limit is taken sick or dies, then the entire family is taken to the poor-house or left to starve and freeze.

II. The over breeding of the degenerate classes and the under breeding of the higher classes is rapidly causing the decay or decline of humanity.

12. The man who produces 10 or 20 children when he can not half decently provide for two, becomes a criminal and a public nuisance. This is the lowest, the vilest, the meanest, the most degenerating, unreasonable and inhuman abuse that can be made of the sexual instinct. Those half starved, filthy, untutored, half naked, sickly savages are turned loose on the streets to pilfer, lie, beg, and corrupt the morals of their playmates. Life is an interlocking, interchanging, magnetic reciprocation, therefore one never will rise mentally and physically much above the status of his country. We are what we inherited plus our environments. The composite lives of a country may be likened to connected ponds of water. We can not purify one pond without purifying all the connecting ponds. Just so one can not elevate himself individually, nor his family without elevating his countrymen. We can evolve mentally and physically at no faster rate than our countrymen can evolve. We can not improve the physical conditions of a community unless we improve the physical conditions of all its citizens.

13. When we evolve higher in the scale of life it may be that married people will have sexual relations as desired for children only, but until we do evolve to that scale of life it should be the duty of the health physician to instruct, free of charge, people how to breed within their sociologic limit, as this can be done without performing an abortion or in any way injuring the

health.

14. Every married family should have a family physician whose duty it is to space the children and to encourage the family to produce their sociologic and physiologic number of children, which at the present stage of our sociologic development should not exceed four.

15. The physician who regulates conception and encourages healthy, normal, educated people to breed at the rate of four per family, is the greatest blessing to humanity, and an absolute necessity to higher civilization, education and progress.

16. These pioneer suggestions are framed by the Depew Board of Health for the advancement of the human race. Healthy criticism is invited. The Board of Health will publicly debate these suggestions with anyone who wishes to challenge them. The aim is fewer divorces, more moral homes, strong, healthful, happy, contented, patriotic, self-supporting and moral people. Those who have or think they have anything better to offer in this line should come forward with the same. We can only arrive at the truth thru free discussions.

Of course our mummified journals, those that are afraid of a new thought and shiver at an unconventional expression, will feel horrified at these suggestions-but no truth ever gained a hearing at its first presentation. We have no hesitation in predicting that the time is not far distant when teaching the masses (the rich have the knowledge now) how to limit their offspring will not be considered a crime, but one of the highest duties of the medical profession, and the imparting of this knowledge will probably be relegated to the board of health physicians (perhaps lady physicians will be appointed specially for this purpose).

P.S. I have just received a letter from Dr. Jack in which he informs me that he has been arrested and that he will have to stand trial for sending "obscene literature" thru the mails. All I can say is that Dr. Jack's arrest is a damnable outrage. One may agree or disagree with the "suggestions," but there is certainly nothing obscene in them. The trouble is that the execution of our laws is frequently in the hands of ignoramuses, with prudish or perverted minds, who see obscenity where none is intended and where no pure mind can see any, and who would shut out from discussion every mention of the sexual question. We believe that Dr Jack has nothing to fear, for only a jury of imbeciles or perverts could see obscenity in Dr. Jack's suggestions and convict him on the charge.

The Future of Medicine is in the Hands of the Regular Medical Profession.

Just as sure as I can be of anything, so sure I am that the future, the great glorious future of medicine, is in the hands of the regular medical profession. Regular medicine is not what it was a hundred or fifty years ago. We have broken the chains of authority, we no longer follow blindly the dicta of leaders, we investigate and analyze all statements regardless from what source they may come, heterodox opinions are now given space in almost all our journals, and what is of the utmost importance, in the profession itself there are thinking and fearless critics who are not afraid to point out our weaknesses, to ridicule our foibles and to guide us to the right path. And let us remember that all the accessory aids, which are required for the progress of medicine, i. e., the microscope, the bacteriologic laboratory, the physiologic laboratory, the chemical laboratory, all the physical instruments of precision, are in the hands of the regular profession and not in the hands of the quacks. And let us remember that every discovery of any importance within the past half or three quarters of a century-anesthesia, antisepsis and asepsis, diphtheria antitoxin, the x-ray, Finsen light, radium, antimeningitis serum, the role of the mosquito in the transmission of malaria and yellow fever (a discovery which alone is worth billions of dollars to the human race), the isolation of the active principle

of the suprarenal gland, the introduction of cystoscopy, the discovery of the tubercle bacillus, the gonococcus, the spirochaeta pallida-in short every discovery of importance either in sanitation, prophylaxis, medical and surgical treatment or in diagnosis of disease, has come from the hands of the regular medical profession or those directly connected with it. And let us also remember that the requirements for entering upon a medical career are becoming higher and stricter, the preliminary education is of a higher character and the course itself is longer and better in every respect.

Nil desperandum. The future of medicine is in the hands of the regular medical profession, and we are tolerant enuf to take in everybody who is sincerely desirous of practising scientific medicine, even if he happened to graduate from a sectarian college. But we do not want ignorant and presumptuous quacks.

Book Reviews.

The book reviews appearing in our medical journals are nauseating. With very few exceptions, they consist of stereotyped phrases and fulsome praises. Our idea of a book review is something entirely different. A real book review should review the book almost page by page-it should point out the faults and weaknesses of the book, as well as the good points; it should present the reviewer's approval of or disagreement with the author's theories, method of presentation, methods of treatment, etc. And for a review to be of particular value it should be comparative, that is, it should point out wherein a certain book or text-book is superior or inferior to its predecessors, to other books in the same field, whether it has any raison d'être at all, etc. For it is evident, that a book taken per se may be satisfactory in every respect, but if it is merely a rehash of other text-books, or if the greater part of it is purloined, or if it is inferior to other books already extant, then it has no reason for existence. Do we print such reviews? No. Such reviews occupy much space, and ours is too limited. But then we have no book reviews; we call them just what they are: book notices.

The Critic occupies an important place in general literature and in the drama. Let us hope that the time is not far distant when we will have real critics in the field of medical literature.

Is the World Moving?

Attack Race Suicide-Catholic Protest Against Newspaper Article on the Subject.

Baltimore, Feb. 23.—Bishop O. B. Corrigan, assistant to Cardinal Gibbons, announced to-night that as a result of a series of articles appearing in a Baltimore newspaper, this resolution was adopted to-day at the quarterly conference of the Catholic clergy of Baltimore at St Mary's Seminary:

"We, the Catholic priests of Baltimore assembled in conference, view with alarm and indignation the attitude of certain influential publications, which circulate largely in the homes of our Catholic people, in regard to the dangerous and immoral practice of limiting families by the arbitrary restriction of childbirth.

"When the daily newspapers begin to spread such theories, we feel that the time has come for plain speech on our part, and that it is our duty to protect the interests of the people and to prevent them from being inoculated with such dangerous doctrines. We pledge ourselves to accomplish this end, not only by teaching the truth on these subjects, but also, when necessary, by denouncing such publications as dangerous and immoral.

(Signed)

"O. B. CORRIGAN,
"Bishop of Macra, Chairman."

The above is from the New York Times of February 24th. And still there are pessimists who want to persuade us that the world is standing still. Why, could one imagine a more positive, a more unmistakable sign of progress? When an influential daily newspaper has the courage to come out openly with the advocacy "of limiting families by the arbitrary restriction of childbirth,' then we surely have a right to say, that the world is moving. And let the poor bishop go on resoluting and thundering, let him even carry out his terrible threat of "denouncing such publications as dangerous and immoral"-the march of progress can only be obstructed-it cannot be stopped altogether.

And by the way-the idea just struck us-what right have the Catholic clergy to inveigh against the limitation of offspring?· They certainly do not contribute anything to the increase of the (legitimate) population. If all males turned Catholic priests, the world would soon die out. Or wouldn't it?

Not so Polite but More Truthful.

Apropos of our editorial on Book Reviews, in years gone by they did not mince words as much as they do now. They were more truthful even if they were not so polite. In looking thru an old volume of the Medical Record, the following sentence met our eye (Med. Rec., Nov. 15, 1872, p. 515):

"This is one of the worst books ever written on any subject by any man in any country since the much-abused art of writing books was discovered."

This is the opening sentence of a review of Medical Electricity, by Prof. William White, and the concluding sentences

are:

"It represents a type of civilization that is fast disappearing even in this country, where it has run riot for a century. It suggests a dark period in the history of science, and yet it will no doubt find admirers."

Scoffing at Schools.

It has become a custom with certain fakirs and semi-fakirs to scoff at schools and colleges, to apotheosize the school of experience, the school of hard knocks, and also the school of Nature, for there are books in stones, in trees and in babbling brooks, etc., etc. That our schools and colleges are not perfect, we are only too painfully aware. But was the world better off, did it have more and better educated men, when there were none or few schools and colleges? As to the school of experience, and the school of Nature, we would say this: Practically everybody has to go thru the first, a large majority of the people-the farmers and country dwellers-are in constant attendance at the latter, and still we don't see that such finished scholars are turned out by either. In short, the scoffing at schools and colleges indulged in by some of our quasi-thinkers may be characterized simply as piffle.

Let an uneducated man roam about for ten years among trees and flowers and he will not learn as much as an educated man who has taken a systematic course in botany would learn in three months. Yes, we distinctly believe in book education as a foundation for every possible line of activity.

It is with extreme regret that I learn that the genial editor of the Military Surgeon, Major James Evelyn Pilcher, has been obliged to lay down his editorial pen on account of loss of eyesight. I read his farewell editorial in the April issue, "Taps," with tears in my eyes.

Because the medical profession is rotten in spots is no valid reason for jumping into quackery, which is rotten all the way thru. Do you think it is?

When you hit a quack, when you expose a charlatan, when you prove that a man who wishes to pose as a medical "reformer" is nothing but a harpy living for pelf, pelf, pelf, it is but natural that these gentry should try to hit back. And knowing that you are telling the truth, unable to show a weak point. in your argument, they necessarily must have recourse to personal abuse. But who cares a rap about what a dishonest quack, a brazen fraud may say?

On the Writing of Testimonials.

There is no zealot like a new zealot, and the overtoppling zeal of some of our recent converts to "ethical" prescribing is really amusing. A Dr. Reik, of Baltimore, recently read a paper entitled: "What Should Be Our Attitude Towards Proprietary Medicines?" He naturally repeats the old platitudes about limit