been satisfied that this operation is quite
uncertain, and seems to depend a great deal on chance, and much reliance
must not be placed on it. Arculanus suggests a substitute method by
which latent polyps or occult polyps as he calls them may be removed.

There is scarcely an important disease for which Arculanus has not some
interesting suggestions, and the more one reads of him the more is one
surprised to find how many things that we might think of as coming into
the purview of medicine long after his time or at least as having been
neglected from the time of the Greeks almost down to our own time are
here treated explicitly, definitely, and with excellent practical
suggestions. He has a good deal to say with regard to the treatment of
angina, which he calls synanche, or synanchia, or cynanche, or angina.
Parasynanche is a synonymous term, but refers to a milder synanche. He
distinguished four forms of it. In one called canine angina, because the
patient's tongue hangs out of his mouth, somewhat the same as from an
overheated dog in the summer time, while at the same time the mouth is
held open and he draws his breath pantingly, Arculanus suggests an
unfavorable prognosis, and would seem to refer to those cases of
Ludwig's angina in which there is involvement of the tongue and in which
our prognosis continues to be of the very worst even to our own day. At
times the angina causes such swelling in the throat that the breathing
is interfered with completely. For this Arculanus' master, Rhazes,
advised tracheotomy. Arculanus himself, however, apparently hesitated
about that.

It is not surprising, then, to find that Arculanus is very explicit in
his treatment of affections of the uvula. He divides its affections into
_apostema, ulcus, putredo sive corrosio, et casus_. _Apostema_ was
abscess, _ulcus_ any rather deep erosion, _putredo_ a gangrenous
condition, and _casus_ the fall of the uvula. This is the notorious
falling of the soft palate which has always been in popular medical
literature at least. Arculanus describes it as a preternatural
elongation of the uvula which sometimes goes to such an extent as to
make it resemble the tail of a mouse. For shorter elongations he
suggests the cautery; for longer, excision followed by the cautery so
that the greater portion of the extending part may be cut off. If people
fear the knife he suggests following Rhazes, the application of an
astringent powder directly to the part