cidedly that the old prescribers were not altogether fools and that there is a very positive justification for our so-called polypharmacy.

In treating tripanosomatous diseases the action of tripanocidal agents can be easily followed and controlled, and Lavaran and Franke showed that certain forms of diseases which are not cured by either trypan-red or atoxyl alone, yield readily to a combination of both.

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has also shown that mercuric chloride has a very decided power of increasing the tripanocidal action of atoxyl. What is true of mercuric chloride is also true of antimony.

These facts, which are not by any means isolated, have induced Ehrlich to warmly recommend the combination treatment of diseases in men. He says: "The complete sterilization of the body, i. e., the total destruction of every parasite, is often only to be accomplished by the administration of doses which come very close to the lethal dose. Such a procedure directly endangering life may be permissible in the animal experiments, but never in man. One is, however, justified in hoping that it might be possible to cure the disease without endangering life by the simultaneous administration. of three, four or five substances chosen in such a manner that their actions are concentrated on the parasites, which in the organism of the vertebrate host are distributed over several different organs."

These remarks, coming as they do from a scientist of the first rank and not from a poor country empiric, should carry great weight. They are applicable not only to bacterial diseases, but to all other diseases as well.

The Woman at Forty and After.

There was a time when a woman, married or single-but particularly single-on reaching the age of thirty would begin to consider herself old and feel as if she owed somebody an apology for her existence. That time is luckily passed. Now nobody would be so impudent or so fatuous as to apply to a girl of thirty the offensive appelation of "old-maid," while a married woman of thirty is a very young woman, and is for many reasons much more attractive, much more sought after than her sister younger in years.

But now forty is considered the fatal year. As soon as a woman has crossed that Rubicon, she becomes bitterly conscious of her age. She feels herself out of the swim, she thinks she can no longer dress like a young woman, she believes she can no longer inspire in the masculine sex those feelings which a pretty, normal woman is supposed to inspire; and as to flirting, the most harmless sort of flirting-why she thinks it would be an imposition on her part, so to say an at

tempt to obtain money on false pretences. In short, she thinks herself old.

Well, if a woman at forty thinks herself old-it is her own fault. We repeat it with emphasis-it is her own fault. Not Nature's fault. And not being a natural, inevitable event, it can entirely or to a very great extent be prevented.

There is no reason why a woman at forty should not look and feel like a woman at thirty, or even younger. Thirty or thirty-five is not the acme of a person's age and there is no natural decline after those years. On the contrary, there is a gradual rise in physical as well as in mental power, and just as a man reaches his prime at forty-five, so a woman, who knows how to take care of herself, should keep on increasing in attractiveness until that age. That this is not only a theoretical but a practical possibility, is known to everybody who is acquainted with some of our actresses and society women. It is well known that many of our actresses do not seem to age at all, and some look more attractive now than they did ten or fifteen years ago. And this not only on, but off the stage. But it is not necessary to go to the stage for examples. We know in private life several women between the ages of forty and forty-five who have preserved themselves beautifully (and whose skin has never known the touch of rouge or swan-down either). I know one little woman near forty who seems to have discovered the fountain of perpetual youth. Her skin may not have the same peachy creaminess that it had twenty years ago, but in her tout ensemble she is just as beautiful, just as attractive, just as appetizing-if you will pardon this unconventional term-as she was at the age of twenty or thirty. And she holds her husband-lover just as firmly as she did the first year he married her-or more so.

All a woman has to do is to want to feel young and to observe a few hygienic rules and she can be at forty as attractive as a young girl. And more than that. There is no intrinsic reason why a woman at fifty should not have all her physical, yes, all her sexual attractiveness and charms unimpaired. It is an art, and it requires some effort and perseverance, but an increasing number of members of the lovely sex are learning the art.

Venereal Infection in Children.

That venereal infection in children is not merely a spectre, but a horrible reality, will be seen from a paper by Dr. F. Pollack, published in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin (No. xx, p. 142). According to the author, there are about 1000 cases of acquired venereal infection among children in Baltimore every year. If a city of the size of Baltimore has 1000 cases yearly, it is a perfectly safe and rather conservative estimate to say that there are one hundred thousand cases in

the United States every year. And this is a terrible, terrible number. The cause of a large number of outrages on children is due to the wretched superstition still prevailing among the low and uneducated classes that a person suffering with either gonorrhea or syphilis may get cured by having intercourse with and transmitting his infection to an untouched virgin. Thousands of cases of gonorrhea and syphilis in young girls are caused by this savage belief. Dr. Pollack has personally seen 189 such cases in the last six years.

A terrible condition of affairs indeed, and still our puritans would like to suppress prostitution entirely. They do not want to see what every sane person sees, that rape in various forms would increase a hundredfold.

Another Cancer Cure Company Declared Fraudulent.

Another cruel swindle has recently been put out of business. A fraud order has been issued against the "Dr." Curry Cancer Cure Company of Lebanon, Ohio, which has been advertising to cure the most desperate cases of cancer within a few days. The "cure" on analysis has been found to be as worthless as all the rest of the advertised cures. The Government is doing good work in driving out the frauds, but it is exasperatingly slow. It seems that if given the power we could rid the country of all the medical frauds and swindles in very short order.

The Effect of Strictures on the Sexual Function.

It is difficult to explain the reason why a stricture in the anterior urethra should have a deleterious effect on the sexual function, but that such a causal relationship exists, there is not the slightest doubt. The effect on the sexual function may vary from a more or less premature ejaculation to complete impotence. And on cutting the stricture the sexual disability often disappears at once. Even dilatation has a beneficial effect. We have a number of cases of strictures of large caliber, where a cutting operation is not indicated, but where dilatation, each time it is performed, has a good effect not only on the urinary, but on the sexual function as well. And we might add that many people know the beneficial effect of passing a steel sound on the sexual function, and are themselves in the habit of passing one, every once in a while. If it is done aseptically there is no danger.

What Should the Poor Editor Do?

The Editor confesses that when that part of the month comes around which is set apart for the preparation of the matter for the Therapeutic Guide or Therapeutic Medicine,

he is often in a state almost bordering on despair. First, there is a great dearth of therapeutic material of any kind. The editor will sometimes spend several hours, going thru forty or fifty journals, and not a therapeutic article, or a therapeutic hint will he find. And when such articles are found, their therapeutics is so old, ancient and well-known, that the editor, who has some respect for his readers' intelligence and knowledge, feels ashamed to abstract them. It seems to him nothing short of imposition. "Why should I reprint or abstract an article on the treatment of such and such a disease when a much more thoro, more systematic and much better written exposition of it can be found in any good text-book?" Here for instance after going thru two dozen journals the editor has found articles on the treatment of eclampsia, of typhoid fever, acute articular rheumatism, and epilepsy. Not a single new suggestion, not a single thought that is not to be found. in every text-book, that has not been repeated by thousands and thousands of others. Eclampsia-bromides and chloral by the rectum and emptying the uterus; typhoid fever-good nursing, calomel and hydrochloric acid; acute articular rheumatism-sodium salicylate with alkalies, rest in bed; epilepsy-bromides and again bromides, and as a tonic iron, quinine and strychnine.

Now, in all sincerity I ask, has an editor the moral right to present such stuff to his readers, either in “original” articles or in the form of abstracts?

But what is one to do? If one were to leave out all the old, chewed-over, chestnutty, useless or worthless stuff from the medical journals, they would become so painfully thin as to be "indecent." Apparently some journals, like some women, would be utterly unpresentable without some padding.

Physique and Brain Power.

"The average height of our student class has increased from 5 feet 7 inches to 5 feet 8 inches, and the average weight by from six to eight pounds, while the total strength has increased some 30 per cent. With this great improvement in physique, which means not only larger and stronger muscles, but better hearts, lungs, stomachs, and brains, I believe there has been a corresponding improvement in mental and moral tone as indicated in the general reduction in the amount of vice, gambling, and intemperance now practiced by American students."

Thus writes Prof. Sargent of Harvard University in the October issue of Putnam's Magazine. It reads very well, but somehow or other we find it difficult to subscribe to the idea that a good physique necessarily means a good brain. It should be so, theoretically, but practically we meet with so many exceptions that the rule becomes worthless. In fact the

exceptions are so numerous, that one feels almost induced to formulate another rule: the stronger the physique, the poorer the brain. On our recent trip we met on both ocean voyages and in Europe very many people who were splendid examples of physical manhood, of animalism, but whose brains were truly infantile. It seemed that if an original idea ever entered their mind, the shock would kill them.

As to the reduction in the amount of vice and intemperance, we will reserve to ourselves the privilege of remaining skeptical on that point-until we get real proofs, and not a

mere statement.

A Thumb-Nail Sketch of My European Trip.

CHAPTER IV.

From Budapest to Hoboken.

Physically exhausted but mentally buoyant we left Budapest -not without some regrets-on September 4th, but instead of going directly to Berlin,we went via Vienna and Carlsbad. Vienna looks the same as ever and produced on us the same impression as ever-that of a once beautiful, but now decadent and faded coquette. She, as all Austria, needs new blood. William II. would make things hum, but Franz Joseph, why he is an estimable (more or less) old fogy, but he is too old to grasp the needs of either a municipality or an empire. And unfortunately his successor, Archduke Ferdinand, inspires no hopes of a better future. He is disliked and despised by most of his future subjects, and we fear that as soon as he ascends the throne, "the troubles will commence." In his younger days Ferdinand was one of the most dissolute debauchees that the royal house of the Hapsburgs has ever harbored-and it has harbored many of them; he was rapidly going into a physical and mental decline. (a brother of his died of syphilis), when he met a woman. A governess. She changed the entire current of his life. He gave up his dissipations and married her (or he married her and gave up his dissipations; the exact sequence of events does not matter); he improved physically and while from the standpoint of conventional morality his life is now fairly decent, he has taken violently to religion, to expiate his early sins. And when a former debauchee becomes saved and takes to religion-God save us. He is, dear Ferdinand is, of a very low mental caliber. He has no idea of the national problems, of which AustriaHungary has more than any other country, and he is still less familiar with international questions. When he ascends the throne, he will endeavor to rule, with the aid of his clerical advisers, in medieval fashion, and then as we said, the troubles will begin. We will wager that he will not reign as long as Franz Joseph has. But we have troubles of our own and shall therefore proceed.

We left Vienna at 9.36 p. m. We found the beds made and in a few minutes we were in the strong embrace of the most merciful, most beneficent and most charitable

* Chapters I, II and III appeared in the September and October issues.