Of course, I had to

body of the organ itself lay quite behind. complete the operation by removing the kidney itself. Only one ounce of urine was passed on the day of the operation, but the quantity steadily rose until it was thirty ounces, when she left for home on July 4th. She has since remained in good health, and the wound is perfectly healed.

REMARKS.-The surgery of the kidney has now advanced to such a stage, that we may speak pretty positively of what can and what ought to be done in all cases of tumors of this organ. What I have to say now is very much a repetition of what I have said in previous papers on this subject, with the exception that I have had, as I have already indicated, to modify somewhat my belief concerning movable kidneys; but even here I can confirm much of what I have already said on the question. This abnormality is so rare that this is the first case I have ever seen, in a practice which now extends over twenty-five years, and which includes forty operations upon the kidney, and more than twelve hundred abdominals. The second point deserving notice is, that all of these forty operations, with one exception, have been performed on the right kidney, a circumstance which certainly is very remarkable, and must be something more than a mere coincidence. Some months ago, in a communication made to the Obstetrical Society, I told the story-now some fifteen years old-of an interview I had with a board of examiners, whom I could not satisfy concerning the treatment to which I would subject a patient submitted to me for the purpose of the examination, and who was burdened with a large suppurating tumor of the kidney. I told the board that I should remove the kidney, as everything else seemed to have been tried fruitlessly. In reply, they told me that my surgical enthusiasm seemed to be greater than my knowledge of the practice of medicine, and we parted, never to resume further association. A singular change has occurred since then, for the kidney promises to be one of the most brilliant fields for the achievements of new surgery. Out of my forty operations on diseased kidneys, including

abscesses, hydatids, sarcomas, and stones in the pelvis, I not only had thirty-eight recoveries, but I have had so far as I know up to the time of writing-complete cures in thirty-eight out of the forty operations. In the fortieth case I failed, because I did too much. I removed a kidney with a large number of chronic abscesses in it, when I ought simply to have opened it and drained it, as an expedient preparatory to its subsequent removal. This patient died of shock, and in this I learnt the lesson which I shall always follow in future in such cases, of opening the kidney, in order to ascertain its condition exactly before I remove it. I really think that, in this conclusion, I have to sum up all my experience in renal surgery.

There can be no question that interference with the large malignant tumors, which we see in children under fourteen and fifteen years of age, is simply nonsense. Even if the little sufferers recover from the terrible operation which is performed in such a case, the disease will recur, and no good will have been done. But in all other tumors of the kidney, if the patient is sufficiently ill to justify interference, the disease may be attacked with a perfect certainty of procuring relief in every case, and complete cure in probably 90 per cent. I do not think it matters much whether the organ be attacked by what is called the abdominal method, or the lumbar, as far as the immediate success of the operation is concerned. But I have a strong preference in my own practice for the abdominal method, if there is any likelihood of its being decided to remove the kidney, for, in this way, the condition of the other organ may be ascertained before the diseased one is removed. If, however, it has been determined to perform nephrotomy, and the removal of the diseased organ is a question which has been dismissed, then, I think, the lumbar incision may be the preferable of the two. In such a case, the operation of nephrotomy is an extremely easy one, and even the removal of the kidney is not a proceeding accompanied by much danger or difficulty, unless it has been too long delayed.

TREATMENT OF MELANCHOLIA.

Dr. DeFoe writes as follows: "The family doctor only knows how widespread melancholia is in our country. The many household cares develop this disease in nervous women, who show its first symptoms in fretfulness and worry. I have sought for a remedy for years for this malady, and have at last found it in the triple valerianates, which work like a charm:

"The drugs must be absolutely pure. The old reliable house of W. H. Schieffelin & Co., of New York, have added the above pills (soluble) to their list, and I have tried them in many cases, and I find them a specific for the worry of nervous women, melancholia and incipient insanity.

"Please try them and report.

Medical Brief.

Your success will be sure."

THE COCAINE HABIT.

Louis Bauer, M. D., M. R. C. S., England, Professor of Surgery in the St. Louis College of Physicians, made a report to the Mississippi Valley Medical Society, at its meeting in September last, of a case of the cocaine habit in a man suffering from chronic alcoholism.

On the 9th of January last, he became so badly wrecked from his drinking, that he appealed to a physician for relief. The physician used cocaine hypodermically. Unfortunately, he dropped the name of the drug, which the patient caught up, and procured it for his own use. He used it hypodermically, beginning with one-fifth of a grain, increasing it to ten grains at a dose, and very soon found that he must use the drug continuously. The doctor reviewed the physiological action of the drug, so far as it is known, especially as it showed itself on this patient. He noticed that patient acquired a decided aversion for alcoholic liquors; that the cocaine habit was most deplorable for

a man of his intellect and social station of life, but thought that the use of cocaine had injured him less than excessive alcoholism. He has observed none of those permanent organic disturbances which alcohol produces. By comparison, therefore, the former is preferable to the latter.

Editorial.

HYDROPHOBIA AND PASTEUR'S EXPERIMENTS.

The wonderful announcement has recently been made that a cure has been found for hydrophobia, a disease not of frequent occurrence, but most terrible in its character and results. If a cure has been found, it is one of the most brilliant discoveries of modern therapeutics.

For years the great French savant, Louis Pasteur, has been working out the problem of ameliorating and preventing the communicable diseases of animals and man. Already his

achievements have commanded the admiration of the whole scientific world; and those who are engaged in the industries of brewing, wine-growing, silkworm-raising, and poultry-keeping, will ever hold his name in grateful remembrance. Already he has won the veneration of our profession by demonstrating that Jenner's great discovery of vaccination was not an isolated and empirical fact, but that it was only a single member of a united family held together by the great scientific law, that disease may be abbreviated or prevented by the inoculation of a modified or attenuated virus of the same.

For over five years Pasteur has been conducting an extended series of experiments with hydrophobia, which have led to his latest and grandest achievement-the prevention and cure of this dread disease. The results of many of these experiments were given in his memorable address* delivered to a vast audience at the International Medical Congress at Copenhagen, August 11, 1884.

London Medical Times and Gazette, August 23, 1884.

The main conclusions there enunciated were that hydrophobia possesses one poison only; that it had a period of incubation varying with the susceptibility of the subject and the methods of introduction into the system; that it never invades every part simultaneously, but is always developed in the brain, spinal cord, nerves, and salivary glands; that the virus is always found, when "death occurs as a natural result of the disease," at the "uppermost portion of the spinal cord," the "bulb," ," "which forms the point of transition between the cord and brain;" that the virus obtained from the "bulb" by macerating it in two or three times its bulk of sterilized liquid, will not fail to produce the disease when introduced into the arachnoid space through the trephined skull; that the incubation period is shorter when introduced from animal to animal of the same species; that the virulence is modified and weakened when transmitted through different species, monkeys, especially, diminishing it; that the test of degrees of virulence is determined with sufficient certainty by the duration of the incubating period, using the intracranial inoculation, and "a quantity of virus, which, although very weak, is more than sufficient to produce rabies;" that "the application of these facts yields a method of vaccinating dogs as a protection against rabies," taking, as "the starting point, one of the rabbits which have been inoculated from monkeys, to a sufficient degree that hypodermic or intravenous injection does not cause death."

Here Pasteur reached a point where he was enabled to prevent hydrophobia in dogs by the inoculation of a virus. weakened by transmission through animals of different species, particularly the monkey. Nothing further of importance was given by him to the public until the latter part of October last, when he read a paper before the Paris Academy of Medicine, maintaining that he had discovered another method of weakening or attenuating the virus of hydrophobia, and that by a system of inoculation applied to the human subject, he had been able to render ineffective the bite of rabid dogs.