good reason why national quarantine or national sanitation should not be as effective as national defense.

THE COMPARATIVE MERITS OF ANTIPYRETICS.

THE Contribution made by Drs. David Cerna and William S. Carter to the definite knowledge of the action of antipyretics is valuable. In a study of the comparative action of antipyrin, phenacetin and phenocoll they find, in regard to heat phenomena, that all three fail to produce any effect on the heat functions of the normal animal. Antipyrin produces a fall of temperature due to increase of heat distribution with a fall in heat production. Phenacetin acts similarly to antipyrin, though delayed in its action due to insolubility of the drug. Phenocoll produces a decided reduction the first hour of administration, due to diminished heat production, without change in heat distribution.

MEDICAL NEWS.

TYPHUS FEVER has made its appearance in New York city.

SIR RICHARD OWEN, the distinguished anatomist, died in London, December 9. THE Comma bacillus does not thrive on curare, neither does it on tobacco. RUSSIA will soon have an inebriate asylum-the first one established in that country.

THE physicians of New York have the right to cross the line of any parade or procession.

MISS GARRETT, of Baltimore, has given two hundred thousand dollars to the Johns Hopkins hospital.

BERLIN has one hundred and eighty-three polyclinics and is beginning to think the thing overdone.

A CHLORODYNE habitué died recently in Wales who used to take every week about five ounces of the drug.

DURING the past few weeks several hundred deaths have occurred from typhoid fever in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

INDIANS are said to take very kindly to anæsthetics and once they have seen them used desire them for trivial purposes.

A DAY in bed once a month is prescribed for the overworked physician as something better than an annual vacation.

DR. JOHN RIDLON, of Chicago, has been appointed professor of orthopedic surgery in the post-graduate school of that city.

THE Presbyterian hospital, of Chicago, has established a special and detached ward for the care and treatment of consumptives.

On the ground that its title and contents conflict, the medical practice act of South Dakota has been declared unconstitutional.

MEDICAL students who served in the Hamburg hospitals during the cholera epidemic are to be remunerated for their work at the rate of twenty marks a day.

A GIFT of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars was recently received by the medical college of the Western Reserve university.

CHOLERA INOCULATION.-Dr. Haffkine, of the Pasteur institute, is about to proceed to India to apply his method of dealing with cholera endemics.

AT the recent meeting of the Intercolonial medical congress of Australia six hundred members were present and one hundred and sixty papers were read.

THERE are seventy female physicians in London, five in Edinburgh, two in Dublin, thirty-five in Paris, one in Algiers, and two thousand in the United States.

THE Cost of conducting the Journal of the American Medical Association for one year is thirty-three thousand, four hundred and seventy-nine dollars and ninety

one cents.

THE highest legal tribunal in Germany has decided that legal human life does not begin in the foetus until labor has set it, and that its destruction before full term is not murder.

AT the recent meeting of the American electro-therapeutic association Dr J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, was elected a member of the executive committee for 1893.

DR. HENRY T. BYFORD, of Chicago, has been elected to the chair of gynecology in the college of physicians and surgeons, of Chicago, vice Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, recently deceased.

A BILL will be introduced into the Nebraska legislature, the purport of which is to amend the law relative to capital punishment by substituting death by electricity in place of hanging.

GOOD work is being done by the anti-tuberculous league of France, who have distributed over two million, six hundred thousand circulars giving practical information on preventive measures.

A ROYAL HEART FOR SALE.-The heart of the Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, preserved in alcohol since the death of its owner ninety-seven year ago, is for sale at auction.

A CONFERENCE on cholera was held in Saint Petersburg last month. It was called for the purpose of instituting precautions against the expected outbreak of the disease which is likely to occur next year.

THE Columbian exposition will have a bureau of hygiene and sanitation. It will aim "to show as adequately as possible the position in which the theory and practice of hygiene stands at the present day."

THE hospitals of New York city have been ordered by the fire commissioners to comply with a new law passed by the legislature, which calls upon them all to have a night watchman and a gong and annunciator apparatus.

A NEW medical law in France abolishes the grade of officier de santé, and requires anyone desiring to practice medicine in that country to possess a diploma obtained by examination before the faculty of medicine. Certain parts of the examination are not required of foreigners who possess a medical degree.

HARD TO PROVE.—A man recently brought suit to recover damages from the keeper of a restaurant for injuries sustained in swallowing a needle in his food. He could bring forward no evidence that the needle was in his food.

A STRANGE LAWSUIT.-A merchant of Dayton, Ohio, had his kidney removed by a surgeon. His attending physician claims the healthy kidney was removed. Suit is instituted to recover the kidney now in possession of the surgeon.

THE deaths from surgical operations in New York city, says the New York Medical Journal, in 1891, were one hundred and thirty-three. Ten per cent. were due to the operation of circumcision, performed, it is presumed, in these cases, by Rabbis.

THE WORLD'S FAIR AND PATENT MEDICINES.-"Articles that are in any way dangerous or offensive, also patent medicines, nostrums, etc., empirical preparations whose ingredients are concealed, will not be admitted to the exposition," so reads Rule XV of pamphlet on "Classification."

DR. BERVAH A. WATSON, of Jersey City, died on December 22, aged fifty-six years. He has achieved distinction in the profession through his medical works. During the rebellion he was an army surgeon of prominence, and at the time of his demise was a leading practitioner.

THE university of Edinburgh has decided to grant diplomas to specialists. Regular medical graduates who have taken the required five years' course for the degree of M. D., may become applicants for special degrees by pursuing a oneyear course of study in the branch of their choice.

RUSSIA has indefinitely postponed the establishment of separate medical schools for women. The project has been set aside through the influence of the minister of religion, who views the higher education of women in an unfavorable light, being of the opinion that the study of medicine leads to materialism and nihilism.

FIAT JUSTITIA.—It is said by those in charge of the silver statue of "Justice," now being made as Montana's mining exhibit at the World's Fair, that Miss Ada Rehan, of New York, was chosen as the model, because out of the sixty-eight measurements which mark the standard of perfect womanhood, in sixty-two she conformed to the requirements, and in none of the other six did she deviate onequarter of an inch from the standard.

THE number of medical practitioners in each of the ten principal cities of Italy is as follows: Turin, with a population of 613,995, has 431 doctors; Genoa, with 425,854, has 240; Milan, with 275,164, has 391; Venice, with 149,686, has 124; Bologna, with 354,584, has 215; Florence, with 539,855, has 281(?); Rome, with 507,504, has 506; Palermo, with 486,448, has 316; Messina, with 238,294, has 117; Naples, with 678,891, has 1,323.

THE Committee on membership of the American pharmaceutical association is anxious to present, at the Chicago meeting next August, a long list of names of reputable pharmacists of the United States and Canada. Blank applications and full information regarding fees, benefits of becoming a member, etc., can be obtained by addressing the chairman of the committee, Dr. H. M. Whelpley, 2342 Albion Place, Saint Louis, Missouri.

SAN FRANCISCo has a greater number of opium smokers and opium dens than any other civilized city in the world. Over five hundred thousand pounds of smoking opium entered that port during the past eight years, fifty thousand pounds of this amount having landed during the first six months of last year. Nearly all of this enormous quantity is smoked in the golded state.

PROFESSIONAL advertising recently received condemnation from the San Francisco county medical society in a resolution which declared "That any member of this society whose name shall appear in the daily press, describing his professional powers in an unprofessional manner, and who cannot give a satisfactory explanation of the same, shall, at the next meeting, be expelled from the society." Several members have already been expelled for periods varying from thirty to ninety days.

AT the annual meeting of the trustees of Saint Luke's hospital, Chicago, it was shown that during the year one thousand, five hundred and four patients were admitted, fifty-eight per cent. of them being cured, and ten per cent. meeting with fatal results. The receipts were forty-seven thousand, three hundred and forty-three dollars and seventy-nine cents, and disbursements fifty-six thousand, five hundred and ninety-nine dollars and thirty-nine cents. The cases treated at the dispensary numbered five thousand, nine hundred and thirteen. Legacies received during the year aggregated fifty thousand dollars.

THE French benevolent society of San Francisco have decided to erect a magnificent two hundred thousand dollar hospital. It will be built on the pavilion plan and will comprise seventeen buildings, besides operating rooms, laboratories, porter's lodge, and stable accommodations for horses and carriages. It will have a capacity for one hundred and fifty patients, twenty-five beds being for chronic cases, one hundred for the different wards, and twenty-five for pay patients. One pavilion will be given to female patients, and another to surgical cases. There will be six beds for contagious diseases, twelve for tuberculosis, and twenty for surgical cases.

DURING the year ending September 30, the receipts of the Illinois training school for nurses, located at Chicago, aggregated twenty-six thousand, two hundred and sixteen dollars and sixty-nine cents. The expenditures for the same period were twenty-eight thousand and twelve dollars and fifty-two cents. These figures show a deficit of about two thousand dollars. The Cook county hospital paid thirteen thousand, five hundred and seven dollars and thirty-three cents, and the Presbyterian hospital twelve thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine dollars and thirty-six cents to the school during the year for nurses. The cost of maintaining the training school was eighteen thousand, seven hundred and ninety-seven dollars and fifty cents; hospital expenses about four thousand, five hundred dollars.

A STRUCTURE devoted to children and their interests is to be erected and equipped at the Columbian exposition by the board of lady managers. The following information from their circular will be of interest as showing the scope of the work undertaken: "A series of manikins will be so dressed as to represent the manner of clothing infants in the different countries of the world, and a demonstration will be made of the most healthful, comfortable, and rational

system of dressing and caring for children according to modern scientific theories; while their sleeping accommodations, and everything touching their physical interests, will be discussed. Lectures will also be given upon the development of the child's mental and moral nature by improved methods of home training. The building will have an assembly room containing rows of little chairs, and a platform from which stereopticon lectures will be given to the older boys and girls, about foreign countries, their languages, manners, and customs, and important facts connected with their history. These talks will be given by kindergartners, who will then take the groups of children to see the exhibits from the countries about which they have just heard. This audience room will also be available for musical, dramatic, and literary entertainments, which will be carefully planned to suit the intelligence of children of varying ages. One of the numerous associations interested in such work will probably conduct a crèche, where young children can be left in the care of experienced nurses, who will provide for all their wants while their mothers are visiting the various departments of the exposition. On the ground floor of the building there will be a large square court, which will serve as a play-ground for the children."

THE medical society of the state of Pennsylvania has prepared a bill for presentation to the legislature which has for its purpose the establishment of a medical examining board. The following abstract will serve to show the purport thereof: "(1) The board shall consist of nine members, graduates of some legal medical school, no two of whom shall be residents of the same county, and none of whom shall be a member of the faculty or staff of any medical school or university. (2) The members shall be appointed by the governor by and with the advice and consent of the senate. (3) Only physicians commencing practice in Pennsylvania after July 1, 1893, shall be examined in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, pathology, hygiene, toxicology, differential diagnosis, surgery, and obstetrics; and each applicant, upon receiving from the secretary of the board an order for an examination, shall draw by lot a confidential number, which he or she shall place upon his or her examination paper, so that when said papers are passed upon by the examiners the latter shall not know by what applicant said papers have been prepared, and upon each day of examination all candidates shall be given the same set of questions. (4) The examination papers and marks shall be preserved and shall be open to public inspection in case of dispute. No one shall be excluded or rejected on account of adherence to any special system or school of practice. (5) Each applicant who shall have passed a satisfactory examination shall receive from the said board under seal a license to practice medicine and surgery in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (6) Nothing in this act shall be construed to prohibit service in cases of emergency or the domestic administration of family remedies. (7) The applicant shall pay an examination fee of ten dollars, and in case of failure at any examination shall have the privilege of subsequent examinations without the payment of an additional fee." The bill is endorsed by the Jefferson medical college, the University of Pennsylvania, the Woman's medical college, and the Polyclinic, of Philadelphia. There are nine hundred and thirty-two undiplomaed quacks in Pennsylvania, and about two hundred and twenty-two more who are practicing on diplomas purchased from bogus medical colleges.