THE HYGIENE OF THE LYING-IN-ROOM.

ALTHOUGH it is well known that wo

men in the puerperal state are peculiarly sensitive to the influence of imperfect sanitation, it is remarkable that comparatively little attention is paid to the hygiene of the lying-in-chamber in private dwellings.

We do not believe the careful practitioner ignores the importance of disinfectants in this connection, yet it is true their use is frequently considered of secondary value, when the greatest skill will be vain so long as the surroundings of the patient are lowering the vitality or poisoning the blood.

Because of the unpleasant odor, it is easily understood why objection should be made to the use about the room of chloride of lime or carbolic acid, or any pungent compound,but when thorough dis

be attained by the use of odorless yet harmless chemicals, it seems it should be a pleasing duty of the physician to adopt. their use.

For this purpose especially let us again call your attention to Platt's Chlorides, at once a reliable disinfectant, a prompt deodorant and a powerful antiseptic, entirely free from odor or color, clean, stainless and economical.

The following practical words from a well known New York City physician are to the point:

In all confinements, with the best of care, there is necessarily a good deal of offensive air under the bed covers which is not due to offensive lochia, but to perfectly normal discharges and perspiration, both of which are so profuse

unpleasant to the lady herself as to her physician and attendants. For all these conditions let me urge the profession to make free use of "Platt's Chlorides." For injections at first, use one part to thirty of water. The strength can be easily modified to suit the circumstances. For simply purifying the room or bed, I saturate towels with undiluted Chlorides and hang about the room or spread between the sheets and resaturate when evaporation is complete. It is very effectual.

A. M. PIERSONS, M. D., 24 East 127th St.

VOL. IX.

Institutes.

SOME THOUGHTS ON MEDICAL

EDUCATION.

BY T. P. WILSON, M. D., DETROIT, MICH.

IF after more than thirty years of

medical college work, being closely connected with the details of the education of medical students, one should find himself fallen into a rut and willing to remain there, while at the same time and naturally enough-possessed of only fixed and fossiliferous ideas, it might be doubtful if the opinions of such a person could possess more than an antiquarian interest.

The head of an old medical college professor, might, if opened, be found empty save some dust, and it might also be that an automaton, skillfully prepared, might deliver lectures as well as he. Still, experience has its advantages and doubly so if the lifelong teacher has been dissatisfied with prevalent methods and has been among the foremost in promoting a new and better system of instruction.

Medical education is a subject quite too comprehensive to be treated in a single article like this; or indeed in anything less than a fair octavo volume of several hundred pages. As I view it,

No. 10.

question unless he is fully alive to the fact that it involves much and requires a large amount of careful study.

Medical education as a practical system needs to be reformed. Let him deny that who dares. But theories alone are not sufficient to accomplish the task. Nothing in this line is certain, unless it has successfully stood the test of experiment. One who has graduated and practiced medicine a half-score of years, more or less, requires something more to make him an expert in medical education.

In the first place, the philosophy and science of EDUCATION, in their widest sense, must be mastered. Medical education like astronomical, geological or sociological education forms but a part of the one great system whose chief factors are teaching and learning. And all, I believe, are to be solved by an understanding of the structure and functions of the brain. When one has done much work on the anatomy and physiology of the brain, and mastered what is known of psychology, he is then only well prepared to speak effectively on the subject of education in any of its aspects.

I speak thus plainly, because from our national institute down to the most youthful local societies it is evident that many 'prentice-hands are working at a problem they are not yet qualified

to attempt to solve. Those who have never had in charge a case of confinement cannot tell us much about Obstetrics, save what they may find in the books.

But the fact that a man has for years been a medical professor gives him no necessary prominence in discussing this question. I have known teachers who were brilliant anatomists but who had very little knowledge of the relation this subject bore to the other medical subjects; and their idea of teaching was to cram every student so full of anatomy that their confreres could find no corner in the student's head not already filled with corpuscles, osseous tuberosities, cul de sacs or blastodermic membranes.

There are few colleges in this country. whose students on commencement day could not draw up a profitable set of resolutions which would embody their ideas of education, and which might greatly edify their professors.

I will go so far as to say that, in all our medical schools there are but few intelligent students who do not groan under the follies perpetrated upon them in the name of education.

Let us for a moment consider the subject from a psychological standpoint, if indeed it can be considered from any other. Whatever is done in educating the student must find its results in the student's brain. The brain is an instrument of record. Many instruments have been devised by man for the same purpose, and while these instruments are automatic they also are self-limiting. They cannot work on forever, neither is their capacity unlimited. The human brain is just such another instrument. Essentially it is automatic. It is true there are many leaders in education who do not so view it, neither do they realize how little the brain can hold.

These educators have drawn upon the mental recourses of the student in spective of the student's capacity tor, ceive. Also the medical teachers in g signing their tasks seem to forget th their confreres have equal claim up the same student. Their education, drawing out, consists of hammering or if I may change the figure, the brain their victim to a thinness that render such a brain of little further use.

There are very few colleges of an order in this country whose curricct! are based upon a scientific observati of the human mind. Trainers of deg and horses study the nature of the an mals they teach. They realize the a that each animal possesses a characte of its own. But for this they could succeed.

end.

They train to reach a practic

Not so our teachers of human pupis The majority of them do not educat they only teach; and between these the is a vast difference. One can teac without educating, that is plain; be one can not educate without teaching.

Time and space forbid that I should attempt to enter upon a discussion of the principles laid down. And I must als omit so much as a reference to cognate points. But if what I have said is true cannot be denied that our medical ed cation needs a wide and thorough re formation in the construction of its cur riculum as well as in the personnel of its

teachers.

TWO DECADES IN MEDICINE.

BY T. H. HUDSON, M. D., KANSAS CITY, MO

NEARLY twenty years ago I began

the study of medicine in an Eastern Allopathic college. I never dreamed that there was a better place, more effi cient teaching, or wiser instructors.