modestly posted as editor. Now there has come a change. The editor has given up the work in order that more time may be had for the Physician and the Professor. We're sorry. He was a good one. He wrote on up-to-date themes. There always was meat in his articles and the reader felt much strengthened after absorbing them. We need fearless editors-those who keep abreast of the times and are not afraid to "speak out." Of such was Halbert and the editor-world will sadly miss him. Sometimes we have wondered why his popularity persisted. Usually, you know, when one has the habit of saying just what he thinks wherever he happens to be, and no matter whom he hits, he is not so popular as he might be. But it's different with Halbert. He is liked by most everybody. He took up Ludlam's work in the Clinique and right worthily he has continued it, keeping in touch with all that was foremost in journalism. We're hoping his future may be great and glorious.

Of the new editor, it is not necessary to make any introductory remarks. Might just as well introduce Roosevelt to the American Public as Charles Gatchell to the Homeopathic world. Everybody knows of him and everybody reads and likes to read what comes from his pen. The Clinique ought to keep its reputation as a bright, scientific, up-to-date medical journal. Here's to its future and that of its editors, he of the past and he of the present.

CLEVELAND AND ITS WATER SUPPLY.

When you read these lines, dear reader, Cleveland will be getting its water-supply from 'way out in old Lake Erie instead of just along the sewer openings-at least we hope so. For several months the big tunnel has been completed, and for a month or more filled with water. Now the new pumps are in working order, in fact are working, and soon pure water will flow through the pipes and be available for the use of the citizens. While we have not had much typhoid fever this year, we have had some and it is hoped that with the advent of the purer water we have so little as to make us practically free of the dread disease.

It has been a long time coming, this pure water, but it's worth waiting for. We'll drink to the health of us all-even though we are doctors.

The directors of the Denver Homeopathic College are congratulating themselves upon the obtaining of a new building for their hospital.

3

Materia Medica Notes

HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES IN ENTERO-COLITIS.

Pulsatilla.- My first thought in any disease having diarrhea as a prominent symptom is pulsatilla. The movements are mucous, frequent, and may be of any color. They may or may not be accompanied by gas. If gas is present it usually causes some discomfort, which is promptly relieved by a movement. I have repeatedly seen pulsatilla cut short a diarrhea after a few doses. It is not of service when blood appears in the stools, or when the movements are accompanied by tenesmus.

Ipecacuanha.-Raue says ipecacuanha and veratrum album are the two most useful remedies in the treatment of summer complaint. The indications for ipecacuanha I find to be frequent stools, pain about the navel, and vomiting. Ipecac and pulsatilla follow each other well. I use the third centesimal dilution of each in water.

Arsenicum is a valuable remedy when the patient is prostrated, restless, and has fever. Everything taken into the stomach is immediately vomited up. The patient is thirsty, drinking little and often. I use the third centesimal trituration. It will have to be given dry on the tongue if the vomiting is present, otherwise I prefer it in water. Mercurius. My preference is the corrosivus. That has marked tenesmus, bloody stools, and excoriation of the parts the discharge. Raue gives the solubilis in his list of remedies, for tenesmus and frequent mucous stools.

Goodno recommends the dulcis, in the second decimal trituration, when the inflammatory symptoms subside but the frequent stools continue.

Cantharis is a remedy that may be called for in bloody stools with

tenesmus.

Aconite is called for if the onset is sudden, pulse rapid, fever more or less marked, and if the patient is restless.

Belladonna is useful with high fever, flushed face, and the patient is drowsy.

Other remedies may be called for, but the above forms a good working list.-Mills, in Hom. Jour. Obstet.

SOME HEART REMEDIES.

Actæa Racemosa.-Heart affected by rheumatic poison; recurring attacks of pain resembling angina pectoris; left arm feels as if bound to the side; gloominess.

Arsenicum.-Endocarditis and hypertrophy; septic conditions; fatty granular degeneration; feebleness of heart with constant fainting; angina pectoris; præcordial pain and anxiety; great aggravation from ascending stairs or climbing hills.

Cactus Grandiflorus.-Acute carditis; hypertrophy; valvular disease; aneurysm; spasm of heart, causing it to feel as if compressed with an iron band or clutched by an iron hand; soreness and constrictive sensations.

Kali Carbonicum.-Cardiac asthma; attacks at 2 A. M.; dyspnoea so great must sit up in bed, leaning forward; cardiac cough; exophthalmic goitre.

Kalmia Latifolia.-Cardiac rheumatism; much pain, with slow, weak pulse; valvular insufficiency; pains in rheumatic joints shift suddenly to heart; numbness of left arm; heart intermits every third or fourth beat; shooting pains through the chest to scapula.

Naja Tripudians.-Chronic nervous palpitation; in young subjects valvular murmurs after acute rheumatism, or endocardial murmurs following scarlatina; sympathetic pains arising from other organs, especially ovaries; constriction and dyspnoea in evening.

Phosphorus.-Fatty degeneration of the heart associated with fatty degeneration of other tissues and organs; right ventricle most affected; venous stagnation.

Rhus Toxicodendron.-Hypertrophy from over-exertion, pulse quick, weak, irregular, intermittent, with numbness of left arm; trembling and palpitation when sitting still.

Spigelia.-Violent palpitations, with great pressure on the chest; shooting pains through heart and down left arm, over the chest and down the spine; rheumatic carditis; pericarditis; endocarditis; darting and lacerating pains during acute exacerbations; palpitations due to worms; dyspnoea, compelling patient to sit bolt upright.-The Hahne

mannian.

THE TEACHING OF MATERIA MEDICA.

Some of the most eminent medical teachers have occupied the chair of materia medica in medical colleges and continue to occupy them. It is therefore with some diffidence that we enter upon the discussion of a topic that in our opinion merits stringent criticism.

In the first place we are not one of the number who believes that the proper person to occupy the chair of materia medica, especially in homeopathic medical colleges. is the man who is noted as the greatest crank on the subject of infinitesimals, or any other phase of drug action. Nor should he be a man of that contracted sort who believes

a remedy given internally is always the most effective mode of treatment and who preaches the omnipotence of remedies in certain form. His cerebration should be wide enough to recognize the fact that local treatment is very often the most effective treatment and not infrequently the only means offering relief to the patient. It were far better for this earthly sphere and the class, that his tentacles be not reared among the clouds while ratiocinating too much upon the superior virtues of malandrum, tuberculinum, syphilinum and luna.

Another very important fact should also receive due attention. The teacher of materia medica should be a man, or a woman, who has had an opportunity to practice what he preaches, whose office is at least the occasional resort of suffering humanity, one who has infused sufficient confidence among his fellows that at least a few will place their health and even lives in his hands. Neither a clientless lawyer nor a patientless doctor should meet with more favor at the hands of a faculty, or board of trustees, than is accorded them by the less thoughtful public. Talking book knowledge and teaching the experience of practice are totally different matters.

He should be honest. Not only should he pay his just debts, but he should tell the truth. When he states that he gave belladonna 200x with complete relief of pain, it should not be met by the counter statement of the patient that antikamnia and codeine were given at the same time. Such teaching is an insult to a class of honest seekers after truth and will lead to the student's undoing until he has learned from painful experience that his teacher was a fabricator and grossly untrue to the position the institution had given him.

Symptomatology is the golden strand that adorns and completes the therapeutic web. It is the key that unlocks the treasure-house in which is stored the inorganic and organic kingdoms that may be made to minister to suffering humanity. But the strand is not the web and the key is not the treasure-house. The physician whose knowledge of materia medica is confined to symptomatology is often a most dangerous man at the bedside-as negatively dangerous as the surgeon who imagines that the scalpel is the representative of his art.

It is not safe for the chair of materia medica to assume that the student will gain knowledge of crude drugs in the study of chemistry, botany and biology. The writer has known students to pass the chair of materia medica and actually pride themselves on their knowledge of graphites and not have the remotest idea of the substance under consideration, to get confused at once when asked the difference between graphite and lead. A chunk of graphite and a piece of lead should invariably be in evidence before the class before anything in

the nature of symptomatology should be mentioned concerning graphites and plumbum. It should be part of the equipment of the chair of materia medica to have illustrations in colors of all foreign plants; and it should no more be a necessary part of the work of the teacher of botany in high school to collect native specimens for his class than for the professor of materia medica also to exhibit before his class all native specimens, either in the green or dried state, whole or sectional. as may be practicable. With the woods full of dulcamara, generally unknown to the class, who has ever seen a specimen exhibited to a medical class? The meadows and wet places may team with veratrum viride, but who has ever seen a single specimen lay upon the rostrum of a medical college? A little work of this kind done by a professor of materia medica would prove of vastly more benefit than a series of anathemas hurled at other schools of medicine. Besides, it is one of the first principles of instruction that fundamental principles should be made clear before any attempts at generalization should be undertaken. The student who has a hazy knowledge of aconite, or belladonna, or pulsatilla, and is not quite sure whether aconite is a plant or was formerly an allopathic lancet, whether belladonna is a tree of an Italian maiden, or whether pulsatilla is a metal or an artery, reflects more discredit upon his teaching than upon his mental acumen. A good groundwork in materia medica can only be secured by acquainting the student thoroughly with the physical, chemical and biological properties of the various substances that constitute the materia medica. If he lacks these fundamental facts he will fail to appreciate much of what may be added to the subject. His mental storehouse will lack for pins upon which to hang other facts that might prove highly useful to him in after professional life. The teaching of these elementary facts and principles should be largely the work of the first year.

The work of the second year should be given to a careful review of the first and the acquaintance of the student with the physiological and pathological action of the various substances used in medicine. An attempt to teach even a large proportion of these facts and principles would be as absurd as to impress the student with the idea that any large proportion of symptomatology should be a matter of memory. But the fundamental facts and principles, a few of some of the more important substances, could be taught in such a way that a lasting impression might be made. In the case of some of the active poisons it would not be a waste of time to inject a rat, or mouse, or guinea pig with variable doses of such substances as strychnine, morphine and prussic acid and let them observe the effects. One fact or principle impressed for a life-time is worth a thousand for a day.