to reach a woman's understanding, getting her to co-operate with me in the measure intended for her relief, I have had little difficulty in carrying such measures into effect. 1 therefore believe that it is in the education of women to a proper appreciation of physiologic laws and of the virtue and dignity of true wifehood and motherhood as controlled by these laws, that we will find the most powerful factors in the work of reform which we hope may result in her physical restoration and in the production of a healthier generation of human beings as her offspring. At the close of a lecture given by myself recently on the subject of personal hygiene, to a large class of young ladies in one of our fashionable schools, I had a striking illustration of this. One young lady among several grouped around me said most earnestly: "Doctor if you have been doing everything all wrong before the age of 20 is there any chance for you to be set right afterward?" I would close with a query addressed to the members of this Section of the American Medical Association: Do we as conservers of the health of women so influence the education of the young men and the young women of our day as to teach them how to live for healthy parentage.

Infantile Diarrhoea and its Treatment by Sterilized Water.

Watu advocates the treatment of infantile diarrhoea by a regimen of boiled water, cooled to a suitable temperature, and given in small quantities every hour or half hour, or as thirst demands, to the exclusion of food, for eight, twelve or even twenty-four hours. By diluting the irritating secretion, dislodging the debris of decomposed alimentary matter retained in the folds of the mucosa of the canal, increasing the pressure in the blood vessels and dissolving the toxins. attached to the formal elements, the ingested water carries away and eliminates the poison from the system, changes the morbid character of the stools and effects a reduction of the temperature and recovery, especially when administered in acute cases at their commencement and in children not very young.

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E

IN THE SCHOOL ROOM.

ACH year we make progress, or what we call pro

gress, in civilization, and one of the most practical evidences of this condition is a more practical super

vision of the school life of children.

Time was when we were all crowded into a room, and bunched into a class, from which we evoluted, more or less successfully into the men and women of to-day; but little attention being given to individual propinquities, failures of sight, lesions of hearing or mental acumen. If we kept place with the class we were marked 100, if we failed we were stupid, dull and unpromising, and yet strange to say some of the greatest successes in life come from this latter class.

No more can you accomplish a mile in one step than you can attain perfection in a day, and so now having advanced through the early stages of pedagogy, we are seeing, not further, but better medical inspection of children, as

well as of school rooms is doing much to bring about better result. Stupidity and lack of attention has frequently been found to be due to defective sight or hearing and this remedied, a better condition in school work ensues.

We have gone ahead so far, but there is yet work to be done we need to give more attention to sanitation, ventitilation and disinfection, especially the latter when school books are used in common. The color of the school walls are also matters worthy of attention as well as the arrangement of the seats, for young eyes are sensitive to surroundings, and the glare of dead white walls, varnished wood work and polished desks is severe for many eyes.

Watching details may seem to be small work, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

A UNIFICATION OF LAWS.

In the framing of the constitution of these United States the rights of the individual states were sacredly guardedso sacredly that real unification of laws was, and is a thing impossible and the result is a most chaotic condition with regard to many of our laws. What is law in our state is the reverse in the adjoining state and vice versa-so also in laws governing the practice of medicine, while I may be qualified to practice medicine in one state I am disqualfied in a neighboring common wealth, not that the peoples lives are any more fragile, or prescious, but because each state holds the right to arrange its own safeguards. Many states have medical laws, some good, some bad, some indifferent and some none at all.

Truly a chaos, and when will we get unity, and revision founded on common sense and justice with the rights of all conserved? It seems the only way and perhaps the best way is vesting this power to issue licenses to practice medicine in a non partisan National Board-call it be a board of health, or of medicine, or of anything-but this appears to be the only solution of this problem.

LACERATIONS OF THE UTERINE NECK.*

By Dr. Minnie C. T. Love, Denver, Colorado.

I shall not enter into any discussion of the method of repair, or the importance of the repairs of lacerations of the uterine neck. To the surgeon the restoration of a lacerated cervix is simple and usually effective, and unless the laceration be complete it cannot appeal to him as being a very serious accident of parturition. Certainly a large proportion of women who have borne children and are in ill-health trace their trouble directly back to the first child-birth, and examination reveals cervical lacerations of all degrees of severity, in an astonishingly large percentage of such cases. Even insignificant and incomplete tears may become a serious menace to the health of the woman unfortunate enough to sustain them.

On the other hand many lacerations may and do heal readily and involution goes on uninterruptedly, nature taking care of such tears in a remarkable manner.

As to the percentage of tears which heal without surgical interference we are in ignorance, and until in routine practice it becomes the rule to examine every parturient woman for lacerations two or three weeks after delivery, we shall remain in ignorance. Whether the tears be great or small, involving only the internal wall, or extending through the entire neck, we have no guarantee of their spontaneous repair, and unless immediate reparation is assured we know that nearly every one, sooner or later, will seek advice for a train of symptoms familiar to us all; namely, dyspepsia, nervousness, palpitation of the heart, back ache, dragging in the loins, pain in the iliac region in one or both sides-the side corresponding to the deepest laceration usually being the most painful; sterility or abortion, hysterical phenomena, menorrhagia, etc. While these symptoms are not peculiar to women who have larceration of the cervix, many of them are certainly very constant. To be sure any chronic inflammation from whatever cause, producing hyperplasia of the alveolar tissues and cystic degeneration to the same extent as these lacerations. would be productive of the same symptoms.

*Read before the Denver and Arapahoe Medical Society, May 11, 1897.

The causes of lacerations of the cervix have been divided into the predisposing and direct. Among the direct causes, instrumental delivery, manual version, deformity of the child's head, prolapsed arm, rigid os, cancer of the cervix, and placenta praevia, may be mentioned as the most frequent. According to Bach and Emmett, the chief predisposing causes are endocervietis and endometritis. Strong determined pains, persisting with no obstruction to the oncoming head except a rigid os, the result very often of old inflammatory action, are sure to result in rupture. By making special inquiry of women who have, or have had, a larceration of the cervix, it is interesting to find a very large proportion who give a history of leucorrhoea before marriage and up to the time of conception. I confess I am not yet converted to the belief that some degree of larceration is the rule, or that it is really physiological. It seems rather paradoxical that a normal woman passing through a physiological process should suffer a larceration of the muscular fibres and mucus membrane composing the organ of gestation, when that organ is simply performing the only function that it has in the economy of nature. We have all certainly seen a large number of women who have not the slightest tear, either internal or external, who have been delivered many times; and even women who have had uterine inflammations years before marriage bear children without injury to the uterine neck. Of course all young women giving a history of long continued leucorrhoea have not uterine inflammation, as the vaginal mucous membrane may be alone diseased. I believe that we should look upon all larcerations as pathological and therefore a possible foundation for future trouble.

My object in writing this unpretentious paper, is simply to draw out discussion on two or three points:

First-Does chronic endocervicitis predispose to larceration of the cervix?

Second-If so are we not justified, in view of the serious results so frequently following these lacerations, in advising both local and systemic treatment, even in young women?

Third-Is it either wise efficacious to institute or con