Therapeutic facts.

Summer Diarrhea.

There have been, this season, two remedies that have given me entire satisfaction in the treatment of summer diarrheas.

There have been two distinct types of this disease in my locality, viz., the atonic and the irritative.

In the first, or atonic, where the tongue is broad and pallid, often coated white, and the stools are watery and light colored, no pain either preceding or accompanying them, nux vomica has been the remedy.

Sig.: Teaspoonful every hour. In the second or irritative type, where the tongue was narrow, pointed and red at the tip and edges, and the stools were colored, greenish or brownish, with pain both preceding and accompanying them, bismuth subnitrate has controlled the condition immediately.

Sig.: Teaspoonful every hour for a few doses, then every two to three hours.

CARLE W. BEANE, M. D.

COMMENT:—In the courses above, advised by the doctor there is an opportunity to bring out a distinction between this course which is the usual manner in which cases by the most of the physicians in general practice are successfully treated. The results are satisfactory and the course is impressed upon the mind of the doctor as one he can depend upon in future cases, but a real close diagnosis will prove to the doctor that the combination as much if not more than the individual remedy should have credit for the cure, and the combination might not be applicable in another case apparently very similar.

In the first class of cases, while there was atonicity there was also acidity, and the glyconda was a very important element in the cure. In the latter case there was a deficiency of acid and the elixir of pepsin was probably of strongly acid reaction and supplied that deficiency. These indications are among those that must be observed and specifically treated in all cases.

I am not criticizing the doctor's method. It was very good. I simply desire to show, what I am constantly trying to keep before the minds of the readers, the necessity of a close observance of the exact conditions.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 2, 1908, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.