4894 MAY 13 1899 LIBRARY THE ECLECTIC Doctor, you know what the GLEANER has been in the past. The kind words and high enconiums that have come to us from its readers have lightened our labors, and gave us encouragement. The satisfaction coming from the work of 1895 leads us to resolve that more and better work shall be done for the GLEANER for 1896. More gleaning will be done. We'll gather the wheat from the chaff, more and more. If the GLEANER is as good or better, don't you want it for One Dollar? Whether you do or not doctor, we think most kindly of you, and sincerely wish you "A Merrie Christmas and a Happy New Year-a successful 1896." NEW YEAR'S GREETING. Shake! brothers shake! The GLEANER sends As they start on the tour of another year. Keep stiff upper lips-be wide awake, And you'll get there-Shake! brothers shake! "Get there," did I say? You have already got there." To be an eclectic is to be pre-eminently there. What we want is to get past "there," and don't you forget it-we'll do it. With head up, and tail up, Until we have compassed the beyond of medicine. This is written. on the benignant face of destiny. Thank the Lord you are eclectics, and keep on in the good work with all your mights. A wise man of the future shall write it down thus: To have been an eclectic in that day, is to have been a medical philosopher, a hero, and philanthropist. The GLEANER folds you all to its great heart, and bids you a cordial God-speed. C. M'LLE NEW YORK.- Talk about fin de siecle literature- "jever" see Mille New York? It is edited by Vance Thompson, assisted by James Gibbons Hunneker. Thomas Flemmings edits the art departWhere else should it be published than in New York? ment. Thompson easily out-satans the devil in virulent pessimism, and he festoons this with black-and-blue misogyny, and a comprehensive whoop-up of general hell-bentness. His dissatisfaction comprehends all that is interstitial to the banal of socialdom, and the cosmic procession. His egotism reaches to Kingdom-Come, but so does his pen. Write? That quill of his is tipped with the odylic essence of the divine energos, and it has the hyperian sweep of a comet. His method without being Maeterlinckish, contains dubious hints of that maniac's mode. The yawning difference depends upon the literary sanity of Thompson's utterances, and their possible intelligibility. He writes with his nates on belles-lettres convention, and his feet on the exigenities of rhetoric. He is a literary recidivist-nonpareil and impeccable in his delightfully atrocious outlawry. He can write you into catalepsy, and he does it-does it with a naive, grotesque, and diabolic abandon that tilts His Horned Nibs into an erethism of infernal ecstacy. His style is tensive, vervy, Gallic, fetching, ultramodern. Vance Thompson's poetry easily places Walt Whitman's masterpieces in per-spectivity. It is epanthrous in the Heleconic flower garden. Its altruistic edge seems keenest when tempered with diabolism-it will float a maledictory mælstrom on white wings. It is astral and empyrean in cleanness, literary chastity and lofty mightiness. Mr. Hunneker, without being less brilliant, is much less an iconoclast, and has less seething sulphur in his system. He is frenetic, and rather more inclined to the obfuscatory nebulosity of that devastating fatuity which isolates the Maeterlinck brood. He delights to precipitate you into sub-psychic dankness, or troll you through a clammy undertone of ideation. Again, he will work a supernal startle on you that nearly nullifies the spiritual cohesiveness of you. His is a master pen indeed, and it has found its place. The picture work is ultraspecifically outre, deriving its motif and spirit from far oriental art. M'lle New York is the Gila monster in the menagerie of letters, but it is decked with a diamond crown. C. 'TIS SAD.-You have had the experience many a time, dear doctor. He sorto drools into your office. He sits down, and for seven consecutive minutes is cocooned in triple laminated silence. You contemplate him in euphemistic self-ablation, noting that a horned fate has fucated dolorous shades on his dubious personality. A sharp-fanged condition has been gnawing at his soul 'till he has become habitually lost in lugubrious reminiscence. Has he lost a fortune? Has he lost dear friends? Has he buried his family? Nay, 'tis none of these. What then is it that so shakes this poor unfortunate? Heaven knows it is enough-reciprocity between his inner emotions, and penile annex has been totally or partially abolished! He is thinking of the halcyon past, profusely studded with strenous, uncompromising, square-shouldered erections. His life has become a ceaseless wail on the dark shore of Time. If senility is at the back of this, there is little, except evanescent and spasmodic hope for the poor man. He will have to descend to lower planes of thought, in which he will contemplate his other latter end-that which merely concerns spiritual things and his eternal destiny. In any case, you will prescribe specific saw palmetto, and either compound or single syrup of the hypo-phosphites. These will insinuate themselves into the virile center and shake it into selfassertion, if anything will. But 'tis sad. C. RUMOR, founded on what we deem very reliable authority, tells us that an effort is about to be made, if the announcements are not already adrift, to form a new medical association of a National character. It is to gather together the "rag, tag and bobtail" of all schools. The only qualification necessary to membership is that the applicant is allowed to practice medicine in his own State unmolested. No matter whether the applicant has a degree or not. No matter whether he advertises or not, nor in how gross a manner. Liberty, of which so much is said and so little is known is to be at once the society's watchword, pass word and by-law. There is a crying need for such an association. The disrespectable cast outs of the several reputable national associations are becoming so numerous they need a haven of some kind in which they can rest undisturbed and around which they can draw some kind of a cloak that will screen them from general observation, and under which they can carry on their canny practices and upon which they can paint in the purest white "We are respectable." This society will, with outstretched arms, welcome him who opposes enactment of medical laws, and decries state boards and the higher education of physicians. Much of its oratory will be exhausted upon the good old times that have gone. We are glad that such an association is organizing. As we say, it makes a resting place for the fellows who have been dropped; it is a place to which we can direct others who share in the same ideas. We will be glad if quite a number whom we know well and with whom we have been compelled to associate will withdraw from the old Associations and take up with the new one. To GLEANER readers who desire to retain their respectability, we say, beware. Don't be caught by chaff. These people will need some one of worth and integrity to keep in the front, to give them a show of respectability. State boards however, will soon have the measures of all who belong to such an institution. Men will be judged, and rightly by the company they keep. What an array of brass bands, and trumpetry such a grand army would be obliged to keep about them so that the public would really not see of whom it is composed. WE would be pleased to have in brief form for publication, the experiences of those who have used thuja as an injection for the cure of hydrocele, and for the radical cure of hernia. Please tell us how you use it-the dose and its repetition, and the effects that followed. Several inquiries have come to us lately on this subject. THE National Eclectic Medical Association will convene as previously announced, in Portland, Oregon, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, June 16, 17 and 18, 1896. The brethren on the coast, both in Oregon and California, in society assembled have reitterated and emphasized the invitation extended at Waukesha, and they guarantee to us a most hearty reception, many new members, a full coast attendance and half rate or less railroad fares, thus affording to every one a most auspicious time to visit the "far west." Within a short time an individual announcement will be sent to all members. Programs and other announcements are in preparation. From now on until the meeting, every Eclectic in the nation has a work to do for the National, and it is expected that none will falter. Begin to think over your duties. We will ask you to act later. Dr. H. E. Currey, of Baker City, Oregon, is chairman of committee on transportation and arrangements. Respectfully, W. E. BLOYER, M. D., President. ELSEWHERE in this issue you will find a most excellent article on lobelia. We fully agree with its author, Dr. Sinclair, in his praises of this old remedy. There is but one point, however, to which we cannot agree, and that is that lobelia can take the place of ipecac. We depend upon both of these remedies to a great extent in bringing about a favorable result in many of our cases-and we believe, that to a degree, these two drugs are diametrically opposite as far as indications are concerned-lobelia is the remedy-when we have oppression, fullness of tissue, impairment or depression of the sympathetic. Ipecac is the remedy for irritation of the sympathetic. Of both remedies we use very small |