Publishers' Department.

CLEANLINESS IN CATARRH.-Dr. Edwin Pynchon, in an article in the Annals of Ophthalmology and Otology, calls attention to the widely varying formulæ of Dobell's Solution given by different authors, and incidentally mentions what is a really practical question in the treatment of naso-pharyngeal catarrh.

Numerous preparations are widely advertised as adapted for cleansing purposes in the nasal cavity, and are possibly of real merit, but the price asked for the product is so exorbitant that, to people of moderate means, the expense is a serious factor, while to the poor it is beyond their purse, and in each case after .he prescription has, perhaps, been filled once they cease its use and go back to the home remedy of salt and water of varying strength, and usually with disastrous results.

The Seller's tablets, made by different manufacturers, also vary in strength and composition, and our experience has taught us that several of those on the market can not be used without causing great smarting and even pain.

The fluid used in cleansing the nasal cavities in both atrophic and hypertrophic rhinitis should be of about the specific gravity of the serum of the blood, and this is acquired in the solution advised by Dr. Pynchon, which is as follows:

R Soda Bicarb............

Soda Biborat.....

Listerine (Lambert's)....
Glycerine...........

.2 ounces. ....2 ounces.

..8 ounces. ..1 pints.

One ounce of this formula added to a pint of water yields a bland and pleasant alkaline solution with a specific gravity of 1,015.

The addition of the Listerine takes the place of the carbolic acid in the original formula, and is a decided advantage, as it imparts a pleasant taste and is quite as efficacious as the acid.

The common use of Listerine and water should be superceded by the addition of the alkaline solution given, and in the preparation thus made we have all the advantages of any cleansing agent, and it can be furnished at a price commensurate with all pockets.-Atlantic Med. Monthly.

THE Phosphates of Iron, Soda, Lime and Potash, dissolved in an excess of Phosphoric Acid, is a valuable combination to prescribe in Nervous Exhaustion, General Debility, etc. Robinson's Phosphoric Elixir is an elegant solution of these chemicals. See second page of cover.

THE LARYNGOSCOPE, published in St. Louis, has been selected as the official organ, for the year 1897, of the Laryngological Section of the New York Academy of Medicine. This selection, and the great probability of the same journal being chosen by other Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Societies as their official organ, would indicate that The Laryngoscope has become what its proprietors stated they intended to make it, i. e., The American Journal of Record for the specialties represented.

MEDICINE AND SURGERY

C. S. BRIGGS, A. M., M. D., EDITOR.

VOL. LXXXI.

APRIL, 1897.

Original Gommunications.

NUMBER 4.

CHARGE TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 1897 OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE.*

BY L. B. GRADDY, M.D.,

Professor of Diseases of Eye, Ear, Throat, and Nose.

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class:-We meet to-night with mingled feelings of pleasure and regret. With pleasure that your college days have ended, and that you have acquitted yourselves so creditably. We can say without reflection upon the many excellent classes which have preceded you from this instit tion, that none of your predecessors have won a higher degree of merit nor a higher degree of esteem from their teachers than you have. Your diligence and manly deportment have won the admiration of your Faculty. We regret that the ties formed by

*Delivered at the Theatre Vendome, March 24, 1897.

association, which have been uniformly pleasant, must be broken. We meet to-night for the last time as teachers and students; to morrow we meet, so far as college requirements and degrees can make us, as equals in the great field of medicine. We feel both pleasure and pride in the belief that you are not only fitted with a proper knowledge to practice your art and become worthy members of this noble profession, but that you possess the gentlemanly instincts of the true physician.

I think you will agree that each member of your Faculty has met you in the double role of a painstaking teacher and friend, laboring earnestly for your advancement. We feel that we have laid the foundation for your success deep and broad, resting it upon the enduring principles of science. To build worthily upon this foundation, you will need the traditional midnight oil to light the way; the probe with which to reach the heart of unsolved problems; the scalpel with which to lay bare the facts. To build unworthily, a few convivial friends, a deal table in your private office, a pine box outside the door for the vulgar to sit and whittle on and "crack jokes" with "Doc." Unless you are already prepared to make the sacrifices, to perform the labor and discharge the duties necessary to high professional attainments, it were better that you abandon the profession now and enter upon some more congenial pursuit. Henceforth your destiny is in your own hands. Still we shall always be with you in spirit and hope to bind yet firmer the brotherhood born to-night.

You have adopted the noblest of professions; one which draws you into the most sacred relations with your fellowtman; broadening your charity for the weak; exciting your admiration for the strong; God-like in its precepts; angelic in its ministra tions; one filled with men whose names will forever adorn the pinacle of the temple of fame; who labor for nothing less than the relief of human suffering and the prolongation of human life; who never think of self in their search for truth until the waning spark of their own lives remind them that the elixir is antidoted with the decree: "Thou shalt surely die." To become worthy associates of such men will entail upon you endless toil, from which the faint-hearted might shrink, "Not failure but low aim is the crime,"

Medicine may never attain to the dignified title of an exact science, but many of its principles and many of its branches so closely approximate exactness that we are every day more and more warranted in using the phrase "scientific medicine." You are to be congratulated upon entering the profession at a time when so many truths are known and so many others in process of development. The young man of to-day begins his professional career with a knowledge which a few years ago would have been considered colossal. Formerly the teaching was almost wholly dydactic, based upon theories, many of which are now known to be false. Men of those times knew that malaria emanated from the marsh, that cholera came from the east, that yellow fever came from the south, that suppuration and erysipelas were common after surgical work; but the real cause of these affections-the materies morbi-was veiled in mystery, and the treatment necessarily empirical-expectant, as it was called, in which case it was expected that the chances of death were at least equal to the chances of recovery. At the present time the student is carried to the laboratory and shown the ultimate of the tissues of the body; is required to differentiate between the healthy and diseased structures; he is required to demonstrate the cause of disease by producing it himself in a healthy animal by the use of the identical material which causes the same disease in man. He sees and knows the cause of erysipelas and suppuration after surgical work and knows how to prevent their occurrence. If he does not avail himself of these facts in practice, he is derelict of duty and untrue to the teachings of his time. As an illustration of modern surgical practice let me remind you that only recently a microscopist in a hospital of more than a hundred surgical beds, asked for a drop of pus with which to make a demonstration, and not a drop could be found in the institution.

Not only is the student of to-day taught these facts as to surgery, but the teaching extends to purely non-surgical cases. He is brought face to face with the patient, the symptoms elicited in his presence, pathologic lesions demonstrated in an impressive way, in a word the true significance of everything connected with the case made plain. Moreover, he is made familiar with agents which, when used topically or internally, neu