repealed. Not that the socialists were especially interested in quack doctors, but they were interested in the individual freedom of the city. Their theory of government was that the people should be allowed, as much as possible, freedom. That no laws should be made protecting or bolstering up the classes. Therefore, the medical laws were repealed and the people were allowed to do as they pleased about choosing a doctor. The regular physician had all the advantage in the world. He represented the money, the learning, the influence of Berlin. He was supposed to know how to cure disease in the quickest way possible, how to bring to the relief of the sufferers the best remedies. And yet, as soon as the laws against irregular physicians were repealed they sprang up in great numbers in the City of Berlin, and it was not many years before the irregular physicians of Berlin were having as many if not more patients than those who represented the regular schools and the highest culture of medical science. What does such an experience signify? Does it mean that the people are all fools, that they are bent on their own destruction, that they deliberately choose the worst thing instead of the best thing, that they are easily captivated by misrepresentation and are not able to perceive the difference between good things and bad things? I think not. I do not believe this sufficiently explains why so many of the inhabitants of the City of Berlin chose the irregular physician in preference to the regular. Other things are necessary to explain this phenomena. No doubt there are people in Berlin, as there are people everywhere else, who are blinded by the glamour of inordinate pretensions, bombastic claims, But these people are greatly in the minority, and one or two adverse experiences cure even that small number. In my judgment, the reason the people choose the irregular physician is because they receive from the irregular physician more courtesy, more kind ness, and undoubtedly in many cases better medicinal treatment. The irregular physician knew very well that his success depended upon his own efforts. He was not bolstered up by laws that protected him, or that made his competitor an outlaw. If he was to have patients he must win them by h's ability to convince them that he was worth their money. It was necessary that he should make cures. was necessary that he should treat his patients as if they were human beings. It The regular physician in Germany for a long time had enjoyed a monopoly of the practice of medicine. He treated his patients brutally. He scarcely ever addressed them civilly. They came to his office as cringing supplicants. They did not receive treatment that any self-respecting citizen would tolerate for a moment. But so soon as the laws were re pealed that put the regular physician on an equality with the irregular physician, the people quickly noticed the difference. The regular physician could not quickly adjust himself to fair competition. He continued his brusque manner and savage ways, while the irregular physician behaved in a gentlemanly manner toward his patients and treated them as if they were his equals. This is amply sufficient to explain why there was a stampede of the citizens of Berlin toward the irregular physicians so soon as they were allowed to do so. in the City of London, another center Nearly the same thing has happened of medical learning. The medical profession had been in the habit of explaining such things by charging them all up to the perverseness and stupidity of the masses of people. They kept on saying that the people are so fickle, and so anxious to be fooled, that they will run after a quack doctor in preference to a regular physician every time, if they are allowed to. Therefore, laws must be made to prevent people from doing such foolish things. This is no explanation at all. I believe in the people. I believe if they About Tuberculosis in Cattle. are left to themselves they will generally, the majority of them, do right. The fact is, there are a great many excellent physicians that are classed as irregulars. These physicians have been trained in the bitter school of experience not to browbeat or to defraud their patients. They are obliged to make friends with their patients, to gain their confidence. Hence, they must be civil. They must be truthful. They must perform with reasonable fidelity the promises they have made. Not so with the regular physician, who is protected by laws. He can browbeat. He can defraud. He can fail to keep his promises. And yet the people are obliged to employ him. He knows this, and takes advantage of it. He becomes careless. If he makes a mistake it is hushed up or covered up. He is protected in all his wrong-doings, unless they become too flagrant. He is sure of patients, whether he pleases the people or not. Such a relation between the physician and his patrons is entirely wrong. It will always lead to trouble, to the harm of the people and to the degradation of the physician himself. The people should be left absolutely free in their choice of physicians. Doctors should be compelled to face the facts, and to win the people by fair Y 693 competitive methods. This will do the people good, and do the doctors good. Nothing short of this will finally settle the practice of medicine on a rational basis. The more medical laws we have the worse we are off. Even the doctors are beginning to see this. This, however, does not in any wise justify the quack physician who lives by fraud. It requires no medical laws to punish that fellow. He is a fraud. He is a thief. He is a murderer, and he should be vigorously punished for every offense. The Columbus Medical Journal offers no apology for such fellows. Indeed, I would if I could make their apprehension more easy, and their punish ment more severe. But in doing this I would not screen that other doctor who calls himself a regular physician. I would treat him exactly as I would a quack. Indeed, he is a quack so soon as he proves faithless to the confidence that the people have in him. I would apply the word quack to any doctor who defrauds, who is negligent of his duties, who fails to be a gentleman on every occasion. Such a doctor is a quack doctor, irrespective of his standing in the profession or the diplomas he may happen to have. THE CARE OF CATTLE. By C. L. ROTH, Chenoa, Ill. OURS of Sept. 15th received with the answer to the clipping I sent you which was in regard to the tuberculin test for cattle. I would like to get permission of you to send that answer to the man by whom the article in the clipping was written. It is Governor Hoard, of Michigan; he printed it in his paper, Hoard's Dairyman. I certainly think it was the care of his cattle and not the tuberculin test that preserved his herd in spite of his giving all the praise to his test. Yes, I agree with you that lots of people believe false things, perhaps all the people believe at least a few false things; those who don't are perfect and I think that these kind are very scarce. In regard to cattle giving tuberculosis to man, through milk and meat, let me give you my experience in regard to it. My father had a dairy of twenty to twenty-five cows, and after father's death, my mother continued to run it, and I was one of the helpers. We sold all the milk to customers and also some of the butter. People used much more milk than they do here, and it was a small family that did not use more than a quart a day, most of them from a half to a gallon, according to the size of the family. It was used raw and cooked, and we also used quite a great deal in our own family, as there was hardly less than sixteen persons at our table, boarders, helpers and children. We all used milk from once to three times a day, at least half of it raw, some in coffee, others with bread, and about two or more gallons of buttermilk a day, of which all partook in its raw state. Our cows were all stalled in a very close barn, with walls about one and one-half feet thick and about thirty feet of hay above the ceiling. So you see there was very little ventilation in the winter time. The consequence of it was many of the cows developed tuberculosis, but of course we did not know it until they commenced to fall off in flesh, and then we kept on milking them until they began to dry up, which was generally not before they were almost skin and bones only. We then sold them to our local butcher. I know of some of them that were so poor they could scarcely walk to the slaughter house, which was less than half a mile away from our barn. I know of one that fell down before she got there and they had to drag her in where she was butchered and converted into sausage. Now we bought our meat of that butcher and also our sausage meat, at least three times a week. We all ate of it, we all drank the milk of those cows, all our customers did, perhaps nearly forty families. We ate their meat, yet none of us got consumption, neither did I or any of our customers people who died of it in the course of get it, although I knew of a few other in Illinois, where they use little milk years, perhaps one in about ten here compared with the folks at home. Besides I think there is not more than one cow has consumption here to ten of ours at home, simply because the cows here are in the fresh air nearly all the year, with the exception of stormy and cold nights in the winter time. My conclusion is if tuberculous cattle did give consumption to humans, we would have died out long ago, although in a few cases that might be so. I said none of us had consumption. The doctor said I had a touch of it when I was about sixteen years old and had grown very fast for a year or lungs. Still I am alive yet after all two, but I was a little weak in my this that happened over forty years ticing nearly the same tactics they did ago, and people over at home are practhen without getting tuberculosis, or only in rare cases. T ADVERTISING CIGARS. HE cigar advert sers are adroit business men who have exhibited a great deal of ingenuity and skill in presenting the claims of rival cigars Everywhere we see their advertisements. All of the tricks of psychology and esthetics have been resorted to, to attract attention and to convince the multitudes that this cigar is better than that one; and that smoking is a very honorable and polite indulgence. Even Henry George, the philanthropist, in life size figure is held up as an exponent for cigars. Henry George, who did not approve of tobacco at all, who despised the use of cigars. But, the most effective cigar sign that I have seen is not supported by thought out of the fertile brain of any any manufacturer of cigars, nor was it pened. professional advertiser. It just hapbeats the man who sandwiches himIt is a parapetetic ad. that self between two placards and walks about the streets to advertise some one's wares. This traveling cigar ad. to which I refer, works for nothing and boards himself. A Traveling Cigar Advertisement. It is a doctor who rides about in an automobile. Night and day, he is seen in all parts of the city, carrying a half-smoked cigar in his mouth. This doctor is a trusted man in many homes, he is the adviser of an army of working men, of business men, of school boys. His judgment as to the care of the body and cure of disease is valued very highly by numerous citizens. He tells this one what to eat and what not to eat. He tells that one in what he can indulge safely without harm to himself. His automobile is driven from house to house where large fees are paid for his assistance in times of disease. Who could have selected a more prominent and more authoritative exponent of cigars? A more startling and ever present object lesson for the use of cigars? Let us suppose a business man is walking to his office. He has concluded that smoking disagrees with him. He has a half formed notion that he will quit smoking, but on his way to his office this doctor is whirled by in his automobile with a halfsmoked cigar between his teeth. This doctor stands for him as the personification of wisdom concerning the care of the human body. He says to himself, "Well, my medical adviser smokes apparently all the time. He is an old man and has preserved his health beyond the average of men. I guess Ι smoking is not so bad after all." A boy is going to school. He has been seduced by some evil companion to smoke. He knows his parents do not wish him to smoke. He has a half formed belief that it is harmful to smoke, but over-persuasion has broken down his antipathy to cigars for once. His conscience is berating him for having allowed himself to smoke, when around the corner runs the automobile with the doctor who is the family adviser at his home. The doctor is smoking, the boy sees it. If his doctor, who is next to the family Bible in his estimation, can smoke, why not he? 695 And so one after another of our citizens witness this moving object lesson on every alley, every street. At all times of the day they witness this free advertiser of the use of cigars and are influenced for good or evil. Many people believe it bad for the health, weakening to the heart, and destructive to the nervous system to smoke cigars. Even the doctor who carries the halfsmoked cigar in his lips would doubtfully advise any one to begin the practice of smoking, and would quite certainly admonish boys not to use tobacco. But what is his influence? What is he actually doing for or against the cigar smoking? All of the bill boards in the city posted from end to end with attractive cigar ads. could not wield the influence that this one automobile moving picture must wield in this city. No doubt this doctor does a great deal of good, through the practice of his profession. Experience and learning have taught him many things of use to the people. A great deal of good no doubt he does. But, if the truth could be known as to this other influence he is wielding, by the exhibition of cigar smoking he is giving free to vast audiences every day-if the truth could be known, a horrifying revelation might appear that the half-smoked cigar carelessly held between his flabby lips is doing vastly more harm than in his professional function he is doing good. And yet, this one smoker is only a prominent example of what many other men are doing. If men who smoke would at least make this sacrifice, that they will hereafter do their smoking in private, more good would be done to check the prevalence of smoking than all the sermonettes and moral homilies that could possibly be devised. If we want to give the lie to those who say that smoking is an undesirable habit, we can devise no better way to do it, than to put upon the street a respectable, prominent and trusted citizen who shall go about smoking in the sight of the whole. populace. No words can undo the mischief such a man does. No the ories can rectify the damage that such an effective object lesson is doing. Unconscious, and unintentional, of course, but it accomplishes the work of spreading the use of the cigar more thoroughly than all the arts of the professional cigar advertiser. I Constipation Remedy. By J. B. FOLLER, Roanoke, Va. N THE September Columbus Medical Journal you ask for the experiences of those who have been relieved of "constipation." When I was a young man from eighteen to twenty-three years old I was standing in a drug store, and was all the time bothered with constipation. Presume I had taken during those six years a bushel of Compound Cathartic Pills. In fact had to take them every few days or feel mean and no passage from the bowels. I quit the business and went to clerk in a weigh scales office on the railroad and had to walk over a mile to my work. The constipation was somewhat relieved, but I presume the hard work of sitting all day in one position in a poorly ventilated office. hindered a complete correction of the trouble. I worked from 7 A. M. to 6 P. M., with only a few minutes for lunch. I worked this way for about five years and then got into a better position where I did not have to work such long hours and had more exercise. My constipation gradually eased up and I did not have to take pills only once or twice a year. I then got into a better position with more exercise of walking and for the last fifteen years I do not think I have taken five doses of pills, and in fact I could not tell you how long it has been since I have taken the last one; it has been so long that I have forgotten near when it was. For some time I have been eating nothing for breakfast but a bowl of oatmeal and milk and sugar, and find that a good regulator of the bowels, as I have a passage every morning.· With this short epitome of my latter life I think I may say that the best results I received in relieving my constipation were: Reasonable amount of labor, good ventilation and exercise every day, and lastly in the diet of oatmeal, milk and sugar. I use the Quaker Oats, as I like them better. A reasonable amount of work, for God never intended you to be intemperate in working any more than in anything else. Plenty of walking exercise. Oatmeal morning meal, and I may further add that I seldom eat meats. Follow this out for a year or so and I do not think you will want any other regime. I gained forty pounds above what I weighed when in the drug store. I may further add, "No vaccination in my family," as there is no merit in it and I will have none of it, and I have had what the doctors chose to have houses quarantined (even five around mine at one time) all around me as smallpox, and a number of times. we have gone about our business and paid no attention to it and only looked after our general health as usual, and we have never been bothered by the stuff. As Others See Us. By MRS. A. F. GREELY, 513 Fourth St. Minneapolis, Minn. I IT IS just as necessary, I think, for us to "look pleasant, please,' in public, on the street or elsewhere, as it is in the photographer's gallery. It does not help us. any to advertise our griefs or wear our troubles on our sleeves "for daws to peck at." Constant complaints never get pity, and the martyr's look gets no sympathy. It is best to look healthy and happy, though the head may ache or the heart may break. Men are quick to criticise a woman's face, not so much if it be handsome, or ugly, as the expression it wears. The sour, discontented face is sure to cause most men to say or think, "Well, I'm glad she's not my wife," or "I'd hate to live with that woman." Human eyes all about us are little cameras ever ready to take our pic |