been rather a tendency on the part of some of them to fall back on styptics, and other more injurious allopathic appliances, in cases of hæmorrhage.

Rapid Treatment of Itch.

By MM. DUSARD and PILLON.

The remedy here mentioned is the chloride of sulphur dissolved in sulphuret of carbon. The chloride, easily obtained by the action of chlorine on sulphur, was at first employed in its pure state in minute quantities, but this not acting promptly enough, the sulphuret of carbon was, after various trials, chosen as the best vehicle. Twelve grammes of chloride are dissolved in 100 of the sulphuret, this being the utmost quantity required for an adult. The application should be made in a well-ventilated room, removing all copper articles liable to tarnish. The patient is placed quite naked on a stool, and his head is covered with an immense cone made of strong paper, open only at top, so as to protect the face from the effect of the sulphureous vapours which exhale. The whole surface is rapidly smeared over with the mixture, by means of a large badger's-hair-brush or charpie, applying it especially to the parts where the acari most resort. Any hospital attendant can do this. A general sense of heat, without painful smarting, immediately follows, and the patient is thus cured in five minutes. The itching ceases as if by magic. After thirty-six hours a bath is taken, the patient being recommended to abstain from washing his hands and neck until then; and baths on alternate days for a week, to complete the treatment. Complications that may have arisen may, however, require treatment; but they soon subside. When eczema predominates, some gelatinous or starchy baths are employed, and porrigo is usually relieved by alkaline baths. When the complications are very aggravated, they should be somewhat modified before the treatment is commenced, or this may cause pain. After disappearing, the itching may return in five or six days, but it is of a different kind, dependent on persistent porrigo, and relieved by alkaline baths.-L'Union Méd. 1855. No. CIX.

Practical Joking on an Infinitesimal Scale.

Meissner in his Recollections of Heinrich Heine relates the following anecdote of that distinguished poet and satirist :

The homœopath Dr. R sometimes came to see Heine. The poet had made his acquaintance in rather a singular manner. Some years previously Heine and his wife met the violinist Ernst in Lyons. They had formerly known one another in Paris. As Heine was on his way to Paris, the musician requested the poet to take to his physician there, as a present from him, one of those enormous Lyons sausages, enveloped in tin-foil, which are esteemed such a delicacy. Heine accepted the commission. In those days there were no railways to whirl one in a few hours from Lyons to Paris; the journey in the diligence lasted a long time, and Mrs. Matilda grew hungry. What could be more natural than to cut off a small piece of the sausage, whose gigantic proportions and whose savoury odour filled the coupé. Mrs. Heine tasted a bit and pronounced it excellent. Heine followed her example and was equally charmed. The journey lasted another day, the sausage diminished more and more, and by the time the worthy couple reached Paris it so happened that there remained only a small fragment of the mighty monster. Heine now began to feel how scurvily he had executed his commission. What did he do? He took a razor, shaved off a thin transparent slice of the sausage, and sent it in an envelope to the doctor, accompanied by the following lines:-"Sir, your investigations have completely proved that millionth parts produce the most powerful effects. Enclosed is the millionth part of a Lyons sausage, which Mr. Ernst gave me to take to you. If homeopathy be true, it will have the same effect on you as though it were a whole sausage."

A Homoeopathic Mayor.

The election to the supreme civic office of mayor has of late years given frequent opportunities to the burgesses of our towns to shew their freedom from sectarian prejudices. Thus we have seen the civic chair of various towns filled by quakers, Roman catholics, and Jews, amid the gratulations of those who call themselves friends of progress, and the frantic denunciations of the partisans of fogydom, and the self-appointed defenders of our glorious constitution of Church and State. When we consider that the odium medicum is scarcely inferior in intensity and bitterness to the odium theologicum, we cannot help viewing the recent election of a homœopathic physician as mayor of Doncaster as a triumph of liberality over prejudices which we know to our cost are not confined to the profession.

At Doncaster, on the 10th of November, our zealous and enterprising colleague, Dr. George Dunn, was unanimously elected mayor of that ancient borough. Of course we cannot look upon this as a triumph of homœopathy otherwise than in a negative point of view. The existing prejudices against homœopathy were not sufficient to outweigh the claims of Dr. Dunn to the suffrages of his fellow burgesses, and he was unanimously elected mayor. Either the feeling of the allopaths against homoeopathy must be particularly mild in Doncaster, or the claims and merits of Dr. Dunn must be very transcendent that no opposition was raised to his election by the allopaths of the town. We believe the latter is the true state of the case. Dr. Dunn has rendered himself most popular with his townsmen by his untiring endeavours to improve the sanitary condition of his adopted town, and by his establishment of a hospital has shewn that his philanthropic zeal led him to spare neither time, labour, nor expense in the work of beneficence. To oppose a man who had shown so practically his willingness and ability to add to the material and social welfare of his fellow townsmen, on the ground of his heretical medical faith, would have been too absurd, and accordingly no opposition was made to him by the allopaths, who would no doubt derive a certain amount of satisfaction in thinking that they therein displayed a praiseworthy amount of forbearance and liberality.

We sincerely congratulate our worshipful colleague on his election, and have no doubt he will continue to shew during his occupation of the civic chair, as he has during his career as alderman, that the profession of a homoeopathic creed is not inconsistent with the possession of the virtues of liberality and enlightened views of sanitary and social improvement.

A Mare's Nest !

It is probable that one of our courts of law will soon have to settle the question whether homoeopathic globules are or are not medicines, and whether their sale brings the vendor within the power of the Apothecaries' Company. We should be sorry to raise the members of the declining sect to the dignity of martyrs, and should prefer to see them sink quietly into the oblivion so rapidly clouding over them; but there is one consideration which we trust will not be lost sight of-if a medical man neglect a patient, and the patient suffer from his negligence, the medical man may be cast in an action with heavy damages. Then comes the question, is a patient neglected

who is treated homoeopathically? It is said, oh, the doses are imponderable, and therefore harmless; but there is as great danger in medicine in leaving undone those things we ought to have done, as in doing those things we ought not to have done. Common sense and scientific experiment have alike proved that homœopathic globules can possess no medicinal property whatever. The danger of trusting to them therefore in the case of acute and dangerous diseases, is self-evident. The patient who trusts to them dies as much from neglect as if left without treatment.-Med. Times and Gazette, Dec. 13, 1856.

And it is confidently expected in the Canard country, whence the above information is derived, that before long some medical Ditcher will apply to the Court of Queen's Bench for a mandamus to compel a recusant magistrate to pour down the throats of all the homoeopathic gentry in his territory a draft of salts and senna whenever the said Ditcher deems it advisable for the constitution of the county which enjoys the inestimable blessing of his residence.

Homeopathic Congress at Brussels.

The Congress of the Gallican Homœopathic Society was held in September last in the Belgian capital, and was attended by forty members. The meeting seems to have gone off with much eclât, and several interesting papers were read, which gave rise to lively discussions. The next meeting of the Congress was fixed to take place in Paris in 1859. A prize, to be then awarded, was announced for the best essay on the following theme:-" What are the characteristic symptoms, especially of serious diseases, that suffice to determine the choice of the homoeopathic medicine ?” * We cannot congratulate the Congress on its choice of a subject for a prize, and are not astonished to learn that it was suggested by that inveterate symptom-hunter Bönninghausen. We have only to read the Introduction to his Manual to know what his notion of characteristic

symptoms is; but we doubt very much if they would pass for such with any jury of sane doctors. The fact of the matter is, a satisfactory reply to the question is simply impossible, at all events within the legitimate limits of a thesis. It might be possible to

*We shall give the French in case we may have missed the true meaning in the above translation: Quels sont, surtout dans les maladies graves, les symptômes caractéristiques suffisants pour décider le médecin dans le choix du médicament homœopathique?

state the characteristic symptoms that determine the choice of a remedy in an individual case of disease, or in an epidemic disease, but to attempt to detail the characteristic symptoms that shall determine the choice of remedies in serious diseases generally, is to attempt a task in comparison with which the united labours of Hercules would be mere child's play.

To us the most interesting circumstance connected with the Congress is the opportunity it afforded of enabling Dr. Chargé to give an explanation in reference to the accusations brought against him by the allopathists of Marseilles respecting his treatment of cholera patients in the Hôtel Dieu of that town. It is well known to some of our readers that some time ago a statement was busily circulated by the allopathic journals of this country and of France, purporting to be derived from a letter of a Dr. Bouquet, of Marseilles, and containing the following accusation: that Dr. Chargé, during the late epidemy of cholera in Marseilles, had undertaken the medical charge of a ward in the Hôtel Dieu, and that of twenty-six cases of cholera admitted into the ward twenty-one died, whereupon Dr. Chargé retired. That to show the convincing manner in which the experiment testified against the merits of homœopathy, in a ward in the same hospital where cholera patients were treated allopathically at the same time, of twenty-five patients only eleven died. Dr. Chargé enters fully into the details of his experience in the Hôtel Dieu, and it must be confessed that his account divests the statement of Dr. Bouquet of much of its force as far as homœopathy is concerned. This will be seen by a brief resumé of Dr. Chargé's statement.

In 1854 the cholera was committing frightful ravages among the population of Marseilles, and all the resources of the allopathic school seemed to be fruitless to stay its progress or cure the patients when once attacked. Now in a previous epidemic the success of the homœopathic practitioners had greatly exceeded that of the allopathists, and as the facts were pretty generally known, public opinion compelled the authorities to apply to the homœopathic practitioners for their aid in the public hospital against a disease that seemed to defy all the powers of the established system. Dr. Chargé, as being the practitioner most distinguished on the former occasion for his success (in acknowledgment of which, it will be remembered by some, he was decorated), was applied to by the mayor to take charge of a couple of wards in the Hôtel Dieu hospital. To this appeal, which thus made could scarely be resisted, Dr. Chargé responded by