There is nothing quite so hygienic as friendship: to love and be loved means an even pulse, clear eyes, good digestion, sound sleep

success.

Friendships are built on an understanding, while enmities are simply a lack of understanding.

Out in Colorado is a doctor who has a home for the cure of consumptives. His plan is to have the patients live out of doors; winter and summer they sleep in sheds enclosed only on three sides. This treatment cures many cases that the doctors in the East have given up. The doctor tells me that the cold tends to stupefy the patient and benumb his nerves. If this condition of dullness and stupidity can be brought about-the sinking of a man into an Esquimau-a mere eater of blubber, the man gets well. But so long as the patient is mentally alive and alert, thinking of his business or profession, or with a desire to study or save his soul, progress is hopeless.

Thought is combustion, and especially creative thought makes a terrific onslaught on the vitality. Men who paint, write or compose music do their best work only at a fever heat, with the pulse at ninety. Such a condition is necessarily transient, and absolute relaxation is. necessary if the creative period is to come again.

Great men are barbarians-a part of the time.

And when the feeling of dullness and indifference comes, they prize it.

Disease is a remedial attempt on Nature's part to get rid of a poison. If a man eats too much or takes food of the wrong kind, he gets sick. To then give him medicine to cure his indisposition and make him comfortable, is to run a grave risk of killing him.

Physicians everywhere are now coming to the conclusion that to stimulate flagging vitality, is to make a sedative necessary a little later This course continued-alternate stimulants and sedativesmeans a nervous break-down.

on.

More men die from the effects of medicine than from disease.
Give the organs rest when they ask for it.

If you feel dull and stupid, thank God and cultivate the mood. Nature has given you a sedative. But the average man when he is dull is inclined to stimulate on whisky or drugs, or at least to look upon the oolong when it is red. People who stimulate their energies artificially are bound to soon reach for an artificial sedative.

The only people who scintillate equally all day long are street. gamins and clerks at the lace counter. The man who at times gives out an acetylene scintillation is one who is a simple savage for several hours every day.

Cultivate your dull moments; hug your stupidity; and when your intellect begins to flash, seize upon that mood, too, and make the best of it.

The source of power is in human emotion-the human desire. Men get what they work for, and in just the measure they work for it. The measure of success is the measure of desire.

Fresh air, moderate exercise, plain food, regular sleep, and kind thoughts will heal you of your diseases, pluck from memory its rooted sorrows, and put you close to all the Good there is. -Elbert Hubbard, in Suggestion.

LET THE SHOEMAKER STICK TO HIS LAST.

Not long ago, after an address upon the subject of tuberculosis given before a lay audience by a well-known Chicago pathologist, this man was asked: "Is there any remedy of value in the treatment of consumption? In bugle-like tones the answer rang out-"None." He was absolutely certain that medicinal agents were useless and did not hesitate to leave this impression with his hearers. Only a little. while before, the newspapers all over the country had given publicity to the words of a Chicago surgeon who with equal positiveness. asserted that medicinal treatment is without value in pneumonia. Neither of these men is a practicing physician, yet each took it upon himself to speak for the profession, ex cathedra, and the answer was accepted, in each case, as coming from a fountain-head of medical knowledge.

The physician naturally asks himself this question, "Are these things true?" and if he is a man of large experience in general practice, the answer he gives is almost invariably a negative one. He knows there are few specifics, but he also knows that there are certain remedial agents which when properly used do have the power to favorably modify the course of these and other diseases. By what right, then, do these nonpractitioners assume to undermine the standing of the profession with the laity? For this is certainly the only result of extravagant language like theirs.

The truth is that a large share of the therapeutic nihilism, both inside the profession and out of it, is due to the unwise and unwarranted remarks of medical theorists-principally pathologists and surgeons. Their enthusiasm in medical research problems, or the niceties of surgical technique leaves little time and provides no opportunity for the study of pharmacology. This is a pity, for these great men form the opinions of the student body-opinions which

too often have to be unlearned when the young practitioner is faced with the problem of disease and its cure. The cry of the general practitioner is for help in his practice-for treatment. What is he offered? The assurance that his efforts are in vain; that he may act as "guide, comforter and friend" to the sick-little more. A professor in a college of pharmacy, who was compelled to undergo an operation in a hospital, after recovery told his class that the doctor is passe-that he will be replaced by the nurse and the druggist. With medicinal therapeutics cut out, what will the surgeons leave us? Doubtless the X-ray machines, the hot-air apparatus (they will retain the product), dietetics and massage-though the nurses may claim the latter.

In all humility we protest. The ignorance is not all on our side. We need first a revivifying interest in the practical in our profession. All honor to our medical scientists! Let them go right on discovering new germs, inventing new antitoxins, evolving new theories and improving upon the old operations. But let these shoemakers stick to their lasts! Practical medicine has problems equally greatbut they must be solved by physicians.-Medical Standard.

HOW MEDICINES "GO TO THE RIGHT SPOT."

Recent experiments in France show that the white-blood globules, also called "leucocytes," fulfill a very important function in distributing medicinal drugs to all parts of the body, and in carrying them to the spot where they will do the most good.

This is shown by various experiments. Here, for instance, is a rabbit under whose skin is injected a little strychnine or atropin. At the end of, say, half an hour, some of the blood is drawn off and divided by centrifugal treatment into its three parts-leucocytes, red globules, and plasma. Equal quantities of each are injected into three animals, and it is seen that the one that receives the leucocytes is poisoned, while the others are not.

The leucocytes transfer these from one part of the body to another, and this is their greatest utility. It is the more so that the place where they transport these substances varies according to circumstances. In normal conditions-that is, in health-the leucocytes carry the drug to the liver and marrow. In illness they carry it to the affected points, to the centers of irritation, where the arrival of the leucocytes is most desirable.... Here there is a remarkable but very natural and in no way mysterious electricity by which the organism profits greatly. All we have to do is to discover the element that we

should give to the leucocytes to act most effectively. But we can depend on them to carry iron to the blood-making organs, iodoform to tuberculous lesions, salicylate of soda to affected joints, etc....There is another fact that must be taken into account. The leucocytes, it is true, carry drugs to affected points, but they carry them also, with special insistence, to certain organs. Different organs attract different drugs; the liver, iron; the thyroid gland, arsenic and iodin; while the skin, the spleen, the lymphatic ganglia, and other organs seem to constitute regions of choice for several chemical substances. This specificity of localization is well known in the case of certain drugsiodin, iron, arsenic-and we should be able to recognize it in all other medicaments. This knowledge would doubtless enable us to control useful action and perhaps also to avoid certain injurious forms of action. In fine, the role of the leucocytes in the transportation of medicines is of high importance, and it is to be hoped that investigation along this line may be followed out with great care.- La Revue Scientifique.

CANCER AND HEREDITY.

This question has more than a merely theoretical importance in view of the prevailing tendency among laity and certain physicians to admit hereditary cancer. As a result we not infrequently see persons who have had the misfortune to lose a near relative from carcinoma become mentally unbalanced by the fear of imminent danger to themselves. The number of such cancerous neurasthenics appears to be quite large, and while some of them really succumb to the dreaded disease, the majority make themselves and their friends miserable and spend their time in waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall.American Medicine.

OF THE WEATHER.

There is no subject of which we know less than the weather. It is well that this is so, for, if by any impossible chance it came about that the art of controlling it were discovered, the result would be chaos. Meanwhile, a deal of wise discussion is wasted. It is a frequent complaint that by our reckless destruction of forests we are changing conditions so that our droughts are more severe and our floods worse than those of earlier days. This has a plausible sound, but, after all, it is not sustained by a study of the records.

Books of the Month

THE CHRONIC MIASMS. Psora and Pseudo-Psora. By J. H. Allen, M. D., Author of "Diseases and Therapeutics of the Skin" Professor of Diseases of the Skin and Miasmatics, Hering Medical College, Chicago, Ill. Volume I.

By the true Hahnemannian Prof. Allen's work will be welcomed, as a clear and succinct discussion of much mooted questions concerning this very abstruse and little understood part of Hahnemann's great theory. Very few teachers have either the opportunity, inclination or time to take up a study of the relation of homeopathic treatment to that class of diseases which Hahnemann included under the name of psora. Hahnemann regarded this department of knowledge as being all-important and the student of Homeopathy has a right to expect from his teacher a knowledge of this condition such as is very seldom found. Hence it is that particularly to the teacher now, and later to his student, this book should be welcomed. The writer gives a carefully written note as to the methods of study in taking up this work, saying quite properly that it should be done in a logical way, taking the first part of the book relating to the history and action of psora and pseudo-psora, and following this with a study of the diseases, or as he terms them-miasms, to be found in the balance of the book.

Prof. Allen is expecting to write a companion book to this, called "Psychosis," in which he will give a full and exhaustive discussion of the action of this malignant miasm in all its forms, with the diseases and complications that arise. We are glad to know that this book is on the market. We believe that it will be appreciated by many of the Doctor's collaborators.

INTERNATIONAL CLINICS. A Quarterly of Illustrated Clinical Lectures and Especially Prepared Articles on Treatment, Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, Gynecology, etc., by leading Members of the Medical Profession Throughout the World. Edited by A. O. J. Kelly, A. M., M. D., Philadelphia. Volume II. 14th Series. 309 pages. Cloth, $2.00.

We have often spoken favorably of International Clinics, and it would be impossible to do otherwise. The present number contains a number of valuable contributions upon tropical medicine, 133 pages being devoted to the consideration of diseases of the warm climates. An especially interesting article upon the spread of disease by insects, with suggestions regarding prophylaxis is presented by Chas. F. Mason. An article of equal interest gives a detailed descrip