A TEXTBOOK OF OPHTHALMOLOGY. By Prof. Earnest Fuchs, M.D., Professor of Ophthalmology in University of Vienna. Authorized Translation from the Second Enlarged and Improved German Edition. By A. Duane, M.D., Assistant Surgeon Ophthalmic and Aural Institute, New York. With numerous illustrations. D. Appleton & Co., New York.

Standing as it does in the front rank of works on ophthalmology, Prof. Fuchs' Lehrbuch der Angere heilkunde has been a standard textbook for some time. This work is written in the author's usual clear, concise and pleasing style. The additions made by the translator are everywhere distinguished by being enclosed in brackets, and, in the case of foot notes, by having the letter "D" appended to them. Numerously illustrated, clearly printed and bound in an attractive manner, we unhesitatingly recommend it to the practitioner as a valuable work of reference, and to the student as a textbook of superior merit.

A MANUAL OF MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE AND TOXICOLOGY. By Henry C. Chapman, M.D., Professor of Institutes of Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia; Member of the College of Physicians, Philadelphia; of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; of the American Philosophical Society, and the Zoological Society of Philadelphia. With thirty-six illustrations, some of which are in colors. Price, $1.25 net. W. B. Saunders, 913 Walnut street, Philadelphia. The students of Jefferson Medical College having requested Prof. Chapman to publish his lectures on Medical Jurisprudence, delivered during the session of 1891-92, he has done so in the form of a handy manual of 237 pages. Only those parts of this extensive subject which the experience of the author as coroner's physician of the city of Philadelphia for a period of six years leads him to regard as the most important for practical purposes, are considered in this work. The manual is eminently suited to the needs of the students of our medical colleges.

THE STUDENTS' QUIZ SERIES.

The Students' Quiz Series, published by Messrs. Lea Bros. & Co., Philadelphia, is most admirable in the excellent way in which the several volumes of the series are written and edited. We note the rapidity with which they are taking a place in the front rank of valuable ready-reference books as indication of their merit. We have received the following additional volumes of the series, price $1 per volume: PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. By Edwin F. Doubleday, M.D., Member New York Pathological Society, and J. D. Nagle, M.D., Member N. Y. County Medical Association.

HISTOLOGY, PATHOLOGY AND BACTERIOLOGY. By Bennett S. Beach, M.D., Lecturer on Histology, Pathology and Bacteriology, New York Polyclinic.

GYNECOLOGY. By G. W. Braenthal, Assistant in Gynecology, Vanderbilt Clinic, New York. Assisted by Sinclair Tousey, M.D., Assistant Surgeon, Out Patient Department, Roosevelt Hospital, New York.

MEMPHIS

MEDICAL MONTHLY.

VOL. XII. MEMPHIS, DECEMBER, 1892.

Original Communications,

No. 12

A PLEA FOR WOMAN.

Annual Address Delivered before the Tri-State Medical Association of Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee,

BY A. WEBB, M.D., COLLIERVILLE, TENN., PRESIDENT.

One of the

A plea for woman is a plea for the human race. greatest Latin poets inspired the prayer to the gods for the highest good: "mens sana in corpore sano"-that a sound mind exist in a sound body.

The constituents of the statesman appeal to his tired leader-· ship for the laws through whose operation the State may flourish in greatness, and they remain free and prosperous. The cause of woman pleads for rescue from her bondage of ills, and for guidance to the sphere of higher usefulness and destined happiness. This is a plea not only for herself, but for the fortunes and triumphs of humanity. Her diseases and physical weaknesses are often transmissions into her own life by heredity, to be transmitted again to her posterity. This prayer is for the healing of her present maladies, and for the prevention of sufferings in her descendants. As that patriotic statesman guides the ship of state through stormy waters of revolution to the haven of safety and peace, so should our noble profession pilot her destiny through the waves of her ills, and

* Respectfully dedicated to Drs. Maury, Saunders and Rogers, for their kindness to me and mine.

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rescue her from disastrous shipwreck. As through the authority and aid of governments, medical genius has warded off epidemic and contagious diseases from the people, so our skill and sacred care, in this regard, should conspire to heal the diseases and sicknesses of the home, and guard the conditions of the general health from the invasion of disease, and arrest the fatal steps of slow-paced death. This duty done, should vindicate our loyalty to the queen of the home, woman.

Man is the stupendous miracle in animated existence. "What is man? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor." Man is the unit of humanity, and woman is the complement of that unit. The two are one: Male and female created he them,-Man. Her constitution has much in common with her mate, yet she is differentiated by marked peculiarities. Her physical stature is lower and lighter and inferior in strength. Her beauty and her grace are far superior. The make of her organs is more complex. She is beardless. Her voice is softer, and one octave higher in pitch. In esthetics her tastes are more refined and delicate. Hence her characteristic excellence in music and art, and in the decoration of the home. In ethics, she is of purer life. She is more emotional, more affectionate and tender, more sympathetic and merciful, and excels in goodness. She is more patient, and is superior in fortitude. To human woes her heart is more responsive with beneficent charities. and tenderer sympathies. Goodness and benevolence "spring spontaneously in her delicate and moral perceptions and in the somatic innervations of her feminine constitution." She is physically the weaker sex, yet not less noble, for she inspires nobler virtues and more gallant endeavors in the masculine

sex.

As to her beauty, the treasures of eloquent tongues have been taxed to delineate its enchantments. Her intellect is clear and instinctive with the illuminations of the good, the beautiful and the true. The woman's taste, heart and truth speak out in her literature as from a higher sphere. While she is not dominant in the grander creations of literature, for that were masculine, yet, the poetic muse has breathed in words that burned as from some hidden shrine, and has moved

stronger natures as a power behind the throne. In the night of the medieval age, when society was shattered and civilization was wrecked, her woman's genius evoked the mission of troubadour and knight, to transform chaos into cosmos, to transmute barbarism back into civilization, whence sprang the new epoch of the revival of the true learning and a higher literature. The glory of our boasted civilization, in its mighty accession from knowledge, art and religion, has received its beautiful complexion from woman's character and influence, and from the magic touch of her "humanizing hand."

Her methods of efficiency are akin to the divine. Her instincts of fidelity are loyal to humanity, under the dominion of love and duty. In joy or sorrow her fortitude surrenders herself a submissive sacrifice for the weal of others. She supplements the toils and cares of her mate with the tribute of love and gratitude; with her affectionate trust for the pledge of his promises; with her sustaining hope for his discouragements; with her faith for his manly truth; and with her agony for his life. In her religion she is more pious than he. Among the devout her presence consecrates the temples of worship and forms the majority of the worshipers. She leads her children to the sanctuary and implants in their minds the seeds of virtue and piety, that by her watchful care, these pledges of her love may be nurtured into plants that shall eternally bloom amid the trees of paradise. From her life flows out the crystal stream that irrigates the gardens of society and fertilizes the desert wastes of nations into honest fields of golden grain and ambrosial fruits!

Comprehended in the unit, man, she conveys within it, the dowered wealth of her own golden virtues, which mingling with the heroic masculine attributes trends the graduated character toward the ideal man, and the strange blended light that corruscates in that ideal, is a reflection from that intenser white light that transfigured the man of Nazareth!

Hers is the plea, and so great a one is she who pleads. Let her protectors hear! The preceding advocacy of her worth to the life of man must now yield to the consideration of profounder facts of absolute importance, whose necessity emphasizes a more eloquent and impressive plea for her protection.

The ovarian stroma archived within the argana of her body has perpetuated through all ages the distinct type of man. No violence or casualty has disrupted the scheme of the human plan of being. From this stroma of ovaries, solely, is elaborated germinal reproductive matter. "In the inner temple of her body is placed the ark that contains the law which keeps the human genera unmixed from age to age."

Indeed, within this penetralia, as in a sacred ark, has been shielded the secret power and condition, that alone has preserved the germ, man, an imperishable unit. In the eloquent language of Professor Meigs: "It is an imperishable unit, it commenced in the beginning, it touches the middle and the end of time. It is a vast wave rolling down the tide of time, ever rolling, ever descending. Its spray and its foam are lost in the sand or melted in the air as the fragments of mortality are broken off and swallowed up in the grave, but the unit is unbroken. The great majestic wave rolls onward, onward forever, perdurable. The sun himself 'grows dim with years," but the unit, the genus man, springs ever fresh in immortal youth and vigor, the ever-living unit, man." And the above "generic power is launched from the ovarian stroma, the sole animal concrete that is capable of producing" vitellus, which is germinal matter, reproductive.

"Let Eve take a wise care of the temple God made for her; and Adam of the temple made for him; and both will enter upon a career whose glory and beauty no seer has foretold nor poet sung." (Ext. from Dr. Clark).

Our first indictment is that woman is injured by the unphysiological methods of her education, and the unperiodicity of her work. I submit Dr. Clark's "physiological motto": "Educate a man for manhood, a woman for womanhood, both for humanity."

"Woman must be regarded as a woman. Such education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to fit the youth for usefulness, in their future stations: a boy for a man's, a girl for a woman's station." But if the school overwork her brain in the long, persistent study of the college curriculum, and thus divert force to her brain imperiously demanded elsewhere, "the results are monstrous