number of Army and Navy officers, with whom the chief of the chemical division may or may not see fit to consult on technical sanitary problems; the Chief Chemist is empowered under this bill to appoint more consultants than is the President of the United States, and his power over the commission is thus assured. Moreover, the bill arrogates to the Chief Chemist, whoever he may be, fixation of standards of purity for the manufacture of drugs and foods of this country, and those interested in the manufacture of many billions worth of such products must step to the "chemist's office" and get the stamp of his official seal or shut up shop. Truly the chemist of to-day is about to realize the dream of the alchemist of old.

But

Not that we do not need standarized drug products nor pure foods. Such a proposition we do not for a moment question. it is maintained that while within the provisions of this bill there are many most desirable features, there are certain absurdities, any one of which should preclude even its serious consideration.

If interstate commerce in manufactured foods and drugs is to be at all regulated, and it is in serious need of most careful and wise regulation, such control should come within the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department of the United States Government, and, should questions of deleterious adulteration in food or drug products arise, such should be referred for investigation to the existing medical authorities of the Treasury Department, the present Marine Hospital Service. The Agricultural Department should have no voice in matters of commerce or of medicine, preventive or otherwise. The Agricultural Department was not instituted for that purpose-its sphere of usefulness should not extend outside of the interests of the grower of crops. The Chief Chemist is chosen for his proficiency in agricultural chemistry; he is not a sanitary expert, nor a physiologist, nor a pathologist, nor a physician, nor is he called upon to possess a knowledge of the complicated details of interstate commerce. Why, then,

should any representative now in office seek to wrest these duties from a department already organized to which they might be referred with much better chance of their competent fulfilment ?

The present pure-food legislation emanating from the chemical side of the Agricultural Department of our Government is but a larger and louder "cry to arms" under the auspices of a "pure-food congress" which is strongly suggestive of a lobby at Washington keeping alive the agitation to enlarge the chemical division of the Bureau of Agricul

ture.

From the medical point of view this agitation has become a stench in the nostrils, since regulation of the manufacture and sale of pure foods and drugs can be better subserved by the proper branch of our Government service-the Marine Hospital Corpswhich is infinitely better equipped for such service; especially should the proposed measure for the enlargement of the scope of this important service become a law.

The protection of the public health and the control of sound economics are the fundamental questions which underlie the necessity for a "pure-food law" and to the medical mind it is an amazing spectacle that committees in Congress should permit themselves to be misled in this important matter. To us the problems involved are sanitary, not chemical. A National Health Department-be it a reorganized Marine Hospital Service or an entirely new organization-we should have, and the solution of these problems is assured.

FEEDING IN GASTRIC ULCER.*

OFTEN enough the medical attendant finds much difficulty in arriving at a suitable dietary in the treatment of gastric ulcer; the indications are plainly to administer food only in such form as will not irritate the healing ulcer, but in practice this desirable end is not seldom a hard problem. Of

*Brit. Med Jour.

course the difficulties may be obviated, for a time, by rectal feeding, but this process cannot be continued for any lengthy period without impairment to the general health of the patient. Sir Lauder Brunton's recent clinical lecture on "Feeding in Gastric Ulcer" contains many invaluable practical hints which it is well to bear in mind. That such hard, indigestible or irritating substances as seeds, the achenia of strawberries, nuts, butcher meat, currants, pepper, etc., must be avoided is well recognized by practitioners, and a reliance is placed chiefly on fluid foods. But it is not always sufficiently recognized that even such a simple fluid food as milk may result in the formation of hard indigestible coagula in the stomach. Brunton relates an instance where a female patient vomited a hard felt-like concretion, and another case where a similar fibrous concretion was removed per rectum, and in each case the concretion was formed of long curds of casein matted together, being the result of rapid ingestion of milk. Hence the advantage of adding lime water to the milk, or of peptonizing it so as to avoid those large indigestible curds being formed.

The next point of great practical moment. which Brunton emphasizes is the fact that the longer food remains in the stomach the more acid does it become. We should therefore be careful to administer the food in small quantities at frequent intervals, rather than in three or four meals of large quantity.

Further, the greater ease with which the digestion of pounded fish or meat as compared with the small solid masses brought about by mincing or mastication is a point to remember when a more extended diet is to be allowed.

Lastly, the proper way of preparing starchy food is touched upon, and we are reminded that we should beat the starch up with a little cold water, and then, when it is a paste, hot water may be added without causing lumpiness, while no one should be ignorant of the indigestibility of new bread as compared with stale.

ALCOHOL IN ITS MEDICAL AND SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS.

THE Committee appointed at the Northfield Summer Conference of Christian Workers, Aug. 11, 1899, to investigate the statements of Prof. Atwater of Wesleyan University on the nutritive value of alcohol, has made an exhaustive report in a sixteenpage pamphlet, entitled "An Appeal to Truth," published to-day.

This committee acted in co-operation with the Advisory Board of the National Temperance Societies, the Presbyterian Woman's Temperance Association, the Permanent Committee on Temperance of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Permanent Committee on Temperance of the Presbyterian Church, the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society, the National Department of Scientific Instruction, and the Non-Partisan National Woman's Woman's Christian Christian Temperance Union.

Under these auspices the data furnished by Prof. Atwater as the result of his experiments at Middletown were subjected to a searching analysis by leading experts in physiological chemistry, and the following deductions are made:

Prof. Atwater says his experiments proved that alcohol is oxidized in the body. This is not denied, but it is denied that Prof. Atwater's claim proved alcohol to be a food. Many poisons besides alcohol are oxidized in the body.

The Middletown experiments are said to prove that alcohol in being oxidized in the body furnishes heat and energy. This again is not denied; but the assertion is made that the claim proves nothing in favor of alcohol, because of its injurious action at the same time far outweighs the value of the heat and energy it liberates, as is the case with other poisons oxidized in the body.

Prof. Atwater, in his experiments, proved that alcohol protects the materials of the body from consumption just as effectively as corresponding amounts of sugar, starch,

and fat. But eminent scientific authorities testify that these statements are not supported by his own figures in the tables of his first official data bulletins published by the Department of Agriculture in 1899. This is the testimony of professors occupying the chairs of pathological chemistry in the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York; of physiology in the Medical School of Northwestern University, Chicago; of hygiene in the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia, and of a former professor in the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates.

These scientists, after careful study of Prof. Atwater's report, came to the same conclusion, viz., that his tables do not show that alcohol protected the body's materials, but show on the contrary a distinct loss of nitrogenous material when alcohol was administered.

The entire testimony in "The Appeal to Truth" shows that, according to his' own tables, Prof. Atwater's costly experiments have produced no evidence to sustain his charge of error against the present temperance teaching that alcohol is not a food, but a poison.

Woodhead states in an article on this never exhausted subject, which he published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for August, 1901, that his views may be summed up as follows:

Alcohol is a narcotic poison, of which the pernicious effects are to be seen at all times, and on every hand. It is a drug which, under certain conditions, may be valuable, but it is a dangerous medicament in the hands of any one but a physician; and even in the hands of the physician or surgeon its exhibition is attended with dangers that attach to the prescription of no other substance in the Pharmacopeia. These These dangers are not moral only, but physical dangers, resulting from the action of alcohol on the tissues generally, but especially on those of the nerve centers. Its food

value under ordinary conditions is practically nil and put in the most advantageous light, can only be temporary, and then of an extraordinarily slight and wasteful charac

ter.

THE USE OF INSECTS AS FOOD.

M. DAGIN, a French entomologist, has recently written an article in which he recommends certain insects as an article of diet. He speaks with authority, having not only read through the whole literature of insect-eating, but having himself tasted several hundred of species raw, boiled, fried, broiled, roasted, and hashed. He has even eaten spiders, but does not recommend them. Cockroaches, however, he says, form a most delicious soup. Pounded mortar, put through a sieve, and poured into water or beef stock, Dagin says they make a purée preferable to bisque. Wilfred de Fonvielle, the French scientist, prefers cockroaches in the larval state. The perfect insect may be shelled and eaten like a shrimp. Then, caterpillars are a light food and easy of digestion; not only African and American natives like them, but they are also appreciated by Frenchmen. M. de Lalande, the astronomer, dined every Sunday with the zoologist Quatremere d'Isjonvalle, and Mme. d'Isjonvalle used to collect caterpillars and serve them to the guest. The locust is much eaten by the Bedouins, and may be enjoyed fried, dried in the sun, ground into flour, boiled in milk, or fried and served with rice. The Jesuit father Cambon thinks that locust flour might become popular in Europe as a condiment. The precise opinions which are expressed by travelers as to locusts differ considerably. Amicis said that they taste like shrimps; Niebuhr, like sardines, and Livingstone, like caviare-another illustration of the differences of palatal appreciation. Medical Times and Hospital Gazette.

DRINKS OF MANKIND.

TEA, says London Health, which rivals coffee in favor is a native of China, where it has been grown for over 1,000 years. Pepys mentions having drank it in 1660, showing that it was then a novelty.

Ale is a heavier malted liquor than beer, and contains a small proportion of hops. It was a favorite drink of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes.

Coffee, the drink more highly regarded to-day than any other, was first used in Abyssinia in 875. Thence it was brought to Arabia. A Greek first introduced it to England, and made himself famous by the

act.

Whisky, which is more democratic than wine, is distilled from various grains, from potatoes, and from malted barley. It was named by the Celts in Ireland and Scotland. Brandy, a drink not so universally used, is distilled from wine.

So-called beer was made in England a long time ago by tapping spruce, fir, birch, maple, and ash trees, and using their juices. This process is still kept up in England, and in America, where home-made beers from roots are much used.

Among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Athenians beer was made from barley, while in Spain and Britain wheat was used for malting. Tacitus, in the first century, Isaid that beer was the usual drink of the Romans, and the soldiers of Cæsar introduced it into Britain.

A more aristocratic drink is wine, the use of which is as old as civilization. Its origin is ascribed to the gods. The culture of the vine began in Armenia and Pontus and speedily spread. The most famous of Asiatic wines was that of Chalyb, which furnished the tables of the Persian kings. Wine was not used by the most ancient Romans.

received it from the ancient Gauls, who were great drinkers, as well as feeders. Undoubtedly, the use of beer was common as early as the use of wine.

TREATMENT OF OBESITY. DEBOVE, in Le Semaine Médicale, says that obesity is essentially a nervous disease. He believes that the nutrition of the body and the maintenance of it at a given weight are regulated by a nervous mechanism, in the same way that the heat of the body is controlled. It is essentially a condition of altered metamorphosis closely allied to gout, diabetes, chlorosis, myxedema, and arrests of development. The argument advanced in support of the nervous control of the body weight is based upon the fact that habitually more food is taken than is needed to maintain the nutrition of the tissues and in the ordinary oxidation for the production of energy. The remaining food is oxidized and gotten rid of under the regulating influences of the nervous system.

The application of these principles to the treatment of obesity consists first in the reduction of the foods to a point at which the excess of adipose is removed for purposes of oxidation; after this is attained he substitutes a voluntary regulation of the diet for the imperfect regulation of the nervous system. Upon the following diet a patient lost one hundred pounds in a period of five months: For breakfast, a cup of tea or milk; for luncheon, one or two slices of meat, a few vegetables, and a little salad, with four or five ounces of bread; for supper, a glass of hot milk, with two or three ounces of bread, fruit if desired. Exercise he regards of little value in the treatment of obesity, as it increases the appetite and thus more than compensates for the increased oxidation. Mineral waters are objectionable, because of their tendency to interfere with digestion. Thyroids should be used only in those cases in which obesity is dependent upon myxede

ma.

WHY I DO NOT USE ALCOHOL IN

SURGERY.*

BY W. VON R. BLIGHTON, M.D.,

North Tonawanda, N. Y.

Surgeon Erie Railroad.

IN discussing the subject of this paper. we shall not invade the realms of operative or mechanical surgery any further than those branches involve the domain of "surgical therapeutics," which seems to be the sphere to which our theme is confined. "Surgical therapeutics" is that branch of the surgical art which deals with our duties as surgeons, primarily for the relief of our patients, from a purely medical standpoint.

Generally, the first condition that demands. our attention when we are called to a case of injury, is shock or hemorrhage. Sometimes both of these conditions are present and demand relief.

We are to consider in this paper, not what should be done; but one thing which should not be done.

I remember to have read in a book writ

ten by the distinguished Keeth Imray, of Edinburgh, when I was a mere boy in medicine, so long ago as 1862, a sentence which made an indelible impression upon my mind. Its language was, in substance, this: "Before stating what it is proper for us to do in collapse occurring from injury, let us state what should by all means be avoided. First, give the patient no beer, wine or spirits."

of

I also recall a sentence from the pen Prof. H. C. Wood, written, I suppose, about the year 1892, at least it was about that time I read it: "If you want your patients to come out of shock, you will be careful how you give them alcohol. Indeed, I am sure that a large dose of alcohol puts one nail in the coffin of your patient. Alcohol is a heart stimulant, but a paralyzant of the bloodvessels." This last sentence brings us sharply up against the thought of our

* Read at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Association of Sur. geons of the Southern Railway Company, held at Mobile, Ala., May 7, 8, 9, 1901. Reprinted from Int. Jour of Surgery.

My first reason for the non-use of alcohol in surgery, and especially in shock and extreme exhaustion, is this: It is unscientific and dangerous.

Alcohol is not a heart stimulant. How can a substance be what Prof. Wood says alcohol is:-"A heart stimulant," and yet, "a paralyzant of the blood vessels?" The bloodvessels (especially the arteries) are a continuation of the heart tissue, receiving their nervous impulse from the same nerves which supply the heart all of which are given off from the central nervous system, the sympathetic being the accelerator and the vagus the inhibitor. Therefore, no substance can stimulate the heart without stimulating the blood vessels; and no substance. can paralyze the blood vessels without paralyzing the heart.

My position on this subject is sustained by such authorities as Richardson, N. S. Davis, Woodhead, Sansbury, Ringer, Parks, Martin, Bunge, Copp, Fick, Brunton, Cushny, Hall, Kellogg, and scores of others who occupy the foremost rank in the medical profession.

If alcohol is a cardiac and vasomotor paralyzant, and all of these eminent scientific investigators so teach us, then, if shock is the result of heart paralysis and vasomotor paralysis of the abdominal blood vessels, it must be the height of absurdity, and glaringly unscientific, to administer alcohol in shock, or in any other condition of extreme exhaustion from whatever cause; and Prof. Wood may well say, that: "A large dose of alcohol puts one nail in the coffin of your patient."

My second objection to the use of alcoohol in surgery is this. Its use must of necessity counteract, to a considerable degree, the effects of those remedies that are specifically indicated, because of their power to stimulate into activity the reserve force of the body, and, at the same time, add to the accumulative source of energy.

It cannot be successfully denied that, if strychnia is a vasomotor stimulant, and