The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-15

attack only the old, or those of a car- tain age, the chances are still more In favor of the average sojourner in the
 world escaping one or the other. Some diseases may be borne without serious consequences and recovered from with
 comparative ease, while others leave their mark for life, as It were engender- ing other complaints which go to make
 up the list of sick dangers
 From another point of view the dis
 eases may be apportioned among the
 various external parts and organs of the body for the in a measure cutting down the total for the whole body at
 the expense of some particular part. Thus the head may be subject to So simple a disease as the falling out of
 hair, or so serious a one as the tearing off of the scalp by accidental means. The one is apt to occur to almost any one while the other happens only in rare accidents. Again, simple expo sure to cold may cause soreness and stiffness in the muscles of the neck, which, for a few days, may be extreme ly trying to the man of affairs But this is not in it with having steel chis- el shot into the head, as was the case with recent patient in Baltimore, from whose skull the iron was success fully removed.
 A simple headache, while annoying, may be due to no traceable derange ment of the nerves or brain. On the other hand, the growth of a tunor in the brain or the blood clot formed from a ruptured or diseased blood vessel may, by its pressure on an important nerve center, cause paralysis of limb or the whole side of the body.
 Outside of the zymotic diseases, or those caused by the reproduction with in the body of living germs, introduced from without, this physician says that after all the other diseases are merely forms of inflammation. Thus, one form of inflammation of the mu- cous lining of the throat will produce simple sore throat, while another form of inflammation of the same tissues will cause deadly case of diphtheria. Thus, too, an inflammation of the membranes lining the interior of the lungs will be called pneumonia. while another form of inflammation of the
 
 pleurisy. So 1t goes through various tissues and organs of the body, each having a variety of forms of inflamma- tion, particularized as diseases which are known by this or that name.
 A single organ may be subject to nearly a score Of diseases, as, for in- stance, the liver, about which much is said and written, and which receives much blame for the varying moods of man. In well-known work on the practice of medicine the liver has set down to 1t fifteen diseases with which its owner may suffer.
 Besides the specific disease which is supposed to attack all welI-ordered hearts in their youth and leave them more or less affected throughout life, the medical writers assign half dozen diseases to that organ which are to be treated by the doctor.
 Vacations of life give their impress to diseases. as the clergyman sore throat the "housemaid's knee" writers cramp," and chimney sweeps cancer" Some of the recent additions to this class of diseases are
 ty yptNllttlS pdTdlySlS anu lSiepllOHe headache" an affliction to which some of the exchange girls are subject, from constant use of the telephone receiver.
 Diseases, like fashions, change with the seasons, some being more prevalent in one month of the year than in anoth- CT, although there is no hard and fast rule to confine them to particular sea- son. Under the proper provocation a person may have cold in the head in as well as in winter. There is less change from year to year than in fashions. It is quoted from the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun" This Is held by some to be true of medicine. It is pointed out that the same maladies have existed for centuries, only, perhaps, they were not so well studied and less was written about them. The progress of medical science has also brought about changes in the method of treatment, and this caused prominence to be given some diseases which had previously held an obscure place in medical and surgical literature. A case in point is appendici- tis, which in old works on medicine held little, if any, place, and then under an- other name. The first performance of the operation of opening the abdomen, by an American surgeon, less than a score of years ago, led to the recogni- ton of this disease and it's surgical treatment. Nowadays hardly a day passes without an operation for appen- dicitis.
 Influenza, or grip, has its periods of activity when every cold of is called by this better sounding name along with the genuine cases of the malady Again, it sinks nto comparative obscurity until into prominence by an epidem- e in some section of the country.
 The multiplication of remedies has more than kept pace with the growth in -he number of diseases. All the coal -ar products were unknown but a few years ago. Chemists and manufactur- ars are now busy and allow scarcely a week to go by without putting on the market a new remedy for which some special curative function is claimed.
 The medical colleges, too, are turning put hundreds of graduates every year who are taking up the fight against dis ease, adding their Investigations and deductions to the work that has gone before. Hygiene and dietetics are be- ng given more attention in the field of preventive medicine, in order to build ID the human system so that it will re-