This takes the system practically out of the realm of politics, puts it under the control of the Health Board, where it belongs, and ensures a prompt and scientific investigation into the causes of death in all suspicious cases. The verdict of a coroner's jury today counts for very little, and very often is regarded as a farce or as a scandal. It has no weight with the district attorney, nor influence with the Grand Jury. The only fault of the bill is that it grants the present incumbents in the coroner's office too much consideration. There is no good reason why the law should not take effect immediately, and not be delayed until the present terms expire. We observe that the N. Y. State Medical Society and the Medical Association of the State of New York both endorsed and heartily worked for the passage of the bill. We have not learned that the Hom. Med. Society of the State of New York manifested in any way the slightest interest in the measure. It seems to be with the homeopathic profession once more a shameless exhibition of private selfishness and public incapacity.

But if homeopathy is not fittingly represented when laws are made, recognition may not be hoped when the laws become operative.

TUBERCULOSIS.

The late Prof. Koch, in 1901, made his famous assertion that human tuberculosis bore no relation to bovine tuberculosis, and, therefore, there was no danger of contracting the disease from infected meat or milk. He expressed the opinion that the decline of pulmonary tuberculosis in England was largely the result of special hospitals for the treatment of this disease. In direct opposition to this is the evidence given by Prof. Behring, at the Congress of German Naturalists and Medical Men in October last. His proposition is that tuberculosis has its origin in infancy and that the vehicle conveying the latent affection is milk. Tuberculous milk is more apt to cause harm in infants on account of the greater permeability of the gastro-intestinal canal. Active tuberculosis results from this latent infection when the conditions of life alter the soil of the

individual already the bearer of the essential seed. As a third view an Englishman, Dr. H. Charlton Bastian, boldly suggests that tuberculosis can be produced de novo. Prof. Hueppe, of Prague, seems to incline toward Behring's view of the etiology. He believes that the bacilli may enter the system through other channels than the lungs and that a special susceptibility of certain organs determines which would be affected. The point of least resistance is found in the lungs of the adult and in the intestines of a child. He believes that the fight against the baccilli alone would not suffice as a practical means of prevention. We should also resort to hygienic measures, which would increase the powers of resistance against infection.

It is an established fact that pulmonary tuberculosis, when in its incipiency, is a curable disease. The Department of Health in New York City have, in a twelve-years campaign, reduced the mortality of consumption forty per cent. Dr. Herman M. Biggs, the Director of the Bacteriological Laboratories of the New York City Health Department, says, "By observing simple measures of disinfection and isolation, it is possible to largely prevent all the suffering and death following this disease." The campaign in New York has been one of education, isolation of the patients and care of the sputum. This has been followed up by disinfection of dwellings where patients have lived or died. The Charity Organization Society's Committee on the Prevention of Tuberculosis have issued a series of charts, which show graphically the deductions resulting from the work.

Dr. Biggs says, in reference to these: "On comparing the death rate of New York and the country at large, if our advances be kept up, the time will come when New York City will be relatively more free from consumption than the country as a whole. I can say this, because consumption is a disease which can be controlled absolutely."

But while hygiene and sanitation are sufficient to check the disease in its incipiency, other measures are necessary later on in its course. Prof. Behring, in October, said that "vaccination" against tuberculosis is not beyond the realms of practicability. And as soon as November, Marmorek, at the meeting of the Academy of Medicine,

in Paris, made a definite announcement that he had found a new serum for tuberculosis and gave the details of its preparation. Knowing that the human tubercle baccillus has its habitat in the leucocytes or giant cells, Marmorek prepared, after repeated experiments, a glycerinated leucotoxic liver boullion. Only the hardiest tubercle bacilli thrive in this preparation, but these maintain their characteristic properties and produce a toxin. By injecting graduated quantities of this product, the blood serum of the animal acquired antitoxic properties. This antitoxin has been used with very satisfactory results on some two thousand "hopeless cases" in Paris. It is said to be especially efficacious in surgical tuberculosis.

Recently a new preparation has been reported by our Consul General at Berlin. He calls attention to the work done by the Sanosin treatment, under which out of one hundred and twenty desperate cases received up to the date of the report, fifty per cent. has been discharged as cured. The sputa of the patients was kept under examination, and a rapid and steady diminution of the bacilli noted. The treatment is very simple. Sanosin is composed of flowers of sulphur, powdered charcoal, and the powdered leaves of the Australian eucalyptus treated with essential oil of that plant. On placing a small quantity of this preparation over a spirit lamp, the sulphur and eucalyptus are volatilized and fumes inhaled by the patient. The results are said to be prompt, especially upon the catarrhal conditions, preventing cough, aiding sleep, and increasing the appetite. It seems worthy of trial in this country.

Dr. Samuel Tracy, of New York, recommends another inhalent. The material in this case is thorium, which possesses many of the properties of its allied metal, radium, and is much less expensive. Thorium oxid is heated, and the emanations carried to the lungs, where they leave a film of radio-active matter, which continues to act for from twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the original emanations have been exhaled. It is of value on account of its antiseptic and antifermentative properties, and does not interfere with the dietetic, hygienic or even with drug treatment.

Finally, it should be remembered that the homeopathic physician has a powerful force at his command in the well-selected drug.

The properly prescribed remedy, used with modern sanitorial treatment, has many cures to its credit.

With increasing knowledge of etiology, the proper education of the laity, and the use of the scientific methods of treatment at our command, we may be confident that the day is not far distant when tuberculosis shall cease to be the dread "White Peril."

I

A DEFENSE OF HIGH POTENCIES.

T has been frequently charged, by members of the high potency wing of the homeopathic profession, that the leading journals of the school are so intolerant of their views as to refuse to give place to reports of cases in which high potencies were prescribed. The NORTH AMERICAN unhesitatingly challenges the right of any one to charge it with exercise of any unfair discrimination in this or any other more or less disputed subject. We believe that no one can properly choose one of two courses unless both sides are presented to him from which to make the choice. We print in this issue of the NORTH AMERICAN a paper entitled "A Clinical Case and Defense of High Potencies," recently read by Dr. F. H. Lutze, before the Homeopathic Medical Society of the County of Kings. We have done so not so much because we think it is a valuable contribution to homeopathic literature, but because it reached us accompanied by a challenge to show our fairness by printing it, and the writer's personal challenge was backed up by others from friends of his way of thinking.

The whole career of the homeopathic school has been marked by a more or less bitter discussion of the potency question. We have no idea that this last contribution is going in any way to settle the question; if the problem were to be solved by the publication of such papers we would gladly give our friends all the space they thought was necessary. This paper, however, we must confess to be singularly unconvincing, and we think those friends of the author who urged its publication were ill-advised. They might better have prayed to be saved from their friends.

The report of the Clinical Case, with which the paper opens, is not without interest. As one reads it one sees a justification for the sceptical attitude toward medicine and medical men, which is undoubtedly growing among the laity and for the prevalence of the tendency to run after such new gods as Christian Science, Mental Science, Osteopathy, etc. And the doctor is to be congratulated upon the happy termination of the case. But, granting that, what then? Surely we are no more bound to become users of high potencies as a result of the termination of this case than we are to become Christian Scientists, Mental Scientists, Osteopaths, or the advocate of some patent medicine, because a happy termination followed the employment of their use in some given case. The point is that the writer of the paper has failed to recognize the fact that the narration of a single case is not evidence of a character that can be accepted for a moment by the scientific thought of to-day. Deductions as to the value of any method of therapeutics, of any detail of therapeutics, can be drawn only from observing results in a large number of cases, and comparative values can only be established by comparative tests made under precisely the same conditions. To scientifically establish the worth of high potencies we need to use the clinical material in our hospitals and to let the experiment run over a considerable time. Let, say, one-third of the cases in an institution be given remedies in the lower potencies, one-third receive high potencies, and the remainder no remedies at all, except sac lac for mental effect. Carry such a test on for a year or more, and we should then be in a position to judge of the relative curative value of high potencies. Dr. Lutze's defense, occupying twothirds of his paper, had better not have been written. He would have served his cause better had he stayed his pen when the narration of the case ended. One might almost say that he has gone on the principle of bolstering up a bad case by abusing the plaintiff's attorney. One would suppose from reading the article that everyone that does not use the extreme potencies alternates his remedies, makes no use of repertories, has no homeopathic textbooks. The advocates of high potencies deserve all the credit that can be given for the mastery of homeopathic materia medica that as a body they