number of sick persons were taken to the Hospital. In passing over the Mountain they were in such manner seized and penetrated with the Cold in the Extremities of the Body that a total loss of Sense and also a Gangrene did

ensue.

"And," concludes the author, "had not Charity and Patience prevailed in this place and restrained us from cutting off, without further delay, Members that were only gangrened by an Extremity of Cold, the Hospital of would have been full of invalids."

There are few subjects on which Major Belloste does not touch. He believes that a very strict diet is a mighty hindrance to the cure of wounds in soldiers, who ordinarily feel more of the inconvenience of a too scanty than a too plentiful table. "Wherefore," says this man of wisdom, "give them substantial, solid food, and wine, a little allayed, should not be kept from them."

On ulcers and dislocations he has his say and also on the treatment of burns, for he has treated men so badly burned that a plaster as big as a bed sheet was scarcely sufficient to cover them and, after treatment they, "like so many serpents, were all obliged to cast and change their skin.'

The Major then touches on moral matters, telling the young surgeon that credit does not consist in emptying the shops to cure his patient. On the contrary, a surgeon ought rather, Christian-like, to be saving of the money of those who trust their very person and life in his hands. "We ought not to be bribed," he warns, "by the consideration of a mean interest to abandon the Fidelity where with we ought to endeavor the speedy cure of our Patients."

If a patient, after such good deeds on the part of his physician should be so ungrateful as not to pay the price, then, says Major Belloste, "the Surgeon may expect his reward in Heaven."

Among other virtues required of surgeons, in order that they may be eligible for this celestial recompense, is gentleness.

"It must be owned," says the doctor, "that there are some among 'em (surgeons) that would think they had not acquitted themselves as they should unless they made those under their hands to roar out for a considerable time."

Before putting an end to his discourse, Major Belloste advises the army surgeon, because of the inadequacy of field hospital paraphernalia, to be prepared to make up simple and easy remedies with few things; and to accommodate himself at all times to dressing wounds seldom, and then only according to the right method which, in his book, he has communicated to the public in order that he may procure "a Gentle, Speedy and Easy Method for the Comfort and Encouragement of such as so generously expose their lives for the Glory of their Prince and the Good of their Country.”

He hopes that his readers will take what he has to say in "good Part and not condemn the design, the only aim of which is the Glory of God, the Comfort of the Afflicted and the Perfection of Surgery."

Thus does Surgeon-Major Belloste (in a fat little volume that stands on the book-shelves of Dr. John Mason Little's offices, in Marlborough Street, Boston,) warn all young surgeons against the Mischiefs of a Contrary Practice and set before them the Advantages of the New, Gentle and Easy Way in which he speedily cured the wounds of all those soldiers who come under his care in the Hospitals of the French King's Army in Italy in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and ninety (1690).

Concord, N. H.

LOUISE H. GUYOL.

How often do I sit, when day is spent,

And question what it is you find in me That causes your rare heart to wish to be, In my heart's humble name, so diligent. God knows that I do not possess a cent,

That I have neither fame nor pedigree; And yet, somehow, you seek my company, And in my presence seem to reap content.

Savannah, Georgia.

Viewed in the light of such a splendid fate,
Whenever it is my proud lot to hear

The high-born or the low expatiate

Concerning those whom they esteem sincere,

Or sing of friendships which are tried and true,—
You cannot wonder that I think of-You!

RALPH M. THOMSON, M. D.

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practicing in Switzerland, who was overtaken, on his way to visit a patient critically ill with influenza, by a messenger who informed him that his son had met with an accident, resulting in a fracture of the skull.

It was reported that the physician hesitated for a moment, undecided whether to go on or to return to the side of his injured child.

He hesitated for but a moment, however, and then went on to his original destination.

When he returned his son was dead.

At once there arose an interesting discussion in the colunms of the lay press as to where his steps should have led him in the given circumstances.

It is certainly an interesting topic for discussion. Those who believed that he pursued the right course, felt very strongly that he had been governed by duty and had not allowed himself to be controlled by sentiment.

Therein he had upheld the highest and noblest tenets of the medical profession as understood by them.

Those who contended that he should have abandoned the patient awaiting him, leaving her care to another, and

that he should have hastened post speed to the side of his stricken son, urged that paternal instinct and love should have been the dominating and deciding factors in the case, and that they would be in the case of most men.

Even these latter seem to concede that the finger of duty pointed but in one direction and that that one was toward the original patient.

In short, both sides agreed on what his obligations really were to attend the influenza patient first-but the debators in the one case felt that he had cogent reasons for dereliction of duty.

Thus the spectacle was presented of logic opposing logic peering through sentimental glasses, and, of course, logic proved the victor.

The French physician was vindicated in his behavicr. Upon closer analysis it would seem that two other points might appear which would question this premise as to which way lay his duty.

First, between two patients, requiring the physician's aid, had the one established a moral claim of priority in the fact that the doctor was on his way to visit her?

Should he not have been governed entirely by his estimation of the relative necessities and urgency of the respective cases?

If despairing relatives awaited him at the bedside of the grippe case at a promised hour, it might have required considerable moral strength to explain later that he had been diverted by a more urgent case but it would have demanded much greater courage to add that the victim happened to be of his own flesh and blood.

Surely in such circumstances his duty would have led him back.

The second point that occurs to us is this: as a physician he well knew that since his son had suffered a fracture of the skull his presence as a parent might be acutely necessary to give consent to an operation which could not permit of delay.

Thus his duty as a father and his responsibility as a physician to act for his incompetent patient called loudly to him to retrace his steps.

It may be true, and it probably is so, that the physician whose action is being discussed, considered all of these things and concluded as he did because there were other factors of which we know nothing.

We are not discussing him but rather those who have decided the proprieties of the act upon the evidence adduced.