there not a tendency to attempt things in the treatment of these unfortunates which we would not essay in the case of poorer men? Are not hopelessly sick millionaires constantly subjected to strenuous efforts on the part of their attendants to attain cures which cold analysis would unhesitatingly pronounce vain and visionary? Does not the 'longshoreman in the public ward stand a much better chance of recovery from his pneumonia than the plutocrat in his vulgar palace, due allowance being made for differences in physique? Ultrascientific overtreatment about sums up the matter. Our human nature betrays us, too, in this situation. Proposed Contests for an International Medical Congress. Event I. For best technic for brain decapsulation. Prize.-A Cook's ticket for the North Pole-one way. Event 2. For best method of preventing conception (must be applicable to rabbits). Prize.-Life subscriptions to the Ladies' Home Journal and Outlook; also Theodore Roosevelt's work, "American Ideals." Event 3. Debate; theme: benzoate of soda. Representatives of interested corporations barred. Prize.-Barrel of trading stamps redeemable for heavier than platinum aeroplane. Event 4. For most remarkable case. Maternal impression dope not admissable. Prize.-Handsomely bound volume of Congressional Record and new tariff schedules. Event 5. For professional Pickwicks. Prize to most unctuous, bombastic, platitudinous and impressive-black cloak, with cape attachment; old age pension, to take effect immediately, thrown in. Event 6. For new milk formulas. Prize.-De luxe edition of Alice in Wonderland. Event 8. For hysterectomy against time. (Record time five minutes.) Prize.-Certificate entitling winner to free cremation. Event 8. Talking Marathon.-All long-winded speakers of the societies eligible. Prize.-Life fellowship in the Rockebilt Cloisters and Institute for Medical Meditation. Event 9. For most alarming statistics anent the venereal peril (striking phrase that-venereal peril). Notorious agitators barred. Prize.-Valuable work by Helbert Ubbard, "Little Journeys to the Homes of False Alarmists." The Ultra Smart Set. There is a class of people in New York City of special interest to the social philosopher and to the neurologist and alienist. We are alluding to the ultra-smart set, so-called. The women of this class are more especially interesting. They appear to be, in the main, sheltered defectives. Their facial "expression" is usually inane, vapid and suggestive of dementia præcox. Excessive wealth surely carries its own terrible compensations. Its possessors need not be envied. These women, and in particular the younger ones, are of poor physique and generally poorly nourished. Thus they betray a general deterioration, or decadence. The older ones are better nourished but nevertheless poorly conditioned. The appearance of these degenerates is wholly consonant with the popular conceptions regarding their methods of killing time. It fully bears out the conceptions, under the scrutiny of the trained medical observer. Listen to them converse and the diagnosis is complete. They are to be seen chiefly at certain country-clubs, fashionable racetracks, hunt-clubs and charity bazars. They not only lack talent of every sort but the most elcmentary faculties only are theirs. Some of them make lamentable attempts at the terpsichorean or dramatic arts among their kind, by whom they are, of course, applauded. One of them occasionally writes a book calculated to make the judicious grieve and becomes known among his set as a devil of a littérateur. Charity is a common field for their exploitation. Were it not for their wealth and the social sycophancy it engenders they would speedily come to social and psychopathic grief, for as a class they have not brains enuf to entertain, edify or propitiate their fellow men on an equal plane. Many of them become neurasthenic, or rather succumb to their congenital neurasthenia and finally are unable to live. without trained nurses and a certain sort of fashionable physician who is a kind of professional Elijah, eating largely of these sacred ravens' manna. Dementia often closes the chapter. No well-informed medical New Yorker will dispute the essential truth of the foregoing paragraphs. A Comic History of Medicine. Somebody ought to write a comic History of Medicine, or even a comic Practice. Heaven knows there have been ludicrous epochs and doctrines and methods enough, yet they have always been treated seriously by the writers. There is much better reason for treating them without seriousness. We daresay that Knickerbocker's chronicles of old New York have done more to fix the early Dutch history in our minds than all the dry tomes with which the library shelves groan unrelieved. The advantage of writing comic medical history would be that you wouldn't have to exaggerate anything! The good taste of such a work would of course be questioned by the Pharisees (whom we have always with us, God "bless" them) and various dignified gentlemen who have never read medical history in any shape or form and who would certainly not be harmed by a little historical knowledge, even were it acquired thru such an undignified medium as a comic history of medicine. Such a work would divest medical history of its dry-as-dust aspects and give it a human zest. Certainly it would differ radically from the eminently respectable library tomes dealing laboriously with the vital epochs in medical history, which tomes but few read. As regards a comic Practice, it may be objected that there is really no need of such a work-that the sections on treatment in some of our textbooks fully supply the need. Periods in Medicine. Just as truly as there have been Triassic and Jurassic periods in geologic history, have there been Jackassic periods in medical history. One of them was in 1750, when owing in large part to the efforts of Dr. J. P. Frank and other medical leaders to increase the population in Bavaria, which had been decimated by the Thirty Years' War, bigamy was legalized in Nuremberg. Frank was the progenitor of all the race-suicide alarmists of the present day, whose remedies, tho less immoral, are equally asinine. Another Jackassic period was when the profession used mummies, as vouched for by Sir Thomas Browne, in epilepsy, gout and other conditions. Says Browne: "But the common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great consumption thereof, and princes and great men contended for this strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies from dead carcases and giving them the names of kings, while specifics were compounded from crosses and bibbet-leavings. There wanted not a set of Arabians who counterfeited mummies so accurately that it needed great skill to distinguish the false from the true." The proprietary firms need not yet despair and the museums may yet turn Cheops, Psammitticus, Chamnes and Amosis to excellent commercial and therapeutic account, tho for that matter we may rest assured that any demand, however great, could be supplied by our modern Arabians right here in New York. By the way, have the advocates of placental extracts in puerperal disorders secured any followers? Medicine is one-tenth Jackassic to-day. It is inevitable that it should be always attended by a degree of vacuity and inanity. Let us give thanks to Asklepios that the Jackassic element is no greater. Yet we confess that we have a sneaking regard for a character who has always been classed as a medical mountebank. We mean Paracelsus. The great quack's vigorous attacks in 1526 on the Galenic and Arabic dogmas contributed somewhat to their overthrow and to the renaissance and reformation of medicine. We could stand for an occasional quack, were he a Paracelsus. A Prayer to the Patent Medicine Goddess. "These be thy gods, O Israel." -Exodus 32, 4. Modern heathendom has a good many private gods and goddesses. Why not a New Mythology? A handbook, or manual, containing appropriate invocations addressed to the tutelary divinities who preside over the destinies of our modern heathen and are worshipped by the latter, would then be needed. Such a manual might be called a book of (un) common prayer. Below we print our conception of a prayer suitable for use on the part of the patent medicine makers. THE MANUFACTURERS OF PATENT MEDICINES TO NERVURA. (Compassionately dedicated to that mighty and ever increasing host, the Suckers and the Stung.) Sublime Nervura, hearken to our appeal. The people and their doctors show signs of awakening intelligence and our trade is threatened. We invoke thy power to blast them in their forwardness. Loosen not, we beseech thee, the shackles in which we have so long held them bound. Allow not the hypochondriac to escape from our hands. Take not from us such subtle and potent poisons as cocaine and morphine. Truly, without these demoralizing agents were the patent medicine trade bootless. We thank thee especially for the gift of the poison alcohol, which effects a transitory sense of well-being and wins us half our testimonials at the hands of the near-clergy. Permit not the press of the country to reclaim to truth, to decency, to sanity and to wholesomeness their advertising columns. Perpetuate among our people, O deity, a low moral sense, weak character and an undue susceptibility to suggestion. So shall we, thy devoted suppliants, thrive. Cure for Insomnia. A sufferer from insomnia writes in a recent issue of the Argonaut that a friend who had heard that he sometimes suffered from sleeplessness told him of a sure cure. "Eat a pint of peanuts and drink two or three glasses of milk before going to bed," said he, "and I'll warrant you'll be asleep within half an hour." He did as he suggested, and now, for the benefit of others who may be afflicted with insomnia, he feels it his duty to report what happened, so far as he is able to recall the details: "First, let me say my friend was right, I did go to sleep very soon after my retirement. Then a friend with his head under his arm came along and asked me if I wanted to buy his feet. I was negotiating with him, when the dragon on which I was riding slipped out of his skin and left me floating in the air. While I was considering how I should get down, a bull with two heads peered over the edge of the wall and said he would haul me up if I would first climb up and rig a windlass for him. So as I was sliding down the mountainside the brakeman came in, and I asked him when the train would reach my station. "We passed your station 400 years ago," he said, calmly folding the train up and slipping it into his vest pocket. At this juncture the clown bounded into the ring and pulled the centrepole out of the ground, lifting the tent and all the people in it up, up, while I stood on the earth below watching myself go out of sight among the clouds above." He then awoke and found he had been asleep almost ten minutes. Clinical Medicine in Rome 2000 Years Ago. Languid I lay, and thou camest, O Symmachus, quickly to see me. Martial, Epigrams. "A faculty without its troubles is always in a bad waythe waters should be stirred. Some ferment should be brewing; the young men should always be asking for improvements, to which the old men will object. It is a sign of health,. -much good will come of them." There is no question about Osler's wisdom, sanity, great ness. Book salesman, to customer: "The Last Days of Pompeii' is an interesting book." "Who was he? What did he die of?" |