COLLEGE, HOSPITAL AND LABORATORY NOTES.

THE report of the medical faculty of the New York University shows that over twenty-five hundred examinations of material were made in the pathological laboratory, during the past year, seven hundred of these being for Bellevue Hospital.

THE thirty-seventh annual report of the Boston City Hospital, just issued, states that 40,492 patients have been treated, an increase over last year of 2,241. These figures refer, of course, to the works of all departments. The number of accident cases received was 1210.

We regret to record the closing of the Women's College of Medicine of Northwestern University owing to lack of patronage. It is claimed by some of the trustees that women are failures in medicine, by others, that there are no more failures among them than among the men. At all events they evidently prefer to study at coeducational institutions and colleges where they are represented on the faculty.

THE control of some of the New York city hospitals, namely, Bellevue, Gouverneur, Harlem, and Fordham hospitals, and the Emergency Hospital for Women, will pass from the Department of Charities on February 1 into the hands of a board of trustees appointed by the Mayor which, after that date, will have complete control of these hospitals. The board is to be known as the Board of Trustees of Bellevue and Allied Hospitals. It will consist of seven members, and the term of one of them will expire each year.

CHLOROFORM has been the favorite anesthetic at the St. Louis City Hospital during the past year, and was used in a large majority of cases. In some cases chloroform and ether were both used. Chloroform was used in 455 cases; chloroform and ether, in 17 cases.

By the terms of the will of the late Mrs. Mary Stearns of Medford, the Massachusetts Homoeopathic Hospital will receive $10,000.

THE registration at Harvard Medical School shows a falling off this year to the extent of nearly one hundred admissions.

A STATE COLONY FOR THE INSANE is to be established in Gardner. Seven trustees have been appointed by the Governor, including two physicians, Dr. H. B. Howard of Boston and Dr. W. H. Baker of Lynn who will serve respectively five and three years. The trustees will be allowed $50,000 for the project, while the State Board of Insanity will expend an additional $25,000. The colony will be essentially a big farm, and patients will be transferred from the various insane hospitals as the State Board of Lunacy and Charity may direct.

IN HAYMARKET SQUARE, BOSTON, stands the fine, new, City Hospital relief station, now practically completed. On the first floor the front of the building is arranged for the administration offices and a general waiting-room. In the rear, so arranged to avoid all publicity, are five rooms for dressing surgical cases. Admission to these rooms will be had through the interior of the hospital and direct from the ambulance.

The second floor provides for two operating rooms for special surgical cases, a sterilizing room and three wardrooms for cases requiring serious operations and for persons seriously injured. On this floor also there are storerooms and a nurses' service room, and entirely cut off from the rest of the floor, a sitting room and two chambers for resident physicians.

The third floor will be devoted to a suite of rooms for the nurses, a kitchen, laundry and dining room for the employees. Even the roof can be covered over, and here patients suffering from sunstroke will be treated, and patients who cannot be moved to the City or some other hospital, but need more air than can be had in the wardrooms, will have cots placed under the canopy on the roof.

AN endowment of $1,000,000 has been given by Mr. and Mrs. Harold McCormick, of Chicago, to found a medical institution which will be known as the memorial institute for infectious diseases.

OBITUARY.

DR. FRANCIS EDMUND BOERICKE, a prominent homœopathic pharmacist, died December 17, 1901, at his residence at 6386 Drexel road, Overbrook, Pa., aged 75 years. He had been an invalid for the last fifteen years.

Born in Glauchan, Saxony, in 1826, Francis Edmund Boericke came to this country during the Revolution of 1848, and made his home in Philadelphia. His father was a promnent manufacturer and exporter of woolen goods in Glauchan. Soon after his arrival here the young man obtained a position as bookkeeper with Plata, at Fourth and Chestnut Streets, a well known dry goods merchant and the Saxon Consul. Following this he became a partner in Andre's music store in Chestnut Street. In 1852 he joined the Church of the New Jerusalem, and opened a store where religious books were sold in Sixth Street, below Chestnut. A year later he was induced by Dr. Constantine Hering to turn his attention to the preparation of homoeopathic medicines, and by his proficiency and industry soon gained the confidence of leading homœopathists in the country. In 1854 he married Miss. Eliza Tafel, and in 1859 associated with himself in the pharmacy business as a partner, Adolph Tafel, his brother-in-law, who had retired from the Civil War with the rank of Major.

Dr. Boericke was graduated from the Hahnemann College in 1863. He received a scholarship and delivered lectures on pharmacy for some time. In 1864 he added to his business an establishment for publishing homoeopathic works, and soon enlarged his trade by establishing branches throughout the country. In 1859 Major Tafel died, and after that the firm consisted of Dr. F. A. Boericke, and Adolph L. Tafel, sons of the original members.

Dr. Boericke is survived by his widow and nine children.

PERSONAL AND GENERAL ITEMS.

DR. CHARLES T. HOWARD, formerly of Watertown, has opened an office at 160 Newbury Street, Boston, with office hours from 12.30 to 2 p. m.

DR. G. H. WILKINS has removed from Palmer to 59 Wood land Road, Auburndale, Mass.

Dr. H. C. CHENEY, until recently located at Newburyport, succeeds Dr. Wilkins in his practice at Palmer, Mass.

BEVERLY, MASS., wishes to pay the City Physician $600, but the local members of the profession are reported to have agreed not to take the position for less than $800. Twelve cents a call was the remunerative average compensation last year, it is claimed, and this is regarded as beneath acceptance, if not contempt.

THE NORTH AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY celebrates its fiftieth birthday with the issue of a January jubilee number which does its distinguished editors great credit. Drs. Packard and Rice of Boston are among the contributors. The North American holds an enviable place in homoeopathic journalism, and has the esteem and goodwill of its contemporaries and the profession at large.

TO CHECK SMALLPOX IN PHILADELPHIA.-In future the authorities will not confine their efforts to fumigating only those houses in which smallpox has been discovered, but the precautionary measures will be extended to all adjoining buildings. Moreover, schoolhouses, seminaries, churches, halls and other public places will be disinfected. One hundred and fifty formaldehyde generators have been purchased, and an auxiliary corps of disinfectors organized.

SMALLPOX IN LONDON. During the first week in January more than 750 cases of smallpox were under treatment in London. It is announced that the Metropolitan Asylums Board has ordered the erection of a new receiving station to cost $130,000. A steamboat and 28 new ambulances have The death rate of 349 completed cases was, of the vaccinated, 20 per cent., unvaccinated, 60 per cent.

been purchased.

By WALTER E. FERNALD, M.D. Supt. Mass. School for Feeble-Minded.

[Read before the Boston Homœopathic Medical Society, Feb. 6, 1902.]

I feel greatly honored by the invitation to address this society.

In the limited time at my disposal I can only touch upon some of the more important points concerning the educational treatment of the feeble-minded, after a brief consideration of the frequency, nature and varieties of feeble-mindedness.

The census of 1890 shows a total of 95,571 feeble-minded persons in the United States. It is certain that this enumeration did not include many cases where the parents were unwilling to admit the mental defect of their children or where the defect was not recognized. Over 3,000 were enumerated in this state alone. I am confident that if every case was included there would be at least two to every thousand of the population in this state.

Feeble-mindedness may be defined as "mental deficiency depending upon imperfect development or disease of the nervous system, occurring before, at, or after birth, previous to the evolution of the mental faculties." That is, a feeble