ceases. RELAXATION FOR THE DOCTOR And so goes the world. Progress never Ambition is never satisfied. The woman who glories in being queen of the greatest man arouses the envy of other women, who push their men to topple over the king and take his throne. The man who grows content obstructs the way for one just behind who is not content, and shoves the other one aside, gently or otherwise. "Push or be pushed" is as inexorable law as the savage "spear or be speared." The Man, the Neighborhood, the Community, the Race, the Nation that is discontented betters its relative position. The Man, the Neighborhood, the Community, the Race, the Nation that is satisfied falls back. Man for man, the Huron was as good a fighter as the Iroquois, yet the 6000 attacking Iroquois exterminated the defensive 30,000 Hurons. Necessity, Work, Cold, Hunger, Pride, Ambition, Mate-hunger, Avarice, Lust for Power-the evils and sins of man-are the sources of effort and of achievement. Good would be dead were Evil annihilated. The existence of the one without the other is as impossible as the front of a mirror can not be without its back, or the negative pole without the positive, or valleys without their mountains. ROBBING A MAN OF HIS CREDIT Nobody expects a doctor to receive any credit for simply doing his duty, but it sure seems hard to do a great thing and then have the credit attributed to somebody else. A certain prominent citizen has just recovered from a severe and prolonged attack of typhoid fever characterized by several perilous crises through which nothing but the skill of his physician carried him safely. Now that he has recovered the family give the credit to a number of friends who directed toward his bed of illness numerous "thought waves." How do you know these soul-vibrations had anything to do with the outcome? Giving us any proof of such an effect? The mere fact that you wished a thing and it came true is no proof at all, since the same thing might occur without any wish having been entertained. It is a mere assumption 695 that the wish had any influence, and there is not a possible shadow of proof to that effect. On the contrary, we well know that typhoid fever is a disease in which the patient may go to the door of death, may even be apparently dead, and yet recover; and in which the nice and timely application of just the right remedy at just the right time often results in recovery when the case is so desperate that it looks almost miraculous. Two points stand out in this matterthe credulity of these people, and their gross ingratitude-always providing the newspaper tales are veracious. Some wise man has called courtesy the "Aladdin's lamp of success." Remember that when you are tempted to pass your neighbor "on the other side" without a smile or even a nod of recognition. If your heart be kind, turn it inside out and let it be seen by the beggar on the street, as well as by the man of affairs. RELAXATION FOR THE DOCTOR The institution of the day of rest is attributed to a divine source. Even God rested after six days of work, we are told. Farm animals do a bigger and better week's work if allowed a full day of rest on Sunday. The barber can tell you that he has to give his razors a rest occasionally, to preserve their temper, which suffers if used too long. The only man or thing in all animate or inanimate nature that never needs a rest is the doctor. The doctor is made on the order of the brook that ran on forever. He is the living example of perpetual motion. He needs neither grease to ease his bearings nor fuel to keep up his power. He works all dayhours not limited-and at night lies half awake listening for the ring of the nightbell. Sundays are worse the old man is at home and wants to see the doctor. If ever the man had a soul to care for, he has forgotten it, so long is it since he had a chance to attend church in peace and listen to a sermon. The worst of it is that the wear gets into his work. He falls into routine, and passes his life making visits. Gets up mornings, notes that he has so many calls to make, allows so many minutes for each, is delayed by unforeseen complications that a fresh, alert man would recognize as most important and interesting but which only annoy him as upsetting his schedule; puts in the evening in office, seeing a few strays and making out bills; is roused at night for a croup or confinement; dozes over a journal when he has a spare hour; and finally ends by resorting to opiates to keep himself at the drudgery. There's the pity of it. Any other man would revolt at the slavery and demand the rights of humanity-the doctor has to keep at it. Result-he grows worn, crabbed, pessimistic, cross, narrow, set in his ways and jealous of proffered suggestions looking to better methods, a dull routinist who has lost the power of improving. In time, as the drug-habit grows, he falls more into a confined, cramped method outside which he neither goes nor thinks. His field is invaded by all manner of quacks, who waste no time in study save only as they study the weaknesses of humanity and the ways of profiting thereby; the real doctor resents their encroachments, but does nothing to oppose them effectively he is making visits or trying to collect. There is always enough routine to fill the days and the mind of the man who lets routine engross him. In the happy days when King Theodore rules and we can make people do just what we wish, we shall send that man a writ directing him to report at once to the Bank of the River, for a term of banishment of thirty days. How bewildered he will be! How unwilling to believe he can live, and the world move on, when he has been torn from his rut. But in a few days the congealed vital currents will commence to thaw and to circulate; he will begin to taste the sweets of freedom; of thought, and his emotion will begin to stir. You will be surprised to find what a man there is beneath the shell. The humanity of men, the humor of things, the meaning of life, the objects of endeavor come to him. His experiences furnish him the most novel and interesting tales to tell. He has seen mankind from the inside, life from the seamy side. To him, all masks are off, all pretense is dropped, all realities are bared. He knows -others think they know. The world sees the imposing facade he sees the back yard. Society speculates over the ineffable melancholy haunting the features of her queenthe doctor knows she has neglected to take her pill. Mankind writhes under the lash of a Carlyle-the doctor thinks: "Drat the man! he's been eating pork and beans again!" Many a mental and moral kink our friend has straightened out, thanks to his knowledge of physiology and pathology-and of anthropology, and psychology, and helminthology, and a dozen other 'ologies. That month of freedom is an epoch. The doctor can no more return to his former life than the shattered vase can restore itself. The scent may cling around it still, but, as a vase, its integrity is vanished. The new currents of thought and feeling opened up during this time remain pervious. The doctor's reception by friends and patrons makes him realize as never before what he is to them. The old muck piles, which he had passed many times without seeing, arouse in his nostrils, accustomed to the piney scents, a new feeling of repulsion; and he wonders how a human being can endure such nuisances. But what amazes him and strongly impresses his patients is the new vim with which he tackles his duties. His insight is keener, his perceptions are quicker, his sympathies are deeper and stronger. I wish I had the gift of saying what is in my mind in a way to carry the message to him who needs it. The brain-weary man, the dulled rut-dweller, the narrow routinist is rarely aware of his situation. It takes dynamite to separate him from his evil life. He has to get out of his rut to see across it. He is not really tied down to his work by duties or the lack of money; he only thinks he is. The earliest stages of paresis are characterized by the patient's utter inability to appreciate his own malady, when everybody else is painfully aware of it. Doctor, you are not so busy as you think; not so necessary, so essential to the community, not so poor, not so completely engrossed in duty that you have lost the capability of unbending. You only think these things are so. The folks will not die, without you, unless God wills; and then what can you do? The creditors will be lenient, the debtors feel enough sympathy with you to "ante up" some of their debts to aid the good work. Everybody sees you need the rest; so take it and try to unbend. CONCERNING THOSE OPPOSED TO DRUGS Owe nine hundred dollars, do you? Well, make it an even one thousand then and go fishing. Mrs. G. is expecting a baby, is she? Well, do you remember the day when no woman was expecting a baby? Ever know of one coming uncared for? Can't possibly raise the expense of a trip? Get half a dozen of the men you know need it to go and take you as doctorthey'll be glad of the excuse and of your company. In any and all events-go fishing. If the world is going wrong-forget it. Sorrow never lingers long-forget it. If your neighbor bears ill-will; if you owe an ancient bill-square yourself, my good friend Bill-and then forget it! How about that over-due subscription? CONCERNING THOSE OPPOSED TO DRUGS In a little eddy from the current of the Father of Waters, in the swamps of Louisiana, I picked up a pine-cone-battered, decayed, crushed out of semblance of its original shape, yet evidently a pine-cone. Not a product of the Georgia pines of Catahoula, but the fruit of a tree that stood in the distant mountains of Idaho, four thousand miles from the river's shore on which it has been cast, after many months of drifting. Firmly rooted in the rocks of the northern mountains, the parent tree had stood for ages, dropping its seeds into the little stream that sprang from the melting snows and nurtured its roots. It was fitted to its environment. It could not bear transplanting to the soft alluvium and the sweltering heat of the far South, and it lay a derelict, of no further use except as by its decay it might add to the fertilization of the soil for the benefit of a plant better suited to that time and place. The little mountain-stream in which that stranger cone commenced its long 697 voyage had been joined by innumerable others, drawn from many thousand miles of varied countries, and had grown into a mighty river, bearing on its breast the argosies of commerce and the skiff of the fisher; with the flotsam of the Alleghanies and the Rockies, the wooded slopes of the East, the prairies of Illinois, and the sandy stretches of the West. Trees torn from their rootings by the flooding waters, bits of worked wood, boxes, baskets, bottles, relics of civilization's needs, perhaps the rudely cut arrow-shaft of the Indian, drowned wild animals, and, possibly, men, cattle, crops, things growing and designed for many a need-all these drift in the river and are stranded in those amphibiabreeding flats. Their original meaning and objects have been lost, and they are merely waste material that may possibly be utilized for the lowly purpose of food for fishes, or of fertilizers or not used at all. On the streetcar, yesterday, I picked up a leaflet issued by the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, entitled "Doctors and Drugs, Surgeons and Knives." It opened by tracing the origin of medicine to "heathenism"; but, although temples preceded, churches made no protest against the building of the latter. Then it went on to declare that not one word between the lids of the Bible favored doctors or drugs, and the pamphlet presented the following telling (?) argument: The Greek word pharmakeia means the use of drugs, poisoning, and also sorcery; pharmakeus means one who prepares drugs, and also a sorcerer; pharmakon, a drug, and also an enchantment; pharmakos, pertaining to magical arts. Therefore, inferentially, people ought not to resort to modern medical science. Since in Exodus it is said that "I am the Lord that healeth thee;" Jeremiah said, "Cursed is the man that trusteth in man", and "In vain dost thou use many medicines"; and Job told his bad advisers that "Ye are all physicians of no value;" and Ezekiel said, "The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick;" and James said, "Is any among you sick, let him call on the elders of the Church;" and Mark said, "And a woman which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse;" and a few more quotations of the same sort-therefore, if one is ailing, he should not call on the doctors, but go to Wilbur Glenn Voliva for relief. Next comes a nice selection of the pessimistic remarks of eminent medical men anent the practice of medicine. As a sample, there is quoted Sir Astley Cooper: "The science of medicine is founded upon conjecture and improved by murder." In my college days, during our debates in the literary societies, it was the custom, when one of us ran short of other arguments, to go to the great Bible that reposed on a stand and from its pages quote a text that fitted the subject and confirmed our view. Whereupon the opponent would do the same thing and find a text that quite as exactly fitted his view. This went on until by tacit agreement we left the Bible out of our discussions. One could prove or disprove anything by the quotation of isolated verses, taken from their context, and applying them to present-day conditions. Because Jeremiah thought the invasion of Asia by the Cimmerians was going to reach the region in which he dwelt-which it didn't and inflict upon the people a punishment for their sins, people here in the twentieth century must not go to a doctor when they are sick. Because Ezekiel favored the Assyrian alliance rather than the Egyptian for the hill-states of Syria, the taking of "salts" is immoral. Because, in that exquisite allegory, Job did not like the advice his neighbors proffered, we should disdain to use the brains with which the Lord has endowed us, and the means of cure which He has placed at our disposal, and ask Him to save us the trouble of thinking and investigating. Take this idea, that drugs are immoral, and trace it to its legitimate conclusions: Who made drugs-God or the devil? If the latter, then there are two creators, the one totally independent of the other and not under God's control-therefore, two deities of equal power. Is that the Christian doc trine today? Then are the self-styled Christians truly devil-worshipers. But, if the Lord created drugs, he had an object and intended that they should be utilized, as we have learned to utilize so many of the priceless blessings dug out of the earth or found as enveloped in plant structures. Thus to wrest the Bible from its divine purpose and invest solitary texts with a meaning, to be applied thus to things of this day, is to degrade the Book to the category of dream and magic writings. Such efforts are strictly on a par with those of the silly girls who fasten a key in the volume, say some magic words, and, opening at randon, find the name of their future husbands. There is something repugnant in this to those of us who hold that Book in reverence and see in it the summum bonum, that which presents the altruism that rescues mankind from the animal and makes civilization, all that is good in life possible, and prevents its being overwhelmed by the floods of selfishness and passion. How about the arraignment of medicine by its own votaries? It is, perhaps, too much for the narrow minds we deal with to comprehend that many of these "smart" sayings are of the nature of after-dinner remarks, not to be taken seriously; or they are the outspoken protests against an unscientific and blind method of using our resources. Exaggerations, and so intended -in order to command attention by their vehemence. The boy who declares there were a million cats in the back yard, the orator who bounds his country by the North and the South Poles, the Orient and the Occident, the politician who predicts that Texas will go Republican, the promoter who promises returns of a million percent on "investments," any of these scarcely expects that aught but a born idiot will take them literally-and they are right. That such "guff" as the quotations above given should secure a following is a curious commentary on the civilization of the day. PRACTICAL POSTGRADUATE WORK Where's the doctor? Gone to Chicago to do postgraduate work. In due time he returns, and the curious drop in to see what THE PASSION FOR INVESTIGATION he has learned in the way of new and improved methods of treating the sick. He has brought back a few new stories, mainly of the kind that men tell when there are no women about; speaks of the great men he has seen and the wonderful cases and operations; but besides that he seems to be the same old doctor, with the same old remedies, his only acquisition being a distaste for humdrum work, and impatience at so much a visit, when Professor X gets $500 for a single hour's carving. 699 the colored picture of the growing plant is shown, then the crude drugs, the roots, leaves, bark, wood and other official parts, then the pharmacopeial preparations. At several of the Chicago colleges, the alkaloidal ideas have made entrance, and the student receives really excellent instructions along modern lines, with modern remedies. Such is the case at Bennett, the Chicago College, and at the American in St. Louis. These are all progressive, rapidly growing institutions-and there are others equally worthy in these and other cities. But what of the man who can spare only a few weeks? The Postgraduate, of course - yet, for the man who wants to study therapeutics, we are planning something special. Note carefully Dr. Abbott's special communication on page 688. If you are in the slightest interested, write him at once. This should appeal to you. Don't The truth is, that the doctor has spent too much of the time supposed to be devoted to postgraduate work in loafing-chatting with the other loafers, running to witness operations which he never can by any possibility be called upon to perform-but getting one thing he really needs: a good rest. Much better get that by going fishing. Much is to be learned at the postgraduate schools by those really deter- miss it-don't delay. mined to add to their store of knowledge; but the month's vacation is usually spread out too thin to permit of doing much or seeing much to be of any very practical value. It's good as far as it goes-only it doesn't go far enough. Every five or ten years the real doctor should take a full year off. He doesn't need to go abroad to improve that year to the utmost. May we make the suggestion that he go to one of the colleges and take a ticket entitling him to the run of the classes, and then brush up on anything he needs-anatomy, physiology, practiceand, if he can find an institution where therapeutics is taught (not the modern frills, but good solid drug therapeutics, of the kind one should use in nine-tenths of his practice) let him take in that. After such a period of study he returns to his patients a better physician, with the means of doing better work and saving lives he otherwise would have lost, or at least of giving better and quicker relief than he could before his postgraduate trip. The people would not be long in appreciating the improvement, and his income would grow. More attention is being given to drugs at the undergraduate colleges. At one, the professor has a beautiful cabinet in which THE PASSION FOR INVESTIGATION Grave charges of inefficiency and fraud against the Bureau of Animal Industry have been preferred by Representative Nelson, of Wisconsin, in a resolution to Congress asking for an investigation of the federal meat inspection. The importance of the federal meat inspection as conducted by the Bureau of Animal Industry is generally underestimated. An adequate idea of its importance may be had from a consideration of the fact that 30 percent of the food of the American people is meat, and of this 30 percent, more than half is inspected by the officials of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture. This far outranks the importance and in the number of skilled men used all other food inspections, including that of the Bureau of Chemistry, which has received so much notoriety through the press. Unfortunately, Dr. A. D. Melvin, chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, though quite eminently fitted for the work of directing the meat inspection, is in no sense a publicist, and largely because of this he is unable to rely upon the support of the press and the people to the extent that Dr. Wiley |