prisoners in the jail at Albany; of Mott, my own college mate, of the same disease, caught in the hospital on Blackwell's Island.

The army of life-savers, too, has accompanied that other one of destruction upon every field, and the members of the one have shared with the soldiers of the other every danger, every hardship, to which they were exposed. During our late war, on the Federal side there were killed in battle thirty-two surgeons; nine were killed by accidents; eighty-three were wounded on the field; four died in prison, and two-hundred and eighty-one of diseases incident to the service. I have not been able to obtain the figures of the losses on our side, but doubtless they were as great.

Nor is the record of those of our fraternity who go down to the sea in ships a whit less glorious. In times of disaster it is the surgeon who, having brought up all his sick or wounded and put them into the boats, is the last save the captain to go over the vessel's side. I have lately read an account of the great naval duel between the Kearsarge and the Alabama. After the latter had been reported sinking, the officer who went below to examine her condition saw "Assistant Surgeon Llewellyn at his post, but the table and the patient upon it were swept away from him by an eleven-inch shell." One of the Alabama's men reports having seen him returning below for some of the wounded when the ship was actually going down, and then he was never again seen alive by mortal eyes. His dead body was found floating upon the surface of the sea.

In the ranks of republican France was a young soldier of family and fortune. Brave beyond compare, foremost in every danger, he scorned all proffers of promotion, and was never known by any title other than that acclaimed by an admiring host, "The First Grenadier of France." Finally, in some fierce charge he fell. His comrades buried him on the field, and placed him dead as he had even been living, with his face to the foe. And ever after, on parade muster, the first name called from the roll of his regiment was that of La Tour d'Auvergne; and the sergeant, stepping from his place, came to salute and made answer, “Mort sur le cham de bataille !" And so, sir, when in calling our roll there comes no answer to our dead heroes' names, should not our hearts leap up, and making the salute of honor, call out that phrase more glorious than any monument builded by human hands: Mort sur le champ de bataille ! Dead on the field of battle!-From the Oration on "Some of Our Forgotten Worthies," before the Louisiana State Medical Society, at Its Eighth Annual Meeting, by Henry D. Bruns, M. D.

MEDICINE.

MEDICAL HEROISM.-There are two armies. The one in splendid trappings, with gorgeous banners flaunting in the van, with golddecked officers who cheer or threaten, with men whose faces gleam with the fierce delight of victory, or darken with defeat, sweeps over the earth with horrid noise of shouting men, and rattling musketry, and thunder-rolling guns. The air is darkened by its dust, and the earth shakes beneath its rushing squadrons. It passes, and the peaceful fields are blackened in its track; the clear streams are stained with long, dark streaks of blood, and all of nature's thousand happy voices are drowned in awful groans, wrung from the parched lips of mangled things that once were men.

The other host comes with so still a thread you hardly note the steadiness of its advance. Its men are sober suited, and the faces of them grave and set. Here and there upon some brow the deeper lines, the whiter hair, in some calm countenance the sadder eyes, mark alone the presence of a leader, whose daily foe for many years, perhaps in many lands, is death. For, though no mortal ear may catch the sound of conflict, each man of this devoted band is target for a myriad poisoned darts that fall more gently than the silent snow; and many, ah! how many, as the great host keeps its unfaltering way, drop stricken from its ranks and yield the ghost, not leaving even one dark stain on God's green grass to mark the spot they fell. But they fall not in vain. Ever before them flee the fell sisters, pain and death. Ever behind them rise the deep sigh of relief, the murmured prayer of gratitude, the glad cry of Rachael, weeping no longer, but comforted, for her children are restored unto her.

The one is the army of death, the militant hosts of the world. Nations are proud to honor its heroes, and their monuments of brass or marble are lifted to every sky. The other is the army of life, the host Esculapian, and with the exception of a few, a very few, we may look, and we shall look in vain, for their memorials.

The roll of this honorable company is forever lengthening. The journals tell us of the death of Lawson of scarlet fever, "contracted from a patient; " of McCaughin of typhus, taken while attending the

prisoners in the jail at Albany; of Mott, my own college mate, of the same disease, caught in the hospital on Blackwell's Island.

The army of life-savers, too, has accompanied that other one of destruction upon every field, and the members of the one have shared with the soldiers of the other every danger, every hardDuring our late war, on the Fed

ship, to which they were exposed. eral side there were killed in battle thirty-two surgeons; nine were killed by accidents; eighty-three were wounded on the field; four . died in prison, and two-hundred and eighty-one of diseases incident to the service. I have not been able to obtain the figures of the losses on our side, but doubtless they were as great.

Nor is the record of those of our fraternity who go down to the sea in ships a whit less glorious. In times of disaster it is the surgeon who, having brought up all his sick or wounded and put them into the boats, is the last save the captain to go over the vessel's side. I have lately read an account of the great naval duel between the Kearsarge and the Alabama. After the latter had been reported sinking, the officer who went below to examine her condition saw "Assistant Surgeon Llewellyn at his post, but the table and the patient upon it were swept away from him by an eleven-inch shell." One of the Alabama's men reports having seen him returning below for some of the wounded when the ship was actually going down, and then he was never again seen alive by mortal eyes. His dead body was found floating upon the surface of the sea.

In the ranks of republican France was a young soldier of family and fortune. Brave beyond compare, foremost in every danger, he scorned all proffers of promotion, and was never known by any title other than that acclaimed by an admiring host, "The First Grenadier of France.” Finally, in some fierce charge he fell. His comrades buried him on the field, and placed him dead as he had even been living, with his face to the foe. And ever after, on parade muster, the first name called from the roll of his regiment was that of La Tour d'Auvergne; and the sergeant, stepping from his place, came to salute and made answer, "Mort sur le cham de bataille " And so, sir, when in calling our roll there comes no answer to our dead heroes' names, should not our hearts leap up, and making the salute of honor, call out that phrase more glorious than any monument builded by human hands: Mort sur le champ de bataille! Dead on the field of battle!-From the Oration on "Some of Our For gotten Worthies," before the Louisiana State Medical Society, at Its Eighth Annual Meeting, by Henry D. Bruns, M. D.

THE PREVAILING EPIDEMIC OF REFLEX AFFECTIONS.-It is natural, and, indeed, inevitable, that those who devote their lives to the study of some special group of diseases, or who limit their practice to the maladies of some one organ, should magnify the evils that spring from the affections with which they are brought in contact, and extend the sphere of their influence beyond the ordinarily accepted limits. The interdependence of the bodily functions is such that it is not beyond the range of possibility for the remotest results to flow from any one derangement. Hence has arisen the teaching of reflex diseases, against which, as a truth, no word can be said.

Now, it can readily be seen that such a theory of disease is liable, if not kept strictly within bounds, to degenerate into a pair of pathological spectacles of colored glass, in which all things are seen-not darkly, but-clearly, only, alas! all of one color. Thus, A. is a gentleman of uterine proclivities, and his glasses are green. The pathological world is clear and verdant to him. A subinvolution or a urethral caruncle explains to him the cause of the maladies that afflict one-half of humanity; and if perchance a fibroid tumor or swollen ovary rewards his search for something removable, then, indeed, he has the very pathological devil by the hair!

But, then, here comes B. His glasses are not green, but blue. The scene of his exploits is the nasal cavity-a narrow space, and somewhat secluded from public view; hence must he bestir himself the more actively, and make what noise he can. In his azure view, the turbinated bodies form the more prominent features of the landscape, and in the recesses of the nasal sinuses must the fountain of health be sought for. There is a background of lungs, and heart and general system which he perceives dimly, but their condition is of no importance in comparison with the necessity of having a rectangular septum or an absolutely smooth pharyngeal vault.

C.'s glasses are neither green nor blue. They are smoked, and he lives and has his being in the atmosphere of the distal end of the alimentary canal. He finds that mankind suffers from rectal fissures, hemorrhoids, and constipation. There are some other troubles, it is true; but, as he said recently to a myopic friend of ours,"Only have your sphincter ani dilated, and your eyes will be all right!"

These gentlemen cannot all be right; they must all at least be partly wrong. Yet do we see them, day in and day out, in medical journals and at medical meetings, claim each one for his own special field the most far-reaching results. And the specialist of general medicine is very apt to get tired of comparing their conflicting claims, and so reject them all.

There is a modicum of truth in regard to reflex maladies overwhelmed and hidden by the excess of ex parte testimony that their advocates present. It is unfortunate that it should be so. It seems to be time for the largest body of specialists of all to call their brethren to a stricter account, and to demand more convincing proof before accepting the testimony of those working in narrower fields. Int. Jour. of Surg.

SYPHILIS OF THE TONGUE.-Though it is well known that practically no portions of the body accessible to syphilitic virus are exempt from the manifestations of this disease, the development of the primary sore upon the tongue is so exceptional that it is rarely seen except by syphilographers. Moreover, there are certain points connected with the development of the secondary eruption in this region of great importance not only to the specialist, but to the general practitioner. In this connection, Fournier offers, as the result of his exceptionally wide experience, a most valuable contribution. He states that in an experience of twenty-seven years he has seen but thirtyseven instances of lingual chancre; still, he believes that the tongue. is, after the lips, the most common extra-genital seat of the primary sore. Though this is not in accord with elaborate statistics recently reported, which seem to show that the first manifestations of extragenital syphilis are commonly found about the breast, the word of Fournier has such weight on this subject that his statement must be accepted as almost conclusive.

When chancre involves the tongue it is usually found upon the. upper or lateral surfaces of its anterior half. It may take either the erosive or the ulcerative form; the latter, however, being rare. It commonly appears as a superficial erosion without distinct margins, flat, smooth and exhibiting the characteristics of the ordinary chancre; with frequently a gray diphtheroid surface. There is a parchment induration, sometimes slightly nodular. The characteristic bubonic enlargement is commonly found involving the supra-hyoidean glands.