lieve the heart is the oftenest mistreated by the physician. Take strychnia, nitroglycerin and digitalis for instance, and do you not know one or more general practitioners who cannot discern the condition in a patient that calls for each? How many use them indiscriminately? Have you not seen a patient injected with so-called heart stimulants that would contract, dilate, slow and increase the beat all at the same time? Now why is this possible? That old rut, treating a name by a name; heart trouble, heart stimulant. Here are pathology, materia medica and therapeutics buried deep in the rut and substituted are mere names with the result of a hit or miss practice that truly justifies the old saying, "the undertaker buries the mistake." I have great hopes that the rather universal use of the blood pressure apparatus today is to be the means of better knowledge, or rather the application of knowledge in the treatment of heart lesions. Today we know there is no specific disease to call rheumatism, that we merely use it as a blanket term to cover all those infections that escape the primary site and take up abode at a distance, in a joint, muscle, tendon or elsewhere. An infection and as such differing not one wit from an infected tooth, infected tonsil, infected bladder, infected uterus or what not, except in location; it is no longer where you may call it tonsillitis, or cystitis, so it is rheumatism, Also, in the past year have come under my sight these conditions diagnosed as rheumatism; dislocation of shoulder and hip, flat foot, hypertrophied prostate, chronic malaria, multiple neuritis, nephritis, refractive errors, strictures, tubercular spine, uterine displacements, and probably others that I failed to properly diagnose. Certainly each and every one had pain. Then under this blanket term we put not only the infections, the crippled joints as a result of past infection but everything that pains regardless of from where the pain may be reflected or the underlying cause of that A *PERSONAL pain. Now consider, gentlemen, is it not time for this association to take steps to forever eliminate a term that is a badge of gross ignorance? Would it not be better from every standpoint if we were to absolutely bar the term rheumatism? Call an arthritis an arthritis, a myalgia by its proper name. Extend our nomenclature if you will, but have every term used mean the truth. Gentlemen, I am firmly convinced the greatest drawback the physician of today has in making a clean diagnosis is not lack of knowledge, but an easy desk chair (the withstanding), which is only another way Hookworm Commission to the contrary notof saying lack of application of the knowledge which he possesses and which rightly belongs to the patient applying for relief. If every doctor would apply all his knowledge in every case coming under his care, what a difference there would be, how the glory of the profession would rise, and how the sects and cults that we are responsible for through carelessness and thoughtlessness, would perish. Having acted the part of Job's comforter up to this point I want to say to this body of most distingushed men that fault finding with the profession at large was by far the hardest task your president could select, one that has so little chance to bear fruit. And had it not been for the fact that you men of the Southwest stand so far above the average it would not have been attempted for fear of becoming personal-a thing here impossible knowing your ability. your application of that ability, your high character and adherence to the noblest ideals in your individual and collective professional lives. professional lives. May you take the message of truth and thoroughness to the highways and byways that some one whom you have long since outstripped on the grade to success may stop and reason unto himself that in the end one other doctor may become a good physician. INFLUENCE. S flowers emit fragrance, and fire heat, so from every human being there radiates an influence. Our words, acts and example produce some effect on some one else. No one lives to himself entirely. If a man speak words of wisdom and kindness they will have a beneficial influence on others, but if his words are harsh, vulgar, profane and false, they will be attended by a baneful effect. It is as wicked for one man to deceive another by false statements, or to allure an innocent person into vice or crime by improper counsel as it is to administer poison in their food, thus endangering their health and life. The effect of the influence of a bad man is exceedingly bad. It is a moral and social poison more to be dreaded than the miasma of the swamp. Better would it have been for him and others had he never been born. A bad life is a curse and not worth living, but a good life is a benediction to the world for all time. The influence of such men as Paul, Luther, Knox, Wesley, Spurgeon and Moody can never be measured in this life, for, like Tennyson's brook, it goes on forever.-Jas. Stolbert, in Kansas City Post. Kansas City Academy of Medicine Meeting every Saturday evening at the Rialto Building President, Wm. K. Trimble, M. D. Censor, C. B. Francisco, M. D. Secretary, F. M. Denslow, M.D. Treasurer, B. H. Zwart, M. D. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.* FRANK C. NEFF, M. D., Kansas City, Mo. For years the Library Committee of the Academy was a sinecure; lots of honor, nothing to do, and a fine salary. However, there were only a few willing to take such a responsible position. Finally the subject of a library became the occasion of great merriment whenever it was mentioned. At one time the Academy had quite a spectable number of volumes which were kept in an office in the old Rialto Building. It was moved to the public library before the old Rialto burned. The maintenance of the books at the public library was not a success. For various reasons they were too difficult to reach. They were then shipped out to the city hospital, along with the generous contribution of Dr. Crowell's private library. This was the last service of our library committee. books were mingled with the musty volumes belonging to Jackson County, and were turned over to the Kansas City Medical Library Club when it was organized two years ago. The books were sorted over and many of them are now resting in peace, boxed in the basement of this building. The The Academy of Medicine has no formal representation in the present organization of the Library Club, nor is it essential that we should have. But we have done our part in its establishment and maintenance nevertheless. We are paying as an organization $300 per year towards the rent of the rooms, and individual members are generous subscribers to the library. What I wish to urge is that the Academy can do no greater work for the advancement of scientific medicine in this section of the country than to continue the support which we have given, and to further increase our subscriptions and our use of the fine opportunities which the library offers. A library of medicine firmly established in the past two years marks the greatest achievement that has ever happened in local medical circles. Many of us realized how povertystricken this community was a few years ago in the lack of the opportunities for study offered by so many of the larger and Annual Address, Academy of Medicine, October 4, 1913. older cities. That we were without any sort of library facilities was a medical disgrace. This is no longer the case. A few years ago some of our long-headed and generous fellows decide to offer prizes for original work along medical and surgical lines. Although such plans have met with a certain amount of success in other cities it did not find a response with us. With all due respect to the spirit which prompted the offering of prizes as inducements for special work, I do not feel that it would have been possible to accomplish much without a library, nor do I feel that such work would compare with the good which accrues to all of our members from the possession and utilizing of the privileges which our present and future library offers. A few criticisms should be answered. First, that the library is only of service to the members who happen to have offices in this building. The fact is that as many men from other buildings avail themselves of its use as do the members closely situated. I have in mind a few men who spend as much or more time here than most of us here. Time can be economized by anyone calling up the librarian and asking her to lay out the material desired. It is to be hoped that arrangements can be made for service at night, which is the freest time for study. Even now one can get in the rooms after office hours by special arrangement with the librarian. Second. A criticism sometimes heard is that there is little to be found in the present library upon any special subject. If any one will ask for any subject he may wish he will probably find more material than he can digest in many days of reading, and this reached so quickly that he will be unwilling to continue to squander the time necessary to look up subjects in his own books. In addition to the already generous literature which we now possess, our library is affiliated with some of the largest in the country, and by simply paying the cost of transportation we can secure for immediate use any books or periodical in those libraries. The John Crerar library of Chicago is lending us material on this basis every day. My appeal is that we support this enterprise even stronger than we have. Gifts and bequests of books and magazine files which can be more quickly utilized in a systematically-indexed condition than in private possession. I venture that we all have old files or numbers of the Journal A.M.A. which are doing us no good, but as the property of the library would complete its files or could be exchanged for others needed. One reads frequently about gifts and bequests to medical libraries and institutions in the Eastern cities, and there is no reason why such should not be begun here. Of what use is medical literature to one after he is gone. Why not place it now where it will do some good or see that your estate is not burdened with the ques tion of its disposal. Let us all become contributors of books, journals and money to this child of ours, for we all hope to see it grow to the point of greatest usefulness. The Academy can do no greater work than for all its fellows to become the supporters and constant users of the Medical Library. DR. SAM. BY EUGENE Field. Down in the old French quarter (Just out of Rampart street) I went my way At close of day Unto the quaint retreat Where lives the Hoodoo doctor, By some esteemed a sham Yet I'll declare there is none elsewhere With claws of a devilled crawfish, In the light of a midnight moon. I never should have known him That here obtain And ne'er in vain That wizard's arts invoke; With the caul of an alligator, By the light of a midnight moon! In all neurotic ailments I hear that he excels, And he insures Immediate cures Of wierd, uncanny spells; The most unruly patient Gets docile as a lamb And is freed from ill by the potent skill Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam? Feathers of strangled chickens, Moss from the dank lagoon, With a spider's sweat In the light of a midnight moon! They say when nights are grewsome Old Sam steals out And hunts about For charms that hoodoos hate! That from the moaning river And from the haunted glen He silently brings what eerie things Give peace to hoodooed menThe tongue of a piebald possum The tooth of a senile coon, It is not the work, but the worry, That weakens their faith in heaven One ship drives east and another drives west, 'Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tells us the way to go. Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate, As we voyage along through life, 'Tis the set of the soul That decides its goal, And not the calm or the strife. DECEPTION. E.W.W. Edwin Thomson, Kansas City, Mo. O, 'twould be trying on my poor, weak nerves! I wouldn't wear one on the public street- To make the gods look on with pride; Incorporating The Kansas City Medical Index-Lancet An Independent Monthly Magazine Under the editorial direction of CHARLES WOOD FASSETT and S. GROVER BURNETT ASSOCIATE EDITORS P. I. LEONARD, St. Joseph CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ST. CLOUD COOPER, Fort Smith, Ark. S. S. GLASSCOCK, Kansas City, Kan. JOHN PUNTON, Kansas City PAUL V. WOOLEY, Kansas City W. T. WOOTTON, Hot Springs, Ark. DEPARTMENT EDITORS KANSAS CITY P. T. BOHAN, Therapeutics DON CARLOS GUFFEY, Obstetrics J. E. HUNT, Pediatrics JOS. LICHTENBERG, Ophthalmology R. T. SLOAN, Internal Medicine R. L. SUTTON, Dermatology EDW. H. THRAILKILL, Rectal Diseases ST. JOSEPH J. M. BELL, Stomach C. A. GOOD, Medicine A. L. GRAY, Obstetrics J. W. MCGILL, Rectal Diseases L. A. TODD, Surgery OMAHA H. M. McCLANAHAN, Pediatrics H. S. MUNRO, Psychotherapy DES MOINES WALTER L. BIERRING, Medicine Address all communications to Chas. Wood Fassett, Managing Editor, St. Joseph, Missouri. Vol. XXXII MONEY WILL NOVEMBER, 1913 DO IT. Editorial We may never be able to order a season's health by phone as readily as we order a dinner, but stranger things have happened than for a standing order to be placed by a money-made health department for the health of the various communities of the nation and by the departments governing international health. Little by little the profession of medicine has offered up its mite, sacrificing all individual ambition for worldly gain, that in time the sum total of its labors might be unitedly garnered as a harvest of disease prevention in the saving of lives of people. The single thought, a betterment to mankind, is the initial latent banner to be unostentatiously unfurled in the progressive trend of the lives of all truly developed medical men in their inalienable aspirations to greater things. And the accomplishments of these greater No. 11 things have not been puerilely and inconsistently broached. As in the training of child life the little, seemingly insignificant fundamentals are the making of educational unit acquirements to later shape a maturity. And so in the making of medical men for the present and future, the first grand stroke was to systematize and perfect methods of medical education. Obsolete methods no longer could meet the pace of progress. Refined methods of educational finish rapidly began replacing the coarse, unrefined and unfinished modalities. As in all radical changes in shaping superior end results the fixed intellectualities of other days clashed with the dawing minds of tomorrow. Criticism and recriticism, amounting to crimination and recrimination, effervesced wildly and clouded almost to opaqueness the educational test tube destined to chemically clarify and demonstrate |