Excellent Clinics

Excellent Clinics.

Show the great work done by medical progessors.

A short resume of the interesting clinics which have been held in the past week.

The scheme of having lectures and clinics during commencement week for the benefit of returning alumni and others who may wish to attend them has certainly added greatly to the interest of the week's exercises and has proven a success. By this means the practitioners throughout the state see something of the progress that is making and the new methods of doing their work and thus the people in general are benefitted and the university brought into closer relation with the masses. 

The first clinic Tuesday afternoon was for disease of the skin and syphilis conducted by Dr. W. F. Breakey. This chair was established nine years ago. The number of patients treated at the clinic has steadily grown from the first and the character of cases presented cover as wide a range as are found in large cities. Many of these patients demonstrate the value of hospital treatment by the speedy improvement or recovery under conditions of dietary and other restrictions and systematic medication to which they will submit better than they will at home. Some patients by reason of unsightly deformities from birth, or destructive changes from disease and others who may have communicable disease alike show the need for additional hospital room and separate wards for the isolation of cases that are offensive or infectious. Among the eight or ten cases presented were infantile eczema, seborrhea, this later apparently simple and harmless, though in the aged leading by degenerate processes to cancer or other malignant conditions.

Other cases with names unpronounceable by a layman, such as psoriasis, rosacae, sycosis, nevins, angioma, the latter case under chloroform treated by electrolysis, not such strength of electricity as to cauterize but to lessen the very vascular condition and blood supply and followed by compression - this mode of treatment being available in tissues that cannot be removed. Another case of skin lesions occurring coincidently with marked tuberculous disease was shown. Another recent case of recent ulcer with complications was presented and made the text for advice as to treatment of such sores, so as not destroy their diagnostic and not obscure subsequent local or general symptoms.

The lessons taught and emphasized in the remarks of Dr. Breakey were the need for care in examining patients and in trying to reach a correct diagnosis and if possible the causes of the conditions found, whether parasitic, local irritants over washing, lack of cleanliness, errors in diet or in times of eating, lack of exercise, etc. And further the need for care in details of treatment, giving every patient careful personal examination according to the merits of the case regardless of other considerations that it is not the province of the physician to become inquisitor or mentor.

On the whole the skin clinic of the University hospital is evidently a deserved success. A great number of photographs of rare and interesting cases of disease have been secured for illustration in teaching.

Dr. Herdman followed Dr. Breakey with a clinic on diseases of the nervous system, diseases of the brain and of the spinal cord. The first part of his lecture was devoted to diseases of the brain with a patient afflicted with a brain trouble called aphasia caused by embolus of the middle cerebral, middle artery. That is, the patient was unable to understand the meaning or use of simple words, this being caused by a plugging of the before mentioned artery by some substance. The doctor drew upon the black board a diagram of the brain showing the cerebral artery and the portion of the brain deprived of its proper supply of blood by the plugging of the artery. In this way the portion of the brain which registers words and returns the memory of them becomes torpid or inactive producing the disease before mentioned. The patient was utterly unable to recall the simplest words or write them. The cerebral artery being the only one supplying this portion of the brain and it being closed, the brain is not properly nourished and softening of the brain is beginning. The next case illustrated disease of the spinal cord. The patient was a young woman 17 years old. When she was 11 years old she received an injury to the spine from a fall. It troubled her more or less from that time forward. Two years later she was married and six moths later lost the power to walk. She had a rosy face and looked the picture of health except that she had no power to move her lower limbs. Above the injury to the spine she has every power that anyone has but below the injury there is no response to an effort of the will to move limbs. When the doctor tickled the bottoms of her feet the legs were drawn up showing by this reflex action that the nerves below the injury are still intact. She had no knowledge or touch exempting within a small area above the knees. But even here she had no sense of temperature. The injury to the spinal cord is so severe said the doctor, that this slight response to the touch at the knees is the only indication that it is not entirely dead at the point of injury. In the slight response to touch lies the only hope of her ever having the use of her lower limbs again. Had the case been care for in time she probably would have fully recovered.

Dr. Martin followed with a gynecological clinic. About a dozen patients who had been operated upon some days ago were brought in to illustrate the various points spoken of. One operation was performed near the close of the clinic. It was an interesting clinic. All patients were progressing rapidly toward complete recovery. The suffering relieved by the various operations described and illustrated is incalculable.

Dr. Huber lecture Tuesday evening on Perepheral Nerve Endings, illustrative of recent methods in the study of the nervous system was most interesting. He discussed briefly the new methods of microscopic work for studying nerve cells and their processes, mentioning in this connection the Golgi method and the Ehrlick methylen blue method in the histological laboratory of the university. He called attention to some sensory nerve endings found in the epethelium of the bladder, more particularly to the mode of termination of sensory nerves in the so-called muscle-spindles and tendon-spindles. By means of lantern projections, these nerve endings were shown upon a screen.

Dr. Darling's lecture Wednesday was upon practical surgery, teaching students to use hands as well as heads. In this way the student is made familiar with the technique of surgery before he becomes a practitioner. By means of dummies he is also taught to apply bandages and dressings and perform all important operations upon cadaver. He studies operations upon dead intestines, for instance, and then to become familiar with living tissues, he applies the principles learned in performing operations upon living animals. Two dogs were thus operated upon this morning. A portion of an intestine was removed from one, the ends being brought together and all work done as would be the corresponding operation on a human. The dog is expected to recover from the operation.

So far as is known ours is the first medical college to start the scheme of laboratory practice upon living tissue with under graduate students.

Could the people of the state fully understand the immense amount of work and energy and research that is being expended here in discovering things which will make human life safer and freer from disease and pain, they certainly would not hamper the work in any way by failing to furnish the necessary funds to carry it on.