D. N. KINSMAN, M. D., COLUMBUS, OHIO. When I was a boy, at the top of the pages of the Bible there were certain figures, showing that from creation to Christ was 4004 years. Since then the spade has laid bare the ruins. of cities and temples, which must have been scores of centuries old at the time of Abraham. At Nippur was found a library of 130,000 tablets, containing a literature and history which must have required generations to develop. The Code of Hammurabi, the Amraphel of the 14th chapter of Genesis, was promulgated 2285 years B. C. This code contains a system of laws concerning personal and property rights, as complete as those of Ohio today. This code prescribes the fees a physician may charge a gentleman for service and the amount for his servant. Here also in sections 218 and 219, we find laws to protect against malpractice to the extent of having the hand struck off. The veterinarian was also mentioned, and his fees. In the Ebers papyrus, 1600 B. C., there is a list of 16 abdominal, 11 urinary, 10 rectal, 6 chest, 7 heart, 7 vascular, 30 eye, 6 ear, 4 nose, 3 head and 15 skin diseases. It reports a list of 700 medicines, and among prescriptions 74 hair tonics. The ladies had their medicine chests, which have come to our time. The Hebrews were great imitators. They brought many things out of Egypt. Sayce says that in the temple of Belus was the ark, the table of Shew-bread and brazen laver supported by brazen oxen, and the columns Jachin and Boaz of King Solomon's temple had their prototypes at Nippur and were repeated in the Phoenician temples long before they reached Solomon. Moses directed the covering of fecal matter while the Jews were wandering in the wilderness some thousand years before the process was patented. This is the best contribution in hygiene made by any ancient people. Among the Jews, many *Toast at the Canton Banquet, Ohio State Medical Association, May 8th, 1906. diseases were known. Miracles and prayers, with offerings, were their therapeutic measures. Saul's melancholia, Asa's gout, Jeroboam's palsy, Hezekiah's boil, the widow's sun smitten child, were all treated the same way. The sun stands still, iron swims, bitter waters are made sweet and the dead live in answer to prayer. "Nature's common course was strange and out of order, so oft hath the Lord invaded with miraculous intervention." In his last sickness the record is, "And Asa sought not unto the Lord, but unto the physicians, and he died," a victim to irregular practice of medicine. There was no need of science in this age and among this people. Among the Greeks, Aesculapius was the god of medicine. To him the ram was sacred. The patient killed the ram and, fasting at night, entered the temple of God, and reclined on the ram skin waiting developments. The god came incarnated in the priest with a crowd of beautiful girls, who prepared the medicine for the god who administered it. This is the first time we have known in history the medicine man to be aided by the trained nurse. Late in Grecian history, the Hippocratic family appeared, whose influence has come to our time. Among the Romans there were no physicians for nearly 1,000 years. During this time the plague visited Rome many times and five lectisternia were celebrated. These were processions of the weeping and praying people, following the couches, magnificently adorned, on which reclined the images of the gods and goddesses in pairs. At Rome, later, temples were built to secure special favors. Of these, three were built to fever, which still prevails at Rome and will prevail as it has for ages, not for want of religious ceremonies, but for want of drainage, screens and coal oil. There were temples to Cough, to Fessona, to Hygiene and Clitoris, Prosa, Posteria and Lucina. Ossapage's temple was the goal of those with rickets. The temple of Carna, the victims of Marasmus throng, and at Cremona a temple was built to Mephitis to cure a stench. Alexander sought relief from his fatal fever in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, where Vespasian cured the blind miraculously. There was only one star of the first magnitude in medicine at Rome. He lived in the first and second century A. D. This was Galen, who dominated medicine for fifteen centuries. When the theologians took possession of the world, between the first and fourth centuries, they settled the dogmatic relations between this world and the next and determined this life was simply to be a brief prelude to another and a better. As has always been the case when theologians rule, science languished and disappeared. In the sixth century, the most distinguished physician was Aetius. He was a believer in the magic power of certain formulae, and Sprengel says when he gave a patient medicine he accompanied it with a prayer in a loud voice, "May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob give efficacy to this medicine." From the time of Hammurabi and the Egyptians there were but few gleams of light which shone in the waste of darkness and supersition and ignorance. In 1620 Bacon gave the world his Novum Organon and the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. The scientific spirit had been born and men began to observe and think. The old order had passed. All things were new. Time would fail to tell you the triumphs of medicine since. Vaccination and anaesthesia, followed by the demonstration of the causes of cholera and typhoid, tuberculosis, plague, diphtheria, rabies and the mode of preventing and curing them. We stand today on a height whence we can survey the chaos of the past, the triumph of the present, and anticipate the glories of medicine in the future. A NEW METHOD OF TREATMENT OF ACNE. Eli Moschcowitz has applied Biers' principle of hyperemia to the treatment of acne, and reports very good results. The procedure consists in the application of dry cups to the affected region for one-half hour, once or twice a day. The suction must be very slight and the cup is removed and reapplied every one or two minutes. It takes from two to five sessions for each area to effect the desired result. The method does not prevent the appearance of new pustules, although they become less frequent. Eight cases were treated by this method alone with satisfactory improvement.-Medical Record, January 13, 1906. THE COLUMBUS MEDICAL JOURNAL. A MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY. EDITORS. JAMES U. BARNHILL, A. M., Ph. D., M. D., 248 E. State Street. ASSOCIATES. D. N. KINSMAN, M. D. V. A. DODD, M. D. H. H, SNIVELY, M. D. Communications relating to the editorial department should be addressed to Dr. J. U. Barnhill, 248 East State Street; those relating to business management should be addressed to Dr, W. J. Means, 715 North High Street. Per annum, in advance, subscription price, including postage... .15 cents. Bound volumes.. $1.00 2.00 Original articles, scientific and clinical. memoranda, correspondence and news items are cordially solicited from the profession. JULY, 1906 Editorial. THE BOSTON MEETING: In a long series of successful meetings of the American Medical Association the climax was reached in the recent Boston session. Many factors contributed to make it so, the pheromenal growth of the Association; increasing professional pride; general prosperity and unity of feeling throughout the entire profession; the abundant facilities for entertainment; the many objects of professional and historic interest, and with all the gracious hospitality of a cultured metropolis. According to the official Journal, over four thousand seven hundred registered, exceeding by eighteen hundred the largest previous registration-that of Atlantic City in 1904. A large number of physicians were present who did not register, besides invited guests and associate members, who are not included in the above figures. It is not an exaggeration to say that at least six thousand physicians were in attendance. An unusual number were accompanied by their wives and friends, so that one local newspaper statement that fifteen thousand visitors were in Boston as a result of the American Medical Association session was probably true. The local Committee of Arrangements, of which Dr. Burrell was Chairman, deserves "the highest commendation for the magnificent manner in which the Association was entertained. Never before in the history of the organization have the plans for its care and entertainment been conceived and executed on such a grand scale and with such attention to the minutest detail. With it all there was not the slightest attempt at ostentatious display. Not a single offensive advertisement was to be seen, but throughout the entire meeting everything from the greatest to the least was carried out with precision and with that dignity and graciousness which are so characteristic of this famous city. Never before has it been so apparent that the end and aims of the profession are not limited to personal and individual benefits nor to local conditions, but are co-extensive in philanthropy and beneficence with the welfare of the entire community, and that when the great interests of the public are concerned all individual differences are at once lost in that altruism which so characterizes the true physician." The Boston Evening Transcript said editorially: There is no question of the genuineness of Boston's welcome to the members of the American Medical Association, who assemble here this week. It is rarely our good fortune to entertain as fine, as interesting and as useful a body of workers for the welfare of society. That they, as a class, represent profound scientific knowledge, their credentials show. That they are the friends of suffering humanity their records prove. The easy superiority of the layman sometimes makes free with the achievements of the medical profession, but criticism rarely comes from those who have frequent need of its services. In hardly any other line of human endeavor has recent progress been so marked as in this. In it we see the result of tireless research and a splendid enthusiasm. Yet these results have frequently been obtained at the price of extreme sacrifice. There are incidents not a few where doctors have tested new |