such masses of our fellow citizens into Christian science. The Christian scientist is rather smart. He says: "The regular physician says he can do nothing for you. We can." The quack says: "The regular doctor says he has nothing in his posesssion which can help you. We have." Who is to blame if the patient, knowing that he needs relief, believes both? He simply takes us at our word. Since we can't relieve him, he will try somebody who can; and since in very many instances he does get relief from the other people, there is little wonder that year by year the public is slipping farther and farther away from us. The whole matter could be easily settled. These nihilistic scientists ought to give up the idea that they are doctors. Let them enjoy their science in all its uselessness, devoting themselves to the study of "pure science" of the loftiest character, in which there is not the slightest suspicion of utility attaching to their labors. But for Heaven's sake, let them leave the treatment of the sick to doctors who have not such lofty aims and whose only desire is that they may relieve human suffering and postpone human death. This would solve the whole matter. You may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.-Bacon. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE FOR US? The Southern Clinic contains a fine address by Dr. Dorrell, of Missouri. We can only quote here the closing words: "We revert to our original query: What has the present management of the A. M. A. done for the American medical profession individually? That something could be done for us individually by organization is evident. The fact that we won the fight for a five-dollar fee for life insurance examinations shows this. This fight was won by the combination of physicians, but this combination was not made by the A. M. A. Our query remains yet unanswered." If we mistake not, there are a good many others besides Dr. Dorrell who would like to aim at the A. M. A. management this same WHY? which will grow bigger and bigger, until it is compelled to answer. The American medical profession does not organize for the purpose of affording tenthousand-dollar jobs to people who could not earn half of that at their legitimate business, or to enable these people to persecute men in the profession to whom they have taken a dislike. Every physician has a right to ask, What has this organization. done for him personally? and to insist upon an answer. THE NATIVE BORN The medical profession today is overcrowded with throngs of ambitious men, foreign by birth or by parentage. One of these foreign elements, which has multiplied enormously in the last few years, seems to have brought with it a wave of commercialism, which has permeated the entire profession. Even worse than this is the influence over the ideals of the profession exerted by the hordes of Europeans, and the native-born Americans who, whatever else they may have brought back from the schools of Europe, return with a welldeveloped contempt for their native land. Among these people we hear such expressions as this, that "nobody's opinion is to be seriously considered unless he is a member of certain classes, in certain European schools." The continental view of medical science is that as a true science it must dismiss absolutely all idea of utility; in other words, that no physician can be truly scientific if he considers anything more than the diagnosis, the pathology of his case. But if he should so much as consider the question of curing or relieving his patients, he is thereby debarred from serious consideration. It would perhaps have been better had no American student resorted to the schools of Europe, for all that they could possibly have brought back with them could not equal in practical benefit what they have lost. Unfortunately the sentiment of these people pervades the profession today. It is time that a good, healthy reaction toward oldfashioned native Americanism set in, that we should refuse to be dictated to by Europe, and should resume the operation of our own common-sense. Why cannot the native American feel in himself the consciousness of worth? Why cannot he value his own ideals? Why must he necessarily step down, as inferior to the exotic imported from Europe? Whatever may have been the shortcomings of the American doctor, he was a good doctor, who did his patients good and they loved him. He was a useful man. His whole thought was centered on that one question of being useful and of relieving suffering and postponing death. Devoting all his energy to this part of the science of medicine, he excelled in it. He may not have been able to describe the pathology of some of the diseases which he treated, but in the way of relieving a man, he could do more in a day than his European colleagues could in a month. All these advantages have been thrown away. THE SITUATION OF THE GENERAL PRACTICIAN Dr. Whalen read a paper the other night that set us all thinking. He showed that the medical charities of Chicago took out of the pockets of the medical profession, from people able to pay, a sum that reached the astounding total of over $7,000,000, or $2500 a year for each registered physician in the city. Moreover, this can not be placed to our credit as our contribution to "sweet charity," for it is in fact a fund placed at the disposal of the medical staffs of the 'institutions," to enable them better to grab at the sorry remains of our professional clientage. This enormous practice is absorbed by the dispensaries, hospitals, college clinics, municipal bureaus and visiting nurses (the latter in one month reported over 700 treatments of "minor cases"). This is but a part of the inroads made on the practician. Add the slices from off him cut by The surgeon, The laryngologist, The masseur, and all the numberless exponents of The remainder we share with Chicago is not different from the other great cities in these respects. In all the same evils exist, and competition in and out of our own ranks has rendered the medical profession an occupation incapable of yielding support to its practicians. Where is the remedy? Hallberg, whose rhinoceros persistence has pushed him to the front, thinks he can turn us back to the old, tried-for-centuries-and-found-utterly-unworthy galenics. He thinks the medical profession can be folded into a corral and made to hedge themselves in and quit dispensing; prescribing alone and only the U. S. P., N. F. and Council-endorsed patent medicines. In other words, our difficulties are to be met by dropping our own judgment and adopting that of a lot of druggists, by leaving off the use of the remedies we know and have used with success and going back to the crude, nauseous, ineffective preparations whose uncouth form and uncertain powers have well earned the contempt of physicians and bred therapeutic nihilism. Nulla vestigia retrorsum. Backward advances are an impossibliity. The movement is foredoomed to failure. The fires of martyrdom failed to exterminate Christianity and to bring the world back to the worship of the gods of Olympus. Once the public faith in them had died, it could not be revivified. If we have not something more promising we may as well give up the fight and retire to agriculture. We have something better. We have the remedy in our own hands; one we know how to use, one that must win success. Through all this long contest we have played a singularly unwise part. With every new fad arising we have dropped our old weapons, deserted our strong fortress, and swarmed over the walls to fall at the feet of our assailant and welcome him as the master. The quack has advocated hydropathy, electricity and innumerable other nondrug measures, and claimed for them an infinite superiority over drugs-and we have meekly responded, "Yes, you're right”—and have adopted his suggestions. With our endorsement he has reaped his harvest; and by the time we have mastered his remedy and are ready to assign it its proper place, he is presenting a new one, which in turn we accept. Meanwhile we are led far away from our stronghold, where we are impregnable, the scientific application of drugs in the sick-room. Here is where our skill in reading symptoms, ascribing them to their true cause and applying the remedy renders us secure. Not one of our rivals, in or outside the profession, can meet us here. Here we are judged by the public, and here we demonstrate our own worth, and show that our long and expensive medical course, our years of experience, give us a vantage that elevates us far above the heads of the trained amateur. What an obvious thing it is, after all. We study our patient as we alone know how to study; we recognize the departure from health as we alone are qualified to do; and we apply the remedies we alone know. There is absolutely no competition possible; here we are without a rival. Now also we are furnished with the means of meeting the needs revealed by our clinical examinations, a line of uniformly acting remedies which we can direct unerringly against the point of attack. The superstitions and the uncertainties, the approximations and the mysteries of the old medieval therapy that have so long befogged our sight and paralyzed our nerves are gone. We were striking in a mist before, and always dreaded that our blows might miss the disease and strike down the patient. All that is a thing of the past. We know; and the calm confidence of knowledge sits on our brow, and quiets and reanimates the patient. Why won't you see this! Why will you persist in seeing in the alkaloids only a somewhat better form of old medicines, instead of realizing the radical change they have effected in our methods, the revolution they have worked in clinical therapeutics? But no! You will continue to run after every fad that is devised, every ignis fatuus arising from the swamps of quackery, instead of appreciating that for nine-tenths of your work drugs are your best resources, and that now you have at command drugs that are sure to do just what you expect them to do; and that this one fact clothes your hand with power. The knowledge of fact, and the power to do, are yours. Never delay To do the duty which the hour brings, Whether it be in great or smaller things; For who doth know What he shall do the coming day?-M. L. B. THE FRA'S MISTAKE In The Fra Hubbard quotes approvingly Charles McCormick's criticism of the A. M. A., as follows: "There are many trusts nowadays, but the medical trust is the most dangerous, because it is the most far-reaching and most tyrannical of any trust on earth. It not only reaches deep down into the pockets of the masses, be they rich or poor, but it trifles with human health and happiness, and even human life and personal liberty. This professional trust is determined to crush out all competition; that is, all other practicians except their own. This trust is determined to make it unlawful to be born, or to be sick, or to die, with out tipping the hat and opening the purse to one of their kind. We can not even bury our friends without consent of a medical officer, and he ignores certificates from all but his own class. This trust strikes directly at the liberties of the people; for it says in unmistakable language, the people must hire them at their prices whether they wish to or not." Of all the mistakes into which Fra Elbertus has tumbled, this is about the worst. No better example could be adduced of the evils of setting up an imaginary condition in one's mind, assuming it as true, without the slightest investigation, and then proceeding to blow off! McCormick and Hubbard are mixing up coroner's regulations (that throw a wise obstacle in the way of a murderer hiding his crime), state-board examinations, and the A. M. A. Bless your dear hearts, gentlemen, the just-now management of the A. M. A. doesn't have anything whatever to do with the restrictions that gall you. It does not seek to control by trust methods anybody except the regular medical profession. It does not in the least interfere with quackery of any description; and in truth, when one manufacturing chemical house raised its voice in protest against the other chemical firms supplying the quacks, the editor of the J. A. M. A. denied that this was objectionable and tried to drive the anti-quack house out of business. So far as the state examining boards are operations only restrict concerned, their and hamper the real doctor, so that he is excluded from the states whose boards are most closely afflicted with the present J. A. M. A. management, while your quack friends pour *We said "affiliated." but the printer put it "afflicted," and we're not quite certain but that he improved on us. I have just devoted a column to Fra Elbertus and the wrong he does his readers by talking to them on subjects of which he knows nothing and is too lazy to inform himself. But why do we leave to such ignoramuses as he the privilege of influencing public opinion on matters that concern us? Look over the huge mass of ignorant prejudice, degenerative bias and varied misinformation printed each month under the guise of mental or physical hygiene. Old,. long-exploded hypotheses are paraded as new, lies long since exposed are revamped, all sorts of snide projects and grafts are unblushingly exploited; and yet these alleged journals continue to live and multiply. Public opinion is swayed by them, the beliefs of the masses created by them. One and all, they hold it the unpardonable sin for a doctor to spend years in study of the human body and its ailments; and as a self-evident truth that any person whatsoever can begin treating the sick without any previous study, knowing nothing of the body in health or disease, and necessarily do better than the one who has conscientiously tried to learn his art. The type of practician they appreciate is an old woman who sells a cancer cure, and who says, "Any sore or lump that has · lasted six months is a cancer!" What a terrible thing that the greedy medical trust should seek to prevent her charging enormous fees for torturing people, by burning out harmless warts and irritating real cancers until they have passed the stage where a cure might have been effected. Why not educate the people ourselves? Let each of us take up the periodicals within reach and supply them with good, sensible. articles. The editors will be glad enough to get them. Don't write a stilted, textbooky thing they'll yawn over. Take up some topic of everyday interest and ventilate it-the smell from the stockyards or glue factory, smoke from tall chimneys, the disease-spreading housefly; the mosquito-breeding pools; the ventilation of the schoolroom. In a word, take that which needs most immediate attention, put yourself forward as the man who knows just what should be done, and show it in language every reader can appreciate. It may be fine to have people admire your erudition; it's better they should exclaim: "Just what I think!" Once establish yourself as the sanitary adviser of your community, and a series of home-sanitation lessons will do you and your neighbors good. If we as physicians do not occupy the place and wield the influence to which we consider ourselves entitled, whose fault is it? We strongly suspect the man who is wearing our hat could best tell. AS SEEN BY OUR NEIGHBORS In a symposium, evidently intended to answer the probably insistent question as to why the State Society's Journal does not pull better, why it does not better represent medical thought in the grand old state of Michigan, in its issue for November one participant hits the nail on the head one good tap, as follows: Referring to THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE, he says: "I think that the reason that Abbott's paper, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE, has won its way so closely to the hearts of the doctors is that it does not sleep under the same covers summer and winter. Verbum sat sapienti.” We bow. We greatly appreciate this compliment; but we had thought that there was something beside our frequent change of cover to account for the great popularity of CLINICAL MEDICINE, a popularity which is growing with astonishing rapidity. We sort of thought that our hard work and that of the many, many able friends who have contributed to its reading pages had a little to do with the matter. If we are to judge from the flood of encomium and of friendly expressions that come to us from the field, accompanying renewal subscriptions, the members of the profession who receive from it (as they say) their greatest uplift have about the same idea. THE CLINIC is practical. It stands for and boosts toward greater professional success, and therefore it teachings put money in the pocket of the doctors, as a mass, which dry-as-dust medical journalism does not. The select and elect classes in our profession are cared for by the Powers, but the rank and file are left to scratch for themselves. Imitation or, rather, emulation of a good thing is not only commendable but good business policy, while imitation of aa— Well, the critic of The Journal of The Michigan State Medical Society has said enough; and its journal is by no means alone in its sorrow. It takes something more than theories and resolutions and society backing to run a medical journal successfully. PROTECTION OR SUBJECTION President Enos, in his address before the Colorado Homeopathic Homeopathic Society, says: "We have the sad spectacle in this city of an ignorant, drunken blacksmith, who |