Medical Miscellany

Reputable Manufacturing Pharmacists Do Not Furnish Emmenagogues for Immoral Purposes.

Recently one of the leading manufacturing pharmaceutical houses received a letter upon the letterhead of a retail druggist but signed by another name followed by the word "druggist." The person signing the letter may have been a clerk or successor of the druggist. The letter was as follows:

"There is practically no sale for your emmenagogue improved pills, as few ladies know anything about them, and we can give no advice, as we know nothing about them ourselves as to dose, etc. Please let us know by return mail and tell us how to use, dose, etc."

Reply was made to the pharmacist whose name was on the letterhead, and was as follows:

"We have our doubts about Mr.- being a druggist, for we cannot imagine any druggist not knowing that it is not only immoral, but criminal, to sell an emmenagogue except upon a physician's prescrip tion. We believe that every druggist who sells an emmenagogue direct to the consumer is put upon his notice that it will be used for an immoral and criminal purpose. Emmenagogues on our list are intended exclusively for the prescription trade and we never knowingly sell them for popular use or to be recommended and resold as remedies for female complaints, etc."

An Interesting Exhibit in Medicine and Surgery at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

One fact alone would make the exhibit in medicine and surgery at the PanamaPacific International Exposition the most important of any similar display at any preceding exposition, for when the world comes to San Francisco in 1915 to celebrate the completion of the Panama canal, it will be divided in admiration of the two men who perhaps above all others are responsible under the United States Government, for the successful termination of the gigantic work. And these two men are representatives of highest honor from the science of engineering and the science of medicine: Dr. William C. Gorgas, Colonel in the United States Army Medical Corps, is the physician who undertook to preserve the lives of the canal builders in a land of malignant disease, while the toilers were operat

ing under the guiding genius of the great Colonel George W. Goethals of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army.

Representatives of the science of medicine and surgery from every land under the sun will be present during the exposition, to pay tribute to the doctor and incidentally to study the processes whereby the rav ages of a disease ridden zone were stayed the abode of health. and the camp of the canal builders became

The element that alone would lend a distinctive character to the exhibit, is the featured presentation of the methods whereby the deadly mosquito was fought in his native haunts of morass and jungle; the application of specially devised sanitary processes by which Dr. Gorgas and his men were victors in their struggle with deadly fevers, enervating malaria and others of the swarm of maladies that wait for men who penetrate those miasmic lands "where even the birds forget how to sing." ods, as well as the equipment that, under A complete demonstration of these methman's uses, achieved success, will be installed for the advantage of the world by the United States government. It will excite the interest not alone of the medical fraternity, but of all such nations as are in

terested in the colonization of the tropics.

The Emergency Hospital, another interesting feature of the exhibit in the department of medicine and surgery, scheduled in the exposition catalogue as "Group No. 35," will be a model emergency hospital, provided with its equipment entirely by exhibitors.

The law of averages works at expositions as elsewhere and there will not be, even in 1915 in San Francisco, a suspension of the laws of gravitation, nor an annulment of the re-activities of cause and effect. Where a million people meet, there will be, in spite of all precautions to the contrary, causes of sickness, and the foolhardy will, be subject to the usual percentage of disaster. Hence the necessity for an Emergency Hospital.

This Emergency Hospital will be a model equipped by the leading manufacturers of the country, with the best instruments and appliances and stocked with every drug that physicians know.

Dr. R. N. Woodward, at present in charge of the United States Marine Hospital, situated near the Golden Gate, has been appointed by the Treasury Department to assume control of the Emergency Hospital at the exposition and he has taken great pride in assembling all of the elements, materials and equipment necessary for a model insti

tution. How well he has succeeded, and is still succeeding, with the choice of the whole world's supply at his disposal, will be seen by the interested when the exposition is opened.

Although the entire equipment is not yet provided and while changes in what has already been selected may be made if, later proffered equipment is preferred. Dr. Woodward is sure that the Emergency Hospital at the exposition will be as near perfection as human endeavor, working in this most enlightened age, can make it.

Two superb examples of the skill of the manufacturers of auto-ambulances will be installed, an X-ray apparatus will be placed in the X-ray ward of the hospital; sterilizing apparatus; wound dressing appliances will be donated, and one manufacturer is providing even the spreads, with the seal of the exposition woven in the center, for the twenty beds that will be placed in the men's, women's, and isolated wards. Tables for minor and capital operations, and capital operations, the innumerable electric surgical appliances that human ingenuity has created, a library of medical books, a high power microscope with photographic apparatus and dark room for the development of negatives; and, finally, a cradle for the possible future president or countess who may insist, perhaps prematurely on visiting the exposition.

It is not contemplated by the exposition's directorate that patients will be kept at the hospital over night, for it is to conform strictly to its classification as a hospital for emergency cases. If, however, the patient's health were to be jeopardized by removal to his home or to another hospital, he will not be removed.

The installation of the emergency hospital with the variety of the equipment thereof-from beds and stoves and other nonmedical material to drugs, ether and operating tables and other essentially surgical or medical material-might cause a confusion in exhibits were the scheme worked out with less careful consideration of all the exhibitors. Wherever the display normally would fall, whether in the department of Liberal Arts or Manufactures and Varied Industries, there the exhibit will be actually considered. Surgical instruments in use in the Emergency Hospital will be regarded as in the Department of Medicine and Surgery in the Palace of Liberal Arts and will there be subjected to competitive examination with the other exhibits, although manufacturers, judging by the applications for privileges of hospital employment of products, are not unaware of the

greater advantage accuring to their exhibit when shown under working conditions. In any event, the jury of awards will be careful to consider that advantage and will not let it prejudice the displays under glass cases in the Palace of Liberal Arts.

In the meanwhile the student of municipal affairs, the expert in town policing, as well as the doctor, the surgeon and the nurse, will be vastly interested and enlightened by the model emergency hospital at the exposition, where any case will be cared for, from that provided by a female exercising her inalienable right to faint, or that of a child after his first lesson in the immutability of gravity's law, to that of an impulsive infant whose ambition to occupy the pretty cradle will reflect more credit on his taste than his decorum.

Anesthesia Number.

The December issue of the Annals of Surgery is almost double the size of an ordinary number. It is a special anesthesia number and offers some of the most important papers presented on this subject. In getting out this extraordinary issue the publishers have not sacrificed any space usually given up to the many valuable papers on surgery which appear in this publication. Nor have they spared any pains or expense to make this a banner issue. Any one interested in anesthesia should read this December number of the Annals of Surgery-it is a masterpiece.

We are listing below some of the papers found in this issue:

Gwatmey, J, T,. The American Association of Anesthetists.

Connell, Karl, Accuracy in Anesthesia. Parsons, C. G., Reflex Action during General Surgical Anesthesia.

Honan, W. F., Intravenous Anesthesia. Cunningham, O. J., Nitrous Oxide and Oxygen Narcosis.

Janeway, H. H., Intratracheal Anesthe

sia.

Cotton, F. J., Deaths from Anesthesia. Bainbridge, W. S., The Question of Anesthesia in Goitre Operations.

Mereness, E. H. Jr., Stovaine Spinal Analgesia in Prison Surgery.

McMeehan, F. H., Medicolegal Aspects of Anesthesia.

Bloodgood, J. C., Studies and Blood Pressure with reference to Shock.

Callison, J. G. and MacKenty, J. E., Tumors of the Carotid Body.

Walker, J. T., The Early Diagnosis of Hydronephrosis by Pyelography and Other Means.

Heraldings

A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. It is a taste I would not exchange for the wealth of the Indies.Gibbon.

"Professor Horner looked in the corner,
Or canthus of the eye;

He found a small muscle,
He raised a great bustle,

And called it the 'Tensor Tarse.''

There are three marriages: One is a monarchy; a king or queen presides over life. One is a true federative republic; there is equality under large sense of law and mutual rights. The third is anarchy. -S. Weir Mitchell.

Operations are less likely to become infected if the eye is not bandaged before operation. Bandaging increases the number and virulency of bacteria present.

"God and the doctor we alike adore

When on the brink of danger, not before; The danger past, both are alike requited: God is forgotten, and the doctor slighted." An author's purpose "to write a little handbook of practical instruction for the running of the human automobile, with just enough description of its machinery to enable a beginner to fuel it, run it, and make roadside repairs."

"If all of us knew what all of us do,

And all of us knew that all of us knew, Then some of us might not do just a few Of some of the things that all of us do." Important hints for the brethren: If you have a fatiguingly deaf patient to talk to, place the ear-pieces of your binatural stethoscope in the patient's ears, and talk into the chest piece, and you have an excellent ear-trumpet. If you leave your spectacles at home, being old and apesbyopic, make a hole with a pin in the corner of your visiting card, and you can read your clinical thermometer or anything else.

¶ Maeterlink claims that if he had been permitted his own way he would have studied medicine, which he is convinced to be the most beautiful key which gives access to the great realities of life."

Two hearts that beat as two
Then two that beat as one;

Two hearts that beat as two again
And then the whole thing's done.
The pessimist kills a wasp on sight.
The optimist waits until it stings him.

Bear through sorrow, wrong and ruth,
In thy heart the dew of youth,

On thy lips the smile of truth.

-Longfellow.

Love is the dawning of yesterday's to

morrow.

¶ Medical slang at our local hospitals: Dr. A.: I have just removed an "acute appendix.”

Dr. B.: That's nothing, it is still more startling to find a "pathology" in the abdomen.

Dr. C.: Miraculous, I got you beat!, At our hospital every day "many patients have no temperature.

¶ In summing up his impressions of George Sand after his visit to her at Nahant, Balzac would seek to explain all the contradictions and inconsistencies of her complex personality, by affirming that she was "as little a woman as possible," and in this formula Henry James sees the best solution of the problem.

Ellen Key says love is the greatest thing in the world--not free love, but "the freedom to love-love must be given, never demanded. No "marriage rights" for boorish husbands to insist on, for Ellen.

In looking about and observing the methods of the worldly wise successful, or eminently practical man, sometimes he calls himself a self-made man (always in love with his maker) we think of the saying of that Irish physician and poet, Oliver Goldsmith, "it is more expensive to keep a conscience than a carriage, driver and footman."

Morality is geography and time.

We suggest Markham's poem to the eugenists:

"Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face

And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the Ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?"

Industrial oppression and man's selfishness! The few have been living high at the expense of the many, through the ages, and continue into our vaunted civilization.

The furor operativa removes alleged adneoids when the site of obstruction is in the P.I.L. anterior nares.

Crinoline gauze provides a better body for The plaster bandages than soft gauze. plaster should be spread evenly into the meshes. To be most serviceable a plaster bandage should be very loosely rolled. It may be kept air-tight in gutta-percha sealed with chloroform.-Amer. Jour. of Surg.

Song Sermons

GLIMPSED.

G. HENRI BOGART, Paris, Ill.

Somewhere, down the road,
Brightest roses blowed,
Scenting Junetimes, long ago,
Song birds' clearest notes,
Vied with boy-glad throats;

Harvest times joy-joined the snows.

Somewhere up the road,

Fancy's castles glowed,

Roseate as Hope might know
Came with each day's night
Dreams of dawning light,

Care was chained, Love free to grow.

Somewhere from the road,
Where he dropped Life's load

He has scaled the Hesper bow,

Whose life kept its best

Warmed with Love's sweet quest,
Earned the Future's afterglow.

Life is a succession of contrasts, of cycles, which seem to oppose one the other. Every summer is followed by its winter, every day follows some night, and these steps in the way of progression toward the Infinite plan swing back and forth like the pendulum, the while, the unseen wheels of the Omnipotent volition are turning, and the hour hand is moving ever onward across the dial of destiny. Your own life is at the best but one atom, and a mighty small one at that in the great sum total of the Universal Growth.

But every act, even your unspoken thought, has a definite share in the uplift or the down drag of the race. The scowl that a harsh dream planted on your face will have its influence upon some one whom you meet, and so, will influence some action of his, even though you may not know it, and that act another, and so on, in endless and ever widening power, even as a pebble sends ripples across the lake; and your unconscious soul ripples shall go on, and on, ever widening, until at last they shall break up on the farthest shores of eternity.

So, whether in the material, or in the psychical, pluck the roses and forget the thorns; scatter smiles and when your heart is heavy and soul clouds are lowering, mask it all with a smile, and the world will be better for it, and the demon of darkness will flee from out your personality, and after awhile, he will cease to come to the place wherein he has no welcome

Here on the bright side,
Here on the right side,
Everything's all for the best.

Subscribe for the Medical Herald.

Medical News

Dr. Martha M. Bacon recreated in Topeka during the holidays.

Dr. James C. Walker is spending the winter in New Orleans.

Dr. Carl Doolin, of Ash Grove, Mo., spent holidays in Kansas City.

Dr. Ernst G. Mark was a guest of the Chicago Medical Society December 17th.

Dr. J. C. Waterman, formerly of Council Bluffs, is now practicing in Burke, S.D.

Dr. B. E. O'Daniel, of Denver, was visitng his old home, Independence, Mo., Christmas week.

Dr. Maggie L. McCrea, after a long absence has returned to the city and is located at 4004 Wyoming street.

Dr. R. P. Walker, Belton, Mo., suffered the loss of his entire equipment recently, when fire destroyed his office.

Dr. and Mrs. Herbert G. Tureman left for the South December 20th, to sail for a three weeks' sojourn in Cuba.

Dr. B. B. Davis, of Omaha, was elected president of the Western Surgical Association, at its annual meeting in St. Louis.

Dr. Hugh Wilkinson, of Kansas City, Kans., announces that he will limit his practice to surgery and consultation work.

Dr. Geo. Henry Torney, surgeon-general U. S. Army, died in Washington, December 27, of bronchial pneumonia, aged 63 years.

Dr. G. T. Twyman who is wintering in Chicago, spent holidays with his brother, Dr. Elmer D. Twyman, of Independence, Mo.

Dr. and Mrs. L. McBride sailed December 20th from Key West, Florida, for Cuba and the West Indies. Christmas day was spent in Havana.

Dr. and Mrs. S. C. Pigman, of Concordia, Kans., spent Christmas week visiting the doctor's sister, Mrs. H. J. S. Seeley of Kansas City.

Dr. Thos. J. Allen, president of Aurora (Ill.) College has applied for a Nobel prize, based upon his discoveries in diet and the relative values of foodstuffs.

Dr. H. S. Jones successfully escaped from his burning residence at midnight in his "nighty," December 26th. The loss to the building and contents is said to be $1,800. The doctor was alone, Mrs. Jones being away for the holidays.

Dr. L. M. Callaway has been appointed to the school medical inspection service of Kansas City. Dr. Eugene Hamilton resigned after four years service.

Dr. Jabez N. Jackson presided at the St. Louis meeting of Surgeons with presidential dignity. "Jackson's membrane" attracted creditable program attention.

Dr. Frank Parsons Norbury, of Springfield, Ill., has returned to his old love in repurchasing Maplewood Sanitarium, of Jacksonville, first established by him in 1901.

Dr. and Mrs. W. H. Schutz returned December 22d from Springfield, Ill., after attending the golden wedding anniversary of the doctor's parents, Rev. and Mrs. Henry Schutz.

Dr. B. F. Hawke of Harper, Kans., has been appointed superintendent of the new asylum for the insane at Larned, Kans. This new institution will be ready to receive patients about February 1st.

Dr. and Mrs. John H. Thompson announce the marriage of their daughter December 6th, Miss Julia Ellen Thompson to Mr. Ernest G. Schmolck of Paris, Rev. S. M. Neal officiating.

Drs. Edson L. Bridges, John P. Lord, Leroy Crummer, William N. Anderson, Claude Mitchell, A. A. Johnson and Oscar T. Schultz are the new faculty members of the University of Nebraska.

Dr. M. Luther Spriggs, of Joplin, Mo., lost his license to practice on the evidence of a postoffice inspector who corresponded with the doctor under the assumed name of "Susie Davis,"-but, December 9th, Division No. 2 of the Supreme Court ruled that "Susie Davis" was a myth, therefore, no offense was committed! Thus the board stands over-ruled!

Dr. Thomas M. Paul, of St. Joseph, is spending several months in the clinics of the old world, brushing up on G.-U. The doctor's itinerary will embrace London, Berlin, Vienna and Paris.

At the annual election of the Jackson County Medical Society, Dr. Richard L. Sutton was elected president; Dr. J. M. Frankenburger, vice-president; Dr. H. L. Hess, secretary and editor of the Bulletin; Dr. William F. Kuhn, treasurer. Dr. Fred T. Van Eman was re-elected censor and Dr. R. M. Schauffler and Dr. William J. Frick were elected counselors.

Dr. Richard W. Allen, of Dallas, Texas, died at his home of his son-in-law, Dr. Elmer Twyman, in Independence, Mo.. December 20th. Dr. Allen was 67 years old. He had practiced medicine in Dallas for forty years. For thirty years he served the hospital department of the M. K. & T. Ry. as surgeon. The remains were taken to Dallas in a special car furnished by the railway company.

The requested resignation of Major J. L. Fryer, surgeon of the Western Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, by the Board of Managers has met with stringent resentment by many who believe the action to be a gross injustice. The Leavenworth County Medical Society says: "Resolved, That we bear witness to his efficacy in the management of the Soldiers' Home Hospital; that we regard the charges by the Board of Managers against the administration of Major Fryer as unjust, shameful and outrageous, and wholly unfounded; that the Leavenworth County Medical Society enter the most vigorous protest against, and condemn, the action of the Board of Managers in their unwarranted action in asking for the resignation of Major Fryer.

T