Palatable Castor Oil.

Abstract

It is immaterial if years ago a writer in Ziemssen's Ency¬ clopedia did recommend quinin in enormous doses in the treat¬ ment of pneumonia. What if Drs. A. or B. have after some fashion tried it? When I was a student quinin in moderate doses was a treatment of pneumonia, the lancet was in disre¬ pute; drugs were little relied on as specifics.Alonzo Clark told us that "if the good Lord would forgive him he would never again pack the chest of a pneumonia patient with ice," he having lost eight consecutive eases in Bellevue Hospital by this practice. Several years after gradu¬ ation I observed the practice in Vienna of applying cold cloths to the chest and giving a little red wine internally. For more than 20 years since that time I have noted that some physi¬ cians use ice locally; others, blisters, the flaxseed poultice, the Clark oil-silk jacket, etc. Internally have been administered alcohol, the coal-tar products, strychnin, digitalis, salicylate of soda and creosotal. All have kept the mortality at about the time-honored standard of from 10 to 40 per cent., in accord¬ ance with the age of the patient, his natural resistance and the character of the prevalent severity of the pneumonia.