RATES TO THE NATIONAL.-There are no reduced round trip rates to Washington except via Norfolk, Va., and steamer. Sixty-day circular tours to New York City, via Washington, with a different route returning, are very well arranged and only slightly higher, and in many cases less than round trip to Washington. These are approximately as follows, as based on last year's tariff: To Washington, D. C.

Hotel headquarters at The Shoreham. Rates on the European plan, $2 per day and upwards; on the American plan, $4 per day and upwards. Don't forget the dates, June 18, 19, 20, and 21, JOHN K. SCUDDER, M. D., Committee on Arrangements.

1912.

POTASSIUM BICARBONATE.-The best form of neutralizing cordial contains potassium bicarbonate. As an anti-acid and cleanser of the gastric mucous tissue when the tongue is persistently coated white, we prefer it to sodium bicarbonate. It is an ideal agent for very young infants with flatulency, failure to digest even the simplest nourishment and constantly writhing in pain. In one case of a nine months' old infant with persistent dyspeptic distress since birth and a typical marasmic appearance, potassium bicarbonate in two-grain doses twice a day changed the whole tenor of life and in two months the little patient rose from a weight of six to that of thirteen pounds, with the ability to digest its food perfectly.

AMONG THE ECLECTIC EDITORS.

Who Shall Teach.-Is it the teacher that determines the efficiency of the school, or is it the bricks and mortar of the buildings? Who is the true instructor? Is it the apparatus that produces laboratory results, educational as well as practical, or is it the manipulator of the apparatus? Is it the magnitude of the majority with which a man affiliates, educationally, politically, or otherwise, that accomplishes, or is it the personality of the man?

Listen! Is not the man who knows, the man to teach? Is not the experienced man the one to give from the wealth of his knowledge?

At the battle of Bunker Hill it is said the command was given, "Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes." This writer believes in the personality of the man who teaches, and he also believes this becomes most effective when close before him line "the whites of the eyes" of those who listen.

This writer believes in the country school, the village home school, the homelike college, where teachers who know look into the eyes of students who learn. Here the young are qualified for special objects. Afterward they may take finishing courses in beehives of mammoth proportions. The writer furthermore believes that it is time for men with wealth for distribution to begin to care for the fountain-head. Does not the river disappear when the springs and brooklets dry? Is the country school to be more and more neglected and discredited in the future, as has seemingly been the case in recent years? Are the small colleges and the presumably minor teachers to be subjugated by the god that passes onward the millionaire's money? Is the man who teaches, as well as the one who learns, to be judged by the mere size of the monuments of brick and mortar of the buildings, or the collection of wonderful apparatus at his command? Many a philosopher and highly educated man sacrifices his life by serving in fields exceedingly barren, according to such standards. Helpful to the man is the mechanism that money buys, but unless the man be behind the apparatus, of what worth is the contrivance, however marvelous in itself?

In this connection we would ask, Was Agassiz a greater teacher because he was connected with a great university, or was Tappan the less an educator for accepting the presidency of Michigan University, then struggling almost in the woods for its very existence, a small, derided "fresh-water college," which his genius placed upon the broad foundations that made it the model and parent of our great State universities?

Listen! The trend of the times has recently been toward the subjugation of minor institutions, in favor of those highly endowed. This trend must change. This course will change. "Back to the plow!" has become a slogan of recent years. "Back to the school, back to the teacher, close to the man who knows!" will again become the slogan of educational circles. With elbows touching their instructors, will the students of the future march onward?

Let us not fail to honor him to whom honor is due. How came the opportunities, whether in past or present times, of the majority of men who have accomplished? The unknown young dentist, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, gave to the world the anesthetic, sulphuric ether. Thomas A. Edison, the mother-taught newsboy of the train, experimented with self-made apparatus, and never set student's foot into a great university. Sir Humphrey Davy attained to some of his most brilliant discoveries through the aid of ink-bottles, glass tubes, and olive-oil flasks.

These and such as these, multitudes in number, confront the man who argues that education is to be standardized by mighty buildings, made of brick and mortar. And yet, if one reasons fairly, he will perceive that each is necessary, the one to the other; that, leaning on each other, each contributes to the welfare of all.

Men there are of culture, refinement, and education, thousands of them, in the primary educational institutions and the small colleges of America. Mighty men there are also in the great universities. Neither class is to be discredited by the success of the other. Neither should be envious of the good works of the other. Least of all, neither of these should seek to disparage what has been accomplished by the other nor attempt to paralyze the efforts of the other.

Listen once again! Are not the presidents of our most celebrated institutions, great and powerful though they be, ever on the alert to find the man, be he country-educated or teaching in some minor institution, who has accomplished, and who, by the luster of his countrybred fame and balanced methods, may add still greater reputation to the mighty university? Do not the presidents of these busy hives recognize the value of men bred in the country and evolved by country education? Well do they comprehend that the fame and the opportunities of the university depend on their corps of teachers, not on mere structures made of brick or stone. "Give us a man!" is their constant cry. From the country comes the response.-Lloyd, Eclectic Medical Journal, February, 1912.

Hints and Winnowings.-There never has been a time during the existence of the Eclectic school of medicine when thorough organization and active work were more urgently demanded than they are at the present time, for our rights are constantly being assailed by large and powerful bodies of men who do not hesitate to employ the most unscrupulous means in order to accomplish their own selfish ends. Associations of druggists, aided by medical politicians, under the pretense of protecting the people, are still endeavoring to secure the passage of laws in all of the States making it unlawful for any person who is not a graduated druggist to dispense medicines to the sick, and thus ruin the practice of the greater number of the members of our school. We must continually oppose these attempts, as well as all other unjust legislation, and in order to successfully do so we must keep thoroughly organized, and conduct our efforts in a wise and con

servative manner. Radical denunciation of all medical laws will do much more harm than good. Certain medical laws will be enacted, whether they meet with our approval or our disapproval. What we want and have a right to demand is that all laws in regard to health, disease, and medicine shall guarantee, in words that can not be misconstrued, equal rights and privileges to the several regular schools of medicine.-Fyfe, The Eclectic Review, February, 1912.

The Proprietary Medical College. We had thought that the proprietary medical college had about passed away, but we learn from the "American Medical Journal" that Dr. Waldo Briggs has just sued the Missouri State Board of Health, in the circuit court at St. Louis, for $200,000 damages for having placed his college, "The St. Louis College of Physicians" (Allopathic), on the discredited list on September 27th last.

In his petition he alleges that he has been proprietor of the college for forty years, and has had an annual income of $15,000 per year until the school was discredited.

Evidently Dean Briggs had no salaried instructors, and presumably the janitor was the only one paid.

In these latter days of higher medical education a college not only needs all its tuition fees, but additional funds from taxation, endowment, or annual contributions from friends and alumni, to support properly.

Medical colleges are usually divided into three groups: proprietary, independent, and university schools. The day of the proprietary school should be passed.

In this connection we note that the editor of the "Oklahoma Medical Journal" has just learned (two years late), that two Eclectic schools in St. Louis and Chicago had turned Allopathic. His rejoicing should not be taken seriously, when one considers that it only needed the purchase of a majority of stock to have made them either Homeopathic or Osteopathic as well. In neither case had the Eclectic faculties any voice in the matter.

While the total number of colleges has been reduced from 156 to 120, there are still low-grade proprietary colleges in Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis to worry Carnegie, Bevan, et al.—Scudder, Eclectic Medical Journal, April, 1912.

Empiricism.-This is a word to juggle with, and to juggle. It is a favorite term of reproach for those who, wishing to be considered as excruciatingly scientific, apply to those on whom these self-constituted authorities desire to cast a reflection. It is not our intention to enter into the problem or into the history of the various phases through which the term has passed, in its connection with medicine and pharmacy, but it is our intention to call attention to the fact that a certain class of people prescribe to-day, "by authority," in a manner that, in the excruciating precision of "authority" of times gone by,

would have been considered as rank empiricism. On the contrary, those now thrown by such self-arrogated authority into the camp of the empiricists would in those days have been considered exceedingly "regular."

Let us, in this connection, turn to the address delivered before the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Lexington, Ky., in 1839, by the talented and even celebrated physician, Thomas D. Mitchell, professor of materia medica and therapeutics in the medical department of Transylvania University in the days when Transylvania University was a center of art, science, and medicine in the Middle West. Let us turn to page 9 of this address, titled "The Principles and Practice of Medical Ethics," which was published by request of the faculty and students of the college. From this we extract the following passages:

"By some the term 'empiricism' has been restricted to the use or countenance of avowed nostrums, and this is undoubtedly a part of the evil. But, in our judgment, every species of random practice, the exhibition of remedial agents, without a rational why or wherefore, prescribing for names rather than for symptoms, and every other device resorted to by the practitioner, to save the labor of thinking, may with strict propriety be placed to the account of empiricism."

Professor Mitchell herein calls attention to two phases of the problem embodied in the one extract. First, the term "empiricism" was by some at that date restricted to the use of the nostrums by which the doctor meant secret mixtures incapable of producing the effects claimed for them. At the present date this application of the term "empiricism" seems to have become obsolete. Second, Professor Mitchell calls attention to a fundamental principle regarding which the Eclectic school of medicine stands on record as having ever advocated ideals that place the rules and methods of the school in the first rank of idealistic practitioners. The very words of encomium used by Professor Mitchell have been a slogan of the Eclectic school for over half a century. "Prescribing for a name rather than for symptoms" is perhaps one of the most familiar examples against which the school has for fifty years protested by word and practice.

What school is it that to-day studies symptoms and seeks remedies therefor? Is not what Dr. Mitchell has classed as "random practice;" namely, "the exhibition of remedial agents without a rational why or wherefore, prescribing for names rather than for symptoms," that which the fathers in Eclecticism have resisted and Eclecticism of to-day prohibits? Does not the final sentence of Professor Mitchell place the ideals of the Eclectic school of medicine foremost in a manner balanced as Professor Mitchell could not anticipate? The Eclectic school has endeavored to reach his standard by a study of his symptoms, and not by a prescribing for names of diseases.

According to the ethical rulings of Professor Mitchell, the Eclectic school of medicine to-day is not the "empirical" school of medicine. -Lloyd, Eclectic Medical Journal, April, 1912.