38o 
American  Medical  Association. 
{  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
I      August,  1908. 
These  few  examples  indicate  the  very  serious  condition  caused  by 
these  doctor-publishers  and  suggests  that  the  attention  of  the  medi- 
cal profession  be  directed  to  this  perversion  of  the  literature  and 
also  that  the  privilege  of  second  class  mail  rates,  through  which  the 
Post-Office  department  is  robbed  of  many  thousands  of  dollars  annu- 
ally, be  denied  these  publications. 
Without  this  privilege  these  journals  could  not  exist. 
STATE  ASSOCIATION  JOURNALS. 
There  are  now  nearly  a  score  of  journals  published  by  State  medi- 
cal societies,  and  the  number  is  steadily  increasing.  It  is  hoped 
that  in  the  near  future  every  State  medical  society  will  have  its  own 
journal,  or  that  the  smaller  societies  jointly  publish  an  official  organ. 
This  will  drive  out  the  undesirable  class  of  journals  referred  to,  and 
since  these  State  journals  are  responsive  to  their  State  medical  soci- 
eties, it  will  be  comparatively  easy  to  keep  their  pages  clean  and 
accept  advertisements  for  medicinal  articles  only  that  have  been 
approved  by  the  Council. 
To  maintain  these  journals  is,  however,  difficult',  since  limited  in 
advertisements  they  often  cannot  secure  sufficient  acceptable  adver- 
tising to  pay  expense  of  publication,  and  since  the  journals  must  not 
be  too  much  of  a  drain  on  the  revenues  derived  from  dues,  their 
continuance  is  often  a  difficult  problem  for  solution.  This  embaras- 
sing  situation  might  be  relieved  if  local  pharmacists,  or  possibly 
societies,  could  extend  some  patronage  in  this  direction. 
MEDICAL  CURRICULA. 
Another  agency  which  must  be  aligned  for  co-operation  in  this 
work  is  the  instruction  in  the  fundamental  branches  in  the  medical 
schools.  This  will  require  not  only  that  the  courses  be  extended 
to  cover  more  practical  work  under  personal  instruction,  but  that 
more  time  be  devoted  and  that  the  construction  of  prescriptions  be 
done  in  the  last  year  of  the  course  instead  of  the  first,  as  has  been 
the  case.  The  methods  of  the  dispensaries  and  hospitals  and  the 
training  of  internes  must  also  be  radically  changed.  As  now  con. 
ducted  in  most  institutions  it  is  simply  a  drilling  into  the  habit  of 
designating  numerical  mixtures,  often  without  intelligent  discrimina- 
tion;  a  sort  of  picking  the  winner  and  trusting  to  chance. 
