if it did exist he regarded it as a very simple and harmless matter. If it were contagious and virulent, however, Lloyd thinks that Dr. Gould carried it in his clothes to his new patient American Medicine, for he says that American Medicine is more seriously infected with the germs of the dread "commercialism" than the Philadelphia paper ever was. Personally we remember many good things in both journals and never found it necessary to disinfect them when they came to the office. We are inclined to think that Dr. Gould is something of a hypochondriac in regard to his journalism and that the dread malady-"commercialism"-of which he tells us, is not as prevalent or as virulent in the better class of medical journals as he imagines. Certainly American Medicine is no better than the Philadelphia Journal was morally, typographically, or "medically."

Signed Editorials.

Dr. T. D. Crothers, at the meeting of the American Medical Editors' Association at New Orleans, urged very strongly that editorials should invariably be signed so that they would make clear the personality of him who expressed his opinions editorially, that they might bear the more weight from the reputation of the editorial writer, and that the signature might impel a man to his best efforts. To all this we agree most heartily. We have been in the habit of signing all editorial matter and have personally stood responsible for all that has been said in our editorial pages: sometimes individually, at other times mutually. The further expressions of the speaker are not so obviously correct. He feels that a medical journal should take no sides in the medical controversies of the day, but should reflect the sentiments of the medical profession. He is inclined to believe that the medical journal should pose as a mirror, inanimate and unthinking, rather than as a moulder of professional sentiment. He is opposed to criticism and especially opposed to bitterness or sarcasm in editorial writing. He calls attention to the blunders which editors have made by too much positiveness; he says nothing of the evils which editorial sarcasm and irony have. choked. He especially dreads the medical journal becoming "yellow" -he fears this bilious hue as one might a viper; but he does not warn us against the anaemia-the bloodlessness which is far more a fault with our present medical press. We are ourselves advocates of conservatism. We dislike bigotry in the medical press or in the medical man. We do feel, however, that the editor, if he is

to be a force or power in his vocation, must permit himself and must be permitted perfect freedom of thought and speech. We like the personal medical journal, if it has the interests of the medical profession at heart. We like to see the journal with an object and, if necessary, we like to see the editor of such a journal fight for his principles by casting firebrands into the camps of the enemy. We lament the dreary, monotonous existence of many of the medical editors, who, fettered by fear that they may overstep the bounds of conventionality, go along through life as rather imperfect mirrors of the ideas of others. There is a difference between conservatism and somnolence. A tinge of jaundice is no worse, to our minds, than the recently discussed "sleeping sickness" complicated with a grave and persistent anaemia. G. T. P.

Are Doctors Poor Lawyers?

A prominent lawyer, who had dealt much with physicians, stated recently that there was no class of persons with whom he came in contact who seemed so incapable of grasping the principles of common law as medical men. "The scientific physician," he was heard to say, "endeavors to work out his own law according to scientific principles, reasoning as to what the law ought to be as a matter of cause and effect. The empirical physician, accustomed to deal with his constituency with unreasoning dogmatism and having no one to contest his positiveness, is inclined to take an arbitrary view of the law and to decide at once, in a sort of 'snap diagnosis,' what the law ought to be as sized up by his own. opinion." The law is not to be reached in either of these ways. The law is itself dogmatic and positive and is made so by peculiar statutes and oftentimes more peculiar decisions at which one can not guess with any further assurance than that he will fail. The most arrant positiveness on the part of the layman will not alter the law a hair's breadth. For the same reasons the scientific reasoning of the scientific man will not bring him to a conclusion coinciding with the facts of the law. Law is theoretical only so far as the theories have been established. The doctor and the parson are allowed the greatest liberty in the formation of opinions, for these opinions are given to the world, as a rule, unargued and unrefuted, while the legal man must form his opinions with the appreciation that they will be torn to pieces, if possible, by a man as able and as clever as himself. This may account for the posi

tiveness of the doctor or the parson and for the caution of the attorney in dealing with legal matters. Whether the lawyer above quoted was correct in his opinion of the legal capacities of the doctor's mind or not, can not be proven and may not be accepted by medical men, and yet it is interesting to note that the legal efforts of medical men have often proven dismal failures. The medical practice act of Illinois was engineered by doctors. It was trimmed by lawyers so that it could be read in a single session of the legislature, so voluminous was the doctor's draft of it, but the doctors would not consent to any of the features being eliminated. The result has been that this "doctor's bill," drafted by doctors, has opened the way to more quackery and unprincipled practice in Illinois than ever before. Even criminal abortion does not permit the revoking of the license of the man who has practiced a few years. It is good in a general way, but shows an unfortunate deficiency of legal knowledge. The medical practice act of South Dakota is now in the hands of the courts in the trial of a traveling quack doctor and in all probability it will be proven entirely unconstitutional. Another specimen of laws drafted by doctors. Possibly it would be as wise for the doctor to hire a good lawyer when he wants to express himself perfectly in legal matters as for the lawyer to hire a good doctor to carry him through an attack of serious illness. G. T. P.

Cold water taken before meals excites a flow of gastric juice, but the so-called stomachics and bitters, and carbonates, introduced into the stomach before meals, do not cause a flow of gastric juice. An ice bag or cold compress applied to the epigastrium half an hour before meals will increase the arterial flow in the walls of the stomach, and therefore the flow of gastric juice. Cold friction is a powerful tonic to the circulation, glandular activity, and to the nervous system. A blood count following an application of cold will show a great increase in the number of blood cells, not that they are manufactured by the treatment, but that they are forced out of the deep-seated organs and congested areas into the general circulation. Insomnia yields very readily to hydriatic measures without resorting to depressing drugs. The neutral bath, the neutralelectric bath, large fomentations to the spine, the wet sheet pack prolonged for an hour or more without inducing perspiration, are all effective measures in promoting sleep. For chronic functional disorders probably more can be done by hydriatic treatment than by the use of any other one measure. F. M. Rossiter.

The civic milk problem is one that will not down, but on the contrary has latterly grown to such importance that the United States Department of Agriculture has deemed it worthy a monograph of some 200 pages, entitled "The Milk Supply of Two Hundred Cities and Towns."

This is published with the reprint of the Bureau of Animal Industry under the immediate supervision of Henry C. Alvord and R. A. Peterson, and is well deserving the attentive reading of every altruistic physician. Its perusal is especially commended to those who desire to improve the milk supply of any large city, for in no other way is it possible to realize the magnitude of the task that confronts the milk reformer in a city of large size like Chicago.

For more than seven years the milk department of the Chicago Board of Health has done valiant service for the improvement of our city milk. When it began its work, 45 per cent of the samples of milk examined were being sold contrary to law; today the percentage is a trifle over seven-results that we have just reasons to be proud of; but no seven men can adequately inspect daily 4,629 milkmen, distributing milk from 2,662 stores and 2,692 milk wagons. As a matter of fact with the present city facilities and allowance ($10,000) it is impossible to inspect more than about 2,000 samples a month, a mere droplet out of the 679,860 quarts of milk required for Chicago's daily consumption (0.8 pints per capita).

To remedy, as far as possible, this condition of affairs the gentlemen who compose the milk commission of the Chicago Medical Society, propose to affix their official label to the milk of those dairies that meet their requirements and it is supposed that the grateful public will do the rest, a consummation devoutly to be wished, but the trouble is that the great American public don't care twopence for the committee's little gummed label. Literally that, for milk properly cared for as vouched by the commission's label will cost the consumer nearly, if not, four cents more a quart, delivered in Chicago. This our good housewives will as yet not stand for. They see no extravagance in a shopping tour which necessitates a fifty-cent lunch at Gunther's or the "Grill Room,” but eight cents a day additional for pure, clean milk-perish the thought!

Why, then, should the dairyman and the milkman spend their good money for what the people don't care to pay for? They don't and the consequence is that unless there is an enforcement of fines by the board of health, the constant tendency of city milk is to deteriorate in quality. In our own city only a few weeks ago it was found by the inspectors that the three leading restaurants in Chicago were selling milk that subjected them to a fine. If a princely firm like Marshall Field & Co. does not care enough for the quality of its milk supply to buy a certified milk, what hope is there of impecunious dairymen generally desiring inspection even at the hands of a committee of the Chicago Medical Society?

Furthermore how many of the members of that august body really know how a model dairy ought to be run, with profit, for . that, after all, is really the reason why dairymen and milkmen are in business. Their main aim in life is not to produce a milk that is worthy to bear the milk commission's label, but to sell their milk at a profit, a fact that we are very prone to forget in our scientific discussion of the question. The milkman is not a fiend incarnate. If he sells swill milk it is because swill milk is cheap and the public is willing to put up with it, and a few babies more or less doesn't make very much difference, unless, peradventure, it happens to be your baby, and then that is a very different story. It is the struggle between laisser-faire and paternal government, and in this milk question every physician ought to stand for the most paternal kind of paternal government. Hence, while we fully recognize the value of our city health department and the assistance that might be rendered it by the State Pure Food Commis