tained by the use of glasses and graduated tenotomies upon some of the ocular muscles. To the oculist the technical portion of some of these records will doubtless prove of greater interest than to the general practitioner in medicine; but they serve to make the text more convincing.

The views which the author supported in his work on nervous diseases-relative to the effect of eye-strain upon the development of headache, neuralgia, chorea, epilepsy and nervous. prostration are reiterated in this volume with strong clinical evidence to sustain them.

In chapter II the reader will find a good and complete statement of the steps that should be taken in an examination, to detect an error of refraction and anomalies of adjustment of the ocular muscles. The instructions are given in a manner that there is no excuse for the general practitioner in failing to fully grasp the plan of the tests which it would be profitable for him to be familiar with, and which cover practically all the ground that is necessary to be gone over in the search for functional trouble.

While the author perhaps occupies ground in regard to the importance which ocular defects play in the production of such disorders as chorea and epilepsy, on which the majority of ophthalmologists are not yet ready to stand, it must be admitted that he has strong clinical proof to support his views, and it can be said that there is no excuse for a failure to carefully examine into the condition of refraction and balance of the ocular muscles in all these cases of obstinate or obscure headache, neuralgia, chorea, epilepsy, insomnia, nervous prostration, etc.

For a fuller understanding of this subject the reader is recommended to a perusal of the work of Dr. Ranney, whose professional standing is such as to make any views advanced by him worthy of careful consideration.

Second President American Academy of Railway Surgeons ;
Chief Surgeon Illinois Central Railway.

Columbus Medical Journal

A Bi-Weekly Journal Devoted to the Advancement of the
Medical and Surgical Sciences.

In the medical profession there are a great number of choice spirits who hunger and thirst after knowledge for its sake alone. As a result of their labors, medicine has a right to be known as a learned profession. It will be given to but few men in any day to climb to the heights where they stand; but it is possible to raise the common level of professional excellence. This must be done

by those who are now entering the profession as students. Longer courses, laboratory and clinical work, in which the student only absorbs and imitates, or follows a via recta marked out before him while at college, will not make him a learned man. During the four or six months of his vacation, he should read, mark and inwardly digest some up-to-date text-book, and thus a four years' course in medicine will not be a misnomer for twenty-four months' study. Anatomy, we grant, should be largely practical, but a text-book on anatomy may be so read and remembered that the bones, their processes, and the location of muscular attachments can be named.

Physiology and surgical pathology should be read so closely that the student can turn to the table of contents and be able to recall what the author has said on any single subject there named. The same may be said concerning obstetrics, surgery, therapeutics and practice. When a student has thus mastered his textbook, he has built a working foundation which can never be moved. Moreover, all of his subsequent reading will be a culling process in which he selects easily and rapidly all that is new and useful, in any authority, and it will fit at once into the building whose foundation was laid broad and deep in the beginning of his student life. Professional reading thus becomes a means of mental discipline, as well as preparation for his chosen work for life.

Desultory and miscellaneous reading by a student even of the best text-books can only result in the accumulation of a mass -stuff-which is neither knowledge or information, jumbled together without order like the contents of a grab-bag at a church fair. A faithful preceptor who will daily test the work of the student is a great advantage, during the vacation. If there is one thing which the writer gratefully remembers, in his student life, it is the work of such a faithful, studious physician more than thirty years ago, in his behalf. The long, muddy country rides by night and day grew shorter and their fatigue was forgotten in the midst. of the volley of questions in anatomy, chemistry and physiology which flew from preceptor to student and from student to preceptor in these friendly duels. And if he has attained any success in the after years of his life, either as a teacher or practitioner, it has been due in no small measure to the enthusiasm of that grand old doctor.

MEDICAL EDUCATION.

It is refreshing to the medical profession and especially to the younger practitioner, as well as the student, to read the short but concise statement of facts that are given in the first editorial of this issue under the head of Medical Students, by one who has not only had years of experience, but who by his hard work. and studious habits has obtained a position on the higher plateaus of medical science; a man who has been given the highest gift possible to a member of the medical profession of the State of Ohio (President of the Ohio State Medical Society), and who has at heart the elevation of the medical and surgical sciences.

In this same issue and in this same connection we desire to call attention to an article on "The Recitation versus the Lecture System of Teaching Medicine," which sets forth in a clear, concise manner these two methods, and leaves for those who are interested not only in obtaining a medical education but in teaching those who are seeking such, to decide as to the best method of giving and receiving instruction in the medical sciences. This article is all the more interesting to the members of the medical profession not only of Columbus but of Ohio, for the reason that Ohio granted the first charter, and Columbus has the distinction of having the first medical school where "the recitation plan” was adopted and put into operation, and which has proven a success beyond the anticipation of its most sanguine promoters. It is particularly interesting to note that other leading schools throughout the country are falling into line and adopting this plan which we believe will sooner or later supersede "the lecture plan," not because it is new, but because of its intrinsic value and the demand made, on the part of the students, that medical schools shall keep abreast in their methods of teaching with their literary contemporaries.