THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 303 



earnings, expenses, and profits, are all clearly tabulated, as the book- 

 keeping of all the companies is on a uniform and simple plan. The 

 tariffs of the roads are accessible to the commission, which is a bureau 

 where complaints of unjust discrimination can be lodged for inquiry 

 and for correction, as far as its poAvers admit. These powers the com- 

 mission believes might be advantageously extended, for the abstract 

 rights of the public without legal remedies are very apt to be disre- 

 garded. The authority of the board, however, extends to enforcing 

 for public safety the proper strength, breadth, and height of bridges 

 and tunnels, and such guarding of crossings and employment of me- 

 chanical appliances as experience suggests for adoption. All serious 

 and fatal accidents are investigated, and the " Annual Report " of the 

 board is a document which might serve as a model of a business-like 

 State paper. 



A system of State commissioners patterned after the Massachusetts 

 board, with a national center of reference, is as much in the way of 

 legislation and public supervision as the leading railroad minds of the 

 country deem advisable at present. The chiefs of the greatest com- 

 mercial interest of Amei-ica are quite prepared to accept legislation ; all 

 that they ask is that it be intelligent. 



The public must not, however, expect too much from enactment, 

 for, with business morality as it is, why should ideal justice prevail in 

 railroad transactions more than in any other ? The fact which on the 

 broad stage of railroading is odious discrimination, less recognizably 

 pervades the smaller circles of trade where employes permit personal 

 interest or personal friendship to jolt the sacred scales. The view that 

 railroading is a special and public service, in a sense which entitles the 

 people to control it, is not a view which the facts of American politics 

 favor as yielding any practical suggestion. 







THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 

 DYSPEPSIA. 



T3EF0RE our ancestors colonized the colder latitudes of this planet, 

 -L-' the equatorial regions had for ages been inhabited by men or 

 man-like four-handers. The influence of this long abode in the tropics 

 still asserts itself in many peculiarities of our physical constitution. 

 We are but half acclimatized. Wolves are weather-proof ; bears and 

 badgers have managed to inure themselves to the miasma of their win- 

 ter dens : but the primates of the animal kingdom can neither endure 

 cold nor breathe impure air with perfect impunity ; and of most of our 

 civilized fellow-men, as well as of savages and all the species of our 



