questions of public moment. In the forties the slavery question began to be agitated and gave rise to many heated public arguments. In 1847 he delivered a public discourse in which he declared himself as being absolutely opposed to slavery, but he advocated the colonization of the Negro in Liberia. His work as a minister he never quite abandoned. Up to 1842 he preached regularly in the First Baptist Church in Indianapolis. He resigned his ministerial position in 1842, but continued to work in the Lord's vineyard whenever the spirit moved him. He always joined in the congregational singing with much earnestness and fervor. His magnificent bass voice could always be heard over and above the singing of the entire congregation. His faithful wife died in 1854. He followed her in October, 1855. Their bodies were interred in Covington, Indiana, but a few years afterwards taken up and buried in Lafayette, Indiana, in Springdale Cemetery.

John L. Richmond is described by those who knew him as a very large and powerful man. A granddaughter of his, the wife of the present American consul-general in London, England, is the proud possessor of a white beaver hat which belonged to her grandfather. But few men can wear it on account of its gigantic size. Richmond was a fluent talker, but always preferred to listen rather than to talk. He did his own thinking on practically every subject, and, after arriving at a conclusion, was unrelenting in adhering to it. In his intercourse with people as a professional man he was, to a degree, dignified, but otherwise thoroughly democratic in his demeanor. He was one of the first in this country who made a subcutaneous tenotomy and did some clever plastic work on the face. Towards the end of his life he became a firm believer in homoeopathy. It may be of interest to mention his mechanical skill. Many of the instruments which he used in his surgical work were of his own make. Richmond was a stanch supporter of all movements for the educational betterment of his people. He was one of the founders of Dennison University (Ohio) and Franklin College (Indiana). I can not refrain from mentioning a beautiful legend which is attached to the name of Richmond. I call it a legend because, while it has come to me from several sources, there is nothing more than tradition to back up the story. The two medical heroes of the cholera epidemic of 1832 were Jesse Smith and John L. Richmond. Smith was a distinguished surgeon and had been professor of anatomy and sur

gery in the Medical College of Ohio. He worked day and night to relieve the victims of the epidemic, and finally died of cholera, a martyr at the post of duty. He fell like a soldier in the line of duty, with his face to the foe. Richmond survived, but was broken in body and spirit. Two streets that had been laid out in the West End of Cincinnati (Smith Street and Richmond Street) were named to commemorate the acts of humanity and bravery of these two noble pioneers of medicine in this Western country.

So runs the story of John L. Richmond. Three years ago you, Fellows of the McDowell Medical Society, observed the hundredth anniversary of Ephraim McDowell's great operation in a most befitting manner. It seems no less opportune and proper to pay another tribute to the almost forgotten past. To honor the memory of a man like Richmond means more than merely to pay back a debt of gratitude which the present owes to the past. The very name of Richmond reminds us of that colossal figure that stood in the foreground of events when our profession took its first faltering steps in this Western country, the founder of the Medical College of Ohio, that incomparable master of medical teaching, Daniel Drake, the friend and instructor of Richmond. Posterity seems to have forgotten the glories and achievements of this giant who was to the West what Benjamin Rush was to the East. The child of his love, the Medical College of Ohio, is now a mere hazy, historical reminiscence. Figuratively speaking, only a few half-collapsed walls are still standing, the last mute remnants of a house which was built and inhabited by giants. The once famous Cincinnati Hospital has not even a modest tablet to commemorate the name of the great physician who founded it. When you, my

friends and colleagues, go out to Newtown to honor the name and achievements of John L. Richmond, let the tribute which you pay to his memory have a wider and deeper significance. Let it be testimony of honor and reverence to all that Richmond stood for, to all the ideals of knowledge and education embodied in his great teacher, Drake. Let this memorial be an eloquent tribute to the generation of big hearts and great minds that laid the foundation of the stately edifice of Western medicine on the banks of the Ohio one hundred years ago. The record of the deeds of these mighty pioneers is an epic of heroism and patriotism that will be chanted by the voices of centuries until the end of time. There surely were giants in the earth in those days.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. Joshua Bailey Richmond. Genealogy of the Richmond Family.

Boston, 1897.

2. Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences. Cin

cinnati. Vol. III, p. 435. 1830.

3. Transactions of the Indiana State Medical Society, 1893. (See article by Dr. W. H. Wishard, Sr., on "Medical Men and Medical Practice in the Early Days of Indianapolis.")

4. G. W. H. Kemper, in Indianapolis Medical Journal, Sept.,

1909.

5. Indiana Journal of Medicine. Vol. III, p. 129. 1872. 6. Indiana Medical Journal, Sept., 1908, p. 112. (Open letter of W. N. Wishard, Jr., to Otto Juettner on the Richmond case.)

7. Otto Juettner's "Daniel Drake and His Followers" (two references to Richmond's case).

8. Robert P. Harris' excellent monographs on the history, statistics, and technique of Cæsarean section in the United States. Am. Journ. of Obst., 1871, p. 409, also 1881, p. 341. Cincinnati Obst. Gazette, 1878, p. 99, also 1882, p. 404. Am. Journ. of Med. Sciences, 1878, p. 313.

9. G. W. H. Kemper. "Medical History of Indiana." 1911. 10. Works on obstetrics by Wm. P. Dewees, Charles D. Meigs, Fleetwood Churchill, Hugh L. Hodge, and others.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GELSEMIUM AND
BELLADONNA.

BY M. F. BETTENCOURT, M. D., FORT WORTH, TEXAS.

An earnest endeavor to learn the specific indications which call for the administration of individual drugs and a continued effort to understand the "why's" of their action, are the ways that lead to exactness in drug knowledge. The all-important empirical study of drugs upon the sick human being, when carried on under the observing eye, reveals the exact conditions which are corrected by each agent and points out the parts for which each has an affinity. When this knowledge of their capabilities has been gained it then becomes possible for us to ferret out the "why's" of their action.

The number of errors in prescribing, from the standpoint of specific medication and the reduction of polypharmacy, which is