Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/63

Rh brain, and led in many instances to the subsequent development of insanity. The former system of prescribing large doses of opium, with the view of procuring sleep at all hazards, was no less pernicious; and there is &quot;reason to fear that not a few cases of delirium tremens have ended in fatal coma from what was in reality opium poisoning. In addition to these methods of treatment, mechanical restraint of the patient was the common practice.

The views of the disease which now prevail, recognizing the delirium as the effect at once of the poisonous action of alcohol upon the brain and of the want of food, encourage reliance to be placed for its cure upon the entire withdrawal, in most instances, of stimulants, and the liberal administration of light nutriment, in addition to quietness and gentle but firm control, without mechanical restraint. In mild attacks this is frequently all that is required. In more severe cases, where there is great restlessness, sedatives have to be resorted to, and many substances have been recommended for the purpose. Opiates administered in small quantity, and preferably by hypodermic injection, are undoubtedly of value ; and chloral, either alone or in conjunction with bromide of potassium, often answers even better. Such remedies, however, should be administered with great caution, and only under medical supervision.

Stimulants may be called for where the delirium assumes the low or adynamic form, and the patient tends to sink from exhaustion, or when the attack is complicated with some other disease. Such cases are, however, in the highest degree exceptional, and do not affect the general principle of treatment already referred to, which inculcates the entire withdrawal of stimulants in the treatment of ordinary attacks of delirium tremens. {j. o. A.)

 DELITZSCH, a town of Prussia, in the province of Saxony, at the head of a district in the department of Merseburg, situated on the Lober, an affluent of the Mulde, 12 miles north of Leipsic at a railway junction. Its public buildings comprise an old castle of the 14th century now used as a female penitentiary, one Roman Catholic and three Protestant churches, a normal college (Schullehrerseminar) established in 1873, and several other educational institutions. Besides Kuhschwanz, a peculiar kind of beer, it manufactures tobacco, cigars, shoes, and hosiery; and coal-mining is carried en in the neighbourhood. Originally a settlement of the Sorbian Wends, and in the 12th century part of the possessions of the bishops of Merseburg, Delitzsch ultimately passed to the Sachsen-Merseburg family, and on their extinction in 1738 was incorporated with Electoral Saxony. Ehrenberg, the famous naturalist, was born in the town in 1795. Population in 1875, 8235.

 DELOLME, (1740-1806), jurist and constitutional writer, was born at Geneva in 1740. He studied for the bar, and had entered on the profession of an advocate in his native town when he was obliged to emigrate on account of the publication of a pamphlet entitled Examen de trois parts de droit, which gave offence to the authorities of the town. He found an asylum in England, where he lived for several years on the meagre and precarious income derived from occasional contributions to various journals. He maintained an honourable independence, however, until 1775, when he found himself compelled to accept aid from a charitable society to enable him to return home. He died at Sewen, a village in the canton of Schwytz, on the 16th July 1806. During his exile Delolme made a careful study of the English constitution, the results of which he published in his La Constitution de l'Angleterre (Amsterdam, 1771), of which an enlarged and improved edition in English appeared in 1772, and was several times reprinted. The work excited much interest as the production of a foreigner, and as containing many acute observations on the causes of the excellence of the English constitution as compared with that of other countries. It is, however, wanting in breadth of view, being written before the period when constitutional questions were treated in a philosophical manner. Several editions were published after the author's death, the latest being in 1853 by MacGregor. Delolme also wrote A Parallel between the English Government and the former Government of Sweden (1772), A History of the Flagellants (1782), based upon a work of Boileau's, An Essay on the Union of Scotland and England (1787), and one or two smaller works.

 DELOS, now Mikra Dili, or Little Delos, to distinguish it from Megali Dili, or Great Delos, an island in the yEgean, the smallest but most famous of the Cyclades, and, according to the ancient belief, the spot round which the group arranged itself in a nearly circular form. It is a rugged mass of granite, about 12 square miles in extent, in 37 23 N. lat. and 25 17 E. long., about half a mile to the east of Megali Dili, or Rheneia, and two miles to the west of Myconos. Towards the centre it rises to its great est height of 350 feet in the steep and rocky peak of Mount Cynthus, which, though overtopped by several eminences in the neighbouring islands, is very conspicuous from the surrounding sea. It is now completely destitute of trees ; but it abounds with brushwood of lentisk and cistus, and here and there affords a patch of corn-land to the occasional sower from Myconos. Of the many traditions that were current among the ancient Greeks regarding the origin of Delos or, as they sometimes named it, Asteria, Ortygia, Chlamydia, or Pyrpile&amp;gt; the most popular describes it as struck from the bed of the sea by a dint of Neptune s trident, and drifting devious through the^Egeantill moored by Jupiter as a refuge for his persecuted Latona. It was soon after flooded with the birth-radiance of Apollo and Diana, and became for ever sacred to these twin deities of light. The island first appears in history as an Ionian colony and the seat of a great Ionic festival to which the Athenians, among the rest, were accustomed annually to despatch a ewpi s, or sacred ship, with a number of Deliasts, apoi, or sacred delegates. In the 6th century B.C. the influence of the Delian Apollo was at its height ; Polycrates of Samos dedicated the neighbouring island of Rheneia to his service, arid Pisistratus of Athens caused all the area within sight of the temple to be cleared of the tombs by which its sanctity was impaired. About a hundred years afterwards, in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war (426 B.C.), the Athenians instituted a more elaborate lustration, caused every tomb to be removed from the island, and established a law that ever after any one whose condition seemed to threaten its pollution by either birth or death should be at once conveyed from its shores. And even this was not accounted sufficient; for, in 422, they expelled all its secular inhabitants. After the overthrow of Corinth, in 146 B.C., the commercial element which had in all pro bability been present from the first in the religious gather ings, came prominently forward, and Delos became the central mart of the ^Egean. In the Mithridatic war it was laid waste by Menophanes, the general of the Bithynian king ; and it never recovered its former prosperity, though it is said that, under the Roman empire, 10,000 slaves were sometimes put up for sale in a single day. Hadrian attempted to found a city which was to bear the proud name of New Athens ; but, when visited by Pausanias towards the close of the same century, the whole island was almost depopulated. It is now absolutely without a j permanent inhabitant, though during the summer months j a few shepherds cross over with their flocks from Myconos j or Rheneia. As a religious centre it is replaced by Teuos. 