and reputable firms unhesitatingly testified to the fact that they sold compound articles of food branded as pure, and then prayed Congress to enact laws which would compel them and their fellow-dealers to be honest."

Attempts have been made to form some estimate of the gain to the dishonest dealer and the consequent loss to the consumer resulting from food adulteration. The lowest estimate has been placed at $225,000.00 by Dr. Abbott, of Massachusetts, and at $675,000.00 by A. J. Wedderburn, special agent of the Department of Agriculture. “He says that Congressional investigation of the hog products, and especially of lard, clearly shows that my estimate is below rather than above the mark." This was written in the last pamphlet published on the subject fourteen years ago. It must be borne in mind that the practice of adulteration is on the increase as well as the volume of trade done. Of still greater importance is the effect produced on the health and life of the consumer of impure foods. We are told that much of the adulteration is not injurious to health, and that it does not destroy life. By some the substances used in adulteration are classified as injurious and the non-injurious, and we are expected to thank God, if not the dealer, that after having been robbed we have escaped with our life.

I hold that it is impossible to use food that has been adulterated in any degree without suffering to some extent from its use. If an infant is fed on milk below the standard it suffers, but if a preservative be added, the infant suffers still more, even though the preservative be not an active poison. If sulphate of copper in French peas is injurious if taken in large quantities it is only less injurious if taken in smaller quantities. If, as is claimed by Koch, tuberculosis is not transmissible, through the use of tuberculous meat and milk, yet most of us would prefer ours without being thus contaminated, if not for sanitary reasons, then because of the æsthetic. If coffee retards waste, and is a stimulant, and one needs it, other than coffee will not produce the result and the consumer will surely suffer, or is injured for the lack of it. Other substances are admittedly injurious, and instances are not infrequent where death has resulted, notably chrome yellow (Chromate of lead) in buns in Philadelphia a few years ago. The remedy lies in educating the people on the subject, more especially physicians, and those who make our laws. Then suitable laws must be enacted, and they must be judiciously enforced. Many States have such laws all more or less ineffective and carried out, if at all, with spasmodic efforts, followed by long periods of repose. In some instances this is due to insufficient appropriations, this in turn being due

to the utter lack of appreciation on the part of the people and our legislative bodies of the importance of the question. Then let us agitate for good State laws, with sufficient appropriation, and energetic enforcement, but finally the national government must regulate the matter by laws governing the food supply.

804 Lehigh Ave.

SOME POINTS ON THE CARE OF YOUNG BABIES.*

By Chandler Weaver, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa.

If mothers or nurses would wash out the baby's mouth after nursing they would seldom have babies' sore mouth. Not having much, or at first any, saliva, the milk will lie in the mouth and become acid, cutting the fine mucous membrane, from which sore mouth begins.

Another point: Take a frail baby and give it a bath every day. tumbled over the lap and undressed too often wears them out-the sleep after such is too often from exhaustion. Better to wash where and when dirty, using oil between to rub the limbs and parts of the body, which can be done without much fatigue to baby. It acts as nourishment, as well as massaging the body, which hardens the skin and makes better circulation, increasing the growth and endurance of the baby until it gets older and stronger, then the bath every day will be tolerated without bad results. When baby is two or three weeks: old I substitute a saturated solution of red rock salt in alcohol and water-half and half-for the oil rubs.

Another point: Too frequently parents want to take baby carriageor trolley rides of distances too great, tiring them out, when they areentirely too young to get any enjoyment or health from it. I believe this is one of the greatest reasons that first babies are so often lost, the parents being in too much of a hurry to show them to distant rela-tives and friends. Babies should be kept at home for at least four to six months, where habits can be regular, without so much wear and tear on their physical strength. Give them plenty of fresh air, but. do not take them out of their home, are my instructions to the young mother.

Another point: Not too frequent feeding. My minimum time is: two hours, but as soon as possible longer-show mothers the reason of this, by telling them it takes as long for one drop of milk to digest. into food as it takes a full stomach of milk, and without it is properly prepared by the stomach it will not get into the blood for baby to grow on, and worse too, it will make them have pain as it passes down *Read before the Homeopathic Medical Society, State of Pennsylvania, in Easton, Sept., 1904.

through the bowels, because it should not be in that undigested condition. Stomachs need about one and one-half hours to properly prepare their part of the digesting and everybody, as well as every organ, must have times of rest between working time to properly keep on with their work. If baby worries between times of feeding, give it nothing but water, either hot or cold, whichever is most soothing to it.

Another point: Dress in loose, light, warm clothes in cold weather, but in summer when the temperature is high, ranging around 90 degrees, have as little on as possible, but be sure to keep abdomen covered by always pinning baby's undershirt, which had better be of gauze wool, in the square whenever it is changed, so it cannot get up under baby's arms, leaving abdomen exposed. Undershirt, square, and a light slip are sufficient for any baby with temperature around 90 degrees, protected from draughts. If you are favored by having large shady trees, put a mosquito netting over coach, which will divide the wind and do baby no harm, if windy.

Another point: If baby has tender skin and is subject to chafing instruct the mother to have underclothing and diapers always washed with borax soap, which you will find will often overcome the trouble.

Feeding is an important subject of its own and much has been written upon it, so I leave it alone, except to call attention to one point. Physiology tells us that we do not have tyalin in the saliva until near the third month, and science tells us that it is needed in the saliva to digest cereals, so under three months the baby's food must be animal, which we get in cream and milk and white of eggs, or having something going through baby, pasting the fine mucous membranes of the bowels, giving them pain, and closing up the ducts by which absorption should take place to feed and increase growth of blood and tissue. This of course applies to artificially fed babies. I never even allow water off of soaked crackers under three months. Give plenty of water, with milk and cream to suit conditions, and not much sugar. This paper is short, but to the point, to help young men to reason, to action, to lessen the large mortality of infants.

A Scotch doctor who was attending a laird had instructed the butler of the house in the art of taking and recording his master's temperature with a thermometer. On repairing to the house one morning he was met by the butler, to whom he said, "Well, John, I hope the laird's temperature is not any higher to-day." The man looked puzzled for a moment, and then replied: "Weel, I was just wonderin' that myself'. Ye see, he died at twal o'clock."-Kansas City Independent.

THE DEMANDS OF PÆDOLOGY IN THE PROGRESS OF MEDICINE.

By Anna D. Varner, M. D., Wilkinsburg, Pa.

There is no other field of medicine that requires the attention alike of general practitioner and specialist-be he gynæcologist, surgeon, oculist, or aurist-as the diseases of children.

No other part of the work is more important. To promote health in a child is like laying a firm, strong foundation for a large building. The whole super-structure depends upon the strength of the foundation. The health of an adult depends a great deal upon his physical condition in early childhood.

Another reason why pædology is such an important study is because of the exceedingly high mortality in children. In our large cities one-tenth of all infants born die during the first year; one-third of all deaths are in children under two years of age; and 45 per cent. under fifteen years.

The diseases to which these children succumb are of such a nature that, in the present state of our knowledge, prevention is possible. According to Holt, who made 726 consecutive autopsies in children under three years of age in the New York Infant Asylum, 322 deaths were due to pneumonia, 56 to pulmonary tuberculosis, 189 to diseases of the digestive tract, 35 to diseases of the brain, 36 to marasmus, and the remaining 88 to various other causes. We find very much the same proportion in private practice in either the city or the country, so that in any locality under any conditions if the diseases of the respiratory tract and those due to digestive disturbances and faulty nutrition were deducted from the sum total of all diseases less than one-third would remain. After five years of age the acute contagious are the most fatal.

It is interesting to note the chief etiological factors concerned in these diseases. Omitting malformations and accidents connected with birth, the diseases in infancy are due largely to these four causes: inheritance, infection, exposure to cold and conditions interfering with nutrition. The last mentioned includes improper food, unhygienic surroundings and neglect.

Over against those appalling figures which prove that more than one-third of the human race die before reaching maturity place such causes as improper food, impure air, infection, neglect, etc., and tell me, is not prophylaxis the chief requirement in the advancement of pædology?

True in acute infectious disease great progress has been made in prophylaxis. The sanitary conditions have been improved and quarantine laws enforced. Scientists are wrestling with the problems of

germ life, serum therapy and the purifying of our water supply. Some effort has been made to control the spread of tuberculosis; very little to prevent syphilis. Surely these chronic infectious diseases, demand more effort of the profession to suppress them than the acute disease, because they are more disastrous to humanity. Tuberculosis is widespread and usually fatal. Syphilis is more frequently transmitted from parent to child than any other disease. They are both practically incurable. The best way to control them is to prevent them; the best time is in childhood; the best means is to educate the people how to live so as to avoid contracting them.

But the prevention of the so-called germ diseases is not all that is to be considered by the profession in the future. Germs do not multiply on good soil. Some very interesting tests are being made at the Homeopathic Hospital in Pittsburg. They are taking cultures from the hands of the operator, the assistants, the nurses, and the field of operation just at the beginning of an operation after the most rigid antiseptic preparation, and they are proving over and over again that it is the patient's resisting power, and not the absolute absence of germs that prevents many a fatality there.

Suppose ten people are exposed to infection and but one becomes infected, then it is obvious that the most important way after all to prevent disease is to increase the resisting power of the body. This brings us to the chief, fundamental cause of disease-poor nutrition.

If, as we are told, protoplasm is the basis of all life, then this protoplasm contains the secret of the power to resist disease. Each -cell is composed of nutrient matter, living matter and formed matter. In health there is a sort of fixed proportion between these component parts. In old age the formed matter exceeds the nutrient. From maturity to old age they are equal, but mark you, in childhood the nutrient far exceeds the formed matter. It must, if a child's body is to be kept in a healthy condition and grow at the same time. I believe that the secret of vitality and the power of resistance lies in this ratio of proportion between the nutrient and formed matter. you can readily see that anything that changes the quality and quantity of the nutrient matter will not only decrease the resisting power of the body against germ diseases and increase the predisposition to hereditary diseases but will prove the starting point to digestive troubles and various other maladies which may follow the victim through life.

Nutrition then is certainly the most important study in pædology and the high death rate in childhood will not be materially decreased until this subject receives more attention from the profession.