With the great improvements still possible in the moving picture shows the schools of the country will find their influence transferred to the cinematograph. If disinterested men and women direct the latter's activities, all will be well. The dire possibilities for evil inherent in the shows make one shudder to think of them.-Lancet Clinic.

SLIPPING ONE OVER ON MIKE.

A party of contractors, among whom were two Irishmen, were gathered in one of the booths of a buffet, drinking beer. One suddenly suggested that they have a round of wine, and after a little discussion it was agreed that each one should ask a question and the first man who asked a question he couldn't answer himself was to pay for the wine.

It finally came Pat's turn.

"How is it," he asid, "that a squirrel can dig a hole in th' ground an' not lave anny dirrt around th' top?"

All guessed, but they had to give it up.

"Will," said Pat, "it's aisy enough. He commences at the bottom."

All seemed satisfied except Mike. He scratched his head thoughtfully and finally inquired:

"Oi say, Patsy, how th' devil does he git to th' bottom?"
"Bejabbers. Mike, that's your question, not mine. Answer it."
Mike bought.

ALL MADE CLEAR.

A woman missionary in China was taking tea with a mandarin's eight wives. The Chinese ladies examined her clothing, her hair, her teeth, and

so on, but her feet especially amazed them.

"Why," cried one, "you can walk and run as well as a man!"

"Yes, to be sure," said the missionary.

"Can you ride a horse and swim, too?"

"Yes."

"Then you must be as strong as a man!"

"I am."

"And you wouldn't let a man beat you--not even if he was your husband-would you?"

"Indeed I wouldn't," the missionary said.

The mandarin's eight wives looked at one another, nodding their heads. Then the oldest said, softly:

"Now I understand why the foreign devil never has more than one wife. He is afraid!"-Western Christian Advocate.

There is a Southern insane asylum where those inmates whose participate in dances and other amusements, to which outsiders are invited. At a lawn party at this institution, a prominent lawyer who had been invited saw a very attractive girl seated under the trees, and engaged her in conversation.

"You are surely not an inmate of this place?" he sympathetically inquired.

"Oh, yes, I am," she assured him.

"But you don't look a bit insane."

"Well, you see I was put here because I can't keep from swearing. You see that man walking around with a mop?"

"Yes."

"Well, he walks around after me and washes off the swear words that I write on the walks. I'm two hells and a damn ahead of the mop now." The lawyer departed.

A JOURNAL OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY

Publshed Monthly by Western Medical Review Company, Omaha, Nebr. Per Annum, $2.00 The Western Medical Review is the journal of the Nebraska State Medical Association and is sent by order of the Association to each of its members. Entered as second-class matter at the Postoffice of Omaha, Nebraska, under the act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

In the decade from 1901 to 1910 the death rate from tuberculosis in the United States declined from 196.9 for each 100,000 persons living to 160.3, a decrease of 18.7 per cent, while the general death rate, including all causes of death, declined only onehalf as fast, or at the rate of 9.7 per cent, from 1655.0 to 1495.8.

These figures were given out in a statement issued recently by The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. They are based on data abstracted from the reports of the United States Bureau of the Census, and cover the registration area in this country. According to the statement, the tuberculosis death rate has declined steadily since 1904, when

it was 201.6. On the other hand, the general death rate shows a fluctuation downward in general trend, but not as steady as the tuberculosis rate. The decline in the tuberculosis death rate in the last ten years means a saving of 27,000 lives at the present time.

In certain cities, such as New York, Boston, Cleveland and Chicago, and in states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the decline in the tuberculosis death rate is much more marked than in the country at large.

The National Association says that there are many factors working together to cause the decline in the tuberculosis death rate, such factors as the change in the character of our urban population, increased sanitation, and better housing, but probably as potent a factor as any has been the national wide antituberculosis campaign. "It may be foretold with considerable certainty," the statement concludes, "that when the effects of the present rapidly increasing provision for the care of tuberculosis patients shall have become evident, the decline in the death rate from consumption in the coming decade will be even more marked than that in the last one."

Nicotin and the Adrenals.

Any light on the physiologic action of an article as widely used as tobacco, or its active principle, nicotin, is of medical interest even if it cannot be immediately applied to problems of practical medicine. Hence attention may be called to some recent experiments in which it is clearly shown that a very small amount of nicotin administered to an animal causes increased activity of the adrenals; within a few minutes after the administration of the nicotin an increased amount of the active principle of these glands, epinephrin, could, by physiologic tests, be detected in the blood coming from the glands.

Such a result is in harmony with what has been learned within recent years as to the innervation of the adrenal on the one hand and the general action of nicotin on the other. It has been shown that the secretion of epinephrin is under the influence of sympathetic nerves and that nicotin has the property of