hension has often resulted in her assumption of the office of medical adviser, when she really is only a part of the machinery employed in the direction of any given case of disease. The privileges of personal contact and close relationship with patients of physicians advising their employment have often led to the assumption of absolutely unauthorized rights, which from honesty and conscience are misdirected. These must be relegated into the same disuse as other evils besetting a nurse's work, or no legislative act will or can determine a standard which has as a part of its foundation a false position engendering a lack of confidence on the part of the physician and a lack of respect from the patient.

Tulane Medical Department,

The recent Commencement of the Medical Department of Tulane was a matter of gratification to every medical man in Louisiana. Not only did the Dean's report show an increase in the attendance, a smaller graduating class, but it showed a higher standard of the old school. The 91 graduates who received their diplomas were the first to have fulfilled a four-year's course, and a glance at the personnel of the class showed the result of an elevated standard.

With the Hutchinson legacy finally settled in the favor of the Col'ege, the future of this school should be assured. The Tulane Medical Department has depended largely on a long time repute, satisfied to move along established lines, even if archaic in some particulars. The clinical advantages and teaching have never been lacking and have ranked with any school in the United States. Now every line of teaching should be advanced and the friends of the school as well as the admiring graduates may have more and more reason to reckon her advantages, and to point to comparative standards with swelling pride.

Kissing Again.

Quite an interesting critique anent the late agitation about kissing appeared in the editorial columns of the New York Medical Journal and the Philadelphia Medical Journal for March 19, 1904. No attempt is made at either attack or defense, but we incline to the belief that the conclusions of the editor point to some sympathy

with those who still practice the osculatory habit. It must be a far reaching microscopic eye that essays to tilt with the kiss itself and hopes to find in its vapory nothingness some wafted germs, 'coccuses, or 'illis, and plant them on a waiting slide, while lovers woo or mothers whisper cradle lullabies to pouting baby lips.

Oh! Shades of Secundus and ye, companions of Bonnefons, in vain your apostrophes have rung to willing ears for nigh four centuries if in a moment cold, drear, science touches your poetic lines with blasting truth. Why write such odes as these if time shall kill them in the name of cruel truth:

"'Tis not a kiss those ruby lips bestow,
But richest nectar and ambrosial dews;
Such as from fragrant naid or quassia flow,
Or blest Arabia's spicy shades diffuse;
Or sweets from Hymettus' thymy brow,
Or roses that Cecropian bowers produce,
Unwearied honey-bees selecting bear
To cells of virgin wax, and temper there."

"All hail, ye kisses of ambrosial birth,
Whom Neptune's thrilling hour produc'd on earth!
Sweet joys, that soothe the pangs of fierce desire,
For you the bard shall wave the sounding lyre-
And while the Muses' hill shall last, your praise
Shall live immortal in the poet's lays;

And Love! who boasts himself with conscious pride,
To that dear race from which ye spring allied,
In Roman strains your raptures shall rehearse
In all the liquid melody of verse."

"To crown our raptures 'twas agreed, dear maid,
A sweet two thousand should the number be;
And on thy glowing lips a thousand paid.
A thousand kisses I received from thee;
Complete, I own, the numbered raptures prove,
But when did numbers e'er suffice with love?"

"Yes, count my tears. Yet if thou cease to count,
O, cruel maid! each kiss thy lips bestow,

Then of my sorrows heed not the amount;

But, oh! if such can mitigate my woe,

Let the unnumbered tears these eyes have shed,

By thy unnumbered kisses be repaid."

"Why reach for sweets in every flow'ret's bloom,
The thyme, the anise, scatt'ring sweet perfume;
The blushing rose, the violet's nectar'd flower,
Ambrosial offspring of the vernal hour?
Fly, silly insects, to my charming fair,
Light on her lips, and gather fragrance there-
Lips where the thyme, and blushing rose dispense
Their rich perfumes, and ravish every sense;

Where vernal violets all their sweets exhale,
And fragrant anise breathes in every gale-
Lips by Narcissus' genuine tears bedew'd-
Lips by the Oebalian stripling's blood imbued;
Pure as those streams where either ceas'd to be,
He by foul chance, and self enamour'd he
That fragrant life blood, and whose flowing tears,
By nectar temper'd, and etherial airs,

Whose balmy tides impregn'd the fruitful earth,
And gave the vari-colour'd flow'rets birth."

Seriously, the evils of osculation are probably exaggerated, particularly as they relate to the family circle and the sentimental life. That discriminative education should be aimed at promiscuous osculatory exhibitions is perhaps advisable. When diseases of infectious type are known to travel by the respiratory route, when tuberculosis is so prevalent and its victims grow, a word at times may serve some prophylactic purpose.

The Esquimaux, Japanese and certain savage races have never learned the osculatory embrace, but in India castes direct the mode of kissing in each walk and circle, and in the sacred books of both Brahmin and Persian faith the exact directions are given in which each form of kiss is to be impressed or implanted.

It will be a strange world indeed without the maternal nocturnal or matitudinal osculatory benison; where lovers simply press the fervid hands; where brothers pass in wordy greeting, or where the poet is condemned to banish the highest token of his creed.

"For joy like this
Olympus sighed in vain!"

Abstracts, Extracts and Miscellany.

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

In charge of DR. P. MICHINARD, assisted by Dr. C. J. MILLER. New Orleans.

PUERPERAL MORBIDITY AFTER THE BIRTH OF MACERATED FETUS.-The Journal of Obs. and Gyne. of the British Empire contains an extract of an article by Kothen (Archiv fur Gynaekol.) in which

it is stated that the writer has collected from the Journal of the Women's Hospital in Giessen 70 cases in which the birth of macerated fetuses occurred from 1889 to 1903. These are tabulated and analyzed. A definite rule is adopted in estimating the number of "Morbid" cases and by applying this standard to the ordinary labors occurring in the same hospital during the same years, Kothen arrives at the conclusion that the morbidity after the delivery of macerated fetuses is from 10.8 to 11 per cent. higher than in ordinary morbidity. The discharges were fetid with slight rise of temperature in most of the morbid cases. The cause generally appeared to be infection after rupture of the membranes and before expulsion of the fetus.

ON SECONDARY SUTURE OF THE PERINEUM DURING THE PUERPERIUM.-Abuladse contributed to the Monats, fur Geburts. und Gynäk Bd. 18 Hf. 4 a paper on this subject, an extract of which appears in The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the British Empire for Jan. 1904.

He states that unhealed lacerations of the perineum, although frequently followed by no particular symptoms, in general lead to such a train of symptoms that operations of a plastic nature have perforce to be performed long after the injury has taken place. The possibility of obtaining good results from suture of the perineum some days after it has been lacerated was demonstrated as far back as 1849, by Maisonneuve, who sutured two such cases on the tenth and twelfth days respectively after labor. Soon after this Nélaton operated on similar cases on the fourth and seventh days, with good results.

Since this time many important authorities have written confirming Maisonneuve's original observations, and in all the writer has collected 118 cases from the literature of the subject. To these are added 11 cases described by the author. Of these 137 cases two died, one of puerperal sepsis, and the other of erysipelas mig

rans.

In 126 cases the secondary suture was perfectly successful, and the time of performance of the operation varied from the second to the twenty-eighth day after delivery. The operation was partly successful in five cases and unsuccessful in four only. In some of these cases the granulations covering the lacerated surfaces were

simply removed with a sharp spoon before suturing, in others, the wounded surfaces were refreshed by dissection, in others simply by energetic rubbing with cotton wool. Good results were obtained by all these methods. The author recommends the following technic: After disinfection of the genitals and vagina he applies tincture of iodin to the granulation tissue so as to destroy as many bacteria as possible, then puts in the deep sutures, and before tying them scrapes away the granulations with a sharp spoon. The sutures are not removed until after five or six days. In the eleven cases described there was no rise of temperature recorded, and all healed completely. If there has been any infection of the wound or ulcerative process it is necessary to wait until granulation tissue has appeared before attempting to suture the surfaces. On the other hand, there must not be any real scar tissue formed if a good result is to be expected; in general, up to four weeks after labor a good result may be looked for.

Department of Cherapeutics.

In charge of DR. J. A. STORCK, New Orleans.

ARISTOCHIN IN BRONCHIAL ASTHMA.-K. Dresler found that aristochin produced very quick relief for asthmatics. At first they invariably complained of being worse, but soon after the spasms lost their intensity, the attacks became fewer, the cough and dyspnea disappeared completely after a short time. One man who had been suffering unspeakably for three years, and who had not been relieved by any of the known drugs, was relieved after taking 0.4 gm. (6 gr.) of aristochin three times daily for six weeks. The drug quiets the irritated nervous system of these patients markedly and regulates the cardiac rhythm, also diminishing the heart-beats considerably. It may produce slight, transient itching and buzzing in the ears, but otherwise nothing unpleasant has been complained of.-American Medicine, April 16, 1904.

QUININ SUBCUTANEOUSLY.-The following combination containing quinin is recommended by Aufrecht, administered hypodermically: