Functional Diseases of the Stomach. Part I. Sea - sickness ; its
nature and treatment. By John Chapman, M.D. (Trubner.) —We noticed a year or more ago the success which Dr. Chapman's method of treating the circulating through the nervous, or to specify more particularly, the " vaso-motor " system, had had in cases of epilepsy and paralysis. Deeming sea-sickness to be due " to an excessive amount of blood in the nervous centres along the back," Dr. Chapman was led to try the effect of ice applied to the back in curing it, and certainly his success seems to have been nearly perfect. In seventeen cases he has never yet failed either to prevent sea-sickness entirely if the remedy was applied in time, or to cure it if properly applied after it had set in ; and this, too, with one patient (subject to epilepsy) who had been so fearfully affected by sea- sickness on previous voyages from Boulogne to Folkstone and Rhyl to Liverpool as to be regarded as "at the point of death" by her medical attendants on landing. Even with this patient the ice, when applied for some little time before embarking and throughout the voyage, kept her in perfect health, while many other passengers were sick around her. Dr. Chapman chronicles all the circumstances of each case, whether favourable or unfavourable to his conclusion, such as the comparative calmness of the weather and the number of the other passengers affected, with rigid minuteness. Indeed it seems quite cer- tain that a remedy of the greatest efficacy for sea-sickness has been attained. Of the general science of the method the first chapter (a paper reprinted from the Lancet) will be found to be a very lucid state- ment. The Lancet has since (in its issue of January n recorded a most remarkable case communicated by Mr. Ernest Hart, ophthalmic surgeon, in which the ice-treatment has benefited greatly not merely epilepsy, but a complaint hitherto thought incurable, atrophy of the optic nerve. Although linable ourselves to speak of this method from any profes-
sional knowledge, it is obvious that many men of the highest eminence now see in the application of heat and cold to the spine a new therapeutic instrument of the greatest power.
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