Improvement in Method.

Editor Ellingwood 's Therapeutist:

At the beginning of this another year I am trying to decide whether I am improving or not in my methods of practice as the years go by. In my own practice within the last sixteen years, there have some changes and improvements which I consider very important. I have grown into the practice of prescribing single remedies for exact conditions. I remember years ago, when the traveling salesman for some drug house called, I would order compound cough mixtures, compound tonics, and compounds of other kinds, and would not succeed in collecting enough money from the medicine to pay for the order, before he would call again. The bills would increase faster than the cash came in to pay them. Often there would be an accumulation of these remedies that would be a dead loss to me.

Later I began to study each case with reference to the exact factors present, and to prescribe only that remedy or those remedies which were plainly indicated. This course has proved in every way the most satisfactory. I could give the histories of many cases that would prove the benefits of this course.

In a case of albuminuria a man thirty years of age, who had long complained of feeling languid and weary, with persistent weakness of the back, I prescribed calcium phosphate, 3X, and with the persistent use of this remedy for three months, the albumin gradually disappeared from the urine and the patient made a satisfactory recovery. This was perhaps five years ago, and there has been no return of the symptoms.

Another case, similar in some particulars, was that of a boy of 15, who three years ago was brought to my office with face bloated, limbs swollen, appetite poor, and generally debilitated. There was a very large quantity of albumen in the urine. I put this patient upon the same treatment as the above, and within a very few weeks the characteristic symptoms had all disappeared, and in a short time longer he was apparently well, and has so remained.

I am interested in the articles on the use of Lobelia hypodermically. I shall be glad to see more of them, though there has not been a case of diphtheria come under my observation in this locality for years. B. L. GORDON, M. D.

COMMENT: It looks as if the discovery of the powerful stimulant and restorative influence of Lobelia in collapse or when everything else has failed and death is imminent, will prove to be as important as its use in diphtheria. In the above influence it seems to be wider in its action than any remedy or combination we now have access to.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 3, 1909, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.