In the corner of her mouth is a scar which looks like the initial sign of lues, but she claims it appeared a few weeks after the breaking out on her body. On examining her mouth no mucus patches or scars were found.
She now has an osteo-periostitis on the anterior aspect of her right tibia. It is moderately swollen, slightly reddened, and is very painful (the pain is aching, acute and boring in character) on pressure, and on tapping the bone with my finger above and below this point it caused her intense pain. (Patient claims she has never received any injury in this location.)
Upon consulting Dr. McElfresh, he remembered the case and said that he had treated her for a short time about two years ago for the initial symptoms of syphilis, but since then has never seen her.
She is now receiving the mixed treatment of protiodid of mercury, gr. ¼, with a saturated solution of potassium iodid three times a day, starting her on ten drops, then increasing it one drop each time taken. I requested her to return when the medicine is finished.
DISCUSSION BY DR. WARNER HOLT, OF WASHINGTON, OF THE PAPER ON THE CHEMICAL CO-RELATION BETWEEN THE SALIVARY GLANDS AND THE STOMACH, BY JOHN C. HEMMETER, OF BALTIMORE.
Read Before the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, of New York, Meeting in the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, on December 16, 1908.
Dr. Holt said in part: “This experimental study by Dr. Hemmeter is not, as it might appear to be, only an inquiry into the physiology of a limited part of the digestive apparatus, but it is an attempt to solve a biologic problem and to get at the broad basic principles that underlie the chemical co-relation of the organs.
“When a worker occupies himself with the effect of the extirpation of one organ of digestion upon the organs in the next segment of the digestive apparatus, he naturally thinks of phenomena of exclusion or loss of function in one or the other of the segments following the one extirpated, but instead of phenomena of exclusion it is conceivable that those of exaggerated activity in the other segments of the digestive tube might result.
“For 'a priori' we cannot know whether the influence that one segment of the digestive tract exerts upon the succeeding segment is that of stimulation or of inhibition, or of both, viz., of stimulation under one set of conditions and inhibition under another set of conditions. In the investigation of the problem of a chemical co-relation between the salivary glands and the stomach, Dr. Hemmeter has done meritorious work, a great part of which it has been my good fortune to observe and assist in personally; though I am a physician in the employment of the government at Washington, I consider myself a post-graduate student of Professor Hemmeter. I have seen personally four of his animals that had successfully been nursed through the Pawlow operation and extirpation of the salivary glands after months of the most trying work. It required a great deal of perseverance to persist in this kind of work, especially when some of the best animals that had emerged safely from the vicissitudes of the operation for an accessory stomach and from the removal of all the salivary glands on one side of the head succumbed to the third operation in the attempt to remove the remaining salivary glands on the other side.
“The history of these operative failures, though they will never be told, constitute a large part of the merit of those who have worked with Dr. Hemmeter in this research. No matter what the final outcome of the future investigation of this problem will be, whether affirmative or negative, the intrinsic value of such work will be appreciated by all who are to the least degree conversant with the history of physiology. Nowadays we are too liable to forget the hard plodders in experimental work who have started the solution of a problem, and when the last word has been said the worker of the beginning is generally forgotten.