physician or surgeon to divide fees with or to promise to pay a part of his fee to or pay a commission to any other physician or surgeon or person who calls him in consultation or sends patients to him for treatment or operation.

Section 2. Any physician or surgeon who pays or receives any money prohibited by this act shall be punished by a fine not to exceed one hundred dollars or imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed ninety days, or both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court.

Section 3. In case a physician or surgeon shall be convicted of violating any of the provisions of this act the Board of Registration in Medicine, upon a first conviction may and upon a subsequent conviction shall, revoke the license of the person so convicted.

Editorial Comments

November with its Thanksgiving and first snow finds Michigan's doctors back into the harness of winter work and long hours. But in spite of the demands upon your time Doctor, arrange your work so that on the afternoon or evening that your society meets you will be in attendance. Pass along that tardy patient, who comes into your office just as you are starting for the meeting, until tomorrow. Be sure that emergency call is in reality an emergency. In fact you can not risk hiding behind a shallow excuse. Make up your mind to go and then go.

Are Industrial and Indemnity Insurance Companies attempting to dictate to you? If so discuss the problem at your next meeting. Of course you can't charge big fees for poor work, while on the other hand when you have done modern industrial surgery and exercised every skilled care you are entitled to your fees. There seems to be one trouble and that is that the incompetent do not realize that the end result determines the degree of skill that has been exercised.

It's the exceptional "Doc." who nowadays is content to travel by his "lonely." The better ones realize the need of society affiliation.

This gargle

Quinine Sulphate or Bisulphate, grs. VI. Thymol.

Ol. Menth Pip.

Ol. Wintergreen aa zi. Aquae, gallons, one.

used undiluted and several times a day will be found most efficacious in preventing throat infections. It is particularly effective in clearing the mouth and throat of the pneumococcus. We have become personally familiar with its potency on several occasions and have witnessed its effect on three different occasions-the last one being where some nine hundred throat cultures before and after this gargle was used were studied. During the influenza epidemic last year those who faithfully used the gargle escaped infection and gave negative throat cultures. McCord has reported a series of laboratory investigations and demonstrates the effective bacteriacidal properties of quinine whenever the pneumococci are the prevailing organisms. it this winter.

Try

A serious problem confronting our hospitals, the profession and the public is the scarcity of students in our nursing training schools, as well as that of graduate trained nurses. The increasing demands of higher education incorporate the provision that students entering training schools must possess a high school certificate. The curriculum also insists upon a three year training course. To all of which we subscribe approval. We hold that a trained nurse must receive more than superficial instruction.

But we can not reconcile the waste of time in the first three or six months of the present curriculums of most of our training schools. The student nurse devotes from two to four months and in some instances six months as a probationer. In that period of her training her time is largely consumed in scrubbing bath rooms, tubs and toilets, and similar menial work. We venture to assert that such work is without a training course scope and may well be performed by paid help and the probationer's time occupied by other training duties, that will be of greater value to her and permit longer training in the basic and essential principles and practice of nursing. Serious consideration of this feature of our training schools should be given by those who direct our hospital schools.

And now comes "Mr. Grunter" who has been in the rut so long he can't keep up with the pro

fession's progress, and all he does is to grunt and growl. Moral-your local County Society will enable you to escape "Mr. Grunter's fate of becoming a "has been."

Dr. Hugh Cabot of Boston has been elected professor of surgery in our University and head of the Surgical Department of the University hospital. This is the announcement made by the Regents during the past month. We sincerely hope that a generalized readjustment of policy and attitude will result so that some of the past and present abuses and imposition upon the profession of the State will be corrected. Yes, we realize we are touching a tender and sensitive spot-but unless that feeling is removed the near future is bound to bring a serious rupture between the profession and the University Medical Department.

"Old High Cost" continues in full health and vigor. Gee-but we wish somebody with a Dempsey wallop would come along and give him the count. The way paper, ink and labor continue to go up and increase our publication expense is causing us no little concern and worry. We are endeavoring to get along as well as possible and make no retrenchments.

Years ago, more or less, we were all boyswe mean boys in the accepted sense of tender years, two piece customs and ten cent hats. Back in the old swimming hole days there was always strife and differences about this thing, that thing and the other and naturally a scrap or two. Even now you can narrow down your eyes to a mere slit, lean back in your chair and squint through the tobacco smoke and see Jim with the chip on his shoulder. Then look about and "Jim" with his chip is visualized in your neighbor and competitor. In place of knocking the chip off and starting a modern row, go ask "Jim" at the first opportunity to accompany you to your next County meeting and cause the chip to fall unnoticed by the wayside. Nowa-days you can not afford to indulge in any "scraps." To many problems confronting demand co-operative solution. We bespeak the taking of an active part by all of our members in organization work.

"A good dinner takes the wrinkles out of both your tummy and your forehead."

and orderliness; care and attention to details and a patient's feelings and sentiment; abreastness and utilization of modern principles and practices; affiliation with and attendance at your local County and State Society; studiousness-the spending of a definite amount of time each day in reading and investigation-these are but a few of the bricks that tend to stabilize a wall of confidence for you in the community in which you reside. The more of these bricks that you acquire, added to others that will be apparent to you will surround you with a wall of confidence that assures contentment and happiness in your life.

Correspondence

September 27th, 1919.

Dr. F. C. Warnshuis,
Journal of Michigan State Medical Society,
Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Dear Doctor Warnshuis:

My attention has been called to an editorial comment in the Journal for September in which the inference is clearly drawn that I am an advocate of any kind of compulsory health insurance. Inasmuch as it would not have been difficult for you to have ascertained my views and you have chosen to draw your conclusions from a newspaper report, I rather resent the impl.cation contained in your article.

That some kind of health insurance is highly desirable, as well as inevitable, I firmly believe. I rather think that it is desirable to make it compulsory. On the other hand, I quite agree that the ill-conceived legislation passed in a number of states recently is not going to be for the

Deaths

good of the people and, not being good for the people in general, it will be detrimental to the interests of the medical profession. Mere opposition on the part of the medical profession to the general subject of health insurance is not going to accomplish very much except to lessen the chances of securing constructive legislation which will protect the interests of the medical profession and encourage the practice of better medicine.

A certain gentleman of antiquity, with full confidence in his own ability, once essayed to turn back the sea but, as I recall it, the net result of his adventure was a wet raiment-and no fish.

To raise the issues of "compulsion" and "bureaucracy" is only to employ the wiles of those who have long been the enemies of the medical profession and it ill befits us, to advance such bugaboos as arguments. Education is compulsory, obedience to law is compulsory and, to most of us who have to work for a living, work is compulsory, so why the fright at the word?

A good deal of the faulty legislation already enacted is due, in my opinion, to lack of information on the part of those who have made the laws. Would it not been most logical for the medical profession earnestly to endeavor to formulate and advocate such measures for health insurance as will result in the best service to the public and to the maintenance of the best traditions of medicine? In this way the doctors will be able to offer something in the way of a constructive program and not be subject to the accusation that they are members of a "trust" opposed to any form of interference with a "personal liberty" which takes no account of the rights or welfare of others so long as it remains undisturbed.

Doctor Grace Clark, of Detroit, died following a brief illness with pneumonia.

Doctor Clark graduated from the medical department of the University of Michigan in 1902, since which time she has practiced her profession in Detroit. She was associated with Doctor Rhoda Farquharson and Doctor Mary Haskins in medical practice at the time of her death.

She is survived by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Clark of Mayville, a brother, Stanton Clark, and a sister, Mrs. Gabriel Tuthill of Detroit.

State News Notes

COLLECTIONS.

Physicians' Bills and Hospital Accounts collected anywhere in Michigan. H. C. VanAken, Lawyer, 309 Post Building, Battle Creek, Michigan. Reference any Bank in Battle Creek.

Detroit College of Medicine and Surgery opened September 29th with a total enrollment of 150 students. Of these approximately 100 are residents of the City of Detroit, the others coming from various parts of the country. Their classification is as follows: Seniors 41, Juniors 52, Sophomores 17, Freshmen 33 and Special 7.

The Detroit Board of Education has enacted a ruling whereby students who have been for one year previous to matriculation residents of the City are released from the necessity of paying tuition. These resident students pay an annual fee of $25.00 which is assumed to cover depreciation of the teaching plant and clinical fees in the various hospitals affiliated with the College. The non resident students pay an annual fee of $150.00 which covers all expenses.

to

At a recent meeting of the Faculty action was taken lengthening the college course five years by requiring one year of interneship or research or teaching before the degree of Doctor of Medicine is conferred. This applies to the Freshman class of 1919-20 and has been confirmed by the approval of the Board of Education.

The teaching staff of the College is very complete and has been carefully selected, there being at present more than twenty names on the College payroll, exclusive, of course, of janitors. Dr. C. F. McClintic, late of the University of Cin

cinnati, has been employed to take charge of the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology and Dr. A. R. Grierson, also of Cincinnati, has been employed as Dr. McClintic's assistant in this department. The growth and development of the Department of Pathology and Bacteriology during the past year under the supervision and control of Dr. James E. Davis leaves nothing to be desired. The other pre-clinical departments are named as heretofore and no change in the staff personnel of these departments is at present contemplated though additional teachers will be appointed from time to time as the need for them develops.

Extensive additions in the way of teaching and research equipment have been made in all the laboratories, thanks to the liberality of the Board of Education and of the Civic Administration of the City of Detroit, so that in these respects the College is unusually well provided for. The present relations of the College with its affiliated hospitals are very satisfactory. A teaching schedule has been arranged whereby the Senior class is divided into sections of appropriate size which receive their clinical instruction in the general hospitals, one group in each hospital. By this means overcrowding and too rapid hospital rotation are avoided, the students remain longer in the hospitals and no hospital is overburdened.

So far as entrance and promotion standards are concerned the College prides itself on the care with which credentials are evaluated and the rules suggested by the Council and the State Board are administered. At the present time no conditioned students are admitted either to the Freshman class or to advanced standing and no student is admitted to, advance standing who cannot produce a certificate from the authorities of the school whence he comes authorizing his re-registration in that school with the same classification he asks of the Detroit College of Medicine and Surgery. Furthermore, no students are received from other than Class A medical schools and no premedical colleges are recognized excepting those on the acceptable list of the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association. It is hoped that a careful adherence to these standards will assure the College the approval of the various standardizing agencies in relation with which it comes.

Dr. John Bell, retiring President of the Wayne County Medical Society, gave the President's Annual Address, Monday evening, September

22nd, at Medical Bldg., Detroit. Among many things, he mentioned the following:

1. Two hundred members of this Society have been away serving Our Country.

2. There was only one death, Dr. V. C. Vaughan, Jr.

3. Approximately 115 new members have joined our Society during the past year.

4. The average attendance of the weekly meetings was about 112.

5. A permanent memorial tablet to those who were in service should be placed in our Club Rooms.

6. Attention should be given to the matter of securing more hospital beds in Detroit.

7. A large Municipal Hospital should be built at once, to be placed under the control of a hospital commission.

8. There is still an indebtedness of $7,000 on our property.