Varieties.

VIBURNUM OPULUS.—This remedy is one of our very best when the following symptoms are present: Hysterical condition from uterine irritation, cramps in the extremities during pregnancy, dysmenorrhea of a spasmodic character, and painful, scanty menses.—Med. Times, from South. Med. Record, p. 276.

THE SUSTENTATIVE PROPERTIES OF COCA.—Dr. Unanue, an earnest partisan of the celestial plant, mentions the case of a courier, on service between Chiquisata and Paz (about 100 miles), who carried for this long journey only coca and two pounds of burnt maize, or potatoes frozen and dried; and further relates that towards the termination of the siege of La Paz by the insurgents, in 1871, the inhabitants, after a blockade of several months during a rigorous winter, in want of provisions were yet obliged to war simultaneously against the elements, the exigencies of nature and the attacks of the enemy. A few had laid in a stock of coca, and this resource, apparently so scanty, turned out the most powerful allies, since it permitted them to support fatigue, suppress sleep, endure hunger without suffering, and to brave the rigors of the cold.

During the same war a body of patriotic infantry, obliged to traverse, during a rigorous season, one of the coldest plateaus of Bolivia, found itself deprived of provisions while advancing in forced marches to rejoin the divisions encamped in Janin; on arrival, hunger and fatigue had decimated it, and but a few were in a state to combat, but these privileged ones were nearly all young mountaineers, habituated from childhood to carry with them always a stock of coca. From time to time they swallowed tiny balls, prepared in advance with the leaves of coca, from which they had removed the nerves, and which they chewed until they contained no more juice. This precaution conserved their strength.— Virginia Medical Monthly, Aug., 1881, from Cinc. Lancet and Clinic.

BULLFROG OINTMENT.—The Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal, August, 1881, tells of a practitioner in Almeda county, California, who found his patient using bullfrog ointment made by boiling a pint of milk, then boiling a living bullfrog to paste therein, and throwing out the bones. The "ointment" thus prepared is, on the aforesaid patient's authority, the best application for sore breasts. This seems to be a return to the materia medica of the twelfth century; the "science" of one age surviving as a superstition of another. The "Journal's" zoological nomenclature seems to be as much awry as the therapeutics of the patient alluded to, for it calls the bullfrog Bufo, the generic title applied by all other zoologists to the toad.—Chic. Med. Review, Sept. 5.

The American Journal of Pharmacy, Vol. 53, 1881, was edited by John M. Maisch.