tivs, too, are worthy of trial, such as vaselin and the bland oils like oliv oil. In making the high injections, we would use oliv oil instead of water, and by only elevating the reservoir slightly above the hips, prolong the injection into an "instillation," that is, we would allow 20 minutes to be occupied in transferring four ounces of the oil into the bowel. Given in this way the oil does not provoke peristalsis or straining, and will often be retained in almost its entirety for several hours-perhaps until the bowels move. If you get results from this, you can employ it as often as required. Older persons, treated in this way, can taste the oil after a few treatments, showing that it passes up the alimentary canal until it reaches the mouth. This should solve the difficulty in so far as the constipation is concerned, if persisted in long enuf to thoroly saturate the canal. Doubtless you have given the bromids in large amounts. Make sure that the mental condition of the child is not partly caused by the medicin you are giving it. In other words, do not induce a condition as bad as the malady, by excessiv administration of drugs.-Ed.] Migraine. Editor Medical World: Female, age 26 years, been married 3 years, has one child, 7 months old, healthy and fine. Has had trouble in back part of head ever since she was 10 years old. I was called to see her two months ago. When I arrived I found her suffering tortures, both hands claspt over occiput, moaning, raving, eyes rolled back with not a twitch of lids, pulse 78, temperature normal, tongue nice and clean, respiration good and normal; bowels regular, urin slightly acid, appetite good, right up to one of her spells. She could hardly talk; said that it seems to her that there was a lot of pus or some other fluid gathered right under the occipital bone; said that at other times it seemed like a bunch of insects or worms working in the brain in that one spot, and that the pain was so great she could not live without ease at once. Her husband told me that she had been attended by several other doctors, but none could give her any relief except with large hypodermics of morphin. He said they had employed numbers of other remedies but none would relieve her. I gave her a powder containing sodium bromid 5 grains, caffein 1-2 grain, acetanilid 2 grains, ext. henbane morphin sulf. 1-20 grain. No relief. Repeated. 1-2 grain, No relief. Bromidia, teaspoonful every hour for three doses; no difference. She nearly went into convulsions. I then gave a hypodermic of morphin 1-2 grain. She got a little quieter, but still suffered considerably for two days. Spell gradually wore off. 159 I got a history of the family. Father was a physician; died when she was 14 years old, of pneumonia. Mother living; good health; af brothers and sisters have good health. She has had these spells ever since she was 10 years of age, lasting from three to five days, suffering almost death. Menstruated when 13; has always been regular. The spells come every 10 to 12 days; sometimes oftener. The last week before confinement she suffered these pains every day right up to delivery; then had no more trouble for ten days. During the past month she has barely gotten over one until another has come. Her health otherwise seems to be fine. She tells me that when she was nine years old she got into her father's drugs and drank a large swallow of fl. ext. of belladonna, and that her father (a physician at that time) thought that the cause of these pains in the head, altho it was one and a half years after that before she began to have them. Her husband tells me that some physician pronounced it occipital neuralgia. I have blistered cupt, given remedy after remedy, double doses, repeating often, but nothing will do the work except a large hypodermic of morphin, and that only eases very slightly. The patient is getting desperate. She is not nervous, not excitable, is a very sensible, refined woman of fine talent and judgment and good health with the exception of this. Now can any one, from this description, enlighten me any or make any suggestion? W. S. O. Kansas. [The case is not "occipital neuralgia." Neuralgia presents no such periodicity; moreover, it would have been more easily influenced by the medication employed by yourself and predecessors, if it had been of neuralgic origin. It is a true migraine, we think. It is possible that it arises from auto-intoxication, and with this as a working basis we would proceed to secure and maintain the working at par of every emunctory. In addition to attention to the kidneys, and insisting upon drinking of large amounts of water, we would employ purgativs which would not too greatly derange the digestion, and which could be given simultaneously with intestinal antiseptics and antifermentativs. The skin should be kept activ by frequent bathing and brisk friction following. Exercise should be regulated to a desirable point. In short, make the environment and habits as hygienic as possible. For, if the theory be correct, some of her organs are chronically inactiv. We confess that in the majority of cases it is a very difficult matter to locate the origin of a migraine, and if you do find the originating factor there seems to have been a systemic habit formed, like in an epi leptic case, that is very hard to break up by aseptic compresses, and instruct her how to medication. In the treatment of these so-called idiopathic migraines, there have been many drugs tried, and to none of them can be ascribed specific virtues. Dr. Seguin, of New York, many years ago, called attention to the curativ powers of cannabis indica in certain cases of migraine. It is necessary to make sure that a therapeutically activ preparation is secured, and then to "give it continuously, day after day, for months, in such doses as will keep just within the limit of distinct physiological effects." (H. C. Wood.) The editor can endorse the efficacy of the treatment.-Ed.] Spina Bifida. Editor Medical World: I have a case of spina bifida, meningocele in lumbar region. Can you or any of the "World" family advise me as to best mode of treatment? Patient is two months of age, and the tumor is about the size of a hen's egg. E. E. EVANS. Bois D'Arc, Mo. [There is no treatment of any avail except the radical surgical operation. Before considering this, it would be well to have an X-ray picture of the tumor taken, and thus ascertain what deficiency there is in the bony structure. If the deficiency is slight, the operation at a little greater age may promise much; if the deficiency is great, but little hope of benefit can be extended to the family. See any of the good modern text books on surgery for a discussion of the various phases of such cases. We can not devote the space here to the consideration of all of them, and you are not sufficiently explicit to enable us to give you a definit opinion.-Ed.] Varicose Veins.-Femoral Hernia in Male Infant. Editor Medical World: Will some of the fraternity give me a little light on the treatment of varicose veins, involving the whole length of left leg, labia, vulva, and one side of the vagina? pregnant six months. Also best method of retaining a femoral hernia in an infant (male) six weeks old. As the latter case is in my own family, I am doubly interested. Aurora, Mo. J. B. FLEMING, M. D. [In a case of such extensiv involvement of vein structure, in pregnancy, you can do nothing but guard against rupture until after delivery. When delivered, you can accomplish much by medication, if the trouble does not disappear spontaneously. Bandage the leg, and keep the patient off her feet as much as possible. Provide her with apply them in an emergency. This is all you can do. In labor, even with the vagina bulging and the labia enormously distended with varicose veins, rupture is rare: the vein structure seeming to take part in the general elasticity of the other parts. Rupture may, however, occur, and you must be prepared to meet it by prompt incision to expose the vein and ligate under aseptic precautions. In an infant of that age, cure is often obtained by wearing a proper support for several months. We think you will do better to make your own support, rather than attempt to purchase one that will fit properly and retain the hernia. Make a compress of absorbent wool covered with oiled silk of finest texture, or use rubber tissue as a covering. Place the compress property, and fix it in place by surgeon's adhesiv plaster. By proper application, and protection of the plaster from discharges subsequently, such application need not be renewed for several days.-Ed.] Letter from Dr. Cooper. CLEVES, OHIO, March 13, 1906. Dear DR. TAYLOR and the WORLD FAMILY:-1 take this method and opportunity, first, of thanking the editor of THE WORLD for his conscientious and sympathetic review of my little work, "Preventiv Medicin" (March WORLD, page 115); and second, of thanking numerous of the WORLD readers for their generous patronage. If I never knew before (and I did) that THE MEDICAL WORLD has, quite certainly, the largest circulation of any medical journal publisht, I know it now. However, the problem presented is quite a complex one. It has been my opinion that not more than one doctor in fifty reads the book reviews of a medical journal, and that not more than one or two of this fifty buys the book reviewed. If my sales since Dr. Taylor's review depend solely on this fact (granting that my hypothesis is correct), then the circulation of the WORLD is little short of 50,000. To the extent that the circulation is less than that, the results have depended on the character of the review, and the character of the WORLD readers. I leave the problem with the reader and with Dr. Taylor. The principal object of this letter, however, is to make known to WORLD readers the utter impossibility of my answering the personal letters I receive in connection with orders for the book. It is a physical impossibility for one person to do this, and I am not yet consequential enuf to keep a private secretary. Besides, a private secretary's letters would be purely perfunctory; there would be no red blood in them. I have received very many warm-hearted, congratulatory, and laudatory letters, each one of which richly deserves an extended answer. Let me say here to the authors of these precious letters, that they have done me a world of good as psychic tonics. I am deeply grateful to all of these brethren and shall try to deserve their good will to the end. I ask each of them to accept this as an answer to his good letter. Fraternally and cordially, WILLIAM COLBY COOPER. [Dr. Cooper writes separately that a number of our readers have adopted his method of treating pneumonia, and are more than satisfied with it."C. F. T.] OUR MONTHLY TALK. Well, I have been "talking" in this column a long time-over ten years. I have pointed out the importance of economic, sociologic, and political problems to every citizen, including the physician. I have said some things a good many times, because of the importance of, and the general nonacceptance of, these things. One of these things was the evils of partisanship. I have pointed out, many times, that partisanship among the masses is the instrument by which the corporations and the privileged classes generally get control of things, and "work" the masses. Hence the large and growing number of millionaires and multimillionaires in this country; and for every millionaire there are, necessarily, many who are poorer than they would be were exact economic justice meted out to every one. While this is an exceptionally wealthy country, the wealth is distributed very unevenly, and this tendency is growing all the time. I have tried to show that this is not only an evil to the country and to humanity in general, but it is a disadvantage particularly to the doctor, who must serve all classes and must look to all classes for his support -particularly to the masses, as most of his work is with them. But I am not particularly fond of talking. I have been talking only because what I have been saying needed to be said. I have been looking for a man who could say them better than I could, and I am glad to say I have found him; and I am glad to yield, this month, to him. The Phila. North American is an old republican paper. It is now owned by Ex-postmaster-General John Wanamaker. In its issue for March 11, 1906, Mr. Lincoln Steffens says as follows: CRACK ACROSS THE FRONT OF BOTH OLD PARTIES, HE SAYS. BY LINCOLN STEFFENS. (Copyright, 1906, by J. L. Steffens.) WASHINGTON, March 10. A political realignment is going on here. There is a great slanting crack across the face of both the old parties. It isn't a new crack; on the contrary, it is very old; but it is spreading just now and so rapidly that the outlines of four political divisions are discernible: republican and democratic, conservativ (and let us say) liberal. The democratic leaders seem not to see the cleavage very willingly, but the President does, and so does Senator Aldrich. Neither of these two men could trace the line in language for me. Mr. Aldrich had names for two sides; it was he that first used the word " conservativs" for those who stood with him in both the old parties, and he waved away all others as "radicals." He said that the division was not one of principle, but he couldn't or wouldn't describe what it was. And neither could the President. Yet these two men are the leaders, at present, of what may turn out to be two new American parties. And we need two new political parties. One isn't enuf. When Governor Folk, of Missouri, was Circuit Attorney of St. Louis, he called on the President, and they spent an evening together. After it Mr. Folk said: "Isn't it too bad that two men who agree as the President and I do on all moral questions should be in different parties!" When this remark was repeated to the President, he answered, quick as a flash: "No, it isn't bad. It's good that there should be men in both parties who agree on all moral questions." The President was wiser than Mr. Folk, but not so practical. Both parties should stand for right things, but they don't. In a representativ democracy both parties should represent the public good. But our parties don't. They might, and they should differ as to the policy to pursue to serve best the common interest. But our parties don't differ at all. They both stand today for special interests and graft, and we are coming to realize-we, the voters-that we haven't any parties at all, nothing but organizations that have us. ALL GRAFTERS LOOK ALIKE. What is the difference between the republican organization that exploited Philadelphia and the democratic organization that sold out St. Louis? Or between Tammany Hall in New York and the socalled republican party of Cincinnati? There wasn't any difference. They were alike in the character of their leadership, the purposes of their organization, and the methods of their stealings. I have never been South, but in the North and West and East the only correct classification is between the outs and the ins. All reformed majority parties-no matter what their names-whether republican or democratic, look alike, act alike and talk alike. And, curiously enuf, the minority parties all resemble one another. The minority republican party of St. Louis was a replica of the democratic minority organization of Philadelphia; it wasn't quite so miserable, because the St. Louis republicans got some Federal graft from their national party. The Philadelphia democrats lived only on the crumbs dropt from the table of the majority party. And that's the way our minority parties live, on the majority party. They are "kept" by the boss grafters, to keep us divided and catch us if we run away. That there is this tacit agreement between the two parties we all know well, but we can see it best in a state like New York, where one party controls the city, the other the state. All "business" that is done at Albany is handled by a combination of Tammany democrats and upstate republicans, the majority groups. I know of but one state where the people, sick of "their" majority party, have had a minority party fit to go to. That state is Ohio. In Missouri, Wisconsin and now in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Illinois, reformers have had to seize, clean up and set about the reorganization of the rotten old majority party, whichever it was. After visiting a few such states and cities one becomes party blind. When I came down here I couldn't tell the difference between a democrat and a republican, and it hurt my pride to have statesmen tell me about their parties. The candid thieves who run our states and cities had ceased long ago to try to work off that sort of buncombe on me, and I thought that all talk of parties was for the "peepul," not for me and the railroads and the boodlers, who change parties as we change cars to follow the majority from state to state. UNCLE JOE'S STUMP SPEECH. But still they would talk parties, and the Speaker, Mr. Cannon, was especially annoying. He sat me down in a big chair, gave me a cigar, stuck another in his own mouth, and then he stood up over me and delivered a regular stump speech. He called it an interview, but it was the sort of oration he delivers to his constituents out in Illinois. All about "the" party, "the great party which has made this great country what it is-great." Since he is a humorist, I thought at first that he was "joking," but he seemed very serious and I put it down to habit; till by and by it dawned on me that he was trying to deceive himself as well as me. I half believe he half believes the G. O. P. brings up good crops. But he said one thing that is true: "This is a government by parties." It is. As I left the room, John Sharp Williams, the minority leader, entered. They work together, these two, for government by parties. We have a bi-partisan system here as well as in the cities and states. If there's a River and Harbor bill, the democrats get their "divvy." They don't get as much as the " party gets, but-there's no difference in "pork," which, mind you, is treated as graft." So with the other pork barrel, the Public Buildings bill. Toledo needs right now a Federal building, so do Atlanta and other places, but they can't have what they need till there's enuf money to go around to all the Congressmen of both parties who voted right. And they vote right here without any precise regard to party. The Speaker put his Philippine bill thru only with the help of the democrats; and Rice, the last special interest "taken care of" by "Uncle Joe" Cannon in his free trade measure, was expected to win over enuf Southern protection democrats to overcome the insurgent high-tariff republicans. The party line there is as confused as that sentence. And as for the Hepburn rate bill, everybody voted to pass that measure up to the Senate to be fixed. So there's no difference there. And, taking the Senate, what's the difference between Aldrich, the republican leader, and Gorman, the democratic leader? Or between Clark, democrat, of Montana, and Wetmore, republican, of Rhode Island? Bailey, of Texas, is a democrat, but he is not so much of a democrat as La Follette, a republican, of Wisconsin. And certainly Dolliver, republican, of Iowa, is at least as democratic as McLaurin, democrat, of Mississippi. There are differences among these men, and these differences are political. They are broad enuf to build political parties on. But the old political parties are not built upon them. The new parties will have to be and, as a matter of fact, the new parties are being built upon them now, here as elsewhere, in the United States. What are those differences? What is the line the President and Mr. Aldrich could not draw in words? What is the American issue? Out in Chicago some twelve years ago a group of reformers undertook to clear the boodlers out of their council. The street railways, which needed the corrupt council in their business, were in politics, and they fought reform. The fight has been waging ever since. "Municipal ownership" is the form the issue has taken out there, but the fight is really between the public service corporations and the people for the control of the government; and men divide according as they are for special interests or the common interest. In Cleveland the story is essentially the same. The form of the issue is "three-cent fares," but the fight, which has extended into the state, is between the railroads and other public service corporations on the one hand and the people on the other for representation in the government, and the voters are dividing as in Chicago. In Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette undertook to tax the railroads like any other property. They resisted. He taxed them. They were going to take it out of the people of the state by means of higher rates. He undertook to regulate rates. SPECIAL INTERESTS VS. THE PEOPLE. The issue there was, as in Chicago and Cleveland, representativ government; the fight was between privileged business and the people, and the voters abandoned the old parties and took sides according as they were for the special interests or the common interests. Everett Colby, Mark Fagan, George L. Record, and their friends in Jersey are just beginning to tax the railroads. Their cry is equal taxation." But the people of Jersey are really fighting against the special interests for the control of their government in the common interest of all of them. In Wisconsin the common-interest party calls itself republican, and it controls the republican organization, but the La Follette half-breed party contains many democrats. In Ohio the reformers call themselves democrats, but they won with republican votes. In Jersey the republican party is the party used, but in the last election the voters paid no heed to old party lines. They were for themselves. And so it has gone in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and elsewhere. Wherever the people have found a leader who would lead, they have crossed all party lines to follow, and they are forming a new party. For Folk (dem.) and Colby (rep.), John Weaver (rep.) and Tom Johnson (dem.), La Follette (rep.), and Dunne (dem.), all belong to one party. Differ tho they may in ideas, in wisdom, in the slogans they have raised and the symbols they vote under, they all are fighting one fight, raising one issue. They are dividing old parties into new parties, and all that is needed to complete the realignment are national leaders to bring them together. NEW LINES IN WASHINGTON. And the same thing is happening here in the same way and from the same cause. When the President undertook to pass a rate regulation bill, he opened up that old crack which runs across the front of both the old parties. That bill is called an attack on the railroads. It isn't. It may not be a wise bill, but it isn't unfair. Purporting to empower the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, it will do nothing of the sort. The best friends of the Hepburn bill, as it passed the House, do not pretend that it will solve the railroad rate problem; the most that they claim for it is that it is a step forward," and the advocates of the effectiv regulation of rates want to amend the bill to make it do its work. So, while the bill may be weak, it is not harsh. But it was a challenge to the power of the railroads in the national government, and they prepared to oppose its passage. Public opinion put the bill thru the House, and the railroads hoped to avoid an open fight by "fooling' the President into accepting amendments. Everybody thought that they would succeed in this, but they didn't. The President saw the game. When Senator Aldrich exprest his concern lest the bill was unconstitutional, the President is said to have answered: " Then why do you object to it?" When Senator Knox offered an amendment to perfect the bill, and Attorney-General Moody reported that the Knox amendment did a little more than that, the President lost some faith in one of his most trusted advisers and Mr. Knox lost his temper. The fight was on. Further attempts were made toward a "reconciliation," and the President listened to them. But if we don't lead, others will. It certainly looks as if the fight would go on to the end, the fight that is waging in so many parts of the country. REAL ISSUE, WHO SHALL RULE? The apparent issue here is an accident; railroad rate regulation may not be central or essential, but neither is three-cent fare central or essential. The particular issue does not matter, however; anything will do that brings the people (by "people," I mean all men, not alone the "down-trodden ") in just conflict (not with the "rich," but) with the interests which corruptly rule this country. "What do they represent?" That is the question we have always to ask, and when the fight was thrown out of the White House into the Interstate Commerce Committee of the Senate the answers came fast. Elkins, Aldrich, Kean, Foraker, Crane, republicans, were for an amendment to appeal rate-making to the courts for delay, and two democrats, McLaurin and Foster, leaned that way. No old party line there. Dolliver, Clapp, and Cullom, republicans, and Tillman, Carmack, and Newlands, democrats, were opposed to any emasculation. No old party line there. But there were new party lines, and Senator Aldrich indicated them. When it appeared that the bill must be reported out with a whole skin, he said that this (the republican President's) bill was a democratic bill; and it is. It is in "our interest," wherefore Aldrich said: "Let a democrat lead it thru the Senate," and he named Senator Tillman, and the republicans voted the leadership to this democrat. This incident was regarded as highly picturesque, because Tillman is no friend of the President. But it may turn out to be more than picturesque. Tillman is a democrat, but Theodore Roosevelt is a democrat. The President isn't an intellectual democrat, else he could not have advocated a Ship Subsidy bill. But instinctivly "that man is for that government which Lincoln said should not perish from the earth. Aldrich is not, nor Kean, nor Foraker. They are conservativs"; Mr. Aldrich says so. They stand for business; Mr. Aldrich says so. These men honestly believe that anything that helps business is good, no matter how much it may hurt our national character as a people or the institution of our government, if it helps business, that thing must be right. And there are many men in the Senate and in the House and in the Cabinet and in the country at large who are for" prosperity at any cost." But also there are a few men in the Senate and in the Cabinet and in the House, and in the country at large there are many men who hold that whatever hurts our manhood and our government, no matter how much it may help business, is bad. These men think that the corruption of legislatures and courts is wrong, even if it is necessary. And these two groups of thinkers are lining up to fight in the nation as they are in the cities and states, and it is just possible that the fight over the rate bill, with Tillman, a democrat, and Roosevelt or some other republican leading one side, and Aldrich and his "democrats " on the other, may split both the parties wide open and show the state and city fighters who the new national leaders are of their new national parties. Thus it is proven, as I have often said, that the plutocratic party has controlled both the republican and the democratic voters thru their political machines. Isn't it time to break the machines? 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