Vol 22, No 12 (1926)

The reaction of a dead muscle was for the first time discovered by the famous chemist Bercelius as acidic, and this understanding of muscle reaction was kept until Du-Bois-Reymond, who proved an alkaline reaction on litmus of a resting muscle; he explained the observed cases of undoubted acid reaction of the latter either by decay of muscle tissue, or its death and rigor, or by its active tension, work. Although such an explanation was contradicted by the experiments of Du-Bois-Reymond in which he obtained an alkaline reaction in inactive muscles killed by him in boiling water, but the ideas about the reaction of the muscle that came from the time of Du-Bois-Reymond have survived to this day.

The task of the clinic is, if possible, to determine the onset of this pathology in the cardiac work. If we and Germans usually speak about sufficiency and insufficiency of the heart, about its compensation and decompensation, these values of the limiting and definite order, the French school puts the question more precisely, treating hyposystoles and asystoles. In recent years, especially much attention has been paid to this clarification of the definition of the state of heart dysfunction.

The causes of hydronephrosis are known to be various obstructions to the outflow of urine, arising in one or another part of the urinary tract, starting from the kidney and ending with the urethra. Depending on whether these obstacles appear to be congenital or acquired, two forms of hydronephrosis are distinguished - congenital and acquired, and, however, it is not always possible to draw an exact boundary between both of these forms. According to Küster, in 530 cases of hydronephrosis 336 cases had acquired hydronephrosis and 194 cases were probably congenital.

Up to the present time we have not had a single sign of separation of the placenta, which would indicate with absolute certainty that the placenta of the woman in labor has already completely separated, and therefore it can be pushed out without danger to the health of the woman. Therefore, in addition to the old, long-known signs of separation of the placenta, such as Schroeder's and Ahlfeld's signs, until very recently, various authors have continually proposed new signs of this kind in the medical press.

Practice shows that syphilis infection, when it causes progressive paralysis later on, precedes the latter on average 9-12 years. Metasyphilis is known to affect men more often than women. This 2:1 norm seems to have recently increased to a ratio of 4:1 (Bleuler et al.). In Russia, the percentage of progressive paralysis in relation to the total psychosis is 13.8% for men and 4.3% for women according to Zhdanov, or 13.9% and 6% according to Ignatyev.

For physicians working especially in remote places, where hospitals have no devices for disinfecting clothing, linen and bedding, and where there are no means to purchase expensive and cumbersome disinfection chambers for transportation, but where, however, the need for disinfection is acute, I propose a simple device for disinfection, whose construction is feasible anywhere at a low cost. I used this device with success when I was a zemstvo doctor in Vologda province, in a combined hospital during the German war and especially during the civil war, during epidemics of typhus and relapsing typhus and cholera, in district hospitals.

Antagonism between pancreas and thyroid gland, according to experiments and observations of the author, undoubtedly exists. From here there is a reason to try insulin, with therapeutic purpose, at some diseases of a thyroid gland, especially those which are accompanied by its hyperfunction.

Leukocytes were obtained from the exudate induced in rabbits by sterile aleuronate injection and subjected to the action of sera of various animals. It turned out that removal of thyroid gland, spleen, ovaries and testicles decreases phagocytic ability of leukocytes. Thyroidectomy has the strongest effect in this respect, testicular removal the weakest.

In Spain, from 1960 to 1907, 77,058 people died of cancer (33,555 men and 43,513 women), with nearly 1/4 being cases of gastric cancer. In England, from 1901 to 1909, 21.4% of men and 14.2% of women died of cancer and other malignancies: of the latter, 22% of uterine cancer and 16.8% of breast cancer.

Analyzing 2 cases of primary liver cancer and 1 case of general carcinomatosis studied clinically and pathologically in detail, in agreement with the literature data the author came to the conclusion that in the etiology of malignant tumors, their growth, development and metastasis the endocrine factor, especially the sex glands and pituitary gland, is often of significant importance.

Having analyzed cases of spontaneous cure of cancer and sarcoma published in the literature, Strauss concludes that while sarcoma is capable of such self-healing, the latter is not observed in cancer, but only partial reversal of tumor development occurs, which has no significance for the final fate of the patient.

The treatment of feeding by diet alone does not always succeed because of the lack of appetite, as is often the case in tbc patients. In such cases the use of insulin, which, by increasing the appetite, promotes the introduction of large quantities of food, is of great benefit.

The authors suggest that more serious attention than has hitherto been given to the treatment of pernicious anemia should be given to a special, fat-poor diet consisting chiefly of large quantities of liver, fresh vegetables, and fruit. In almost all of the 45 patients who were under their care and were on this diet, the anemia rapidly subsided with a decrease in the jaundice index and an increase in the number of red blood cells.

While administering Na silicici injections to a patient with open form of tbc, suffering at the same time typical attacks of bronchial asthma, the author accidentally noticed that asthma attacks in this patient in connection with the treatment disappeared and did not recur for 9 months. Further application of these injections in 20 cases of bronchial asthma gave the same favorable results.

The author has obtained excellent results from the use of stryphnonin, a synthetically derived substance representing chemically a preliminary stage of adrenaline, for profuse hemoptysis and pulmonary hemorrhage.

The authors propose a double technique of gastric function examination, which does not differ much from Kalk's and Katsch's technique. At an interval of one or two days a fractional examination of the gastric contents is made-the first time with water, the second time with caffeine breakfast. Hypacidic and hyperacidic stomachs behave differently in relation to the caffeine breakfast.

This is ossophyt (Na glykokolphosphoricum) manufactured by Boehringer in Mannheim. Düker reports two cases of fractures of lower limbs, where after 8 and 4 weeks of unsuccessful treatment with a plaster cast, injections of a 4% aqueous solution of ossophyt in the fracture circumference, made in an amount of 10.0 solution per week (in 1 or 2 instillations) helped very quickly.

Surgical treatment of intussusception in children of 2 months to 2 years of age was performed from 1908 to 1926 in 40 cases by Suermondt. The mortality rate was 37.5%; 16 cases were operated upon within 24 hours, the mortality rate being 6.3%; 10 cases after 24 hours, the mortality rate being 20%; 2 cases after 36 hours, the mortality rate being 50%; 7 cases after 48 hours, the mortality rate 86%; 5 cases after 3 days, the mortality rate 100%.

The author believes that Krönlein-Orlov pharyngotomy makes access to the root of the tongue completely free and allows, in case of its cancerous lesion, extensive removal of submandibular and upper parts of the lateral cervical region of one side along with complete removal of the tongue.

The author reports an exceptional case of benign struma metastasis. The case concerned a 30-year-old woman who had been suffering from a struma without any disorder for 2 years. After childbirth the goiter began to enlarge slightly, and in addition, the patient noticed a tumor in the right frontal area the size of a walnut, closely fused to the bone.

Vorschütz in 1923 reported about his method of treatment of postoperative pneumonias by injection of patients' own blood. But his proposal did not meet a great response in the press and, apparently, found few followers why Graser's article, fervently recommending this method and based on a large number of observations, deserves great attention of practitioners.

The author particularly recommends, as an improvement of this operation, the use of a suture-carrier on the superior rectus muscle. This protects against various complications and especially against vitreous body prolapse, reducing intraocular pressure and immobilizing the eye better than other methods of fixation.

The author tries to answer very important questions for the practitioner, how pregnancy affects Graves' disease, and whether the latter is an indication for abortion. These questions are still debatable, which is why the two cases J. observed are very instructive.

The author recommends that after inserting the prolapsed umbilical cord, when immediate extraction of the fetus is impossible or dangerous, a 3 centimeter thick and 20 centimeters long gauze pad be placed between the pelvic wall and the presenting part. In some cases, it is necessary to insert two rolls, one in front and one behind.

To find out experimentally which conditions favor uterine rupture during childbirth in women who had previously undergone a caesarian section, Lackner performed a series of experiments on 32 goats in which the uterus was incised in one direction or another.

The author found that a favorable clinical course is given by cases where there is a relative and small absolute increase in lymphocyte counts after primary illumination, as well as cases with relatively elevated lymphocyte counts before illumination.

The author performed this treatment on 40 patients. Patients with more or less pronounced intoxication, who were admitted to the hospital in the first days of the disease, were chosen for treatment.

Proceeding from the fact that the modern nutritious mixtures recommended for diarrheal diseases, as protein milk, buttermilk, Adam's "diétic milk," are poor in fats, and that the ratio of nutrients in them differs considerably from the ratio available in women's milk, the author proposes a mixture he calls "protein milk dressing" (protein milk with 4% flour, 4% sugar and 3% butter, prepared according to the method of Czerny-Kelinshmidt'a).

On the basis of his experiments on animals and observations in humans, the author finds the use of these agents before and especially after abdominal operations very useful for maintaining body temperature and reviving blood circulation.

The author studied in 74 patients (69 with polyarthritis and 5 with Ischias) the content of catalase in the blood before and after the mud bath. The determination was made according to the method of Bach and Zubkova.

This method is based on a modification of Nesht and Bauer using natural homolytic amboceptor and human serum complement. The authors tested it on 1009 sera (mostly syphilitic) and concluded that it is more sensitive compared to the classical WR, simple technique, and inexpensive.

The book of Prof. Z. gives a new and bright proof to how important is the application of the principles of physiological experiment to the clinical research, and how productive can be the idea of necessity to find out the dynamics of the disease process, which only leads to understanding of the functional state of a sick cell. As simple as this provision is, it still has to be emphasized in view of the fact that clinical thought still remains clenched within the framework of pathological and anatomical notions and has difficulty breaking away from them. Without diminishing the importance of morphological knowledge in the slightest degree, however, every attempt to push the boundaries of clinical investigation towards the application of methods which allow to find out the functional relations should be welcomed.

The book is a collection of lectures given at the Kyiv Clinical Institute for Advanced Medical Training. The first six lectures are devoted to diseases of the large brain: hemorrhages, embolism and thrombosis of cerebral vessels, traumatic injuries of the large brain, comas, and encephalitis. These are followed by two lectures on inflammation of the cerebral membranes and two lectures on acute and sudden cerebrospinal diseases.

Held in Samara, from October 3 to 8, the III Congress on the fight against malaria, as a result of its work, adopted a number of resolutions, listed below.

At the end of 1925, conferences were organized at the Central Tuberculosis Dispensary, with the aim of elaborating questions of scientific and practical character and of public struggle against tbc. The conferences were held twice a month with the participation not only of the dispensary doctors, but also of other scientific and prophylactic institutions of Kazan, who took an active part in the work of the conferences. Prof. B. A. Voltaire was elected chairman of the conferences, Dr. M. I. Oyfebach was elected secretary.

Professor V.L. Bogolyubov was unanimously nominated to the vacant chair of Hospital Surgical Clinic of Kazan University by the Scientific Council of the Medical Faculty of the latter and by the Surgical Subject-Matter Commission. Professor S.S. Zimnitsky was unanimously appointed to the chair of Propaedeutics of Internal Medicine at Kazan University by the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Medicine.