an important factor in relieving congestion of diseased organs. I will say that I am glad to have the privilege of opening the discussion upon. such a valuable paper as has been presented to us.

President. It is indeed a pleasure to listen to such a paper from an intelligent woman physician. I have thought that men and women are so different that there should be no comparison between them. Why? If you look at the physiology, women's forces are constructive entirely. They build up. On the other hand, a man's forces are destructive. Man is superior in muscular strength. The ability to run 100 yards in 1 1-10 seconds does not mean anything but the ability to construct, maintain, nourish and bring into the world one individual is worth more than anything else.

Dr. Maxwell. I want to congratulate Dr. Gillard on her paper, and the excellent way in which she handled her subject. The Doctor speaks about rest and massage, but when you combine the two you get many miracles. I am glad to hear from Dr. Gillard.

Dr. Barnhill.-I am afraid I cannot add much to these papers, as they are so very complete, and homeopathic all the way through. By the way, my homeopathic sign has been in my window for twenty years. It has produced some ridicule among some possibly, but has made me all I am. I feel that 7-10 of the physiological disturbances in the system of both men and women can be relieved, if not cured, by the law of similars as laid down by Hahnemann. I believe that by studying the characteristic drugs, as we find them to-day, not to say anything of the new drugs, we cannot fail. The characteristics of a drug and the constitutional dyscrasia of the patient come into homeopathy, and but for them you cannot have success.

Dr. Gillard's paper was fine, well delivered, and was full of good solid meat. I believe it is wrong for Dr. Gillard, or any other doctor, to live in any community and not put forth such teachings in their local surroundings so that they will aid not only the medical profession, but the people who need it, and ought to have it. We are the teachers. I think such papers as Dr. Gillard's should be printed in the local papers at home. If every homeopathic physician would do more preaching and less practicing in their communities we would never need fear any allopathic gathering in this world.

Surgical dressings should always be changed at once whenever secretion reaches the edges of the dressing or comes out through any part of it, or whenever the patient shows a rise of temperature after twenty-four hours have elapsed since the operation.

In the early years of my practice, when I had lots of time on my hands, I spent considerable of it with the standard authors, and a story which made a great impression on my mind at that time was the "Coming Race," by Bulwer Lytton.

It was written early in the last century and describes a people far in advance of that time in point of intellect and scientific attainment. In the course of the story he describes minutely the electric light and telephone long before they had come into use, which brought to my mind the adage, that great events cast their shadows before.

But what impressed me most at that time and has occupied my mind to a considerable extent since, was an occult power possessed by these people, which enabled them to produce by thought force alone anything which they might desire.

This power he called Vril, and I have chosen it for the subject of my address this evening.

In defining the word he says, "I should call it electricity except that it comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature to which in our scientific nomenclature different names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, etc.”

He considered that in Vril we would arrive at the unity in natural, energic agencies, which has been conjectured by many philosophers and called the correlation of forces.

I believe with many true lovers of natural knowledge that the various forms under which the various forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin, or in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent that they are convertible, as it were, into one another and possess equivalents of power in their action.

I remember that at the time of reading I was very much interested in the story, but as the years have gone by I am able to see much more clearly the wonderful significance of that wonderful power which he so graphically describes.

At the time I supposed his Vril to mean simply a highly developed hypnotic power, whereby he made his characters able to influence matter, change the shape and form of physical things and even to destroy the life of dangerous foes by willing it so, but now after having studied the subject with some care, I believe hypnotism to be as crude when compared with what Lytton was pleased to call Vril as a mother tincture to our millionth potency.

The theory of evolution has made many things clear which for ages

were obscured by ignorance and superstition, and as yet its power for enlightenment is in its infancy.

We have, however, learned conclusively that through all these ages a natural process has been going on with a great object in view, and that object was man.

Man at present is lord of creation, and has been for many thousands of years, during which time he has been slowly advancing, until now he occupies a position much superior to the creature who first took on human guise.

Natural selection and survival of the fittest have had much to do with man's past history, but he has now reached the point of physical perfection where it is reasonable to suppose that his future advance will be made along the line of intellectual and moral improvement, and he himself will be able to supercede to some extent, natural selection and survival of the fittest. It is a fact well demonstrated, that there is a much greater difference between the brain and its functions of the highest and lowest types of man than between the lowest type of man and the highest type of ape, which goes to show that the coming race will be possessed of far greater brain power than at present. This greater brain power which will be developed as man's intellectuality develops, in my opinion, is what Lord Lytton meant by Vrill.

My own definition of the word to-night is that Vril is the potentiation of human nature, the grinding, trituration and reduction of all the lower elements, destroying the tiger and the ape, getting rid of the husk and the shell through evolution and allowing the involution of the finer forces of nature, until man will be free from all animal instincts and in that perfected state of potentiated mind power will be able to comprehend every law of the universe, and command by power of thought every force in nature.

To Darwin is due the credit of putting into systematic arrangement the theory of physical evolution.

To Herbert Spencer is due the credit of adding to Darwinism and giving us the philosophy of its further development along the lines of sociology and psychology.

To Lord Lytton is due the credit of putting in romantic form and predicting the final outcome of the human mind.

Now in closing, I wish to speak of another genius-a man of great intellectual attainments-a man of great practical ability, a man far in advance of his time scientifically, -a man who in the midst of great darkness on the subject, discovered a natural law and reduced it to a practical working basis and thereby benefited humanity more than

any predecessor-and you have all heard his name-Samuel Hahne

mann.

With the aid of the law of similia similibus curantur-with the knowledge of how to potentiate drugs-freeing them from the husks and shells of crude materialism-reducing them to Vril-of how to administer them to the sick and suffering so as to counteract dynamic force by dynamic force and restore lost equilibrium. not only physical but mental as well, Hahnemann has placed in our hands as his disciples a God-given palliative which will be more useful to mankind than any other system of therapeutics; till we reach that time predicted by Lord Lytton in his wonderful romance, when the mind of man will be so thoroughly in control of physical things that pain and suffering will have disappeared from off the face of the earth.

PEDIATRICS WHY AND WHEREFORE.

By Z. W. Shepherd, M. D., Toledo, Ohio.

That one-third of all infants born into this world die before they reach the age of five years, and that more than fifty per cent. of these in the first two years, is a sufficient reason for creating a separate bureau of medical theory and therapy. That a marked decrease has taken place in the last decade in infant mortality is a matter of congratulation to the profession, for it is entirely to the increased intelligence as to causes, and the better facilities for combating those causes on the part of the medical profession that such decrease exists. We are indebted to Dr. Roland G. Freeman, of New York, for valuable statistics in relation to infant mortality, not only in New York City, but other large cities of this country, and many cities and countries of Europe. We have taken the liberty of copying some of his items and would cite you to the original article in the Medical News, of New York, Sept. 5, 1903, Vol. 83, No. 10, Art. 1.

By reference to his tabulated statistics, wherein the deaths are noted in the order of causes, we can readily group the causes into four principal ones: 1st. Improper feeding; 2nd. Extremes of Temperature; 3rd. Bad Environments; 4th. Congenital Influences. This last one. I add upon my own experience, as I am certain that many obscure cases of infantile diseases are traceable to causes operative on the prenatal life. Of the first named, the comparison of mortality statistics between certain European countries enables us to draw very accurate conclusions as to one specific item of improper food, e. g., in Norway and Sweden where the infants are fed almost entirely upon breast milk, the mortality is but 106 per thousand, while in Bavaria and

Wurtemberg, where the infants are largely bottle-fed, the death rate is 317% per thousand. In my own practice I have found the proportion of deaths between children nursed at the breast and fed by the bottle or spoon to be more than 6 to 1 in favor of the breast-fed. I regard it as criminal ignorance that so often, on account of some trivial—or even serious-ailment of a mother, the physician or nurse will insist on weaning the baby, thereby increasing the liability of the mother's ailment to become dangerous by the stoppage of the natural secretion, and also increasing the chances against the child. I am aware that some timid doctor or nurse, who has not learned the secret of reliance upon nature, will say, "Oh, the baby will nurse disease from the mother." I would remind the objector that it will nurse medical relief too, and the danger to the child will be more than compensated by the more ready recovery of the mother. I wish to emphasize this conclusion-that only in the most extreme cases is it either wise or beneficial to advise the substitution of anything to take the place of the natural food of the infant.

While upon this theme I wish to relate an incident that came under my own observation, when in a railroad train in the far-famed sunny South. (I hope no such may ever be seen in Ohio.) At a suburban station near one of the large cities, two ladies entered the car, each bearing a bundle in her arms, which they began to unwrap (as it was a warm September day), the one, a colored lady, soon removed the wrappings from her bundle and disclosed to the fellow-passengers a lovely child, whose features showed it to be the child of the whiteskinned woman, who now exhibited to the disgusted passengers, a fat, wheezy, stub-nosed pug dog. We could readily see that the care of the little child was given over to the colored servant, and the unnatural mother bestowed her anxious care upon her pug. I thought then, and feel no change of heart in that respect, that it is fortunate that an infinitely loving Father ordained the plan of propagation of the species, for if I had the future proliferation of that female to arrange, I would see that her next progeny should be a snub-nosed pug. As a very important part of the conscientious physician's work (while the least remunerative) is that of instruction as to the avoidance of the causes of disease, let every one insist upon his patient following the dictates of nature as far as possible, and show them the great danger, as well as the absurdity, of permitting the cow or the goat to take the place of the God-given right of motherhood.

The next most important cause of infant mortality, and against which there is but little chance of defense, is that of extremes of temperature. In the winter season the sudden changes cause croup, diph