The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-11-23
so BEE STING IS GOOD FOR
 RHEUMATIZ?

Personally I don't believe more than small fraction of the tales of great new cures that come out of Europe, via the popular press.
 Even when the yarn is replete with circumstance and names of the
 savants who figure in it, just ad-
 mire the imagination of the cor
 respondent or the imagination of
 his medical cronies.
 But here Is one that gives me pause. It comes from our regular correspondent in Paris, l mean the correspondent of our leafing med ical journal, so listen. Professor
 Mourice Perrin and MT Alain Cue-
 not of the Nancy medical school decided to try some experiments
 to test the popular belief that bee
 stings are good for the rheuma-
 tism. Now, right here wash my
 hands of this. don't even know what rheumatis is, if anything, and I warn you that can give no fur
 ther information than youswill find
 in this article.
 The gentlemen began their in- | vestigation with great skepticism. Or so the medical correspondent
 says now. They were astonished when they found that bee venom actually docs benefit victims of
 rheumatism, (You know as well as I do what they mean by rheu- matism). Among the conditions they studied were cases of arth-
 ritis defomans, articular rheuma- tism (this quaint diagnosis is ex- tinct in America), arthritis, rheu- matoid pains, muscular pains. lum- bago and sciatica. There you have the works, I should say. About all
 the painful maladies not included are neuritis, bursitis, felon and corn. But the French are that way. Everything goes in the soup. The technic these Nancy inves- tigators employed was quite simple. They collected bees by holding a wide mouth bottle before the open ing o fthe beehive. They took up the bees one by one with forceps and placed 9 sufficient number in a cupping glass on a sheet of
 paper: The cupping glass was then placed on the skin at the site chosen. the paper quickly with drawn, and the bees set to work promptly, being somewhat annoyed at the indignity.
 The experimenters assert that the pain caused by the stings is much less in a person with rheumatism, whatever that may be, than it IS in a normal person. Thirty bees stinging the patient at one sitting, a sitting every threc days. and the treatment continued from two to three months, consti- tutes a fair test of the method. Boy, an ideal combination for this treatment would be a doctor as deaf as am and a patient as dumb as dumb.
 Perrin has prepared solution of bee venom which can be ad- ministered by hypodermic injec- ton with the same results as though one were host to thirty bees Mondays and Thursdays. He extracts the venom sacs from the
 bees with famed forceps and transfers them to receptacle with absolute alcohol. Later this | is dried in vacuum and preserved | in the standard ampu1e of physi- ological salt Solution. ready to in. feet. Don't ask me whether or where this bee venom can be ob. tained. If you must know. perhaps Professor Maurice Perrin of the
 Faculte de medicine de Nancy. Nancy, France, would inform you.
 There is nothing about the bee sting treatment in my booklet.
 "The Ills Called Rheumatism"
 but several correspondents have assured me the booklet Is worth
 the dime and stamped addressed
 envelope.
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