The death-rate in large cities is greater because of expectant plan of treatment, because of the excess of asthenic patients, and abandonment of local treatment.

Dr. Cason: I never carry the blister to the extent of blistering if I can help it. You can get the effect without blistering by simply reddening the skin. You can take the patient who is weak and anemic and push the calomel and he will be stimulated more than depressed by the calomel, and the result will be better than to stimulate him with alcohol.

Dr. Hubbard: I want to congratulate Dr. Slack on his paper, also upon the general method of treatment that ha has outlined. It seems to me that calomel heads the list in the treatment of this as well as in the treatment of typhoid fever. It is rather gratifying to a man who has talked as much as I have about calomel. The man who starts out to treat a case of pneumonia by a systematie method and says that he will use this in every case is unscientific and is using irrational treatment. If you have a full-blooded man, if you use on the first day you see him a little veratrum you will do good, but you would not think of using it later on when he is weak. I believe in using the blister, although we can not tell how it does good, but it does. There are many things in medicine that we do not know how they act, but we know that they do. We are not justified in standing by and seeing our patients die without doing something. I am sure that the pendulum has swung too far in condemning the use of drugs in pneumonia. It is perfectly absurd in my mind to say that we should not use drugs. We can not cure every case, and most of them will get well any way, but a small percentage on the border line we can pull through with the use of blisters, calomel, strychnine, veratrum and alcohol. I have no use for the man who says that he can not do anything but let him die easy. I do not see how he can do that.

Medicine will not do everything, but we should do all that we can, and we should use our reason. I am sorry to see so many of the profession leaving off the use of drugs.

Dr. Hull: I would like to ask one question of Dr. Slack. He has stated that the mortality has greatly increased. Are there any statistics which answer the question as to whether the increase of alcoholism has anything to do with the increase of mortality in pneumonia?

Dr. Shorter: One point Dr. Hubbard said about drugs reminds me of a remark by Dr. Jacobi, of New York, and what he says about drugs is this: "Those men who do not use drugs and don't believe in them are those who do not know how to use them."

Dr. Hooten: The first thing in the treatment of pneumonia patients is to give calomel and put on counter-irritation. I never carry the counter-irritation to the extent of blistering unless the condition demands it, and I have found that under the active use of counter-irritants in pneumonia the patient is more comfortable. As to how it acts I do not know. It is enough for me to know that it does it. When I find that a thing does the work I am going to use it regardless of how it does it. It is also my practice to treat them pretty much as Dr. Slack says. I am a little afraid of veratrum, but I am a great believer in pushing quinine in these cases. It is always my object to make the patient as comfortable as possible. If there is much nervous disturbance and pain I use codeine in preference to dover's powders. By using whiskey, quinine, codeine, calomel and counter-irritation you will get along very well.

Dr. Slack (in closing): The reason I read this paper was because in looking over the Transactions of the Georgia Medical Association for twelve years I found that while appendicitis, eliminative treatment of typhoid fever, etc., have come up almost every year, the treatment of

pneumonia seems to be a leap-year subject. The last paper read before the Association did not endorse blisters.

In the medical journals this winter I have seen more articles about the treatment of pneumonia than ever before. I was struck by the article by Dr. Baird, who only mentioned blistering to condemn it. About two weeks ago an able paper came out by Dr. Gilman Thompson in the Journal of the American Medical Association, but he did not mention blistering. I wish to state here that the idea seems to be growing that blistering is not the proper thing. Not long since a young lady from the country went to one of the city colleges. She had an attack of lobar pneumonia, and six days later was brought home a corpse. The family found that the doctors had not used blisters, and they came to me and asked me if the doctors should be paid their bills when they did not blister. I simply mention this for the benefit of the doctors in the cities, who treat country girls or boys attending colleges.

In regard to alcoholics, of course if you eliminate them the death-rate will fall to about 12 per cent. in hospital practice.

The physician who does not believe in drugs and medicines and thinks all he must do is to make a correct diagnosis, as the patient will get along all right without them, reminds me of the theologian who does not believe in the inspiration of the Bible or the divinity of Christ. He takes away the only hope you have and substitutes nothing in its place.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUGGESTION: A

THEORY.

BY JNO. R. ROSE, M.D., EASTMAN.

In the systematic study of psychology we will sooner or later arrive at a place where, like at "the parting of the ways," we must choose which one of two divergent lines of thought we will follow; this choice is made a necessity from the fact that both can not be true, while it is simply a matter of individual temperament as to which one will be chosen. These divergent lines of reasoning have their Leginning in the very concept of mind itself, and are expressed to-day by two schools or branches of mental philosophy, each one with its zealous supporters and defenders.

The rationalistic school had their first great champion in Locke, the English apostle of rationalism, who, in his "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding," built the platform upon which they stand to-day. He taught that mind is limited by consciousness, that all activities. beyond the confines of conscious recognition and physical and not psychic; he took the position that whatever is not capable of direct proof has no existence. In 1696 the German philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz undertook to answer and disprove the arguments of Locke, and as a result gave to the world his "New Essay," which must be considered the first concise statement of the claims of idealistic psychology, though he only elaborated theories that date back as far as Plato. Leibnitz undertook to prove that mind is not limited by a conscious recognition of its

existence, that it exists outside of and beyond the limits of consciousness.

To the rationalist, mind is like a cultivated field, strongly fenced, beyond which there is no further arable land; to the idealist, mind is a vast expanse, of which only a small part is fenced in and under cultivation, the rest being unknown territory. To more fully elucidate the idealistic concept of mind, it has been compared to a bridge composed of three arches, that span the chasm between the Divine and the material; of these only the middle arch is illumined by a strong light, consciousness, which very rarely allows fitful flashes to dispel the gloom of the other two, and then only for short distances. The first arch begins in absolute darkness, but in direct touch with the Divine; here we must look for the home of inspiration, imagination, genius and spiritual instinct, whose impulses are constantly traveling to the circle of light beyond, where they manifest themselves as thought, feeling or action. On the other side, the third arch is again shrouded in darkness, the end resting on the material; here we may expect to find the dwelling-place of physical life and instinct, of passions, vices and low tendencies whose impulses are also traveling to the circle of light to war with and modify or be modified by those from the other side. Whether we accept this concept of mind or not, it is undeniably true that mental work is accomplished without the aid of consciousness, and though we may not and do not know when this work is being done, yet we do know when it is done by the finished product of this work; just as when we see a house, we know from the very fact that the house is there that work has been done there by carpenters, masons, painters and others, though we may have no conscious knowledge of such work. It is a common experience that, after vainly trying to recall some forgotten incident, the conscious will give up the attempt and turns attention to