Sixth, look at the pits, say one year after he gets well.

Seventh, the death rate.

Treatment. All the standard works on chicken pox say no treatment is necessary. I will give the results of my experiment in treating three cases in one family at the same time.

To case No. 1 I gave chalk in ten-grain doses three times a day. To case No. 2 I gave alder teas hot, three times a day. Case No. 3 I gave whisky freely like a case of measles.

Look at the results:

No. 1 fared well, had but a few bumps and no pitting.

No. 2 fared bad, had to go to bed, was very well covered with the eruption.

No. 3 fared very bad; it got into his hands and the bottoms of his feet, mouth, nose, and successive crops kept on coming out as long as he took the whisky.

Now if any doctor wants to scare everybody in the country over a case of chickenpox, and make the case resemble a case of small-pox, give the patient plenty of stimulants, and it will convert a mild case into a confluent one. The best treatment is ten grains of chalk three times a day. Chalk three times a day is a favorite prescription.

[Written for the MEDICAL BRIEF.] Typhoid Fever.

BY J. W. LOCKHART, M. D., St. John, Wash.

[Comment on Dr. Blair Article.]

I have just been reading Dr. Blair's article in the March number of the MEDICAL BRIEF, and am not a little interested therewith. That doctor writes with that sweeping assumption of facts and theories that is more characteristic of fancy than of sound reason. For instance, the Doctor assumes, without any show of demonstration, that because the death rate from typhoid fever in certain cities diminished almost simultaneously with installation of filters for the water supply that the diminution of the death rate was due entirely to the purer supply of water. The fact is well established beyond controversy that the death rate

from typhoid fever and other diseases varies greatly not only for different years, but for different series of years in cities and rural districts without any appreciable change in the sanitary conditions.

I have had an interesting experience with typhoid fever that I would like very much to have some one who believes in the germ theory explain. For nearly twelve years I had the medical practice of this town and surrounding country entirely to myself and have had, of course, an excellent opportunity to observe certain diseases, especially typhoid fever. I could never see my way clear to believe in the germ theory of disease, and consequently have paid but little attention to the disinfection and disposition of discharges from the sick. For several years I had from four to seven or eight cases of typhoid fever to treat each year. Then came a year in which I treated fifteen cases, all except four being in the country where there had never been any case of typhoid fever. Five of these cases occurred in one family where the drinking water came through a pipe from a spring forty rods from the house. The next year I treated five or six cases of this disease, and the year after fifty-five cases, mostly in town. Reaping the reward of former carelessness! I hear the bacteriologists say. But the fact is, that in only one instance did the disease occur in any house or on any premises where there had ever before been a case of this disease.

Since that epidemic, that is, for the four years last past, there has been from two to four cases of this fever in town each year, and in only one instance has the disease reappeared on any premises where it had been before. The year before last there were but two cases here, and both of them were in a new house in a new addition to the town and quite remote from any other residence. The water supply was from a new well. This year the same thing was repeated, only in another house. The general water supply is from wells from fifteen to twenty-five feet deep. The soil is porous and easy of penetration by disease germs. There is no sewage system, and no sys

theory of disease, and that of a germinfected water supply as the cause of typhoid fever, is not one of the colossal mistakes of the age it must be that some unseen power has performed a stupendous miracle here in this little burg. What became of all those myriads of fever germs with which the soil must have been polluted four years ago? Who will rise and explain?

This State is cursed with a pure food law that would be intolerable were it not for the fact that it is not enforced. A law recently enacted makes it a criminal offense for any one to sell a little milk to a neighbor for a sick child unless his cow has been "endorsed" by the State Board of Health. It is a crime to sell milk that has been subjected to a temperature of 55° F.; that contains any pathogenic germs, or any foreign substance whatsoever. "Foreign substance whatsoever" is quite a sweeping term and only milk treated by the very best of "separators" would be at all marketable. See! If you keep a cow for your own milk supply and sell your neighbors a little milk in order to lessen the expense of the cow, buy one of my "separators" or quit selling milk. The number of germs which milk may contain is also fixed by law, and if after having your cow "endorsed" by the State Board of Health and buying a separator the bacteriologist should swoop down on you and find a few too many germs, either patho- or non-pathogenic, in the milk you sell, you can pay fifty dollars fine and go to jail for three months (unless you can compromise (?) with the bacteriologist for a less amount). The argument in favor of this kind of legislation has ever been and always will be: "The health of the people must be the supreme law of the land," even at the expense of liberty destroyed, and the shackles of tyranny riveted upon the individual citizen.

[Written for the MEDICAL BRIEF.] A Peculiar Case of Labor.

BY T. CHAS, BUXTON, M. D., Grand Medical Examiner of the Toilers' Fraternity and Coroner of Macon County, Ill. Decatur, Ill.

It is with some hesitancy I pen the report of this case, but owing to its peculiarity I would not think of mentioning it, though it may put some one in a better position to diagnose and treat intelligently another such case.

Mrs. S. L., aged thirty-five years, gave birth to a seven-pound child; the labor was normal, no difficulty, placenta delivered in ten minutes clean, not a break in the membranes surrounding it.

The first seven days she did well, and on the night of the eighth about ten P. M., I was called. On arriving I found her vomiting, temperature one degree below normal, 9721⁄2° F. Pulse weak and wiry, beating but sixty-three times per minute; tetanic contractions of the abdominal muscles, clonic contractions of the muscles of the genital tract, pains almost equal to her travail. Could not elicit any history of chill or fever, the evening diet being two poached eggs, a piece of toasted bread, some butter and a glass of milk.