number of medical journals unavoidably occasions much scattering of effort, and, consequently, the suppression of part of these multifarious publications may be looked upon as contributing to real progress.

The absorbing of other journals has been prosecuted somewhat industriously at 12 Mt. Morris Park, New York, Dr. William J. Robinson, the editor of The Critic and Guide, having acquired ownership in sev

al other medical journals. A short time ago, The Medical Review of Reviews, which is under the management of Doctor Robinson's son, Frederick H. Robinson, incorporated with itself Pediatrics, a journal that for many years had been a welcome visitor to pediatrists and general practitioners alike, because of the truly excellent work that it accomplished in medical literature and also because of its having been devoted more particularly to the diseases of children.

Now we are informed that The Buffalo Medical Journal, edited for several years by Dr. A. L. Benedict (well known to CLINIC readers) also has been taken over by The Medical Review of Reviews, and lastly, that the latter journal has purchased, for consideration, The Southern Practitioner.

The Medical Review of Reviews has experienced a marked revival since its destinies have been guided by Mr. Robinson. Not only are its editorial pages characterized by much erudition and brilliancy of thought, but, the original contributions also present communications of lasting value, while the abstracts from current medical iterature presented to its readers show care and thought in their selection. The Medical Review of Reviews is one of those journals that are worth while. In its enlarged form, including, as it does, several well-known and excellent other journals, it bids fair to surpass even itself, if that be possible. We wish our contemporary every success in its enlarged sphere of activity and hope that it may continue its good work for the benefit of the medical profession for many years to come.

Nihilists and destructive critics have done much to lower medicine in the estimation of the people.

IN PROSPECT AND IN RETROSPECT

The other day, sitting in a restaurant, I overheard a man behind me say: "Twenty years is a long time to look ahead to look

back it is like the flash of an eye." This saying, trite as it is and camouflaged with the hoariness of age, arrogates to itself a degree of truth that would be astounding if it were justified. As a matter of fact, like most commonplace sayings that fall so glibly from the tongues of certain wiseacres, it is an old chestnut and, like most old chestnuts, it harbors within it an element of untruth that deserves to be nailed down.

Twenty years is a long time to look ahead; most true. Don't we all remember the time when as kiddies we teased Dad and Mother about how soon we should be grown up? At the age of six or seven years, twenty-six means the mature age of accomplished manhood and womanhood; while we who have turned the milestone of the half century look back to that period of all-inclusive and overpowering wisdom smilingly, half sorry for the Oh! so long, long ago. We look back twenty years, we look back ten, five, two years, or even a twelve-months and see what all has happened in those long toilsome days, in those stretches of weary nights of which we yet think as long since gone and done with. One year ago, even; three hundred and sixty-five days and three hundred and sixty-five nights. It is a lifetime full of intense feelings and rich experiences. It is a succession of ages not only to look forward to, but to look back upon, for those who are not fortunate enough to be blessed with some absorbing occupation but who dally and idle their lives away or for those who through some misfortune or on account of some misdeed are obliged to pass their days in confinement or, at any rate, away from congenial surroundings.

Occasionally we may meet some invalid who has lain on his bed of suffering for ten, fifteen, twenty years. Ask him, or her, whether they can look back upon their life in the flash of an eye. Every day was and endless torture, every night an eon of suffering. And, they all have left their indelible mark and will never be forgotten.

Ask the man who has been freed after twenty years of confinement in prison whether he can look back upon this time as in the flash of an eye, he will tell you that he lived countless long, tedious lives in those twenty years, lives full of weariness and discouragement and despair that stretch out in retrospect without a limit to the beginning of time. Ask the factory worker who is "an old employe" whether the twenty years that he spent behind his bench or in the shop seem short to him now, and he will tell you that they represent an interminable series of grinding days and toil-stunned nights. Ask the traveler or globe trotter who has spent the best years of life exploring the recesses of the earth, the pinnacles of mountains, the courses of streams and rivers, whether his experiences return to his eye kaleidoscopically, rapidly, swiftly, not, perhaps, like the flash of the eye, but, like the screen in the moving picture, let us say: and he will think back for hours and days, mayhap, over the experiences that have come to him in those twenty cycles of the earth around the sun, with their long laborious days of marching or climbing or riding and interminable nights of watching and possibly fighting; twenty years of work and effort. Ask the ordinary citizen, the business man or the professional man whether he looks back upon the last twenty years of his experience like the flash of an eye, and he will tell you that to him they represent a continued series of difficult problems which he lives over during minutes or hours but which, nevertheless, seem long drawn out and endless even in

memory.

No, No, these old sayings that are scattered so freely beneath the branching chestnut tree are misleading and false. Twenty years is a long period to look back upon, just as it is illimitable in prospect.

But, let us look backward and forward for just one short year. One year ago, to be personal, we started upon the twentyfifth year of our experience as a medical journal. We were rather proud of the fact and strutted a little. Can you blame us? From what you, the readers of CLINICAL MEDICINE, have told us and are telling us constantly, we have succeeded in our aim to present to medical practitioners a journal which helps them in their daily tasks, in their constant effort to alleviate disease and suffering. We infer that we have been successful in making the lessons that we attempt to teach free from dryness and monotony. It has been our pride to have CLINICAL MEDICINE "human." We have everlastingly been endeavoring to get under your skin, talking to you as man to

man, mindful of the fact that your patients are not "cases" but human beings who want to be treated, not by the rule of three, but, as creatures with sensibilities and feelings whose inner workings have become disarranged and whose mentality therefore has suffered even though possibly no mental affliction existed.

So, we were just a little proud of what we had accomplished at the beginning of the last year that should make the first quarter-century of our existence. In this last year we have visited you twelve times, sending you our messages, following the progress of the world war in so far as it as of interest particularly to physicians, taking note of many important lessons learned and passed on by our colleagues in field and in camp, and we have greeted with loud acclaim, like everybody else, the cessation of hostilities and expressed our sincere hope that this would end the war and would initiate a long period of peace on earth; while at the same time we expressed and acted upon our intention to do our share as far as lay in us toward the restoration of all that is disorganized and that requires reconstruction, during this perhaps the most important and serious period that civilized mankind ever has passed through.

It was a long time, these twelve months, these three hundred and sixty-five days; a long and weary period to look back upon, lightened, though, by the joy of the last two months since the signing of the armistice which brought renewed courage and joy to many hearts.

And, so, we look forward to one year, believing it best to accomplish our tasks one at a time, holding it to be wiser to plan definitely for one year ahead, since it is just the immediate present that is ours, while the remote future is in the lap of the gods. What will the coming year bring? We do not know. We hope to continue making CLINICAL MEDICINE just what it should be for your benefit. We hope to help you in your daily tasks and problems; we hope to inform you of new discoveries that are being made, of new things that are observed, and we hope to be permitted to share in the restoration of the world as far as may lay within our sphere. So we look ahead to twelve numbers of CLINICAL MEDICINE which will comprise the first volume of the second quarter-century of our existence. It is a long time to look forward to. There will be work, there will be study, there will be pleasant experiences and there will be discouragements; but, with it all, the lesson is impressed upon us to take each day the work that is for us to do and do it as well as we can, putting forth our best efforts and leaving the result to that Beneficent Law that works out to its own wise ends all happenings and all acts of mortals.

There existed, at one time, a very beautiful custom in Germany, which it would be well to imitate everywhere. On the first day of the New Year, whatever may have been the quarrels or estrangement between friends and relatives, mutual visits were interchanged, kindly greetings given and received-all was forgotten and forgiven. Let this custom begin with reconciliation to God, then friendship and fellowship may be found that shall be blessed and lasting.Foster.

OUR HONOR ROLL

On pages 60 and 61 on this issue, we publish a list of the representatives of The Abbott Laboratories, the Slee Laboratories and THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE who have served our country in the Army and Navy during the great war. We also reproduce their pictures as far as we are able to do so.

Needless to say, the men whose names appear in the Roll of Honor are not the only representatives of the three institutions concerned who "served their coun

try." Never before has any war been so much a people's war and never before has the whole nation, men, women and children, participated so wholeheartedly in promoting the cause for which the government had found it necessary to declare war. Therefore, we stay-at-homes whose names do not appear on the roster, nevertheless,

may feel that we also have served our country. Of our own editorial staff, Dr. Alfred S. Burdick served constantly and efficiently as a member of Draft Board, Exemption District No. 59, while Dr. H. J. Achard served with the other medical examiners on this board. He also spent much time as medical attendant to the dependent families of soldiers and sailors. A large amount of clerical work connected with draft-board and other patriotic activities was accomplished in the offices of CLINICAL MEDICINE, many of the young ladies gladly donating their evenings and Saturday afternoons to this work. However, we sent those who were available forth to wear Uncle Sam's uniform in the battlefields, in camp, and in other phases of active service.

The names of these fortunate ones, as their pictures appear in the page facing the Roll of Honor, are as follows:

IN

「N war, the relation of price to physiologic and esthetics value, adulterations, even, within certain limits, wholesomeness are subordinated to the prime necessity of having an ample supply of the best standard foods for the army. Extravagance may be allowable and even encouraged, in order to conserve staple foods; and, while prices may be directly or indirectly controlled by the government, contrary to peace precedent, the aim may be to discourage civilian use of certain food stuffs as well as to protect the people against profiteering.

With the advent of peace, there begins a transition-period toward the restoration of ordinary economic rules, although the continued necessity of providing foods for other nations and the varying conditions of available stocks of different foods and of facilities for transportation will require adherence to war regulations for some time to come; and these regulations may appear inconsistent because of the policy to apply them only according to the actual conditions obtaining for any particular foodstuff at any particular time and place.

The ultimate principles of food economics are the same as for any other commodity, and they can not be sublimated beyond the prosaic demand of the ultimate purchaser to get the best value, for his labor, with due regard both to physiologic and esthetic standards. Nor can we get away from the hard fact that values have been measured for many centuries in terms of gold or other forms of money ultimately based upon the ease or difficulty of procuring gold. Consequently, we must dismiss

the former pretense of indifference with regard to price and the various other affectations that have been applied to food even more than to dress and other personal ne-. cessities and to domestic, as contrasted with commercial transactions.

The Economic Crime of Wasting The affectation of liberality in serving, of daintiness in eating, the reduction of such policies to an actual rule of etiquette that the plate should never be entirely cleared, overrefinement of the proper ob

jection to the re-use of broken food, laziness in domestic conservation, lack of insistence upon the same care to avoid waste by domestic servants as by employees in factories, all this has resulted in an average waste of at least 10 percent for the entire country, and up to 50 percent in the case of many families.

It is not a joke to say that, hitherto, we have all too literally been following the mental process of the garbage-man and have judged the social status of ourselves and our neighbors by the "elegance of the swill". In military cantonments, there was, at first, an enormous waste of food; which, however, was systematically combated. As extreme examples may be mentioned: a large canful of wheat bread thrown out by a single company and the reduction of the waste for one day for a unit to slightly larger than 5 ounces.

Fallacious Household Economies Fallacies about preventing waste should not be neglected. So-considered cheap foods often are dear at any price, except as appetizers, because of their small content

of nutriment-the commonly used vegetables popularly considered hearty and sustaining being for the most part nothing but cellulose and water and useless, in the limited sense, for nutrition. Cheap meats, as a rule, are expensive relatively to their net nutriment, while, even if tables show a high caloric value, this usually is due to fat, which could be more economically purchased than at meat prices and which many persons can not or will not eat.

Small-scale domestic methods of economy, by making fats into soap, ordinarily are absurdly costly in labor, fuel and materials. There is an unavoidable waste of about 25 percent in the "peelings" of all fruits and vegetables, and this waste may be greatly increased by careless methods. However, an order to avoid this waste by serving potatoes et cetera in the skins, may defeat its object if they are dumped into gravy or vegetable juice on plates, so that the individual simply squeezes or cuts out as much of the interior as is convenient without too much soiling of the fingers. Bread puddings and various similar desserts are, by many persons, considered adequate only when the bread or other cereal remnant is diluted and concealed with costly material, thus rendering it undetectable. Many analogous fallacies occur in vain efforts to prevent waste, instead of following the simple principle of buying, cooking, and serving only what is to be actually used and of utilizing the inevitable excess in simple and direct ways.

Utilization of Unavoidable Food Waste Generally speaking, the utilization of unavoidable food waste, including that which is practically inedible or even innutritious for human beings, is best accomplished by feeding it to pigs. Rendering into fat and fertilizer is less economic, but, often, better, for practical purposes, by municipalities, while questions of expense, of transportation, labor, availability of market, et cetera, often necessitate destruction, while sometimes, by mixing it with other waste, some fuel-value can be derived. The marked diminution of incinerators at cantonments, in the course of the last year, represents not only a tremendous saving by the utilization of garbage, but, in fuel, labor, and damage from smoke.

Application of Ordinary Economic Principles to Food

There are obvious reasons why wholesale prices should be lower than retail

prices, why incidental expenses for transportation, bookkeeping, overhead charges, labor, et cetera, should be added to the price of various commodities, why the transient and especially the nonresident customer should pay a higher price than the regular, resident patron. Still, there is no reason why these factors should apply to food and a few other services to a greater intrinsic degree than to any other commercial transactions. It is doubtful whether a meal can be served, under conditions as ordinarily demanded, for less than a 100-percent gross profit on the cost of the raw food; however, there is no reason why the purchase of food by the meal, wherever one happens to be, should exceed by 500 to 1000 percent the cost of similar food and similar accessories at home.

Furthermore, the labor of serving food, even that particular form of labor which carries the food from the kitchen to the table, should be adequately paid; there is no good reason, though, for paying for it twice over, and at rates far beyond its true value, in the form of a gratuity that debases the laborer. Of course, we dislike to break an established custom, especially as it involves much personal discomfort. We are, moreover, indifferent to the fact that the custom has exerted such a serious influence that it is accepted legal precedent that a waiter has not the status of a witness or juror of average vocation. Indeed, we affect not to realize that, in the aggregate, the tip, in itself, is a serious factor against the same convenient use of readymade foods, to borrow an expression from another trade, that under similar conditions is applied to most other commodities.

The Stabilizing of Food Prices Statistics show that the dollar of 1918 had a purchasing power of 59 cents as compared with that of 1914. Experience seldom shows that the individual enjoyed only 59 per cent of the standards of comfort of the year 1914 on the same total outlay or that his expenses increased to 169 per cent in securing the same standards as prevailed in 1914. It is doubtful, whether, in the whole, the difference amounted to 10 per

cent.

The discrepancy is accounted for by two well-known economic principles that should have accompanied the statistics, namely:

1. Most commodities, including foodstuffs to a considerable degree, can be