The death and funeral are announced of Dr. William H. Malin. Dr. Malin was one of the founders of the Germantown Homœopathic Medical Society and until quite recently attended all the meetings he could, even in spite of physical discomfort. His kindly interest in the affairs of the general profession will be greatly missed. WALTER M. JAMES, M.D., Pres., Dr. G. Harlan Wells and Dr. Ralph Bernstein, of Philadelphia, were guests of honor at the recent meeting of the Maryland State Homœopathic Medical Society held in the city of Baltimore on October 25 and 26. Dr. Wells addressed the Society on "Some Clinical Observations on the Use of Cactus Cretægus and the Iodide of Arsenic in the Treatment of Diseases of the Heart." Dr. Bernstein gave an address on "Organization," from the standpoint of homoeopathic medical societies, as a representative from the Board of Trustees of the Homeopathic Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania. Dr. Samuel Sappington, of Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, reported an unusual case of paratyphoid fever before the Clinico-Pathologic Society, in which the symptomatology was identical with that of typhoid fever. Dr. Ellen Woodward Howell, of Philadelphia, delivered an_address before the members of the Graduating Class of the Women's Southern Homœopathic Hospital. Dr. Chauncey V. B. Vedder has accepted the position of chief resident at the West Philadelphia General Homeopathic Hospital. Dr. Vedder is a recent graduate of Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, and formerly of the Buffalo Homœopathic Hospital. Dr. J. M. Heimbach, of Kane, Pa., has been spending several weeks in post-graduate work at the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. Dr. W. A. Dewey, of Ann Arbor, Mich., was a recent visitor to Philadelphia. Dr. T. H. Carmichael, of Philadelphia, President of the American Institute of Homœopathy, was a guest of honor at the annual banquet of the Homœopathic Medical Society of the State of New York at its forty-fifth annual meeting held at the Hotel Savoy, New York City. Dr. Richard Haehl, the well-known Hahnemann historian, recently extended an invitation to the members of the Seventy-ninth German Homœopathic Congress, held at Stuttgart in Wurtemburg, to inspect his relics of Hahnemann, a most comprehensive and precious collection of first edition letters, pictures, and seal rings, cameos, original medicine cases, busts, and many other remembrances of the great man, Samuel Hahnemann. The invitation was eagerly accepted, and quite a number of physicians present at the Congress took advantage of this opportunity. Surely homoeopaths travelling abroad should not miss the opportunity to pay a visit to Dr. Haehl at Stuttgart and inspect his interesting museum. Dr. Haehl extends a hearty welcome to all homeopaths to visit him when abroad. Drs. E. C. Blackburn and W. H. Follmer, of Williamsport, were recent visitors to Philadelphia. Dr. Percy Craig has opened his office for the practice of general medicine on Broad Street in Chester, Pa. The Hahnemannian Medical Society of Reading which flourished a number of years ago was again called into being in response to a call issued to the homœopathic physicians of the city of Reading and suburbs on October 6. The following officers were chosen: President, Dr Charles R. Haman; Vice-President, Dr. Chester B. Jennings; Secretary and Treasurer, Dr. F. H. Lawrence. The following enrolled as members: Drs. Charles R. Haman, Frank H. Lawrence, Paul H. Gerhardt, William F Marks, Clifford D. Harvey, Theodore Pachali, Samuel L. Dreibelbis, Leon S. Dreibelbis, George R. Curry, Archibald S. McDowell, Wm. A. Haman, George I. Keen, and Lewis A. Schollenberger, all of Reading, Pa., and Dr. Francis W. Sunanday, of Hyde Park, Pa. BOOK REVIEWS. THE MONTH'S BEST BOOKS. Tropical Medicine. Daniels. $4.00. P. Blakiston's Son & Co. Regional Diagnosis in Affections of the Brain and Spinal Cord Principles of Anatomy. Morton. $12.00. Rebman & Co. Diseases of the Lungs. Powell. $6.00. P. Blakiston's Son & Co. Practice of Medicine. Anders. $5.50. W. B. Saunders Co. A System of Medicine. Allbutt. Vol. 8, $6.00. Macmillan Co. Saunders Co. The Practitioner's Visiting List, 1912. $1.25. Lea & Febiger. A Text-Book of Pathology. With a Final Section on Post-Mortem Examinations and the Methods of Preserving and Examining Diseased Tissues. By Francis Delafield, M.D., LL.D., Emeritus Professor of the Practice of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, and T. Mitchell Prudden, M.D., LL.D. Emeritus Professor of Pathology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York. Ninth Edition. With thirteen full-page plates and six hundred and eighty-seven illustrations in the text, in black and colors. Price $5.50 net. William Wood & Company, 51 Fifth Ave., New York. 1911. Whether the great reputation of these authors has done much to forward the popularity of this book or the genuine worth of the work in its previous editions has been the cause of this reputation may be debatable, but the truth of either statement is beyond discussion. Standing in the forefront of the somewhat older generation of pathologists, the book that they have written has for years held a similar position in pathological literature The previous editions have been uniformly progressive in every line, and the present one is of equal standing. It is noted that in the classification of tumors, Adami's very complex but at the same time most satisfactory arrangement is not even mentioned. The section covering possible etiologic phases of tumors is very full. Infectious diseases are treated to an extent unusual in works upon general pathology. The third section of the book treats of post-mortem examinations and methods of preserving tissues. Numerous illustrations are uniformly excellent. A very complete index helps much to render the various contained facts readily accessible. Clinical Diagnosis. A Text-Book of Clinical Microscopy and Clinical Chemistry for Medical Students, Laboratory Workers, and Practitioners of Medicine. By Charles Phillips Emerson, A.B., M.D. Late Resident Physician, the Johns Hopkins Hospital; and Associate in Medicine, the Johns Hopkins University; Professor of Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine. Third Edition. J. B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia and London. 1911. To many of our readers this book is already familiar in its earlier editions. To such it requires no description or recommendation. To others, however, such is necessary, and to the friends already made some notes concerning the alterations seems advisable. The author states that he has modelled his book after the course of laboratory sessions which he has given and that practically all the points are those that were thus advanced. The sputum, the urine, the contents of the alimentary tract, the blood and other miscellaneous subjects are taken up in detail and with much clearness. It is gratifying to note that when exact determinations are of not more value than approximate ones, the latter are given preference. As would be expected the technic of the Wasserman reaction and of its later modification by Noguchi is well portrayed. Of particular value are those sections appended to every chapter upon the clinical interpretation of the various results which may be obtained. The reviewer believes that at the present time this is the most satisfactory and "up-to-date" book in the English language, covering both the laboratory methods of technic and the proper interpretation of the same from the standpoint of actual value to the patient. The Practitioner's Visiting List, 1912. Records of Practice for thirty patients per week. Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia and New York. The 1912 edition of this very practical little account book, that has received annual attention in the pages of the Gazette for a number of years past, has just appeared. It is a very convenient pocket account book, that also contains an abundance of information along medical lines that will frequently be of great value in emergencies. Dr. OPEN LETTER FROM DR. WILCOX. My dear Doctor : Your letter of the first has remained unanswered in order that I might have ample time to consider your request and also to inform myself as thoroughly as possible concerning the "League of Medical Freedom." I read Dr. Flower's article when it first appeared in the "Twentieth Century" of June, 1910, and I have read much that he has written since. I have read pretty much everything Collier's has had to say about the League and which the Journal of the American Medical Association has said, and as a climax read every word of Senator Works' long speech before Congress on the Owen bill. Hence you cannot accuse me of not attempting to inform myself whereof I speak. My conclusion is that the more I learn of the "League of Medical Freedom" the less use I have for it and the deeper is my Conviction that it is at bottom a thousand times more selfish and self-seeking than the American Medical Association ever dreamed of being. I believe that the instigators and framers of the League care infinitely less for the welfare of the dear public and its physical protection than any body or set of men who ever banded themselves together. I am of the opinion that the League was conceived in selfishness and born for that single purpose. It goes without saying that there are many excellent men like yourself who are members of the League, but all such have been drawn into its meshes by the sophistries and false pretenses pu forth to catch the unwary. They need you good people for just one purpose, namely, to get their chestnuts out of the fire, which chestnuts, patent medicines, impure foods, drugs, fake methods of medical practice, and other money-making humbugs are in danger of being destroyed. If the Owen bill threatened one-tenth the danger to the public welfare which the real animus of the originators of the League threatened then I would say fight the bill to the finish. Just consider for a moment, my dear Doctor, what the League stands for as presented in Senator Works' speech. It seeks to annul or belittle all the great discoveries made in medicine during the last fifty years. It practically wipes out the germ theory of disease. It would abolish all Public Health Boards. It would not insist upon quarantine of infectious diseases. It would terminate at once all public school medical inspection. It would prohibit compulsory vaccination. It scoffs at typhoid protection in the army. It would only too gladly wipe out all restrictions on pure food, drugs, and medicines. It would annihilate vivisection in toto. To be sure, Senator Works does not say all this in as many words, but it is there and easily read between the lines. I fail to see how any self-respecting physician can endorse that speech when the speaker heaps upon the physician that invidious opprobrium of advocating public school inspection for the sole purpose of so frightening the parents of the school children that those parents will rush madly to the doctors to have the children cured of disease which, according to Senator Works, they probably do not have, and thus line the doctors' pockets with ill-gotten gains. Will any honest physician take that insult quietly? Yet he places the entire profession in just that sinister light. Is there a public school teacher in the land who has watched the effect of medical inspection in the schools who will not endorse it most enthusiastically because of the good it renders the afflicted children? It seems to me, Doctor, if we of the homeopathic school are so afraid that the dominant school will legislate us out of existence that we must call to our aid the medical quacks, the Christian Scientists, the poison food squad, and all the other medical sore-heads, then I must say that it is better that we die a respectable death and have a decent burial. For my part I would rather be licked fighting honorably with honest comrades than win by the aid of the Hessians. This "Medical Freedom League" is not our fight, it is the sore-heads' fight. We belong to an honorable, self-respecting branch of the medical profession which has never thus far sullied its plumage by resorting to questionable methods of warfare. We have won our way into the hearts of the people, and gained the respect of the dominant school by our endeavors to do honest, scientific, progressive work. "All that pertains to the great field of medical learning is ours by tradition, by inheritance, by right." Are we going to repudiate that splendid record and stultify ourselves by joining forces with the deadly enemy of medical progress simply because a few in our ranks are seized with an attack of hysteria and ycll, "We shall be legislated out of existence?" If there is not enough truth in Homœopathy and stuff enough in her followers to stand such legislation as proposed in the Owen bill, then she deserves just such an ignominious death. But she will not die that way. There is a fundamental truth in this old law of Hahnemann which you can not choke, hang, stick, strangle, electrocute, or kick to death, and when all those measuures have been unsuccessfully tried it will, like the cat, come home again very much alive. Some day our dear brothers of the dominant school will set to work and prove the truth of that law by laboratory tests (and the shame will be upon us if we do not do it first). Then will that old battered but much alive truth be set upon a pinnacle of perpetual peace. The fact is we need a National Bureau of Public Health just as much as we need State Boards of Health. It may not be in just the form outlined in the Owen bill, but such a department is necessary to the physical welfare of the American people and being such it will be created. It is simply in the line of progress, and when an individual or a body of individuals throw themselves in the pathway of the Chariot of Progress they are likely to be rendered broader and longer, but being very much flattened they are not altogether useful. No, Doctor, you are unwittingly in bad company, and much as I think of you, I would not join that same company to save your—well, to save that stunning Norfolk suit I saw you wearing this summer. Yours most sincerely, DEWITT G. WILCOX. PERSONAL AND GENERAL ITEMS. Dr. Harold L. Babcock, class of 1910, B.U.S.M., has opened an office in the Charlesgate, 535 Beacon St., Boston, where he will specialize in diseases of the ear. Dr. Carl A. Williams has removed from New London, Conn., to 61 Passaic Ave., Passaic, N. J. Dr. John A. Hayward, B. U. S. M., 1906, has removed from Bangor to Waterville, Maine. FOR RENT.-A physician having a three-room office suite in Warren Chambers, 419 Boylston St., Boston, will sub-let for forenoon or evening hours. Address "Warren Chambers," care of New England Medical Gazette, 422 Columbia Road, Dorchester, Mass. Dr. H. T. Karsenar, recently a member of the staff of the University of Pennsylvania has been appointed Assistant Professor of Experimental Pathology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. George Frederick Jelly died in Wakefield, Mass., on October 24, 1911. Dr. Jelly was born in 1842; graduated from Brown University, and from the Harvard Medical School. He has been closely associated with neurological work for the past forty years, having held many positions of prominence in various medical societies. He was perhaps the best known expert in mental diseases in Boston, and particularly in his court work was he highly esteemed as a frank and fearless witness. Dr. W. Kernig, the well-known Russian physician, has retired from service in the Obuchow Hospital for Women at St. Petersburg, after fortyseven years of activity. He will doubtless be best known in medical science for his sign of meningitis. The will of the late Mrs. Sarah P. Sears of Waltham provides a bequest of $10,000 to the Waltham Hospital. The Boston Dispensary receives $100,000 and the Boston Lying-In Hospital $125,000, under the will of the late Dr. Charles G. Weld of Newport, R. I. Early in October the Medical School of New York University paid the last $20,000 of its mortgage of $175,000 which has been carried for a long time. The payment was made possible by a bequest from John J. Kennedy. The sixty-ninth anniversary of Ether Day was held at the Massachusetts General Hospital, on October 16. The speaker was Dr. Simon Flexner of New York City. Mrs. E. H. Harriman has provided a fund for the Roosevelt Hospital, New York, the income from which will be used for a research laboratory at that institution. Jefferson Medical College has formally received the new building for the new institute of anatomy, made possible by a gift from Mr. Daniel Baugh. This will be known as the Baugh Institute of Anatomy, the director of which will be Dr. Edward A. Spitzka, the well-known anatomist. The use of saccharine has been forbidden by the New York Board of Health. This action is in accordance with a decision of the Department of Agriculture which forbids the use commercially of saccharine in the District of Columbia after January first next. |