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be courteous in his common intercourse. Some errors of this kind 

 are doubtless owing to want of careful supervision on the part 

 of the editor. That such negligence is very general, there can be 

 no dispute; there is hardly one of the journals whose fair features 

 are not marked with the acne of typographical inaccuracies — and as 

 the editors are educated men, the inference is inevitable that they 

 have not read their own pages. Some years since, a leading Ameri- 

 can Journal remarked of the report of the Massachusetts Insane 

 Hospital, "on page 79, is a very important typographical error — the 

 word chains occurs twice when it should be chairs. No chains have 

 ever been used in the institution." But, within a few months the 

 same journal allowed the following words to stand upon its pages a8 

 Latin: " mulierem uteres gerentum morta quopiam acuto corripi 

 iefbale;" and speaks in its January number, of a disease as being 

 "imminently curable." 



The Committee have no intention of furnishing a list of errata to 

 the periodical works in question, although they have almost involun- 

 tarily accumulated the means of so doing. The most unpardonable 

 are those which mangle and distort the names of our medical autho- 

 rities — "Laennec," "Boerhaave," "Bonelli," " Shenk," and many 

 more, have suffered this kind of mutilation or martyrdom. On the 

 other hand, some new honours have been awarded by a similar 

 mechanism, and what is still more remarkable, new authorities in 

 science have been created by the same agency. "Baron Louis" 

 received his title in Boston (Nov. 3d, 1847); "Sir John Hunter" 

 was knighted in New York (Jan. 1848), and Hives, the inventor of 

 "Hives' Syrup," was born a full grown therapeutist at Philadelphia 

 (April 1842). 



The advertising portion of the journals seems to be considered by 

 some editors as beyond the jurisdiction of medical ethics. It is to 

 this opinion, or more probably to mere inadvertence, that the phy- 

 sician owes the privilege of reading before he opens one of the pro- 

 minent journals, the notice of one Dr. Beach's Medical Works, "for 

 which he has received numerous gold medals from the various crowned 

 heads of Europe, and diplomas from the most learned colleges in the 

 Old World." (July, 1847.) 



In connection with periodical literature, it seems proper to allude 

 to the "Introductory Lectures," of which so large a number are 

 delivered and printed annually. They must not be judged too 

 harshly, for they are delivered to young men, who like high season- 



