I do not believe it is possible to produce miscarriage or abortion by this treatment. I have never seen it follow, and so certain am I of this fact that I have come to look upon it as being a safe and convenient means in making a differential diagnosis as to the presence or absence of conception in cases of suppressed menses. I am so confident of this diagnostic value that I am in the habit of saying to the patient when there is any doubt as to the cause of the suppression, “I shall give you a dose of medicine which will bring matters around all right if you have taken a cold, but if there is a natural cause for the arrest of the menstruation you need look for no results.” Who has not occasion, frequently, to decide for the anxious patient the cause of delayed menstruation? They come to you insisting that the suppression is not due to conception, and are exceedingly importunate in their demands for relief. Here, then, is a medium through which I have frequently solved this perplexing question; and through which I have been enabled to conscientiously prescribe for such cases, while otherwise I should have refused to use any means to afford relief, simply advising patience, and awaiting the tedious restoration of function by Nature’s own forces.
D. H. Bergey, M. D.
1245 S. 28th St., Philadelphia, Pa.
ICE IN BRONCHIAL ASTHMA.
To the Editor:
Sir:—In the November number of the American Therapist, I contributed a short account of a long, violent and very refractory exacerbation of bronchial asthma, which yielded almost instantly to the application of ice-packs over the pneumogastrics. The vagi are held to contain both dilator and contractor filaments for the bronchial muscles. This attack seemed to me to be a convulsion, so to speak, of the afferent contractor filaments. By freezing the vagi, then, these violent motor impulses should be inhibited; and such turned out to be the case.
A day or two since I received a letter from Dr. Ezra Peters, of Missouri, saying: “I have just returned from a case of asthma very similar in every particular to the one reported by you in the November number of the American Therapist, except that I did not use nitro glycerin. After a hard tussle for fifty-two hours for air, a fifteen minute’s application of the ice-pack to the neck caused the respiration to become quite full and free, and the pulse to fall from 138 to 80.”
I publish this additional experience in the hope that others will give this simple procedure a further trial.
Ernest B. Sangree, M. D.
2020 Arch St., Philadelphia.