THE AMERICAN PRACTITIONER AND NEWS. Vol. 19. "NEC TENUI PENNÂ.” SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 1895. D. W. YANDELL, M. D., and H. A. COTTELL, M. D., Editors. No. 1. A Journal of Medicine and Surgery, published every other Saturday. Price, $3 per year, postage paid. This journal is devoted solely to the advancement of medical science and the promotion of the interests of the whole profession. Essays, reports of cases, and correspondence upon subjects of professional interest are solicited. The editors are not responsible for the views of contributors. Books for review, and all communications relating to the columns of the journal, should be addressed to the Editors of THE AMERICAN PRACTITIONER and News, Louisville, Ky. Subscriptions and advertisements received, specimen copies and bound volumes for sale by the undersigned, to whom remittances may be sent by postal money order, bank check, or registered letter. Address JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY, Louisville, Ky. THE ACADEMY. A few weeks since a number of the leading physicians and surgeons of Louisville met and established upon a permanent basis a medical society. The new organization is called The Louisville Academy of Medicine. In the matter of medical societies the city of Louisville has for more than twenty years been unique. Since ethical wrangling killed the old College of Physicians and Surgeons, some attempts have been made to organize a general medical society in Louisville, but without success. A few close corporations of the medical club order, like the MedicoChirurgical, the Clinical, the Surgical Societies, etc., have been well attended and have done good work, but the profession of the city at large have had no place where they could meet for that healthful exchange of opinion so necessary to the development of professional life. The object of the founders of the new society is to provide such a rallying point for the profession, the securing of a permanent place of meeting, the institution of a library, and other desirable features. To this society every member of the profession in the city, the county, and neighboring towns will be welcome. The officers of the Academy are President, Dr. T. L. McDermott; Vice-President, Dr. Frank C. Simpson; Secretary, Dr. John L. Howard; and Treasurer, Dr. J. M. Ray. An Executive Committee, consisting of Dr. Turner Anderson, Dr. C. W. Kelley, Dr. William L. Rodman, and Dr. Lewis S. McMurtry have the affairs of the society well in hand, and have instituted measures which will insure its success. Elegant permanent quarters have been secured and the society begins the new year with more than flattering promises. The first regular meeting was held on the 7th inst. A brief report of this meeting, with the full text of the president's address, will be found elsewhere in this issue. The membership is now nearly one hundred, and more members are coming in. It is not too much to say that the Academy is destined to become the most influential medical body in the city, if not in the State. DR. WILLIAM BAILEY'S ADDRESS. On page 26 is published a very incomplete synopsis of Dr. Bailey's remarks before the Louisville Academy of Medicine on introducing the subject of the uses and abuses of the vaginal douche during the puerperium. The speaker at a previous meeting elucidated the topic in a full and satisfactory manner, but the business necessary to the organization consumed the time. Dr. Bailey had not committed his remarks to writing, and there was no stenographer to take them down. The synopsis as published is a bare restatement of the points made in the first address, and by no means does the author justice. It is, however, with the limited time at our disposal all that we could secure for publication. DR. D. W. YANDELL. We are pained to announce that the senior editor of this journal has been confined to his bed for some eight weeks with a serious illness. Ten days ago it looked as if the noble spirit was about to leave its earthly tenement, but the strong man has made a brave rally, and his physicians are not without hope that his useful life may yet be spared to his family, to his friends, and to the profession it has so long enriched and ornamented. VOLUME XIX. With this issue of the American Practitioner and News begins its nineteenth volume. It will be our aim to publish during the year 1895 valuable papers and reports of societies, besides selections from the best medical literature at home and abroad. We are particularly anxious that every Kentucky doctor shall become a reader of the American Practitioner and News, and we shall mail a large number of sample copies of this issue with an order blank inclosed. This is an invitation for you to become a subscriber, and we trust that you will favor us with your subscription promptly, that we may place your name on our list before the next issue is mailed. Notes and Queries. THE MILK QUESTION.-Farmers naturally resent the recent rules of the Board of Health, but it would be well for them to remember that the board is rather behind than ahead of educated public sentiment. The first rule was an order for inspectors' certificates to be signed by a local reputable veterinarian, and no demand was made for the tuberculin test. This position was found to be untenable, and reluctantly the tuberculin test applied by an expert was required, as inspection even by the best educated eyes notably failed to detect tuberculosis in diseased cattle. It is quite safe to say that the present movement has come to stay." For years we have been improving or trying to improve our surroundings, sewering, trapping, and ventilating traps, putting all our ingenuity at work to remove the known sources of disease, while all the time the advanced science of the day knew that we were throwing wide our doors and inviting the most deadly contagion into our houses, and offering it to our friends and children in our milk supply. This knowledge, once the possession of the few, is now rapidly becoming the possession of the many, and either milk must go or it must come to us in unquestionable shape. It is no longer its integrity, the amount of cream that rises, the amount of suspected diluents in it, or even the artificial aid of color, thickening or preservative. It is simply the question of germs, and already the use of milk is lessening. Thousands of families boil it. Thousands avoid it when possible, and with good reason, for milk has been proved to have conveyed to the human race tuberculosis, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, dysentery (amebic), cholera infantum, cholera, and ulcerative stomatitis. It also labors under far more than a suspicion of having extensively carried influenza, especially in its gastric and enteric forms. It would not be impossible, under a universal public disgust, for the whole business to be ruined. The conservatism of the kitchen still holds on to it in cooking; but it seems probable that very soon we shall have recipes for all necessary dishes without it. Science can do that much if called upon. Cream, so difficult to sterilize, will find less and less use. The farmer will not need to rob the few quarts he handles; and butter-well, the Eastern nations clarify it by heat into a sort of oil, which they admire, and which the biologist will probably consider safe; but lands flowing with milk and honey will no longer excite longing anticipations or cause wars for the acquisition of such enticing territory, for the honey of to-day, if we believe the food-pessimist, is but a flavored glucose in artificial combs, and the milk that should normally flow beside it may well, in the coming days, be also a chemic product. So it seems possible that the only thing that can arrest the rapid descent of the cow and her products is this very inspection -an inspection so thorough as to command that hardest of all things to command, perfect confidence.-Philadelphia Medical News. A FRENCHMAN'S IMPRESSIONS OF FOOTBALL.—At the Harvard-Pennsylvania game of football played last year at Cambridge, Paul Bourget was an onlooker. His lurid impressions are given in the last chapter of "Outre Mer," from which we take the following brief extract: "The signal is given and the play begins. It is a terrible game, which by itself would suffice to indicate the differences between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin world-a game of young bulldogs brought up to bite, to rush upon the quarry, game fit for a race made for wild attack, for violent defense, for implacable conquests and struggles even to extermination. With their leather vests, with the Harvard sleeves of red cloth, and the Pennsylvania blue and white vests and sleeves, so soon to be torn; with the leather gaiters to protect their shins, with their great shoes and their long hair, floating around their pale and pink faces, these scholarly athletes are at once admirable and frightful to see, as soon as the demon of contest has entered into them. At each extremity of the field is a goal, representing at the right end one of the teams, at the left the other. The entire object is to throw [sic] an enormous leather ball, which the champion of one or the other side holds in turn. It is in waiting for this throw that all the excitement of this almost ferocious amusement is concentrated. He who holds the ball is there, bent forward, his companions and his adversaries likewise bent down around him in the attitude of beasts of prey about to spring. All of a sudden he runs to throw the ball, or else with a movement of wild rapidity he hands it to another, who rushes off with it, and whom it is necessary to stop. "The brutality with which they seize the bearer of the ball is impossible to imagine without having witnessed it. He is seized by the middle of the body, by the head, by the legs, by the feet. He rolls over and his assailants with him, and, as they fight for the ball and the two sides come to the rescue, it becomes a whole heap of twenty-two bodies tumbling on top of one another, like an inextricable knot of serpents with human heads. This heap writhes on the ground and tears itself. One sees faces, hair, backs or legs appearing in a monstrous and agitated melée. Then this murderous knot unravels itself, and the ball, thrown by the most agile, rebounds and is again followed by the same fury. Constantly, after one of these frenzied entanglements, and when the knot of players is undone, one of the combatants remains on the field motionless, incapable of rising, so much has he been hit, pressed, crushed, thumped." It is well that M. Bourget was not present this year at Springfield.-Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF SUICIDE BY INSURANCE COMPANIES.Among the agencies of civilization there are few that are more certainly beneficial than properly conducted life insurance. But it may not be doubted that the companies need public and scrutinizing oversight by the government to avoid the great evils that so easily slip in with the good. The imperfection of control, nay, the absolute non-control by the members, leads almost inevitably to abuse of power, waste of the common capital, and the capital-engorged plethora of huge companies, whose corporate interests threaten the stability and purity of legislation and social life. Among the evils may be reckoned some aspects of the commercialization of risks. Men get insured as a business matter, "for the benefit of their creditors," etc. From family reasons or by the agents of the companies they are teased and tormented into taking a larger insurance than their income justifies, and rather than keep up the struggle they "die to win." They also, it seems, insure with a possible view of committing suicide, especially if business is poor, or other misfortune should happen. A medical director of a large company writes: "Most of our suicides were heavily embarrassed financially, and in several instances there seemed to be a well-laid plan to secure all the insurance possible." Another writes: "An insured person has the thought when financial trouble and despondency overtake him, especially if he finds it hard to continue his assessments, that suicide will end his earthly troubles and possibly benefit his family more than he might be able to do by continuing the struggle against his environments."-Philadelphia Medical News. LITTLE CHILDREN AND HEAT.-Much misery would be avoided if mothers and nurses could be made to realize that in hot summer weather children are far more likely to suffer from heat than from "taking cold." There is one source of cruel suffering and dangerous or even fatal illness in very hot weather which is often overlooked, because it is unsuspected: It is want of water. At II A. M. of one of our hottest days I found in my consulting-room a |