretherefore repeated, and the child was completely cured.The second case was that of a girl of eleven, who had beenreduced to a highly anaemic condition by profuse bleedingfrom a rectal polypus. There were in her case, as in thatof the boy, a systolic mitral murmur, vomiting, and faintingfits. Fifty grammes of defibrinated human blood were

injected subcutaneously into the thigh, and rapidly broughtabout a cure. The author remarks that the greatest caremust be taken to disinfect the hands, the instrument, andthe cutaneous surface, both of the patient and of the

person who gives the blood. The blood must be completelydefibrinated and kept at a temperature of 39° C.; also,during and after the injection, the surface should be rubbedor stroked in an upward direction.

PROFESSOR VON BERGMANN.

PROFESSOR voN BERGMANN, the director of the Kaenig-liche Chirurgische Universitats-Klinik " lately celebratedthe twenty-fifth anniversary of his career as surgeon.Born in Livland, he passed his examination at the universityin Dorpat. His education was the usual one of surgeons.Following his academical studies, he travelled for some

time, stopping in Berlin and Vienna. He then began prac-tising as assistant at the surgical hospital in Dorpat, underthe direction of Professor von Adelmann. But it was the

wars of the years 1866 and 1870 which considerably furtheredhim in his surgical skilL In 1866 Bergmann was employedin the Prussian service in the war hospital at Eceniginhofin Bohemia, and during the war with France he was chiefsurgeon in the barracks of Karlsruhe and Mannheim. In

1877 he went into the field with the Russian army of theDanube as consulting physician. Bergmann has given hisexperience of battle surgery in a series of writings. He has

specially contributed articles on excision of the joints; hisoperation in the knee was first brought into more generalpractice in war surgery by Langenbeck and Stromeyerduring the Schleswig-Holstein war of 1851. It was in theRusso-Turkish war that Bergmann first tried the antiseptictreatment of Lister, which had previously not been used in warsurgery. Besides the writings founded upon his practice andsurgical experience, Bergmann has written a series of purelytheoretical investigations, which are principally a continua-tion of Lister’s inquiries into antiseptics. These articles werebegun during the year 1860, and have not yet been concluded.With regard to septic infection and wound fever, Bergmannbelieves it to be caused by pepsin, " an organic azotic bodywhich he has found in decayed yeast, and which, whenintroduced into the organism of an animal, calls forth thesymptoms of septic infection." Later experiments by

Schmiedeberg and Angerer in Wiirzburg are calculatedto confirm Bergmann’s theory. To complete the pictureof the Professor’s literary labours we must mention

his works on Kopfverletrungen, which appeared in the" Deutsche Chirurgie " of 1880, and also his

" Krankheiten der

Lymphdriisen (Diseases of the Glands) in Gerhardt’s" Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten." Very original washis first larger work entitled " Die Lepra in Livland," whichwas published in 1867. Leprosy as an epidemic is metwith only in Norway and Sweden, and far more seldomin the East sea frontier. In his book Bergmann makesknown all that he has ascertained about leprosy in his nativecountry. He remained in Dorpat until 1878; he then wentto Wiirzburg as the substitute of Linhardt. In 1882 hesettled in Berlin as director of the " Koenigliche Chirur-

gische Universitats-Klinik," succeeding Bernhardt von Lan-genbeck. His lectures on surgery are listened to with muchinterest by the students, who term after term crowd hislecture-hall to the doors.

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THE EFFECTS OF COLD SALINE AND FRESHWATER BATHS ON FEVER.

THE treatment of fevers by baths, of which a good dealhas been heard during the last few years, is of course byno means novel, being mentioned by Hippocrates, Galen,Celsus, and other classical writers. Currie, in 1787, obtainedexcellent results by treating "typhus" in this way, andseveral continental physicians shortly afterwards followedCurrie’s example. Within the last five-and-twenty yearsmany careful observations have been made with the assist-ance of modern instruments of precision, as the clinicalthermometer and the sphygmograph, on the effect of coldbaths-that is to say, baths considerably below the tem-perature of the body-in cases of fever, and especially oftyphoid, both of an ordinary kind and where the tempera-ture was abnormally high; and papers on the subject havebeen published by Brand, Ziemssen, Wilson Fox. Bartels,Jurgensen, Hagenbach, Liebermeister, Mosler, Treskoff, Ches-nokoff, Nikolski, Krukenberg, Stohr, Ringer, Bradbury, andothers. Senator added to the water of the bath two poundsof potash and half a pound of soda, but did not, however, findthat these materially improved the results. He then applieda sinapism before putting patients in the bath, and obtainedbetter results. Winternitz then tried the effect of rubbing thesurface pretty energetically just before the bath, and showed,by means of comparative experiments, that while after asimple bath the temperature of a patient was lowered 02° C.,after a bath of similar temperature and duration precededby friction it was lowered 08° C. Last year Dr. Liskus, ofSt. Petersburg, published the results of observations on

thirty " parallel baths at 20° R. (870 F) " with and withoutfriction, showing that the temperature, both in the rectumand axilla, was more distinctly lowered and for a longertime where friction preceded the bath than where it wasnot employed. Quite recently Dr. Rabinovich has publishedthe results of some very extensive investigations made inthe Nicholaevsky Military Hospital on the comparativeeffects of salt and fresh water baths on the temperature,pulse, respiration, and muscular power of twenty-sixtyphoid fever patients to whom he gave 141 baths. Hefinds that saline baths have more effect in lowering thetemperature than fresh water ones, the average differencebeing rather more than a tenth. It is especially greatduring the first half-hour after the bath, but is perceptiblefor fully three hours. Evening baths, both saline and fresh,produced a greater reduction than those given in the morn-ing. Saline baths produced a more marked effect on bothpulse and temperature than fresh water ones. The augmenta-tion of the muscular force as tested by the dynamometerwas also greater with the former class of baths.