OFFICE BUILDING TO REPLACE DR. OSLER'S HOUSE.-Dr. William Osler has sold his residence for $55,000. It is a twostory and attic house of colonial design and occupies a lot 59 x 100 feet in the very heart of the city. It was purchased by him about fifteen years ago for $40,000. Possession will be given next May, when Dr. Osler will leave for England. The purchaser will build an apartment house on the property, and the first and second floors will be arranged for physicians' and dentists' offices.

ALMA SANITARIUM, ALMA, MICH.-Dr. Raymond C. Turck has been appointed Medical Superintendent and Manager of the Alma Springs Sanitarium, one of the most delightful institutions of its character in America. He will be assisted in his work by Dr. Harry John Thompson, who for the past two years has been medical superintendent of the Hudson Sanitarium at Hudson, Wisconsin. Dr. Turck has had a splendid training for the work he has been appointed to administer, and the Alma Sanitarium will be sure to be found in the very front rank under his management.

TRIBUTE TO DR. WELCH.-A medical society was recently formed in Philadelphia in honor of Dr. William M. Welch. The first meeting was held at Dr. Welch's residence on December 19th, and twenty-five names were enrolled. The society is composed of ex-resident physicians and some of the present resident physicians of the Municipal Hospital. Dr. Welch was for many years physician in charge of this institution, being appointed in 1870 and serving continuously until 1903. At the meeting Dr. Welch was presented with a loving cup. An informal banquet

followed.

THE PNEUMONIA COMMISSION.-The commission organized under the authority of the Department of Health of New York City to investigate pneumonia has secured the co-operation of hospitals in Baltimore, Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, San Francisco, Buffalo, Helena, Minneapolis, Denver, and twenty other cities equally scattered, and in Montreal, Canada. These hospitals will carry on the field work and will report on specially prepared blanks. The laboratory work will be carried on in Boston, Philadelphia, Saranac Lake, and at three laboratories in New York City. Twenty thousand cases will be studied in the six months which began November 1st. The central laboratory will be at the headquarters of the Department of

Health of New York City. The commission will study the occurrence and virulence of the pneumococcus and the organisms related to or resembling this in the human mouth in health and disease; the evidence of variation in virulence of the pneumococcus; the occurrence of the pneumococcus in children's hospitals, homes, and asylums, with a study of the bacteria of mouths before and after an outbreak of pneumonia; the vitality of the pneumococcus under various conditions; the study of mouth disinfection and the study of the air in public places, especially in reference to its dust content. The first six months of this year showed a death rate of 19.6 per cent. of the total number of deaths due to pneumonia. The same period in 1903 showed a death rate of 16.5 per cent. due to this cause. The commission will probably make an examination of subway workers and surface car men with the object of ascertaining the effects of these employments on the health of these men.

THE testimonial to Dr. Osler, which was inaugurated some time ago, has grown in importance. About $10,000 has already been raised, and it is hoped that the fund will reach $100,000, or more. It is planned that the testimonial shall take the form of a building, to be erected in Baltimore, to become the receptacle of the library of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, and to be the home of the various medical bodies affiliated with the faculty, with, perhaps, one or more national medical bodies, if they can be secured.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

THE Nobel prize for medicine, it is reported, will this year be awarded to Dr. Robert Koch. He has been presented with a portrait bust and a festschrift on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.

THE oldest medical works in existence are those of the Chinese, and date back to nearly 3,000 years B.C. Then, as now, they divided their subjects under the captions of healing, cooling, refreshing, and temperate. They have everything divided into classes, and their prescriptions are classified under seven headings, as follows: (1) The great prescription; (2) the little prescription; (3) the slow prescription; (4) the quick prescrip

tion; (5) the odd prescription; (6) the even prescription; (7) the double prescription. These are applied under four special circumstances and conditions, which in their turn are classified. Fire is an agent in which they have great faith, as also they have in mineral waters.

MANY MEDICAL JOURNALS IN GERMANY.-The number of medical journals in Germany is extraordinarily large, and still on the increase. At the end of 1903 there were 230, and ten more were added in the nine months following.

PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAPP SINCLAIR, of the Victoria University, of Manchester, England, has received the decoration of knighthood. Sir William was present at the Vancouver meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, and was chairman of the section of obstetrics and gynecology when the British Medical Association met in Montreal in 1897.

THE VALUE OF MEDICAL TRAINING.-Sir Conan Doyle, who graduated in medicine and practised for a time before devoting his talents exclusively to the writing of stories, states that there was a time when a young man who was going to do anything in the world was passed mechanically through the bar. He says: "I believe the time will come when the similar young man will be passed through medicine, because I know no other means by which he could get to the fundamental and absolute facts of life. The mere fact that in his training a man has to undergo so searching an ordeal in the most critical years of his life, and pays such enormous attention to detail, is in itself evidence that he receives a splendid training. I have always said that for a man who has mastered Gray's Anatomy' life has no future terrors. If our young army officers had five years' study in the same sense that the young medical man has five years' study, we should become the terror of Europe."

EFFECTS OF COMPULSORY VACCINATION IN MADRAS, 1874 TO 1904. According to Public Health and Marine Hospital Service Reports, some interesting data are furnished by a report of the returns of deaths from smallpox in Madras for the last thirty years. In 1874 the deaths numbered 819. During the succeeding ten years the numbers varied from 196 to as many as 4,064. The latter number of deaths from the disease occurred in 1884, and apparently resulted in Government making vaccination compulsory in the city. The compulsory order went into effect

on June 1st, 1884. From that time the diminution in the number of deaths from smallpox has been extraordinary. In 1886 only one death occurred; in 1895 but three deaths were recorded; in 1903 seven. In only three years has the number exceeded one hundred, i.e., 1897, 1898, and 1901. For the rest the yearly deaths have been enumerated in tens, where before 1884 they were counted in hundreds and even thousands. This seems to me favorable testimony as to the efficiency of compulsory vaccination in populated areas.

Correspondence.

MY MEDICAL CREED.

To the Editor of DOMINION MEDICAL MONTHLY :

I. I believe the sons of physicians make the best physicians, and the sons of clergymen the best lawyers, authors, and poets. 2. I believe the schoolmaster, provided he has reached the age of sound judgment and is recognized as a suitable judge, should be able to notice in the pupil such virtues as are essential for the medical profession.

3. I believe that an early age should be selected, provided the pupil evince an adaptability or genius for our art. He should possess marked discernment, a sound judgment, a character of mildness, boldness, and full of sympathy; he should be studious, patient, inventive, and resourceful.

4. I believe the student should have thorough training in the Latin, Greek, and English classics, in fact, should not be allowed to matriculate in medicine except he possess the B.A. or BSc. degree, or proceed in his medical course unless he combine an arts or science course with medicine, and obtain either of the degrees when he graduates as M.D.

5. I believe that each province or state should have its university, and it alone be allowed to grant degrees, although one or two well-endowed colleges should be permitted to be federated and to teach similar courses, if the state or provincial university be not centrally located and in a city not affording hospital advantages of the highest order.

6. I believe that if four hundred of the universities in the U. S. would cease to exist, the remaining number, eighty-four,

would be more honored, and higher education and university degrees more prized. (Think of the U. S. having three hundred more universities than the rest of the world! Vide: The Peerless Atlas of the World.)

7. I believe our medical colleges should not admit the sons of saloon keepers, whiskey sellers, fakirs, licentious or immoral persons, however rich; and that the sons of esteemed and regularly graduated practitioners should be allowed free tuition and every encouragement.

8. I believe every graduate, at graduation, should be made to sign papers, agreeing under penalties not to practise quackery, and to conform his practice to the principles of medical ethics.

9. I believe that those who have acquired great wealth in the disposal of sour beer, pork, lard, or oil, or by lucky ventures in stocks or mines, and wishing to "honor" their name in educational interests, would endow a hall or college in connection with the state university, they would not less honor their names, and it would advance the interests of education much better than to establish a "John Q. Smiths University."

10. I believe it advisable, that a thorough set of addresses relating to medical ethics, medical fees, collection agencies, stock speculations, protective associations, the obligations and duties of court witnesses, medical journalism, quackery, etc., should be given during the last year at college to medical students.

II. I do not believe it advisable, but rather condemnable, except in a very few instances, that we advise any young man to study medicine.

12. I do believe that medical men have more power for good, and really do more good, than the resident clergymen. I believe, also, that if "these leaders of faithful souls and guides of those who travel to the skies" (i.e., the preachers), were better educated and not so many of them the possessors of purchased degrees from Central University (?), Indianapolis, or National University, Chicago, we would respect them better, and they would better advance every progressive movement-even religion.

13. I believe we will never notice the testimonial for a whiskey compound from a Governor or Colonel of the Carolinas, for each is capable by smell and by taste to tell the presence of a leather-headed carpet tack in ten gallons of Bourbon-certainly not when such competent judges exist and know the flavor of mint juleps. The "Reverend Doctor" is not "in it" of late years, as he is evidently buying it straight from the next county, or has been reading Box's "Exposition."