strongly flexed on the abdomen, the conjugate diameter of the pelvis is shortened; when placed in the dorsal position with the hips close to the edge of the table and the lower extremities hanging, that diameter is lengthened. The latter posture is known as Walcher's position." The gain in the conjugate in changing from the lithotomy to the Walcher position is variously estimated at from 5 mm. to 13 mm. In a series of observations made by the writer the increment was, in the cadaver of the nonpuerperal subject, 3 mm., and in the living woman, within two weeks after labor, from 5 mm. to 7 mm. This gain may be used to advantage in moderate disproportion between the head and pelvis. In difficult extraction the patient should be placed with the thighs in full extension till the largest circumference of the head has passed the brim.

It may be noticed that the stain of healthy lochia upon the napkin differs considerably from the stain of putrid lochia. The former will show the stain of a drop, whose center is red and the edges almost colorless and poorly defined, while the latter shows a pale center and well defined red edges.

MEDICAL NEWS.

THE MADRID MEETING.

THE International Medical Congress convened its fourteenth meeting at Madrid, Spain, Thursday, April 23, 1903, under the presidency of M. le Professor Julian Calleja y Sanchez, and held daily sessions to the 30th inclusive. The inaugural exercises, which were conducted in the Opera House, were honored by the presence of King Alfonzo XIII and the mother queen. The presidential address dealt with the medical progress of the century, the cell doctrine and the relation sustained thereto by epigenesis, receiving its share of attention. The orator declared, however, that the greatest achievement had been scored in bacteriology. Congratulatory speeches by Brouardel, Leyden, Pavy, and Schroetter also contributed to the interest of the preliminary session. The most important papers of the scientific proceedings were embraced in the departments of medicine, gynecology, obstetrics, and pathology. The social features of the occasion included a grand ball on the evening of the first day in the City Hall, at which five hundred delegates were present; a full-dress reception in the palace on Friday evening by the king and queen; an excursion to the Escurial monastery, situated in the vicinity of Madrid, on Saturday; a special bull fight on Sunday; an excursion to Toiedo on Monday; and a party in the Royal Gardens on Wednesday evening. The Secretary announced that seven thousand had attended the congress, one-half of whom were foreigners. The United States ranked seventh in the list of countries represented, two hundred Americans gracing the gathering. The next meeting will be held at Lisbon, Portugal, in 1906. Professor Alfredo da Costa, of that city, is president.

MINOR INTELLIGENCE.

THE last word in the article entitled "The Parasite of Smallpox," which appeared in our April issue, was misprinted "cancer." It should have been "smallpox."

THE London Hospital Quinquennial Appeal Fund has received a gift of £1,000 from the Queen of England.

ONE hundred seventy-two persons have been treated for rabies at the Pasteur Institute, New York City, since January 1, 1903.

DOCTOR THEODORE J. BLUTHARDT, of Chicago, has recently been appointed to the United States Consulship at Barmen, Germany.

THE last United States census shows a decrease in the death rate from tuberculosis, during the years 1890-1900, of about one-tenth per

cent.

THE legislature of Pennsylvania has appropriated fifty thousand dollars to the State Board of Health for the purpose of suppressing smallpox.

THE legislature of New York has appropriated one hundred fifteen thousand dollars to the State Hospital for Tuberculosis in the Adirondack mountains.

ANNOUNCEMENT is made that an epidemic of typhoid fever has appeared at Leland Stanford University. Over one hundred cases have already been reported.

MILAN has a female professor of anatomy in the person of Doctor Rena Mastio, who was recently appointed a member of the faculty in one of the schools of that city.

REPORT says that Miss K. Chamberlain, a niece of Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, has received the appointment of resident physician to the Royal Free Hospital of London.

MR. HOMER FOLKS, Commissioner of Charities of New York City, has advised that one hundred thousand dollars be appropriated for the organization of a cottage colony, on Staten Island, for aged and infirm poor.

THE author of the best paper on surgical pathology or surgical practice will receive the Samuel D. Gross prize of twelve hundred dollars. The award will be presented on January 1, 1904. Competitors must be American citizens.

THE Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital lately received fifty thousand dollars from Mrs. A. A. Thomas and her two children for the purpose of establishing the Samuel Thomas Memorial Ward, which will be furnished with ten beds.

DOCTOR HOWARD A. KELLY, of Baltimore, recently commenced suit. against the Western Union Telegraph Company to recover two thousand dollars damages for failure to deliver two telegrams last October, whereby he was prevented from performing an important operation.

AN ordinance preventing the sale of opium or cocain, except in physicians' prescriptions, has been passed by the council of Wilmington, Delaware.

KING EDWARD'S Hospital Fund has been augmented by a gift of twenty-five thousand dollars, bequeathed in the will of the late Mr. Mellin, the originator of Mellin's Food.

THE study of malaria in the Congo region will be facilitated, through the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, by a subscription of two thousand five hundred dollars from the king of Belgium.

ONE of the senators recently sent to Washington from Delaware, Doctor Louis Heisler Ball, is said to be the second physician engaged in active practice who has been honored by election to the United States Senate.

FINLAND enjoys the distinction of being comparatively free from quacks. Statistics show that in that country there are four hundred fourteen legally qualified physicians, while the number of unqualified practicians is only fourteen.

CINCINNATI physicians recently petitioned the Ohio State Board of Health to debar osteopaths from vaccinating school children. The position was taken that surgery, even in minor degree, should not be practiced by adherents to this cult. The petition was sustained.

THE legislature of Pennsylvania has appropriated one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars for improvements and apparatus at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The acquisitions will embrace an x-ray equipment and the erection of a sterilization building.

THE one hundred thirtieth anniversary of the Medical Society of London was recently celebrated by a dinner which was attended by nearly two hundred persons. Among the postprandial speakers were the Honorable R. P. Porter of the United States army, and the Lord Chancellor.

A RESOLUTION was recently adopted by the common council of Columbus, Ohio, requiring street cars to be fumigated every twentyfour hours. A serious mistake was made, however, in allowing the railway companies to employ whatever method of fumigation they may choose.

GENERAL DAVIS, Commander of the Division of the Philippines, has arranged for the construction of a modern hospital, to be located three thousand feet above sea level, near Mariveles. The hospital is intended for the benefit of officers and men suffering from the effects of the Philippine climate.

STATISTICS, issued by the Imperial Health Board of Berlin, place the death rate in European countries as follows: Russia four thousand per one million inhabitants; Austria and France three thousand per one million; Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, two thousand per one million; Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Norway and England; one thousand per one million.

A LAW which was recently passed by the legislature of Virginia requires an applicant for a liquor license to possess a petition bearing the signatures of a majority of the voters in his district.

CHARLES S. BAYLIS, of Brooklyn, who died recently, bequeathed ten thousand dollars to the Long Island College Hospital and two thousand dollars to the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital.

DOCTOR L. GIDEON ARCHAMBAULT, one of Rhode Island's oldest physicians, who died recently at Providence, bequeathed forty thousand dollars for the establishment of a hospital for the aged poor in that city.

OSTEOPATHY has suffered defeat in Pennsylvania. A bill, which was introduced into the legislature early in the winter to recognize this schismatic cult, was defeated, owing, it is said, to the efficient work of twenty-four physicians and two druggists who are members of the lower house.

THE bill forbidding pollution of public waters, which was lately passed by the legislature of New York, has been signed by the Governor. Superintendents of factories and commercial establishments must henceforth secure a permit from the State Department before emptying waste material into the rivers.

DOCTOR ALMA A. WILLISTON, of Phillipsburg, Warren county, New York, has been appointed municipal physician of that place by the town council. She will receive a yearly salary of two hundred dollars, and in addition will be provided with an automobile and an allowance of one hundred dollars per year for medicines.

THIRTEEN persons recently contracted charbon in Louisiana, through the death of two hundred twenty-five head of cattle from the disease. The farmers, not realizing the infectious nature of charbon, skinned some of the animals and disposed of the hides, which were the cause of the infection. Steps have been taken to suppress the disease.

MR. JAMES STILLMAN, who contributed one hundred fifty thousand dollars for the erection of an infirmary at Cambridge to accommodate students of Harvard University, recently augmented this gift by an additional fifty thousand dollars for the establishment of a contagious disease ward in connection with the infirmary.

AT a meeting of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, which was held recently in Washington, a movement was inaugurated to erect a monument to the memory of the late Major Walter Reed, of the United States Army. A commitee was appointed and it is the intention of the society to raise about twenty thousand dollars for the memorial.

THE medical corps of the United States Navy is to be increased by the addition of one hundred fifty new members. Twenty-five physicians will be appointed each year for six years. Examinations are conducted by the Secretary of the Navy, and any physician in good standing between the ages of twenty-one and thirty years, who is a citizen of the United States, is eligible.

M. LOUBET, president of the French Republic, has contributed four hundred eighty pounds for the establishment of a dispensary for the treatment of tuberculosis, the building to be erected in Paris, on a site provided by the municipality.

DOCTOR JULIUS B. RANSOM, physician to the New York State prison, reports that one-fourth of the prisoners confined in that institution are tuberculous. Of two hundred fifty inmates, who have the disease, only fifty-four can be accommodated in the consumption ward.

THE Health Commissioner of Milwaukee has recommended the purchase of sixty acres of land in the outskirts of that city for the purpose of founding an isolation hospital. The legislature of Wisconsin recently passed a bill granting permission to establish such a hospital, providing that it be located at least a mile from the city limits. and six hundred feet from any thoroughfare.

DOCTOR CASEY A. WOOD, of Chicago, received the degree of D. C. L., honoris causa, from the University of Bishop's College on the occasion of the medical convocation of that institution, which was held in Montreal on the 24th of April last. Doctor Wood graduated from that school in 1887, and almost immediately became a member of its faculty of medicine, filling the chair of Chemistry and one or two other professorships for a period of ten years, after which he studied ophthalmology two years in Europe and finally settled in Chicago.

GOVERNOR DOLE, of Hawaii, reports a marked decrease in leprosy on the islands in consequence of the strict precautions which have been exercised in deporting persons afflicted with the disease to the leper settlement at Molokai. The colony was established in 1866, in which year one hundred forty-one patients were segregated. In 1873, owing to a more stringent enforcement of the law, four hundred eighty-seven lepers were colonized. From this date until 1887 the average number of yearly acquisitions was one hundred forty-one. In 1888 five hundred seventy-nine patients were deported; in 1889 three hundred eight; in 1890 two hundred two, since which time the prevalence of the disease has gradually lessened. The yearly death rate has decreased from twenty per cent in 1871 to twelve per cent in 1900.

THE authorities of the Maternity Hospital at Manila, have been compelled, because of lack of funds, to close the doors of that institution. Special effort was made by a committee of American, Spanish and Filipino women to maintain the hospital in a satisfactory manner, but sufficient assistance could not be procured. The Maternity is a relic of the days of Spanish rule, and was in a thriving condition at the inception of hostilities between Spain and the United States. Being supported almost entirely by Spanish donations the hospital was closed in 1898, but through the generosity of some philanthropic Filipinos was reopened last year. Recently, however, the inadequacy of volunteer support again forced the closure of the hospital. The children who were confined in the wards have been adopted by wealthy Filipino. families.