Injury to brain cells by disease stimulates resentment of the injury which often is directed by disordered logic toward individuals, producing a desire in the maniac's mind to destroy even his nearest and dearest friends.

Degeneration of brain cells often induces the most profound melancholy, banishing happiness beyond a possibility of its future return, or even impelling the deluded victim to seek the surcease from sorrow that is only found in the suicide's grave.

BIVALVE UTERINE DRAIN.

Ernst Gallont describes and illustrates in the Medical Record a new bivalve uterine drain, made of the two halves of a split tube, united to a cuplike base, separated one-eighth of an inch on the sides, to permit the cervical mucus to flow into the drain, mingle with the uterine excretions, prevent clotting and plugging of the drain and providing an unobstructed outlet to blood, lochia, and

INSTRUMENT FOR VACCINATION. Platinum Wire is Simple, Effective and Easily Sterilized.

Francis H. Williams, in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, describes a simple and advantageous instrument for vaccination, consisting of a piece of stiff platinum wire, 1 mm. in diameter and 5 cm. long, fused into a piece of glass tubing which serves as a handle. The other end of the wire is flattened by means of a hammer to a width of rather more than 2 mm., and has been well rounded with a file and its edge roughened by making shallow cuts in it with a knife blade. This roughening is important. The platinum wire is sterilized by heating to a red heat; it cools in a

moment.

CERTAINLY NOT PRESENT.

It was in one of the colored schools of Baltimore, and the teacher was an inexperienced one. There was talking among the little negroes before her.

"I want absolute silence," she said, severely.

Still the talking continued.

"I want absolute silence," she repeated again.

At the third demand one very small girl spoke up boldly.

"Assalute Silence ain't hyar," she said. "She's got de toofache."

FIG. 1.-Fenestrated rubber uterine drain in the cervix; a roll of gauze wick in the vagina. mucus every minute of every hour of every day of every month while it is worn, and finally restoring the cervix to its normal shape and caliber. This incessant drainage promotes involution and atrophy of the hypertrophied uterus, stops dysmenorrhea, regulates menstruation, and if established early in septic cases, will bring about rapid subsidence of all the symptoms of infection.

The fenestrated rubber uterine drain has these advantages: It is not cor

G.TIEMANN & CO.

FIG. 2.-The Bivalve Uterine Drain.

roded by the acid vaginal secretion, as is the silver or gold-plated drain, is more easily introduced, and stays in place. better; but it can not be boiled without losing its cervical curve, really a matter of minor importance.

because nature cures them. Perhaps bread pills would cure as many as medicine."-J. W. Carson.

"Thousands are annually slaughtered in the quiet sick-room."-Marshall Hall. "The popular medical system has neither philosophy nor common sense to commend it to confidence."-Ramage.

"The reason medicine has advanced so slowly is because physicians have studied. the writings of their predecessors instead of nature."-Alex. H. Stevens.

"The science of medicine is a hopeless assemblage of inaccurate ideas, of deceptive remedies, and of formulæ as fantastically conceived as they are tediously arranged, an incoherent assemblage of incoherent opinions."-Bichat.

"I am sick of learned quackery.”— Waterhouse.

"We are following an erroneous course in our investigations, and must resort to some new modes if we desire to be more successful."-Lugol.

"The medical practice of our day is, at best, a most uncertain and unsatisfactory system; it has neither philosophy nor common sense to commend it to confidence."-Evans.

"Assuredly the uncertain and most unsatisfactory art that we call medical science is no science at all, but a jumble of inconsistent opinions; of conclusions hastily and often incorrectly drawn; of facts misunderstood or perverted; of comparisons without analogy, of hypotheses without reason, and theories not only useless, but dangerous."-Dublin Medical Journal.

"The older physicians grow, the more skeptical they become of the virtue of medicines and the more they are disposed to trust to the power of nature."-A. H. Stevens.

"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon and the effects of our medicines on the human system are in the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that they have already destroyed more

lives than war, pestilence and famine combined."-John Mason Good.

"The present practice of medicine is a reproach to the name of science, while its professors give evidence of an almost total want of true knowledge of the nature or proper treatment of disease. Nine times out of ten our miscalled remedies are absolutely injurious to our patients, suffering under diseases of whose real character and cause we are most culpably ignorant."-Jameson.

"I hesitate not to declare, no matter how sorely I shall wound our vanity, that so gross is our ignorance of the real nature of the physiological disorders called diseases, that it would, perhaps, be better to do nothing, and resign the complaint we are called upon to treat to the resources of Nature, than to act as we are frequently compelled to do, without knowing the why and wherefore of our conduct, and at obvious risk of hastening the end of the patient."Magendie.

"I tell you, what I say is the truth of God. I am an old physician, I am an old professor, but I want to tell the truth. We are guessing in the dark, and there is no such thing as medical science."Douglas MacClagan.

"The science of medicine is founded upon conjecture and improved by murder."-Sir Astley Cooper.

"Medicine is a great humbug. It is nothing like science. Doctors are mere empirics when they are not charlatans. We are as ignorant as man can be. I tell you frankly I know nothing of medicine. I repeat to you, there is no such thing as medical science."-Magendie.

If we denounce the old materia medica, we have at least a preponderance of weighty authority upon our side, as may be shown by the foregoing twenty expressions. These could be multiplied indefinitely.

Please recollect that all of these are aimed against the old-fashioned drugs,

not one of them against the active principles. They fairly represent the views of the vast majority of the better educated of the medical profession. Truly, if there is nothing better than these old drugs, we would join with these gentlemen and sweep the whole mass overboard. It was the necessity for something better than this that led us to first investigate the claims made for the use of the active principles. We believe that scientific drug applications can be based upon these agents, for the simple reason that they are accurate single remedies, each one being always true to itself and capable when given in the same dose of exerting the same influence over the bodily functions. With them the matter reduces itself to a simple recognition of the diseased conditions presenting, and fitting thereto a remedy which is known to exactly obviate those abnormal conditions.

But make no mistake here this method is radically different from the ordinary one. In the latter we will suppose that a new remedy is proposed, for instance, saw palmetto, for diseases of the bladder. A fluid extract is put upon the market. The physician looks over the label and sees that the dose is given at one-half drachm; he therefore orders a prescription in which half a drachm of this medicine is combined with various adjuvants, corrigents and excipients, and this is administered to the patient for affections of the bladder. Just what the remedy does, and how it will exert its remedial agency, he has not the faintest idea. All he knows is that it is suggested as a remedy for diseases of the bladder. If when given in this manner it has little or no perceptible effect he lays it aside as useless.

Our method is different: We seek to study the case and ascertain what are the leading factors of disease presenting. There is irritability of the bladder, and examination shows the presence of vesical catarrh. Gelseminine allays the

irritation, the continued administration of small doses of arbutin for months gradually subdues the catarrh and favors recovery. There is an irritating quality to the urine, and its causes are sought out and remedied. An old gonorrheal infection persists, and this is extinguished by saturation with the sulphides. of lime and arsenic. The passing of a sound reveals undue irritability of the prostatic urethra, and this disappears. under daily applications of europhen in fluid petrolatum, provided the latter is pure and neutral-if acid or alkaline it will irritate. Or, the examination discloses the presence of mechanical conditions that require mechanical relief, and resort to surgical intervention is made.

In the new therapeutics the duty of the internist is to study the pathologic conditions present, as seen in the living patient rather than in the deadhouse; to recognize the deviations from the normal and harmonious operation of the vital functions, and supply the remedies that will exactly correct the difficulty. The treatment may be founded on etiologic factors, if this will effect the cure; but this is not always the case. It may be symptomatic, but is more frequently aimed at the pathologic state, rather than at its clinical manifestations. It places the first duty of the physician in the study of his patient, in the sick-room. To this study he brings all the resources supplied by the textbooks, the laboratory and the records of his own and others' experiences; but all these are simply aids to his chief professional function, the study of the case itself and the application of means for relief and cure.

PRESCRIBING VERBALLY.

A physician just outside of Boston, who prescribed verbally for a sick child, the child afterwards dying, has been fined $2500, and the drug clerk who dispensed the verbal prescription has been exonerated.