The hours for meals at this institution are as follows: Breakfast at 7.30 in the summer and 8 in the winter; dinner at 12.45 and supper at 6. In addition there are three lunches served, one at 10.30 A. M. and another at 4 P. M., while the last comes just before retiring. Milk, eggs or some specially prepared food is used at the lunch hours.

RULES ENFORCED.

There are rules adopted by the management of this institution which are rigidly enforced, and infractions are not tolerated. Between the hours of 1.30 and 4 in the afternoon a special quiet is required in the house. The patients are required to be ready for physical culture lessons and their other regular duties. The patients are required to be in their rooms at 8.15, and at 9 the lights are out. Another rule is that the patients are not allowed to visit each other in their bedrooms or enter the executive or private rooms. Patients are requested to keep their rooms in order and have few articles and ornaments to avoid the collection of dust. Permission is necessary to go farther than the village or to take an extended walk.

The rule against expectoration is more rigidly enforced than on the elevated in Boston. Sputa cups are supplied, and every possible safeguard is used. Under no circumstances are handkerchiefs or other articles of clothing permitted to receive sputa, and spitting upon the grounds of the sanatorium is absolutely forbidden.

In the past year many cases have been received at the sanatorium, and the treatment, it is asserted, has been beneficial in every instance. Of course damaged lung tissue can never be replaced, but the sanatorium is not designed for patients who are past cure. It is for the incipient cases of tuberculosis and lung trouble, which can be treated in such a manner as to put new vigor in the patient and send him home with a renewed interest in life.

"It is now nearly two years," said the physician in charge. "since I was called to see a young man whose family history was most remarkable. His father, brother and grandfather and two aunts died with chronic phthisis. He was suffering from a cough and dyspnoea and had a temperature of 100.5 degrees. The ordinary remedies were applied, and he continued to lose flesh. I took him to two specialists in Boston, and they said that my patient undoubtedly had tuberculosis.

"At that time I read a brochure by a Boston physician and he spoke of the benefits derived when he compelled his patients to remain out late in the evening in reclining chairs. I then urged my patient to sleep out of doors. For nine months he slept in the open air, with the exception of the stormy nights, and it was surprising to see the change. At the end of a month his temperature was normal. In four months he had gained twenty-two pounds, and the only medicine I gave was a little tincture of nux vomica. He has been perfectly well since and tips the scales at 147. The man has worked in a shoe factory nine hours per day since his treatment commenced.

"I might cite case after case similar to the one mentioned, cases where the open-air treatment has returned direct results. As a matter of experiment I have slept in a roof garden, and until one has tried it he cannot know how much more refreshed one feels after a night's rest out of doors.

"The cabalistic words 'dampness' and 'drafts' are of the past, and should not be considered for a moment. Many times patients have found their bed clothing and night clothes damp with the dew, and a summer rain has disturbed their restful slumbers, but with no harm, beyond the necessity of drying their clothes before another bedtime. I am of the opinion that if people could be taught to fear impure air and overheated rooms as they now dread a slight increase of moisture or a little air stirring in the room, tuberculosis would become as infrequent as smallpox.

W. C. GURNEY.

DESTRUCTION OF FUNGOID GROWTHS IN GERMANY.-ConsulGeneral Hughes, of Coburg, reports, December 13, 1901, as fcilows:

"Messrs. Rosenzweig & Baumann, of Cassel, manufacture at their color works a simple and effective agent for the destruction of fungoid growths, which they have put on the market under the name of 'mikrosol.' Professor Bigula, of the same city, has made a thorough examination into the action and effect of mikrosol, and recommends it as very efficient, both for the destruction and prevention of fungoid growths. Mikrosol is easily soluble in water. A 2 per cent. solution applied to wood by means of a brush will bring about the desired effect almost immediately. Mikrosol ought to be very useful on shipboard, especially in tropical and semi-tropical countries."

THE LEGAL STRUGGLE WITH TUBERCULOSIS.*

By CLARK BELL, Esq., LL. D., of New York City.

Since the organization of the Medico-Legal Society, indeed since the beginning of the last century, no such momentous question in forensic medicine has ever been presented to the general judgment and verdict of the professors of law and of medicine as the one with which now all the civilized nations of the world are confronted, and with which all are now grappling in the question of legislation for its prevention and spread. How far can the ravages of consumption be arrested by legislation? Can any legal enactments or regulations sanctioned by laws arrest its devastating march upon, and its terrible destruction of, human life?

It is the most momentous question of the hour, and last year our best effort was in inaugurating, organizing and rallying all the forces at our command upon this supreme question of medical jurisprudence.

THE AMERICAN CONGRESS OF TUBERCULOSIS.

While there had been an attempt to enlist the medical profession in the issue, in 1900, the labors of this society were initial and tentative, and only originated as a question of forensic medicine, which did not so deeply interest medical men outside the MedicoLegal Society as it should have done; but the session of the American Congress of 1901, at the Hotel Majestic, on May 15 and 16, 1901, was indeed splendidly successful in the organization of, and the real inauguration of, a superb movement, international in purpose, and based on the co-operation of not only the American States of our American Union, but on every State, province and country in the United States of America, in Mexico, and in the South and Central American Republics, and in the Dominion of Canada. Both continents of the Western Hemisphere and all countries in American waters were intended to be embraced in its labors. Governors of a large number of States of the American Union named delegates, and Mexico and the Central

*Abstract of Inaugural Address as President of the Medico-Legal Society, pronounced January 15, 1902.

and South American States were to some extent represented, and the Dominion of Canada. The Bulletin of this work now nearly completed, containing over 300 pages, which are a part only of its labor, will illustrate the great value and importance of its work and its value to the literature of the subject. The most important of all, however, was the organization of a strong body with a board of officers, selected from various parts of the States, provinces and countries of both continents upon the Western Hemisphere, the original officers of which have been announced to the world.

The plan proposed was to have three additional vice-presidents chosen in each State, province and country, who would form the nucleus of work in each location, and this has progressed until these officials have been chosen and selected for at least half the American States, and in some of the Canadian provinces, Mexico, some of the Central and South American Republics, and this branch of the work of organization is rapidly approaching completion.

The officials of that Congress have also appointed honorary vice-presidents, and are now making such appointments for each country, State and province, and these officials have been chosen and accepted for the Dominion of Canada, and in all its provinces, from men of the very highest character and social position in the Dominion. This work is also progressing in the various States of the American Union and in Mexico and in all the Central and South American Republics, and will soon be complete and ready for announcement. The delegates already appointed by the Governors of the States of the American Union are over 160 in number, exclusive of a considerable list of delegates from medical societies, legal academies of medicine and other organizations.

The officers have announced the next general session of the Congress for the 14th, 15th and 16th of May, 1902, to be held in joint session with the Medico-Legal Society at the Hotel Majestic in the city of New York, with a public banquet on the evening of the 15th of May, in which all medical and legal societies are invited to co-operate and to send delegates, and medical and legal men are invited to contribute papers to be read. A programme will be prepared and announced later to embrace the issues of the hour, the discussion of which will enlist the ablest thinkers and talent in the profession of law and medicine, in both countries of the entire Western Hemisphere, and their dependencies.

A MUSEUM.

There will be a museum and a suitable room has been secured at the Hotel Majestic for this purpose, convenient to the assembly room, and the preparation for the museum will be in the hands of a carefully selected committee, of which Dr. Edwin H. Lewis, of Burlington, Vermont, will be the chairman.

Prof. Dr. Moritz Benedikt, of Vienna, Austria, has announced his intention of contributing an open letter to this Congress, as he did to the London Congress of 1901.

RECEPTION AND ENTERTAINMENT.

These outlines seem to show the enormous labor that will devolve upon the officers of that Congress, and especially upon this society, who will have to take the laboring oar in the work of the committee on reception and entertainment of our foreign visitors.

MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE-QUESTIONS UNDER INVESTIGATION. The subjects under investigation as announced last year, are still in charge of committees, and additional questions have been accepted by our executive officers and will be assigned to standing committees, the details of which will appear in our transactions, of which I shall allude to a few only at this time.

It is more than probable that the enormous labors of the approaching Congress, to be held in May, will divert and postpone to some extent the labors of the Select Committee on the subjects already referred until later in the year, and perhaps until next

autumn.

Death has cut down an unusually heavy number of our best names in the year that has passed.

Prof. Maschka, of Bohemia, I am informed by Prof. Dr. Morris Benedikt, is no more. The details and sketch of his career will appear, I trust, later on.

Dr. Irwin G. Ross, of Washington, D. C., one of our ablest neurologists and alienists, has passed away, and appropriate action has been taken to his memory, as also Simon Sterne, of the New York bar; Judge David McAdam, of the Supreme Court of New York, who was one of the charter members of the society at its foundation; ex-Medical Director Dr. Albert H. Gihon, who has for many years been identified with this society, and on whose life and career Dr. I. N. Love pronounced a eulogy at the January meeting.