I

"IT IS LAW"-A DREAM LOOKED out into an April afternoon -lustrous with sunshine and glistening with rain-the fitful, passionate spring rain which is always falling or is immediately about to fall. There was a gentle breeze blowing from the southwest, bearing a peculiar aroma in its breath, which is like new and dearer life to those who love it.

The trees swayed to and fro with an elastic vigor that was beautiful to behold. The light, fleecy spring clouds-opal and palest gray and white, and yet, again, "whiter than white"-careered in impetuous troops before the wind; dividing-meeting again-blending with fresh groups-shaping themselves into forms every momentnow irradiated by the sunlight into brightness at which my eyes ached-now subdued again into softer loveliness-and anon cushioning on their breasts the mystical glory of a rainbow.

I sat in my room, looking out across the lawn into the park and up into the clouds, until the afternoon was made glorious by an April sunset which hallowed the sky and made serene the earth.

The passionate gusts of wind and weeping rains had ceased; gray and quiet clouds for a while arched the world, save where, at the west, a golden gate seemed to open wider and more glorious every moment.

Then came the moon, its white rays falling amid the trees like dripping fountains of silent light. All the park was bathed in this luminous flood, and the radiance of it was so penetrating that I could distinguish even the frail delineation of the birches. The last shiver of the air seemed to ruffle this lake of rays, asleep in its sovereign peace, between the elms and the roof of an adjacent building.

The transparency of the warm evening and that odorous renovation of the earth charmed me into pensive reverie, and I soon fell to sleep and dreamed that I was leaning over the parapet of the universe, watching the conflict of the spheres.

Far out into the illimitable space I saw the brilliant birth of planets and the death of exhausted worlds. All about me seething masses whirled, some very small, some infinitely larger, but all seemingly identical in structure. There was one so small I scarcely noticed it, but, as I turned toward the largest and oldest planet, a voice said:

"Nay, turn not away from Earth, for while it is one of the youngest and smallest worlds, it will be the next to throb with life-yea, and the next to die."

Mam

And as I gazed, the fiery flames died down, and I saw mighty oceans, and rocks, and earth. Then life appeared in the waters, on the land, and in the air. moth trees and plants grew up, and, while I was admiring the beauty of the verdure, terrific tornadoes uprooted the trees and cast them into the sea. Strange monsters ate of the plants and they preyed upon each other, until the ground was crimson with their blood. Marveling at the devastation and sickening at the sight, I turned away; but, when I looked again, behold, there was no vegetation nor animated life, but, instead, mountains of ice extending in all directions. While I watched, great glaring spurs, inconceivably huge in dimensions, broke away and melted into rolling, swelling rivers, bearing downward under their prodigious pressure the frozen hulks of animals and the detritus of a former age scoured from the earth's surface by the crushing, plunging masses of rock and ice.

Appalled at the frigid desolation of the scene, I closed my eyes in horror, crying: "Oh! why is this?"

And the Voice said:

"It is Law. Look again."

And where had been avalanches and mighty rivers of ice, I saw wide and beautiful valleys through which quiet streams crept toward the seas, and the glory of the sun bathed valley and mountain.

Suddenly a wave of wondrous melody enveloped me. The sun and stars and all creation burst into one grand oratorio, and, looking into the valley, I saw a man, erect, godlike, and his voice resembled the voice I had heard. Then the earth was flooded with a light so pure, so dazzling that for a while I could not see the valley. The perfume of a delicate incense came to me and I nearly swooned from the music and the fragrance, but the Voice said:

"Behold, my greatest work!" And I saw the man again, and by his side a woman. Rude they were, and nude, yet innocent as infants they played together, and with the animals of the forest, as children play with kittens.

The day merged into night. One by one the stars went out in a rapidly advancing and terrible blackness, and while I stood breathless, awestruck at the gloom and stillness, a flash of light pierced the darkness; and it sought the man and the woman, widening until the whole earth stood revealed beneath a purple sky. Then I saw the man and the woman, with bowed heads and frightened glances pass out of the valley into what seemed to be a great highway. Soon other beings came along, and the road was crowded with a struggling mass of men, and women, and children.

The horror of all I had witnessed before this was as nothing as compared to what now began to pass before my eyes.

Contending hosts, wild with rage and thirst, fought hand to hand. Suckling babes were ruthlessly torn from the breasts of shrieking mothers and dashed to death. A confused mass of maddened elephants, spurred on by men, still more mad, disemboweled and trampled human beings in the bloody mud. Broken pikes and human

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limbs swirled in the onrush of men and beasts. Wild boars, bathed with an inflammable liquid set on fire, ran wildly among the living, dying, and dead; and I was stifled by the stench of burning flesh.

I saw conquerors march away, chanting a victorious ode, driving with strokes of cruel whips a horde of vanquished human beings destined to serve as slaves. I saw captive women debauched by lecherous men and then cast into the maws of ravenous beasts. Then, when their thirst for blood had been appeased, the victors built temples to their gods and worshipped in them, sending up loud praises.

But soon the worshippers disagreed, and then new temples and images were erected by the dissenting sects grown in numbers. Wars followed upon wars. Time passed on-silently, relentlessly. Old temples that lifted their spiral curves and kissed the clouds were deserted and soon were lost in desert sands. Nations perished and passed out of memory. Lands once rich with verdure and with food now became changed into arid wastes. The very heavens were black and full of death.

When I marveled at the blight and the awful devastation, the Voice again spake: "It is Law!"

Sadly I looked down into a dark and cruel world. But as I looked, I saw painted upon the black canvas of the night a cross, and nailed to it, with arms outstretched, a God. I saw Him look with infinite compassion upon the men thirsting for his life, and I heard Him say, in a voice which seemed to be the one I had heard speaking out of nothingness: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

I could not understand why a being so good should be so cruelly put to death; but the Voice said:

"It is Law!"

A great and holy light went out from the cross and began to illumine the dark and gloomy places of the earth.

I thought that henceforth there would be no more night, nor no more death. But men did not understand, they differed about the light; and soon there were more

wars, wars more terrible than had ever been seen before.

I saw innocent women chained to floors of stone in damp and dismal dungeons. I saw great streams of blood gurgle from headless trunks of martyred men. I saw the quivering flesh of thousands of human beings given up to greedy flames.

The whole earth seemed to be one horrible, mysterious labyrinth, in which men surged, frightened and bewildered, fearful lest at any moment they fall into an abyss of never-dying flame and torture.

Gaunt famine stalked unchecked throughout the land; aye, I saw women's breasts unbabed for want of food, and men die with imploring gestures and voiceless lips. Then pestilence came, and it swept the famished. living multitudes into heaps of blackened and festered dead.

"Oh! why is all this suffering and death?" I cried. "Can there be no peace, nor joy, nor life?" But the Voice said:

"It is Law. Look upward."

As I raised my eyes, I gazed into a sublime radiance, which rose from the cross and spread out into illimitable space, and, in it, countless shadowy forms were rising from the reeking charnel-house below. There were men, women, and children with their faces wreathed in smiles, and they were welcomed by Him, whom I had seen upon the cross, into a land of honey and of flowers.

Only for a moment was I permitted to gaze into this heavenly abode where life, and joy, and perfect peace reigned without end. Then my eyes again sought the earth, and quickly changing scenes as of a kaleidoscope met my eyes. What I beheld was an alternating tide of the ebb and the flow of peace and of plenty, of suffering and of sin.

I saw golden grain growing ripe and rich upon a thousand sunlit hills. I saw it made into bread which fed and nourished a countless multitude of human beings. I saw it distilled into liquid hell which flowed down the earth like a stream of death, leaving upon its devastated banks a mass of physical, moral, and mental wreckage. I witnessed the passions of men and of

women when they bore the luscious fruit of love, and they blossomed into pure and affectionate homes filled with tenderness and truth and hallowed by the laughter of loving children. And then I saw them bear the blighted barren fruit of lust, and saw them wither in abodes of infamy and shame, their gaudy robes and glittering gems changed at the end for rags and wretchedness, disgusting disease, and horrid death. I saw men bent on mercenary aims and selfish deeds sail safely o'er a sapphire sea, through days of sun and nights of stars. I saw others, on missions of mercy, tossed on the mad and measureless main and finally sink into an abyss of bitter brine.

I looked into a great city and saw rich men's palaces proudly rear their fluted columns to the sky while hungry women wandered houseless through wintry streets; men living in lavish luxury and others wearing out hand and heart and brain for a scanty crust; fabrics of priceless value molded in store houses while shivering children died unclad. I saw countless tons of coal locked in cellars beneath the feet of freezing men and women; pitiless plutocrats laughed and dined while unemployed and hungry men paced the streets in grim despair. I saw children entertained with books and toys, and others growing up in ignorance and crime; wives caressed by loving husbands in luxurious homes; other women hesitating between "the wolf of want and the abundance of infamy." I saw churches, barred and massive, by the side of hells of vice, where lust ran riot and demons danced. I listened to music in magnificent theaters and to wails of want from tottering tenements.

I breathed the perfume of the boudoir, and was stifled by the odor of the morgue. I saw gray heads of women hid in costly lace, while others covered theirs in handkerchiefs of blue and red.

I saw men reach the very verge of godhood or sink beneath the level of the brute; ambition fail and bodies of good men crumble into dust only to furnish food and flowers for selfish, sinful people, but who, in their turn, were forgotten in that heap of human clay.

I saw healthy children grow to noble manhood and others dwarfed and imbeciled by a father's sins or a mother's ills. I saw a thousand score of happy souls engaged in trade, in pleasure, and in prayer choked to death by a volcano's sulphurous fumes. Across the sunlight of the noon was cast the shadow of the night. Buildings of iron and marble crumbled in the heat while the streets ran red with lava and with fire.

I saw a house filled with young men and women joyous with health and life, and listened to peals of mirth and music and the rhythmic cadence of dancing feet; and then I saw the ruinous rush of a cyclone and the murderous timbers press the warm blood from their quivering forms, and lips that a moment before spoke words of love were cold in death ere the echo died.

I looked into a happy home filled with love's own melody and saw it entered by disease, and the husband and wife bow their faces upon the cold sod that covered the sacred dust of their only child.

I saw all this, and more. But, as I gazed, I thought that the light was all the whlle widening, and slowly it dispelled the dark clouds from the hills and the mists from the valleys; the songs of peace and the melody of joy supplanted groans and moans. Again birds sang, again lovers told their stories of their hearts; flowers bloomed, and refreshing rains fell upon the thirsty earth.

I believed that at last Life and Peace and Happiness had come, but at that instant it seemed to me that I heard an agonized voice calling out aloud:

"Oh, Doctor, do come at once, my little girl has been run over by an automobile!" Then the Voice said: "It is Law. And I woke.

Go!"

DIAGNOSIS OF WHOOPING-COUGH BY MEANS OF THE BORDET-GENGOU

REACTION

It is well known, says Paris Medical (page 77, 1912) how difficult it is to diagnose certain ill-defined attacks of whoopingcough, and how important a diagnosis is in order to limit an epidemic, since the atypical forms of the disease are often just

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as contagious as the manifest ones. The bacillus, which was isolated by Bordet and Gengou from the expectoration of children affected with whooping-cough, appears to be specific, but it is difficult to isolate it by culture and its demonstration cannot facilitate the diagnosis.

Fortunately, the complement fixation method may here be employed and this reaction, which has given us such interesting results in syphilis and in hydatid liver cysts, seems to be applicable to the diagnosis of pertussis.

During an epidemic of whooping-cough in the neighborhood of Brussels, Mr. Delcourt (Archives de Médecine des Enfants, 1911) was enabled by the fixation test to show that the atypical cases of whoopingcough are much more numerous than had commonly been believed, not only in children, but also in adults. Certain children had only a simple bronchial catarrh without paroxysms of cough, without periodical paroxysms of vomiting. In these the Bordet-Gengou reaction was nevertheless positive. They were permitted to attend school, while those affected with typical whooping-cough had been isolated, and the fact of their attendance at school explains the obstinate persistence of the epidemic, since they were bacillus carriers and not known to be affected with the disease. In one of the pupils a test enabled the recognition of an atypical whoopingcough, which had actually been the origin of the epidemic.

The reaction of Bordet-Gengou should therefore be employed in such cases, and if the investigations of Delcourt are verified and confirmed, this reaction will be useful in the differential diagnosis of conditions accompanying paroxysmal coughs and useful in the prophylaxis of pertussis.

The diagnosis of whooping-cough has heretofore been by no means an easy matter, and any method which promises precision is to be welcomed. No doubt there are thousands of undiagnosed cases, and these patients become carriers of the disease. With accurate diagnoses and dependable methods of treatment (with active-principle remedies) the dangers from this disease will be greatly reduced.

A

The International Medical Annual. Year Book of Treatment and Practitioner's Index. 1912. Thirtieth Year. New York: E. B. Treat & Co. Price $3.50.

This splendid reference work has just appeared in its thirtieth volume, and presents, as usual, a résumé of the progress made in medical sciences during the last year. It supplies, as the editor says in the preface, the whole literature on the subject, filtered of extraneous matter, crystallized, submitted to criticism, and so arranged that it is immediately available for reference.

A review of a book of this nature is naturally difficult. The reading matter is in two parts, containing the Dictionary of Medical Matters and Therapeutics in the first, and the Dictionary of Treatment in the second part, followed by a very complete and valuable index.

As was quite natural, the subject of salvarsan has received much attention, because, as the editor says, this has been a year of salvarsan. But there are many other points of interest in it. I find an appreciative editorial note on the therapeutic value of cactus, a review of the action of pituitary extract, notes on scarlet-red, on ionic medication, and, in the Dictionary of Treatment, very complete accounts of the investigations of the year in the practice of medicine, surgery, and the specialties.

The individual reviews are not only faithful as to subject matter, but are also very readable and sometimes acceptably supplied with editorial comment. For the research worker and the author, the refer

ences given at the foot of each review supply full literary indications for originalsource studies.

The International Medical Annual is, however, essentially a book for the practitioner and is recommended to him as embodying all that is known of the medical progress during the passing year.

COTTON'S "JOINT FRACTURES"

Dislocations and Joint Fractures. By Frederic Jay Cotton, A. M., M. D. Octavo, 654 pages; 1201 original illustrations. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company. 1910. Price, cloth, $6.00 net.

If Scudder, in his treatise on the subject of fractures, covers that particular domain and only incidentally treats of dislocations, a book like the one under consideration must be of particular importance, dealing, as it does, entirely with injuries to the joints, which, naturally, are always combined with a greater or lesser degree of dislocation; in fact, as the title indicates, the book deals with injuries to and about the joints. Dr. Cotton's book thus forms a desirable complement to that of Scudder's.

The study and treatment of injuries of the joints has always been a difficult one; and, while to some extent much light was literally shed on it by the Roentgen-ray, this was not always, as the author correctly remarks, to our aid, but not infrequently a source of confusion. The interpretation of radiographs presents a rather difficult problem and is all but impossible to the uninitiated. It was, therefore, a rather grateful, if difficult, task to review the subject deliberately and specifically. The author's book arose primarily from the results of his own experience, "fortified by