ABSTRACTS.

NOTE ON THE THERAPEUTIC USE OF METHYLENE-BLUE.

79

BIDAULT commenced using methylene-blue in 1898 for flap wounds with extensive separation of skin, which prove difficult to heal by ordinary anti­septic methods.

Although the substance is somewhat expensive, costing about 50 francs per kilogramme, its use in such cases is quite practicable, inasmuch as the solutions employed are not concentrated. A saturated solution in water contains 4'57 per cent. The living cells have the power of reducing it and thereby destroy­ing its staining quality.

Methylene-blue is antiseptic. In saturated solution it rapidly destroys staphylococci, streptococci, the bacillus coli communis, and the anthrax bacillus. On the other hand, some microbes, like Eberth's bacillus and Friedlander's bacillus, resist even prolonged contact. Bidault declares that a I per cent. solution destroys staphylococci in twenty-four hours. Methylene­blue is not caustic, and in human medicine is said to have analgesic properties which render it suitable for diminishing pain in neuralgia, enteritis, and rheumatism. Injected like cocaine, it produces in about ten minutes a sufficiently marked analgesic effect to relieve painful lameness. Such injec­tions, however, are followed later on by painful enlargement, which persists from four to six days.

Bidault suggests that methylene-blue might be used in the treatment of acute rheumatic lameness, and enteritis with obstinate diarrhcea. He treated a young horse suffering from rheumatic synovitis of the great sesamoid sheath which had resisted all ordinary methods. Doses of 50 cm. of powdered methylene-blue were given in gelatine capsules. The dose was repeated three times a day. Treatment was commenced on the 1St May and by the 5th of that month lameness had almost disappeared. The dose was then increased to 2 grammes per day until the 8th May, after which 1 gramme per day was given for the next week. On the 18th lameness had disappeared. Since that time the horse has done military service without showing any signs of lame­ness.

Bidault claims to have had good results from the external use of 1 per cent. solution in cases of conjunctiVItis.

For wounds he recommends 2 per cent. solutions. The parts are thoroughly cleansed and washed with boiled wafer, and then cautiously injected or mopped with a solution of the above strength. He also claims to have had remarkably good results in the treatment of synovitis and open arthritis with 2 per cent. solutions. A troop horse in which the great sesamoid sheath had been deeply penetrated was cured in ten days by injections. In another case, affecting a thoroughbred horse, the synovial sac of the tibio-tarsal joint was accidentally perforated when racing. Synovia escaped in considerable quantity, and in spite of the careful use of sublimate solutions the synovial capsule became extremely tense and the general symptoms more and more marked, until, after two days of treatment, recourse was had to injections of methylene-blue. Five days later the discharge ceased. Harness injuries are treated with 2 per cent. solutions of methylene-blue in glycerine. Bidault speaks highly of the results obtained (Rec. de MM. VCterill., 15th November 1903, p. 697).

TRAUMATIC PERICARDITIS IN SWINE.

'CASES of traumatic pericarditis in swine are extremely seldom seen, and interest therefore attaches to a case of the kind described by Teetz. He was called to inspect a pig which, it was stated, had been in indifferent health for