goat to water! That is probably true. Why, then, don't you get in and improve the society by your presence?

Don't you know that wherever there is a good, solid organization among medical men, that fees are better; that bills are more promptly paid, and that the doctor is the most respected citizen in the community, as he should be?

I believe the majority of doctors are honest, as they should be; that they love truth and justice; they are just and upright and honorable with their patients and with themselves. I believe they feel the pangs and bitterness and remorse as they should, when they see some man who is riding to success by means of fraud, dishonesty and deception. Yet whose fault is it that such a state of affairs exists? Your own and nobody else's.

Is it not a fact that some doctors and even great surgeons are guilty of dichotomy? That the doctor acts as an agent in procuring patients for operation, and the celebrated surgeon gives him from 25 per cent. to 50 per cent. of the fees for his services? A traffic in human life. Is it not possible that celebrated surgeons who would stoop to such practices would operate when it was not necessary? Do not some physicians make out the most trivial iliness to be most grave, and tell the people if they had not been called, the patient would have died? Are the methods of some so-called ethical and upright men any different from the individuals whose faces adorn the advertising pages of the daily newspapers?

Is it not a fact that if they cannot get $1.00 per visit, that they will make it for 25 and 50 cents, in order to beat someone else out of work; and that to a family who are well able to pay? I do not think any member of a socity would object to a doctor charging a fee below the minimum in a poor family who wants to be honest and pay the doctor something. But when it comes to doing this in families who have dollars to where the average doctor has doughnuts, then it is time to call a halt. Cheap doctors are like cheap cigars, cheap whisky and cheap everything else. And they have a very poor opinion of their own abilities. "The laborer is worthy of his hire."

Then there is the case of the doctor being called in after another doctor was discharged and saying if he had only been called sooner, he could have saved the case. Liar, and he knows it.

Then there is the case of the doctor who is called in consultation and agrees as to the diagnosis and treatment of the attending physician in the presence of the family, but as soon as he can see some other relative, he will say that the attending physician is all wrong, and if a change is not made soon, the patient is going to die. Base hypocrite.

Then there is the case of the attending physician being called out of town or in the country, or inaccessible when one of the cases suddenly gets worse, and it is necessary to call in someone else. I wonder how many physicians have read the Code of Ethics? I wonder if they have ever heard of it? It is my honest opinion that the Code of Ethics was taught better years back than of late years.

There is no one thing quite so likely to dsiturb the poise and higher aims of a young practitioner than to find out that some pompous old veteran in the profession is daily violating the things that he was taught to hold inviolate. Many of the first steps of misconduct were taken at this early period and the younger doctor is forced, in self-defense, to repeat the mis-step until, like all other vices and habits, it becomes fixed, and he goes on daily practicing wthout thinking, the things he formerly knew to be wrong.

Now, if these things be wrong, and there are those of us who have not so far forgotten our sense of obligation and right, why do we permit things to continue? These are always unpleasant things to tackle. Most all of us prefer to travel the pleasant by-ways, rathr than the unpleasant. But you know "God hates a coward." Two wrongs don't make a right. Then let us up and tackle wrongs like the Christian tackles sin. What is the use of code, principles, societies and organizations and right, when they are being daily violated? Throw them all to the dogs and disregard our sacred obligation handed down for so many centuries by hypocrites, which are as follows: "With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my art. I will always conduct myself above the suspicion of wrong doing and harm."

Instead, we will make our sole object and aim gain and greed. We will obtain it by hook and crook, by fair or foul means; by deceit, by lies, hypocrisy and by fraud. Such means and methods have sometimes been successful in business and

politics in the past; they do occasionally succeed at the present day, but the jails and penitentiaries are being overcrowded by ignominious failures.

Quacks and Charlatans have grown rich and waxed fat in the past by working on the credulity of an unsuspecting public.

Every honest physician has been compelled to watch, with chagrin, some clap-trap grow oppulent out of some worthless nostrum, but he was partly to blame in not safeguarding his own interest and that of the public by his efforts and activities in his local society. The mass of people want enlightenment on these harmful effects, and they look to their medical advisors for it.

Two, at least,' of our greatest periodicals have taken a step in advance of us-Mr. Bok, in the Ladies' Home Journal, and Mr. Adams, in Colliers' Weekly. They have refused to take any advertising of that kind and have, in able editorials, exposed these frauds to the public.

What have you done toward it, brother physicians? Not a thing. You have a right and it is your duty to help along in this glorious work.

We are in dire need of much special legislation, both State and Federal, along medical lines. There is more work than we can hope to do in the next fifty years, that needs to be done now. Why don't we get at it? Because we are not more thoroughly organized in our county societies; because each organization is not willing to make itself felt in the community. You may say that public officials do not listen to organizations, but I assure you this is a mistake. We have a very amusing spectacle of a public official who did not heed the pleadings of a certain organization, before us at the present time.

I can do no better right here than to quote you from an editorial in No. 10, vol. xlv., September 2, the Journal, A. M. A., on the county society and the organization movement. The recognition of the importance of the county society as a unit is the basic principle on which the work of organization has been and is being conducted. The most important unit in the scheme of organization is the county society. Then comes the State association and the American Medical Association. The last is the least important of the three; the first, the county society, the most important.

Every effort that has been made by the American Medical Association in developing organization, has been made with the above principle in view-the importance of the county or local society.

Now the machinery all over the country is practically complete, and results must be looked for. These are many, but the most important is the making the county societies something more than a name; something more than a piece of machinery lying idle, rusting. It must be a living force to dignify medicine as a profession; to increase public respect for and elevate the material, moral and intellectual status of that profession.

How can this be accomplished? How can the county society be made a power for good to those who belong to it and to the community? In many and various ways. The first thing to be recognized, however, is the average county society, if left to itself, will become dormant.

There are many exceptions, but this is the rule. Another thing must be appreciated. If a society can be made a living, active force for good in one community, a similar society can be kept up in another community where similar conditions exist.

out.

In the Highland County Medical Society there are many things that we would like to see come to pass. We would like to see all the principles embodied in Dr. Simmons' editorial carried We would like to see an increased membership in our society. There are at least twenty physicians in the county who should become members of this societp. It is just as much to their interest as ours. We need their influence and support to strengthen and uphold the local society. This society does not exist for any particular individual or clique. I think a feeling of unselfishness prevails, and anyone with proper motives will be given a "square deal." We want to do for all as well as the individual. We would like to have it understood that the county society exists for the upbuilding of the profession individually and collectively.

We would like to see a greater interest taken by the members of the society, not only at the meetings, but outside. Your officers are elected to do your bidding-not their own.

We would like to make the society a sort of clearinghouse, where difficult and interesting cases could be presented. A postgraduate course, as it were, where the knowledge and experience

of each individual member could be increased. I think there are none of us but what realize our short comings, our inefficiencies and incompetencies.

There is no man living but what, at times, has felt how little he knew. Only the fool and idiot profess to know it all. We would like to see the empyricism so often seen, usurped by scientific accuracy. There are many who do not know yet that medicine, while not an exact science, like mathematics, is becoming more so each day. The former guessing is done now by the rule and square. Modern medicine is truly a scientific study. But above all this, we would like to see a fraternal feeling existing among the profession; a feeling of unselfishness and selfabnegation; a feeling that success is not always measured by the number of patients seen each day, nor the amount of money accumulated. You must all come to know that the fate of fortune, sooner or later, levels all things. That "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may."

That true worth is only obtained at the greatest sacrifice; that truth, honor and industry are three most priceless jewels in a physician's name.

There is one obligation we should not forget. Commercialism has so invaded our craft in these days of "frenzied finance" that we too often lose sight of it. That is the obligation we owe to our fellow men, to humanity. Our calling descended from the most ancient priests and saints. The mythological characters, Aesculpius and Hygeia, were, shortly after the Christian Era, superceded by the holy martyrs, Cosmas and Damian (two) brothers). They were deeply moved by the Christian religion and actuated by the noblest motives, and practiced the art of healing with the utmost self-sacrifice. For their fealty, Lysias ordered them to be beheaded; whereupon their souls took flight heavenward.

Our priesthood is not only that of a healer of the sick and afflicted, but to do good; to give good counsel; to alleviate suffering and pain and to soothe the bed of affliction. And when the lives of our patients come down to the parting of the way, when all has been done that human power can do in this world, then do we drop the garb of science and don the robe of the priesthood. When the last earthly ties are severed, severed, then do we