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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadel- 

 phia. This species can not, however, be 

 included in any known genus, as these are 

 at present defined, and lor that reason Mr. 

 Scott has proposed for it the name Ccrval- 

 ccs Americamis. The most obvious pecul- 

 iarity of the skeleton is the great length of 

 the legs, which gives the animal a stilted 

 appearance, while the thorax is shallow and 

 the neck short. The shoulders are higher 

 than the hips, as in the moose, and unlike 

 those of the stag. The combined length of 

 the head and neck shows that in the ordi- 

 nary position of the legs the muzzle would 

 not reach the ground by fourteen or fifteen 

 inches. Measured in the same manner, the 

 moose's muzzle reaches to within about ten 

 inches from the ground, and that of Mega- 

 ceros to eight or nine inches. This and 

 some other features of the structure indi- 

 cate that the habits of the animal, and to 

 some degree its appearance, were those of 

 the moose. Its short neck shows that it 

 would have great difficulty in grazing, and 

 so probably lived by browsing upon shrubs 

 and trees. This was aided by a more or 

 less prehensile upper lip, which the charac- 

 ter of the nasal opening shows to have been 

 more probfiscis-like than in the deer, though 

 far less so than in the moose. Morpho- 

 logically, the fossil is of interest for the 

 light which it seems to throw upon the 

 question of the genus Alecs, and its rela- 

 tions to the typical deer. 



Many Drnjs : Few Bemedieso — In an ad- 

 dress on " Many Drugs : Few Remedies," Dr. 

 George K. Welch, of Keyport, New Jersey, 

 draws a highly-colored picture of the help- 

 lessness of the average medical practice in 

 the face of disease. The schools increase 

 and the graduates swarm, " but how many 

 great physicians can you name, and which 

 are tlie diseases borne under the annual 

 spring-flood of doctors ; and yet, where is 

 the young doctor who does not believe in 

 the magic of drugs, and the old doctor, if 

 he be a wise man, who does not look upon 

 the most of them as mischievous, and the 

 minority as deserving of restriction ? The 

 pathologist is skeptical of them all. With 

 laborious zeal we study diseases. . . . We 

 anatomize and compare, and the professor 

 awes with learned length while he discourses 



of the ills he can not cure. ... Do we, wait- 

 ing behind the eye of Koch, know anything 

 of tuberculosis, or believe that he does? 

 Does not the ravage go on ? And who has 

 won eminence in curing yellow fever ? Are 

 men no longer in dread of cholera ? And 

 the exanthemata — does not the grewsome 

 pendulum of disease sweep into and out of 

 every neighborhood about once in five years ? 

 Who cures rheumatism, or typhoid fever, or 

 chronic Bright's disease ? And where is the 

 stout heart that never failed before a patient 

 burning and broiling in the horrible slow 

 flame of pyaemia? And yet, who refrains 

 from prescribing ? The witches move one 

 way about the caldron, and we go the other ; 

 they throw in the drugs that brew the poi- 

 sons, and we throw in the counter-poisons. 

 Stille and Maisch's 'Dispensatory' has a 

 list of one hundred and fifty remedies for 

 rheumatism, a disease which is as likely to 

 become chronic with treatment as without it. 

 Everybody has a specific, from your grand- 

 aunt with teas, fomentations, and flannel, 

 to/the last German doctor with forty grains 

 of salycilic acid to the dose. . . . The trouble 

 is, medical thought moves too much toward 

 specifics." Improvement must come, part- 

 ly by enforcing the responsibility of every 

 physician to all, or by the establishment of 

 a college of experimental medicine, with a 

 system of registration for correcting errors 

 of observation ; or, in other words, by adopt- 

 ing for the study of disease the methods of 

 the experimental physiologists. 



Reform of Jnries. — The causes of the 

 decline of juries and the remedy for it are 

 considered by Mr. Edwin Young, of the Al- 

 bany bar, in a paper on " The Jury in Mod- 

 ern Corporate Life." The theory of the 

 institution, that " twelve disinterested free- 

 holders of the neighborhood, of average in- 

 telligence and virtue, are best qualified to 

 determine issues of fact," ought, if carried 

 out, to secure an ideal tribunal. It does 

 not secure it, but something far different. 

 The reason of the deterioration that has 

 come over juries is easily found in the ex- 

 emptions allowed by law, some of them 

 really unnecessary and even improper when 

 the true view of the case is taken, which 

 furnish a loop-hole through which a consid- 

 erable body of our best citizens escape from 



