School Inspection

in Kansas City

The popularity and effectiveness of the school inspection system established under the direction of Dr. E. H. Trowbridge through the generosity of a Kansas City philanthropist, has made possible added plans for the next school year, at which time supervision of the work is expected to pass from the hospital and health board to the board of education.

The system, as established last November, is not by any means in keeping with the schools of a city like Kansas City or with the work being done in other cities, Doctor Trowbridge says, and the tentative plans arranged for next year will be an added step in the direction of a system that will be on a par with those in vogue elsewhere.

Under the present system, five physicians, an equal number of dentists and ten nurses, operating in six school clinics, have made much progress. The cost has been about $1,500, aside from the cost of supplies and the salary of the director. The salary of the director was paid by the hospital and health board until February 1 and was stopped when he refused to resign.

The system planned for next year will have nine physicians, nine dentists, twenty-one nurses, one psychologist, six district clinics and a central clinic, with two dentists for full time work, two physicians for eye, ear, nose, throat, medical and surgical work and a psychological laboratory. Special teachers for certain classes of pupils are also embraced in the plans.

The tentative plans for next year have five definite objects in the work-the control of contagious diseases, the discovery of defective physical conditions in children that retard their normal advancement, the discovery of cases of retarded mental development which are causes of deficient school work, sanitary inspection of the schoolrooms and school buildings, and home visits.

Since November, when the school inspection system was established in Kansas City, 8,612 children have been examined. To carry on the work

as planned for next year will require about $2,500 per month, or $25,000 for the school year. Provision for the increased amount needed will have to be made, but it is believed that this will readily be forthcoming when needed.

Donated a Library

The medical library of the Jackson County Medical Society has been enriched by the addition of the entire library of the late Dr. Flavel B. Tiffany, of Kansas City. The donation was made by Mrs. Tiffany, actuated by a desire to carry out what she believed to be the wishes of her late husband.

Danger From Automobile Fumes

Dr. H. J. Blumensohn of New York calls attention, in the Medical Record, to four deaths recently from automobile fumes.

victims being Nat Willis, the famous comedian, and another, Dr. Martin G. Benedict. The fumes are generated by the combustion of gasoline and oil and are discharged from the exhaust under the automobile. Persons are overcome by being close to the exhaust or in any part of a closed garage in which the fumes are discharged. They may be exposed only a minute. It happens most frequently when the windows and doors are closed, in winter, but sometimes happens in the summer time, if a person is close to the exhaust. The precautions to be taken are: have good ventilation, do not run the motor while the car is in your garage unless well ventilated. A warning sign should be posted in every garage. Dr. Wood, in the Medical Record, December 22, suggests a very clever plan for disposing of the poisonous gases which emanate from the car while the engine is started in a closed garage. His plan is to bore a hole through the garage at a point directly opposite the exhaust pipe of the car when it is in its usual position. The hole which need not be large can be closed by a drop cover of wood or tin hung on a nail above the hole. A piece of light metal piping of any kind just large enough to be pushed over the end of the exhaust pipe, is kept in the garage. When you wish to start your engine in the garage, this piece of pipe is first shoved out through the hole in the garage, then drawn in and passed over the end of the exhaust pipe. In this way, all the fumes will be carried to the outside.

Cleveland

in St. Louis

W. G. Cleveland, president of the W. G. Clevecians' and surgeons' supply house at 1112 land Company of Omaha, has opened a physi

Locust street, St. Louis, Missouri.

Company of St. Louis has no legal connection The W. G. Cleveland Drug and Surgical with The W. G. Cleveland Company of Omaha, which means that the same efficient service that but Mr. Cleveland is president of both companies, has individualized "The Western House for the Western Doctor" will be maintained at the St. Louis house.

It means that under one roof will be assembled everything the physician, surgeon, hospital and veterinarian uses and the Southwestern doctor, for the first time, will be able to obtain a complete service from one house.

Spirits of camphor and limewater, equal parts, applied early to a carbuncle, aborts it.

Buchanan County Medical
Society at Savannah

As a courtesy to the Savannah members of the Buchanan County Medical Society, the last meeting of March, the 20th inst., was held in their city. Supper was spread in the Masonic Hall for fifty members, and every place was taken. The meal, a chicken pie affair, was very enjoyable, under the toastmastership of Dr. Daniel Morton, president of the society. After a pleasant address by the mayor and a speech by the school superintendent, the flowers of the table decoration were auctioned by Floyd Spencer. Twelve dollars were raised by the sale, to be devoted to Red Cross work. The paper of the evening was read by Dr. L. J. Dandurant, on Intestinal Obstruction. The subject was so generally discussed by the society the balance of the program was omitted. Discussion was opened by Dr. Spencer, he was followed by Drs. Conrad, Bell, Walter Myers, Colley, Farber, Potter, Willman, Ladd; closed by defendant. The paper proved very profitable to the society, and the whole evening such a delightful one that it was resolved to repeat it in the near future. The excursion of the society is in line with the policy of the president, to make the influence of the society felt in Northwest Missouri. The program committee has already arranged a number of pleasing features for the year, so much so that the year's work promises to be most interesting and profitable. J. M. B.

"Fougera" is the title of a neat little periodical issued by that sterling old importing firm, Fougera & Co., of New York, established in 1849. The "Salutamus" says that "the world war now raging has already brought about a marked change in the use of medicinal products of foreign manufacture. What almost amounted to a monopoly in favor of products "Made in Germany" is fast yielding to the force of circumstances. English chemists and French pharmacists have labored and experimented no less carefully and successfully than their Teuton confreres, and the fruit of their efforts comes to E. Fougera & Company, the great clearing house, and through it is brought within reach of American druggists and doctors. In order to familiarize these with such products, the house of E. Fougera & Company, which has every reason to be regarded as an American institution, will issue from time to time, a bulletin or brochure designed not only to give information regarding Fougera products, but also to disseminate, in epitomized form, items concerning treatment, diagnosis, etc., of interest to the busy and progressive medical man. The booklet will be issued at intervals to physicians who may request it, free of all cost, by E. Fougera & Co., 90 Beekman street, New York.

The World War News

"Our country; its need is our need, its honor our honor, its responsibility our responsibility. To support it is a duty, to defend it a privilege, to serve it a joy. In its hour of trial we must be steadfast, in its hour of danger we must be strong, in its hour of triumph we must be generous. Though all else depart, and all we own be taken away, there will still remain the foundation of our fortunes, the bulwark of our hopes, a rock on which to build anew-our country, our homeland, America."-From American Medicine, May, 1917 (National Number.)

TO MY WIFE

"Little you'd care what I laid at your feet, Ribbon or crest or shawl

What if I bring you nothing, sweet,

Nor maybe come home at all?

Ah, but you'll know, brave heart, you'll know
Two things I'll have kept to send:
Mine honor for which you made me go

And my love-my love to the end."

-R. E. Vernede, "War Poems" (Heinemann,
London).

Capt. Will Wallis of Maryville has been called.

Capt. W. T. Elam is to report at Fort Riley about April 1, 1918.

Lieut. Levi S. Long has been called to Fort Riley March 25, 1918.

Dr. Charles Greenburg was shaking hands with his friends on a leave of absence visit.

Captain Emmett F. Cook is regimental surgeon at Camp Dodge, Ia. He reports feeling

fine.

Lieut. C. E. Miller of Noyes Hospital and Lieut. H. O. Whitten of the State Hospital No. 2 will report at Fort Riley shortly.

First Lieut. Harvey P. Boughnou, M. R. C., now stationed at Camp Pike, Ark. He is 29 years old and served as interne at St. Margaret's Hospital one year and the last four years has been office assistant to Dr. P. T. Bohan.

Dr. C. C. Dennie has been commissioned and assigned to Base Hospital Unit No. 28. Lieutenant Dennie will start tomorrow night for Fort McPherson where he will join the rest of the unit. Lieutenant Dennie was associate pro

fessor of dermatology of the University of Kansas, and on the staffs of the Mercy, the Christian Church, and St. Margaret's hospitals.

Capt. George H. Hoxie has left for Fort McPherson to join Base Hospital Unit No. 28. It is expected that the unit will embark for France soon. The hospital organization was recruited by Maj. J. F. Binnie, chief adjutant under Col. W. B. Bannister. Colonel Bannister was placed in command on February 20 when the unit entrained for Fort McPherson.

Dr. E. F. Robinson of Kansas City, Mo., was appointed chief medical officer and commissioned as major of the new Seventh Regiment, National Guard of Missouri.

These camps of 20 to 80,000 men, where they are being trained, will be made health resorts and not pestilential areas.

Remember that your country wants you, your country is calling you, your country needs you and needs you now.

The government is making an effort to place every man properly. It is willing to invest a certain amount of money in each man, and he is taught the difference between civil and military practice.

The officer can live in the field for approximately $50 a month.

The equipment in the Medical Officers' Reserve Corps is approximately $150. That includes his uniforms and everything.

The following St. Joseph nurses are in Hospital Unit No. 28 and they will be sent in groups of ten for preliminary training to national army cantonments: Minnie Strobel, Blanche Johnson, Hazel Richey, Ruth Winegar, Ethel Leonard.

Field, in New York Med. Jour., Dec. 29, 1917, in an interesting article on the feet, says that those whose duties require them to stand or walk much also frequently suffer from aching feet due to the tenderness of their feet. The tenderness may result from infrequency of bathing, from the formation of callous spots, from blisters, from excessive perspiration, or from ingrowing nails. A person who suffers from tender feet should take a cold foot spray every morning and every evening, by standing in a bathtub for a moment or two and receiving the tonic effect of the full pressure of the cold water from the faucet. After the spray the feet should be thoroughly dried with Turkish towel, special attention being paid to the spaces between the toes. Conclude the operation by rubbing the feet with alcohol and boric acid and powdering them. Callous spots on toes or feet should be removed by

rubbing with pumice stone and then softening

the skin with vaseline or cold cream. This will be found safer and more effectual than the cut

ting of corns. Excessive perspiration is caused generally by lack of personal hygiene and should be overcome not by the use of lotions, but rather by careful attention to the cleanliness of the feet and of the footwear. When excessive perspiration causes blisters these should be treated with spirit of camphor administered by means of pieces of cheese cloth adjusted at the seat of the trouble. These applications will cause smarting at first, but will effectively heal all inflammations of the feet and the toes not amounting to genuine blisters.

In England the tax on incomes of $1,000 is 41⁄2 per cent, in America nothing.

A board has been organized to standardize the management of soldiers with remedial defects.

It is now Capt. J. V. Littig, Davenport, Ia. The doctor is well known to the readers of the Medical Herald.

The campaign for the Third Liberty Loan will be opened on the 6th of April, the anniversary of the declaration of a state of war between the United States and Germany.

The issue of $500,000,000 of United States Treasury certificates, the subscription to which closed March 5, was oversubscribed, the subscription in every district, except one, exceeding the quota assigned it

In comparison with the tax levied in England on incomes our own income taxes are moderate, indeed.

At the meeting of the Buchanan and Andrew Counties Medical Societies at Savannah, Mo., on March 20, 1918, Dr. J. M. Bell made an eloquent plea for the purchase of thrift stamps. The ladies of Savannah served a chicken dinner, everything donated by them free. All the money received was patriotically turned over to the Red Cross. That is the spirit which wins.

From the declaration of war to February 23, the Surgeon General of the army has removed 1,050 officers of the Medical Reserve Corps. In the following table the reason assigned for discharge does not isolate under "inaptitude for the service" all those whose dismissal was in considerable degree due to inefficiency or incompetency, since these reasons had weight in many cases otherwise clasified. Discharged for physical disability, 411; inaptitude for the service, 154; to join other branches, 306; domestic difficulties, 59; resignation, 88; needed by communities, hospitals, schools, 32. During the same period there have been 2,265 promotions, including some officers promoted more than once.

The Red Cross has appointed an advisory Board, headed by Dr. Joseph A. Blake, and has appropriated $100,000 for general military medical research work in France, including special methods of recognition and study of diseases among soldiers.

The United States Army is in need of nurses for immediate assignment to duty and for reserve. According to a recent announcement it is confronted by the task of increasing the enrollment nearly 1,000 per cent to procure 37,500 nurses, who will be needed for an army of 1,500,000. The present strength of the Army Nurse Corps is but 4,000.

In England the tax on incomes of $1,500 is 634 per cent; in America nothing for married men or heads of families, and 2 per cent on $500 for an unmarried man.

In England the tax on an income of $2,000 is 77% per cent; in America nothing for a married man or head of a family, and 2 per cent on $1,000 for unmarried men.

The English income tax rate also increases more rapidly with the growth of the income than ours, a $3,000 income being taxed 14 per cent, $5,000 16 per cent, $10,000 20 per cent, and $15,000 25 per cent, while our corresponding taxes for married men are respectively two-thirds of 1 per cent, 11⁄2 per cent, 32 per cent and 5 per cent, and only slightly more for the unmarried, due to the smaller amount exempted, the rate being the same.

Do the members of your county medical society write regularly to those confreres now in war service? Have a committee appointed to attend this welcome duty.

Does your county medical society regularly forward to brethren in war service moneys collected from the latters' patients? That should be conscientiously done everywhere.

We hear that Germany is "surrounded by enemies." Why aren't her neighbors friends? Is it their fault or her fault?

In England and France the military authorities are making use of the hydrologic resources of the spas of those countries in the treatment of convalescent soldiers. Dr. Guy Hinsdale has called attention to the extensive use of these spas by the English and the French, and suggests that an inventory of American hydrologic resources should be taken.

Many physicians, though successful in ordinary practice, are not qualified for military medical functions, some 3,000 physicians have been dismissed from the army because of incompetence for the special kind of duties required.

Scarcity of registered trained nurses, due to war service, is the reason for a new agitation that the rule demanding one year of high school education be removed from the requirements for entering on the hospital training course.

Accused of conspiring to sell to soldiers a drug that would produce symptoms resembling Bright's disease and enable them to obtain a discharge from the army, Dr. Philip G. Becker, a New York physician, and Harry E. Walters, a former soldier, were arrested and arraigned today before a United States commissioner. Doctor Becker was held in $10,000 bail and Walters in $500. The pair are alleged to have effected Walters' discharge from the Spartanburg, S. C., camp by means of the drug. Soldiers at that and other camps were to be required, the government charges, to pay preliminary fees of $50, with further fees of $100 or $200 upon discharge from the army.

A Bureau of Social Hygiene, to handle the venereal problem on a national or worldwide scale, is the latest addition to the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation.

America's prospective army of 5,000,000 men or more will require fully 35,000 surgeons, to be taken from doctors in civil practice. Then,

when medical men are scarce, what a howl will go up from the nostrum-advertising dailies.

Extreme care should be taken to ascertain before eating canned goods of any kind, whether they are in good condition, advises the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, and if there is any doubt they should not be consumed.

Journals Merge-The Pacific Medical Journal, the oldest journal on the Pacific coast, which has just completed its 60th volume, has been acquired by Dr. Wm. J. Robinson and will be consolidated with The American Journal Urology and Sexology. The combined journal will be published from 12 Mt. Morris Park West, New York City.

A Victory to Win-Go back to the simple life. Be contented with simple food, simple pleasures, simple clothes. Work hard, pray hard, play hard. Work, eat, recreate and sleep. Do it all courageously. We have a victory to win.-Herbert Hoover.

Military Morals-One of the uses of the proceeds of the Liberty Loan that will appeal strongly to the great mass of American people is the care and attention given to the moral welfare and protection of the American soldiers. Heretofore with the American army and even now

with some of the armies of our allies the moral welfare of the soldier was and is a matter largely ignored. In the German armies provision is even made for immorality. It is to the glory of American arms and American national character that of the men who wear the United States uniform a high standard of conduct is expected and demanded, and provided for. Kipling's "Single men in barracks" are not to find their prototpyes in the American army. Gen. Pershing says there is no cleaner-living body of men in the world than the American army in France.

Medical Inspection in the Schools-To me, the tragedy of this earth is a diseased child. The natural inheritance of a child is joy and strength and growth and freedom. He is robbed of it all by disease. To me, the most tragic indictment of civilization is a diseased child-civilization that stands still and lets a little child, through ignorance of his parents or his teacher or for any cause, be robbed of this divine inheritance of the joy and happiness of childhood-of the strength and growth of childhood! Medical inspection is intended to help prevent that tragedy-to help remove that terrible indictment against our Christian civilization. The physician and the teacher are necessarily the main agencies in this work. Medical inspection, then, opens a new door of larger service to childhood, and through Joyner, M. D. childhood, to civilization and posterity.-J. Y.

THE LIBERTY PRAYER Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. God bless my brother gone to war Across the seas, in France, so far. Oh, may his fight for liberty, Save millions more than little me From cruel fates or ruthless blastAnd bring him safely home at last.