Memphis Medical Monthly Memphis Medical Monthly, established as the Mississippi Valley Medical Monthly, 1880 Memphis Lancet, established 1898. LYCEUM BUILDING, MEMPHIS, TENN. Subscription Per Annum, One Dollar in Advance. Official Organ of the Tri-State Medical Association of Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, Memphis Medical Society, and Yazoo Delta Medical Association. C. H. BRIGHT, BUSINESS MANAGER. RICHMOND MCKINNEY, M.D., EDITOR. W. B. ROGERS, M.D. DEPARTMENT EDITORS. A. G. SINCLAIR, M.D. T. J. CROFFORD, M.D. W. D. HAGGARD, M.D., Nashville. B. F. TURNER, M.D. THE MEMPHIS MEETING OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE. THE sixty-ninth annual meeting of the State Medical Society, which will be held in Memphis on April 8, 9 and 10, promises to be the most important meeting that this organization has held in a number of years. It has been several years since Memphis has entertained the State Society, and we look to considerable interest being manifested in this meeting by local physicians and members of the profession throughout the Western Division of the State. On this occasion the following amendments to the constitution will come up for final action: 1. "The State Society to be known as the home or parent society, with three branch societies, to be designated the East, Middle and West Tennessee branches of the State Medical Society. "The parent society to meet annually in Nashville on the second Tuesday in April. The branch societies annually in September, October or November at such places as may be elected. "The membership fee and annual dues to be $3, $2 of which shall belong to the parent society and $1 to the branch society. (See Transactions, pp. 22, 23 and 24.) 2. "To establish a journal to be known as Tennessee Medical Journal, which shall be published monthly in the city of Nashville, the proceedings and all papers of the branch societies as well as the parent society to be published in the Journal. "Publication of the Transactions in book form to be suspended." Considering the proposed amendments, each for its own claims for adoption, we regard the scheme to organize the society into a parent society, with three branch societies, as a plan that has many theoretical and practical advantages, but it would almost necessarily require that several existing district organizations, for instance, the West Tennessee Medical and Surgical Association, be discontinued, for it would hardly be reasonable to expect the physicians of the various sections to lend sufficient aid and recognition to maintain more than one organization with practically the same scope. Such organizations as the one mentioned have usually found a warm. spot in the hearts of their various members, and serve a useful purpose, and we believe that they would not surrender their identity without first making a strong effort to maintain their organization and individuality. The second clause of the first amendment has always been warmly advocated by us, for we think that a State Medical Society should hold its annual meetings at the State capital. The expediency of this is emphasized in the fact that the meetings at the State capitals are invariably the best attended and most interesting that are held. Still, a strong fight will be made against the adoption of this clause of the amendment. To take up the second amendment, we would first like to go on record as stating that in this matter we have absolutely no ax to grind, for the MONTHLY has never depended upon the State Society to any considerable extent for contributions to its original pages, nor would its subscription list be materially decreased were it to lose every subscriber thereon who is a member of the State Society, but to us it seems that this proposition to establish a medical journal, to be known as the Tennessee Medical Journal, is the most absurd scheme. that it has ever been proposed to perpetrate upon the society. In the first place, no medical journal can be a really successful venture without it is enabled to secure a certain amount of advertising matter. This will be found very difficult to do with such a journal, for the subscription list will unquestionably be almost wholly confined to members of the society, since the journal will be of entirely too local a nature to extend its circulation very much beyond the confines of the State. Further, we are very familiar with the cost of running a medical journal, and unless printing is obtained much more cheaply in Nashville than in MemVOL. XXII-12 phis, there will be some financial difficulties to report at the expiration of the first twelve months' experience with this journalistic bark. Looking at this matter from another standpoint, there are very few men who take the trouble to prepare a creditable paper who would be willing to have it buried in a publication that has a circulation of three or four hundred subscribers. An author desires that the fruit of his pen shall reach an extensive circle of readers, and the claim for such attention is perfectly legitimate. We are confident that the adoption of this plan of publishing papers read before the society will result in the loss of some of the best contributors to the annual program. The publication. of Transactions is a good and permanent method for the preservation of papers, but society members should be permitted to first publish their papers in a journal of their election (which the Tennessee State Medical Society now does), or else one that has not merely a limited and local circulation. This scheme of publishing a State Society journal has beer. tried many times before without success. Mississippi and Arkansas have each made an unsuccessful venture. There are a few other States that are publishing society journals, but these, almost to a unit, are poor productions from every standpoint. Let us continue the publication of our Transactions, but don't, gentlemen, commit the society to a venture that savors so strongly of turning the grindstone for some who have the editorial bee buzzing under their bonnets. THE BARRING OF TUBERCULOUS IMMIGRANTS. CONSIDERABLE discussion has been evoked by the action of the Treasury Department in refusing admission to consumptive immigrants, tuberculosis being classed by the department under the heading of communicable diseases. Many claim, and we find to our regret that a number of these are physicians, that this step on the part of the Government is uncalled for and without the basis of scientific certainty as to the contagiousness of this disease. Indeed, the New York Academy of Medicine has recently adopted a resolution denouncing this ruling of the Treasury Department. While the course of the Treasury Department may be construed by some as inhumane, we can not see why the victims of tuberculosis should not be excluded as well as those of favus and other communicable diseases, which cause the rejection of a number of immigrants to this country. It is true that the degree of contagiousness of tuberculosis is still debatable, but sufficient evidence has been adduced to prove that it is at times transmitted from man to man through the medium of the air and other routes of conduction. The consumptive immigrant is almost invariably an individual in reduced circumstances and is incompetent to earn his own living on account of his physical condition. These diseased persons frequently become a charge upon the hands of the community or State, and prior to that they customarily live in surroundings so squalid, and are usually so careless as to habits, that they necessarily become foci for the further propagation and spreading of tubercle bacilli. They are undeniably a source of expense to the country, instead of being producers, and unquestionably must be more or less inimical to the health of other individuals with whom they come in contact. From a sentimental standpoint it does look a little hard that the father or mother or sister or brother should be refused. permission to join their relatives in this country, which they have come to look upon as a haven of independence and physical health, but while this may concern a limited circle, the old law of the greatest good to the greatest number recurs here as in similar conditions, and it certainly seems unfair that this country, which already carries a heavy burden of parasites who have come to us from other lands, should be forced to assume other charges who, while they may be objects of pity, can be of no value to the community, but must always remain a source of menace. We are as yet too uncertain of our ability to cure tuberculosis to welcome these prospective patients. DR. LEONIDAS H. LAIDLEY has been appointed to the important post of medical director of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. EDITOR'S NOTES. THE WESTERN OPHTHALMOLOGIC AND OTO-LARYNGOLOGIC ASSOCIATION will hold its seventh annual meeting in Chicago on April 10, 11, 12 prox. An interesting program is promised. THE MEMPHIS TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES OF THE CITY HOSPITAL held its annual- commencement exercises on Friday evening, February 14, at the hospital. Three nurses were graduated. THE MEMPHIS MEDICAL SOCIETY enjoyed a delightful smoker at the Peabody Hotel on the evening of January 31st. There were between sixty and seventy members of the Society present, and the occasion was one to which all who attended will look back with many pleasant recollections. THE APRIL ISSUE OF THE MONTHLY will be almost entirely devoted to the publication of papers discussing the continued types of fever more or less widely prevalent in the South. There will be articles by Drs. W. A. Evans, of Chicago, J. B. McElroy, of Stovall, Miss., H. L. Sutherland, of Rosedale, Miss., Wm. Krauss, of Memphis, and others. This issue will be of peculiar interest to physicians of the Delta, and the issue alone promises to be worth more to practitioners than the cost of a year's subscription to the foremost medical journal in the Mississippi Valley. THE FARBENFABRIKEN OF ELBERFELD COMPANY has requested us to inform its readers that they have recently ferreted out and exposed a gang of drug counterfeiters, who have been selling under false labels to druggists, imitations of several of their preparations, and that quite a quantity of these spurious products has been placed on the market. Where phenacetin, sulfonal, or trional are indicated, every physician recognizes the imperative necessity for securing a pure article, therefore they should exercise great care in seeing that their patients obtain what is prescribed for them. |