sweats it acts better than Veratrum. It seems to act well as an adjuvant, and prepares the system for other remedies.

What is said of the Triosteum in the "New Remedies," as far as the doctor's proving has extended, applies only to the berry; no such effects can be derived from the root. This he uses in anæmia and chlorosis; but the berry, in adition to this, in influenza and common colds with excellent effect. In ozæna it is, almost specific; with this, Baptisia and Arum, he cures most of these cases. It relieves pain of a pleuritic character in the right antero-inferior portion of the thorax. A few globules of the third potency, dissolved in half a tumbler of water, will cure the so-called bilious colic equally as readily as Colocynth. It is excellent in frontal headache. It quiets labor pains in threatened abortion. In one case of tumultous action of the heart, in asthma, where the patient expected speedy death, it seemed to act like a charm.

Those who have studied the "New Remedies" will recollect a fragmentary proving by Dr. Tallmadge. If the effects of the berry and the root differ so essentially, the whole plant, berry root and leaves should be thoroughly proven.

н.

BAPTISIA TINCTORIA.

Dr. William Bayes in his "Applied Homeopathy," just published, says of this remedy:

"The curative sphere of Baptisia appears to be the gastric mucous membrane, and the great semilunar ganglion of the sympathetic nervous system. In gastric fever with typhoid symptoms no medicine proves more serviceable. I have given it in the mother tincture, in doses of from one-third of a drop to one drop, and also in dilutions from the first to the third with benefit. One of the strongest indications for Baptisia is, that in whatever position the patient lies, the parts rested upon feel sore and bruised. I have seen several cases of gastric fever where the nausea and pains have been at once relieved, and where the patient has made rapid recovery under Baptisia I. In a case of dyspepsia following an attack of typhus fever two years previously, the prominent sensation being a great sinking at the epigastrium with frequent faintings, Baptisia 8, and to third, rapidly cured the patient, and restored her to perfect health.

"In cases of chronic dyspepsia with great sinking at the epigastrium, and a dry brown tongue in the morning, this medicine is also very useful."

Pathology and Microscopy.

PROF. D. A. COLTON, M. D., AND PROF. S. A. JONES, M. D. EDITORS.

INCUBATION AND PERIODICITY.

There is or has been much difficulty in accounting for the incubation of diseases such as scarlatina, small pox, etc., and, indeed, all morbid conditions that may not be styled continued in their character. My opinion is that they are dependant upon the nervous system for all the interrupted and incubationary phenomena which they present and that these are clearly analagous to those electric manifestations which may be induced in accordance with the well known rules of chemistry.

Premising, what is now generally admitted, that the nerve forces of man are analagous to those of the electric, which are subject to chemical laws, we can but consider the ganglia, or centers of nerve impulse, as different elements in the great compound nerve battery; and in this way only, can we account for the many phases which diseased conditions present..

Sleep, as a nervous expression of insensibility, a rest to the nervous system of animal life, may be considered as a type, in a physiological way, of all expressions of a nervous character where periodicity is concerned. It is nothing more nor less than a natural physiological expression of periodicity. Sleep involves the whole nervous system of animal life; placing it in a state of repose, so that it, and the whole body, may recover their exhausted energies; and, suppose that we should term sleep an expression of a diseased condition, namely, exhaustion, we would have to consider the wakeful hours as incubationary; there being no somnolent demand or expression until a definite time has elapsed or a certain period arrived.

Per consequence, or in accordance with this grand physiological demand which involves one-third of the life of the individual

we find there are periods for eating and drinking, thinking and acting, for joy and sorrow, and, indeed, for increasing, declining and death. Thus all human history is made up of periods of longer or shorter duration;—and which are more or less marked in their character.

Our natural and physiological demands and changes being thus periodic in their expressions, it is not strange that diseased actions should manifest themselves in like manner; and be apparently the more intricate in their nature, the farther they deviate from those which are plainly physiological. Many more diseases than our nosology indicates, are periodic in their nature; and clearly so, from their relation to the nervous system, either as direct cause or by implication.

Granted that the nervous system is thus directly or indirectly concerned; in a word, that all periodic manifestations are through its agency; the question arises, what is the modus operandi of this agency, or the scientific analogy by which we can explain such phenomena? The analogy is found in electricity; a term used to include all galvanic or electro-magnetic operations. The phenomena of induction, we think, are sufficient to explain incubation and the paroxysmal expressions of diseases.

Were we to attempt to explain the periods of incubation in any other way than as involving the nervous system, and as an expression of it, we would have to refer them to blood changes or other vital processes more or less independent of proper nerve influences; and which would come within the range of what are termed ordinary organic or chemical affinities. Such changes would be expected to be immediate and progressive. For instance, the disease influence, contagious or otherwise, would at once begin its operations; so that the blood, added to or lessened in quantity or quality of its normal constituents, might exert its vitiating influence as it coursed throughout the body, and there be no delay in an expression of either general or local trouble. The period of incubation may not give out a single sign; but the incubationary stage having once fully elapsed, when the monster and specific disease, like Jupiter's royal son, appears full grown and fully armed to mete out its whole design. If the contagious or infectious influence of smallpox or scarlatina has its effect upon the individual, he can as certainly be said to have one or the other of these diseases, from the time of such exposure and infection, as when the rash or commencing pustule makes its appearance.

He has it, as surely as a woman is with child from the time of conception, although the disease may not have attained its full proportions until its plain manifestations.

The disease producing, or propagating quality, must be a force that primarily acts upon the force propagating or impelling appliances of the organism, viz: the nervous centers and ganglia From the various operations which the different ganglia are known to enter into as a sort of propelling power behind the scenes, it is plain that these ganglia, notwithstanding their relations which are well known, must yet be able under certain circumstances, to act independently; to receive and impart an appar ently super-added force as if each were insulated. The force of incubationary or contagious diseases may fall upon certain ganglia, and there, for the time being, remain, and increase; and, as cumulative electricity in a cloud acts upon objects beneath, so this cumulated and diseased nerve force may induce an opposite state or nervous condition in other ganglia upon which it exerts an influence. And this may continue just so long as conduction does not occur. Just as soon as induction is broken, and conduction and comparative equalization, in the distribution of this diseased force occurs, then the disease breaks out. So long as the surcharged cloud retains its extra amount of electricity, its inductive force may not be subject to ordinary observation; but let the cloud discharge itself, and a series of awfully destructive phenomena may be occasioned. This is one simple illustra tion, by analogy, of which many could be adduced. Of course the refinements of the nervous system, in our bodies, are far above those of which ordinary chemistry takes cognizance. Hence our comparisons must necessarily be rough ones, but this, it strikes me, is the one which will bear the test of criticism in every particular.

The disease force, in these incubationary maladies, we would say, produces a nervous (electric) tension which can be increased within certain limits which have relation to the status quo of the individual. That is, certain individuals have greater susceptibility to the influence of disease than others. Again, some resist disease with such power as to almost defy its approaches. These have their analogy in electric combinations with which the profession are too familiar to require anything more than a reference to them in order to realize the full force of what I am saying.

The homoeopathic profession is practically taking this ground viz that disease is a force, and that remedies are potential in their nature. This being the case, is it not quite simple and allowable to let the same idea run through the heretofore intricate processes of incubation and periodicity?

D. A. C.

Physiology and Principles of Medicine.

PROF. H. P. GATCHELL, M. D. KENOSHA, WIS., EDITO R,

PROF. BERNARD ON SUGAR.

Lecture of Prof. Bernard delivered before the Medical School at Paris.

TRANSLATED FOR THIS JOURNAL BY MISS LATIMER.

The following translation of one of Prof. Bernard's lectures, in which he conclusively disposes of some of the objections opposed to his discovery of the glycogenic function of the liver, is particularly interesting at the present time when that discovery is under discussion.

H. P. G.

In the last lecture, I digressed in giving you an account of the researches which I had made in regard to the saccharine matter existing in our embryonic condition. Those details did not belong directly to the history of the liver, because the facts that were stated took place partly before this organ assumed its proper functions. I wished only to give you new ideas as to the uses of sugar in the organism, by showing you in what way I came to think that its principle uses were accomplished rather at the moment of its formation than at that of its destruction. We will limit ourselves at the present in establishing this view and will continue the history of the glycogenic functions of the liver.

I believe it necessary on account of the recent attacks which my opinions have sustained, to speak again of the function, wholly physiological, of the production of sugar by an especial organ; and of the interior origin of this matter both in man and animals.

When I published the facts some years since, which established the truth of this glycogenic function it was admitted by a great number of physiologists and chemists who examined the statements very closely. Lehmann especially studied carefully the composition of the blood before entering and after leaving the liver, and was struck by the quantity of sugar which came