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marital) obligations rest lightly. He does attain his objects, but to the glory of God and of God's world, in which, after all, in Browning's phrase, "all's well," he never succeeds, for success in his case is a contradiction in the terms in which we express true conceptions of moral standards.

In a higher state of civilization, in which we may fancifully imagine the imposition of penalties after conviction for such offences as we have just sketched, we think that a fit punishment for him would be breaking stones for life with a rubber hammer.

II

There is another type of practitioner whom one occasionally meets who always excites a kind of sad interest. We are thinking of the man of whom it used to be said fifteen years ago that he promised exceptionally well, but who to-day is practising or teaching medicine in a dazed, dogged sort of way, his orientation somewhat disordered, and feeling that, somehow, he is not fulfilling his destiny.

As a matter of fact he is fulfilling his destiny and, if he only knew it, has been reasonably successful for a man of his type.

If you know a good deal about this type you can analyze it very readily. Dr. X as a young university man, bright, but possessed of no exceptional talent, became associated with some scientific worker of note, doing the drudgery end of research work, or else he became the assistant of some distinguished hospital physician or surgeon or college professor (under dog).

There you have the clue to the whole matter.

Because of his affiliations X became obsessed of the notion that he was destined to have a "career" in the profession. And with his third-rate mind he did his best to consummate his ambition. And his Chiefs and his friends flattered him, of course.

Had our friend been less naïve, less honest, had he had a bit of the adventurer and a touch of the charlatan in him he might have had a career," tho not of a sort that you or I, reader, would envy, and not of a sort that would see at its termination any less misery and suffering in the world.

Why, oh why, have the diligent years spent in London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna yielded only a harvest of Dead Sea fruit? That is the question that now preoccupies X himself constantly. You can read it in his face, in his gait, in his absent-minded manner.

He would not confess disillusion, probably, tho his pride. and his manhood are a bit damaged.

It is only a pity in so far as such a type fails to discern that he could have done no better with the talents constituting his general equipment. Pride, however, is a dominating trait

in most of us and few men are ever wholly frank with themselves.

III.

The old physician made a pathetic figure. After a long, active and useful life he was spending its evening in a brave effort to still be active, still useful. Like most of the guild of Esculapius, he had acquired no competence, having spent all his professional income in living as a man should. The social world no longer held a place for him. His hand was no longer steady, his form was bent, his step uncertain. He had buried his faithful wife and the children's places in life were no longer close to his own. Love bound their hearts; fate held them apart most of the time. Their relations served but little material purpose. The sick he counselled wisely and successfully.

So he lived until a beneficent apoplexy carried him off. His small remaining means permitted a decent funeral and there were not a few friends who carried him in grateful and affectionate remembrance. Like most doctors he had lived well and died poor.

Judged by the world's standards, this man's life was a failure, its ending grim tragedy. In very truth, it was a benediction and a success.

IV.

John Rhodes had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. Everything that mere money could buy in the way of advantages was his from the cradle. To his credit it must be said that for one of his class he applied himself to the business of life with some assiduity. Wealth and special privilege were his in large measure.

Leaving college, he took up the study of medicine, was graduated at one of the great metropolitan schools and then became a member of the resident staff of one of the great city hospitals. After the hospital training came three years of study abroad at Vienna, Paris and Berlin. At the last centre of learning he specialized in bacteriology, intending to make. this his life work.

So far, so good.

Returning to his home city he began a career of acquisition. His social influence was great. He acquired a post at this hospital and a post at that. He became a professor in one of the physician factories. He became a continuous performer in the medical society vaudeville (serio-comic rôle). He acquired a fellowship in the Hopkinson Institute for Medical Research. His mastery of technical cant was a marvellous thing; his papers and statistical studies were miracles of involved, ultrascientific flubdub, seemingly of large value.

The theologic discussions of the Middle Ages, "touchin' on an' appertainin' to" such questions as the number of angels that could stand on the point of a needle at one and the same time, were but kindergarten exercises in scholastic buncombe compared with the creations of Rhodes.

He typified that absurd figure, the dilettante in medicine, raised to the nth power. Heaven forfend us from the breed! When he had finished his inane career, handicapped always by the curses of inherited wealth and social influence out of all proportion to his actual talents and deserts, envied by foolish confrères but pitied by the gods, he had failed to attain the goal so admirably set by Benjamin Rush, when he said: "That physician has lived to little purpose who does not leave his profession in a more improved state than that in which he found it."

Judged by the world's standards, this man's life was a success. In very truth, it was a rank failure; its course and its ending a comedy, if not a farce.

[Comment.-Will some reader say that the career of Dr. Rhodes was a useful one, that he was an educator, etc., and that if he did not fulfil Rush's requirements, neither did the old general practitioner whom we have sketched?]

Whatever the objections to socialism, one thing is certain-people would be less nervous under it. Why? Because it would abolish to a very great extent the feeling of danger in the individual and therefore destroy fear, the mainspring of neurasthenia. By practically guaranteeing the individual the opportunity of earning a living it would free him from a very great part of the wear and tear which now break down so many of our fellows.

This would be an advantage weighing heavily, in our humble opinion, against some of the alleged disadvantages of the socialistic state.

It is a fact that tax upon physicians. and North Carolina. income.

some of the states still impose a special There is a fixed tax in Virginia, Georgia, In Louisiana the tax increases with the

Our esteemed contemporary, The Medical Era, waxes very wroth in discussing this outrageous condition of affairs. It suggests that we might as well, if we are to submit to such things, wear iron collars around our necks and go by a number.

But isn't the fact that the physicians of the states mentioned submit to such a tax an excellent illustration of professional supineness under galling conditions? And we don't believe that our southern brethren are less manly than are we. We needn't commiserate with them a bit, for right here in New York State equally outrageous conditions obtain to which

we have become almost as immured as are the Russian peasantry immured to the abuses of the Russian Bureaucracy. Don't let's fool ourselves.

Professor Hofmeier, who represented Germany at the centennial of the first ovariotomy, recently celebrated by the American Gynecologic Society, has, since his return home, written an account of his trip thru the United States last spring. Among many other things, he frankly comments upon this society's limitation of membership to 100, which he thinks must shut out many young men. The loss is chiefly the society's, he thinks, because it loses the inspiration from young enthusiasm which in Germany is found so useful. He regards the situation as a striking example of the democratic conception of freedom and equality in America. "With all its external form it does not exclude a far-reaching social exclusiveness."

Good for Professor Hofmeier!

Even of Air and Light Not Too Much.

Great Scott! here's Woodruff in American Medicine for August warning against the use of tents in the hot, light months in the treatment of tuberculosis. He declares that the mortality from this cause is unduly large and that it is avoidable if we will only abjure tents and keep the patients cool and shaded. How honest presentation of all the facts must make some of the over-enthusiastic crusaders foam at the mouth. But, come to think of it, you can't be a crusader unless you are over-enthusiastic. It's really too bad that people who, like Woodruff, insist upon examining all sides of a problem and not suppressing the data if it runs counter to the accepted dogmas of the "authorities" can't be muzzled in some way.

Some Gratuitous Advice.

Do not believe all that the medical tin gods say. Investigate for yourself.

Do not fear to disagree with authorities.

Do not create idols to yourself-out of mud.

Do not take a shapeless clump of clay for a Venus de Milo, nor mistake a cheap chromo for a Sistine Madonna.

Do not invest a commonplace humdrum piece of flesh with a halo of sanctity and poesy.

Do not expect to make a chunk of ice glow with the warmth of feeling and emotion. It is not in the nature of ice.

And also remember one thing: No hero is a hero to his valet, but not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.

Truths are truths to those only who can understand them. Newton's Principia are but waste paper to a Hottentot.

Contributed to THE CRITIC AND GUIDE.

The Prevention of Conception

By Luther L. Ames, M.D., Rich Hill, Mo.

The Roosevelt theory of larger families in this day and age of the world is a piece of nonsense, and shows that altho Mr. Roosevelt may be a great statesman, he has made little study of the physiologic and economic conditions of the people, or that he perhaps considers quantity more important than material. If he had said: those who are in condition, physically, mentally, morally and financially should raise. large families, there could be no objection to the statement.

There are but few men and women to-day, who are in a fit condition to raise large families.

Let us go among the extremely wealthy classes; the votaries of fashion; those who dawdle away their time in dancing, card playing, gambling, expensive dinners, those who continually turn night into day, and day into night; those who habitually use wine and other liquors to keep themselves bolstered up to this continual round of riotous living. Do we find in this class, as a rule, a high degree of intellect, a perfect nervous system, a pure circulation and a strong physical condition? Do we find any of the requisites necessary to the reproduction of a stronger and better race? On the contrary, is it not a fact that these classes degenerate from generation to generation? Does not the parent, from generation to generation, hand down a weaker offspring, till at last nature cries enough, and we get sterility, or death in infancy, thus ending a degenerate race?

Among the middle classes we may find, perhaps, more of the requisites necessary to the bringing forth of a perfect life. Yet here, in the whirl and rush of twentieth century conditions, we find the masses too busily engaged in the scramble for money, to think of health; and a large number of them violate every physiologic law, rendering themselves unfit for the act of procreation.

How often does the physician hear the people saying: "My children are not as strong as I was when of their age. I don't see why it is, but they can't stand what I could." The reason is plain; they have rendered themselves unfit to be fathers or mothers, by intemperance in appetite, venereal excess, and overwork.

Let us now look at the conditions among the lower classes; those who are housed in rookeries in the cities, those who herd together by the score in squallor and filth, those whose lives. are a daily battle for mere existence, those who know not one day where the bread for the next is coming from, half starved, half clad, uneducated, perhaps criminal. It is here we find a class most ready to obey the command: "Be ye fruitful and multiply." It is here we find, as a rule, the largest families.

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