verts; controversies arose; he excited the indignation of the medical faculty of Paris, who stigmatized him as a charlatan; still the people crowded to him.

While at Paris his practise became so enormous that it was impossible for him to handle all his patients. So he invented a scheme by which a number of his patients could be magnetized at once. He had troughs filled with bottles of water and iron filings, around which the patients stood holding iron rods which issued from the troughs. All the subjects were tied to each other by cords so that they could not break away and thus spoil the contact. Perfect silence was necessary and soft music was heard. The patients were affected variously, according to the suggestion Mesmer gave them. Some became hysterical, others crazed, some became affectionate and embraced each other, while others laughed and became repulsive. This lasted for hours and was followed by states of dreaminess and languor. A picture given by Binet and Feret, two eminent French scientists, will present an idea of these meetings.

"Mesmer, wearing a coat of lilac silk, walked up and down amid this agitated throng accompanied by Deslon and his associates whom he chose for their youth and comeliness. Mesmer carried a long iron wand, with which he touched the bodies of the patients, and especially the diseased parts. Often laying aside the wand, he magnetized the patients with his eyes, fixing his gaze on theirs, or applying his hand to the hypochondriac region and to the abdomen. This application was often applied for hours, and at other times the master made use of passes. He began by placing himself 'en rapport' with his subject. Seated opposite to him, foot against foot, knee against knee, Mesmer laid his fingers on the hypochondriac region and moved them to and fro, lightly touching the ribs. Magnetism with strong electric currents was substituted for these manipulations when more energetic results were to be produced. The master, raising his fingers in a pyramidal form, passed his hands over the patient's body, beginning with the head, and going downward over the shoulders to the feet. He then returned to the head, both back and front, to the belly and the back, and renewed the process again and again until the magnetised person was saturated with the healing fluid and transported with pain or pleasure, both sensations being equally salutary. Young women were so much gratified by the crisis that they wished to be thrown into it anew. They followed Mesmer through the halls and confessed that it was impossible not to be warmly attached to the person of the magnetizer."

Mesmer was not an imposter by any means. He had deceived himself and had thus deceived others. But the Academy of Sciences in Paris believed that he was a mystic and a fanatic, and made it so hot for him that he was finally forced to leave France, where, however, he returned later. He died in 1815, and for a time animal magnetism fell into disrepute and Mesmer was denounced as an imposter.

Before Mesmer's death, he moved from Paris to a secluded spot among the hills. We see him at the last-bitterly complaining of the

treatment he had received, thoroughly convinced as to the truth of his pet theories, performing various cures for the peasants about him, and living the simple life of a hermit.

Throughout Mesmer's career, the streets were not paved with gold. Many people died under his treatment, giving the belief that the treatment itself was the cause of death. He was treated with ridicule wherever he went. Papers, plays, et cetera, brought him even more prominently before the public in a more ridiculous light than his own. hypothetical and mystical performances. A comedy, "Docteur Modernes" brought his procedures on the stage. It severely criticized his "fanatical" enthusiasm for a quondam science and portrayed the supposed abuses of his treatment. In England notices like the following appeared in the leading journals:

"The Wonderful Magnetical Elixir. Take of the chemical oil of Fear, Dread and Terror, each four ounces; of the Rectified Spirits of Imagination, two pounds. Put all these ingredients into a bottle of fancy, digest for several days, and take forty drops at about nine in the morning, or a few minutes before you receive a portion of the magnetic Effluvia. They will make the effluvia have a surprising effect, et cetera.

Once, in 1785, a mock funeral oration upon Mesmer took place, making his exhibitions and theories seem more ridiculous than ever. Thus he was tossed about between ridicule and praise until, as we have seen, his life was hardly one of harmony or joy.

BRAID.

Although a number of men followed Mesmer, appropriating his method, enlarging' upon it and changing it somewhat-such men as de Puysegur-it will be impossible in such a brief essay to tell of all of them. However, there is one man who rose up in the chaos of the times and again added new facts and theories to the science. This man was Braid, a surgeon of Manchester, England. Braid was born. in the year 1795 on his father's estate in Fifeshire. He received his education at the University of Edinburgh, later being apprenticed to Doctor Charles Anderson, of Leith. After graduating, he was appointed surgeon to the Hopetown mining works in Lanarkshire, after moving to Dumfries, where he engaged in practise with a Doctor Maxwell. An accident happening at that time brought to his town a Mr. Petty, who finally persuaded him to move to Manchester. It was here that he carefully worked on his new discovery and practised his cures. He died on March 25, 1860.

There is very little in Braid's life of especial interest, except his investigations in animal magnetism. His life seems to have been particularly free from the early struggles of a young practitioner. His interest in animal magnetism dates from the time he witnessed a séance by a M. Lafontaine, a traveling mesmerist. He was extremely skeptical, but this one urged him to try experimenting himself.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

MEDICAL NEWS.

THE AESCULAPIAN GRIST AT ANN ARBOR. THE following received the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the late commencement exercises of the University of Michigan: Elmer Goodman Balsam, Robert Hause Beach, A. B., Frederick Beekel, A. B., Gordon Berry, A. B., Joseph Tower Berry, B. S., Elton Pope Billings, A. B., Richard Arthur Bolt, A. B., Fritz Albert Brink, Eugene Taylor Brunson, A. B., William Sanders Chapin, A. B., Leroy William Childs, A. B., Frederick Earl Clark, Herbert Everett Coe, A. B., Anna Marion Cook, George Henry Crary, Marshall Lawrence Cushman, Charles Carroll Demmer, David Lewis Dunlap, B. S., Norma Bertha Elles, Ralph David Engle, A. B., Lemuel William Famulener, Ph.C., A. B., Myron Stephen Gregory, Edward Goodwin, Hilbrand J. Hards, John Frank Hastings, John Francis Hincks, Lester Orlo Houghten, Lloyd Watterson Howe, Ivan Lewis Hunt, David Sanders Jickling, Catherine Johnston, B. S., Harrie W. Kenfield, Guy Almeron Klock, Don DeWitt Knapp, A. B., David J. Levy, A. B., Frank Adam McJunkin, Fraley McMillan, A. B., Frank Noble Martin, George Washington More, John Walter Needles, A. M., D. D. S., Roscoe Charles Olmstead, A. B., Frank Joseph Parizek, Paul Morse Patterson, Esther Kempton Payne, Alvin Roy Peebles, Frank Cleveland Pennell, A. B., Charles Arthur Peterson, Eryl Smith Peterson, John Hibbard Pettis, A. B., Julius Henry Powers, Jr., A. M., Lewis D. Remington, Walter Henry Rieger, Orville Rockwell, Fred Schoepfle, Jr., Royston Earl Scrafford, Lucetta Amelia Smith, John William Snyder, Arturo Torregrosa, A. B., Chad Adelbert Van Dusen, Dell Warner Ward, A. B., John Taylor Watkins, Anna Weld, Ray Close Whitmore, Carl John Wiggers, William G. Winter, Frank Clarence Witter, Walter Stuart Woodruff, James Anderson Work, Jr., A. B., Hessel Sjoerd Yntema, A. B.

MINOR INTELLIGENCE.

TYPHOID fever has developed at the United States Military Academy, several cases having recently been reported.

Of the one hundred seventy-one slaughter houses in Philadelphia, thirty-seven have been condemned by the Bureau of Health, because of unsanitary conditions.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY recently conferred the degree of Doctor of Science on Baron Kanehiro Takaki, M. D., F. R. S. C., SurgeonGeneral of the Japanese navy.

BERLIN has a society for the study of the history of the sciences and of medicine. The president is Imperial Privy Councilor von Buchka, and the vicepresident is Professor Paget.

IPSWICH, South Dakota, is in the throes of an epidemic of typhoid fever. Over one hundred persons contracted the disease at a picnic as a result of drinking lemonade, the water for which was procured from an abandoned well.

DOCTOR G. FRANK LYDSTON, the well-known author, of Chicago, is shortly to issue another novel entitled "Poker Jim." The story depicts the characteristics of the early American frontier type, and will undoubtedly be of great interest.

A BROOKLYN mother has recently given birth to her twenty-first child. Eleven of the children have been females and ten males, and of this total seventeen survive, making what is conceded to be the largest family in Greater New York.

THE first person to receive the degree of Doctor of Medicine in North America was Daniel Turner. The degree was an honorary one and was conferred by Yale College in 1720, as a mark of esteem for the financial aid he had tendered the institution.

TWENTY nurses recently became ill with ptomain poisoning at Bellevue Hospital, as a result of eating canned tongue and ham. In justice to the institution it should be said that the prepared food was not from the hospital larder, but had been brought in by the nurses.

THE New York Postgraduate Medical School and Hospital is the recipient of a gift of $5,000 from Mr. and Mrs. Edgar E. Brandon, of Oxford, Ohio. The sum is to be utilized in the establishment of an obstetrical ward in memory of the infant son of the donors.

ARTICLES of incorporation have recently been filed for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Little Rock, Arkansas. The new institution will open its doors on October 1, in the old Maddox Seminary Building. The president of the college is Doctor C. R. Shinault.

A PHYSICIANS' CLUB was recently organized by the physicians of Escanaba, Michigan. A schedule of fees was adopted and the following officers elected: President, Doctor A. F. Snyder; vicepresident, Doctor H. B. Reynolds; secretary, Doctor H. W. Long; treasurer, Doctor J. D. Groos.

THROUGH the generosity of Doctor Eugene F. Cordell, Professor of the History of Medicine and librarian of the Medical School of Maryland University, that institution is to receive the Miltenberger collection of nine hundred forty-six volumes, making a total for the library of six thousand two hundred eighty works.

THE substitution of paper handkerchiefs for the linen article is being agitated in London, where the argument is advanced that their employment will inhibit the dissemination of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. In many English sanatoria paper handkerchiefs have already been adopted. Receptacles are provided for their disposition and subsequently they are burned.

TORONTO, Ontario, has been converted into a medical mecca during the month of August. From the 21st to the 25th the British Medical Association was in session; on August 19 the American Orthopedic Association assembled; and on the following day the Ontario Medical Association convened its annual meeting.

A NOVEL patient was presented for treatment at Bellevue Hospital a short time ago, in the person of a monkey, whose left forefoot had been fractured in a fracas with the cook, on whose ship he was mascot. A plaster cast was applied under ether anesthesia and conditions augur well for the complete recovery of his monkeyship.

TWENTY-SEVEN cases of variola are reported from the Isthmus, all the victims being negroes. The disease is principally confined to the City of Colon, the remainder of the Canal Zone being practically exempt. No American has yet contracted the malady and no deaths are reported from existing cases. This is the first outbreak of smallpox since the American invasion.

REPORT says that the wife of Wu Ting Fang, former Chinese minister to Washington, has subjected herself to a surgical operation with the hope of restoring her deformed feet to their natural symmetry. Many Chinese women have resorted to like procedure, and the probability obtains that the abominable practice of foot-binding peculiar to the Orientals will be discountenanced in future.

THE free alcohol bill was passed by the senate on May 23. This permits of the employment of grain alcohol in the arts and for commercial purposes without payment of internal revenue tax. The passage of this bill is to be commended, since the followers of pursuits requiring constant contact with wood alcohol were frequently subjected to great discomfort, sometimes even loss of eyesight or fatal illness resulting.

THE first American law distinguishing between physicians who were graduates of some college of medicine and those who had no diploma, was passed in Virginia in 1736. It provided that "those persons who have studied physic in any University, and taken a degree therein," might charge whatsoever fee they desired, while "surgeons and apothecaries who have served an apprenticeship to those trades" must charge a lower specified fee.

MUNICIPAL Control of the practice of medicine is vogue in Zurich. The council of that city, having successfully regulated hygienic conditions, now essays to retain only forty physicians, whose salary will be £500 per annum, and who must tender, gratis, treatment alike to rich and poor. Since Zurich has a population of one hundred twelve thousand inhabitants it would seem that the medical staff is inadequate, and hence the success of the venture will be awaited with interest.