50,4 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 225 



fairly questioned, but the careful observer of 

 current politics must have noticed the increasing 

 tendency to turn to the legislature for any thing 

 and every thing. It is time to call a halt, and it is 

 the duty of our students of political science to de- 

 termine for us how this may best be done. The 

 question is worthy of their most careful study. 



The faith-cdre and the mind- cure are at the 

 present time attracting a great deal of popular 

 attention ; and almost daily, cures are announced, 

 under this treatment, of persons who have, under 

 all other methods, remained chronic invalids. It 

 is not to be wondered at, that physicians denounce 

 this treatment as charlatanism, but it was hardly 

 to be expected that one of the most potent argu- 

 ments against the validity of its claims should 

 come from one of the clergy. In a recent sermon 

 on this subject, Rev. E. C. Ray of Hyde Park, 

 111., says, " Apparent cures are often followed by 

 a relapse, temporary improvement by permanent 

 decline. From reported cases of cure we must 

 deduct many of unreported relapse : it is not in 

 human nature, when a wonderful cure has been 

 published abroad, to follow it up with an account 

 of the relapse coming afterward. Mistaken di- 

 agnosis accounts for many supposed cures. Phy- 

 sicians often, patients more often, mistake the 

 natm-e of a disease. Temporary swellings are 

 called malignant tumors or cancers (thus cancer- 

 doctors get their reputations) ; hysteria simu- 

 lates almost every other disease, so as to deceive 

 even the most elect of doctors ; dyspepsia produces 

 symptoms of heart-disease or other deadly illness. 

 There can be no question that a large proportion of 

 faith-cures and mind-cures, and a considerable 

 proportion of cases under ordinary medical treat- 

 ment, are cases of mistaken diagnosis, the disease 

 being less serious in its nature than was supposed. 

 Mistaken prognosis accounts for many cases ; 

 mistake as to what would be the outcome of the 

 disease if no curative methods were employed. 

 It is a truth seldom recognized by patients, though 

 well known to physicians, that in most cases not 

 hopelessly fatal from the start, there is from 

 the start a strong tendency toward recovery. 

 Dr. Austin Flint, Sr., than whom perhaps no 

 abler physician has lived in this land, always 

 urged upon his students the truth that not drugs, 

 but vis medicatrix naturae, the healing-power of 

 nature, is the means of recovery. The wise phy- 

 sician and nurse seldom attempt more than 



gently and humbly to assist Nature in her cura- 

 tive processes. Let me add the statement of a 

 conviction derived from some years of such close 

 scrutiny of medical practice of various schools 

 as a pastor has good opportunity for, — a con- 

 viction agreed to, I think, by most physicians. 

 The benefit of medicine is often not its direct ac- 

 tion upon the disease or upon the body, but its 

 action upon the mind, and through that upon the 

 nervous system and the whole body, stimulating 

 faith, hope, expectation of recovery, good cheer,, 

 which are probably nature's mightiest remedial 

 assistants." 



The first edition of Dr. Orton's preliminary- 

 report on natural gas and oil in Ohio was ex- 

 hausted in a few months, and the publication of 

 the final or complete report on the oil and gas of 

 Ohio having been still further, though, consider- 

 ing the rapid developments still in progress, per- 

 haps not unwisely, delayed by legislative action. 

 Professor Orton has just issued a second edition,^ 

 with a supplement, showing the marvellous re- 

 sults accomplished during the last year (1886). 

 The extreme activity in drilling deep wells in all 

 portions of the state, and especially in western 

 Ohio, will make this year always memorable in 

 the history of Ohio geology. The explorations of 

 no single year hereafter can make additions of 

 equal value to our knowledge of the stratigraphy 

 of the state. The leading facts have now been 

 established ; and we know the order from one 

 thousand to two thousand feet below the surface 

 in every portion of the state as well as we do the 

 arrangement of the strata on the surface. The 

 vital relation of the production of oil and gas to 

 the geological structure is well exemplified in the 

 facts now thoroughly established, — that through- 

 out western Ohio and eastern Indiana every im- 

 portant gas-well has pierced the Trenton lime- 

 stone at a depth not exceeding four hundred feet 

 belo^v sea-level, and that every successful oil-well 

 has reached the same horizon at a point less than 

 five hundred feet beiow tide : in other words, the 

 contours of the Trenton limestone are the all-im- 

 portant element to be considered in locating new 

 wells, and they can only he determined by drilling. 

 It has been demonstrated that the Trenton lime- 

 stone, which has been heretofore supposed not to 

 come to the surface in Ohio, is actually exposed 

 in the bed of the Ohio River above Cincinnati. In 

 northern Ohio the Utica and Hudson River shales 

 have the normal character and thickness of those 



