complexion and the fetid coating of the tongue of such an illy medicated victim. The germ of disease is still in the organization and no drug medication will aid an abused natural healing power to cast out the foe, except the old puke, purge and sweat method or more rationally the hydropathic wet sheet pack method or most rationally the late invention of the transmission of ozone through the thermic current direct into the circulation which will destroy the miasmatic plasmodium throughout the system. The administration of gelsemium, bryonia or aconite is to be recommended. Remedies should not be given haphazardly through the œsophagus as formerly, chancing new combinations or chemical decompositions in the stomach before and after digestion, for they can be given specifically and scientifically by direct, local inhibition through electrical endosmosis which is much superior even to hypodermic injections.

If we are true eclectics we should rationally study all abnormal conditions of our bodily functions, and any new discovery, which will prove to transmit remedial agents direct to the seat of disease should be hailed with joy. A. OPPERMANN, Auburn, Neb.

DR. JNO. W. WRIGHT, ELK CITY, KANS.-Dear Doctor:-Pardon me if I am intruding on your time, but I want to compliment you on your worthy article in the November "Brief."

For six years I have been in regular practice, prescribing proprie tary medicines and lots of it. My; what a help to the druggist I am; when I get through with a patient, his drug bill is bigger than his doctor bill. Within the last year or two I have talked with one or two friends who are eclectic physicians (as my father was before he died), and I believe I see a better way to practice medicine. I do admire the certainty of specifics and I am finding out in my practice the value of smaller doses; but the drug store tinctures, etc., are so unreliable, and after reading your article and studying it, I see you have accomplished with a few drops with the right medicine what I have with $1.50 worth of medicine at the expense of my patient. Doctor, I am going to ask you, what shall I get to further enlighten me on what I am after, Spécific Medication and Diagnosis isn't it, and by whom and where can I get such works? Where can I get a good Eclectic Journal and where can I send to for a catalogue of Specific medicines, etc., when I want to put a line of medicines in my office and stop feeding the drug store at the expense of my patient? Well, I'm young yet, and have a good deal to learn. Trusting I have not bothered you with this communication, I am yours fraternally. Signed.

Blanchard, Iowa, Oct. 30th, 1896.

[Tais letter is full of truth and interest. Many doctors are in the satne boat with the writer; that is, "there are others," who feed the pitent medicine maker, and who should stop to think.]

CLUB RATES.-"When accompanied by a year's subscription to the ECLECTIC MEDICAL GLEANER, all back subscriptions being paid, we will send any or all of the following Eclectic Journals at the rates indicated:

This club offer will hold good during December and January only."

DRUGGISTS PROSECUTED.—It must be admitted that "no reputable druggist" will substitute one drug for another, as, for example, cinchonidia for quinine. While this is true, we still lament the fact that the term reputable has to be used, and ask in all seriousness, how are physicians to judge between reputable and disreputable? However, it seems as though another class of substitutes is not considered so reprehensibly by pharmacists, many of whom maintain their right to use their own judgement and substitute when certain preparations are specified.

For example, if a physician orders a preparation made by a certain manufacturer, the argument is made that if this preparation has no official formula, the druggist has a right to put in his own make or that of any other manufacturer. To this view we most emphatically dissent. If we order Squibb's chloroform or ergot, or Gardner's syrup of hydriodic acid, we want only that brand. Of course, in an emergency case, any make of chloroform may be taken in order to save life, but, in such case we would write "Squibb's preferred." In another direction, in cases, for instance, where the manufacturer has with held his detail process of manufacture from competitors, there is no substitute. There may be name imitations but they are not drug representatives. Every physician has his preferences in the way of brands of medicines, and confidence is placed in some manufacturing pharmacist whose preparations made by unpublished formulæ, have in his own hands become standards. No other pharmacist can reproduce these preparations and the druggist who substitutes imitations is abusing his physician. In this connection, it may be said that as a rule the only inducement to the druggist who substitutes is that of money making, for the only claim substitutors make for their imitations is that of cheapness. We observe by the Pharmaceutical Era, July 22d, that Fairchld Bros. & Foster have began a lively crusade against those druggists who are putting up a cheap "essence of pepsin," when Fairchld's is ordered. A number of them are to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We wish "Fairchild's success in their work, for we are firm believers in the integrity

of original medicines, and insist that these substitutes that save twentyfive per cent. are the cause of much discouragement to physicians and many deaths of patients, as probably many of our readers have personally discovered.

Had eclectic physicians been willing to take imitations of specific medicines, they would have had no creditable remedies to day. Had eclectic physicians not insisted on their rights, and the privilege of selfprotection, the market would have been flooded with substitutes of the same name and "cheaper."

ANTITOXIN NEEDS SALTING.-The common sense of the world condemns antitoxin. It should not be necessary to say to the most enlightened members of a community-the medical profession-that serum taken from a horse which has undergone a process of chronic poisoning, and which begins to deteriorate further from the moment it leaves his veins is not a proper substance to introduce directly into the circulation of a sick child.

The enormity of the crime of those who originated this form of treatment increases daily as we read the growing list of deaths and unnecessary suffering occasioned by blind devotion to a theory.

In all the common walks of life where men can have a monopoly on an idea, and the benefits accruing from its application, the idea is received cum grano saiis, and subjected to the most rigid test; but in medicine, where skepticism has most warrant, ingenuity rather than practical results is the accepted test of truth.

All those who have the honor and dignity of the profession at heart, must make a stand against faddism. It is a very real battle between theorists and formalists, and those who love truth for its own sake. Doctors are but men, and a majority of men will follow any standard; but Brief readers possess large individuality; they are accustomed to think for themselves, and have conscientiously and intelligently enrolled under her banner of: "Exact diagnosis and pure drugs." But to believe is not enough: speak, act and write your belief. Begin now.-Medical Brief.

EVERY now and then we get a letter about like the following: "I never run any bills. I pay cash for everything I get. I did not order your journal this year." This in reply to a dun for the year's journal. A man who will take any journal-not ours alone, for there are others— out of the post-office regularly for eight, nine or ten months, then when asked to pay for it write a letter like the above, has a soul smaller than a mustard seed, and his honesty could not be found in a thousand year's microscopic search. He has none. B.

HERE is a "tip" for tablet doctors, for which no charge is made. Some of our oldest and best ideas come from China, and this one should not be scorned by physicians who have frequently been bothered at not finding in their handbags the remedy indicated. St. Nicholas tells the story: Abbe Huc, a distinguished traveler, says that when a Tartar finds himself without his drugs and medicines he is not the least embarrassed. He writes the names of the needed drugs on slips of paper, and these, being rolled up in little balls, are swallowed by the sick man. "To swallow the name of the remedy itself," say the Tartars, "comes to precisely the same thing.-Druggists Circular and Chemical Gazette.

[The above holds the substance of a whole dissertation. Tablets are a God send to medical skeptics alone. They afford a fine opportunity to those who have no faith in drugs, and who wish to do nothing with the semblance of something. The days of these pretty little frauds are numbered.]

C.

THE ONSLAUGHT OF MODERN SURGERY.-Dr. N. Senn in a recent address at Atlanta, Ga., pays his compliments to abdominal surgery in the following remarkable language, which it will repay all concerned to consider:

The greatest onslaught of modern surgery has been upon the organs of generation, male and female. The future historians who will record the work of many gynecologists belonging to the present generation will have reason to express their surprise at what disasters the art of surgery has produced when applied in cases far in advance of a scientific fourdation. Here and there we hear a feeble voice protesting against the indiscriminate surgery upon the organs of generation of the opposite sex, but the mutilating work continues in spite of such opposition and well meant advice. When we arraign the gynecologists before such a representative body, composed of representative medical men of this country, for innumerable and inexcusable transgressions of the rules which ought to govern and control the art of surgery, we do not include the scientific, conscientious workers in that department of surgery, but our remarks apply to a class of routine operators which has recently grown to alarming dimensions not only in this, but in nearly every country which has been penetrated by the dim rays of so called bold surgery. The new generation of doctors finds no longer satisfaction in practicising their profession in some rural district. They have their eyes on large cities and have heard of enticing fees paid to specialists for insignificent operations. Why buy a horse and saddlebags when fortune awaits them in devoting themselves to a speciality, more particularly gynecology? The recent graduate, or the man who has become. disgustsd with country practice, seeks a much employed gynecologist, follows his work for a month or two and returns to his prospective field

of labor a full fledged specialist. He is now ready to extirpate the uterus, remove ovaries and Fallopian tubes, sew imaginary laceratiors of the cervix and perineum. Do you suppose that such an aspirant for gynecological fame ever examines a woman ard firds her perfect? Is it not true that in nine cases out of ten he finds something to mend?

Laceration of the perineum is a favorite subject for the amateur gynecologist. The extent of lacerations and the symptoms caused by it are not always care fully considered in deciding upon the propriety of an operation. The performance of an operation on the perineum in five or seven minutes still serves as an attraction for the lookers on in many private hospitals and gynecological clinics.

The frequency with which women are being castrated is one of the most flagrant transgressions of the limits of the art of surgery. It is not unusual for one operator to exhibit five or six normal ovaries as the result of half a day's work. All kinds of excuses are made for this kind of surgery. Where is this wholesale unsexing of our female population going to end? The beginning of the end has come. The army of women minus their essential organs of generation is beginning to raise. its voice against such mutilating work. The number of women who willingly sacrificed their ovaries to restore their shattered health without securing the expected relief has increased to an alarming extent. This sad experience has made the gynecologists more desperate and bold. It is difficult to say where this rage for the removal of the female sexual organs will end, or what organs will be the next battle ground for the aggressive gynecologists. The clitoris, the vagina, the cervix uteri, the ovaries, the Fallopian tubes, the uterus and its ligaments have successively passed through a trying ordeal of operative furor. What the next fad will be is impossible to foretell.--The Charlotte Medical Journal.

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MEASLES. Dr. Lyman Pike, an eclectic warrior, 71 years of age, who keeps matters moving at Terre Haute, Ind., writes us thusly: "I cannot agree with Dr. J. C. Andrews as to the management of measles. I want specific sarracenia purpurea in every case of zymotic disease, besides the indicated sedatives. I never think that measles are cured unless sarracenia has been used five or six days." The doctor is an observer. Who can substantiate the correctness as to the value of this remedy.

THF professor asked, "And what is space?" The trembling medical student who was being examined in elementary physics, said, "Carnot think at present, but have it in my head."