Part second consists of twenty pages devoted to personal hygiene. These pages are simply crammed with information that every person ought to read. It is a pity that such nuggets of gold should be read exclusively by doctors.

Part third is devoted to dietetics, extending over twenty pages, into which are crowded the essentials of dietetics. We quote from page fifty-five three dietetic principles which the author declares are as firm and unshakable as the rock of Gibraltar. The principles are as follows:

I. Modern man eats too much and too often in proportion to his physiological wants.

2. Modern man eats too much meat in proportion to the amount of carbohydrates.

3. The treatment of all general diseases and many local troubles must begin with a rational dietetic regime.

Part fourth discusses the physiological effects of heat and cold. Thirty pages are devoted to this discussion and they are simply replete with practical information, that every physician at least ought to know, and it would be well for men and women that are trying to rear families to know them also.

Mechano-Therapy is outlined in part five, with many illustrations and explana

The action of light upon the human body is discussed in part seven.

Perhaps the most important part of the book is that part devoted to electricity as applied to-day in the treatment of disease. This interesting subject is discussed in chapters eight and nine.

The chapter on X-Ray diagnosis is up-to-date and contains information indispensable to the physician.

One unique feature of the book is the therapeutic index, nearly two hundred pages. The therapeutic index is arranged exactly like a dictionary, the names of diseases are put in alphabetical order, which makes it convenient for reference. Following the name of the disease is the treatment which the author recommends. Instead of being obliged to hunt through the whole book to find the practical treatment recommended, one can turn immediately to the particular disease about which the information is needed and find condensed into one paragraph the recommendations of the author.

Altogether the book is a valuable contribution to that rapidly growing literature which undertakes the discussion of other remedies than drugs in the cure of disease. The book is published by the Harvey Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.

I

"I did not learn to practice medicine in college. Not a bit of it. They taught me anatomy there. They taught me physiology and chemistry. But they didn't teach me to practice medicine. In the first place, the stuff they taught about, drugs in those days, is now antiquated, out of date. The remedies they recommended few know of to-day. But that was not the greatest trouble with it. They did not teach me anything for practical use about medicine. No, I did not learn to practice medicine from what they taught in college. Neither did I

learn to practice medicine from text books. I have a library full of text books. I scarcely ever read one of them. They are of no use to me, especially in the treatment of disease.”

I ventured to ask this doctor how he did learn to practice medicine, then.

"All right, I will tell you. I learned by practicing it. The fact is, everything I have learned of any special use to me are the things I have picked up by experience, here and there. I tried this, and tried that, and finally found a few remedies-not many-that work. Yes, sir. That is the way I learned to practice medicine. I just began to practice, with little or no practical knowledge, and found out a few things."

Such talk as this sounds all right from the standpoint of the physician. No doubt experience is the best teacher in anything, as well as the practice of medicine. But what about the patients? What about those he was practicing among? How are they faring while he is learning to practice medicine?

Is it a fact, then, that every new doctor must learn to practice medicine by trying things on his patients? If the doctor's testimony above quoted is true, that is the way to learn, and the only way.

There is a good deal of truth in it. No one can deny that. The doctor comes out of college inflated with things he imagines he knows. In ten years he has found out by experience that the most of the things he thought he knew were fictitious. The pity of it is that he has found it out through his mistakes on those trusting people who have paid him good money to help them in times of sickness. That is the pity of it.

We must all humbly confess that the practice of medicine is not a science. At the very best it is an art of uncertain reliability. Remedies change. Notions concerning cures change. In the last ten years all the multitude of remedies heretofore used for consumption have gone to the junk heap as worthless. We can only look back in pity and shame to the multitude of consumptives who have trustingly swallowed the trash that the medical profession has invented for them. in years past. Pity and shame!

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The trouble is, we have not quit such things yet. We are still doing things that ten years from now we will be ashamed of again.

In view of this state of affairs, what a horrible injustice it is for the medical profession to attempt to make it illegal for any but themselves to try to heal the sick.

There are certain men who attempt to cure disease by the use of water. These doctors are known as hydropaths.

There are men who think they can cure some diseases by the use of electricity. These men are known as electropaths.

There are men who think they can cure some diseases by mechanical means, with instruments the have invented. These people call themselves mechanicotherapeutists.

There are men who think they can cure disease by laying on of hands, by imparting the magnetism of their bodies to the bodies of the patients. These men are called magnetic healers.

There are men who think they can cure disease by rubbing, kneading, massaging the body. These men are called masseurs, manual movement curists, and the like.

All of these different kinds of healers make many cures, sometimes astonishing cures after the drugger has quit, after the surgeon has given up in despair. All of them make this sort of cures. They rarely do harm, for their treatment is not necessarily harmful, even in cases where it does not help.

And yet every one of them is under the ban of the law to-day. The laws which the druggers have succeeded by hook and crook in passing through our state legislatures make every one of these helpful and harmless healers outlaws.

If by the aid of electricity, or water, or movements, or massage, some one heals you of some chronic disease he is obliged to do it with the same stealth as if he were stealing a horse or picking a pocket. In the sight of the law he is a criminal. The doctors' society will hound him to the death.

When the doctors began to make these laws the pretense was they were trying

to protect the dear public from ignorant doctors who were attempting to prescribe drugs. But none of these doctors above enumerated is trying to prescribe drugs at all. And yet the doctors are just as violently opposed to them as to an ignorant drugger.

The fact is, these healers are making cures. This is probably the chief objection that the druggers have to their work. They make cures. They demonstrate in a community the fallacy of drugging, in some cases at least.

When a doctor is willing to admit that he did not learn to practice medicine in the colleges, or through the text books, but learned to practice it by experimenting on his patients, when he admits this it would seem as if it was about time

other people were allowed to practice who do not propose to use drugs at all, or learn how to heal some by trying experiments on many others.

What must be the meditations of an old doctor who looks back over his life's

work, how must his thoughts trouble him when he thinks of the foolish notions he fondly believed when he left medical college, how the phantoms of past mis

takes must rise before his inner visionthat honest farmer whom he drugged to death by following the instructions he had learned in college. That trusting woman, cut to death by obeying the directions of some text book.

And finally, by piling up these mistakes one after another, he learns in later years what not to do, and a few things. that he ought to do. And now, in his old age, just as he had acquired a proper reverence for the human body and the laws that govern it, he must lay down his surgical tools, set aside his medicine case, and be gathered with his patients. into the last resting place. I wonder if he expects to meet them on the other

side!

To be sure, the doctor did the best he could, no doubt, and he may comfort himself with this meager consolation. But is such a man in a position to oppose other men who are trying to find out some other way to heal disease besides experimenting with drugs upon patients for twenty-five years, in order to learn what not to do in the next ten years?

Dear Doctor Carr:

Y

OU don't know how glad I am to know you are again in your proper place and in full control of a Medical Journal. I want it as long as I live, if you keep up the standard of "Old Medical Talk." I am at the head of the Drugless Healers' Association, of Washington, and will urge all our members to subscribe for THE COLUMBUS MEDICAL JOURNAL.

I enclose you a copy of a bill we have decided to press before next Legislature. It is short and simple, but we believe it sufficient. In speaking of this state, there have been seventeen arrests for practicing medicine without a license. The State Medical Association is behind this persecution and prosecution. The drugless healers are in constant jeopardy. One of our members in Bellingham has

been arrested three times, on on same charges, warrants are out for fourteen persons in Tacoma, conviction nearly always follows in lower courts and more have paid their fines and others have appealed to the higher courts. I am informed that in Tacoma the State Medical Association has made a contract with a young attorney to pay him $50.00 per head for convictions in the lower courts. Wishing you great success, I remain as ever, yours for liberty for the people,

JAMES F. ZEDIKER.

We give below two sections of the bill: A Bill for an act to regulate the practice of drugless healing and midwifery in the State of Washington; to devise a plan of registration, and create a fund to defray the expense of the same, and providing a penalty for the violation of the provisions of this act.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Washington:

Section 1. Any person desiring to enter upon the practice of drugless healing or midwifery in this state shall, and they are hereby required to have their name and place of residence registered in the office of the recorder of the county in which they reside, in a book kept for that purpose, also a statement of the system of practice they propose to pursue; where and when they graduated, if graduates; and if not when and where, how long, and with, or under whom they studied, and when, where and how long they have practiced, if at all, and such other facts as will enable the people to judge of their fitness to practice drugless healing, which shall include the use of Water, Electricity, Magnetism, Massage, Swedish Movement, Osteopathic treatment, Hypnotism, Mental influence, Christian. Science, Neuropathy, Chiropractic, Light, Heat, Hygiene, Dietics, or any one of Heat, Hygiene, Dietics, or any one of them, or any other system or agency, or combination of drugless systems or agencies, and these facts must be recorded before such person shall enter upon the practice of the art of healing or midwifery as a business or profession.

Section 2. A certified copy of the registration provided for in section I of this act must be hung up or otherwise displayed in the office of the drugless

healer or midwife before he or she can legally begin practice, and shall remain. hung up, or otherwise displayed, constantly while he or she shall continue to practice.

We have given above the first two paragraphs of the very excellent bill for the regulation and practice of drugless healing in the State of Washington referred to in the above letter.

Those desiring to read the whole of the bill should address Dr. James F. Zediker, Room 9, Ditter Block, North Yakima, Washington, when they will receive a copy of it. Enclose two cents for postage

ENCLOSED find money order for $1.00 to pay my subscription to THE COLUMBUS MEDICAL JOURNAL one year.

I am very glad you are again taking up the Medical Journal business. I was

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sorry you dropped Medical Talk, as I appreciated it very much, as I hope to THE COLUMBUS MEDICAL JOURNAL. I think I am in a position to appreciate them on account of my having been in the drug business about six years and became acquainted with the ins and outs of doctors and also of the rotten side. I like your manly style of telling the truth and "calling a spade by its right name.

I think you are doing a great work and wish you success.

J. B. FOLLER, Box 384, Roanoke, Va.

I

A Very Rich Man.
HAPPEN to be acquainted with a
very rich man.
There is some-

thing so unusual and curious about this man it is difficult to describe him. He is very rich. He not only owns all the property in the ward where he lives, but he owns all the property in the city, in the state. His erty in the city, in the state. possessions extend from ocean to ocean, from hemisphere to hemisphere. They are his, he believes, in the truest sense of the word. He could not wish or hope to make them more his than they are now. I will try to describe how he came in possession of them.

When this man started out in the world he had little or none of the spirit of conquest. He was not a spirited man in any sense of the word. He had no spirit to acquire authority over others. He had no spirit for dominion or financial adventures. He was a quiet, simple man, with just spirit enough to accept life as he found it, and to enjoy common, ordinary things.

This

butler for a very wealthy man. Once, in early life, he had served as brought him in contact daily with expensive luxuries and useless extravagances. He became familiar with every detail of the home of a millionaire. He observed the life at close range of the millionaire and his family.

He was happy, very happy, in his service as a butler. But he noted that the alleged owner of the mansion was not happy. Nor could his family be said to be a happy family. The possession of so much wealth brought with it a thousand and one responsibilities, a tangle of social

relations, a routine of personal habits, which made them at times downright miserable and habitually uncomfortable.

He discovered that they were slaves to their own property. Slaves to the conditions by which they were surrounded. They were not free men and women, like himself. The great, big house in which they all lived together, he with the rest of them, spacious rooms, costly furniture and pictures, all this he had quietly learned to enjoy. But he could not observe that the family whom he served enjoyed them at all.

Little by little he came to realize that he was the real owner of that mansion, and they were the servants.

For instance, the head of the house, the man who had the deeds for the property, the man who had supreme control of the financial management of the estate, bore all of the burden of providing for him, of devising ways and means of improving and beautifying, paying the bills, of keeping them up to the standard of other mansions in the same class. He, the butler, was simply the passive recipient of all this liberality on the part of his employer.

To be sure, the butler had his duties to attend to, but they brought little or no responsibility. They furnished him no more physical exercise or mental strain than was necessary for his health.

The same roof protected him from sun and storm that protected his master, the difference being merelv that his master had all the worry, all the nerve strain and brain rack of keeping the thing going. He, the butler, merely reached out his hand and took his salary at the end of the week or month.

He observed the habits and daily life. of the elder son, who was following in his father's footsteps. His boisterous college days, followed by an eager and strenuous entrance into the life of a business man. He observed his expensive habits, noted his loss of sleep, detected the evidences of increasing dissipation.

Then came the business failure. He saw his employer turned out of the home, his household goods sold under the auctioneer's hammer. The house, with all

its belongings, was purchased by another man.

To the butler all this meant nothing, meant no trouble at all. Even his position was not disturbed by it, nor his salary suspended. The new owner wished him to remain in his old place. Nothing had happened to him but a change of employers, his second employer being much the same sort of a man as the first

one.

The thing went on the old way, he enjoying every day, and all day, the luxurious home, the esthetic surroundings, the physical and mental comforts which they brought.

But his master, like the other one, came and went in a hurry, and except in the whirl of some society event little or no pleasure was apparent inside of that mansion.

His second master suffered a reverse of fortune. Once more the property was sold, and for the third time he served as butler in that home of splendid equipment and magnificent surroundings.

He, the butler, was the real owner of the home all the time. It was he who could take in its full benefits without the soul-destroying effect of legal ownership.

All this time he was saving a portion of his salary. He carefully hoarded the presents that were bestowed upon him, and with it all he was able to purchase a modest house in a portion of the city' where property was cheaper. His home was so simple that the financial details. did not require much of him. married a woman who was as poor in spirit as himself, and they were very happy indeed.

He

He continued his vocation as butler, and thus daily caught glimpses of that other life so different from his home life. In this way he was able to make continuous comparison between the simple life he was living and the life of the haughty owners of millions.

He gradually came to discover that his relation to the grand old mansion where he served was more desirable than the relation of those men he had called master. Not only so with regard to that