waters compare most favorably with those of Europe and it is the duty of the medical profession to educate the public in this respect." What the eastern editor has said is true, but he has spoken only half the truth. The American mineral springs not only compare favorably with the spas of Europe, but, it has been clearly shown, offer from one to a dozen analogues to every European spa as well as having springs such as there are none of in the old world. This merely means that, if there is any merit at all in mineral waters, America offers more such benefits than any nation in the world. It means that if the therapy of mineral waters is not all a myth, America is the place above all others for those who would be benefited thereby. We are great or we are insignificant in surgery or in internal medicine as we compare favorably or unfavorably with Europe. The claim of European education at once gives a medical practitioner caste in the eyes of his American associates and the American public. We strive to equal Europe in the brilliancy and knowledge of our surgery and in our depth of thought in matters scientific. Europe is our standard of medical culture and achievement. We claim, with just cause for pride (if our claim be true), that we excel the Europeans in the originality and brilliancy of our surgery and that we rival them in our medical practice. These are the oft-repeated statements of the American practitioner and the American medical press. Yet these claims are not beyond question and would not be admitted without discussion by the practitioners of the world. In the one line in which our superiority is unquestioned we are remarkably silent, remarkably ignorant, remarkably neglectful. The American practitioner knows practically nothing of our American mineral springs and the medical press seldom calls attention to their excellence. We ignore them, feeling, perhaps, that they hardly merit our attention, yet Europe, our standard in things medical, treasures her springs and extols them to the skies. Is it the fear that some scoffer may brand him as a "water curer" that causes the American physician to ignore our natural waters? Is it through a belief that the European medical appreciation of mineral waters, which has grown through centuries, is an arrant absurdity, which causes the American practitioner to ignore that which these wise Europeans have studied with diligence? Or is it ignorance, pure and simple, which permits our American springs to remain practically unstudied and unused in ethical therapeutics? The field of the mineral waters in therapy is not as wide as the spring promoter would have us believe, but it is important enough to deserve serious consideration. We rail at

the charlatan-like advertising of the various American waters, but we never stop to think that it is due to the fact that educated physicians have declined to lend their learning to the development of these waters. Europe treasures her spas, America ignores her American springs. Europe has studied and knows the limitations and the possibilities of her waters, the American physician has studied American waters practically none and knows neither the therapeutic values or limitations. G. T. P.

CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS AND NURSES. "William Waldorf Astor has given 50,000 pounds sterling to construct suitable buildings for a dispensary in connection with the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, London. The charity is in memory of his deceased daugher Gwendoline."

Which reminds us that it is a great pity that William Waldorf did not emigrate to Chicago instead of to London when he found American crudeness so offensive to his hypersensitive soul. Not that we have need for any more dispensaries but there is a great and pressing need for a hospital for sick children in Chicago, especially for those sick with contagious diseases. Some months ago the cause so strongly appealed to the Women's Club that an efficient committee was appointed to see if a child's hospital could not be established in Chicago. For a while it looked as if the project could be brought to pass, for it was universally admitted that our present hospital accommodations for sick children are meagre and unsatisfactory, but in an evil day the committee took to itself counsellors, many counsellors and with various and opposing views. There has been much talk, oceans of talk, after the fashion of Women's Clubs, though it is but fair to say that in this case most of the talking has been done by men and the net result of this relief of pneumonic pressure is $2,000, one-half of which was given by one man, Mr. Henry Weaver. In a multitude of councillors there may be safety, but certainly there is not much hard cash and to one on the outside it does not look as if there was much wisdom. The present plan of the Children's Hospital Society is to raise as much money as they can and divide it among existing hospitals, whenever by so doing they can increase the efficiency of their service for sick children. The fallacy of the project is that it is so general that it appeals to no one in particular and worse than that, it is an inefficient method of remedying existing evils. Dr. Abt struck the keynote of the situation, when he said that the hospital interne, and he might have added the hospital nurse also, hated the care of sick children. Un

willing service is always poor service and especially so in the care of sick children who need exceptional gifts on the part of their nurses. The ideal nurse for the sick child is one that loves children and to do this implies an amount of unselfishness and the ability to appreciate things from the child's standpoint that to say the least is not congenital with the trained nurse. To the writer's mind there should be a picked corps of trained nurses for children's hospitals evolved by natural selection from the trained nurse. Mixed hospitals are not the congenial habitat of the child's nurse, hence the necessity for children's hospitals and their special training schools for the production of capable, loving, long suffering nurses, the demand for which is always largely in excess of the visible supply.

M. P. H.

When a number of well known medical men signed a letter urging the physicians of Chicago to vote as a unit for the present president of the board of county commissioners, they probably did not anticipate that his administration would be begun with one of the most odorous county hospital scandals we have ever seen. It certainly could not have been expected that in the administration of this "doctors' candidate" charges of incompetence and drunkenness of attendants, thievery of the hospital's drug rooms, improper muleting of fees from county patients by attending physicians, and other disgraceful proceedings would be charged. The career of the president of county commissioners-the "doctors' candidate"-has been unfortunate, to say the least. A partisan judge of his own party held that he was illegally depriving a county officer, of other political faith, of his "patronage" and funds for maintenance of office, and the smell of scandal hangs over Cook County Hospital-the very institution that the doctors hoped to have improved by the present administration.

We used to think there was a great deal of virtue when we were youngsters and fell beneath the chastening rod of our mothers or school masters, to "make believe" it didn't hurt. That is what "Modern Medical Science" is trying to do in regard to the article by Plympton sent to most of the medical journals in the country some time ago. The pink journal was caught on it nicely and now says "it didn't care." In addition it says of the journals which have "poured out the half-ounce vials of their wrath" on Plympton, "If he had worked in the name of some patent preparation from Germany,

the New York agents would have paid him for his article and the medical journals (except ours) would have been glad to print and silently mark a copy to the said agents." Virtuous Wm. Cowper Conant! Philosophical Wm. Cowper Conant, Editor-Publisher!

An excellent medical journal which hails from Cleveland, is really quite exercised over the now almost forgotten Keen incident, in which it was intimated that Dr. Keen was not averse to seeing his name in print. It will be remembered that Dr. Keen vigorously defended the cause of vivisection and obtained considerable newspaper notoriety from correspondence occasioned by his attitude. We think that few persons of ordinary intelligence would feel that Dr. Keen ought to have retired to the solitudes in this matter merely because he happened to be a physician. We have always favored a high standard for the code of medical ethics, but we do not think that there is any rational reason why the eminent medical man should dodge a newspaper as a layman does smallpox. If we remember aright the word doctor means teacher and it seems to us that instructing the layman through his own channels of communication would not be the most disgraceful thing a physician could be guilty of.

These are the kindly words of Dr. Samuel P. Earp, editor of The Indianapolis Medical and Surgical Monitor:

"THE CHICAGO CLINIC AND PURE WATER JOURNAL has established a bureau of Information on American Sanitaria and Health Resorts. This is an important feature and a practical method which has not been taken up by any other journal. Drs. Marcus P. Hatfield and Geo. Thos. Palmer, the able editors, are pursuing a course that will increase the popularity of their journal. The bureau is now able to furnish to the American physicians full and complete data on all of the American resorts and will gladly do so on application, without the least expense to the inquirer."

The Illinois Medical Journal, edited by our old friend, Dr. Geo. N. Krieder, of Springfield, published as a supplement to its March number a copy of the bill creating a state board of medical examiners and regulating the practice of medicine in Illinois. The bill is broad enough to be generally satisfactory, as it gives representation to physicians, homeopaths, osteopaths and pretty much all the cults.

The Mineral Springs of Illinois.

BY GEORGE THOMAS PALMER, M. D., CHICAGO.

It is not necessary to argue the fact that the mineral springs of the United States equal or excel those of any other nation of the world. That fact has been satisfactorily established by the few men who have given the American springs attention in the past few years. It is not necessary to argue the therapeutic value of the waters of the European spas, for if we should conclude that they were not of value, we should be compelled to reach such a conclusion in the face of satisfactory evidence to the contrary originating from the ablest medical minds of Europe. Since we have adopted the European medical men as our standards for comparison and since we feel safe in accepting their doctrines in other matters medical, our decree that Europe's best men are at fault in this one point would have very little weight indeed.

If we admit then that the European spas are of real therapeutic value and if we admit that our own mineral springs either equal or excel the European waters, we must admit that this subject has been shamefully neglected in this country.

As we come from press the Illinois State Medical Society will be in its annual session in Chicago and this society will duly consider medicine, surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, orthopedics, pathology, bacteriology, anatomy, physiology and the whole list of the many branches of medicine, but it will be said with safety that crounotherapy will not be mentioned and that the mineral springs of Illinois will have not the slightest attention.

The very men who come from the parts of the state in which the various springs are situated, will, as a rule, know nothing more about them than that there are such springs in existence.

Without discussion then, it is our desire to offer a short statement of the mineral spring resources of the state and we would merely suggest that, with the rapidity with which mineral springs are gaining popularity in the popular mind, it is well worth while for us to at least