MEDICAL NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12698, 29 October 1904, Page 6 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

THE FEET. Afflictions of the feet are especially distressing in spring and early summer to those J who are obliged to be much on them. The troubles are not due, as bo many suppose, to tight or ill-fitting shoes/but to the excessive exercise of the feet in close shoes without free access of the air to the muscles in action. The bare-footed boy is seldom footsore, but the lad whose feet are encased in close shoes in summer, when the perspiration is abundant, is likely to be a sufferer. One of the remedies for this trouble is to wear low shoes, so that the feat may bo partially ventilated. Next in importance to proper ventilation is proper bathing. All persons ought to bathe and rub their feet vigorously once a day and put on fre?h stockings. Stockings may be aired one day for the next. It is not always necessary that they should be put through water every day. Simply drying and airing them may be enough. Thus two or three pairs of stockings may be worn in rotation for a week. Persons who suffer from excessive perspiration of the feet should be especially particular. They should bathe their feet in cold water, rubbing alcohol between the toes and powder the feet carefully with equal parts of orris root and starch. When a person suffers from cold feet frequent bathing is often efficacious, but the feet ought to be rubbed vigorously after the bath. CHRONIC RHEUMATISM. This is the form most commonly met with in old people, and not infrequently it has never been preceded by a well marked acute attack, but as age increases pains in the joints and muscles, especially at night, become more and more troublesome. The joints are rarely red or tender, as in the acute form, but are swollen and stiff. The stiffness is especially noticeable when the joints have long remained in one position. It affects chiefly the large joints at various times, and gives most trouble to people who are liable to exposure in stormy weather, whose dwellings are damp, whose clothing is scanty, and during sudden changes from warm to cold and damp winds. •'■ Treatment: Little can be accomplished unless the patient secures warm clothing and a dry habitation, although cases occur among those who are abundantly provided in these respects. Hot flannels, or hot-water bags, and wrapping the affected joints in oiled Bilk or guttapercha tissue, usually palliate the local symptoms. When the pains are worst at night iodide of potassium, in doses of seven to fifteen grains, three times daily, in water, will often give rleief. Salicylate" of soda will occasionally be serviceable. Tincture of rhus toxicodendron, in doses of a drop or two in water every couple of hours, is recommended when the lower limbs are affected and are painful while at rest, and the tincture of black cohosh, in doses of three to five, drops in water, every two or three hours, is another remedy which often proves! serviceable. Ammoniated tincture of guniacum, given in halfteasipoonful doses in milk every four to six hours, is an old remedy. Liniments of anv kind, which, together with rubbing, render the skin red at the seat of chronic rheumatic nam, will frequently give some, relief. Small blisters— not more than ah inch 1 square—applied successively at different places.about a tender joint are'sometimes useful.-. > ' • Many' persons,find great relief to follow an'.',.'annual- visit to some' sulphur, spring, where they drink the water and take a series of: baths.

1 The .Turkish bath is among the most valuable remedies when it is obtainable.

CURE OP PNEUMONIA. ;< Everyone knows that (in pneumonia) for a very constant number of days the pneumotoxin circulates in the patient's blood, causing the familiar symptoms ; and then there is produced an anti-toxin, which, in favourable cases, arrests the fever, and totally alter/? the clinical picture. No one lias yet filled a hypodermic syringe with this anti-toxin. When this is "done pneumonia will be robbed of its terrors as surely as diphtheria has been robbed by the anti-toxin which we owe to German and Japanese research.— Physician," in the Pall Midi Gazette. ;