The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1884-01-19
0ait and 9umor.
Spinal Meningitis.
BIZ Nne IN he CAieaao Eue

Bill Nye IN lie Chicago Eye.
So many people have shown pardona-
BILE curiosity about the above named disease
and so few have very clear idea of the
thrill of pleasure it affords the patient, I'M
less they have enjoyed it themselves, that
| have decided to briefly say something in
answer to the innumerable inquiries | have
received.
Up to the moment had notion of get
ting some meningitis, I had never employed
a physician. Since then have been
thrown in their society great deal.
Most of them arc very pleasant and schol-
arly gentlemen, who will not soon be for
gotten but one of them, whom VIC will
call Dysart, to distinguish from the rest,
doctored me first for pneumonia, then for
inhammat0ry rheumatism, and finally, when
death was contiguous, advised me that |
must have change of scene and rest.
told him that if he kept on prescribing
for me | thought might depend on both.
Change of physicians, however, saved my
life. Dysart. the horse doctor, a few weeks
afterward administered simultaneous
morphine squirt in the arm of healthy
servant girI, because she had the headache,
and she is now with the rest of this veteri-
narian's patients in land that is fairer
than this.
She lived six hours after she was pre-
scribed for. He gave her change Of scene
and rest He has quite thriving little
cemetery filled with the people who have
succeeded in cording up enough of his
change of scene and rest to last them
through all eternity. He was called once
to prescribe for a man whose head had
been caved in by stone matchbox, and
after treating the man for asthma and blind
staggers, he prescribed rest and change of
scene for him, too. The poor asthmatic is
now breathing the extremely rarifed air of
the New Jerusalem.
Meningitis is derived from the Latin
Meninges, membrane, and-ttis, an affix de-
noting inflammation, so that, strictly speak
ing, meningitis is the inflammation of a
membrane, and when applied to the spine,
or cerebrum, is called spinal meningitis, or
cerebro-spinal meningitis, &C., according to
the part of the spine or brain involved in
the inflammation. Meningitis is charac-
teristic and result of so-called spotted fever,
and by many it is deemed identical with it.
When we come to consider that the
spinal cord or marrow runs down through
the long bony shaft made by the vertebre,
and that the brain and spine, though con-
nected, are bound up in one continuous
bony wall and covered with this infamed
membrane, it is not difficult to understand
that the thing is very hard to get at. If
your throat gets infamed, doctor asks
you to run your tongue out into society
about yard and half, and he prizes your
mouth open with one of Rogers Brothers
spoon handles Then he is able to exam
inc your throat as he would page of the
Congressional Record, and to treat it with
some local application. When you have
spinal meningitis, however, the doctor
tackles you with bromides, ergots, ammonia,
iodine, choloral hydrate, codi, bromine of
ammonia, hasheesh, bismuth, valerianate Of
ammonia, morphine sulph, nux vomica,
turpentine emulsion, vox humana, rex
magnus, opium, cantharides, Dover's pow
ders, and other bric-a-brac. These RENE
dies are masticated and acted upon by the
salivary glands, passed down the esophe-
cus, thrown into the society of old gastric,
submitted to the peculiar motion of the
stomach and thoroughly chymifed, then
forwarded through the pyloric orfce into
the smaller intestines, where they are touch
ed up with bile, and later on handed over
through the lacteals, thoracic duct, &C., to
the vast circulatory system. Here it is
yanked back and forth through the heart,
lungs and capillaries, and if anything is
left to fork over to the disease, it has to
squeeze into the long, bony, air-tight socket
that holds the spinal cord All this is done
without seeing the patients spinal cord
before or after taking. If it could be taken
out and hung over clothes-line and cleans
ed with benzine and then treated with insect
powder, or rolled in cornmeal, Or preserved
in alcohol and then put back, it would be
all right but you can't You pull mans
spine out of his system and he is bound to
miss it, no matter how careful you have
been about it. 1t is difficult to keep house
without the spine You need it every time
you cook a meal. If the spinal cord could
be pulled by dentist and put away in
pounded ice every time it gets hot-box,
spinal meningitis would lose its stinger.
l was treated by Thirteen physicians,
whose names | may give in a future arti-
Gle. They were, as l said, men [ shall
long remember. One of them said very
sensibly, that meningitis was generally
over-doctored l told him that l agreed
with him. l said that if l should have
another year of meningitis and thirteen
more doctors, | would have to postpone my
trip to Europe, where l had hoped to go
and cultivate my voice. I've got a per-
fectly lovely voice if l could take it to
Europe and have it sand-papered and var
nished and mellowed down with beer and
bologna.
But was speaking of my physicians.
Some time I'm going to give their biograph-
les and portraits, as they did those of DIR.
Bliss, DIR. Barnes, and others. Next year,
if l can get railroad rates, am going to
hold reunion of my physicians at Chica-
CO. 1t will be a pleasant relaxations for
them, and will save the lives of a large per-
centage of their patients.