patiently waiting their turn to see this great man. In order to keep my promise with N., that I would see him through, I purchased a ticket for a dollar, and thereby was able to be with him. all the time, not to mention the joy of the great doctor's attentions. Finally our turn came and we were ushered into the presence of the doctor.

"He looked like a Spanish bull-fighter for all the world. N. was first. He was told to sit in a chair directly facing the doctor. The doctor looked intently at him for about five seconds. Then he made N. put out his tongue; then the doctor said, 'un grande solitario' (a large tape-worm).

"Before doing this he put his finger-tip on the patient's chin, and I at first thought that this was a clap-trap performance. Later on, however, when he examined me, I satisfied myself that this was done merely to depress the head and to indicate to the patient that he should protrude his tongue. He had a large and gaudily-colored chart hanging upon the wall of the room in which we were examined. He pointed out, both in my case and in N.'s also, the kind of parasites that we contained. Furthermore, I know that he afterward did this many times at the plantation; and he professed ability to do this infallibly, offering large rewards for proofs of any failures to make good. best of my knowledge and belief, he never made an error.

To the

"His diagnosis of me merely developed 'muchas chiquetas' (many little ones). The doctor spoke no English, but the interpreter told us to come early the next morning, before we had eaten any break fast. Next morning bright and early, we were on hand and were received very courteously. We were given a fine room with a balcony overlooking the plaza. Shortly after being shown to our room the treatment began. Each of us was given about two ounces of a brownish liquid, the taste of which I cannot now recall. In half an hour this was repeated, and in half an hour after that, it was again repeated. Then, in another half hour, the doctor himself came in, and while I received the fourth dose of the brownish mixture, N. was treated to six drops of some fluid which the doctor put on a lump of sugar from a small vial which he returned to his vest pocket. Again we were

left alone for half an hour, and then we were each given about a goblet of castor-oil, with a glass of beer to wash it down. I cannot say that I experienced any queer feelings, but N. said he felt as if the skin on his head was being drawn very tightly, and he seemed to fear it would split.

We were now free to roam around somewhat and we were shown to the gallery overlooking the court yard, or patio. On this gallery were stacks of granite-ware chamber-pots, literally hundreds of them. N. and I were, for some reason, honored by the fine, large room above mentioned, for our accouchments. Not so for the ordinary Mexican patient. One side of the court was for men and the other for women, and the doctor bunched his hits by putting from fifteen to twenty patients in a room.

"A land-office business was being done in pots - and such excitement and chattering! Every time a worm was expelled (and I should judge that this event averaged one every minute or two), all hands would rush to view it and congratulate the lucky man, woman, or child that had been delivered of it.

Then N. started, and The oil soon spent it

"By and by the castor-oil began to work upon us, and we hurried to our room. I was first relieved, and I got my money's worth. There were numerous small worms in the stool, just such as he had shown me on the chart. sure enough, it was a grand specimen. self, and, there being no more vis a tergo, N. began hauling it out of himself, hand over hand. He finally tired of this, and I offered to stand on the worm while he ran, half-bent, across the room. At last the end came, neck and head, and with its advent two assistants immediately appeared, who began to wash the worm through several basins of water, finally placing it in a basin of milk. The doctor now came in and invited us into a very large room to witness the death of the worm. In the room were, I presume, two hundred people, some seated and some standing, but all around the walls, leaving the central floor-space open.

"An assistant placed a large piece of oil-cloth on the floor and proceeded to curl the worm in a large spiral, starting at the center, and as this attendant coiled it, another measured it. The length

was announced as eighty-seven feet, and the space covered on the oil-cloth was about three feet in diameter.

"The doctor now advanced to the center of the room and made a neat little speech, which we did not understand; and he then sprinkled a few drops of something out of a bottle that he carried on the worm. The worm, from being a thing without life, apparently, now showed signs of great activity, twisting and turning and squirming, until it had tied itself into a ball somewhat larger than one's fist. This ended the performance as far as we were concerned; so we left, very hungry and glad enough to go to breakfast.

"Our reports at the plantation resulted in a visit by the doctor the following Sunday, and out of 150 persons, he diagnosed worms in 78, all of which he got. I remember distinctly that there was one case that was at first reported to have been a false alarm — a wrong diagnosis. But investigation proved that Dr. Yglesias

knew his business.

"I feel perfectly safe in saying that he did not overlook any persons that had worms in their bowels; and I think that he always expelled those that he located.

"I tried to learn from him how he made his diagnosis in these cases, as I wanted to jolly my father with the information. He would not tell me anything more than that he learned somehow, rather late in life, that he had this power. He would not attempt to explain it."

3

Now that you have recovered your breath, I shall merely remind you that Dr. S. Weir Mitchell has recounted an analogous phenomenon as regards the ability of certain specially sensitized persons, so to speak, to recognize the presence of cats in their vicinity by other means altogether than our ordinary senses; and, for my own part, I think that I am entitled to your great consideration, inasmuch as I have failed to perpetrate upon you a Greek name, forged by myself by main strength from the dictionaries, and presumably applicable to this occult diagnosis of helminthiasis.*

*It would appear, from his name ailourophobia, that Dr. Mitchell is unaware of the cat problem that involves ancient Greek literature. There seems good reason to believe that ailouros refers to the European variety of pole-cat rather

What exact confirmation of symptoms of intestinal parasitism is obtainable?

Dr. A. Jacobi used to say, in his lectures upon pediatrics in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, that the diagnosis of a worm was a worm. This dictum should, I think, now read: The diagnosis of an intestinal parasite is its ovum, which can always be found.

Yes, my brother doctors, I'm sorry to say that I have heard that wail of yours before! But it is quite untrue. Busy practitioners can use the microscope; or, if they cannot, it is a mortal, a deadly sin that they are busy. Let me suggest that these same busy practitioners have an idea that it is infra dignitate for them to examine feces. If this is at all widely true, those guilty of this self-deception deserve something a good deal worse than enforced idleness, which is bad enough punishment for most worthy men.

Professor Osler upholds this contention strongly; and I cannot do better than to commend to you his charming essay, "On the Educational Value of the Medical Society," rather than to bludgeon you for your short-comings here as I am but too prone to do.

To enumerate a few of the parasites that merely reasonable care of your patients may at any time show you, I may mention, first of all, the hook-worm-Stiles' Uncinaria Americana, or, later still, Necator Americanus.

I venture to except this parasite from the list in which the microscope is necessary for a positive diagnosis, although it is quite true that such a microscopical diagnosis is at once both the easiest and the most satisfactory. But the hook-worm's vermifuge (thymol) is harmless; and any suspected person may be fasted usually, too, with incidental benefit, and in the fluid stool from a saline purge, following the thymol in adequate doses,

than to the ordinary domesticated cat; nor are there any other Greek words, except late ones, that refer unmistakably to this animal. Its Latin name, feles (or felis), is itself a late word; and the whole question of the cats appearance into Europe is a hazy one.

It seems that none of the basic jokes of Aristophanes deal with cat-courtships; and I consider it inconceivable that he should have avoided this subject, if cats had been as much at home-and in evidence-in Athens as they are now in New York, for instance.

will often be found hook-worms galore. As nearly blind as I am, and as I shall doubtless always remain, I should not hesitate to agree to prove uncinariasis by this method to any doubting St. Thomas of a medico, and that in his own neighborhood hereabouts.*

Please condone my strong insistence upon the importance of this parasite's extermination to every interest of the present and of the future of the South. Infection with it is so like a tragedy to many, if not to all, Anglo-Saxons, that I should hazard much to make this plain to every Southerner and to all of his friends.

The round-worm may not be diagnosticated, I believe, with certainty, except by demonstrating its always abundant and its quite unmistakable ova in the stool. In the Philippines, there was often developed in wheat flour a body that was smaller than this ovum; but it resembled it very much otherwise. may occur in our sub-tropics in America.

Possibly it

The pin-worm (seat-worms, etc.), Oxyuris vermicularis, and the whip-worm, Trichinocephalus dispar, seem to me to be less and less common in this section. But, as it seems virtually impossible for Americans to escape infection with the latter in certain of our colonies (e. g., Guam, and, probably to a smaller extent, in the lower half of the Philippines), this condition may change.

It will be because of these colonies of ours that we shall come to breed amongst ourselves many of their inhabitants' parasites; and of these, the most to be dreaded are the trematodoes or flukes. They are not strictly intestinal; for their injuries to their hosts are usually in the vital organs, but infection is almost always by ingestion, and their ova may often be seen in the stools.

It should, I think, be pointed out here that the pork tapeworm, Tania solium, has great capacity for harm, mostly in the way of the aberrance of its cysticerci. Thus, I have known the succession of a valuable California estate to hinge upon the question of the sanity of a testator, and to be settled unfavorably to his legatees, directly upon the point that he had once harbored this parasite. Hence, it was decided, his sanity had been destroyed by its progeny having attacked his brain.

*See Arkansas State Medical Journal, June, 1906, sub verba.