EDITORIAL

Books for review, exchanges and contributions- the latter to be contributed to the GAZETTE only, and preferably to be typewritten-personal and news items should be sent to THE NEW ENGLAND MEDICAL GAZETTE, 80 East Concord Street, Boston; subscriptions and all communications relating to advertising, or other business, should be sent to the Business Manager, Dr. WILLIAM K. KNOWLES, 40 Mt. Pleasant Ave., Roxbury, Mass.

Reports of Societies and Personal Items should be sent in by the 15th of the month previous to the one in which they are to appear. Reprints will be furnished at cost and should be ordered of the Business Manager before publication.

MATERIA MEDICA A LIVING ISSUE

It has become a wide-spread impression that in the medical world materia medica is far less an issue of the living present, than is the latest development in surgery or electricity. Were this true, it would be a regrettable truth. For we know that it is, after all, to our materia medica that we must turn, as the armory from which to draw our weapons to combat the great majority of the ills of mankind. Taken by and large, the cases of disease treated medically would probably be as at least twenty or thirty to one, to the cases treated surgically. This means that command of the resources of materia medica should be with us a constant ambition; a goal, to attain which it is worth our while to bend our highest energies. Apathy toward materia medica is a most unwholesome sign in the profession, so many of whose needs an adequately understood materia medica must supply. It is, therefore, a source of great satisfaction to note that, in our homœopathic ranks at least, the interest in materia medica was never more widespread, more vivid, more living, than it is to-day. Witness the completion and publication, within a comparatively brief space of time, of two such exhaustive, such epoch-marking works, as Dr. J. H. Clarke's "Dictionary of Materia Medica," and Dr. Howard P. Bellow's "Test Proving of Belladonna." Witness the fact that no other sessions of the recent International Homœopathic Congress commanded the great attendance or the unflagging, enthusiastic, long-sustained interest, of the sessions devoted to materia medica. From 10 A.M. to 11 P.M., save for the noon and dinner recesses, the meeting hall was thronged with intent. and eager listeners, undismayed by the many unfavorable conditions which might well have alienated their attention and their interest; such as the humid and enervating heat, and the incessant and dis

tracting noise of the surf, rushing under and around the pier on which the hall was situated. Surely materia medica vindicated itself as a living issue on that memorable occasion. And again, at the just-ended meeting of the Massachusetts Homœopathic Medical Society, the hours devoted to materia medica proved, under the able chairmanship of Dr. John Arnold Rockwell, the most pregnant hours of the session. Again the objective conditions were most unfavorable; the night brought one of the wildest storms of several years; despite which, in addition to the very large local representation, there were present members from no less than sixteen cities and towns, some of them of seemingly prohibitive distances from Boston. The presence of a well-known physician from far Australia, and another from Tennessee, gave added evidence of the power of the evening's subject to win interest alike against obstacles and counter-attractions.

All this speaks most encouragingly of the fact that we, as homœopathic physicians, have vividly and practically in mind where our distinctive strength lies; and that we are not likely in any immediate present, to forfeit our claim to recognition as therapeutic specialists, by any lack of appreciation of how living an issue materia medica is, and must be, in our councils and in our professional lives.

MEDICAL WISDOM IN MOTLEY WEAR

The world owes much to its jesters. An arrow barbed with a laugh will go home to its mark, when an arrow barbed with a sermon will fly far astray, and sink in the morass of oblivion. When a man meets a truth in the path of his pleasures, he is much more apt to make it his traveling-companion, than when he finds it on the path of duty. Which explains the grateful pleasure with which we have lately chanced, in one of the "best-selling" books of the hourwhere surely no one would have thought of expecting to find anything of the sort! on a bit of medical teaching, so sound and sensible that it cannot be too widely quoted or commended. It must cheer the hearts of preachers of medical reform, remembering what scant and lukewarm audiences they oftenest address, to know that this especial piece of sound good sense, wearing, as it does, the motley of familiar popular slang, will find a welcome way into thousands of minds whose doors are closely shut to any wisdom clad in a preacher's gown. It is famous "Old Gorgan Graham" who thus speaks, in those "Letters to His Son," which, if they do not rival Chesterfield's, in phrase, far surpass them in every-day ethics:

"Health is like any inheritance - you can spend the interest in work and play, but you mustn't break into the principal. Once you do, and it's only a matter of time before you've got to place the remnants in the hands of a doctor as receiver; and receivers are mighty partial to fees and mighty slow to let go. But if you don't work with him to get the business back on a sound basis, there's no such thing as any further voluntary proceedings; and the remnants become remains.

"It's a mighty simple thing, though, to keep in good condition. because about everything that makes for poor health has to get into you right under your nose. Yet a fellow'll load up with pie and buckwheats for breakfast, and go around wondering about his stomach-ache, as if it were a put-up job that had been played on him when he wasn't looking; or he'll go through his dinner pickling each course in a different brand of alcohol, and sob out on the butler's shoulder that the booze isn't as pure as it used to be when he was boy; or he'll come home at midnight singing 'The Old Oaken Bucket,' and act generally as if all the water in the world were in the well on the old homestead, and the mortgage on that had been foreclosed; or from 8 P.M. to 3 G.X. he'll sit in a small game with a large cigar, breathing a blend of light-blue cigarette smoke and dark-blue cuss-words, and next day, when his heart beats four and skips two, and he has that queer, hopping sensation in the knees, he'll complain bitterly to the other clerks that this confining office work is killing him.

"Of course, with all the care in the world, a fellow's likely to catch things; but there's no sense in sending out invitations to a lot of miscellaneous microbes, and pretending when they call that it's a surprise party. Bad health hates a man who is friendly with its enemies hard work, plain food, and pure air. More men die from worry than from overwork; more stuff themselves to death than die of starvation; more break their necks falling down the cellar stairs. than climbing mountains. If the human animal reposed less confidence in his stomach and more in his legs, the streets would be full of healthy men walking down to business. Remember that a man. always rides to his grave; he never walks there!"

A SIGNIFICANT DIETETIC EXPERIMENT

Yale University works in a strenuous spirit, of which its victorious football teams do not furnish the only illustration. Its work in scientific research equally gives example of vigor, perseverance, and demonstrable result. Certain researches along dietetic lines have

been conducted by Professor Irving Fisher of the department of Political Economy, and a summary of their results published in the Yale Alumni Weekly for Oct. 3d. Numerous references to these experiments have appeared also in the daily press, notably a recent lengthy and favorable editorial comment in the Boston Herald. The full report has not yet been published, but in a contribution on the subject to "Science," Professor Fisher says the experiments were undertaken "to discover whether proper mastication and enjoyment of food would, produce the 'physiological economy' claimed for it by Mr. Horace Fletcher, and also whether it would lead to the use of low proteid according to the standard advocated by Professor Chittenden. The result of the experiment would seem to answer both these questions in the affirmative. The experiments were conducted with nine Yale students and lasted from January to June, 1906. Careful record of the amounts of food taken and the constituents in proteids, fats, and carbohydrates, was kept for each man for each day. To avoid weighing at the table, the food was all weighed in the kitchen and served in 'standard portions' of 100 calories each, or simple fractions or multiples thereof, so that the men merely needed to record the number of portions eaten. The propositions of proteids, fats and carbohydrates were found by means of the Mechanical Diet Indicator, described by Professor Fisher in the American Journal of Physiology for April. During the first half of the experiment the men followed two rules only: The first was to thoroughly masticate the food up to the point of involuntary swallowing' with the attention, however, upon the taste and enjoyment of the food rather than upon the mere mechanical act of mastication. Any 'counting chews' was discouraged as was also the forcible holding of food in the mouth, as experience of others, as well as the conclusions of Pawlow had seemed to show that anything which tended to make eating a bore harmed rather than helped digestion. The second rule was to obey implicitly the leadings of appetite, both in regard to quantity of food and the choice between different foods...

"This first half of the experiment, therefore, was really an experiment in natural eating, if we may assume that it is unnatural to hurry through our meals and eat what is set before us, out of politeness, habit, cr limitation of choice. It was found that as a consequence a profound change occurred in the diet of the men. There was a large reduction in the quantity of liquids of all kinds at meals: water, tea, coffee, and even soups. There was a reduction in the total daily average of calories consumed of about 10 per cent, a reduction of proteids of about 15 per cent, and of flesh foods (meat, fowl and shell fish) of about 40 per cent.

"During the second half of the experiment the two rules above mentioned were continued in force, but a third was added. This was, when the appetite was uncertain in its choice of foods, to give the benefit of the doubt to the low proteid and non-flesh foods, and to foods classified, provisionally, as the most wholesome. This influence of suggestion was never carried, however, to the point of eating against appetite. This still remained supreme. Suggestion was used merely to settle cases where appetite was not decisive.

"During the second half of the experiment there was a still more pronounced change in the character of the diet. Comparing the diet in June, with that in January, it was found that the total calories had fallen about 25 per cent, proteid about 40 per cent, and the flesh foods over 80 per cent, or to about one-sixth of the original amount. Moreover, the proteid had fallen to the level indicated as desirable in. the previous experiments of Professor Chittenden, which is one and a half calories of proteid per pound of body weight

"Gymnasium tests were made to ascertain the strength and endurance of the men. It was found that their strength had remained practically constant through the experiment, while their endurance increased during the first half about fifty per cent, and during the second half by as much more. A marked distinction was drawn between strength and endurance, strength being the utmost force which a muscle can exert once, and endurance the number of times that a muscle can perform an exertion well within its strength. . . .

"The average improvement from January to June, making every possible allowance, was over ninety per cent. The men were not as stiff and sore after the June as after the January tests, in spite of the fact that they had performed double the amount of work."

Many points of this highly interesting report merit especial consideration. For instance, the fact that, left to their unrestricted choice, the subjects of the experiment voluntarily adopted the vegetarian diet, as that affording them most pleasure. Again, that on this diet, so far from losing animal vigor, the subjects in question made the amazing gain of over ninety per cent in working capacity and power of endurance. Yet, again, it is significant that a condition of the experiment was that the subjects should "fix their attention" on getting the utmost pleasure from the exercise of eating. When we remember that it is at Yale University that the physical director commands his students to "Think muscle," this fact of the demand for concentrated "attention" in the experiment under consideration, becomes a factor of much interest.

"A" OR "THE" LAW OF CURE: ONE WORD MORE

In the editorial columns of our esteemed contemporary, the Medical Advance, for September last, an article signed "Q. E. D.” takes vigorous exception to our recent comments on the question as to whether any system of treating the sick should arrogate to itself the title of "The" law of cure. A discussion on a point of this sort, as is threatened in the present instance, oftenest resolves itself into a question, not of facts, but of phrases. Sifted to the bottom, if time were well spent so to sift it, a basis of agreement would probably be found between "Q. E. D." and ourselves, on most points of the present question at issue. There would probably still remain, as now there remain, two opinions on the accurate use of a phrase; and time were certainly very badly wasted in any attempt to make these opinions one. For example, we should find ourselves agreed as to the law of similars being the only consistent and effective law