Chronic Ophthalmia.

Dr. S. B. Miller was cured of chronic ophthalmia and weakness of vision by a farinaceous and water diet. Two years after I prescribed for him, he wrote me that his eyes had been improving during the whole period. The disease was of many years' standing, and was subject to various treatment, without effect, till the diet was changed.

Scrofulous Ophthalmia. — H. L. H., a boy of two years, has scrofulous ophthalmia; eyelids, cheeks, and upper lip swollen; has turns of painful vision for half a day or a day at a time. "Has bread and milk for breakfast and supper, when he will eat it; sometimes refuses it; drinks tea and coffee; 'is a great friend to tea;' 'loves cider;' eats fried cakes; 'is very fond of gingerbread and confectionery,' says his father. He is a great hand to sit up evenings,' says his mother. 'Loves raisins,' says his father; 'but they almost always come through him whole;' 'he sits up sometimes till ten in the evening, and because his eyes are weak, he lies late in the morning, sometimes till eight o'clock.' His food, as an apple for instance, often comes through him undigested.

He cries a good deal;'

'He

'loves spirit.' 'In what way does he prefer it?' likes it very well any way; does not care much which; sometimes takes it with sugar, or molasses and water, or he will drink it raw as well as any other way.' 'Often takes a pinch of snuff; our women folks use it; and he likes a pinch now and then.' 'He naturally never appeared to sleep so well as other children; often cries in the night; often has five or six discharges from the bowels in twenty-four hours.' 'Goes to sleep once in the day, towards night, and sleeps from one to two hours.' 'He was near a year old before he had a tooth.' and a half old when he was weaned.' 'While nursing did not care about eating anything.' 'I always try my children early with such things as I eat myself, because I think it is better for them. I begin at three or four months.' 'Had two other children; both died; one at a week, the other twenty months old.' 'Anything of what we eat or drink ourselves, that suits his appetite best, we allow him to have.'

Was a year

"We have blistered this child's arms, and given him sulphur and cream of tartar."

"Had weak eyes when a fortnight old." His mother (about thirty years old) is in the habit of eating without restraint anything she craves while nursing.

Could any course of physical training of a child indicate greater ignorance than the parents exhibited? I prescribed a course of plain feeding, which I had very little expectation would be followed. They lived at a considerable distance. No report has come to me of the sequel. I have almost invariably found that a milk and vegetable diet was sufficient for the cure of the scrofulous ophthalmia of children.

§ II. DEATHS FROM EATING.

A child was attended through scarlet fever by Dr. B. He was particular as to its diet; but as it continued feeble for a long time, Dr. S. was consulted in the case, and directed that the child should eat anything it wished for. Soon after, it expressed a desire for baked beans, was indulged in them, fell into a fit, and died in that fit.

My friend Dr. J. had a patient, a little girl, who was quite sick with scarlet fever, but became so far convalescent as to leave him at liberty to discontinue his visits, leaving strict injunctions as to its diet. Four or five days after, he was called to the house, and found his patient in profound apoplexy. On inquiry, he found that everything proceeded favorably, and that on that day, about five o'clock in the morning, she asked for food, and a portion of cooked beef was given her. In an hour and a half she asked again for food, and received a slice of sweet cake, which she ate also. About nine, A. M., she asked again for food, and ate a large apple which was given her. About half-past ten, a. M., she complained of headache and giddiness, fell back upon the pillow, and the doctor found her as described. She died the same day.

A student of an academy in New Hampshire died from eating fifteen poached eggs in an evening, three evenings in succession. They caused a permanent obstruction in the bowels. He died in a few days. Two other students ate with him, but could not eat as many as he. Both were sick.

"In the winter of 1824-5, four students in one of the colleges in New England," says Mr. M., "became sick in consequence of eating a supper of oysters. One of them.

lost his senses, and continued to be violently deranged for several weeks. Another was seized with a fever which reduced him very low. For a day or two, serious fears were entertained that he might not recover. A third fell down the next day, in a fit, while standing at his desk, and in consequence was obliged to leave college for several months, and when he returned, to enter the class next below. A fourth was extremely unwell, but by applying for medical advice in season, was probably saved from a long illness. They ate," says Mr. M., "a very large quantity of oysters."

§ III. DISTILLERY-FED HOGS.

I not long since visited the whiskey manufactory of Mr. R., who was kind enough to show me the establishment. There is the large apartment for containing the corn in the ear. Into this a farmer was depositing his wagon-load of corn. There is the shelling machine, the grinding mill, the mash tubs, the yeast-making tubs, the still and refrigerator, or condensing tub of one hundred hogsheads, and the river of death running from a large copper tube. Eight hundred bushels of corn are. consumed daily, and eighteen hundred gallons of whiskey made from it to poison men. There is a flouring mill in the same building; the bran and shorts from which the wheat flour is bolted are worked into the mash tub to aid in the production of whiskey.

The hog establishment contains about five hundred hogs, when the material for making whiskey is duly supplied. There are two long hog houses set on piles upon the margin of the Little Miami, with plank floors raised

above high-water mark; each contains two ranges of hogpens, with an alley of three feet in width between them, running the whole length of the building. Each hog-pen is about twelve feet square, and contains eighteen or twenty hogs. All the filth from these animals is scraped off into the river, and descends to mix and become somewhat diluted with the waters of the Ohio, before it is pumped up into the city reservoir to be drank by the citizens of Cincinnati.

The animals are fed exclusively upon the mash, which is kept in large vats of perhaps six or seven hundred. hogsheads each, which is set flowing into their eating. troughs when they become hungry. Most of the animals were lying huddled together, probably not having finished the digestion of their breakfast. They were large-bellied, owing doubtless to their having no exercise, and eating their thin food to gluttony, in order to obtain sufficient nourishment from it.

Mr. R. says that when one of them gets sickly, a circumstance which not unfrequently happens, on account of their food becoming acid from fermentation, he is turned out into the long alley, called the hospital, to recruit, where he gets the benefit of a slightly improved ventilation. If not thus turned out soon after the appearance of symptoms of indisposition, his comrades in the pen fall to and kill him, as if under the instinctive impression that they had stench and foul air enough without the additional exhalation from a sick hog.

These hogs, thus kept and fed from pighood up to the age of twelve or eighteen months, are sent from time to time to the Cincinnati market, as the butchers need them. The fat is made into lard and lard oil; the hams and shoulders are smoked and dried, and the "sides" are