years this method for diagnosis was working its way into its present state of usefulness. Obstetrical Auscultation was discovered by Mayer of Lusanne, but he did not fully appreciate the importance of his discovery. In 1821 Kergaradec explained the results obtained by obstetrical auscultation, and the advantages gained by its use in the diagnosis of pregnancy. His ideas met with opposition but were soon spread throughout Germany, France and England. In 1839 De Paul applied auscultation to the diagnosis of presentation ond position. Abdominal methods of palpation and auscultation have been combined within the last decade to further usefulness. Merrman, 1892, observes the progress of labor by palpation and auscultation, omitting vaginal examinations so far as possible. Leopold and Goldberg recommend and practice palpation and auscultation for the same purpose, confining vaginal examinations to cases of dystocia and when necessary to confirm a diagnosis made by abdominal methods. The writer has also found them useful in determining the progress of labor, and in making a correct diagnosis of the position of the head prior to doing the medium forceps oper. ation. Puerperal Sepsis, from age to age has claimed its thousands without a barrier being raised to oppose its ravages until 1843, when our own Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out the infectious nature of puerperal fever. In 1847 Semmelweis barricaded its wholesale invasion of the mater nity wards of Vienna with s basin of chlorine water for his students hands. Holmes was severely criticized, while Semmelweis was ridiculed in spite of the fact that the mortality was reduced in his wards from 11.4 per cent to 1.25 per cent. in the first year of his disinfecting and washing of hands. Prior to the last half of the present century the vaginal examination was relied on chiefly for diagnosis, the fingers and hands were used, but sad to say, the obstetrical hand of the past was a dirty hand, and the ear was dull or it would have heard the uterine souffle and the beating heart of the foetus long before the Nineteenth century. T E. H. ROOT, M. D. MEDICAL CO-EDUCATION. HE first session of the Cornell University Medical ing of the Loomis Laboratory, formerly occupied by the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. These are temporary quarters secured for use during the construction of new buildings. Women are to be admitted as students under the condition that they take the first two years at Ithaca, the home of the college. This is the first of medical coeducation and the result will be watched with interest. The fact is of deep moment to women, the progress of women in medicine being clearly marked by this step, which, but a few years since would have been considered, if not impossible, at least among the improbabilities. Women in the profession are no longer a probability but a fact. They have demonstrated their fitness, their ability, and their determination to remain. IMPROVEMENTS IN THIS JOURNAL. E desire to call the attention of our readers to a few changes in the makeup of the JOURNAL, changes we think improvements. We hope to make each issue more interesting than the former one, and toward that end have secured the co-operation and assistance of many of the most prominent women in the profession. We are confident you will soon feel you cannot afford to miss one issue of the JOURNAL. To induce you to give it a trial, we have made a special offer, terms of which you will find on fifteenth page in the last advertising form. This is your journal, that is, it represents you as a woman physician. You should at least become acquainted with your representative. We have made it possible for you to do at a small expenditure. Do not fail to read this proposition and having read it, act. PERSONAL ITEMS OF INTEREST TO WOMEN. Dr. Violet Henriette Palmer, of Chicago, will be the interne for the coming year at the eastern Illinois hospital at Kankakee. Dr. Violet Palmer is the daughter of a physician, Dr. A. E. Palmer, of 721 Lincoln avenue, and though very young graduated recently with high honors in medicine and surgery from the Northwestern University. Dr. Palmer intends making a specialty of nervous diseases, and looks upon her appointment to the hospital as a piece of particular good fortune. In addition to her unusual mental qualifications Dr. Palmer possesses a very charming personality. Dr. Florence W. Hays, of Terre Haute, Ind., was married recently to Professor L. Ditto, of De Pauw. Duchess Sophia, the daughter of Duke Charles Theodore, of Bavaria, the princely oculist, has decided to follow her father's footsteps and study the diseases of the eye. twenty-three years old. She is Illness of Liliuokalani.—It is reported that ex-Queen Liliuokalani, of the Sandwich Islands, who recently returned to Honolulu, is suffering from a malignant growth in the neck. We regret to report the death of Dr. E. Gertrude Crum, of Birmingham, N. Y., August 5th, 1898. Dr. Crum was young, being but thirty-two years of age. The Soldiers Aid Society, of Colorado, has decided to send Dr. Rose Kidd Beere, to the Philippines as a soldier's nurse. Dr. Beere was formerly superintendent of the Colorado State Home for Dependent Children. Dr. Beere is a graduate of the Northwestern University Woman's Medical School class '92. Prior to taking charge of the State Home for Dependent Children, Dr. Beere practiced successfully at Durango, Colo. Dr. Beere goes as a special Red Cross nurse for Colorado soldiers. Plucky Englishwoman.-Dr. Lillian Hamilton, an Englishwoman, spent some years in Cabool as the medical adviser of Abdurrahman, a famous despot, who was in the habit of cutting off the heads of his subjects whenever he wanted to cut an argument short. Abdurrahman used to spend many hours in conversation with Dr. Hamilton, discussing various themes, not always relating to his health, although few questions interested him more. The women of the harem came to her and sometimes she and her assistant had as many as 700 patients a day, and a policeman to keep them in order. Dr. Josephine Peavey, of Denver, is visiting the medical institution of Chicago. Dr. Marie J. Mergler, gives weekly clinics in operative gynecology at the Woman's Hospital and at the Post Graduate Hospital of Chicago. Dr. Lydia Labaume, formerly of Aurora, Ill., has accepted the appointment of physician to the "State Home" of Illinois, a reform school for girls. Dr. Labaume is exceptionally well adapted for this position and the institution is to be congratulated on obtaining her services. Caroline Croft, formerly Caroline Abigail Brewer, of Boston, has left $100,000 to two prominent physicians of that city for investigations to find some way of curing cancer, consumption, and other diseases now regarded as incurable. Dr. Allie M. Day, class of '97 Central College of Physicians and Surgeons, has been elected Physician at the County Asylum, Crown Point, Ind. GYNECOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT. LILLIAN G. TOWSLEE, M. D., EDITOR Assistant Lecturer in Diseares of Women, Clev-lan 1 College of Physicians and Surgeons, Cleveland, O io.. T wish to call the attention of the readers of THE WOMAN'S MEDICAL JOURNAL to the following article by Dr. Hunter Robb, read before the Cleveland Medical Society. Dr. Robb was formerly Dr. Howard Kelly's assistant at Johns Hopkins. About three years ago he received the appointment of Gynecologists at the Western Reserve Medical College at Cleveland, which chair he still occupies. As the paper is practical and instructive I desire it to appear in my department. THE TREATMENT OF RETRODISPLACEMENTS OF THE UTERUS. Professor of Gynecology, Western Reserve University; Gynecologist to I feel as if an apology, or at least an explanation, were due you for bringing up once more a subject which has been dealt with so often and so fully and upon which I can say but little that will be original. But the fact that the problems connected with malpositions of the uterus have been so much discussed, and the very fact that so wide divergences of opinion exist as to the proper treatment in individual cases, leads me to hope that a few plain statements may not be out of place. I am sorry to say that among many members of our profession the idea is prevalent that the real question involved is whether the treatment of such cases shall be put into the hands of the specialists or whether the patient shall remain under the care of the family physician. It seems to me that too much zeal in those who occupy themselves mainly with operative gynecology has done much to foster this opinion. In past years I fear that some of us have not been Read before the Cleveland Medical Society, December 18, 1897 |