are today what might be termed a success or a failure is a question that might require no little calculation to determine, and to consider these questions minutely and arrive at a conclusion as to what a success or failure means is another phase of this proposition to be considered. Then, too, who is the judge, to decide whether one is a failure or a success in the chosen field of his own selection? Is it the doctor himself, the profession at large or the people of the community where he is engaged in practice? And, also, what are the leading causes of the successes and failures to be met with?

Desiring to be brief and somewhat explicit in this paper, it may be well to draw a line of divergence, dividing the two leading topics of this paper, speaking of success first and failure later.

It can scarcely be expected that everyone who wishes to practice medicine and call himself doctor of medicine would make a success of his life calling, as there are many who would lack the essential qualities so necessary and conducive to success in this calling. And should the state put up some safeguards, permitting only those to practice who have shown themselves competent to do so, and were this practicable it would eliminate a certain per cent that is sure to terminate in failure itself, but there are many men and women, sane in all other respects, who maintain that the practice of medicine should be free to all and that competition will eliminate the unfit, that all laws gotten up to regulate the practice of medicine are gotten up by the medical profession to protect themselves against superior skill and knowledge of their competitors, that all laws, gotten up to control the practice of medicine are in the nature of a trust or a monopoly. Of course this is a mistake, for it is those physicians who have passed their struggling period who are financially independent, that are most active in making the safeguards about the practice of medicine stronger and more efficient.

It would make no difference to me and would not hurt me in the least financially if the bars were all left down and everyone who had a desire to do so were permitted to enter the field of practice of medicine ad libitum, but what about the community and the dear people at large? What a calamity would befail them? At the same time a general condemnation would be raised against permitting incompetent and unlicensed men from making up prescriptions in drug stores and to handle poisons and dangerous substances the dear people would just be horrified.

By casting out those who are unqualified and unfitted by natural qualities many failures could be eradicated in their incipiency. After practicing medicine in Nebraska twenty-six years I know of some rural communities where it seems that almost anyone who has a desire to do so is trying on the quiet to practice medicine, and how often we have heard it said such and such an old crone knows more about doctoring than all the doctors do. I also know of communities where a majority of confinement cases are attended by a self-styled, self-made, pickup nurse, a sort of a medicamentum, as a great benevolent act, to save the poor family the doctor's fee, when in reality the family own a good farm, well stocked, worth many thousand dollars. And the doctors of this same community attend the other half of the confinement cases for less on the average than one-half the fee they are justly and honestly entitled to. Good doctors enough, but willing and seemingly satisfied to do professional service for most any kind of a fee because it is practicing medicine. "Good because they are cheap and cheap because they are good." What a reputation! A reputation in the practice of medicine at no price is no reputation; pursuing such a course is far from being conducive to that part of success so essential to financial standings in any community. A just compensation for honest services faithfully and conscientiously rendered, honesty of purpose and honor in dealings with our fellow men are factors of success.

This may be disputed by some, but honesty and honor are always the chief factors of success. At the same time material success must not be lost sight of, but is not all. One has ambition to achieve, respect for one's self, for one's home and country, for the county, state and national society, to which we all belong. All these must be reckoned with. The way to become successful is to make good in the profession. Thorough preparedness, unceasing hard work, honesty of purpose, temperate habits in all things, times and places, a desire to offer our patients an honest dollar's worth of service for his confidence and his money will usually win anywhere. It is my opinion after doing a large prescription business for many years that it is best if one has the time to dispense most, if not all, his own medicine, and I find most patrons like this plan. Especially is this true in a country community and among the people of moderate means, as it is quite saving and brings the doctor money which otherwise would go to the druggist. As people do not usually have two fees in their pockets, sometimes it is a question of getting to see your office patient but once or seeing him again.

when his supply of medicine runs out, for the average druggist is not doing business for the special purpose of looking to the doctor's interest, as he has other interests to look after.

With a literary taste and a thorough preparedness and an honest integrity of purpose as advised by Dr. Wahrer of Iowa, with strict attention to business, collecting one's dues as they are made, a fair and reasonable charge, and by investing the same judiciously, keeping up with the advance constantly going on in the medical profession, attending to the medical societies and taking a post graduate course every few years, take a number of first-class medical journals, one is bound to succeed.

We see all over the country, in every town and hamlet, medical men who claim they are too busy to have time to go to the medical society. This is all a mistake, for the medical society men are the real doctors of the country.

The course here spoken of I have followed during my thirtytwo years of general practice and have become independent; can live anywhere. It seems to me the course mostly adopted by a large per cent of doctors over the country, city and village alike is a course that courts failure all the way down the line; it is to seek success in the membership of the churches and lodges. I don't think any of them will add one dollar to a doctor's income. It is well enough to belong to a church, but let others have the management. These organizations fleece one by a well-directed system of obtaining money from other legitimate sources for their own use and for the unkeep of lame ducks and privileged characters in their membership.

Pretenders in the medical profession may skim along for a while and lean on their stronger brethren, but where the real man appears in the field there is only a short lived term to their former popularity and according to the maxim, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," such a daring so soon leads to downfall. Another factor that is sure to lead to failure is to cut prices. If the standard wage of the common day laborer in town is $2.00 per day, you can't hire a man for less than that sum, no matter who he is, but there are physicians in about all our towns who, knowing the fee for a call in town is $1.50, will make it for $1.25, or, as it is in my town, for $1.00, and throw in the medicine, and then when the final account is rendered, throw in some calls besides, done simply to spite the other fellow and as a bid for trade. Let any of these doctors go to any or all the grocery stores in town and see if coffee, sugar and other staples can be purchased one place any cheaper than another.

Then, too, almost nine tenths of all the malpractice cases are advised and gotten up by a brother practitioner. It is a shame that these conditions exist in our ranks. Look what it has cost us in the aggregate; hundreds and thousands of dollars of hard earned money; consider the shameful manner in which many of our best men have been and are still being dragged into our courts by the malicious influence of other physicians, who seldom stop to think their time may come and they may be victims and reap that which they have sown.

Is it anything unusual, then, that as the above exist, and cheap fees, which not infrequently mean scarcely any fee at all, that the medical profession are too often ostracized by the community at large and accounted a failure on general principles. It is a mistake for any general practitioner, when he has a serious case, no matter what line, that he does not call in professional men of eminence in their particular line for assistance and consultation. By not doing so, as is too often the case, he will be stamped with failure. As a doctor estimates himself, so will he be reckoned in his community. His integrity in private life and his honor in professional life must be sustained. "Nothing succeeds like success."

Wasting Time.

When I was young I wasted time in sweating o'er the prose and rhyme, of grand old bards and sages, men world-famed as masters of the pen. When these old masters had a thought they hid it 'neath a ton of rot, and one must dig and claw and rake, to find the meaning of each break. The highbrows told me. I must scratch around that verbal garden patch if I would store my youthful mind with thought-gems, brilliant and refined. And all that work was thrown away; and now that I am old and gray, no longer my ambition fired, the grand old writers make me tired. I do not care how great his fame, I care not for a poet's game, unless he makes his meaning clear; if I must dig for half a year, to find what he is driving at, I'll throw his volume at the cat. There is no sense in writing dope that makes the reader dig and grope. The writer who is truly great is he who dishes up his freight of burning thoughts in words so plain that any man with half a brain gets wise to what he has to say and reads and puts his book away. The skillful craftsman turns his hand to writing things men understand.-Walt Mason.

Eye Complications from the Use of Salvarsan.

In eye and ear work, the results of the 606 treatment of syphilis have not been especially brilliant. While it has not produced the baneful effects of large doeses of atoxyl; no case of blindness having resulted from it, so far as the writer knows; its effect on eye and ear lesions has not been noticeably better than that obtained with the older forms of treatment. On the other hand, quite a number of cases of optic neuritis, iritis and ocular paralysis have been reported which have so promptly followed the injection of salvarsan, that little question could be entertained as to the connection. Davids (Deutsche Med. Woch., 13, 1911), reports an additional case in which a young woman with a fresh case of secondary syphilis received an intramuscular injection of 0.6 of salvarsan. Two days later the eruption became worse, and both eyes were attacked by a sharp iritis, which gradually receded on the use of atropine and heat. One month after the first injection, however, a severe iritis began in the right eye and kept getting worse until a second injection of 606 (0.3 intravenously) was given, then prompt and complete recovery ensued.

In this case, the first attack of iritis, coming as it did with the Herxheimer reaction (aggravation of the skin eruption) probably was due to the same cause that produced the latter. Davids is inclined to accept the theory of Ehrlich that these complications are due to a stirring up of the spirochaetes by an insufficient dose of 606, and the prompt subsidence of the severe second attack of iritis after a second injection, lends support to this view. GIFFORD (Omaha).

Phenol In Herpes (Zoster).

Dr. G. P. Coopernail, (Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., Dec. 3, p. 1998). For the past four years the writer has treated herpes with an application of a 95 per cent solution of phenol. As soon as the skin begins to turn white he neutralizes the phenol effect with alcohol. In many cases one application suffices, and in no case is it necessary to make more than three. After one application of the 95 per cent phenol he dresses the lesions with a simple ointment like zinc oxide. The pain, itching, and burning are quickly relieved. The vesicles shrivel and dry up, leaving a crust. The writer first used phenol in herpes progenitalis with such satisfactory results that he was led to try it for herpes