elled one hundred miles to her oculist. She was suffering with headache and her stomach. The prescription which relieved her was this, "reduce the angle of glasses five degrees." The fact that her glasses tilted a few degrees more than they should, no doubt gave the effect of a cylinder in a horizontal meridian, producing an astigmatic effect which she did not naturally have.

In a work on spectacles and eyeglasses by Dr. Phillips, a table is given wherein is shown the additional extent of cylindrical and spherical effects caused by incorrectly adjusted lenses, as cited in the above case. Any optician engaged in making glasses according to prescriptions, could no doubt cite many cases wherein a difference of a small fraction of an inch in the position of the optical center of lenses before the eyes had given considerable discomfort. Of course there are many wearing glasses, who are not affected by a slight error in adjustment of the lenses, but I find that nearly all and especially those with a stomach or nerve ailment, are hypersensitive in regard to the position of their lenses.

It is a common occurrence to have a busy man or woman, whose glasses have become bent out of shape, leave their work during the rush of business to step into the store of an optician to have them readjusted, and in most cases they are out of line not more than 1-16 or 1-8 of an inch, which is sufficient to make most persons wearing glasses uncomfortable. As a rule, the optician does not charge for this service, which to me is a source of gratification because of these reasons: first, as it is a simple matter for the optician, requiring no further outlay than a moment of his time in its performance; second, for the slight service one is fully recompensed when the person in words and facial expression testifies to instant relief.

This is especially noticeable in the small boy who wears strong lenses, and who has had his frame bent out of its correct shape in a scramble. After readjusting his glasses, to hear him say, "Gee, that's fine." It is an easy matter to feel that he has some change coming to him.

To make glasses so that their frames do not easily bend out of shape and still be delicate in appearance, has been a subject of much study and experimenting on the part of the optician. No metal or other material has proven nearly so satisfactory for this purpose as gold, which after all is the most appropriate to wear on the face. In mechanical manipulation any mechanic of experience in this respect will grant its superiority. It is most cleanly, as it does not tarnish, rust or accumulate verdigris, as do metals sometimes used. It can be most satisfactorily repaired, and as it outlasts several of those made of any other metal used for this purpose, it is most economical.

Next in order to the correct fitting of a pair of glasses, is that they should remain so for as long a time as possible. That they be well made is, of course, essential to their being a perfect fit. The methods of writing measurements of the curvature and axis of lenses, so as to be legible to the physician and optician, have long been standardized. It is only within the last few years that the mountings of glasses have been produced in their present state of mechanical perfection, both in regard to the manner of fitting them before the eyes and the division of the material, so as to give the best results in their use.

Spectacles will probably always be considered the most satisfactory form of mounting lenses, mainly because of their remaining in a more stationary position before the eyes than do nose glasses. The latter style, while greatly improved in its construction during the past few years, is still the same in principle of adherence.

The eye glass for dress is neatest in appearance and most convenient for momentary use, but the spectacle will always be most practical, both in regard to its scientific value and the comfort derived from judicious division of its weight, in adjusting to the nose and ears.

Lens grinding is a branch of spectaclemaking in which machinery is made to play an important part; not only is it conducive to labor-saving, but it is also valuable be

cause of its regularity of purpose. How ever, no machine has been made that is its own master and judge of its work. It is necessary for the prescription optician to employ at least one expert lens-grinder, who in his capacity requires to be an artist in his line, if good results are to be had. To produce a lens with perfect regularity of curvature and entirely free from opacity requires skill and an eye trained by long experience. Since so many lenses are required wherein the optical centre is in a different position from that of the geometrical one, as in lenses combined with prisms, the expert lens grinder has grown considerably more necessary than heretofore, where glasses are made according to prescription.

It would require a visit to the optician's workshop to realize the mechanical skill and accuracy exercised in the completing of a well made pair of glasses. Aside from the importance of precision and care necessary in the making of an instrument to be used in connection with the human eye, it is a difficult feature of workmanship to combine metal and glass when neatness and delicacy are required. Everything is made to correspond with measurements, the patient choosing the style of glasses, his face is measured and each part made to conform to the peculiarities of the wearer. Individualism is necessary in perfect fitting glasses. We all have our own faces, so must we all have our own spectacles to be entirely comfortable in using them.

The refractionist well knows the many different grades of lenses, curvatures and combinations, that the optician is required to make. While there are not very many kinds of glasses, if we consider their general style only, exact similarity in completed pairs, when actually fitted to the face, are far less common than is sameness in the prescriptions after which the lenses are made.

It is true that only a few years ago when glasses encircled with a rim were most generally used, the sizes of the lens rims. were limited to less than half a dozen, but

since the advent of rimless glasses, there is no limitation to the sizes and shapes lenses are made in their adaptation to the face. Even in rimmed glasses, which at this time are used only where durability is necessary, as in cases of small children, there is a considerably larger variety of sizes than were used in former years.

A feature especially noteworthy in our branch of spectacle-making is a class of people who form a majority of those who are our patrons. The fact that errors of refraction in the eyes and muscular irregularities are frequently the cause, or are contributory to the nervous and stomach ailments and headaches, will suggest to you that persons afflicted with this class of difficulties are the most numerous of our pat

rons.

As to the relation of our work to that of the physician, in comparison, our business and that of the druggist are more nearly similar than any other mercantile line. It, however, greatly differs in that we deal directly with the principle, while the druggist successfully fills prescriptions without a visit from the patient

Of course, spectacle-making is a mechanical vocation in every sense, but spectacleselling is not, and in this respect I do not know just what mercantile line of business with which to compare the optician's work. I think almost every merchant could recall instances of dealing with a customer, who would not be suited, regardless of every thing that he could do for them. As they leave his store he will content himself with the thought that the person was a crank.

I by no means believe the optician's customers to be cranks in the sense with which the dictionary defines the word, but I do believe that in general they are a different class from those with which other merchants do business.

If we could imbibe into a model storekeeper a thorough knowledge of spectaclefitting without that of spectacle-selling, and place him suddenly in an optician's store, he would probably believe that most of his customers were whimsical. By this I mean

to illustrate that the spectacle-making optician requires, in order to be successful, a certain different sort of mercantile training from any other class of storekeeper, which only years of experience in this branch of business will develop.

Fortunately for the optician, some eculists instruct their patients in some cases as to the style of glasses he wishes them to wear. Especially when spectacles are to be worn when nose glasses are preferred by the patient is this fortunate, as it is a difficult matter to make such persons understand that spectacles are what they ought

to wear.

Between himself and the patient the physician undoubtedly is master of the situation while relatively the optician is not always.

There are quite a variety of styles and shapes of glasses made, and as in any article of this nature only one kind is the best suited to each case. The optician is expected to know which is that best kind, and if it does not at the time suit the cosmetic taste of the patient, the well-trained optician will overcome the situation by the customers having that which is best for them and, of course, with perfect work always resulting in the retention of the person's good-will. There is no class of patrons that a first-class optician would rather deal with than those who have previously been ill-fitted. No one except those who wear glasses can realize what a continuous source of discomfort an incorrectly fitted pair of glasses are. I believe most persons perfectly fitted with glasses do not forget the optician who made them. This fact coupled with the appreciation of the successful oculist, of perfection in this class of work, constitutes the foundation upon which a spectacle-business is established.

I noticed recently in a local Sunday paper an article boldly headed "King of Oculists." It described one of fame in this branch of medical science in Europe. Among others noted, one of the most distinguishing features of this physician's work, was that he always insisted on his patients going to one certain optician in his city for their glasses,

and much as was his confidence in this man's ability he always had the patient return with the glasses to him, so that he could be sure that they were perfectly made and adjusted. As exactly the same course of procedure is insisted upon not only by the far-famed oculists of our city but also by some of the locally famous ones, to make this fact noteworthy in our country in the description of a European oculist seems to me far fetched. I, for one, am in a position to know what a superior nature of workmanship in glasses some oculists of Buffalo require in order to bestow their approval.

I believe that no one realizes more thoroughly than the leading oculists of our city, how essential a perfectly made and adjusted pair of glasses are to success in the results of their use. The perfect fit is not usually obtained by a haphazard manner of buying nor making them, but by judicious choosing of an optician who will make and fit them according to a plan based on scientific truths—a plan in the following of which the conforming them to the individuality of the face and needs of the wearer has been the main consideration.

A great deal can be said in describing the making of glasses, not only in regard to the grinding of the lenses from the raw material to the completing of the spectacles, and more especially of the mechanical ability required in making the final adjustment in correctly fitting them to the face. But as the physician cannot be much interested in purely mechanical procedures, I have endeavored to remain in the province including the consideration necessary to the successful making and adjusting of glasses. That these are numerous you will grant from your own experiences in your profession, wherein great depth and technicality are involved in everything pertaining to it.

Since the medical profession have interested themselves in spectacles these conditions have at least, in a small degree, blended themselves into the art of spectacle-making. They are an article of which the physician is the architect, and you surely will appreciate that if their correct prescribing

requires long years of study in addition to the great problem of medicine, they at least require mechanism of precision in their making. If not I want to say that much of the energy of my business life has been wasted.

THE TEMPLE OF AESCULAPIUS.

THE Lancet announces (on what authority it does not state) that this long-soughtfor shrine has been discovered at last. The fact is of great archæological interest, and of equally great interest in the medical world.

It seems that Dr. Rudolph Herzog is the lucky man, and that the discovery was made under an ancient Byzantine church in the island of Cos, in the Ægean Sea-an island which, as is well known, was the seat of the cult of Aesculapius and the birthplace of Hippocrates. The discovery seems to be authentic. The columns of the temple have been found, and an inscription in Greek to the effect that "sundry elders from different states have decided by vote to carry on the holy asylum of Aesculapius." A statue of Hygeia also has been found, and an image of a serpent, the well-known symbol of the healing art. Excavations are being made and further discoveries of interest are anticipated.

"A STORY now goes the rounds among German papers regarding the celebrated Bergmann, too good to be lost.

"Professor Bergmann sent one of his richest patients, attacked by an articular affection, to Kreuznach, to follow the chloride treatment. At the end of last Autumn Bergmann met his client on the promenade at Tilleul; the patient was absolutely helpless, and was being pulled around in a chair. "Why, my old friend!' exclaimed Professor Bergmann, 'you appear to be in bad shape. What are you doing here?'

THE whole medical world has come to recognize the vital role of the toxins in the causation of nearly all prevailing diseases. Hence the overdone craze for antitoxins of every nature. Beyond the remark that they have been overdone and overrated by over sanguine enthusiasts, we have no quarrel with their advocates whose zeal often amounts to partisanship.

The more conservative of the profession rely on elimination as the sheet anchor. Hence the multiplication of saiines and evacuants of every kind. Almost every

pharmaceutical chemist has exploited a saline in some form, effervescent sulphate of magnesium being varied with phosphate of sodium and other laxative salts. The Dusal Chemical Company has left them all in the lurch by combining eliminants-especially the lithia salts-with the other accredited salines, and the product is aptly named “SalEliminant."

It is a decided advance this "Sal-Eliminant," as every practising physician will realize at a glance.

A SHORT time ago the newspapers were filled with accounts of wholesale poisoning in England from the use of beer which it was found contained arsenic. Arsenical compounds have long been known as almost perfect antiseptics, but so far as I know there has been no deliberate addition of arsenical salts to foods for preservation purposes. The most inordinate cupidity of the food adulterator has not led him so far as that. The presence of arsenic, therefore, in this beer, after first having been ascribed to its use as an antiseptic, was finally traced to the fact that grape-sugar, so-calledthat is, a sugar made by the hydrolysis of starch with an acid-had been employed in part as a substitute for malt in the breweries. Further investigation showed, happily for us, that the grape-sugars which had produced this unfortunate effect were not, as was at first asserted, imported into England from this country. They were found to be of domestic manufacture, and it was shown that they had been made from potato starch, using oil of vitriol (sulphuric acid) as the hydrolyzing agent. The sulphur derived from iron pyrites which was employed in the manufacture of this acid was found to be arseniferous, and thus considerable quantities of arsenic found their way into the sulphuric acid and also into the grape-sugar made therefrom. I say happily for us this grape-sugar was not of American origin. In a letter lately received from Dr. Bernard Dyer, one of the most

*Read before the Society of Medical Jurisprudence, in New York. Reprinted from Med. Age.

prominent public analysts of England, he says, writing under date of December 17:

"You probably saw in some of the newspapers a record of the fact that a number of people have suffered severely, and as it is alleged, in some cases fatally, from arsenical poisoning which has been traced to the use in the brewing of certain beers of glucose manufactured with impure sulphuric acid-i.e., acid made from arsenical pyrites. I have myself found arsenic in several samples, though not in such quantities as to cause alarm. What would be interesting to know is whether such poisoning has been. going on for a long time unsuspected, or whether the occurrence is due to some particular and unusually impure parcel of glucose. It will be, from a national point of view, no doubt a satisfaction to you to know that, although so much of our glucose is imported from America, it does not appear to have been American glucose that was at fault, the offending product appearing to have been manufactured in England." American glucose is manufactured with hydrochloric acid.

This injury to the public health from the drinking of beer in the Midland districts of Manchester and Liverpool was of sufficient magnitude to justify a public inquiry. There were more than 500 persons suffering from poisonous effects in Manchester alone at the end of November. A number of deaths occurred, although most of the cases recovered. The health officers of Salford, where a great number of cases occurred, found arsenic in one sample of glucose or