ment, saying that the capsule of the kidney should be stripped as readily as you would an appendix when you come in contact with it. As I understand it, he advised that in all cases. I want to know what is the condition of the patients some time after, whether it is only a temporary relief. I was reading quite a long article in reference to the Edebohl operation, and it discountenanced the operation as a general procedure, saying that in many cases it perhaps gave temporary relief, but in the main it was of no permanent benefit. It claimed that in the large majority of cases the capsule re-formed, which made matters much worse than before.

Dr. Smith. I will say that there are always men who are anxious to turn backward, and I think this is one of those cases. I can only speak from personal experience. I remember reading this paper, but from personal experience this operation has always been very satisfactory indeed.

Dr. Chase.-I did not quite comprehend your answer. wanted to ask you how long a time after you observed those cases, and have you had any recurrence of them?

Dr. Smith. I said in my personal experience they had been very satisfactory indeed. I have observed them a year afterward and several years afterward. I think it is a very good operation. Unquestionably Dr. Edebohl when he discovered this operation was too enthusiastic and claimed too much for it, but in the majority of cases it is a very satisfactory procedure. Dr. Edebohl did not claim that all cases of Bright's disease can be cured by stripping the capsule.

Dr. Bell. I share the interest of the Society in Dr. Emerson's paper and Dr. Briggs' remarks. Kidney Kidney cases are often very perplexing. I had one recently, where it was very difficult to determine whether there was a stone in the left kidney or not. The symptoms were all in the abdomen; there were no kidney symptoms at all; no pus in the urine. There was at one time some blood. It was decided that it was best to wait a while, and then he had more pain and a little pus in the urine. I then proceeded to open the right kidney, and I succeeded in finding at stone in the lower calyx, and the patient has been entirely relieved since from all pain.

There is a question in dealing with these cases concerning the hemorrhage, whether we shall use sutures and of what they shall be made. My practice has generally been to suture with fine black silk, yet I share Dr. Briggs' objection that it is nonabsorbable, and I know that he has had success with cat gut. So far I will say that I have had no trouble in using silk, and it is generally used in England.

The question of nephrorrhaphy is one that interests me very much. Last year I had a patient who was over sixty years of age, whom I had treated conservatively for ten years with

bandages, but finally having both kidneys floating, and her general health failing, I advised an operation. I made the usual operation and the patient has been in excellent health ever since. We have modified the method of suspension with success, using two suspension sutures running lengthwise of the wound, of Pagenstecker thread. These pass through the muscle and skin at each end of the wound, and several times through the capsule in each side of the kidney, and are removed in fourteen days.

GLEANINGS

ROTATION OF SERVICE. In Medical Record for December 23, Thompson arranges the arguments for rotation of service as opposed to continuous service by the hospital staff. The latter plan, more common in Europe than here, gives to one attending physician a certain number of beds or ward, for which he will be daily responsible during the entire year. Some arrangements against this and in favor of rotation of service are given as follows:

"For the interns, students, and nurses it is a distinct privilege to have an occasional change of visitant, who introduces new methods or teaches them new theories. For the chronic case it is often an advantage to have another visitant examine it with a fresh interest, and for the acute medical case, it matters little which of several visitants happen to treat it, all being presumably competent. (In one of the largest of the metropolitan hospitals, the average stay of all medical patients in the wards is only 11 days.) For the visitant a rotation of service is an advantage, for may he not learn from his colleagues, and is he not less apt to fall into perfunctory methods of routine? I would go further, and say that for the hospital it may even be an advantage, in rotation of service to secure occasionally a visitant who has had experience part of the year in some kindred institution. I have personal knowledge of many important reforms which have been thus extended from one hospital to another."

IMPROVEMENT IN SANITATION.-We are glad to know that Dr. Coplin, the new director of Public Health and Charities in Philadelphia, is strenuously working for the better observance of the existing sanitary laws in force in that city. He has directed his efforts, among other lines, toward increased cleanliness and sanitation in street cars. Inspectors have been appointed to watch the various lines throughout the city and to report to him, not only individuals who may infringe any of the laws, particularly those concerning expectoration, but also to report the name and number of the conductor having charge of the car, and telling whether he made any attempt to prevent such infringement. If such attempts were made in our own city, we would doubtless find these means of public conveyance kept in a far neater condition than they are at present.

TRANSFERRING OF MORIBUND PATIENTS.-Much dissatisfaction has recently been expressed by the chairman of the Board of Coroners at the practice, not infrequently followed in New York, of transferring moribund patients from one hospital to another in order to keep the mortality statistics as low as possible. Energetic measures will be taken to prevent such actions.

EDITORIAL

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"A" LAW OR "THE" LAW?

"The breadth of a man's view" says a modern aphorist, "may be gaged by his attitude towards the superlative." Exclusiveness and finality are hall marks of unfinished growth. As a man's horizon widens, his speech learns caution. His realization grows that to-day's word on any matter is not the last word. His certainty deepens that we live in a world of mutabilities and relativities; that the Absolute is not a thing of now and here, but of an ever receding tomorrow. He learns to claim for nothing that it is, in its field, the one and only thing; he may claim it is a positively useful, a relatively valuable thing, but never that it is the perfect, the all sufficing, the changeless thing. The changing yesterdays teach him modesty, as he confronts the morrows.

To this same rule, the honest homœopathist does not and cannot stand as an exception. He is the exponent of a therapeutic system; he is a therapeutic specialist, indeed, because he alone, among medical practitioners, believes the rule of similars to be the most frequently effective rule of drug-prescribing. When this rule of treatment was promulgated by Samuel Hahnemann more than a century ago, its efficacy, its beneficent mildness, the steady foothold it offered amid the very dangerous quicksands of contemporary medical practice, made enthusiastic, not to say impassioned partisans of its adopters. His famous aphorism, the foundation-stone of homoeopathic practice, reads "Similia Similibus Curentur." This does not mean, as it is so frequently and loosely quoted

as meaning, "Likes are cured by likes." It means "Let likes be treated by likes." It is not the dogmatic assertion of a law. It is the formulation of a method of treatment. As such it was offered by that very sane and modest scientist, Samuel Hahnemann. As such it is accepted, respected, and demonstrated by the sane and scientific homoeopathists of to-day.

The assertion that "Homœopathy is the Only Law of Cure," was perhaps an excusable one, in the dark days of the senseless persecution of the practitioner of homoeopathy as a Cheap Jack and a charlatan. One must shout, to be heard amid shouters; one excusably uses exaggerated affirmation in face of a sweeping denial.

But with yesterday, there has passed the excuse of yesterday. It is both unjustifiable and foolish for any medical practitioner of to-day to make the assertion that homoeopathy is the "Only law of cure." Plain common sense brought to bear on such a statement instantly shows how untenable it is. If homoeopathy is the only law of cure, then-A. Homœopathy must be shown to cure all diseased conditions; and B. No cure can be shown to take place under any treatment other than homœopathic. Are either of these positions tenable for a moment? Does homoeopathy cure-we will not say every case it is called upon to treat, but every curable case it is called upon to treat? Take a case of neurasthenia. Every homoeopathic remedy suggested by its symptoms is faithfully tried, without demonstrable effect. Then the patient is put to bed, given no medicine whatever, simply and absolutely rests amid hygienic surroundings, and receives hyper-nourishment; and in a few months goes forth, a well man. One system of cure has failed; another has succeeded; can the system that has failed be upheld as, "the only law of cure"? Take pulmonary tuberculosis, in which for so many years homoeopathic and all other treatment failed to check the progress of the disease in an enormous majority of cases. The patient is, to-day, hyper-nourished, rests, and is made to live wholly in the open air. Flesh and strength return, the cough disappears, the patient returns to working life. No system of treatment that failed can, thereafter, be hailed as "the only law of cure." Homœopathy does not dissipate a par-ovarian cyst; a surgeon is called, the trouble disappears. So, pre-eminently, of appendicitis, which for so

long under the names of peritonitis, inflammation of the bowels, and the like, baffled the homœopathist and every other medical practitioner and swelled the death-statistics of every year. To-day ninety-eight per cent of the cases surgically treated are completely cured. So with diphtheria-would an honest comparison of the cases treated by the homoeopathic remedy alone, with those treated by anti-toxin, result in homoeopathy being acclaimed, "the only law of cure"? Consider the significant statistics of the typhoid epidemic of Australia for a recent period of five years; some hospital cases treated allopathically, show a mortality of 19.49 per cent.; those treated homoeopathically, a mortality of 6.96 per cent.; those treated by Dr. Turner of Brisbane, without drugs of any kind, by baths and stimulants, a mortality of 6.69 per cent. This showing certainly does strongly commend the relative beneficence of homoeopathy over allopathy in the disease in question; but as certainly, it does not demonstrate homoeopathy as "the only law of cure." There is no need to multiply instances. We all recall other instances in which a law of cure-or, more accurately and modestly, a system of treatment-has wrought a cure, where homoeopathy and other medicinal systems have failed; electricity has such occasional results to show, for example; and so, however grudgingly it may be admitted, have one and another of the systems of psychic healing. Beyond any possibility of rational counter-claim, it is recognized that there is no "only law of cure," as there is no one road to the salvation of the soul. Scientist and theologian in this new and better day, are sanely, reverently and gratefully recognizing and acknowledging that there is a Power which works alike for righteousness and healing; and that this Power works through many and many a channel, new and old. We call ourselves. and with honorable right, homoeopathists, because we act on our founded belief that the homeopathic rule of treatment is the most harmless, the most efficacious, the most frequently helpful rule for all cases in which the administration of drugs seems indicated as the most hopeful curative measure. We call ourselves homeopathists as the electrician calls himself an electrician or the surgeon a surgeon; that those desiring our special method of treatment may know us as its practitioners. We teach homoeopathy in special medical colleges because no