toxins to develop antitoxins in the diseased individual, at apparently the last moments. of life, than the well-meaning, fake-working, fraudulent saint in his empirical practice of laying on of hands and anointing with oil in the name of Jesus? Excluding the physical causes of recovery, there is not one authentic case of miraculous faith-healing in the annals of history, verified as they are with numerous priestly lies to inspire faith in new converts, where faith in the Divinity has ever cured.

Here in Baltimore we have a respectable colored gentleman who has established a Faith-Healing College, not recognized by the Association of American Medical Colleges. He has paid the price to the State's foremost politicians to have it incorporated, so that no one can touch him. He has a large clientele both of white and colored patrons and has amassed a fortune. In order to see this divine healer you must see a respectable fee of five or ten dollars or he will laugh at you. When this fee is paid, then, on bended knee, the divine healer, with closed eyes and clasped hands, lifts up his able voice through stinking breath in prayer to Christ for him to heal whatever disease may be lurking in his patron's carFrom his Faith-Healing College are graduated annually genuine faith-healers whom we recognize as fakers, frauds, and imposters in every sense of the words.

Like the world-renowned Osler, this divine healer does not believe in the use of nauseous drugs to cure the patient, although he has the right to use them to anoint the sufferer in faith, believing that Christ will do the rest. If any good should follow the use of the drug in anointing, from dermal absorption or from develop ment of immunity through a coincident formation of opsonins or antitoxins in the patient's system, of course the good result would not be attributed at all to any virtue of the drug, opsonin or antitoxin over the disease, but it would be due to some occult power, mythically supposed to reside in the mere name of Jesus.

It seems to me that if we were to teach the laity the truth, the whole truth and

timation of the laity, by convincing them of the true salvation which lies in drugs. We should not abandon the moribund until they are dead, nor should we prescribe for them or allow the nurse to pour medicine by the easpoonful down their throats. We should only use medicine by the hypodermic needle here, and we should remember that if we can keep the patient alive for only a few hours until the friends come, or for a few days or a few weeks beyond that period at which they would have died with

out our service, the patient may be able, for a brief period, to appreciate it, and the friends will be convinced that there resides in drugs, when properly used by a modern, scientific physician to their physiological effect

A miraculous power that can prolong for
the patient's weal,

When all other powers, mortal and di-
vine, have failed to heal.

In treating the dying we have to remember that death begins either at the lungs, the heart or the brain. We must observe the

Home of Dr. W. L. Gleaves, Holt, Mo.

respiration, the pulse and the temperature. The organs of secretion should not be neglected.

When a patient is dying from disease with death beginning at the lungs-dyspneawhen the pulse is 110 and weak and the respiration 95, don't give a lethal dose of strychnine to stimulate the heart, but lose no time in applying external heat, and to give the patient 1-100 grain of atropine hypodermically, repeating the dose to its physiological effect, until the temperature rises to 98.6° F. and the respiration to 14 or 16. The patient will open his eyes then, and say, "Doctor, I feel better now. am so glad you have come."

I

Where the patient is dying from disease with death beginning at the heart-syncope -nitroglycerin often will save by relieving the strain of peripheral resistance. The recumbent position, under these conditions, is highly important to relieve cardiac strain and cyanosis.

Where the patient is dying from disease with death beginning at the brain-coma give drugs to eliminate the toxins.

If we teach the laity that there is a miraculous power in such potent drugs as the alkaloids, when rightly used by a modern physician, to tide them over a serious. sickness that would have ended fatally without their use, there will be fewer numbers to gulp down the balderdash of the faithhealers-Mr. Kennard, Mrs. Eddy, Mr. Dowie, Mr. Joseph Smith, and other divines who have worked on the fruitless imagination of their shallow-witted and witless followers. Why not teach the laity that

Drugs are dangerous things, when unskilfully used,

Or, if used by skilful hands with a head confused?

The doctor knows the assertion is true, and it is the reason why, when he or any member of his family are sick, another physician is always called to attend him or them. If the doctor, knowing all about drugs, refuses to take his own medicine for reasons herein given, how much more important it is for you, a person who knows nothing at all about drugs, to refuse to take them unless directed by the clear head and skilful hand of a physician. No, no, it is not because of any illegality connected with it. No state has the right to dictate to anyone whom he shall employ as his physician. The state's power end with license to the competent. All the rest is safety and professional courtesy. The wise doctor knows the danger of self-drugging, and he doesn't wait to form the habit. Selfmedication is dangerous, and

You must know that the doctor must his skill, his knowledge and his judgment use, Or, like the game of checkers, at any time his patient he will lose.

It is difficult to conceive of any greater disappointment that will surely follow both to patient and physician than for the chronically constipated dyspeptic and neurasthenic to consult a physician for stomach trouble, insomnia and inability to work, and to receive from him a prescription or a package of Glauber's salt or gray powder, when the original or underlying cause of

his constitutional upset is due to eye-strain, as has clearly been shown for several years by the lucid writings of Dr. Geo. M. Gould of Philadelphia.

Dr. Gould has shown that the cynical, ultraconservative, nihilistic authorities and up-to-date textbook makers have much to learn before their books can present an upto-date medical science. Consult the five volumes of his "Biographic Clinics," and the articles which have appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association, American Medicine, The Lancet-Clinic, and elsewhere, and be convinced.

Who has not seen, and noted with disgust, the beautiful results which have followed in women who have been laparotomized, ovariotomized and hysterectomized until their daily lives have become a kind of living death, for complications of an original untreated gonorrhea, by fame-seeking, graft-gathering, nihilistic authoritative surgeons who ought to be put into jail. When their money is all gone, and there is nothing left to be removed, these poor helpless mortal wrecks are told by their famous surgeons in terms that hide their own ignorance, "That is nothing, you are only hysterical, neurasthenic." Hence, it rests with the family doctor to lift the time-honored science of medicine from the plane of vending "headache powders," dyspepsia powders," "bilious purgatives," "exploratory operations," and ethical quackery, to a higher plane of scientific usefulness.

But when you come to enter these realms, beware of sending the patient who has been wearing mother's specs or grandmother's specs to a mydriaticless and ophthalmometerless optician or ophthalmologist for spherical lenses, or the last state of the patient will be worse than his first. Send them to competent men like Dr. Gould, men who err not in the fraction of one diopter, nor in the second of one degree in determining the true axis of astigmatism men who can "cut a just pound of flesh."

When we come to do these things, the disparaging veil of therapeutic nihilism will have been rent and the sway of modern science above the reign of superstition will have dawned.

Lately I was in the ward of a hospital when the head nurse was calling out to the nurse in her charge at the other side of the room, the following orders: "Give No. 6 a 1-4 grain of morphine at 2 o'clock; give No. 8 a 1-60 grain of strychnine, and No. 12 a 1-100 grain of digitalin," etc. Every person in the ward could hear the orders, and the patients listened to them. But there was nothing in the simplicity of the English language to prevent that patient from continuing the 1-4 grain of morphine when dismissed. How could there have been any protection in the mere use

Dr. W. E. Barnes, Marshall, Ill.

of the Latin names, morphina, strychnina, digitalinum?

It is the Latin form of a prescription that protects, not the mere Latin names. There is no protection in the English abbreviations, "dr." or "dr." or "oz.," which every schoolboy knows; neither is there the protection in the numerical figures of the metric system, which the schoolboy can read quite as well as the doctor, that is found in the abbreviations of the established form. Even the priest is often unable to read the compound prescription of the doctor when written in Latin. I have known patients to ask: "What is the meaning of all these z's, iss's,

y's, ix's, ij's, and iv's?" My answer has always been: "That is a dangerous thing for you to know. If known it would result in more deaths than all the doctors have ever caused. I have never disclosed the meaning of those symbols to my wife, nor to my child; and in guarding the interest. of your safety I deem it advisable not to disclose their meaning to you."

"Well, I only asked through curiosity, that was all. Of course nobody is supposed to read a doctor's prescription but a druggist."

Baltimore, Md.

L. B. EVANS.

[We believe every reader will admire, as we do, the masterly way in which Dr. Evans has presented the marvelous and mysterious elements in the practice of our profession-their legitimate as well as their fraudulent uses. If we had time and space we should enjoy commenting on the whole article, with approval here, criticism there. But if we would state our criticisms, all rolled together, in a few words, they would be about as follows:

In spite of the success of faith-healing quacks this is a rational age. The schoolboy of today knows more about many things than did his grandfather half a century ago. It is becoming ever more difficult and pari passu more unnecessary to obscure our knowledge with mere words. Science, thanks to the activities of the popular press, is becoming common knowledge. We can not hide it if we would. The scientific names of our remedies are accessible in any dictionary or cyclopedia. The symbols for drams, ounces and scruples are taught in the common schools, and any schoolboy can easily ascertain them if he wants to. Instead of mystery people want knowledge.

Change the current of faith from the prescription to the doctor. Let the patient understand that it is your knowledge which works the cure-that the selection of the remedy is but an evidence of your "knowhow." Then we shall not have to descend to learned trickery to cover up the name of our "calomel" or "salts."

Now don't assume that I would tell every patient everything I give him. Probably in the majority of cases, even, I should not. In many instances such knowledge might do him harm. That is one of the reasons why I prefer to dispense my own remedies. I can control the situation. I don't advise him of the fact that he is taking a habitforming drug, as when I prescribe morphine; I don't make the dangerous suggestion of heart weakness, as when I put digitalis in his hands; I don't leave in his mind the fear of collapse, as when I advise him that he is taking strychnine. And in such cases as these the use of Latin or English matters not a bit.

The kernel of the situation, to my mind, is this: Avoid an air of mystery. Tell the truth frankly, unless it promises to do harm. Withhold from the patient only as much as is for the patient's good. Teach him to respect you-not your drugs.—ED.]

ESPERANTO: THE WORLD'S AUXILIARY LANGUAGE

Educated men and women for generations have felt more or less keenly the embarrassment and inconvenience, to say nothing of the waste of time and money, occasioned by their inability to read the works of fellow students of other countries. In whatever line of scientific research one is engaged, the same difficulty is present.

A little more than twenty years ago, while engaged in working up a thesis in the laboratories of the University of Nebraska, I was obliged to refer to works in English, German, French, Italian, Latin and an occasional article in some other language. A large amount of time was consumed in digging out what was hidden away in these foreign languages. To become proficient in even two or three of them would be a needless waste of time by one whose whole time is to be taken up with scientific work. How much more appropriate it would be if scientists of England, Germany, France, etc., could record their discoveries and results in one common language which would be readily read by all.