, 1910 , Vol. V., antine and disinfection to avoid expense and assist trade. But we must not allow traders to have everything their way, as they are known by past experience to be utterly oblivious of the deaths they cause, provided money pours in. It would seem wisest to consider fomites guilty until we prove they are not, though as before stated the burden of proof is really on the other side. The culprit has been found guilty and that will be his legal status until new evidence is produced, and that means a long time. Nevertheless the whole trend of recent evidence seems to be in the direction of proving that all diseases are transmitted more or less directly from an infected living being, man or beast, and not indirectly after a long interval. Living infected carriers are the ones to be quarantined and disinfected, not their money, or old clothes or foods. There will be an irresistible outcry against sanitarians, if it is found out that they have needlessly ruined the harmless. property of citizens. Besides all this, the old methods are too often ridiculously inefficient even if fomites existed. Most of them merely create bad smells which compel us to let in the light and air to kill the germs. The dangers of modern football are so well known and have been denounced so often it is rather surprising all college authorities do not insist upon modification of the rules. The dreadful record of injuries a few years ago did seem to have some effect in the way of making it less dangerous, but the death of Cadet Byrne of West Point shows that the reactionaries have been quietly at work again, and it is now necessary to keep up the campaign more vigorously even if the game has to be completely eliminated from the curriculum. The ab surd cry that reformers are molly-coddles does not have the slightest effect beyond showing the desperate character of the efforts to retain these brutal exhibitions of modern gladiators. Most amazing of all is the manner in which football fanatics ignore the real medical objection-the game gives athletic training to the only students who do not need it, and relegates to the bleachers the only men who are desperately in need of games which will develop their feeble physiques. The weaklings must be content with dry calisthenics from which the virtue of sport has been eliminated. Youthful development is based on the stimulus of rivalry of skin and there can be no rivalry where mere beef is the only qualification or at least the basic one. Exhibition games are necessary because rivalry is sterile if its successes are not publicly witnessed, and the ideal sports are those in which the frail men will have as much chance to show skill as the giants. The excessive mortality of overweights has been published by life insurance statisticians and the phenomenon must be considered in football discussions. It is now a proved fact that the men who are barred from the game are the ones who live the longest, and though mere length of life is no criterion of its usefulness, yet it is a fair assumption that the longest-lived are the most vigorous and therefore the best brain workers. The colleges are then spending the most money on the students who will give the least returns. Every now and then some ingenious fellow publishes statistics showing that students able to take part in sports outlive those too defective to take any part at all, as though that needed numerical proof. The new statistics show that the healthy underweights excluded from football are fitter for survival in America than the overweights of the teams. Not infrequently also these frail men are possessed of wonderful brains, and we find the astonishing situation of college sports giving precedence to mere muscular development. This perversion has gone far enough. If the college faculties are so powerless that they cannot reform the rules so as to make it safe for the frailer men to take part, let the wretched business be ended once and for all. Pandering to a public taste for exhibitions of dangerous muscular contests is on a par with the bull fights of Mexico-worse probably. The detested prize fights are less dangerous, so let us have them-or even gladiators paid to kill each other as in the days of Romeand reserve college contests for exhibitions of skill which require trained brains even if the body be weak. Athletic sports for health was the keynote of the discussion at the 1909 meeting of the British Medical Association. It was acknowledged that accidents will happen to boys from the moment they begin to toddle and that we must expect minor injuries even in effeminate games, but it was brought out that some serious injuries and deaths have resulted from such foolish mistakes as great exertion immediately after a full meal. It was also shown that boys of nine-or nineteen-must not be permitted to make the efforts of maturity, particularly prolonged exertion. Boyhood seems to be the time for short periods of activity followed by more or less rest, and boys will be boys if we only let them. Yet their games must be regulated, for even a colt will run itself to death if the stimulus is sufficient, and it has been suggested that each school should have its "games-master"-a man of the social stand , 1910 , Vol. V., ing of the boys he develops. The most satisfactory outcome of the discussion was the revelation that the medical profession is at last taking an active interest and is solidly on the side of athletic sports combined with regulated exercises for the defective, with the sole end of making the boys into better men than they would otherwise be if they were guided by their own instincts. It enhances scholarship and is therefore a vital matter for the faculties themselves. AMERICAN MEDICINE has always taken this stand, and it is extremely gratifying to find our British cousins getting into line. Sterilization of criminals was discussed at the Prison Congress in Seattle in August, 1909, and there was a general agreement as to the wisdom and necessity of preventing the reproduction of these social parasites in this way. All the same it is rather surprising as it is well known that criminals do not raise many offspring. The prison population is mostly recruited from respectable families-even the sons of clergymen sometimes go wrong. There are a few instances of degenerate families, but no one would have dreamed of sterilizing the ancestor who produced the first generation of the bad line. The proper thing to do, is to find out exactly who were the parents and grandparents of the present day criminals and what happened to prevent normal heredity. Then it might be found that there are non-criminal parents who should. have been sterilized as unfit for procreation. In addition to all this, when criminals are given a normal environment and their offspring, if they have any, are properly reared, return to the normal is the rule, as in every other species of living thing. The English criminals exiled to Virginia and Australia have produced a fine race, through this law. In every way we look at it, sterilization seems illogical and it is amazing that it is experiencing such a vogue, The tyranny of authority comes up for condemnation every little while, although no one ever explains why it is a normal consequence of organization. Grouping occurs simply because the units are like-minded and must have a strong class feeling to keep the group in existence, whether it be clan, tribe, nation or scientific society. Outsiders must be attacked or they would destroy the group. Clannishness has therefore always been the basis of survival and he who is not clannish is a traitor to be cast out. This feeling pervades all groupings and fully explains the bitter persecutions of the innovator whose work will change the character of the group. One would suppose that university men would. rise above such actions yet the history of science shows that, being human, they act like all other men in organizations. That is why they have always been bitter in their opposition to outsiders like Darwin, and continue in opposition until Darwinians creep into the organism. The theories of a "professor" are given respectful attention no matter how absurd they may be. The last exhibition of clannishness to disgrace science is the attack upon the astronomer Lowell, who has done so much splendid work. The columns of "Science" recently gave space to a typical sneering article by one Professor Blackwelder, of ominous name, and as this periodical is the organ of the Association for the Advancement of Science, many of whose members are "outsiders," it is liable to hamper their work if it makes many such unhappy slips. Opposition to Lowell's views is perfectly proper but the tone of the above article was undignified, childish and jealous to the verge of vituperation. The whole controversy was and is regrettable. The tyranny of the metric advocates is another instance of persecution by entrenched authority. It has been pointed out a thousand times that the popular measures were evolved for practical use by the common people themselves, who must have units easily divisible by two or three. Scientists evolved another system far more convenient to them and then have tried to force it on people who cannot use it. Few uneducated peasants are able to divide a measure into ten parts and where the metric system has been imposed on them, they have immediately devised half, quarter and eight units like our commercial divisions of the dollar and dime. In certain parts of Europe, the peasants still use their ages old measures where the metric system is the only legal one. They cannot do otherwise and the attempt to force them to the impossible shows gross ignorance of psychology on the part of the metric advocates. Thousands of years hence our western roads will still be a mile apart even if the sign posts mark the distances in decimals of a kilometer. It would be just as sensible for the common people to rise in their wrath and pass laws making it illegal to use in laboratory work any other than their practical their practical measures-indeed more sensible for the scientist can do it though. inconveniently, whereas the peasant cannot use metric measures at all. These are the reasons why physicians in contact with the less intelligent are compelled to use the measures most easily comprehended even if the prescription is written in decimals. We doubt, therefore, whether the metric system will ever come into general use in medical practice or any other matter connected with the lowly. French metric tyranny is now beginning to be actually harmful. The laws have been made so strict that manufacturers are forbidden to use foreign measures or the old native ones. In Lyons several men have been fined for making goods on nonmetric measures, though intended for export to countries where the metric goods will not sell. Tyranny of science could not be carried further, unless all manufacturers are jailed for trying to increase French prosperity. We may, therefore, expect to see a marked reaction as soon as the injury is fully realized, and the metric advocates may prepare for the coming storm. It might as well be acknowledged at once. that though the metric system is indispensable for laboratory work or international science, if such an expression is allowable, it is beyond the capacity of the common herd who have evolved more convenient ways of measuring and will not use the scientific because unable. A century of effort has failed to make people do the impossible and there is no hope of future success. The medical profession The medical profession must realize that in their scientific work they must use the metric system, but in their contact with the sick they must use measures understood, and never use a fraction more complex than a half. We regret the persistent attempts to force congress to do what has failed in Europe. The Early case seems to have again taken on the aspects of a tragedy. The special committee appointed by the Society of Medical Jurisprudence to examine this unfortunate man and free him once and for all from the suspicion of leprosy, reported instead that they had found positive symptoms of the disease and were able to demonstrate lepra bacilli in some of his skin lesions. Dr. Duncan H. Buckley, who has championed Early throughout, denying most strenuously that the man had leprosy, refused to accept the committee's report and by consent of the meeting had final acceptance of their findings postponed for a month. This was just and proper, for as long as a single doubt exists as to this poor man's actual condition every opportunity should be given to him and his friends to disprove the diagnosis of leprosy. It begins to look, however, as though our good friend, Dr. Buckley, has been mistaken. He need make no apologies, for "to err is human." Dr. Buckley's reputation as one of the country's leading dermatologists is too secure, and too great credit is due him for his broad humanity in this most interesting though unfortunate affair, to allow a single unkind thought to be entertained against his position in the controversy. Something ought to be said, though, concerning the Washington authorities, notably Dr. Woodward, the Health Officer of the District. This capable physician, one of the leading sanitarians of the country, has been attacked most viciously for his supposed heartlessness in placing Early under strict quarantine. He is too big a man to gloat over apparent vindication of his course, for he simply did his duty as he saw it. At the same time there is some apology due to him and the other Washington physicians who would have been subject to something worse than criticism if they had done any different than they did. , 1910 , Vol. V., The leprosy problem seems to be farther than ever from solution. Granting as every humane person must that nothing gleaned from recent study and investigation of this disease justifies the abject fears that once led to the most heartless treatment of patients thus afflicted, we must be as ready to admit that our lack of knowledge of the manner of infection most assuredly does not warrant allowing lepers to mix at will with those uninfected. In other words, the modus operandi of a leprous infection is unknown; such being the case, relaxation of a single essential precaution would not only be imprudent-it would be criminal. Until the manner of infection is definitely known, society must maintain a defense that is effective in every direction, even though unnecessary in all but one. Mankind cannot afford to make any concessions to uncertainty. Therefore, when our health authorities seem unduly strict in establishing quarantine against leprosy or any other contagious disease, for that matter-it should occasion satisfaction rather than suspicion. Common sense dictates that the margin of safety should be too wide rather than too narrow in the practical operation of preventive medicine. The new Health Commissioner of New York City, Dr. Ernest J. Lederle, is one of Mayor Gaynor's appointments that will give uniform satisfaction. It is true that we hoped the mayor would continue Dr. Darlington in office, for he has done a splendid work for New York City, and the Health Commissionership should be one position removed from the flesh pots of politics. Clean, efficient service such as Dr. Darlington has given should mean a continuance in office, in the interests of the public rather than as a reward of merit. But since our worthy executive saw fit to make a change, we are glad indeed that he chose a man so well qualified in every respect as Dr. Lederle. This gentleman once before directed the health matters of New York City and made a conspicuous success. As a scientist he stands high and his executive ability has been amply shown in many fields of activity. His former experience will be helpful and it may be confidently expected that the good work of his own and his predecessor's administration. will not only be continued but amplified in every possible way. The residents of New York are fortunate, since a change in the Health Commissionership has been made, that the office has passed into such capable hands. Although the average citizen does not know it, and passes to and fro among his daily activities totally oblivious of the vigilance that the Health Department is constantly exerting in his behalf, the Health Commissioner is one of the most important officers of the city government. Everything depends on his knowledge, administrative ability and common sense. Dr. Lederle will not be found lacking in any of these qualifications and though not a medical graduate he will have the enthusiastic support and cooperation of every New York physician. A prize for a "cure" for tuberculosis has been provided for by an alumnus of Yale, according to an announcement from that institution. While the humane spirit that led to the donation of $100,000 for this purpose must be commended, the careful student of the tuberculosis problem can hardly fail to regret the false or mistaken impressions liable to result from the language and general terms of the prize of |