for it in Potomac Park, the greatest exhibition on public health ever shown in America will be held. The exhibit, which will be composed of eleven groups, will seek to show what America has done in the prevention of disease and the promotion of health. Dr. Joseph W. Schereschewsky, of the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, will be in charge of the exhibition.

During the Congress every effort will be made by the American Committee to show the foreign delegates how the United States has made possible the construction of the Panama Canal by establishing sanitary working conditions, and to assure them that after the canal is opened there will be no danger from the spread of disease from that quarter. A plan for securing uniform and comparable international vital statistics in which the United States is greatly lacking will also be presented. A concerted movement for better public health organization will be started. These and many other subjects will be discussed by the greatest experts in sanitation and public health in the world.

. While the dates of the Congress itself are from September 23rd to 28th, the exhibition will open early in September and will continue until after the Congress.

VITAL STATISTICS.

Lincoln, Neb., Jan. 22, 1912

Editor Western Medical Review,

Dear Sir:

Omaha, Neb.

Thinking that your readers might be interested in information relative to the vital statistics of the state as collected and compiled by this depratment, I hereby hand you a summary of the same for publication. While it is conceded that the returns are not as complete as could be wished, yet in the main they are very gratifying when it is remembered that the state has not made any systematic effort along this line until comparatively recently, and when it is further remembered that more than half of the state is sparsely settled, making it much more difficult to obtain such reports. The department is pleased to note and acknowledge with thanks the efficient and loyal assistance and support accorded it by the large majority of physicians and undertakers of the state, the derelict and obdurate ones being a very small minority. Some physicians seem to labor under the delusion that they are being required to make the returns of births and deaths for the benefit of the state and hence should be compensated by the public for the same; I want to say for the benefit of such that primarily these returns are made for the benefit of the doctor's patrons, for it must be apparent that the obstetrician has not completed his services when officiating at a birth until he has made a legal record of that birth and the fee he charges his patron carries with it the completion of his services. The same holds good in the case of death, the physician not having completed his services until he has signed up the death certificate. In regard to the returns of marriages and divorces it may be interesting to know that the county judges and clerks of the district court comply with the law in this respect very promptly making full returns of the same without any quibble. The classification of causes of death used in the past was an old one and rather unsatisfactory; hence the department has done away with it and for the future will use the International Classification for causes of death. Physicians are earnestly requested and urged to use more care and be more definite when assigning the causes of death on the death certificate. The disease causing the death should be given and not the symptoms or effects: for example do not give such causes as anemia, collapse, coma, dropsy, shock, etc., but when possible name the disease that have given rise to such conditions as that is the real cause of death.

The department has just adopted the standard birth certificate used

by the United States Census Bureau and it will be used in the future; and it is believed that all will agree that it is a great improvement over the old card system.

Hoping for continued and increased interest along these lines, I am,
Very respectfully,

According to the newspapers, a new use has been discovered for quinine. It occurred to a certain housewife, that because quinine had benefited her husband, a sufferer from malaria, it might perhaps be good for a favorite hen which was ailing. Accordingly, she administered a two-grain pill, and before long was gratified to find her patient the liveliest Leghorn in the yard. The next day the hen not only laid her accustomed morning egg, but a second one in the afternoon; and since then, we are assured, she gets a quinine pill every morning, and regularly lays two eggs a day! And if you doubt it she can show you, as evidence, the empty box in which she kept the pills.

A GERMAN ALLEGORY.

On a recent trip to Germany, Doctor Harvey Wiley, the government's pure-food expert, heard an allegory with reference to the subject of food adulteration which, he contends, should cause Americans to congratulate themselves that things are so well ordered in this respect in the United States.

The German allegory was substantially as follows:

Four flies, which had made their way into a certain pantry, determined to have a feast.

One flew to the sugar and ate heartily; but soon died, for the sugar was full of white lead.

The second chose the flour as his diet, but he fared no better, for the flour was loaded with plaster of Paris.

The third sampled the syrup, but his six legs were presently raised in the air, for the syrup was colored with aniline dyes.

The fourth fly, seeing all his friends dead, determined to end his life also, and drank deeply of the fly-poison which he found in a convenient

saucer.

He is still alive and in good health. That, too, was adulterated.-November Lippincott's.

The Chicago Evening Post records this dialogue: "Oh, doctor," sighed patient, "I am so glad you have come. I feel dreadful, and I don't know what in the world is the matter with me. My husband says it is nothing but nervous idigestion, but his mother is positive I am going to have appendicitis, and my mother declares I have intermittent fever, and my sister says it looks to her like creeping paralysis, and Aunt Henrietta says I've got malaria. What do you think I've got doctor?" "Well," frowns the physician, "from these symptoms I should say offhand that you have too many relatives."

MANUAL OF THE DISEASE OF THE EYE

For Students and General Practitioners. By Charles H. May, M. D., New York. Seventh Edition, revised. With 362 Original Illustrations, including 22 Plates, with 62 Colored Figures. New York: William Wood & Company, 1911. Price $2.00 net.

This book is so well and favorably known that it would seem superflous to offer anew our recommendation of it as one of the very best manuals of diseases of the eye. Its popularity is attested by the demand for seven editions within a period of a few years, and many of the editions have had to be reprinted. The high character of the work is also attested by the fact that it has been printed in the German, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Japanese languages. Even in England and in other European countries, as well as in Japan, the book has gone through two and sometimes three editions.

CASE HISTORIES IN NEUROLOGY,

A Selection of Histories Setting Forth the Diagnosis, Treatment and PostMortem Findings in Nervous Diseases, by E. W. Taylor, A. M., M. D., Instructor in Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Assistant Physician, Department Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital; Visiting Neurologist, Long Island Hospital, Boston. W. M. Leonard, Publisher, Boston, 1911.

This is the fourth of the case history series which brings post graduate instruction to the desk of the busy physician.

Next to seeing the cases themselves this method certainly gives the most realistic picture possible of disease conditions. In the arrangement of text this book is exceptional. The nervous field is covered by a succession of well classified cases, making a compact work for ready reference.

It is divided into five sections, i. e., Peripheral Nerves; Spinal Cord; brains; conditions of vague, or undetermined pathological basis; and psychoneuroses.

Each section is preceded by a resume of diagnostic methods illustrated with diagrams and charts of neurone systems just sufficient to give a clear idea of the case descriptions following. The histories are stripped of all verbiage not necessary to concise yet simple description and each one stands out as an entity. The discussions on differential diagnosis and observations on pathology accompanying each case are plain talks full of the meat of common sense. A little attentive reading of this work will clear up many perplexing problems in nervous diagnosis and treatment for the general practitioner. It is really a revelation in the possibilities of readily intelligible descriptions in a field that is ordinarily almost a closed book to the family doctor.

DORLAND'S AMERICAN POCKET MEDICAL DICTIONARY Edited by W. A. Newman Dorland, M. D., Editor "Dorland's American Illustrated Medical Dictonary." Seventh Edition. 12mo. of 610 pages. Philadelphia and London, W. B. Saunders Company, 1911. Flexible leather, gold edges, $1.00 net; thumb indexed, $1.25 net.

This useful little book is becoming very popular with a wide circle of friends and has established a definite place. The revised, enlarged edition, contains hundreds of words not found in works of its class. Terms in nursing, dentistry and veterinary medicine are included and the present edition will prove to be of far wider usefulness than any previous edition.

DISEASES OF THE STOMACH.

By Charles D. Aarón, Sc. D., M. D., Professor of Gastroenterology and Adjunct Professor of Dietetics in the Detroit College of Medicine; Professor of Diseases of the Stomach and Intestines in the Detroit Post