that he will do some bodily harm to someone or that someone will be compelled to defend himself against him." "Well," said Galen to his father, "I have just come from McS.'s. I found him suffering from acute delirium, for when I arrived in the house he informed me that I was not wanted, but that you, yourself, must come at once. He positively and forcibly refused my attention, but when I saw the dangerous condition he was in I proceeded to fill my hypodermic syringe, determined to quiet him at any and all hazards by giving him an injection of atropia and morphia, but to my utter surprise, when I endeavored to give him the injection, he knocked me down and, as I was held by his two neighbors, I was forcibly told that I was crazy; then I told him that I must be permitted to modify my diagnosis; that I certainly thought that he had symptoms of immortality, that even I might be an instrument to fix it so that he would never die again, but eternally live in a world of infinity. This man is certainly delirious, hence I insist upon your going to see him, for I feel it imperative upon myself to control my anger, delirium or no delirium, for I am sad to confess to you that I have an unusually aching desire to immortalize him.”

McS. to Galen's father: "Why, my dear doctor, your son is, I am sorry to say, crazy, for no sane man would have acted as he did. Why, no matter what I said, he still continued to gaze at me with the fixed gaze of a lunatic; I told him that I was not sick, but that I had sent for you to see my wife, and that I only wanted you, but he insisted, with that fixed stare, which almost influenced me that I was in a dangerous condition, and he proceeded, in spite of all of our protestations, to treat me. He filled his hypodermic syringe and, with the glare of an angered tiger, came silently and insidiously toward me. I had to act and found no other way of preventing him from injuring me than by knocking him down and calling the assistance of my two neighbors who are here to help me. It was with the utmost difficulty that we got him outside, and as he stood outside he very gravely said that I had the symptoms of immortality and must surely die, even if he had to bring eternal life to me."

Galen's father to Professor L., to whom he had written for advice: "There has been, as

I can plainly see, a constant and rapid change in Galen. I have been compelled to keep him in the house and will not permit him to attend to anyone. I can see the change gradually come; he has become markedly unfeeling; he now inflicts absolute punishment and torture upon living animals. He not only treats these animals cruelly, but even seems to try to torture inanimate things. I found him out in the orchard cutting and bending down a series of small trees, so that they would bend and not stand erect, for he said that they were "rigidly and cruelly upright." Everything frets him; the movement of the leaves, the wind, the bellowing of a cow, or the neigh of a horse. He seems to be constantly fighting imaginary ills and only yesterday I saw him start up wildly, talk aloud and gesticulate toward Heaven. He is now busily engaged in trying to define various pathological conditions in insects. Again, he seems to be determinedly destructive, becoming more pessimistic than ever. Everything is coming to destruction; his always pale face seems to be more elongated and misanthrophic than ever. His fantasies and peculiarities are markedly profound. He is absolutely afraid of any pointed thing; the point of a needle seems to keep him in abeyance, but he appears to be thoroughly indifferent to the muzzle of a gun, or the mouth of a cannon. He has shown his utter indifference to danger recently on more than one occasion. He has ceased to notice his mother and apparently has become cruel and vindictive against those he should love. What on earth am I to do with him?"

Galen's father, in a letter, two days later, to Professor L.: "My son left night before last without our knowing it, but told friends that he was going to a neighboring town. He wandered upon the railway tracks and was killed by being run over. I learned, in a letter from Dr. S., surgeon of the road, that according to the engineer's report, my son was walking down the track with his back toward the engine but turned when he heard the blowing of the whistle. Before the engine struck him he never seemed to quail, but defiantly shook his fist and started for the engine as though he would demolish it. After being picked up, when cruelly crushed, his only words were, "killed, killed, my God, by corporation's juggernaut."

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with edged-tools; they hurt themselves and put others in pain." This expert seems to have no room for reason; but newspapers frequently make both fools and folly their particular care. Here is an intangible, indefinite and inadequate cause assigned as being a disease-producing factor. Abnormal, erratic, nonsensical and utterly childish reasons given without an iota of truth. Surely no sensible person would for a moment believe, because an engineer upon a railway became insane, had epilepsy, or had progressive locomotar ataxia, that railway traveling caused it. We might as well say, that because a woman gives birth to a child upon a train, that travel caused the child. It is true, it might bring about labor, but previous undoubted factors were the causation; the birth upon the railway train was simply a coincidence. So with the manifestations of this form of railway neurosis supposed to be occasioned by overtraveling. Too many millions of people daily, weekly, monthly and yearly travel, not to have discovered before this a peculiar and marvelous form of neurosis. It is an assertion unsupported by facts. A species of erratic sorcery, having for its object the delusion of the unthinking; it rarely, if ever, convinces. Opinion may be the Czar in Russia, but in this country it may represent all stages of mental thought and only of necessity has force in proportion to its merit and common sense. The idea of a traveling neurosis is a product of idiocy, which does not take into consideration hereditary or acquired conditions and our multiplex surroundings.

SOME CAUSES OF A NATION'S DEPOPULATION.

The meeting in Paris last May, of the National Alliance, for increasing the French population by an equal system of taxing of families, certainly met for an unusual object. Probably never before in the world's history did so natural, and yet so remarkable, an object present itself for consideration to a thinking body of persons. At this meeting a description was given. by M. Bertillon of the coming results of the progressive depopulation of France. The reasons assigned by the various speakers for the depopulation of France were more than interesting; they were profoundly instructive

and sensory disturbances in the left upper limb, the muscles of the shoulder and arm being paralyzed, and the skin over the shoulder and along the outer surface of the arm and forearm very hyperæsthetic. Thirteen months after the accident the seat of injury was exposed, and the nature of the injury, which had previously been diagnosed, clearly made out. The displaced fourth cervical vertebra, which was movable and could be readily reduced, was fixed in its normal position by silver wire attaching its spine to the spines of the third and fifth vertebra. This patient also made a good recovery. At the end of the second year he was able to move his head freely from side to side, and the left upper limb had regained its normal strength, and was quite free from tenderness. The third operation was performed for the cure of very painful and persistent neuralgia of certain closely circumscribed regions of the right upper extremity. After the trial of many plans of treatment, both medical and operative, the patient was completely relieved after exposure of the cord in the cervico-dorsal region, and resection of the posterior nerve roots corresponding to the last two cervical and the first dorsal vertebra.British Medical Journal.

It is hard, at times, to do one's duty, even when the plaudits of the populace, to say naught of their shekels, will in the end reward our efforts, but for an editor to conscientiously do his duty, recognizing at the time that in the doing of it he is lessening the popularity of his paper and the size of his income, is harder still. Yet it is the unflinching performance of this duty that we urge, insisting on it not alone for duty's sake, but because concerted action in this direction would soon restore medical journalism to the high eminence from which we feel it has fallen, and the faithful performance of the duty referred to would soon receive other

and more substantial reward than virtue's own. In short, the entire situation would be changed and the best edited papers would at once be the most successful and popular.

It is high time that the duty line in medical journalism was drawn and universally recognized when, as a unit, the medical press shall say to the abuses that threaten its usefulness: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." A line, too, that shall shut out the petty weaknesses that now impair its dignity and lessen its influence.

And what are these abuses, these weaknesses?

First, sensationalism-that bane of the newspaper press of to-day. Disguised, of course, in physician's garb, but none the less insidious in character, and all the more harmful in its influence.

Too great readiness to give space to the discussion of questionable theories, to the exclusion of sound, instructive argument in support of those that have been proven tenable.

A tendency to overshoot the intelligence of our readers, forgetting that we are writing to the many not the few, and that every general practitioner is not a specialist.

A disposition to, at least, passively, encourage professional "fads" simply because they are popular, instead of vigorously opposing them and mercilessly exposing them as fads.

A forgetfulness of the fact that we are, or are supposed to be, leaders of medical thought and not caterers to the perverted tastes of professional or literary epicures.

The ridiculous practice of expressing plain truths in such stilted, awe-inspiring language that the truths themselves are wholly obscured in the verbiage of words that clothe them.

A disposition to make our editorial columns subservient to the advertising pages, forgetting that even the negative endorsement of a medical journal has an influence that can scarcely be calculated and may be given a publicity by the advertiser that we ourselves would be most reluctant to have it given.

And last, but by no means least, the too frequent surrender to that potent factor-a yearly contract and the acceptance of advertising that should have no place in the columns of a well-edited medical journal that respects the principles it professes to uphold.

We mean, in short, that the advertising columns should be as carefully edited as any in the paper, and that no preparation or article should be advertised that we cannot fully, intelligently and conscientiously endorse.

It is no new code of newspaper morals that we ask shall be adopted, but recognizing our high mission as the medical press of this country, that we return to first principles, those that combine honesty with common sense.— Times and Register.