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THE 41st semi-annual meeting of the Homœopathic Medical Society of the State of New York will be held in Jaeger's Hall, northeast corner of 59th street and Madison avenue, New York, Tuesday and Wednesday, October 4th and 5th, 1892, to which the friends of the society are cordially invited. An especially interesting and well-attended meeting is assured. The New York County Society's committee on entertainment has issued a circular, announcing that after the morning session on Tuesday a luncheon will be served at the New York Homœopathic Medical College and Hospital, 63d street and the Eastern Boulevard, immediately succeeding the opening exercises of the term, and on Wednesday evening a complimentary banquet will be tendered the visiting members and their wives at Sherry's. JOHN L. MOFFAT, Secretary.

17 Schermerhorn street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Ar the annual field day of the Essex County Homœopathic Medical Society, held at Baker's Island July 27, 1892, members and guests were present to the number of about fifty. A short business session was held directly after dinner, when Dr. T. R. Grow, of Lynn, and Dr. H. W. Johnson, of Lynn, were elected to membership. Then followed orchestral selections, and recitations by Prof. Meade, who happened to be stopping at the hotel. Remarks were made by Dr. C. R. Brown, of Lynn, on "The Condition of the Society, Past and Present"; by Dr. J. H. Sherman, of Boston, who represented the Boston Surgical and Gynecological Society; by Dr N. R. Morse, of Salem, on "The First Field Day of the Society"; by Dr. A. B. Ferguson, of Salem, in regard to the work being done by the Essex County Homeopathic Hospital Association; and by Rev. Mr. Frisbee, of Des Moines, Iowa, who spoke in a very pleasing manner on "The Relation of the Clergyman to the Physician."

HOSPITAL JOTTINGS.-The thirteenth report of the State Board of Lunacy and Charity, being for 1891, is just at hand. These reports are very complete. This year is unusually so, containing no less than twenty-two tables relating to the insane department, some with more than five hundred items each. No other State, it seems certain, approaches this in supplying such full information. The advantage of it, as plainly appears, is largely the promotion of comparisons with the hope of improvement. The present report shows a remarkably good record for Westborough. There are in Massachusetts four other hospitals that receive acute cases, similar to this one. They are more than five and one-half times as large, Westborough being, with one exception, smaller than any of them. But those four hospitals together received last year less than three times as many patients as did Westborough. They would have taken in 873 more if they had reached the rate of our hospital. Of patients discharged they would have sent out 959 more if they had equalled Westborough. Of those discharged as recovered, if the reported cases of relapses are deducted, the four other hospitals sent out 193. Westborough discharged 123 of the same class, after subtracting the relapses. By estimation upon the whole number treated, the recoveries here were nearly three times (287) as large as those of the others. If, on the above basis, the others had equalled Westborough, 361 more would have gone out as recovered than really did so. Some may say that the estimate should be based upon the cases admitted during the year. By that method 212 more than did so would have recovered. This hospital discharged last year in all ways, after taking out those who went to chronic asylums from here and the relapses so far as they are known, 330. If the others had done as well in proportion to the whole number treated, they would have discharged 472 more than they did. An interesting table in the report shows how many recovered and how many died, last year, of those remaining who entered in any previous year. In the opening year, 1887, many were transferred from other hos pitals to this. Of those patients 135 remained; none of them recovered last year, and four died, being but one in 34 nearly. Of the 1888 admissions, So remained, 2 went out as recovered, and 3 died. Of 1889, 94 were left, 6 recovered, and died. Of 1890, 199 remained, 32 recovered, and 10 died. Last year, 397 came in, and of them 102 recovered and 33 died, these last being at the rate of 1 in 12. It is seen that after two years of hospital life few recover and but a small proportion die.

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Westborough Chronotype.

THE

NEW-ENGLAND MEDICAL GAZETTE.

No. 10.

OCTOBER, 1892.

VOL. XXVII.

Contributions of original articles, correspondence, personal items, etc., should be sent to the publishers,

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The paper on the study of materia medica, written for the American Institute by Dr. Richard Hughes, and published in our present issue, sounds a note of warning of which the homoopathic profession stands very much in need. The warning is against empiricism as distinguished from pure homoeopathic principles, in the practice of our physicians. No one is better fitted than Dr. Hughes to speak authoritatively on this vitally important theme. No living worker in the homoeopathic ranks has labored more ardently or more fruitfully than he, for the success of our common cause. His scholarly and temperate writings on the theory of homoeopathy command the respectful consideration of all thinking men, whatever their shades of opinion his practical counsels on clinical matters, founded as they are on extended and successful experience, have long been of golden worth to homoeopathic practitioners in their every-day work. His untiring labors in connection with the Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy have, within the last few years, added immeasurably to the heavy debt of gratitude owed to Dr. Hughes by our profession. His keen interest in anything pertaining to our cause permits no detail of significance to it to escape his observation; and when he offers to us a rare word of counsel and warning, couched, as always, in phrases of gracious courtesy, it well becomes us to listen with earnest consideration. In the present instance his warning is well-timed. The em

VOL. XXVII. - No. 10.

451

piricism whose subtle dangers he suggests is already entering the citadel of homoeopathy by more than one gate; and—a curious fact, the branch of the profession which most loudly denounces, by very unpleasant names, certain of our freethinkers who by too frequent resort to palliatives and "physiological" doses open a door to empiricism, are themselves opening, every year, a wider door. What is genuine homœopathic practice? It is one thing and one thing only; the administration for the relief of certain disease-symptoms, of drugs demonstrably able to produce similar symptoms in the healthy organism. Nothing else than this is homœopathic practice, no matter how iterantly or blatantly it may claim to be such. By two classes among us, such practice is set at naught. One class is that which-frankly and in not a few cases justifiably,-uses palliatives for cases past cure, and agonizing for relief, and treats empirically certain other cases for whose symptoms no simillimum has yet been discovered. The second class includes those who treat disease-conditions with drugs having no reliable pathogenesy; drugs whose sick-making powers are absolutely undemonstrated and undemonstrable; and which therefore it is absolutely impossible to employ homoeopathically. Both of these classes are empiricists; only of one class the empiricism is intelligent, honest, occasional and defensible; while the empiricism of the others is blind, chronic, hidden under pretentious and plausible names, and therefore infinitely more perilous. There is no logic on earth which can demonstrate the giving on "clinical indications" of the millionth potency of an unproved and unprovable drug to be any less rank empiricism than the giving a phenacetine pill for neuralgia.

Dr. Hughes goes, after his well-known fashion, to the very root of the mischief in urging that drug-pathogenetics be made a leading and vital interest in every homœopathic medical school, and that drug pathogenesy be taught in its purity and integrity, entirely apart from clinical teachings or even suggestions. The convictions of students are thus, at the outset, fixed on a logical basis; they learn from what armory alone the weapons of true homœopathic practice can be drawn; and if they lapse thereafter into any form of empiricism, it is at least not ignor

antly done. It is to be hoped that every instructor in homœopathic materia medica will examine this work in the light of Dr. Hughes' wise counsel.

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE BATTLE AGAINST ARSENIC IN WALL-PAPERS and in house-furnishings generally seems, in England, to be practically won, which gives good hope that a like cheerful result may be obtained in this country, in the not distant future. In a recent number of the London Lancet there is a highly interesting article on the decrease of arsenical poisoning throughout England, and the almost entire disuse of arsenic as a pigment, not only in wall-papers, but in cretonnes and all upholstering materials. The Lancet attributes this fortunate state of things to the active caution of buyers, taught to demand reliable analyses of purchases under consideration; said caution being implanted by the teachings and preachings of physicians and medical publications. Driven by necessity, the dealers have secured, and are now almost universally employing green and other pigments as harmless as satisfactory, containing no arsenic whatever, as is demonstrated by the most delicate tests employed for its discovery.

The frequent agitation of this subject by the physicians and professional journals of our State, and especially the efforts yet. fresh in the public mind, of our Boston Homœopathic Medical Society, to arouse the public to a sense of its danger from arsenic commercially employed, have brought about much improvement and lessening of the danger in question. But undoubtedly much yet remains to be done before the mischief will be as thoroughly under control with us, as the Lancet's encouraging report shows it to be in England. And meantime, as our contemporary the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal incisively says, in commenting upon the report in question, the Lancet's article is much to be commended "to those physicians in other States, who profess to regard the danger to health from arsenic in papers and fabrics, as a Boston fad."

A BRAVE AND TRIUMPHANT FIGHT AGAINST CHOLERA has been that waged, for the last few weeks, by the health authorities of New York. To have had the dread disease set foot not only on the threshold, but across the threshold of a great city, and then to have fought it bravely back, is an achievement of which modern sanitary resource and the men who so successfully employed it have every reason to be proud. The New York authorities had very much to contend with apart from cholera itself. The city was in far from a sanitary condition, and reforms in this direction, thanks to ignorant poverty and rapacious landlordism are not quickly achieved. The infected steamships brought cabin passengers as well as steerage passengers; and it was but human nature that the former should bitterly rebel not only against being kept from their imperative business and comfortable homes, by the exigencies of quarantine, but against remaining in an infected atmosphere. the shameful story of the riotous mob who delayed the landing, on Fire Island, of the women and little children in desperate case from cold, hunger and loss of sleep, is the darkest chapter in all the tale of difficulties overcome. In face of all these things the disease has been rendered quiescent; practically stamped out; and the fright in the public mind is almost wholly dissipated. It is a brave story, and one which will greatly tend to breed healthy confidence in modern resources against the visitations of epidemic diseases.

Finally

THE FORTHCOMING MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY will be in several respects a unique occasion. It will occur on Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 11th and 12th; covering, contrary to custom, a part of two days; certain of the exercises to be held in the evening. The place of meeting will be the new buildings of the Boston University School of Medicine, on East Concord Street. An exceedingly interesting feature will be the holding of several special surgical clinics, at such hours that the visiting physicians can conveniently be present, without interfering with their attendance on the sessions of the society. Opportunity will thus be given to see the

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