work. The teaching is individual and the student is taught all of the modern methods of research on the blood, sputum, urine and other secretions and excretions of the body. To the extent that he intelligently and carefully uses these methods when he goes into practice, he is the superior of other practitioners who employ only the older means of physical diagnosis. We believe that it is the duty of every physician who has not had the advantage of modern laboratory study to perfect himself, in these methods of diagnosis and to this end we most heartily recommend the above volume. It is practical and complete. Its use will enable a physician to fit up a laboratory and intelligently apply modern methods of diagnosis.

A TEXT-BOOK OF MATERIA MEDICA AND THERAPEUTICS. Characteristic, Analytical and Comparative. By A. C. Cowperthwaite, M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., Senior Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Chicago, etc. Ninth Edition, with an Appendix, including the New Remedies. Chicago: John B. Delbridge & Son. 1905.

We have had a copy of Cowperthwaite nearly a quarter of a century which means that the first edition has been in use by us ever since we graduated, and we have always found it helpful and a splendid book for quick and ready reference, and liking it particularly because of the splendid comparisons noted in the different remedies. This ninth edition includes all that has gone before, and in addition an appendix containing a number of remedies, whose use has become so universal that they cannot be omitted. The clinical index is helpful, and take it all in all, it is really a desk companion of unusual value. Delbridge Company have put it up in good style, the type being clear and easily read.

A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. By John Cordy Jeafferson. 1904. Vol. IV. The Doctors' Recreation Series. The Saalfield Publishing Co., New York, Akron, O., Chicago.

The fourth volume of this very excellent series is devoted to the Doctor himself, giving in its five hundred pages a tremendous amount of very readable matter. The editor, who has already written "A Book about Lawyers," and also other books, among them "The Real Lord Byron," and "The Real Shelley," is entitled to a great deal of credit for the multitude of interesting things he has collated. To give an idea of the scope of the book we note a few of the chapter headings:

"Something about Sticks, and Rather Less about Wigs;" "Quacks;" "The Doctor as a Bon-Vivant;" "Fees;" "Pedagogues Turned Doctors;" "The Generosity and Parsimony of Physicians;"

"Imagination as a Remedial Power;" "Make Way for the Ladies;' "A Few More Quacks;" "The Loves of Physicians;" "Number Eleven-A Hospital Story."

The illustrations consist of four full-page photogravures entitled, "Prof. Billroth's Surgical Clynic," from the Original Painting, by A. F. Seligman; "The Founders of the Medical Society of London," from the Original Painting; "An Accident," from the Original Painting, by Dagnan-Vouveret; "The Anatomist," from the Original Painting, by Max.

The book is a worthy companion of its predecessors.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY OF THE STATE. OF NEW YORK FOR THE YEAR 1904. Volume XXXIX. Edited by the Secretary, DeWit G. Wilcox, M. D., Buffalo, N. Y.

Here we have a record of the doings of a Society whose strength is acknowledged throughout the country. Its meetings are always well attended and the program offered the members is such as to appeal to not only the surgeon or the gynecologist, but the man in general practice. A fine portrait of the president for 1904-Dr. Bukk G. Carleton, New York City-serves as a frontispiece. The body of the work is taken up with some splendid. papers, on which there are reported discussions which indicate the amount of interest evidenced in the meetings. The secretary, Dr. DeWitt G. Wilcox, who by the way, has been chosen president for 1905, is entitled to credit for his thoroughness. There were more than four hundred members of the Society in attendance.

SAUNDERS' QUESTION COMPENDS-ESSENTIALS OF THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. Prepared especially for students of medicine. By William R. Williams, M. D., formerly Instructor in Medicine and Lecturer in Hygiene, Cornell University; Tutor in Therapeutics, Columbia University (College of Physicians and Surgeons), New York. 12mo of 461 pages. Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders & Company, 1905. Double number. Cloth, $1.75 net.,

Dr. Williams has presented this most important branch of medicine in a way which will appeal to all students. He takes up the diseases met with in general practice and epitomizes his treatment of the subject, giving the essential points and helpful hints as to treatment. It is a book from which the general practitioner could learn considerable and would serve him as a remembrancer for ready reference. It is of particular aid in differential diagnosis, inasmuch as the author lays especial stress on the contrasting points in similar conditions. The book is well illustrated and bound in the usual substantial way.

S

Cleveland Medical and Surgical Reporter.

Contributions are solicited upon any subject connected with the practice of medicine or the allied sciences, and the only restrictions placed upon them are that they shall be free from personalities and given to the REPORTER exclusively. The Editor of the REPORTER is not responsible for any opinion expressed by contributors.

Vol. XIII.

JUNE, 1905.

No. 6.

Original Articles.

ANNUAL ADDRESS, 1905.

By Prof. Gaius J. Jones, M. D., Dean of the Faculty.

Mr. President, Members of the Graduating Class, Ladies and Gentle

men:

At the risk of having it seem inappropriate I have chosen for the subject of this address, "What the Medical Profession Has Done for the Good of Humanity." It would be utterly impossible in a brief address of this character to enumerate very many of the beneficent acts of the profession, and I will confine myself to reciting a few. Ever since we knew anything of the history of mankind there has been some portion of it devoted to the relief of others, and a study of diseases and possible means of benefit; and the medical profession has always endeavored to avoid and prevent disease. We read that long before the Christian era one of the famous physicians among the Pythagoreans, Empedocles, living in Agrigentum, noticed that a severe type of fever periodically ravaged his native city. He observed that the appearance of this fever coincided with the return of the sirocco, which blows in Sicily on its western side. He therefore advised closed by a wall, as by a dam, the narrow gorge through which this wind blew upon Agrigentum. His advice was followed and the city was made free from the pestilence. Again, the inhabitants of Selinus were suffering severely from epidemic disease. A sluggish stream filled the city with stagnant water, from which foul vapors arose. Empedocles caused two small rivulets to be conducted into it, which made its current more rapid. The noxious vapors dispersed and the scourge subsided.

One of the most noted physicians who lived at this time was Hippocrates, a man, who like some tall monarch of the forest which arises far above all the rest about it. He wrote a large number of works upon medicine and surgery and was one of the physicians whose works were selected to occupy a place in the Alexandrian Library, which

consisted of something over 700,000 volumes, that unfortunately was destroyed after the conquest by Julius Cæsar. The work of this man seems almost incredible; the number of subjects which he covered in his writings, the amount of influence which he had over mankind, and that his writings had for more than a century after his death.

Cornelius Celsus was another brilliant man who followed Hippocrates. He was a contemporary of the greatest philosophers and poets of Rome during this most brilliant period. It is said that he studied rhetoric, philosophy, the art of war, economics and medicine; he was, in fact, a walking encyclopedia of the knowledge of the day. His teachings, like those of Hippocrates, had a wide and extensive influence over that portion of mankind for a long time.

Galen, another renowed author, was the first to distinguish the difference between arteries and veins. He it was also who originated the division of the body into the various cavities and described their contents. During the reign of Constantine the Great it was required that all who practiced medicine should pass a rigid examination (the first State Board examination I ever knew of), and these were the public helath officers. These health officers were pensioned by the city, enjoyed certain privileges, but had to attend the poor gratuitously.

The Emperor Marcus Aurelius was the first one to institute a dispensary service in the sacred city, and with the assistance of St. Pauline, a lady who lived in the midst of the greatest wealth and pomp and who retired from society and devoted herself to charity and selfdenial, founded a hospital for the benefit of the indigent sick and established a home for convalescents outside the city.

It is exceedingly strange that the circulation of the blood was not discovered until 1613, when William Harvey began to teach that which was thoroughly demonstrated soon after, and which doctrine has never been refuted. Strange to say, his teachings met with great opposition and he was considered demented for a time. The first publication concerning the movements of the heart and the blood were not allowed publication in England, but appeared in a foreign countryin Frankfort in 1628, when he was fifty years old. The first publication in England was in Cambridge in 1649, twenty-one years after its publication in Frankfort. The example of this man is remarkable, in that he withstood the opposition for twenty-five years until he found his theory thoroughly established.

One of the greatest benefits to mankind was the change in the method of the treatment of the insane. Prior to the time of Pinel the insane were imprisoned, chained and treated worse than wild beasts. He was led to the investigation of mental diseases by the fate of one

of his particular friends, who had become insane, escaped to the forest and was there devoured by wolves. In his efforts to improve their lot Pinel acquired the title of "conservative" and "aristocrat "either of which was almost equivalent to a death sentence. Undismayed, however, he appeared before the Paris Council and urged the adoption of reformatory measures, replying to the challenges of skeptical and self-regardful opponents by liberating a number of insane patients who were in his charge. The courage thus exhibited receives appreciation in our time, if never before. From that time on there was a gradual inprovement in the treatment of the insane throughout the civilized world.

But the greatest discovery in medicine was yet to come. Hahnemann, a renowned teacher and writer, while translating a work on materia medica, began to realize that it was possible that a more definite law existed with reference to the action of medicine than anything that had been demonstrated, and from this time he began a series of experiments, together with his friends, and he soon announced to the world that the law Similia Similibus Curantur was the chief governing principle in drug therapeutics. Prior to this time medicine unless given in tangible doses was not considered of any benefit, but he demonstrated that drugs were capable of curing in the sick diseases, the symptoms of which corresponded to those which they produced in the healthy. It followed as a matter of course that the dose must be exceedingly small or it would develop more symptoms characteristic of it-in other words, aggravate the disease. Hahnemann's followers soon proceeded to prove drugs upon the healthy and the symptoms which were elicited were collected and systematically arranged and used as a guide for the selection of the remedy when necessary. This custom has prevailed extensively since that time.

There stands in a prominent circle in the city of Washington, D. C., the most elaborate monument ever erected to the memory of a physician. This monument was dedicated to the memory of Hahnemann in 1901 in the presence of the President of the United States and his cabinet, the American Institute of Homeopathy. and a large concourse of people; a great acknowledgment of a thankful peopleerected almost one hundred and fifty years after Hahnemann's birth. Very few of us will be remembered in any manner that length of time -rather the place on earth which knew us shall know us no more for

ever.

Edward Jenner, who was born in 1749, is generally known as the father of vaccination, and it was he who discovered the prophylactic power of this method of treatment. The son of a clergyman, he began