D THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE CLEVELAND MEDICAL SOCIETY AND OF THE UNION MEDICAL ASSOCIATION OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO PUBLISHED THE TENTH OF EVERY MONTH AT 512-515 NEW ENGLAND BUILDING One Dollar a Year in Advance Single Copies Ten Cents EDITORIAL OSTEOPATHY ONCE MORE R. WILLIAM SMITH, Osteopathist, has sued the Medical Age, Mr. William M. Warren, Detroit, publisher, for $25,000 damages, chiefly for having described osteopathy as a "contagious form of feeblemindedness." Some exception seems to have been taken to the Age's having spoken of the portraits of authors in the Journal of Osteopathy as "a collection of faces one rarely sees outside of an idiot asylum." Certain comments were also made upon the statement of "Bill" Smith, M. D., D. O., to the effect that a case came to him who "for three months had passed no urine," and who, under the benign influence of the new cult, passed five gallons of urine in 30 hours. This was thought to indicate that perhaps Smith's statements were not all entirely credible. In a late issue the Age, in acknowledging the suit, advises Smith not to come to Detroit for his money by way of Illinois, as the latter State offers a reward of $500 for his apprehension for violating certain laws, and that in addition a grand jury of the same State found a true bill for burglary against the same individual. The Age very properly doubts if any court will uphold a claim for damages from such a source even if the alleged injured person holds a chair in the American School of Osteopathy. In an open letter Mr. Warren, publisher of the Age, advises the profession that he will fight the suit and osteopathy along with it to the last ditch. He, however, points out pertinently that osteopathy has hoodwinked already the law-makers of Missouri, Michigan, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Illinois, Colorado and North Carolina. Kentucky is the only State which has really driven them from its borders. Our own State Board has solved the matter to its own comfort by sitting still and allowing them to flourish since Judge Kohler's decision. As the osteopathists have not received a medical education they are certainly not entitled to practice. The prof ssion must wake up to the fact that an insidious cult is endeavoring to break down the bars of education which the profession has with infinite pains put up in some states. Mr. Warren properly hopes that he will have the support and encouragement of the whole profession in his fight against this newest form of quackery. There is no reason to doubt that the profession will sympathize with him and wish him success. In addition, no medical man should lose an opportunity to explain to his lay friends just what osteopathy means (neither God nor man really knows this) in its relation to educated medicine; that our objection to it is not at all because it is a new form of treatment (which it is not), but because its devotees wish the lawmakers to allow them to practice their cure without the necessity of studying anatomy, physiology, chemistry and the other basal sciences of medicine. The public must be educated and the Legislature of this State must be watched. The suit against Mr. Warren and the Medical Age involves much of the interests of legitimate medicine and the profession owes some gratitude to Mr. Warren for his willingness to meet the issue and spend his money in maintaining the dignity and honor of scientific medicine. I MEDICAL COMMISSION BUSINESS. Na very suggestive letter in the New York Medical Journal of October 29, Dr. Charles Lyman Greene draws attention to a most reprehensible practice which is becoming prevalent in the west and has even been openly advocated by at least one writer in the same journal. This is nothing less than the payment of a commission by the consultant to the general practician for referred cases. It would be thought that such a proposition is so self-evidently subversive of the best interests of medicine that it could find no supporters nor even plausible argument in its defense, yet there are some who think the specialist should add something to his regular fee to repay the general practician for bringing him a case, on the ground that the case is good for so much money, which would not go to the specialist without the advice of the general practician, who is, therefore, entitled to his share. The general adoption of such a custom would, of course, result in a sort of auction conducted by the general practician going about among the specialists seeking the highest bidder for his consultation cases. The final stage might very likely be an exchange, much like those for grain and stocks, where, for a consideration, a kindly broker would undertake for the country practician the most remunerative placing of his cases among the city specialists. When such a custom is adopted medicine will cease to be a profession and become purely a trade, conducted only for the money that may be in it. At the same time the patient will cease to be a suffering human being asking such assistance as science may afford and willing to pay the physician for his knowledge and skill, and will become simply an article of commerce, or rather speculation, to be bought and sold and hawked about so long as any money remains in his pockets, after which the profession will have no further use for him. But no matter how seductive this debauching practice may seem, the honor and good sense of the American profession can be very safely trusted to see through its shining surface to the dark realities beneath it. It is not to be believed that such a practice will thrive amongst us. Certainly the honorable men will not touch it once they have considered its significance and its danger, and the dishonorable who employ it will but sink deeper in their dishonor. To those few who advocate this custom we have one question to put: "Would you be willing that your patient should know that the reason you reterred him to the specialist was that you received a share of the fee which he pays the consultant?" Of course not. Yet is a financial transaction which must be kept secret an honorable one? The patient assumes that it is for his own good that he is referred to a specialist by his usual medical adviser, and knowledge of a commission paid therefor would lose the physician both the respect and the patronage of his patient. W AN EARTHLY ANGELL E NOTICE that Mr. Angell, one of the most prominent representatives of the Humane Society movement and an antivivisectionist of the most obtrustive kind, is much wrought up over our cruel and cowardly treatment of "poor little Spain." This streaky kind of cerebration is not a new thing with the class of people he claims to represent. "Poor little Cuba" doesn't enter into his calculations. The murder, by starvation, of over two hundred thousand people-women and children-by the unspeakable Weyler, evidently doesn't count. At the same time the inoculation of a guincapig for purely scientific purposes fills him with a holy indignation entirely beyond the power of words! We cheerfully resign ourselves to a position a little lower than the Angells, if this is a sample of their capacity and char acter. **** People of the Angellic type have never been noted for extraordinary consistency. For instance, in his advice to children on the humane treatment of dumb animals, while adjuring them to speak kindly to the cow and asking how people who stick pins into butterflies would like to have other people stick pins into them, he calmly advises the youth of this land to drop worms into boiling water before using them as bait! It's hard to avoid countering this humane gentleman with the question as to how he'd like being dropped into boiling water. Is it absolutely necessary that children should go fishing, or if so, that they should destroy the "harmless and useful worm" in the peculiarly atrocious manner recommended by this soft-hearted humanitarian? The management of the subscription department of the JOURNAL will hereafter be attended to by the Helman-Taylor Company. In taking this step the dealings of the JOURNAL with its subscribers will be much facilitated. A large book-house of that kind is in constant touch with the doctors and we are satisfied that they will not only obtain subscriptions for us to better advantage, but that they will deal with our subscribers much more accurately than can we ourselves. In the matter of dealing with advertisers it is especially important that the management of a medical journal should be in the hands of the editors rather than in the hands of a business house. This part of our management is retained and will be retained by the editors. Sedulous care will be taken to maintain the highest standards as well ethical as literary. With this new era in our career it is believed that the JOURNAL will represent even better than before the interests of its readers. H GRATITUDE. OW much more precious than mere material profit is the heartfelt gratitude of an appreciative patient! A well-known surgeon of this city was lately called to attend an old gentleman whom he found in a very critical state from retention of urine, along with other serious complications. After prolonged and careful treatment, often necessitating three or four visits a day, the patient was restored to normal health. On the last visit the old man's daughter followed the doctor to the door with the evident intention of expressing her gratitude for his skilled and faithful services. "O, doctor," she exclaimed in a voice tremulous with emotion, "I am sure I don't know how I can ever-." The doctor, being a modest man, begged her not to mention it. "But, doctor," she persisted, "I must tell you, for I know you will be interested. I met Mrs. Dodgit yesterday, and when I told her how nicely dear pa was getting on, she told me she'd been giving him Distant Treatment for the last two weeks. She's a Christian Scientist, you know. I think it's simply wonderful." * * * Which leads to the conclusion that "for ease, rapidity, and absence of friction" (to say nothing of profit), this style of practice "lays over" anything at present on the market. The millinery business and ladies' tailoring simply "ain't in it." Anyone acquainted with the facts of multiple telegraphy on single wires will readily perceive the economy, both of time and work, made possib'e by Mrs. Eddy's thrilling discovery. It would seem, indeed, that the number of healing impulses transmissible at any given time is only conditioned by the financial status of the patient. Another marked advantage of the absent method depends on the now well-recognized fact that the healing business goes on in the subjective or subconscious stratum of the scientist's mind, which makes it possible for Mrs. Dodgit to be choosing a new bonnet and treating seventeen patients simultaneously. In view of this last achievement of science it is almost pathetic to look back on the labors of Jenner, Lister, Pasteur and other well-meaning but misguided experimenters. But the march of evolution knows no mercy, and we honor the past heroes of science for what they aimed at rather than achieved. T HE copying of editorials and clinical papers from one journal to another when selections are judiciously made, is a matter to be encouraged. A singular carelessness, however, prevails in giving credit to the source from which such material is obtained. As an instance, an editorial on "Dietary Cranks" in THE JOURNAL of November, 1897, was quoted by the Alienist and Neurologist, published in St. Louis, and properly credited to this journal. In the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette of May, 1898, an abstract was taken from this editorial, headed "Shall We Live On Fruit," and begins with the statement that Dr. Hughes of the Alienist and Neurologist waxes hilarious over dietary fads," but fails to state the source of his hilarity. The same Dietetic Journal of July uses the editorial once more, at this time giving it in full, but still crediting it to Dr. Hughes. In the Public Health Journal of October, 1898, the same editorial is quoted, this time also credited to the Alienist and Neurologist. The St. Louis Clinique of July, 1898, begins an extract from the Southern Medical Record in this way: "In the Pacific Record of Medicine and Surgery Dr. John P. Sawyer gives his experience in the treatment of chronic urticaria by sodium nitrite." Dr. Sawyer's method of treatment has thus made the rounds of these three journals, and THE CLEVELAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE has meantime sunk into oblivion. We are very glad to have our matter appreciated and utilized, but it would be somewhat fairer to credit it to us, even when it has passed through several hands. P ERHAPS the most brilliant invention of the age is a piece of therapeutic machinery (I forgot the name of it), which, according to the inventor, "concentrates the ethereal vibrations upon the affected part, thereby expelling out the diseased condition." It consists of a handsome walnut tripod supporting a four-foot leg, on |