The determination of the degree of contamination of drinking water is a matter of considerable detail and requires not only technical knowledge more extensive than the average physician possesses, but a laboratory equipment which is by no means easy to secure. The use of "Helthin" for the preliminary testing of water commends itself to the physician for the test is so simple that it may be left to the patient. In fact it may be said that this test, devised by Professor H. Erdmann, of Halle, Germany, is all that is required in the detection of contamination in private water supply or for bottled waters, inasmuch as it shows at once the existance or absence of nitrites and also the relative degree of contamination.

Hot Springs (South Dakota) Weather.

AS REPORTED FOR 1898 BY THE LOCAL UNITED STATES REPORTER, DR. C. W. HARGENS.

The following is a summary of the weather record of Hot Springs, South Dakota, for the year 1898, as reported to the United States Weather Bureau. The observations as to temperatures and precipitation were made with United States Weather Bureau maximum and minimum thermometers and standard rain gauge. The mean maximum is found by dividing the sum of the maximum daily temperatures by the number of days in each month. The mean minimum is found in a similar manner. The mean temperature is one-half the sum of the mean maximum and mean minimum, the computation is carried to the nearest tenth of a degree only. The number of days on which precipitation occurred does not include those days on which the precipitation amounted to only a trace, or a quantity so small that it could not be measured. The number of such days, however, was small.

DR. C. W. HARGENS,
Observer Weather Bureau.

SUMMARY FOR THE YEAR 1898.

Maximum temperature, 100.

Minimum temperature, 16.

Mean temperature, 45.6.

Total precipitation, 8.34 inches.

Number of days on which precipitation occurred, 52.

Greatest precipitation in any 24 consecutive hours, 1.02 inches.
Total snowfall, 27.45 inches.

Number of clear days, 216.

Number of cloudy days, 68.

Number of partly cloudy days, 81.

A day is noted as partly cloudy when the sun is obscured by clouds for from one-third to two-thirds of the day.

The journal of the Illinois Medical College, which has been known as The Bacillus, appears in June as The Illinois Medical Bulletin, announcing that from now on it will enter the field of general medicine with field greatly broadened. Dr. Seth Scott Bishop is the editor and Dr. Foster Frutchey is business manager.

J. H. Tilden, M. D., of Denver, in the June number of The Chicago Medical Times, in an article advocating the use of tampons in gynecological practice, reports, among others, a case which was characterized by severe reflex symptoms and which had not yielded to the treatment accorded by two other practitioners. Dr. Tilden's procedure was the introduction of a glycerine tampon and the administration of antikamnia in ten-grain doses (two five-grain tablets) to relieve the pain. The tampon was removed each night at bedtime and followed with hot water injections. The patient on being discharged remarked that since following this treatment she could run the sewing machine without the usual pain and tired feeling.

We are not inclined to protest very vigorously against the freedom with which some of our brother editors "borrow" paragraphs and verses from us. It's a good thing sometimes to have a few of these outstanding accounts due us-we may get caught short ourselves sometime. We have been rather foolishly particular, however, in crediting the journals from which we may have collected such little obligations-just in the way of receipts for such collections. We really do not care much about the failure of the brother editors to credit us with the original loans. However, we do protest against these editors taking our alleged jokes and pruning them into new forms and publishing them in such forms that we can hardly recognize our own children. The Medical Examiner and Practitioner took that oft-repeated "Murphy button" story of ours and published it quite fully-with only the point omitted.

There has never been any very clear reason why medical journals should not be made attractive in appearance, and we are glad to see our homeopathic fellow-townsman, The Clinique, set a pace with the most attractive cover of the season.

We may talk about the injury of corsets to the human as much as we choose; but they are not without their benefits. A Chicago woman was saved from death at a murderer's hand because the bullet hit the steel of her stays.

BOWLES

PROSERPINE

The Bureau of Information on American

Health Resorts.

A FEW THINGS WORTH REMEMBERING.

I. There is not a mineral spring in the world which has not an analogue in the United States.

II. The variety in climates in the United States includes practically all varieties required in any therapeutic uses.

III. The therapeutic value of mineral waters has been recognized since the days of Hippocrates, and the theories then advanced have since been rationally proven.

IV. In no nation in the world are climate and mineral springs so neglected by the medical profession as in America.

ANNOUNCEMENT.

The importance of the American Health Resorts and of the American Mineral Springs, is but beginning to be appreciated by our physicians who continue, as in the past, to place their chief reliance on the resorts and spas of the old world. It is but recently that eminent investigators have demonstrated that the mineral springs and resorts of this country, so far as natural resources are concerned, stand second to none in the world, and in many instances that the only points in which the European watering places can claim superiority is in the im

provement s

and in equipment--a point in which American wealth and

American in

genuity are fast placing

the advantage

Today we have in America numerous climatic resorts and mineral springs superior to those of other lands and with equipment equally as perfect and as luxurious; but unfortunately, we also have many which are practically worthless, upheld by liberal advertising, by the promulgation of fraudulent statements and by imposition upon the gullible.

WHAT THE BUREAU DOES.-It is in the discrimination between the laudable, and meritorious resorts and those which are not to be commended, that this Bureau ghards and protects the interests of the physician and his patients. It is obviously impossible for the busy medical man to visit and investigate all of the resorts, and being unable so to do, he must send his patients to new resorts on faith (often to his disappointment and to the injury of the patient), or to confine himself to the few (often the very few) resorts with which he is personally acquainted.

This Bureau takes upon itself the work of supplying to physicians and to their patients full and complete information concerning any resort in the United States; information gathered by competent medical men who are utterly unbiased in their work; and just such information, in every detail, as one would desire if he contemplated visiting the resort himself or of sending his patients there. In a word, the information given is intended (in the words of a prominent resort man) "to prevent the wild-goose chases of patients to resorts of no therapeutic value and to those resorts which, while of advantage to many, are unsuited to certain individual cases."