WHAT THE DOCTORS SAY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 19, 7 May 1892, Page 474

WHAT THE DOCTORS SAY.

The reappearance of influenza in Roumania has led Dr. Rabener to use again and to make know the method of treatment which gave him such surprising results two years ago, and which consists in the administration of creoline. It may be well to say that creoline is an antiseptic and deodorizer of the highest order, and that it has no harmful effects on man. It is a species of patent remedy, or at any rate a compound and not very well defined substance, coming from the distillation of a certain variety of coal and supplied to the trade in the form of a dark brown liquid >.f syrupy consistency, smelling like tar and giving a milky emulsion when mixed with water. Cieoline is considered by Dr. Rabener as a panacea for influenza ; he claims that it is not only a specific remedy, but also an efficacious way of preserving one's self from the disease, a fact which he proved on himself both two years ago and during the present epidemic. Whereas his colleagues and the entire personnel of the Roman hospital contracted influenza, he alone was preserved from it, thanks to the internal use of creoline.

Dr. Rabener prefers to give this preparation in the form of pills, each one containing a centigramme of active substance. The ordinary dose is three pills during the day ; twelve to twenty-five of them can be taken by grown persons, according to the case. In the catarrhal form of the complaint, and in bronchitis, laryngitis and even pneumonia brought on by it, as well as in tuberculosis, he always recommends, besides the pills, inhalations of steam coming from an apparatus to which a few tablespoonfuls of a ten per cent, solution of creoline have been added. These inhalations should be made twice a day. DANGERS OF THE BARBER SHOP. The frequency with which the contagion of parasitic sycosis (minute eruptions) has been traced to its source in a barber’s shop is almost characteristic of the disease. Our attention has been directed to this point in a note on four cases, all of which appear to have owed their origin to the attentions of one paiticular operator. The writer, probably with justice, attributes the transference of the infective germs in these cases to the use of unclean brushes and a common soap supply. He suggests that the former evil be obviated by immersing the brush after each time of use in boiling water. As regards the soap, a safeguard alreadyexists in the practice, now common among hairdressers, of using for each client a separate portion of soap-cream, thus avoiding all danger of intermixture. Tbe suggestion respecting the brush is well worthy the attention of barbers, and we might add a further injunction that the water be not only boiling, but fortified in its cleansing property by some simple antiseptic. It is taken for granted that tbe razor being both easily and regularly cleaned is rarely, if ever, a medium of infection. As a razor cut may occasion the transference of more seiious diseases by the mixture of blood with soap suds, every cleanly precaution becomes the more imperative. A NEW TREATMENT OF HICCOUGHS. This disagreeable phenomenon is caused by a sudden spasmodic contraction of the diaphragm, producing a brisk jar of the abdominal and thoracic walls, and accompanied by a hoarse and inarticulate sound caused by the tightening and sonorous vibration of the vocal cords. Up to the present time the treatment of this difficulty has been very uncertain ; at one time directed against disorders of the digestive, respiratory and other organs on which it seemed to depend, and at another, following merely the symptomatic indications, making an absurd use of tisanes, cupping, bleeding, anti-spasmodic drugs—in a word, of the so-called resources of empiricism. In one of the last meetings of the Academie des Sciences de Paris M. Leloir called attention to a method of treatment by compression of the phrenic nerve to which he had recourse five years ago in the following circumstances :—He was shown a little girl, twelve years of age, who had been hiccoughing incessantly twice a minute for a year. This infirmity interfered with her sleep and with her growth, and had reduced the child to a very poor condition of health. The little patient’s father had consulted a large number of physicians, who had in vain prescribed a great variety of forms of treatment. The idea occurred to M. Leloir to use compression of the phrenic nerve at the neck, a little above the inner extremity of the collar bone. The action of the diaphragm depends on this neive, the section of paralysis of which puts a stop to its contractions. This compression, made with the fingers, was quite painful and lasted three minutes, but at the end of that time the symptom had entirely disappeared and has not occurred again since. M Leloir has applied his process a number of times to put a stop to acute or chronic hiccoughs, and has always succeeded by pressing for a few minutes or even for a few seconds on the phrenic nerve at this point. This process is so simple and so practical that it will no doubt find a great many applications. PERSPIRATION AND MICROBES. The question has been raised as to whether microbes can pass through the different’ organs, kidney, liver, intestine, etc., and particularly whether their elimination by perspiration is possible. To settle this question a German physician, Mr Brunner, has injected beneath the skin of animals the microbes of a disease that is entirely exceptional with them ; after which, causing them to salivate and perspire by means of pilocarpine, he regularly found in these secietions the miciobes he was looking for. This fact, which has a marked theoretical and practica importance, gives to spontaneous or artificial crises of perspiration a curative value that can be logically defended, and explains the danger of a person in profuse perspiration absorbing this secretion again through not changing his garments, through not rubbing himself off, or at least through not wearing a woollen gaiment capable of absorbing the perspiration. In such cases the perspiration lays hold of all the microbes that are on the surface of the body and brings them back into the circulation with itself. In this way could be realised a complicated infection by the different pathogenic micro-organisms that are widely spread, such as those of pneumonia and erysipelas. From this can be seen that discoveries which seem purely speculative at first can supply, when examined more closely, very clear and eminently practical deductions.