Scrofula~ an old affliction and an old remedy

from wiki:

scrofula

scrofula~ image source, wiki commons

Scrofula is the term used for tuberculosis of the neck, or, more precisely, a cervical tuberculous lymphadenopathy. Scrofula is usually a result of an infection in the lymph nodes, known as lymphadenitis and is most often observed in immunocompromised patients (about 50% of cervical tuberculous lymphadenopathy). About 95% of the scrofula cases in adults are caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but only 8% of cases in children. The rest are caused by atypical mycobacterium (Mycobacterium scrofulaceum) or nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM). With the stark decrease of tuberculosis in the second half of the 20th century, scrofula became a very rare disease. With the appearance of AIDS, however, it has shown a resurgence, and presently affects about 5% of severely immunocompromised patients.

Signs and symptoms

The most usual signs and symptoms are the appearance of a chronic, painless mass in the neck, which is persistent and usually grows with time. The mass is referred to as a "cold abscess", because there is no accompanying local color or warmth and the overlying skin acquires a violaceous (bluish-purple) color. NTM infections do not show other notable constitutional symptoms, but scrofula caused by tuberculosis is usually accompanied by other symptoms of the disease, such as fever, chills, malaise and weight loss in about 43% of the patients. As the lesion progresses, skin becomes adhered to the mass and may rupture, forming a sinus and an open wound. "

Included in the article is the info that surgical excision and antibiotics are the treatments of choice. Both carry risks.

Iodine has been used, historically, as a treatment for scrofula.

source: Therapeutics and materia medica, Volume 2 by Alfred Stillé, 1874


In the most common and the earliest form of scrofula, glandular enlargement, two elements are frequently combined, the hypertrophic and the tubercular. Under the influence of iodine, especially in the form of lotion or liniment, the former may be entirely removed, but it is doubtful whether the latter is ever really so. At an advanced stage of the disease, when softening of enlarged glands and ulceration of the integuments have taken place, iodine will frequently promote the healing of the ulcers, while it improves the general health in a marked degree. Even in scrofulous enlargements of the articulations depending partly upon thickening of the fibrous coverings and partly upon effusion within the synovial capsule, this medicine, externally as well as internally, exerts a decidedly curative influence, especially when associated with cod-liver oil. It is also capable of producing a marked amelioration of caries of the bones, and sometimes it effects a complete and permanent cure. It is prudent in all such cases not to make use of iodine, so long as an inflammatory action predominates; if then employed, it tends to induce suppuration of the enlarged glands, and to excite inflammation in other diseased structures. It is true that the suppuration is generally of a more acute form, and terminates more rapidly in cure than that which tends to arise spontaneously, and probably would so arise in the part affected. Tabes mesenterica, although generally a fatal disease, is probably in some cases susceptible of cure. This would appear to be proven by Rilliet and Barthez, who found the mesenteric glands converted into cretaceous masses. A number of cases, also, collected by Boinet seem to show that the removal of the disease occasionally takes place under a plan of treatment of which iodine forms the principal part. But in this, as in all other scrofulous affections, the association of iron and cod-liver oil with iodine greatly enhances the probability of cure. To be successful, also, the treatment must be continued for a long time after the disappearance of the local disease. For scrofula is eminently a constitutional affection, and it is only by a well devised and steadily pursued regimen, both dietetic and medicinal, that it can be kept in abeyance. It is in this disease that Boinet especially recommends his iodized food, consisting of bread, gingerbread, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, wine, beer, etc., made with natural products yielding iodine, such as fuci, marine plants, cruciferse, salts containing iodine, and some mineral waters holding this substance in solution.

Vin Nourry Iodinated Wine

source: "Boston medical and surgical journal, Volume 164, Issue 2, 1911

Tincture Of Iodine As A Surgical Antiseptic. April 11, 1911

alternate post title~ "Iodine or Amputation?"

source: "Boston medical and surgical journal, Volume 164, Issue 2", 

  PARIS LETTER.


Tincture Of Iodine As A Surgical Antiseptic.


~From Our Special Correspondent


Paris, April 11, 1911.

Mr. Editor: One of the most surprised preparations in materia medica at the present moment must be our timehonored acquaintance, the tincture of iodine, and there is no gainsaying the fact that it has sufficient grounds for a meditation on the uncertainty of the things of this world. During all the earlier half of the last century this familiar reddish-brown liquid was one of the most important remedies in medical practice, so much so that in 1855 a certain Boinet published a large volume of eight hundred and thirty-five pages about it, entitled "Trait d' Iodotherapie." Already at that time its remarkable antiseptic properties had been noted; fetid pus had been seen to lose its noxious qualities under its influence, and compound fractures had been found to heal without any of the terrible complications so frequent in those times when treated with tincture of iodine. In a word, it seems as though at that period the antiseptic era was on the point of being discovered, in connection with this preparation, some twenty years before the Pasteur-Lister day. The opportunity was there; all that lacked, apparently, was the man with sufficient perspicacity to descry the great discovery that was staring him in the face. That man, however, was not forthcoming. The reign of phenol, sublimate, formal and peroxide began, iodine tincture was practically relegated to the old woman's arsenal, and this marvelous preparation descended very nearly to the level of arnica and chamomile tea!


This period of oblivion lasted for nearly forty years, but now, by the agency of one of those disconcerting turns of the wheel of fortune, tincture of iodine has once more been raised to a position of real eminence in medicine, and suddenly — within the brief space of a couple of years. In this short time it has not only regained the rank in the medical world that it ought never to have lost, but its penetration into the masses has been so deep that it has attained even to such remote regions as the cerebral substance of society women. One of them got her finger-end caught in the door of her carriage the other day and gave it a pretty lively squeeze, producing a small wound par eclatement. When I arrived I remarked in scornful tones, "What in the world did you put arnica on it for?" She was generous in her triumph, that I must allow; for of course she had a lovely chance to make some withering reply. All she said was, "Oh no! that isn't arnica; I drove to the nearest druggist and had the finger painted with iodine!" "The devil you did," thought I; "if these Red Cross lectures continue to rage throughout the land, the future of the medical profession will soon be even less roseate than it seems at present. For the idea is to me not inconceivable that within a delay that is really more or less proximate, the physician is going to have to make his choice between some of the side-branches of his calling, — electricity, radium, x-rays, or mind-treatment, — or harakiri after the scorpion method. Certainly if I had a son who was going in for general medicine, the utmost degree of sympathy at my disposal would be extended toward him, as I think he will see the time when his profession will no longer be a living proposition.


Tincture of iodine, then, has been discovered to be the most marvelous antiseptic known, and, — details that enhance its virtues many times over, — one whose use is simplicity itself, that can be found anywhere and that can be safely put into almost any one's hands. From one point of view it has a similarity with salvarsan in that it is of particular use in very difficult cases, cases that proved almost beyond the resources formerly at our disposal. This will be referred to in a moment; for the present let me cite an instance or two that have come to my ears recently.


One of the younger surgeons here received an urgency call the other day to come at once to such and such a hospital for an amputation. When he arrived he found a man who had got his right hand badly crushed in handling wine barrels, with various fractured bones and wounds, the whole region being, of course, as dirty as possible. It had never occurred to the interne that any other treatment than amputation or disarticulation was to be considered; yet, with simple iodine paintings, this man made a perfect recovery with a quite serviceable hand.


Another surgeon friend of mine went one afternoon to see a lady patient on whom he had operated a short time previously for appendicitis. She told him that her last monthly period had missed entirely and that she was now feeling considerable pain in the pelvis. On examination he found a small mass back and to one side of the uterus, diagnosed extra-uterine pregnancy and told her she must have it removed without delay. That same; evening at ten o'clock he was called to see her again; pain had increased and her condition and appearance had alarmed those about her. The fetal cyst had evidently ruptured during the evening, the patient presented all the signs of serious internal hemorrhage and my surgical friend found himself in presence of as serious an emergency case as any one need desire, as it is not easy in Paris to get anything done in a hurry. However, by dint of heating up the telephone wires he managed to get the patient transported to a clinic and his aids assembled by one o'clock. By that time his unfortunate patient's condition was highly critical, the bleeding was evidently continuing and there was no time to lose. It is easy to conceive that with the former methods of preparing an abdomen for laparotomy, the loss of time, combined with the rough handling necessary to throughly brush and scrub the skin, might have given tliis patient the finishing touch, whereas in this instance, while the surgeon was slipping on his sterilized India-rubber gloves, the assistant simply painted the abdominal surface gently with soft gauze dipped in tincture of iodine and held in a forceps, there was not the slightest delay or mauling of the patient a rapid incision revealed an abdominal cavity filled with blood, the cyst was clamped at once, the usual means of treating severe loss of blood could then be brought to bear, and the surgeon was master of the situation. Such a case as this must, I think, be one of the surgeon's keenest satisfactions, a case in which he is authorized to feel that but for his intervention his patient would have succumbed without doubt in another hour or two. This same man operated an umbilical hernia in a dog for me the other day with the iodine process without even shaving the region; it seems that this is current practice in the experimental laboratories now.


The iodine tincture of the French pharmacies is a one in ten solution in alcohol. It should, whenever possible, be procured fresh; when old it is subject to two secondary processes whereby it becomes stronger and more likely to irritate: the development of hydriodic acid, and concentration through alcohol evaporation. The question is being studied whether it is really necessary to use this one-tenth solution; whether, for instance, this could hot equally well be further extended with alcohol to at least one-twentieth, or whether aqueous solutions obtained with iodide will not be just as efficacious.


 For although it has proved to be one of the safest of all antiseptics, we all know that there are certain patients with a marked idiosyncrasy for iodine with whom small doses produce the most alarming symptoms, and in particular those of edema of the glottis. Thus in the case in point I personally have heard of one patient with whom a most distressing and persistent generalized eczema was brought on by a single application of tincture of iodine; and of another who actually succumbed from acute iodism under the same circumstances. Because, not only is the iodine being applied on normal surfaces, as in the above extra-uterine pregnancy case, or as has been done by different surgeons in emergencies when away from all facilities and they have painted their own hands in order to operate; and not only is it used on open and crushed wounds, and even on extensive denuded surfaces such as burns, but it is applied to severe solutions of continuity, such as a scythe wound, the surfaces being stitched together a few minutes later, and it is also injected into suppurating cavities or fistulas. Under these circumstances a certain amount of the iodine must remain behind; so that if an equal effect can be obtained by a less active solution, it is certainly to be desired that this point should be demonst rated as quickly as possible.
There is a trifling artifice that it is useful to know, in order to have it at one's disposal in instances when a modicum of mind-cure is necessary. Certain families keep tincture of iodine in stock and use it themselves on all occasions, just as others do their precious Pond's Extract or Antiphlogistine. One woman I know here gets Pond's Extract over from America by the demijohn, and has the most absolute faith in its virtues to cure nearly every affection her large household of family and servants presents. To prescribe to such a person a remedy that she is in the habit of using herself would simply be to lose caste in a very precipitous fashion; whereas if you sit down and gravely formulate:

 Metalloidic iodine, 3

   Spirits of chloroform, 30

the effect will be magical, as the druggist will sent her a beautiful cerulean blue solution which you caution her to apply with great care as it is very active, whereas it is in reality nothing but the familiar old one in ten tincture of iodine!


A point that I have been turning over in my mind is whether this preparation may not be excellent for medical use, and in particular for tonsillar affections. The peculiar efficacy of iodine tincture is said to be due to its marked power of penetration, which in turn depends on its alcoholic vehicle; to be really efficacious, then, it should be applied to a perfectly dry surface, all previous cleansing by washing, soaping, etc., impeding its action. Now in the throat a dry surface could scarcely be obtained; but by first carefully wiping off the tonsillar region something approaching such a condition could be produced; besides, the tonsil is not protected by any hard layer of epidermis. I have often used in the throat a preparation consisting in one part of tincture of iodine to two of glycerine, but have never been able to see that it accomplishes very much. This is perhaps due to a peculiarity that we find in phenol, which seems to lose many of its properties, causticity, toxicity, etc., when combined with glycerine. It will be interesting to see how the tonsil reacts to pure tincture of iodine without the glycerine.


I remarked above that the tincture of iodine is particularly effective in the very worst cases, and the type of these is the mechanic or train-hand, who gets one of his extremities mashed in the course of his work. Not only do these accidents present the very worst forms of lesions, — mangled and torn tissues, open articulations and compound fractures;—but the damaged region cannot be otherwise than in the filthiest possible condition. These cases, also, are generally somewhat long in getting to the nearest help, particularly in a railroad accident out on the line. It has really seemed to me worse than useless to attempt to clean up such an affair as a mechanic's hand mashed in a machine. Will not the cleaning send into the open wounds more germs than are there already? My surgical friend assures me that by filling up all the wounds with strips of sterile cotton soaked in some antiseptic fluid, and then operating with care, patience and benzine, the thing can be accomplished; so I suppose we shall have to take his word for it. But however this may be, all doubts of the sort are removed with the iodine process. Here, the less you do the better. No cleaning at all; at the most remove fragments that are bound to go any how, and be chary about this, for I think that the longer we live the greater becomes our respect for what nature can do at a push, then paint everything, — skin wounds, fractures, — carefully with the tincture, not being afraid to go over a surface more than once, and pushing it into every nook and hole. Over that, chiffonmr a lot of light gauze, then some cotton-wool, and a bandage, and the trick is done. 


Nothing simpler could possibly be desired, and a Trousse of this sort, with brief directions, could easily be on every train and in every factory. Strange to say, the pain connected with the application is really insignificant; it can be spread over large burns with equal results. Fancy the revolution this process is going to effect in first-aid ambulances near the firing-line in war time!


What happens, then, after such a dressing as this? The tincture appears to give rise to a profuse serous discharge, which is taken up by the chiffonnee gauze, which must not be protected by any hermetic tissue. Usually such a first dressing can be left in place for twentyfour hours, though of course, if the discharge soaks through the gauze, this can always be removed, and as often as desired. The next day the dressing is changed and the tincture applied again. This daily change is continued so long as the discharge lasts, which is, as a rule, from four to five days. The surfaces then become dry and the dressing and painting need only be done every three or four days.


The cases of recovery that have been reported under this treatment sound really more like fairy tales than serious surgical work. What do you think, for instance, of a compound, comminuted fracture of the leg that had been carefully cleaned, reduced and sewed up by a surgeon, but when his effects failed lamentably and gangrene set in, this was opened by another man, thoroughly painted in every corner, and recovered!


~"S"

Praying for a cure

Hmmmm... an interesting story from an old children's magazine. The moral of this particular story seems to be to be very specific in your prayers.


And to take your iodine!

From  "Golden Hours, A Magazine for Boys and Girls", 1878

LISA rose early, with her mind fully made up. She slipped on her skirt, took her apron and bodice in her hand, and patted down a rocky path which led from Mere Gillott's hut to a spring. Kneeling down by the hand-wide stream which trickled from the spring, she bathed her face, arms, and bosom, and said her prayers, looking toward the east. She wiped her smooth, fresh skin with her apron, and smoothing back her hair, gave it a twist under a kerchief. Then she put on her apron and bodice, and her toilet was made.

Lisa did not know much about the world. She thought all earth was a mountain, with bits of huts dotted here and there, and the universal holidays only such as were kept in her native canton. There was nobody to teach Lisa. She lived in a little hut with Mere Gillott, who was a bent, half-alive old lace-weaver, more ignorant if possible than Lisa herself.

It was a Church holiday, and Lisa had permission from her mistress to spend it in the usual way, in games with the boys and girls, and in company with the whole population, who left work and devoted that day to prayers and feasting and sociability.

After making her toilet she looked very sweet and pretty, though she had neither shoes nor hat. Her wooden shoes must be kept for the cold Winter; her sun-tanned feet must go bare in Summer. Some of the girls who would gather at the festival would wear shoes—real shoes!—but Lisa was not envying them or even thinking of them. She went into the hut. Mere Gillott slept still; her feet moved softly over the earthen floor; she got a thick slice of black bread, a round ball of Swiss cheese and a cup, then she went to the door and called the goat. The goat came near, and Lisa milked some of the thin milk into her cup, and sitting on a stone, ate her breakfast.

The sun was now rising. The air grew lighter, and warm with splendors. Long slants marked distant peaks; the mist rolled cloud over cloud down into hollows. By the time Lisa's breakfast was eaten the sun sprung above the horizon. She now took the garden sickle, and went to the sweet marjoram bed. She cut her apron just as full as she could carry it of sweet marjoram. It was heavy with dew, and Lisa dipped her face into it with delight.

She was now ready to start. But not to the merry-makings which would be kept around the church. She was going up the mountain, on what many would call a superstitious errand. As she came out of the garden, and turned toward the hut to hang up her sickle, the goat clattered up and thrust her nose into Lisa's apron, nibbling the pretty green and white herb.

"Begone, Nanine.'' said Lisa; "this is not for such as thee."

She pulled out a handful for the goat, and hung her sickle on the nail. Then she look the winding and devious path which led up the mountain.

Mere Gillott's hut stood close by the Avail which surrounded an old chalet. Here lived the minister, whose family were all dead, and his housekeeper, a woman so old that nobody in the region pretended to guess at her age. Nevertheless she was still brisk and sharp-eyed. The girls were always glad to sit in groups and hear Mere Grisa talk. Her experiences were marvelous, and they gathered up the very crumbs of her superstition and treasured them.

A few days before the festival Mere Grisa condescended to chat with Mere Gillott. The minister's housekeeper wore a high black cap; the old Gillott had nothing but a black kerchief to her head. Lisa watched them nodding and chattering toothlessly, and wondered how it would seem when she, too, was old. How would she like to have her plump cheeks curve in instead of out? to go bent over, leaning on a stick or crutch? to see her hands and arms shrivel, and all things grow dimmer than they were at present? She did not like the thought. She loved being young and buoyant and strong. She loved to feel her limbs full of spring, and to see such long distances. On the other hand, however, one can not have experiences without growing old, and how all respect the dignified aged!

"It is true," said the somewhat childish old Mere Grisa to Mere Gillott, "I have seen it happen thus again and again. If any one has a heart's desire which he wishes to accomplish, let him try it. Why, there was the mountaineer, Hochuly. His girl wandered from him. Not one in the canton could tell where she was. He roamed aimlessly up the mountains. Not a chamois could tempt him. Then some one—it may have been my great-grandson, Ernst—told him what Mere Grisa knew of the shrine. 'Take an offering there,'said Ernst, 'and you will get your heart's desire.' Hochuly roamed about till, being near the shrine one day, and the words ringing in his ears, he hunts edelweiss and lays it on the shrine. Then, as a Christian man should, he said his prayers, and when he got up from his knees there stood his child Marie, and they flew into each other's arms."

"Yes, yes," said Mere Gillott, "I have heard the tale."

"Where is the shrine, good Mere Grisa?" hastily put in the listening girl.

The old dame peered up at her from under bushy eyebrows.

"And what hast thou to do with a shrine?"

"Why, if folks get their heart's desire by laying such offerings as they can get upon it, I have a heart's desire, and I will go there—yes, and take my ear-rings, if they would do."

"Prut!" ejaculated Mere Grisa. "What are they, little trumpery ear-rings. Art an idol-worshiper, to lay metals and such earth upon a sacred shrine? Take something green and flourishing—something the good God has fashioned, and not a trinket made by man, such as papists deck their waxen figures with. I fear thou ait too rattlebrained to be sound in the faith."

Lisa colored, and her eyes filled.
"I did not know what to take," said she. "My ear-rings are all I have, except my bodice and kerchief and apron and skirt. I would give any thing for my heart's desire."

"Wouldst, eh? Well, what is thy heart's desire, silly thing? A new apron and bodice, and a lover to fill thy head with flattery."

Lisa's face flamed indignantly. "O Mere Grisa! why do you judge me so cruelly? I do not look at any of the young men, and they do not look at me."
"Pooh! it's natural; it's natural", chuckled the old woman.

"And my bodice and apron are quite strong yet," continued Lisa.

"Then what is left for such a chicken as thou art to desire?"

Lisa hung down her head.

"Come, I'll not tell thee where the shrine is unless thou tell what's the heart's desire."

"Mere Grisa, I have a sister—Claire."

"With thy old grandmother, who lives beyond the pass?"

"Yes, Mere Grisa. She is—" Lisa hesitated.

"So I have heard," said the old woman, nodding her head. "Well, and what of that? If she is a cretin it can not be helped."

A tear like an angel's finger traced a bar down Lisa's face. Mere Grisa dimly saw that glistening track; she had a kind old heart.

"Well, child, I was only telling the Mere Gillott that if a believing person goes to the calvary at the light hand side of the Two Brothers' Pass, and takes some little offering in the hand, the heart's desire shall be appeased. It is only a saying in this region. We who are old never expect impossibilities."

"But I know the Two Brothers' Pass," cried Lisa, eagerly, "and I know the shrine. I was once up the mountain as high as that. It is a very old wooden cross fastened in a pile of stones. The figure was blown off it long since, they say."

In consequence of this gossip with Mere Grisa, therefore, the girl set out, as I told you, on this holiday morning, and her destination was not the motherly old church, but the high cross, standing lone on its heap of stones by Two Brothers' Pass.

Lisa clambered cautiously. Her bare feet were hardy, but some of the goat paths were quite steep and full of jagged points. When she had ascended some distance she felt more exhilarated than ever. Some of the people were already gathering to the fete below. Usually Lisa was ready for play and merry-making too. She was too full of her errand, however, to think an instant of play now. She believed that her heart's desire would be given her as soon as she reached the shrine and put down her bundle of sweet marjoram.

"Not on account of the sweet marjoram, though," murmured Lisa. "I did not know any better thing to take. I will ask very distinctly that Claire may be cured, that she may never be a simple cretin any more. What other real heart's desire could I have? I would willingly wear this apron and bodice till I die if Claire could be like other girls. Oh, to see her look up clear and bright at me, instead of dull-eyed, and that horrible pouch hanging from her throat down upon her breast! If Claire were not a cretin, if the goitre were gone, how happy we might be! All our lives we could take such comfort with each other. I wish I had known about this making offerings at the shrine long ago. Why, I would carry sweet herbs up the mountain every day, after my work is done, as long as I live, if Claire could be cured!"

In the simplicity of her heart Lisa continued, as she toiled up and up:
"As soon as I lay the bundle of herb down, I wonder if Claire will stand there cured
as the old mere tells of Hochuly's Marie. Marie appeared to him that moment. How rejoiced I should be! What pleasure it is to look forward to happiness! Shall I take her to the fete? How astonished all would be to see poor Claire standing erect, no goitre upon her poor neck!"

The devious path wove back and forth like a slim shuttle across the dark loom of the mountain. The sun did not grow hot. In that high latitude Lisa would not have been too warm had not exercise opened all her pores. She climbed until past noon, and then sat down for a few moments to rest.

It was a long way to the entrance of Two Brothers' Pass. She never had approached it by this route before, and began to wonder if she were going right. It was much easier to think of making the ascent than to make it.

Lisa had some bread and cheese in her pocket, and she nibbled at it. Then gathering her marjoram closer, she climbed on. Perhaps the lines of her face drooped a little. She grew very tired; but her faith in her errand was great—strong enough to move the mountain itself.

It was late in the afternoon, when the lone wooden cross started out of a cliff side upon her sight. How drear upon its heap of stones! Lisa toiled up to it. Her fair holiday was two-thirds gone. Here was the goal of her efforts. The last quarter league was longer than any other part of her journey. She approached the foot of the pile of stones. It seemed that the story of the region had had other believers.

 Some bunches of dried flowers lay on the stones. A pin-scratched bit of writing was on one of the round stones. Lisa stooped and looked at it, but she could not read, and therefore did not know that it said in blasphemous French:
"Whoever is superstitious fool enough to come here as I did, will go away a convicted fool, but less superstitious."

Lisa looked up at the cross. It must be very lonely in the dark nights. It half-terrified her. She spread down her sweet marjoram on the stones. Then she knelt by it, and told her heart's desire fervently. The mountain echoes handled her little voice very softly. She got up and looked around, really expecting to see Claire, goitreless and lovely, standing close at hand. No one was near her. Her heart turned sick. She got down on her knees again, and waited with a patient waiting. Time moved over the mountain in silence.

"Lisa," called a voice, very tenderly. Lisa turned her head and saw the spiritual, beautiful face of Kaspar, the young mountaineer, who lived nearest her grandmother's hut. He was standing leaning on his alpenstock, his eyes full of sympathetic knowledge of what she was doing. She rose up again, and exclaimed, eagerly:

"Where is Claire?"

"She is cured," said Kaspar, approaching. "I was coming by the Two Brothers' Pass to fetch you to your grandmother's."

"But why didn't Claire come too?" cried Lisa. "When did it happeri? How does she look?"
"I have not seen her since she was changed,"said Kaspar; "but I should think she looked beautiful and happy. You were saying your prayers at the old cross for her, were you?"

"Yes: I was praying that the goitre might leave her, that she might get well and stay so always."

"Well, come with me," said Kaspar; "the change has been made, but you must get accustomed to it."

In time Lisa stood by the bed and looked at her Claire; and the tears trickled down her young, sweet face, but her heart could not break as it might have broken once if she had seen Claire lying before her dead.

The goitre and the idiocy were truly cast off by her sister; even Claire's dead face looked fairer than it ever did in life, and somebody had covered the hideous swelling of her neck. The old grandmother was bustling about the hut; she wiped a tear or two, but Lisa was her favorite, and she did not love the idiot girl as Lisa did.

"She's gone," said the grandmother.

"Cured," breathed Lisa.

"Yes, cured," said Kaspar, putting a hand on her shoulder, "only better cured than you thought to ask for her to be."

Quick! The iodine...!

Just a few snippets from old magazines reminding people to reach for that iodine...

Iodine Wine aka IOWINE

SALUT!

We extract the following from the Medical Times and Gazette: "The vacancy in the section of Therapeutics and Medical National History at the Academie de Medicine, having to be filled up, this time, by a member representing the therapeutical division, two of the candidates have just read papers before the Academy in support of their claims. That of M. Boinet bore the title: "The means of administering Iodine in a completely soluble state, and entirely deprived of its irritating properties." As perhaps no practitioner has employed iodine, in its various forms, more abundantly than M. Boinet, what he has to say on the subject must have great weight. The accidents which were met with when iodine was first introduced, he observes, were due to portions of this substance remaining undissolved, and acting as foreign bodies. Some of these, at once, disappeared when the iodine had been rendered soluble by the agency of potassium. But others arose which were wrongfully attributed to the iodine, such as tumefaction of the mucous membrane, salivation, lachrymation, gastralgia, &c. These M. Boinet is convinced, really arise from the potassium with which the iodine is combined, for results of an analogous character are observed during the use of other salts having potassium as a base, as chlorate and nitrate of potass. Now, the solubility of the iodine may be still preserved, while the inconvenient effects alluded to may be obviated by substituting tannic acid- for the potassium. The tincture of iodine of the French codex is not a completely soluble prepararation, but may be rendered so by the addition of some tannic acid. But M. Boinet thinks, further, that advantage might be derived from recurring in some sort to the practice of our forefathers of employing iodine in a state of more natural combination, as in the form of burnt sponge, marine plants, natural mineral waters, &c.— the greater molecular division facilitating the absorption of the constituent principles. It is only since chemistry has shown us that these various substances contained iodine that we have become aware to what agent they owed their curative properties—properties no less real than those belonging to our modern pharmaceutical preparations. The investigations of Chatin and others have shown that iodine is abundantly distributed throughout organic and inorganic matter, and that there are less goitre and scrofula in those countries where it is most prevalent. For all these reasons, M. Boinet thinks it desirable to resort to these more natural preparations, they being as efficacious and less injurious than those now in use. To this end, he has devised a natural iodine wine which, while it produces no ill effects upon the digestive organs, is of easy absorption and assimilation. It is prepared by placing in a wooden vessel alternate layers of raisins and of marine plants reduced to powder, until the vessel is filled, and then allowing the whole to ferment during a fortnight, and treating it as ordinary wine. A useful combination of iodine is thus produced by which the affections to which this substance is apblicable may be advantageously treated."

The administration of the natural iodine waters produces none of the inconveniences against which M. Boinet would guard us. It is the magnitude of the dose which is the cause of the unfavorable symptoms following the use of iodine, to which he refers ; and it is to the infinitesimal quantities of minutely divided, and therefore, highly soluble iodine, that the natural preparations, to which he purposes to return, owe their superior virtues.—Mon. Hom. Review.

source: The American homeopathist, Volumes 1-2, 1865

On the Preparation of a Natural Iodine Wine.

Originally administered in the natural state and dissolved in water by Coindet, iodine has been exhibited much more efficaciously through the intervention of iodide of potassium, as recommended by Dr. Lugol. This latter salt, indeed, has been almost completely substituted for it, and it is nearly exclusively in this form that internal treatment with iodine is effected.

Reason, however, points out that advantage is gained in giving medicaments in a state as nearly as possible like that in which they are found in nature; and, indeed, iodide of potassium, on account of the special action which it exerts on the mucous membranes of the eye, nose, and larynx, offers real inconveniences, and is impossible to be taken by some persons.

Under these circumstances, M. Debauque has opened a way which promises to be of service in showing how to render iodine soluable in tannin without the aid of iodide of potassium. From this has arisen M. Boinet's idea of administering iodine in liquors or syrups containing tannic acid, such as the wines of horse-raddish, quinine, gentian, walnut, or orange peel.

Arguing upon the good results effected by iodine contained in mineral waters, certain salts and plants, and burnt sponge, although these only contain very small quantities, remembering the results which he had already obtained by the incorporation of this metalloid into articles of food (iodised alimentation) ; and as he has repeatedly said, to get farther from the laboratory and nearer to nature, M. Boinet has been induced to search for a preparation of this kind which would not have upon the tongue, throat, nor the stomach, the ill effects of ordinary iodine wines, which are usually prepared by the addition of tincture of iodine or iodine of potassium. This is what he does:—

At the time of vintage commence by picking the grapes so as only to have them ripe and fit to make good wine. They must not be picked off the bunch, on account of the tannin and salts contained by the stalk, which serve to preserve the wine and aid fermentation. They are placed in a large wooden tub capable of holding many barrels of wine. At the bottom is placed a thick layer of grapes, then above a layer of powdered seaweed, or even a layer of asher of these plants; then a fresh layer of grapes, then another layer of seaweed, and so on until the tub is full. The whole is then covered with a layer of chopped straw to keep the air away and favor fermentation. The important operation of working now commences, which lasts from fifteen to twenty days, according to the temperature. When the wine is fit to draw off—that is to say, when the fermentation is complete and the grape sugar changed into alcohol and carbonic acid, and it has dissolved and assimilated to itself the iodine contained in the weeds—it is placed in casks, keeping it as much as possible from contact with the air. To effect this, it must be drawn from the tub by means of a tap. The concluding operations are effected as with ordinary wine. This wine is, however, nothing more than a tincture of iodine, obtained like other tinctures, as that of aloes, opium, &c., by maceration and fermentation.

This wine M. Boinet calls natural iodine wine. It keeps as well as ordinary wine, and has not, like syrups, the inconvenience of fermenting and decomposing. It contains so much iodine that it can even be mixed with other wine before being administered. The dose may be two or three spoonfuls unmixed per day for adults, and the same in coffee for children. M. Boinet usually administers it in the following manner:

In the wine usually drank at meals, or in any other beverage, a spoonful of this iodine wine is mixed at each meal. This wine has no disagreeable taste, and were invalids not told of it, they would not suspect that they were taking iodine or wine containing iodine.— Bull, de Therap. ; Chemical News.

source: Journal of materia medica, Volume 4, 1862

Healing Hands

A poor woman living in the neighborhool of Hartlepool, England, some years ago was induced by a "wise woman" to go alone at night to an outhouse where a suicide lay awaiting the coroner's inquest and to hold the hand of the corpse on her wen all night. She died shortly after from mental shock. Another woman at Cuddesden, Oxfordshire, asked for the hand of a corpse in order to cure a goiter. Her father, she said, had been cured by the same means, the swelling having diminished as the hand mouldered away. In 1850, it was common for numbers of invalids in certain parts of England to congregate round the gallows in order to receive the " death stroke"—the touch of an executed criminal's hand. The practise declined because of the high fees the hangmen came to charge for applying the remedy.

source: "Popular Science Monthly", Volume LXXXIV

Acute attacks ofbronchocele require the application of leeches and the use of purgatives, to allay excited action, before iodine can be used with advantage. Bronchocele ought always to be submitted to treatment as soon as discovered. If this is done there is seldom much difficulty in it's removal; but if it is allowed to gain a large size, or if it is of old standing, it will resist the most persevering treatment, and perhaps prove a serious cause of inconvenience, especially if it becomes hardened, which it not unfrequently does as life advances. A curious superstition with respect to bronchocele prevails in some of the places in which it is endemic. It is believed that a cure will be effected, if the tumour is rubbed over by the right hand of the corpse of a " bachelor!"

source: "A Dictionary of Domestic Medicine and Household Surgery", 1877

A lady who was staying at Penzance in 1859, and was present at a funeral, observed that when the clergyman came to the words, 'Earth to earth,' a woman made her way to the edge of the grave and dropped a cloth upon the coffin, closed her eyes, and apparently said a prayer. On the lady making enquiries as to the reason of this peculiar proceeding, she was informed of the superstition just recorded. The poor people in Launceston and its neighbourhood, say that a swelling in the neck (the goitre or bronchocele, as it is variously termed) may be cured by the patient going before sunrise on the first of May to the grave of the last young man who has been buried in the churchyard, and applying the dew gathered, by passing the hand three times from the head to the foot of the grave, to the part affected by the ailment. 

source: "Bygone days in Devonshire and Cornwall, with notes of existing superstitions" ... by Mary Elizabeth Whitcombe, 1874

"A short time ago, while in the room where the corpse of a lovely young girl lay awaiting burial, I noticed that many of the passing visitors lifted the hand of the dead and applied it to some part of their own bodies—head, arm, face, breast. I was not sure what was meant by this and took occasion afterwards to ask one of those whom I had observed making this application, and was told that it was intended as a cure for various disorders. It appeared that this young girl had lived a notably pure and holy life, and that the touch of such a person was believed to be especially curative against tumors, warts, headache, and minor affections. My informant was, I was assured, immediately cured of a severe headache.

This led me to further inquiry and I found the custom to be widely spread. In two notable and quite recent instances, those of a Carmelite nun dying in Baltimore and a well-known Catholic priest who died in this city, many applications of the dead hand were made with reputed success. In both of these cases throngs of people pressed to obtain the coveted touch. Nor is the belief confined to those of the Roman Catholic faith; a female homoeopathic physician, formerly an army nurse, told me that once during her hospital service two soldier patients, suffering from malarial fever of a persistent type, came to her and asked permission to prepare for burial the next patient who might die. Upon inquiry it was found that they firmly believed that they could "break the chills" by an application of the dead hand, and it was for that reason that they sought this task. They were allowed to make the trial and were thereby speedily cured! Neither of these patients was a Catholic. In another case a white swelling was cured by a murderer's hand surreptitiously obtained. The moral quality of the individual to whom the member belonged seems to be a matter of importance. I was told, by a person who had knowledge of the facts, that, in the burial place for the paupers of this city, graves are not infrequently violated for the purpose of obtaining a hand or an arm, the cadaver being otherwise uninjured.

In Staffordshire and in Galloway it is held that a dead hand rubbed on warts causes them to disappear.* In Berwickshire, a short time ago, applications of the dead hand were made to remove wens, and in Northamptonshire crowds of sufferers used to congregate about the gallows-tree on days of public executions to receive "the dead stroke," nurses even bringing children for the purpose. The swelling is believed to decrease as the body of the criminal moulders away. Eye-witnesses living in 1868 in West Sussex, England, described the revolting ceremony of stroking at the gibbet, and the touch of the dead hand (not criminal) was still used for goitre and other affections, the stroke being applied nine times from east to west and nine times from west to east. Similar occurrences are related at the execution of Dr. Dodd, in 1777, and at the execution of the murderer Crowley, at Warwick, in the year 1845. 

It is needless to say that no record has been kept of the failures of this strange remedy, and the curious critic might imitate the Roman who, on seeing the tablets hung in the temple of Neptune by those who had been delivered by calling on the god, asked to see the tablets of those who had been drowned after a similar appeal.

The reason for these curious superstitions is obvious. The hand is so intimately connected with the brain as the executor of its behests that the savage mind naturally ascribes to it a separate and distinct force independent of the rest of the body—makes it, in fact, a fetish. Savage tribes wear necklaces made from the phalanges of those slain in battle, as witness the Cheyenne necklace of this character recently deposited in the National Museum. A similar custom prevailed among the Greeks, who wore the fingers and toes of a murdered relative under the armpits to avert the vengeance of the Furies.

source: American Anthropologist, Volume 1,  1888

Mr. Editor,

Happening to pass by Newgate on the morning of the execution of the unfortunate John Anderson, my steps were arrested by the contemplation of the termination of this poor wretch's crime. I bad stopped but a few moments, when I observed the executioner untying the criminal's hands, and immediately afterwards a woman ascended the scaffold, and began rubbing the dead hand across her throat- She was succeeded by another  who also exhibited this disgusting and foolish ceremony to us. I have discovered that these silly women are affected with a tumour which the surgeons call "Bronchocele;'' it is frequent in elevated and bleak parts of this island, and commonly known by the general term, Wen. Now, Sir, I had been induced to believe that the age of superstition and charlatanry was past; judge then my surprise when I saw this indelicate and disgusting instance of delusion sanctioned by the officers of the government of this self-called enlightened country ! It surely is the duty of every man, jealous of the honour of his country, to use his endeavours to clear her name from such folly as this ; both because it is folly, and because it is injurious to the weaker-minded part of the community. Allow me then, Sir, through you, to beg my countrywomen to discontinue this practice:—First, because it is of no use.—Secondly, because it is indelicate, and contrary to female modesty, to exhibit the person upon a scaffold before an immense body of people, to rub the throat with the hand of a dead man; and thirdly, because it is wicked, and contrary to religion, to use this species of conjuration.

Let them, on the contrary, seek their cure from those means which reason and experience approve. And there is, Mr. Editor, one remedy, perhaps not enough known, and that is, to dissolve in the mouth gradually, and often in the day, trocks of burnt sponge. This has often effected a cure. There are also other means of relieving this complaint, but it would lake up too much of your room to describe them. But, before I quit the subject, 1 would first suggest, that, as prevention is better than cure, and, as the same causes, operating on the rising generation of females, will produce the same complaint, 

it would be well if the cause were discovered ; that, by avoiding it, we might prevent the disease altogether. Now, this cause will be found to exist in the exposure of the throat to cold and piercing air, in the occupations of the labouring poor. The reason why it does not attack males is, that they have their throats covered, or partially so, from a very early age. And because females in a more comfortable state of life are not so much exposed to the open air, (in those parts of the country where the air more particularly produces it,) the disease is rarely seen amongst them. The conclusion, Mr. Editor, is obvious~ Let the girls of those parts of the country wear dresses that come close up to the chin, and then, Sir, we shall hear only of the " Goitres" of the Alps, or of other countries. 

source: The Busy body, or Men and manners, ed. by Humphrey Hedgehog, 1816

Goitre, the scourge of the Swiss valleys, is sometimes found in our country, and superstition offers a remedy for it, though a revolting one. The late Rev. J. W. Hick, Incumbent of Byer's Green, informed me that on asking a parishioner thus afflicted whether she had tried any measures for curing it, she answered: "No, I have not, though I have been a sufferer eleven years. But a very respectable man told me to-day that it would pass away if I rubbed a dead child's hand nine times across the lump. I've not much faith in it myself, but I've just tried it." Somewhat similar measures were resorted to by another sufferer not many years ago. The body of a suicide who had hanged himself in Hesilden-dene, not far from Hartlepool, was laid in an outhouse, awaiting the coroner's inquest. The wife of a pitman at Castle Eden Colliery, suffering from a wen in the neck, according to advice given her by a "wise woman," went alone and lay all night in the outhouse, with the hand of the corpse on her wen. She had been assured that the hand of a suicide was an infallible cure. The shock to the nervous system from that terrible night was so great that she did not rally for some months, and eventually she died from the wen. This happened about the year 1853, under the cognisance of my informant, the Rev. Canon Tristram. This belief extended, not many years back, as far south as Sussex. "Some five-and-twenty years ago," writes the Sussex lady, to whom I am so much indebted, " there stood a gibbet within sight of the high road that wound up Beeding Hill, our nearest way to Brighton Among my nurse's fearful stories about it was one relating to the curing of a wen by the touch of the dead murderer's hand, and she described most graphically the whole frightful scene: how the patient was taken under the gallows in a cart, and was held up in order that she might reach the dead hand, and how she passed it three times over the wen and returned home cured. This practice has happily become extinct with the destruction of the gibbet; but the remedy of a dead hand is still sometimes resorted to. Not very long ago, in the neighbouring village of Storrington, a young woman afflicted with goitre was taken by her friends to the side of an open coffin in order that the hand of the corpse might touch it thrice." It may be observed that they say in North Germany that tetters and warts disappear if touched by the hand of a corpse.

source: Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders, by William Henderson, 1878