though this be the case, I am now less European in medicine and politics than mary of those born in this land. I am for freedom, Civil, Religious, Medical. Why should we be trammelled on any subject which pertains to the happiness of man, by the dogmas and hypothesis of men which will not bear the test of experience, or calm dispassionate reasoning.

One reason for my troubling you with this communication, is that I see my name among those who were appointed a Committee of Arrangements for the next meeting of the Convention to be held at Pittsburgh, next May. Now I hope there will be a general turn out of Reformers, both from east and west, and that you and your collegiates will not fail to visit us; we wish the most distinguished in the reform ranks to come, because this is a stronghold of Hunkerism, and we wish to show the public that all the learning and talents are not confined within the precincts of Allopathy, but that men of equal, if not superior talents and education, are to be found on the side of reform; that independent, yea, master spirits have arisen to oppose the death-dealing system of Allopathy. All we want to the overthrow of Allopathy is men qualified for the discharge of the duties of their profession to come into the ranks and fill up the waste places, for the general cry from the afflicted is, "O don't give me calomel."

I was glad to hear that you had separated from Homœopathy, for how can two walk together except they are agreed? It is impossible that they can with any degree of comfort or satisfaction. Besides, I consider Homœopathy in the main as worthless. If your Homœopathic physicians are the same as here, I don't see how you could countenance them. They use no cathartics, nor emetics, nor indeed any thing that produces any perceptible effect in assisting nature to throw off morbid humors from the system. Were it not that I would trespass on your time, I could give you an account of four patients that I have been called to see, who were kept in suffering by them, and for want of proper treatment.

We have had a few cases of cholera in this city and in Pittsburgh. They have been of a very malignant type. The disease has been confined to certain localities in this city. It has prevailed among the German population, principally along the bank of the canal, where there are basement stories in the houses, and where they use pump water.

I have treated only six cases of cholera asphyxia, one of which proved fatal, in consequence of the imprudence of getting out of bed contrary to my express orders. She had profuse watery discharges for twelve hours before I saw her, with extreme prostration, but I succeeded in checking the discharges and allaying the nausea, and raising the pulse, so that she was improving from Tuesday morning until Thursday evening, when she got out of bed. The horizontal posture cannot be too strictly enforced in those cases where rice water evacuations prevail.

Last season I used a pill made of opium, camphor and carb. ammonia, equal parts, in connection with other remedial agents, with success, in all cases where there was vomiting and diarrhoea accompanied with pain. But now I am inclined to think every case may be treated successfully without the use of opium. The epidemic had entirely subsided in Pittsburgh for some time, until the day before yesterday, it has mysteriously appeared in the same locality where it had been before, and taken five or six victims in its course. The location where it had prevailed this season is high and dry, and such as might be supposed most secure against its ravages, and when it had disappeared so that alarm had subsided, lo, it breaks forth afresh. All the theories that I have yet seen fail to fully explain its mysterious operations.

tance.

The electricity doctrine is in some degree lessened in imporNo doubt there are a combination of causes. Atmospheric changes contribute to it, and in all the places where it has prevailed here, they used pump water.

I fear I shall tire your patience by my lengthy epistle, and will bring it to a close by giving you a simple yet effectual prescription for the cure of those after pains with which parturient females are often distressed. I have used it for many years and never knew it to fail to give relief, if not entirely remove the pains:-Gum Camphor, the size of a common pill every two or three hours, until the pains are removed. I have found it not only to relieve the pain but allay restlessness, produce diaphoresis, and in every case the recovery was speedy and safe. It has not, in my hands, given in a solid form, produced nausea or vomiting, or any unpleasant effects. I would conclude by wishing every success to the cause of ReI am respectfully, yours,

form.

J. B., M. D.

ON THE ADVANTAGES OF ANESTHESIA AND THE RELATIVE VALUE OF ITS DIFFERENT AGENTS.

To the Editor of the Eclectic Medical Journal:

SIR: In the June number of your invaluable Journal were two articles on anæsthetic agents,-one from Dr. Pierson, of Salem, Mass., and the other from Dr. Hayward, of Boston, Mass. The object of these articles seems to be, to discuss the relative value of Sulphuric Ether, Chloroform, and Concentrated Chloric Ether. The use of anaesthetic agents is of such obvious and important practical value, that it will hereafter be known as the great medical discovery of the age. Any just attempt, therefore, to discover which is the best anesthetic agent among those now discovered, or to discover one better than those now used, must be considered highly laudable. It is possible that within a few years, some new agent for etherization may entirely supersede those now used; or, facts may be developed which will prove that all those now used are useful in their several places, and may clearly show in what particular cases each should be used. Indeed, is it not also possible that our vastly increased and rapidly increasing knowledge of the nervous system may soon enable us to successfully render all patients temporarily insensible to pain, through the means of mesmerism or some similar agency? Should such discovery of our power to destroy sensibility be made, we should no longer be obliged to resort to those agents which all intelligent surgeons now admit to be occasionally dangerous, sometimes dangerous when we have no indications to warn us of the danger.

But should our knowledge of etherization, or other means of inducing insensibility, remain stationary, its benefits are so much superior to its dangers, that it will be, as before remarked, the great discovery of the age. The dangers of etherization are indeed very slight when it is induced in suitable patients. Tens of thousands of suffering patients, medical, obstetrical and surgical have been relieved by its agency; and though it has doubtless been induced hundreds of times by medical men who neither appreciated in what anæsthesia consists, nor were qualified to detect those organic diseases of the heart, brain and lungs, which forbid the use of these agents; and hundreds of times by dentists who do not even profess to appreciate these diseases; still, how rare are the cases of death, or of permanent injury, even from this indiscriminate use of these powerful agents. We must believe, in fact, that etherization has been, in the practice of many physicians, surgeons and dentists, much too frequently resorted to. In the hands of such, it has passed into a kind of universal remedy, to be exhibited for all painful diseases, upon all constitutions, under almost all circumstances. This fashionable mania for suddenly depressing the vital functions of respiration and circulation, as well as thought and the senses, is entirely unjustifiable. It is expedient to induce so unnatural and deathlike state of the system, in my opinion, in only a few cases in dentistry; in not more than one case in five, or perhaps in ten, in obstetrics, very rarely in medical treatment; but very generally in surgery, unless contraindicated. Some may deem it extravagant to say that nearly all important surgical operations should be performed under its influence, except where the patient has some organic disease; but we believe this opinion to be correct. In slight surgical operations, like the extraction of teeth in ordinary cases, etherization is not justifiable, for the same reason that it is not justifiable in all those cases of medical and dental practice where it is not necessary. Necessity alone should induce us to prescribe anæsthesia, so long as there is that possibility of danger which now belongs to all etherization. Though a dentist by profession, and consequently very often extracting teeth, I do not suppose I have etherized more than some twenty patients, since these agents were discovered. If I extracted a thousand teeth from a thousand etherized patients, and only one died, you, my reader, would not want to be that patient. So in regard to all other unnecessary etherization. One case of fracture of the radius and ulna, and one case of partial or incomplete fracture of the radius and ulna, both happening to children, have occurred in my practice, within the last few months; but in the treatment of neither of these cases was anæsthesia induced. The reduction of each of these fractures required so little time, and consequently exposed the patient to suffering for so brief a period, and the resistance of the muscles to the necessary extension was so slight, that it was not required. Etherization

with chloroform is nearly out of use in ordinary obstetrics, in Boston, and sulphuric and concentrated chloric ether are not so universally exhibited as recently.

But the great necessity and important use of etherization in the more severe surgical operations, will be apparent, when we consider that it has the following, among other advantages:

I. Fewer deaths and better cures occur in surgical practice, with than without it.

In an indiscriminate use of these agents, the per centage of deaths produced by them is very small indeed; and but very few patients have even been, in any degree, injured. And, as before suggested, even this very small per centage of deaths and injuries would be vastly less, if the agents were never administered except by persons who could detect those cases of manifest organic disease of the heart, lungs and brain, which forbid anæsthesia. Such dentists as are uneducated in regard to the physical signs and the rational symptoms of these diseases, should always consult, along with their patient, an intelligent physician before administering any of these agents, to perform dental operations. The very few deaths and injuries which now occur, (and these are less with intelligent surgeons than the mass of physicians and dentists,) do not constitute an objection at all to be compared to the positive advantages and fewer deaths of anesthetic surgery. Many dangerous operations can be performed with much more safety to life, and many of the ordinary operations can be performed so much better as to make better cures. The patient is in no fear, and there is no mental shock. Without ether, this fear, in serious operations, powerfully depresses the powers of life, and your patient, soon after the operation, sinks. Again, the etherized patient suffers no pain. The extreme suffering of some operations, like fear, powerfully depresses the nervous system, and frequently renders these operations fatal. In a case of amputation of the thigh at which I was present, some months since, and which was performed with great dexterity and very little loss of blood, on a very resolute man, the man died in only two or three hours subsequent to the operation, without any after hemorrhage, and his death seemed to be entirely owing to the tremendous shock which his nervous system sustained. This result was not very uncommon. But, under etherization, there is no mental shock of fear, or physical shock of pain.

As your patient neither fears nor feels, so also he does not move. If you are cutting, you cut just where you want to cut; your patient does not voluntarily jerk, nor do the parts spasmodically twitch, and thus, in nice operations, make you wound important blood-vessels and nerves. Many cases of some surgical diseases, such as aneurisms, tumors, &c., which the surgeon could not operate on at all without etherization, because of the danger to these vessels, can now be operated upon, and the lives of many such saved.