fear of the client to state his case full-both the good and the bad features of it-often involving life, liberty or property, to his attor ney, is not more sacred than the privilege of the patient to be secure in the knowledge that whatever information or communication which is necessary to enable his medical adviser to quiet his distress, and relieve his sufferings-information which may involve the honor of families, the reputation of females and the course of descent of property-will be protected in the courts from the garish light of a public and notorious trial.

It was only by slow and often hesitating steps that the patient, in the eye of the law, reached the position, with respect to this privilege, which had been long occupied by the client.

New York and Missouri were among the first of our states to extend the privilege to the patient; they were followed by some others, but in the majority of our States, and in England to this day, the old common law rule is still in force, and the physician can be compelled to disclose information of a private and confidential nature, the possession of which he may owe to that far reaching trust and confidence which should ever subsist between patient and physician, or to chance by means of which he becomes possessed of information which was never intended for his knowledge, and to disclose which would be scacrely less a reflection upon his honor than to disclose that purposely confided to his keeping.

The reason for the exclusion of such testimony in the trial of causes is based upon a sound public policy which, as I have said, seeks to encourage the freest communication and to establish the fullest confidence between persons occupying these several confidential

relations.

Ecclesiastics have, however, sought to place the reason for the rule, which prohibits the priest or minister from testifying to facts communicated to him in the course of his professional duties, upon a higher and more sacred basis than that claimed for the patient and the client.

They argued that the penitent's communi cations and supplications were not addressed to the priest or minister, but were directed up to the very throne of the Deity Himself. Mascardus hence concludes that the ecclesiastic when called to testify respecting such facts as came to his knowledge in his professional capacity, may in his private capacity, deny all knowledge of them. It is scarcely necessary to say that the law recognizes no such foundation for the rule, but bases it, as I have said, upon consideration of the wisest public policy.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the privilege of objecting to testimony touching communications from patient to physi cian, and to have the same excluded by the court, belongs to the patient and not to the physician. The former may waive the privilege which the law confers upon him, and the physician may then be compelled to testify, even against his will, as to facts of a confidential and even criminal nature.

Let us now consider what communications are privileged. It is not every communication which the patient makes to his physi cian even in the course of his treatment of the case that the latter is prohibited from divulging.

We shall presently see that only that information is privileged from being given in evidence, which it is necessary that the phy. sician should know in order to enable him to prescribe for his patient or do some act for him as a surgeon.

The statute of Missouri declares that a physician or surgeon shall be incompetent to testify concerning any information which he may have acquired from any patient while at tending him in a professional character and which information was necessary to enable him to prescribe for such patient as a physician or to do any act for him as a surgeon.

The statute uses the word "information" in conection with the incompetency of the physician, while in the same section of the statute in declaring the incompetency of the attorney, the word "communication" is used, and in declaring the incompetency of the priest

the word "confession" is used. The legisla tors must have intended by the use of so comprehensive a word in the first case and those of such limited significance in the two latter, that the courts should observe a distinction between them.

The Courts at any rate, have acted upon this line of distinction, and in the case of Gartside vs. Conn. Mutual Life Insurance Co. (76 Mo. 446), the meaning of the term information is fully discussed. The action was brought upon a life policy to recover a death loss.

The attending physician was offered by the Insurance Co., to prove that the deceased had died from delirium tremens, and the only point in the case was whether under a proper construction of the statute the physician was forbidden from testifying not only to those facts acquired orally from the patient, but also to those which he had acquired through any of the other senses, by feeling, observation or examination.

The Court in holding that he was forbidden to testify to any information received from the patient by word, by sign, by observation, or examination, states that the real purpose of the statute, is the protection of the secrecy of the sick chamber; that to forbid the physician to reveal that which the patient had communicated to him by word of mouth and permit him to reveal that which he had learned from the patient by sign, observation, or examination, when the fact doubtless is that the physician in his treatment of his patient learns more from his own diagnosis of the case, than he possibly can from any description of it by his patient, would be to restrict the operation of the statute to narrower limits than the legislature ever intended, and to virtually overthrow it.

It seems also that the information indicated in the statute must come from the patient, and that if it came from any other, even from those about the sick-bed, although it pertained exclusively to the ailment of the patient, it would not be privileged.

We will now conclude our subject by seeking for the construction of the courts upon

that portion of the statute, which describes the character of the testimony excluded-"information necessary to enable him (the physician) to prescribe for such patient as a physician or do any act for him as a surgeon."

The decisions are somewhat conflicting on this point. What information is necessary to the physician to enable him to prescribe is a question better answered by the physician than the lawyer.

So far as I have been able to discover there has been no adjudication upon this portion of the statute by the higher courts of our state.

The case of Edington vs. Etna Life Insurance Co., 77 N. Y. 564 is a leading case upon this point, and although its authority has been in large measure overthrown by the later cases, contains, I think, the proper construction of this portion of the statute.

This was an action upon two life policies upon the life of one Dufendorf and assigned by him to the plaintiff. The company defended on the ground that Dufendorf fraudulently represented his state of health and condition, and thereby induced the company to insure him.

In commenting upon and reversing the action of the lower court in excluding evidence offered by the defendant in putting a physician upon the stand who had treated the plaintiff's assignor professionally, to testify to facts which he had learned from seeing Dufendorf upon the street, and observing his state of health and condition while treating him professionally, Earl, J., in delivering the opinion of the court, says:

"Before information can be excluded under this statute, it must appear that it was such as the physician acquired in some way while professionally attending a patient; and it must also be such as was necessary to enable him to prescribe as a physician or do some act as a surgeon. It is not sufficient to authorize the exclusion that the physician acquired the information while attending his patient, but it must be the necessary infor mation mentioned. If the physician has acquired any information which was not necessary to enable him to prescribe, or to act as a

surgeon, such information he can be compelled to disclose, although he acquired it while attending the patient.

It will not do to extend the rule of exclusion so far as to embarrass the administration of justice. It is not even all information which comes within the letter of the statute which is to be excluded. The exclusion is aimed at confidential communications of a patient to his physician, and also such information as a physician may acquire of secret ailments by an examination of the person of his patient. The policy of the statute is to

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to disclose to his physician all information necessary for his treatment. Its purpose is to invite confidence and prevent a breech thereof. Suppose a patient has a fever, a fractured skull or leg or is a raving maniac, and these ailments are obvious to all about him, may not the physician who is called to attend, testify to these matters? In doing so there would be no breach of confidence, and the policy of the

statute would not be invaded. These and other cases might be supposed, which while perhaps within the letter of the statute would not be within the reason thereof."

The authority of the Edington case and the distinction which it makes has, however, as I have before stated, been destroyed by the later cases arising in that state. These cases hold that not only communications of a private and confidential nature should be excluded, but all information obtained by the physician in the course of his professional treatment of the case, and which it was necessary he should have in order to enable him to prescribe, should likewise be excluded.

The court, however, admits that this forced construction of the statute will work consider able mischief. In testamentary cases, where the contest relates to the competency of the testator, it will exclude evidence of physicians, which is generally the most important and decisive.

In actions upon life policies, where the testimony relates to the health and physical condition of the insured, it will exclude the most reliable and vital evidence, which is absolutely needed for the ends of justice.

But as the judge observes in the one case: "The remedy is with the legislators and not with the courts."

The influence of atavism in the molding. of the intellect and instincts of man is well known and of paramount importance. A grand child, a great grand-child, or a descendant even further removed from some ancestor

possessing marked characteristics of mind and body, will be found to have traits so strikingly similar to those of his progenitor as to fully warrant the assumption that they were derivded from him by that irregularly retrogressive form of heredity known as atavism."Man at the present time is evidently not what he intends making of himself in the far distant future, but retains mental traits which are unquestionably derived by a pro

cess of tribal descent from forms of life lower in the organic scale, not possessed of the high intellectual acquirements of man.

Ferocity, to some extent common to nearly all of the lower animals, has not as yet entirely disappeared from man, and when, owing to sudden passion, the intellectual qualities are temporarily placed in abeyance, his animal instincts prevail, and his actions are those of an unreasoning creature instead of reasoning man.

With this fact in mind, the explanation of the existence of crime and of criminals is apparent. What might be termed phylogenetic or tribal atavism, has stamped upon certain persons the instincts of crime, which are unconsciously carried out by the individual.

The subject of criminal anthropology has been given particular attention by Dr. Bor

of his propositions from which to work, the following:

"The periosteum does not initiate the reproduction of bone." He has found that very little new bone is formed in an adult when healthy bone is removed subperiosteally, providing there has been no previous irritation. If, however, a matured bone be subjected to irritation for some time and then removed subperiosteally, good sound bone is reproduced.

The foregoing statements are supported by the observation of experimentally obtained facts, and a careful study of the entire subject proves to his mind that bone is produced and regenerated by proliferation of os. teoblasts, and that its development and reproduction can take place independently of the medulla and periosteum.

The latter acts as a shield, as a protecting lining membrane, through which the bone receives some of its blood supply, a very important portion being derived from its own special nutrient vessel.

The cells composing bone are capable of living separated from both the medulla and periosteum; they possess the power of proliferation, and consequently of regeneration of osseous tissues.

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF ELECTRICITY AS THE SOLE AGENT IN THE CURE OF CHRONIC FLEXIONS.

The pronounced success of a therapeutic measure in one or several directions, leads often to its most extravagant and unlimited use and abuse. Medical periodicals throughout the land are filled with articles teeming with the most laudatory expressions of its utility in the treatment of this disease and that disease, each new comer distinguishing himself by finding for the measure a new field of application. And, straightway, innumerable of the Esculapian host, whose guiding star is empiricism, and empiricism alone, put into practice upon countless thousands of suffering humanity, the wonderful observations of Dr. Self-Sufficiency, or Dr. Self-Delusion,

or Dr. Self-Exaltation. Every epoch in the progress of medicine seems to have been characterized by this same unbridled license of medical claimants for discovery, as well as illimitable credulity on the part of the great mass of the profession.

Electricity enjoys no exception to the rule. In fact, being an agent so inscrutable, so mysterious, so potent and far-reaching in its influence, it has excited in many a feeling of expectation, seemingly akin to that which animated the fond hope of Ponce de Leon in his search for the fountain of youth.

In a paper that I read at a stated meeting of the St. Louis Medical Society on Nov. 26, upon the subject of Rapid Dilatation of the Cervix Uteri for the Relief of Flexions, etc., I stated that there were those who advanced extravagant claims for electricity in the treatment of conditions that I had enumerated as amenable to dilatation. That I regarded it as an important subsidiary agent, but as a principal agent of treatment, I did not believe it comparable with divulsion in the correction of strongly established flexions-in other words, chronic flexions, that form of flexions in which there exists normal or excessive firmness of the uterine walls-a condition of uterine tissue generally noted as a subsequent of undue softness or pliability of its walls. I felt that the measure of importance that I incidentally accorded electricity in that connection was its proper meed, and I still think so, notwithstanding the wonderful prepotency that was claimed for it by some of the members present, based as far as advanced, upon its purely chemical, dynamic and stimu. lant effects, in accelerating absorption and destroying tissue. This feature of electrical use in overcoming chronic flexions was new to me. to me. Its agency in relieving a consequence of flexion--narrowed cervical canal-is readily appreciated in those cases in which the angle of flexion is not so sharp, and the uterine tissue thereat so thin as to endanger the peritoneum-there is nothing new in this use of electricity. But its method of action, as advanced, in establishing the physiological forms of the uterus is to me incomprehensi