do not advocate the refounding of a body whose function it shall be to antagonize the present societies, except, of course, insofar as membership in it would require nonaffiliation with any and all of them. We advocate an ethical society in the interest of scientific medicine and surgery, not of politics and commercialism, and one, moreover, to which we may belong with credit to ourselves, and to which we may point with pride and affection. What we propose, therefore, is not of the nature of a secession from the present state body, but a reentering upon the historical path from which it so radically diverged in 1902.'

*

The restriction of membership to quality naturally raises the question of standard for this prerequisite. A limitation of similar import has been declared through the Southern medical press, the only exception being that Dixie exclusiveness contemplates cutaneous pigment rather than cerebral possibility. The Michigan State Medical Society certainly experienced a long siege of numerical limitation, and, as regards quality of membership, the moral, medical, and mental standard averaged no higher than since reorganization became vogue. A great deal of discussion might be advanced along this line, but an article in a recent issue of the Lancet-Clinic regarding the exclusiveness of scientific societies in general contains a few sentences which seem especially applicable to this particular instance, and hence editorial prerogative is relinquished to contemporaneous expression: "Medical societies should he organized solely for the advancement of science and the love of truth, and they should stand with outstretched arms to welcome all who are willing to receive and ready to impart information and knowledge. Societies which are unnecessarily exclusive are necessarily narrow, prejudiced and bigoted, and their work will eventually partake of the same character. Additions to the societies are dominated by the same influences, and new members are qualified by personal rather than scientific attainments. These societies, like all organizations in general, are made up of the good, bad and indifferent, and the close affiliation and exclusion impart to mediocrity a false, fictitious value and an intolerable air of self-satisfaction. Their weakness is readily apparent, and their undoing is a matter of easy accomplishment."

Georgia is reported to be engaged in forming an Independent State Medical Society, and a Confederacy of Southern Medical Associations is suggested by a Southern medical journal. In fact a movement which points in that direction has already been inaugurated by the Arkansas State Medical Society, which lately appointed a committee to formulate plans for the establishment of a guild to be known as the Southwestern States Medical Association, and composed of the present State Medical Societies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, the procedure foreboding eventual secession from the American Medical Association.

The foregoing are some straws that indicate which way the wind is blowing, and it behooves the trustees and councilors to take cognizance of belligerent possibilities before the stage is reached where forbearance will cease to be a virtue. On the other hand, physicians should bear in mind that Rome was not built in a day. Time is required to perfect medical organization, and due allowance should be made for rocks and shoals encountered along the coast. The organization movement is indeed commendable and deserves hearty support, but the fact that four years of arduous work has brought only about four per cent of the profession into the fold seems to have created the impression that possibly an entire change of policy is the desideratum essential to insure wholesome success.

ANNOTATIONS.

THE UBIQUITY OF CELL UNDERSTANDING. BAUGH, of Canada, has offered some unique speculations on the origin of the human mind, tracing the development of cell intelligence from the ovum and spermatozoon to the fully matured comprehension. That these generative units possess cell intelligence is manifested by their inevitable union, the struggle for supremacy between the countless spermatozoa, and the final entrance of the victor into the female cell. The development of mind is evidenced by the evolution of cell understanding into the immature child brain, and eventually into the complex adult mentality. The prenatal mind is influenced by transmitted impressions through the mother, and the organism only becomes conscious of its being at birth, when, free from maternal influence, it delineates its own course. All cells are endowed with the faculty of choice, and their motility does not give rise to cell understanding, the reverse being true. The most minute particle of animate material possesses the power of generation, and also the faculty of producing a complex organism. The same intelligence which is apparent in animal cells is likewise manifest in plants, flowers and fruit, the phenomenon of cell intelligence therefore being ubiquitous.

MALARIA ASCRIBED TO ANKYLOSTOMA DUODENALE.

WHILE the dissemination of malaria has almost universally been ascribed to the pestiferous mosquito, the recent labors of Doctor Sehrwald, a Brazilian physician, with the Ankylostoma Duodenale, or hookworm, seems to emphasize the contention of certain authorities as to the prevalence of other methods of conveyance. In a number of cases of malaria under his observation, the investigator found the hookworm lodged in the intestinal tract of the victim. Serial sections of the parasite indicated that the malarial organisms wander from the intestine of

the worm into the mouth. The secretion of a peculiar fluid by the hookworm prevents the coagulation of its host's blood at the point to which it is attached, and that the transmission of the malaria parasite from the mouth of the worm directly into the blood of the person can readily be accomplished, is easy of conception. While no observations have been made with regard to transmission of the disease from person to person, by means of the eggs or larvæ of the hookworm, the investigator ventures the assumption that infection may occur in this way. Submitting that the theory of the Brazilian physician is correct, the deduction ensues that the application of quinine for the relief of malarial patients is of no avail so long as the parasite, the new etiologic factor in the disease, retains lodgement. The investigations of Sehrwald seem to indicate that persons who had suffered from malaria to the degree of becoming anemic and debilitated, were restored to perfect health after the elimination of the ankylostoma duodenale.

A WORD TO THE WISE.

THE enthusiasm incident to successful organization has caused. some State Medical Societies to arrogate greater authority than can be either advantageously or conveniently exercised. The bulletins established to promote organization have sadly neglected proper function. and exceeded rightful scope, ostensibly for the purpose of coralling every medical paper in sight and thereby forcing independent journalism from the field. In certain quarters, however, the folly of striving to conduct general journals has been realized, as for instance in Missouri -where people have to be shown-and the following change was recently instituted: "The association journal is to be hereafter more completely devoted to organization and unifying the association; it is not to be the organ of any county society, and will serve the best interests of each and all. Doctor Edward J. Goodwin, of Saint Louis, will be its managing editor, a choice which assures conservative and wise conduct for a valuable organ."

CONTEMPORARY.

PHYSICIANS AND PHILOSOPHERS.

[PROFESSOR CHARLES WILLIAM SUPER, OF OHIO UNIVERSITY, IN popular scienCE MONTHLY.]

(Continued from page 236.)

BOTH medical science and philosophy, though not metaphysics, had run their course by the time the Alexandrian era opened. A not inconsiderable number of new facts were collected in Alexandria, but the ability or the will to arrange them into an orderly system was lacking; at least we must adopt this view with the scant evidence to the contrary before us. For more than a thousand years the one question asked

was not, What does nature say? What are the facts in the case? but, What does the master say? Beginning with the first Christian centuries, Europe and western Asia more and more became organized into a society to suppress the increase of knowledge. It would not be easy to say in which century this organization did the most effective work, though there is no doubt that its most effective instrument was the inquisition. As everybody knows, it was not theology alone that was conservative; law and medicine were equally so. Goethe pays his respects to this attitude of mind when he says in Faust:

And again:

Hear, therefore, one alone, for that is best, in sooth,
And simply take your master's words for truth.

On words let your attention center!

Then through the safest guide you'll enter
The temple-halls of certainty.

Prepare beforehand well your part
With paragraphs all got by heart,

So you can better watch and look

That naught is said but what is in the book:
Yet in this writing as unwearied be

As did the Holy Ghost dictate to thee.

This conservatism was a characteristic of the times; the Protestant revolution was hardly more than the beginning of a struggle for emancipation in a single direction. It did not enlarge the intellectual horizon. of the lawyer or the physician. There is much evidence to show that with the rise of the belief in witchcraft, medical science, using the term in a very loose sense, received a distinct check. What was the advantage of familiarizing one's self with the nature or usual progress of a disease if its course was constantly liable to be interrupted by the will of some malevolent being possessed of supernatural power? What was to be gained by administering remedies that might at any time be rendered nugatory by the same demoniacal interference? Those who embraced the new faith promulgated by Luther were in some respects worse off than those who clung to the old religion. While Catholics and Protestants alike believed in witches and other agents of the devil, the former had also their saints and the Virgin, to whom they could appeal in time of temptation and distress and who were rarely appealed to in vain. For the latter, Satan and his emissaries were no less real; but he had given up his faith in the efficacy of the intercession of the saints and the Virgin. His only resource, therefore, was to protect himself as best he might by dealing mercilessly with those who had anything to do with the black art.

The late Herbert Spencer is said to have reached the conclusion toward the close of his life that man is not a rational being. One can hardly help subscribing to this creed when he learns the attitude of the public toward medical practice. We can understand why there should be a great deal of hazy thinking in matters of law and theology, since

they have to do with problems that are at best more or less abstract. But why the public should willfully shut its eyes to practical benefits in every-day matters, matters that so vitally concern its life and health, is hard to understand. Yet it is no harder to understand than why a stone will not of itself roll up hill. We can only realize this mental asphyxiation in the face of overwhelming evidence. It is explicable only from the standpoint of the universal belief in the utter powerlessness of man in the presence of the spirits that surround him and dwell within him. Though the scriptures have much to say about casting out devils, the belief in them is human rather than Christian, since it is found among all the peoples of the globe, except among that small class who may be called rationalists; or who, if not themselves entitled to this designation, have inherited a rationalistic creed; for a rationalist is simply one who refuses to believe anything except on such evidence as his reason approves.

There are grounds for believing that Aristotle dissected human. bodies; at least on no other grounds can his correct information with regard to certain points in anatomy be explained. But for prudential reasons he did not deem it wise to make public how this knowledge was obtained. Salerno seems to have been the first medical school in Italy outside of Spain, that is, the earliest in charge of Christians, and the probability is that its origin has some connection with the Arab domination. Bologna came into prominence in the thirteenth century and retained its preeminence for a long time. Here we have some definite. statements by Mondino that he dissected several cadavers. But his writings also furnish the proof that he was not able to emancipate himself wholly from the authority of Galen and the Arabians. For some reason there were fewer obstacles in the way of the anatomist in Italy than in any other country in Europe; Berenger of Carpi is said to have performed more than a hundred dissections. In Italy, too, we meet with a number of names that are immortalized by their discoveries in the human body. The chief merit of Vesalius lies in the fact that he clearly recognized for the first time many of the errors that had come into current belief by the authority of Galen..

Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, these three names sum up the science of ancient medicine; but the greatest of these is Hippocrates. It is perhaps not putting the case too strong if we say that they embrace substantially the entire healing art until not much over a century ago. The medical works of these three authors were printed in Italy before the end of the fifteenth century in Latin translations from the Arabic. This is striking testimony to the completeness of the rupture between ancient Greece and dawning era of modern times. When these Latin translations from the Arabic were made is not known; but it is known that they were very imperfect and that they were as blindly followed as were the writings of Aristotle. Galen's prestige was more due to his ambition and industry than to his individual merit. The great mass of medical knowledge was still accessible in manuscripts. This he