By W. C. ABBOTT, M. D. No doubt some will smile at the above caption, and say: “The idea! Who ever heard of such a thing?” Others will read what follows and, perhaps, profit thereby. Strangulated hernia is looked upon as, strictly, a surgical affair, only two ways of treatment being thought of, _i. e._, reduction by taxis or, in case of failure—and if the patient and family will consent, the knife. The former usually fails, and consent to the latter is frequently so long deferred that the result is anything but satisfactory; hence, any measure which is at the same time simple and helpful should be looked upon as a valuable acquisition. The plan of treatment which I wish to present will best be understood if illustrated by the record of a case in hand. One morning, recently, I was summoned hurriedly to see an elderly German laborer, whose “breach was down,” so the messenger said, and it surely was. Such a scrotal display I never saw before; a mass larger than a child’s head, and as hard and tense as a foot-ball. I thought, at first, that part of it must be an old hydrocele, but was assured by the sufferer that “him all goes back.” This rupture was of some ten years standing. Formerly the hernia was retained with a truss, but of late years it had been allowed to go up and down according to circumstances, never having become strangulated before. Now, my experience has been that when an old man who has had years of practice reducing his hernia fails to put it back, the surgeon has a job on his hands. In this particular case most of the mass was resonant, but there was a lump the size of a goose-egg, close to the ring, that was hard and gave a perfectly flat precussion note—the omentum—congested by strangulation, the very irritation from which caused a tighter spasm of the muscle-fibres between which the mass protruded. I tried taxis faithfully; so had the old man, and we both failed. I used hot fomentations to no avail; I placed him at an incline of 45° and sprayed the mass with cold water to stimulate contraction of the muscles of the cord. They contracted sharply, but had no effect except to increase his pain. I lowered him to the horizontal position, covered him up with a hot blanket, and sat down to rest. Here was an old man, hernia strangulated for some two or three hours, a serious case. It was growing worse every moment, and nothing seemed likely to avail but the knife. The spasm was intense. How could I relax it?