SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 361 



HEALTH MATTERS. 

 The Difficulties of the Medical Profession. 

 " An Old Doctor" deplores the visible decadence of the profes- 

 sion in a long letter of lamentation in The Lancet. Among other 

 things, he says, — 



" In these advertising days, in medicine, as in every thing else, 

 people who know little or nothing of a subject, who presume igno- 

 rantly to address the public in the daily and weekly press, attract 

 more notice than those who have devoted their lives to their par- 

 ticular work. It is a misfortune that in this country (i.e., England) 

 a very large amount of medical practice (and that the most easy 

 and profitable) is lost to the profession by the fact that almost all 

 chemists prescribe largely. This is a great and crying evil. The 

 practice is, instead of diminishing, largely increasing. This should 

 be stopped. The chemist nearly always prescribes, but generally 

 says, to cover himself, ' If worse, take patient to a medical man.' 

 And so the medical man reaps all the hard work (often without 

 being paid), and the chemist most of the profits. Then, again, 

 hospitals, both special and general, take away largely from the 

 proper, legal, and rightful profits of the profession. The public 

 have a notion that they get advice and medicine of the highest 

 character from the hospitals for nothing, but, if they pay for it to 

 the general practitioner, they get a second-rate article. This is a 

 bad system. Why not set up legal dispensaries for free legal ad- 

 vice, free places to get married in, free clothing establishments, 

 free meat-stores, etc., all paid for by subscriptions or rates ? 



" The fact is, the medical profession is gradually and surely 

 committing suicide, and its career on the downward path should 

 be promptly arrested. If we were true to ourselves (which we are 

 not, and never have been), the present increase in the profession 

 would be insufficient to supply the needs of the public. But, if 

 we go on working on the ' sweating system,' (for who sweats 

 more, mentally and physically, than the hard-worked medical prac- 

 titioner, night and day doing his best to preserve the health and 

 life of the people ?) often indeed without reward, then we shall be 

 fools indeed. This idea, that medical services can be had for 

 nothing, and so ought to be paid for at that price, is spreading. 

 We are doing away with all professional reserve. We make every 

 thing plain, and it is valued accordingly. The more a profession 

 is lowered in the eyes of the public, the less respect it receives." 



The Bacillus of Warts. — Dr. Kuhnemann has found, says 

 77^;? Medical Record, in sections of warts {verruca vulgaris) a 

 bacillus which is always present in the prickle layer. It has dis- 

 tinctive qualities as regards its capacity for color, and is found 

 both between and in the cells. Its form is that of exceedingly 

 delicate, slender rods, the thickness bearing the proportion to the 

 length of one to six. It is seldom found in the skin surrounding 

 the warts, and is found most plentifully when the wart is recent. 



Memory following Cranial Injury. — The following case 

 is reported by the patient, a distinguished member of the legal 

 profession. The loss of memory has been permanent for certain 

 subjects extending over a certain area of time preceding the acci- 

 dent. In all other respects, says The Medical Analectic, the 

 mental faculties are of a very high order. " When twelve years 

 and ten months old, I fell over a cliff at Howth, County Dublin. 

 The cause of my accident was a kind of landslip, and I fell and 

 rolled about thirty feet, when I caught a bush, which gave way 

 with me, and I fell about thirty feet more on to rocks. I was 

 picked up quite insensible. My jaw was broken in four places, 

 but no other bones. I am told, however, that my appearance was 

 like that of some one who had been beaten into a jelly from head 

 to foot. I have no recollection of the accident beyond holding on 

 to the bush or bramble which gave way with me.. Nor do I re- 

 member being picked up, nor any thing which subsequently oc- 

 curred, until about ten days after the accident, when I seemed 

 to awake out of a long sleep, in great pain, and seeing Surgeon 

 Butcher standing over me and setting my jaw, or doing something 

 to it which caused me great pain. I was more or less incapable of 

 doing any thing for seven or eight months, owing to the shock to my 

 system. My father had died about seven months before the acci- 

 dent ; and I am told that I used constantly to be with him, and 

 that he was verv fond of me, but I have not the smallest recollec- 



tion of him, or what he was like, nor can I remember a single inci- 

 dent of my life before the accident ; and, in fact, up to the time it 

 occurred, every thing is a complete blank in my memory, both as- 

 regards individuals and events. I am told that I was practically 

 insensible for about a week after the accident occurred." 



Influenza. — We are now passing through one of the periodic 

 visitations of this annoying disease. For the last four centuries- 

 these attacks have come at varying intervals, those most pro- 

 nounced being at intervals of forty or fifty years, although others 

 have occurred at shorter intervals. These last, however, have- 

 been confined to smaller areas, where for some reason the condi- 

 tions were favorable to the spread of the disease. A peculiarity of 

 the great attacks has been their universality, spreading as they 

 have from the equator to the poles. We are now inclined to con- 

 nect some micro-organism with each disordered state of the humart 

 system. So it may be that this enemy of human comfort has his- 

 periods of activity, just as the seventeen-year locust has his. In-- 

 fiuenza comes suddenly, and goes as quickly. The cause, whatever 

 it maybe, descends on a community with the result that the least 

 robust, of whatever age, are afflicted most. The outbreak of epi- 

 zootic among horses in 1870 has been connected by some with the 

 influenza in inan. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The government of Chili has had a committee of engineers 

 examining the water-works of the principal European cities, with a 

 view to establishing similar works, on a large scale, in some of the 

 Chilian cities. 



— Professor R. H. Thurston has received the university decora- 

 tion, " Officier de I'Instruciion Piibliqiie de France." 



— The canal to connect the North Sea, at the mouth of the Elbe, 

 with the Gulf of Kiel on the Baltic, which was begun two or three 

 years ago, is making fair progress. It will be 61 miles long, 85 

 feet broad at the bottom, and nearly 200 at the water-level, and of 

 sufficient depth to take the largest German war-vessels. It wilt 

 have only two locks, one at each end. 



— The sixth annual meeting of the American Historical Asso- 

 ciation was begun in Washington, Dec. 28. Among those present 

 were President Charles K. Adams of Cornell University; the Hon. 

 John Jay of New York ; John F. King, president of the New York 

 Historical Society ; Dr. Justin Winsor of Cambridge, Mass.; Mrs. 

 Martha J. Lamb, editor of ihe. Magazine of Ai/iericati History ; 

 Gen. James Grant Wilson of New York; Horatio King, Washing- 

 ton; Gen. George W. Cullom, William F. Poole, Chicago ; Senator 

 Hoar, President Gallaudet, of Washington ; Judge Chamberfin of 

 Boston ; and Gen. Charles Darling of Utica, N.Y. Professor 

 George L. Burr of Cornell University delivered an address on the 

 literature of witchcraft. Ex-President Andrew D. White of Cornell 

 followed in a paper entitled " A Catechism of Revolutionary Re- 

 action." It calls attention to the fact, that, while there are so many- 

 histories of the French Revolution, there is as yet no history of the 

 re-actions which have followed it. The next paper was on the 

 "French Revolution in San Domingo," by Herbert Elmer Mills, 

 instructor in history, Cornell University. Clarence Winthrop Bowen, 

 Ph.D., read a paper entitled " A Newly Discovered Manuscript : 

 Reminiscences of the American War of Independence, by Ludwig, 

 Baron von Closen, Aide to Count de Rochambeau." This con- 

 tained a description of the movements of the allied armies in the 

 neighborhood of Manhattan Island in the summer of 1781, of the 

 meeting of Washington and Rochambeau, and of the scenes fol- 

 lowing Cornwallis's surrender. The writer gives many interesting; 

 personal rei-niniscences of the Washington family and of early Amer- 

 ican society. The subject of President Charles K. Adams's inaugu- 

 ral address was "The Recent Advancement of Historical Studies 

 in the Colleges and Universities of America and Europe,." Mr. 

 Talcott Williams of Philadelphia read an interesting paper ork' 

 " Historical Survivals in Morocco." The full programme has al- 

 ready been published. 



— A careful computation of the speed of a routing-machine 

 cutter, made recently in Chicago by mechanical experts, showed it 

 to be making 23,466 revolutions per minute. This was the regular 



