Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1893 — THE BODY AND ITS HEALTH. [ARTICLE]

THE BODY AND ITS HEALTH.

Insect Bites —Bites of gnats, fleas mosquitoes, flies, etc., may be avoided by sponging the face and hands with elder flower water. A weak carbolic lotion is also used for the purpose. It must not be too strong or the skiu will be injured. Singing in tiik Ear. —That unpleasant sensation known as singing in the ear generally results from hardening of the wax. It may frequently be removed at oucc by syringing the ear with a little warm soap and water, or by dropping a little glycerine oil into the ear at bed time. If these remedies do not answer, a mustard poultice applied just behind the ear at bed time, and repeated, if necessary, two or three nights, is an almost certain cure.

Clinical Thermometers. —ln stating that some 20,000 thermometers are standardized yearly in Berlin and 30,000 in the thermometric institute at Weimar, Professor Helmholtz also remarks that it is really a matter of life and death to be able to distinguish between a temperature of 93 degrees and 991 degrees—years ago, even in the very best and most expensive of these instruments, errors of from 1 to 11 degrees being found. Medical men have discovered that the practical use of clinical thermometers is of extreme value, and, following the example of Germany, great attention has for some time past been given in other countries to the attaining of absolute perfection in these instruments, the operations at Kew advancing this science being well understood. A special factor in thermometry is, of course, the best possible glass, and the claim has been made by English manufacturers that fifty years ago the work of graduation was done less efficiently than now, but that the glass of which the thermometers were made, being perhaps of more simple constitution, was or that account less susceptible to influence inducing devious conditions of strain.

Dangerous Use of Quinine. —“ Dangerous, though popular,” is the judgment pronouced by Dr. W. Thornton Parker in a recent elaborate paper on the present almost indiscriminate use of quinine, and this judgment is fortified by citations from numerous eminent authorities. According to Ringer, large doses produce severe frontal headache, with dull and heavy, tensive and some-, times agonizing pains. In toxic doses it excites convulsions. Cnirone and Cure find that the removal of the motor centres of the brain prevents these’convulsions, aud if the central hemisphere is removed on one side the convulsions are unilateral; on the other hand, Albertoni finds that quiniawill induce convulsions when the central hemisphere or the cortical motor centres are removed. Dr. Bartholow states that in full medicinal doses, asthequinia accumulates in the brain, a sense of fulness in the head, constriction of the forehead, more or less giddiness and even decided vertigo are felt. In toxic doses these symptoms have been intensified—intense headache with constriction of the forehead, dimness of vision or complete blindness, deafness, delirium or coma, dilated pupils, weak, slut ering pulse, irregular and shallow respiration, convulsions, and finally collapse and death. Dr. Wood states that the minimum fatal dose of quinine is not known, but probably varies much. Dr. Brown-Sequard states that in epileptics the attacks are rendered decidedly more frequent by the cinchona alkaloids, and Dr. Wood is of the opinion, also, that, in large doses, quinia without doubt abolishes the functions of the cerebrum.