lative branch of our government to appropriate all funds necessary to foster and facilitate this great and good work; for the food we eat, the water we drink, and the very air we breathe are all liable to contamination, and thus become inimical to health, consequently, they all require scientific supervision.

Especially should the water supply of the towns and cities be closely scrutinized, as the water oftentimes is responsible for endemic diseases, such as diarrhea, dysentery and even typhoid fever, by being impregnated with decomposed animal matter or decayed vegetable substances. When we have a heavy downpour of rain, following a long dry spell of weather, we may expect all well water to be polluted with such surface washings.

So, if every town would abolish the out-door closet, with its sink, and construct a good system of sewerage with an abundance of flush water, and connect therewith all closets, the said town would soon be free from typhoid fever, while the prevalence of diarrhea and dysentery would be notably lessened.

The recent epidemic of yellow fever in the South Atlantic and Gulf States was controlled and held in abeyance by heeding scientific truths and proven theories-by replacing the shotgun with the mosquito-net-by substituting coal oil for the smudge-by scientifically ferreting out and finding out the true cause of the spread of yellow fever, and then confining all efforts to the elimination. of this one palpable cause. Thus, we escaped a scourge of this terrible malady which had heretofore proved so destructive to life and panicky to the living.

Scientific medicine reduced the mortality of yellow fever from 33 per cent to 6 per cent, and thus divested this disease of much of its former terrors. If the physician did no more than to stamp out this one terrible malady and menace to our Southern country, he should receive the plaudits and the gratitude of the whole human race, but this is only one stroke in protecting human life.

But a few years ago we were threatened with a scourge of smallpox which, in years gone by, claimed its victims from all stations in life, excepting and respecting no one. But thanks to Dr. Jenner, we have the key to the situation and locked up, and starved out, this most loathesome of diseases, by rendering the community immune by vaccination.

The day is dawning when our Southern country with its fertile lands and ideal climate, free from the wintry blast of the North and the sultry air of the tropics, will be healthful and free from malaria. This will be an accomplished fact when we educate our

selves and the people to know that a branch of the mosquito family disseminates malarial poison, and by draining their breeding places, we can exterminate the mosquito, and thus be free from malariathe ban of our Southland.

Within recent years tuberculosis has been catalogued among the infectious diseases by Dr. Koch. Now this disease is known to be transmitted by a specific microbe which is contained in the sputa of the patient. And so, by rendering this sputa innocuous by incineration, we can check the dissemination of this virulent disease, and can reduce the mortality in such cases.

Preventive medicine has raised the average age of man from 29 to 33 years, and the time is at hand when it can be increased to 35 years; which can now even be accomplished with the lights before us, together with the present status of knowledge, if we were only willing to invade the assumed rights and abridge the personal liberties of the few for the benefit of the many. This can and will be done as soon as we are educated sufficiently to understand and appreciate the importance of such a step, to which we are making rapid strides, for the exponent of preventive medicine in Texas wields more authority than the chief executive of the State, because he is autocratic in his power, as his edicts are absolute and his decisions are final, from both of which there are no appeals. He can stop commerce and traffic at a word, and detain the United States mail by a stroke of his pen. He deprives men of their boasted personal liberty and disregards the writ of habeas corpus, and ignores the writ of injunction. All these powers are delegated to him for the sole purpose of protecting the public health. These are the laurels of preventive medicine and these are the achievements of the scientific physician.

Gentlemen of the Brazos Valley Medical Association, we all should not only feel a laudable pride in living in this enlightened age of medical progress, in which the searchlight of scientific medicine is casting its rays into the hidden recesses of medical science, and shedding light on many an abstruse problem, which sorely perplexed the scientist of the past, but we should feel justly proud and honored that we are members of the noblest, the most humane, the most beneficent, and the most progressive of all the professions; and as we speed past the mile-post of medical progress we must not loiter lazily in the alluring shades of idleness, nor rest contentedly on flowery beds of ease. Neither should we linger long in the whirlpool of pleasure, lest we become desuetude and unserviceable, and thereby deserve to be Oslerized; for knowledge is now the standard of worth, and reward clings closely to merit.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

FEDERAL VS. STATE QUARANTINE.

The Federal Quarantine Bill passed by the last Congress provides for the taking over by the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, the duty and expense of international quarantine, and the purchase by the Federal government of the quarantine buildings and equipment owned by the State at a price to be agreed upon. In order to perfect the act of Congress and make it effective, the Legislature of each Southern quarantine State must, by special act, ratify and approve of such transfer, and it will then remain only to make deeds to the property and give possession. That is a mere detail.

It becomes now the duty of the Thirtieth Legislature just assembled, to pass such an act, to give effect to the Federal law in Texas. A bill for that purpose should be introduced at an early day, and no doubt will be.

It would seem that no argument should be necessary in support of such a proposition. Texas being a frontier State, pays for the protection of all that lies behind her, from epidemic invasion, which is neither just nor right. Moreover, her sanitary cordon on the Mexican border and on the gulf coast, for which some $50,000 a year is paid, is a superfluity, in as much as it is duplicated by the Federal government, anyhow, and thus a double line, one State and one Federal, is maintained to guard the State against-what? yellow fever! and that, too, to the neglect of internal sanitation. to protect the people from indigenous diseases that destroy a hundred times more lives than yellow fever, and compared to which yellow fever is a minor danger: e. g.: according to figures compiled from the U. S. Census Reports by Reed, Carroll, and Agramonte, from 1793 to 1900 the average number of deaths from yellow fever per year was 1000, while the U. S. Census Reports for 1890 and 1900 show the number of deaths from consumption to be 150,000 a year, or one hundred and fifty times greater than from yellow fever: that whereas one thousand die of yellow fever in a year, one thousand die of consumption every two and a half days! Four hundred and eleven a day, or one every three minutes, night and day.

And yet the spread of consumption is preventable.

And yet nothing, practically nothing, is being done to prevent it!

It is true, some cars are "disinfected" after a fashion. Public buildings are not, although the law stipulates they should be.

The money saved to the State by letting Uncle Sam do the gulf and border quarantining would go a long way in enforcing sanitary measures for the prevention of diseases other than imported infection; for instance, it would make effective the Vital Statistics Act (Twenty-ninth Legislature) inoperative for want of $2000. It would make effective the pure food law, enacted in 1885, but a dead-letter for want of a small appropriation. It would make effective the disinfecting of cars, hotels and public buildings; the prevention of water pollution that breeds typhoid fever, et cetera, et cetera.

The whole medical profession of Texas favors the transfer of quarantine to the U. S. government.

I reproduce from a late Galveston paper the resolution adopted by the South Texas Medical Association in recent session in Houston, and add my endorsement of same:

THE RESOLUTION.

WHEREAS, The national quarantine law provides for the immediate establishment of quarantine stations at all gulf ports, regardless of existing State stations;

WHEREAS, The problem transcends a State duty, and being national, belongs to Federal supervision; and,

WHEREAS, One of the avowed policies of our American medical and the State medical associations, voicing the sentiment of the most intelligent men of our profession, was the confidence in the ability and experience of the United States public health and marine hospital service; and,

WHEREAS, Were our State government to maintain an independent quarantine system side by side with these uniform quarantine stations, it would be a calamity in that it would work a double hardship on freight and passenger traffic, and which, in our opinion, is unwarranted and an unnecessary expense to our State when maintained simply as a check on one of the most efficient and most thoroughly equipped quarantine systems on the face of the globe:

and.

WHEREAS, Constant demands are being made by the profession, the press and the public for more consideration of internal health affairs, such as a State chemist, an inspection service for pure food and drugs, a prevention of pollution of water supply of our cities, and proper care of our dependent consumptives, lepers, etc.; there

fore be it

Resolved, That the South Texas District Medical Association, believing that we, being most vitally interested by virtue of our being contiguous to the coast, and more amenable to yellow fever epidemics, heartily indorse the policies as outlined by the national quarantine law and urge our various committees on public health and legislation to take up this matter with their respective State Senators and members of the Legislature, and admonish them to use their vote and influence towards the consummation of the above ideas, i. e., a sale of State stations and equipment to the National government, whereby we will get the same, or better, protection as at present afforded, without expense to our State government; and be it further

Resolved, That our representatives be requested to provide for the establishment of a State board of health and allow the present annual appropriation for maintenance of the quarantine service to be used by the board for the purpose of safeguarding the public health by dealing intelligently with problems of more vital interest at this time than yellow fever epidemics.

A STATE SANATORIUM FOR CONSUMPTIVES.

Thousands of consumptives of the indigent class flock to Texas every year on the approach of winter, and they are a constant menace to the public health. They infect the cars, boarding houses, parks, public places, and, in fact, everywhere, so that any person is liable at any time, anywhere, to acquire the disease.

It is not so much a humanitarian proposition that they should be cared for, as a measure of protection to the public. The disease is not "catching," like smallpox or measles, but it is infectious, and the infection is in what they cough up or spit out, as well, perhaps, as other dejecta. If you extract the fangs of a serpent you disarm him. If the infectious element,-the sputa, principally, of a consumptive, be destroyed, he is harmless. It is therefore necessary to the protection of the general public that these circulating foci of infection be "retired," corralled, looked after; not only that they may have a showing for recovery, but that they may not spread the disease.

The whole world is aroused now to the necessity of measures to prevent or limit the spread of tuberculosis. Texas has always taken an active part in the campaign, and it should be a matter of pride with her lawmakers that she shall be one of the first to take active steps in the matter.

When the duty and expense of quarantining against yellow fever is relegated to the Federal government, as it should be, and I believe will be, by the Thirtieth Legislature now in session, the money