JUN 8 1909 YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY RELY UPON Hunyadi János THE NATURAL LAXATIVE WATER FOR CONSTIPATION HALF A GLASS ON ARISING IS THE DOSE PUBLISHED MONTHLY. ATLANTA SUBSCRIPTION $1.00 JOURNAL-RECORD Successor to Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, Established 1835. 52d Year Vol. X. ATLANTA, GA., APRIL, 1908. No. 1 DYSPEPSIA, GASTRITIS, GASTRIC ULCER and CONTAGIOUS DISEASES of the STOMACH and INTESTINES. In order to prove the efficiency of GLYCOZONE, I will send a 81.00 bottle free to Physicians accompanying their request with 25c. to pay forwarding charges. A copy of the 18th edition of my book of 340 pages, on the "Rational Treatment of Diseases Characterized by the Presence of Pathogenic Germs," containing reprints of 210 un Prepared only by Charles Marchand solicited clinical reports, by leading contributors to Medical Chemist and Graduate of the "Ecole Centrale des Literature, will be mailed free of charge to Physicians mentioning is Journal. Arts et Manufactures de Paris (France), 57-59 Prince Street, NEW YORK. No Physician can afford to be indifferent regarding the accurate filling of his Prescriptions. 4 Successor to Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, Established 1855, OWNED BY THE ATLANTA MEDICAL JOURNAL CO. Official Organ Fulton County Medical Society, State Examining Board, EDGAR G. BALLENGER, M. D., Editor. BERNARD WOLFF, M. D.. Supervising Editor. A. W. STIRLING, M. D., C. M., D. P. H., JNO. S. HURT, M. D., Associate Editors. GEORGE BROWN, M. D., Business Manager. COLABORATORS DR. W. F. WESTMORLAND, General Surgery. F. W. MCRAE, M. D., Abdominal Surgery. CYRUS W. STRICKLER, M. D., Legal Medicine and Medical Legislation. E. G. JONES, A. B., M. D.. Gynecology. R. T. DORSEY, Jr., B. S., M. D., Medicine. J. N. LeCONTE, M. D.. Diseases of the Stomach and Intestines. EDGAR PAULIN, M. D., Opsonic Medicine. R. R. DALY, M. D., Medical Society. A. W. STIRLING, M. D., Etc., Diseases of the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat. E. G. BALLENGER, M. d., Diseases of the Genito Urinary Organs. VOL. X. APRIL, 1908. NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS. No. 1 The Post Office Department, at Washington, has recently issued a regulation to which we desire to call the especial attention of some of our subscribers. The new ruling requires that all subscriptions to periodicals be paid in advance; that renewals must be subject to the same conditions; that only four months grace will be allowed monthly periodicals, and that if subscriptions or renewals are not paid within this time the journals to such subscribers will be denied the transmission in the mails at second-class rates. We are left no discretion, as in the past, in extending credit to responsible parties, no matter how long they have been subscribers. So dur readers will confer a great favor upon us and obviate an embarrassing situation if they will be so considerate as to make a settlement of past áccounts and renew their subscriptions. An earnest effort will be made on our part to publish a journal well worth the subscription price, and with the increased editorial staff, to which we referred in our last issue, we believe that in the future the JOURNAL-RECORD will present much more original and valuable contributions than it has been able to do in the past. The object of this action of the Post Office Department is to lessen the annual deficit, which is believed to be largely due to irregular periodicals flooding the mails with second-class matter which is not sent to legitimate subscribers. We trust subscribers to the JoURNAL-RECORD who are delinquent will assist us in complying with the above requirements. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. REST IN THE TREATMENT OF BRIGHT'S DISEASE. BY H. F. HARRIS, M. D., ATLANTA, GA. The therapeutic value of rest must have been more or less appreciated even before the dawn of the medicine of to-day, but it was not until John Hilton wrote his masterly monograph on this subject that the especial attention of the medical profession was turned in this direction. Even Hilton, however, regarded the matter rather from a surgical than a medical aspect, and though the credit is due him that he first distinctly recognized and directed attention to this most powerful of therapeutic agencies, it is clear that he did not appreciate its value in the treatment of diseases of the internal organs. Somewhat later Weir Mitchell introduced rest in the practice of medicine as distinguished from surgery, and as the result of his advocacy this agency is now universally recognized as the most potent in correcting the curious nervous states that result from over work, or, what is much more frequently the case, from the various forms of indigestion. Notwithstanding the great degree of merited favor which the Mitchell plan of treatment has attained, it appears to me that the profession as a whole has not as yet appreciated the wonderful potency of rest in the treatment of diseaseconditions generally. If I be correct in this view there is no question that we discard assistance of the most powerful kind in our combat with disease. The experience of recent years has convinced me that one of the great faults in the treatment of that group of conditions known as Bright's disease has been the almost total disregard of the necessity of proper rest. This failure on our part to apply well known principles in this particular case has probably in a measure resulted from a rather indefinite idea as to the causation of the various kinds of chronic inflammation of the kidneys. We have been disposed to look upon these conditions being for the most part inevitable, and a consequence of mysterious agencies, the exact nature of which are entirely unknown. This feeling has been undoubtedly strengthened by the notorious failure of all ordinary therapeutic agencies in the treatment of this disease. It is true that we have long recognized that when patients are placed on milk-the best and most easily assimilable of all foods -they more or less improve, but even where this plan of diatetic treatment could be rigidly carried out, we have expected the patient gradually to go from bad to worse and ultimately die. The object of this paper is to suggest the combination of proper dieting with rest, this, when properly carried out, appearing to me to promise more than any other method of treatment. In order that we may at least have a theoretical understanding of the why and wherefore of the above suggestions, a brief consideration of the causation of Bright's disease may not be without interest. It has long been recognized that during the course of any of the ordinary acute infectious diseases inflammations of the kidneys may supervene-in most cases quickly subsiding, but in others terminating finally in the chronic disease-conditions that we call Bright's; apparently the latter are of frequent occurrence. It should also be remembered that in some of those instances where Bright's apparently results from acute diseases, the patients have previously suffered from an unrecognized chronic inflammation of the kidneys, which are only diagnosticated after having been made worse by the acute malady in question. In |