this as Dr. Lippe again and again entreats some champion to step forward and show wherein his (Dr. Lippe's) logic is at fault and his way fails of being the only right one. Longer silence might be misconstrued.

CORRECTION-On page 463, line 12, of the GAZETTE for October, for T. H. Woodbury, M.D., read J. N. Woodbury, M.D.

SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS.

**Reports of all Homœopathic Medical Societies and Institutions, which may be of genera or special interest to the profession, are respectfully solicited.

MICHIGAN HOMEOPATHIC COLLEGE.

To the Editor of The Chicago Tribune:

CHICAGO, Oct. 2.

In your issue of to-day is a letter from your correspondent at Ann Arbor, Mich., in which mention is made of the so-called "Homœopathic College" which the Regents of the State University established as a branch of the university. It may as well be stated here that it is very doubtful if the Regents lived up to the letter or spirit of the law in establishing the Homœopathic Department.

The law passed by the Michigan Legislature reads as follows: "The Board of Regents of the University of Michigan are hereby authorized to establish a Homoeopathic Medical College as a branch or department of said university, which shall be located at Ann Arbor." The action of the Regents in appointing two professors, one of "Theory and Practice" and one of Materia Medica," and calling them the Faculty of the Homœopathic College, is a glaring absurdity, and the action of the State Homœopathic Society of Michigan, in accepting such a travesty to represent a "homœopathic college," was hasty and imprudent. Some of the best legal talent in Michigan and in Chicago do not hesitate to give an opinion that the action of the Regents was illegal and a fraud. It will become a matter of grave doubt whether the diplomas issued to homœopathic graduates will prove of any value whatever. It is also a matter of doubt if the professors can legally draw any salary for their services. If the question should come before the Supreme Court, as it may, no homœopathic or allopathic physician would testify that two professors constitute a medical college.

There are eight homeopathic colleges in the United States, and none have less than nine professors, and the majority have twelve or

more.

The Homopathic College established as a department of the Boston University has a corps of ten or twelve professors.

The idea that these two professors, untried and inexperienced, will be able to cover the whole ground of homeopathic therapeutics and Materia Medica is utterly absurd. In homeopathic colleges, the Chairs of Surgery, Physiology, Chemistry, Obstetrics, etc., are all taught in such a manner as to show the relationship which they bear to homœopathic practice.

The homœopathists of Michigan will sooner or later find that they have been duped, and that the apology for a college will prove a disgraceful failure.

HOMEOPATHIST.

CALIFORNIA STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY.

A special meeting of the California State Medical Society of Homœopathic Practitioners was held Friday evening, October 29th, in the parlor of the Y. M. C. A. building, 234 Sutter Street. The president being detained by sickness, the vice-president, Dr. J. Murray Moore, took the chair and called the meeting to order. The minutes of the annual meeting were read and approved.

Dr. W. C. F. Hempstead, of Marysville, late Professor of Gynecology in the Homopathic Medical College of Missouri, was admitted a member of the Society.

Dr. F. Hiller then stated the object of the meeting to be to take some action concerning proposed legislation on medical affairs. He favored the provisions of a law already proposed by another society, with some modifications.

A preamble and resolutions were introduced by Dr. W. N. Griswold, which, after some amendments, were adopted, as follows:

Whereas, We, the members of the California State Medical Society of Homœopathic Practitioners, believe it gross injustice and inconsistency that the laws of the State should countenance and endow the ignorant and uneducated with the same immunities and privileges which others have won only at great expense of time and money.

Whereas, We believe the law should interpose and protect, on the one hand, the masses of the people from the operations of medical quacks and imposters, and, on the other, the legally qualified medical profession from ignoble competition with ignorant and unscrupulous pretenders:

Resolved, That we sympathize heartily with the movement now on foot, inaugurated by influential laymen and supported by learned and respectable members of the medical profession, for the attainment of these results.

Resolved, That the members of this Society will unite cordially with any and all practitioners of medicine, graduates of colleges in good standing, of whatever school, to procure the passage of a law just to all concerned; but we will oppose placing the medical affairs

of the State under the exclusive control of any single body of medical men representing but one school of medicine.

Resolved, That the president is hereby authorized to appoint a committee of seven, whose duty it shall be to co-operate with similar committees of other medical societies of this State, or to act alone, as the case may be, in determining such legislation as will meet the wants of the community, and at the same time secure our own as well as the rights and immunities of other bodies of legally qualified medical men.

In pursuance of the last resolution, the president appointed the following as members of said committee: C. W. Breyfogle, San José ; W. C. F. Hempstead, of Marysville; Lester E. Cross. of Stockton; E. J. Fraser, W. N. Griswold, F. Hiller, and M. J. Werder, of San Francisco.

Dr. Fraser presented the draft of a law differing in some respects from the one proposed by another society, which was discussed, but left without definite action.

Dr. Moore noted some amendments which he thought would increase the fairness or efficiency of the law proposed.

The Society then adjourned.

ON DIPHTHERIA.

ITEMS AND EXTRACTS.

Having alluded to the general treatment of diphtheria and its sequels, there yet remains to be mentioned other minor points, which are of considerable importance to the suffering individual, by which we may alleviate suffering and hasten recovery. For example, where the patient complains of sore throat, ab initio, I have found an iron gargle (two drachms of the tincture to half a pint of water) beneficial; but this I have found too cutting when the membrane has disappeared, and then I have substituted one of borax and glycerine (two drachms of the former and one ounce of the latter to half a pint of water), and this gargle I have also found very useful to relieve the sensation of bread-crumbs and tickling in the throat, of which complaints are frequently made during convalescence. Where the denuded surface has proved to be ulcerated, a few touches of nitrate of silver assist the process of repair; and in one case where the tongue and roof of the mouth were so sore that everything that was taken gave pain, I found that great relief was experienced by applying dry trisnitrate of bismuth powder with a camel's-hair pencil just before taking food. In paralysis of the soft palate and regurgitation of fluids through the nostrils, holding the nose during deglutition will be found very much to assist the act; this a patient of mine found out for himself, and I subsequently confirmed his statement in other cases. In these cases, too, I always advise thick drinks, which are more easily swallowed. When the pharynx is also affected, a large bolus is much more easily passed down than a small one, so that I have

advised the collection of all the food in the mouth into one mass before swallowing. This is no doubt accounted for by the weakened muscular fibres of the pharynx being enabled to grasp a large bolus with less contractile effort than would be required for a small one. In one case, I kept a patient alive for some days by giving the yolk of egg, unbroken, and letting it glide down his throat, as it were. These are a few practical hints, which, from what I have seen, I believe to be useful; but the ingenuity of the practitioner will often be put to the test in coping with the anomalous symptoms which sometimes arise during the progress of this horrible, though interesting disease. Much might be written upon this important subject; in fact, a single case will often afford, in its checkuered course, abundant matter for a long paper; but I have endeavored to be as brief as possible, and, with that object in view, have entirely excluded the histories of cases which I should otherwise have liked to introduce. — THOMAS PRANGLEY, Esq, in British Medical Journal.

DIPHTHERIA AND SCARLATINA. Some physicians have been led by these points of resemblance to regard them as one disease, the same poison producing different manifestations; but, in spite of their similarity, I venture to think the differences are too important and too numerous to permit so simple a solution of the problem. In the first place, diphtheria is seen to arise directly from scarlet fever. have never known the converse action. There are other etiological differences. Though both are contagious, diphtheria is less so, and more frequently occurs in single cases. Where several cases occur together, some general cause is probably concerned Scarlet fever is more frequently conveyed by clothes or other fomites, by attendants on the sick, and it may be conveyed by means of milk I am not aware that diphtheria has ever spread by any of these means. The two diseases differ in their geographical distribution. Diphtheria is common in India, where scarlet fever is unknown. Colonies and all new settlements seem peculiarly liable to diphtheria; it has appeared in the Australian colonies and in South America, attacking the otherwise healthy town of Buenos Ayres. In Lima, it was noticed that the black races withstand its contagion. It selects high and well-drained districts, when low-lying lands in the vicinity escape. Dr. Blake, in the Transactions of the Medical Society of California, mentions a most atal epidemic at an elevation of 4,000 feet. Many places in England subject to diphtheria are either high or well-drained. Scarlet fever also haunts certain places; but these scarlet-fever fields are not at high levels, nor are they those in which diphtheria is especially prevalent. Diphtheria is often connected with defects in the house-drainage, not always due to imperfection in the house-connection with a general sewage system, but to leakage from private cesspools; so that a question of spontaneous origin may arise in this disease, which is hardly admissible with respect to scarlet fever. Season has a different influence on the two diseases; scarlet fever being most prevalent in the autumn, low barometric pressure and greater humidity in the air favoring its diffusion; while diphtheria may arise at any season, and,

in my own experience, its most virulent epidemics have occurred in the summer months.

Another difference is found in the fact that scarlet fever is not often associated with other diseases, while diphtheritic affections are not uncommon in the course of other pyrexial disorders. It is recorded in the Report of the Diphtheria Subcommittee of the Epidemiological Society, that in the epidemic of 1861 this disease occurred fiftyseven times alone, thirty-four times in association with scarlatina, nine times with small-pox, seven with measles, six with fever, and three times each with ordinary sore-throat, croup, and catarrh. But in the nature and symptoms of the two diseases are points of unlikeness too great to allow us to rank them as varieties of the same species. Thus, the rash of diphtheria is often absent, is very variable as to the time of its appearance; it occurs seldom at the outset of the malady, and I have seen it as late as the third week of its course. The period at which albuminuria sets in is also different, often appearing in severe cases of diphtheria within the first two or three days, whilst in scarlatina it seldom sets in until degeneration of the kidney is commencing. There is, indeed, an entire absence of definiteness about the duration of the symptoms of diphtheria, which of itself marks it off from the regular sequence of events in scarlet fever. I have known it to last for six weeks, and even two months, without any evident affection of the cervical glands, but with constant formation of exudation on the fauces or on other mucous surfaces.

The mode in which diphtheria localizes itself on the mucous membranes, or on the broken surfaces of the skin, would probably be sufficient to separate it from any other disease. I do not know that scarlet fever ever attacks the larynx; but I have seen the diphtheritic membrane appear in different cases upon wounds of the skin, upon blistered surfaces, and upon nearly all the mucous membranes of the body, the lips, checks, nose, ears, pharynx, larynx, trachea, and bronchi, and on the anus and vulva; and different epidemics have differed strangely in this respect; in one, the throat would always be the point selected for attack; and in another, the other mucous membranes. It is somewhat remarkable in the latter case that, although the disease was mild and there were no deaths, the subsequent complications were much more frequent and troublesome.

The last point of difference that I shall mention is the fact that, while scarlet fever seldom reappears again in the same individual, diphtheria seems by its first attack to confer no immunity from subsequent seizures; on the contrary, the susceptibility of the throat seems to be rather increased. DR. ARTHUR RANSOME, M.A., in British Medical Journal.

RHEUMATIC FEVER. Thus it seems to me, that in the treatment of rheumatic fever, we have, first, to consider the best way to eliminate the acid products of the diseased state; secondly, to relieve pain. Beyond this, the case can be treated as an ordinary one of functional glandular derangement, or febricula; for, when once the sour secretion from the skin is eliminated (no matter how acid the urine might be),