Volume 46 · Issue 10 · 1932

The first general conference of the Chinese Medical Association will go down in our medical history as a significant event marking the formal amalgamation of the China Medical Association and the NationaI Medical Association of China. Henceforth foreign and Chinese medical men will join forces in their efforts to grapple with the huge problem of combatting diseases and entrenching public health in this vast country. The trail blazed by the foreign pioneers of modern medicine will thus be more energetically pursued with native cooperation and lengthened to the mutual benefit of all residents in this country.

The Chinese Medical Association came into existence on April 15th, 1932. It is the joint offspring of the China Medical Association (formerly China Medical Missionary Association, founded in 1886) and the National Medical Association of China, founded in 1914.

Trachtenberg (1) called attention to the usefuInPss of ephedrine in aIlcviating the symptoms of a case of spastic collitis (mucous colitis) rapidly and efficaciously after other metbods had been tried and found ineffective. The result was indeed dramatic. The symptoms of abdominal pain and blood and mucus in stools which had lasted for fuIly a year and a half, causing great disability and discomfort, were quickly relieved by 0.15 gm of ephedrine in three doses, and disappeared entirely after such daily doses for twelve days. Frankel (2) is the only other writer who has reported the use of ephedrine in treating intestinal disorders, in his case spastic constipation. He did not give much detail, but only stated that the result was very gratifying. These favorable reports attracted our interest and attention and we have therefore used ephedrine in the following two patients who happened to come into the Hospital in the past twcIve months. The roentgenographic study of these cases forms the basis of the present report.

During recent years the treatment of acute or subacute amoebic dysentery has been carried out chiefly by the use of emetine, emetine bismuth iodide, quinoxyl, and yatren. The respective merits and methods of use of these substances have been discussed at length in medical journals all over the world, and the commcrciaI literature of the various firms marketing preparations of these substances has been scattered broadcast to medical practitioners and hospitals. We do not wish to discuss the respective merits of these substances, all of which are well known, and are of undoubted clinical value, but all of which possess the disadvantage of being somewhat expensive. With the price of emetine varying from 20 t0 85 cents per grain during recent years it has become increasingly difficult for mission hospitals, and other institutions or practitioners working among the poorest class of patients, to give sufficient quantities of emetine per head really to cure the disease. Similar conditions obtain with the other substances, and one is therefore forced to consider whether the cost of treatment cannot in any way be reduced, so that poor patients may be given adequate treatment on a larger scale.

The following description of a case of Addison's disease is published because of the comparative infrequency of the condition. So far we have not been.able to find records of this disease in Chinese. No doubt amongst readers of the JOURNAL there may be some who have met with it.

Although Sarcosporidiosis is a very common and wiclcIy distributed infection in various kinds of animals, reports of the infection in man are very rare. This is probabIy due to the fact that the infection, as a whoIe does not give rise, so far as we know, to any specific symptoms, and its detection is therefore merely accidental. A search of the literature shows only eight authentic cases on record. A summary of these covering the characters of the parasite, the organs infected, the locality and the associated lesions, the author and the year of each case reported is given in the following tabIe.

The case report below of utero-tubal pregnancy is of interest not only because it is uncommon but because it presented an interesting problem in diagnosis and delivery.

Spontaneous pneumothorax in the new born is, as far as we know, of such rare occurrence that it justifies being put on record. But it is possible that if X-ray studies were made systematically of all new born babies with defective or disordered respiration, the condition might prove to be not quite so rare as it seems to be.

General interest in the question of primary or idiopathic splenomegaly has recently been stimulated by the work of a number of independent investigators, who have isolated various fungi from enlarged spleens. Cases of this type are not infrequently observed in the medical wards of the Peiping Union Medical College Hospital. These cases present splenomegaIy without discoverable cause, anemia of various degrees, and sometimes jaundice, ascites, and a tendency to hemorrhage. Fifty-three such cases in which the clinical diagnosis seems reasonably well established, have occurred among 29,185 hospital admissions. They form the subject of this report.