order was not promulgated until this late date. The clearing up process has been so successful and the education of the masses working in that locality has been so efficient that a high standard of health has been attained. The stegomyia and anopheles will not be present in large number to give cordial welcome to their allies, who do not hold them responsible for the spread of disease. The amount of damage to the health rate will not be great by the admission of the Christian Scientists tho it is a sad reflection upon the governmental appreciation of the medical work that made canal building in that climate a possibility. It is to be hoped that the rigorous sanitary laws of the zone will not be relaxed in order to comply with the political and unhygienic executive order. Dr. Bernard Hollander has been quoted as saying that "Christian Science is a danger to the community, for tho it may make a certain class of people happy it cannot make them healthy." He is reported as asserting that "his investigations have shown him many patients who have become insane on the subject of Christian Science." Dr. A. W. Ferris, late of the New York State Commission in Lunacy, when questioned regarding the accuracy of the statement of Dr. Hollander stated to his interviewer: "The few cases where we have found Christian Science in connection with forms of insanity have been those where the patient took up Christian Science after insanity had come upon him." The contrast of these two statements of well known alienists presents a partial dilemma that is most suggestive. One expert claims that Christian Science causes insanity; the other be lieves that Christian Science is taken up after insanity has developed. Apparently there is merely the question as to whether insanity develops before or after using this pernicious, antisocial, selfish cult. social, selfish cult. It is to be hoped that some light may be thrown upon this phase of the problem by the experience relating to insanity in the Panama Canal zone. In connection herewith it is interesting to note the interpretation of insanity in terms of Science and Health. (95th edition, page 406.) "There is a universal insanity, which mistakes fable for fact thruout the entire round of the material senses, but this general craze cannot, in a spiritual diagnosis shield the individual case from the special name of insanity. Those unfortunate people who are committed to insane asylums are only so many well defined instances of the baneful effects of illusion on mortal minds and bodies." Are the illusions above referred to causes or effects of addiction to Christian Science? The allegation of Mrs. Eddy's foster son may be cited as a non-medical expression. He alleges that "its attempts at healing involve the extirpation from the patient's mind of whatever is known by the evidence of the senses about the human body and its maladies." In our conclusion deep in the recesses of mortal mind it must not be forgotten that Christian Scientists are allowed to vote and that there were over 85,000 communicants of this denomination reported in 1906, of whom 27.6% were males. There are far more voting physicians in this country whose work in the interest of the public health is of the utmost importance. The medical profession has no effec tive hobby and is not zealous in attacking agencies hostile to the national health. And Panama is now reasonably safe from epidemics, so there is no need to exclaim with outraged sense of the eternal fitness of things because the practice of Christian Scientists denying the existence of disease has been given official sanction. by the Chief Executive of this free nation. A CONFERENCE ON CONSERVATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN The American Academy of Medicine is to hold its mid-year conference at Lehigh University, South Bethlehem, Pa., on April 3rd and 4th. The general topic for discussion will be the Conservation of School Children. Deficient and backward children, medical inspection, the teaching of health subjects represent some of the phases of the problem that will receive adequate discussion at the conference. The American Academy of Medicine is the pioneer medical organization to specialize in medical sociology. Its meetings have resulted in a dignified expression of the highest ideals for medical education and medical progress. Its sessions are open to the profession and to those advanced laymen who are vitally interested in the physical and mental and moral advancement of the public welfare. Such a national organization merits the active co-operation of the social workers in the community as well as the attendance of a large number of representatives from within the medical profession. As a result of the activity of this organization there was organized a few years ago the American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality. The far-reaching results of the labors and conferences of this foster child have already mani fested themselves in the wide-spread interest of social organizations, charitable institutions and social reformers. The possibilities of the conference to be held in April are of unusual value. With a large attendance and with the proceedings widely distributed, the cause of the school children should receive an excellent impetus in the right direction. SEMMELWEIS, THE OBSTETRICIAN In our January issue we announced a series of articles by Victor Robinson, for the Department of Medical History. What we then said concerning the brilliant treatment of historical themes by this writer every reader has had an opportunity to confirm by reading the vivid articles on Paracelsus and Jenner. Now we wish to call particular attention to the article on Semmelweis, which will appear in our next issue. We can promise our readers an even greater treat than they derived from Paracelsus or Jenner. The reader will recall how graphically Paracelsus and Jenner stood before him, conjured up in person out of the remote past by the wizardry of our brilliant writer's pen. But in Semmelweis we have a modern figure, a contemporary, one might say, whose majestic, withal pathetic, career in medicine is worthy of recital only by a writer of the first rank, and medicine has not boasted very many literary masters. In Robinson Semmelweis finds an interpreter worthy of him. To him who portrays Paracelsus and Jenner and their times so vividly, the nearby figure of Semmelweis provides the inspiration for masterful interpretation, and by this article which will appear next month, the reader will be held spellbound, thru the power of this writer's powerful literary ability. Prostitution. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee.-St. John viii:11. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.-St. John, viii:7. There are many who believe that ister its practitioners, medically inthe industrial emancipation of woman, spect them, arrest and punish them, the attainment of her economic inde- et cetera, et cetera. Those who don't pendence, the abandonment by men of know what to do with them yet bethe idea of proprietorship of wives lieve that something direct holds the (the "lord and master" and sex su- solution. It is argued that prostituperiority theory) and less barbaric no- tion is an inevitable thing, that it is tions concerning freedom and sex re- the oldest profession in the world, and lations will yet put an end to commerthat it is even virtue's safeguard cialized prostitution. Still to-day we (Lecky). So it is believed to be an are trying expedients calculated for- indispensable institution. The dismally to institutionalize and perpetu- eases that are engendered by it are ate it. believed to justify the intervention of the health and police powers of the State for its reglementation. Naturally, all this postulates the necessity of institutionalization. Collier's recently chronicled an attempt on the part of a Western mayor to segregate vice in an ingenious and unusual way. He raided houses systematically that were not in a certain district, thus compelling their keepers to seek refuge within the precincts wherein they were to be immune, word being passed to them of the mayor's plan. The scheme worked but was later made the basis of a campaign which led to the mayor's political funeral. Here again was provided another spectacle- the spectacle of an oppressed class serving as a political football. The poor prostitute is fated to exist only for political, commercial, sexual and police exploitation. The more of an institution you make of prostitution the more facile becomes its exploitation. It is inevitable. We are obsessed by the notion that we must deal with prostitution directly; that we must segregate it, reg The truth is that prostitution is an anachronism, like tuberculosis. We are all awake to the futility of tinkering with tuberculosis as an end-result, even tho we have not progressed very far in real prophylaxis, which of course involves tremendous economic elements. Nobody thinks of tuberculosis as a necessary institution, as a safeguard of anything (except perhaps charity, which, however, cannot claim to be a virtuous thing, being in truth itself an anachronism), as a thing merely to be regulated, inspected. and policed. Why are we not educated to the same degree in respect to prostitution? Why are we not equally bent upon effective prophylaxis in its case? The prostitute is an absolutely logical result of social and economic pa thology, of conditions that are in turn anachronisms, plus stupid, selfish and barbaric concepts. Society finds her useful because it fancies her genetic factors to be indispensable. She is a necessary thing, so long as we neglect to put our social house in order, all the mouthings of the moralists to the contrary notwithstanding. Those who would persist in institutionalizing her are wholly or relatively blind to the rational indications. any phenomena which are unwholesome and which we would intelligently seek to abate. Society has absolutely no moral right to oppress in any way a class for which it is entirely respon sible, and any kind of regulation spells oppression. Mankind creates this class and then proceeds to harass and penalize it, on the specious and sophistical pretext that it is a disseminator of disease and offensive to public decency. Public decency, forsooth! What about the public decency that should concern itself earnestly with causative factors? society causative factors? As to clandestine prostitution, society's stained hands are tied. The only prophylaxis against the venereal diseases that is morally justifiable, aside from the fundamental social indications, is education in the use of well tried and effective antidotes. But, it will be objected, pending this visionary readjustment of society which has been postulated, prostitution must be dealt with directly as tuberculosis is dealt with directly. Well, what have we accomplished by direct dealing with tuberculosis? We save some lives and prolong many. Speaking cold-bloodedly, is not this very prolongation of the lives of the tuberculous itself an institutionalization of the great white plague? We don't call it that, but what else is it? We have to institutionalize tuberculosis, on humanitarian and other perfectly good grounds, but we are institutionalizing prostitution on unhumanitarian and totally indefensible grounds. It is within our power to deal effectively with the causes of prostitution if we want to do it. To deal with prostitution itself in any way is far more futile than to deal directly with tuberculosis. In connection with the economic factors entering into prostitution O. Henry's story of a dream that he once had is worth quoting. In his dream he thought that he had died and had appeared at the gates of heaven with a crowd of other applicants for admission. An angel-policeman asked him if he belonged to the crowd. "Who are they?" asked O. Henry. "Why," said the angel-policeman, "they are the men who hired working girls and paid 'em five dollars a week to live on. Are you one of the bunch?" "Not on your immortality!" answered O. Henry. "I'm only the fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum and murdered a blind man for his pennies." Then Does this mean that we must ignore the prostitute and prostitution? Yes, except in so far as we must study these end-results as we would study we would study he passed inside. Social Regeneration and the Swift says somewhere that when innovators with with great and sound ideas appear in the world you may Medical Contributors to It. know them by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against them. And Ibsen has pointed out that there is no stability in the world We are not so sure that the majority of those who are opposing, or ignoring, the efforts of men who are advising rabbit-like humans to limit their progeny for the sake of the progeny and the race, are dunces. Many of them are knaves who have something to gain thru the continued maintenance of present social conditions, and some are clever hypocrites whose economic survival depends upon the assiduous inculcation of obsolete "moral" principles. To be sure, all are dunces in a sense, but not exactly in the sense that Swift meant. Now as to this matter of convictions and this question of character. The greatness and sanity of those who are ardently carrying on the propaganda against the human rabbit hutch are proved by this, that the propagandists are not fanatics fighting for a thing which they conceive of as an end in itself; they expect to see a day dawn when social and economic conditions shall be such that parents will not have to prevent the conception of children destined for social perdition. convictions, certainly, but they are convictions that relate to conditions that are not eternal, to conditions that we hope to see the last of within two generations at the most. When the conditions change these workers will change with them. Not so fanatics, like the anti-vivisectionists. Their convictions are of course claimed to be rooted in eternal principles which, like themselves, never change. And not so the sticklers for conventional morality, who, despite the facts of modern life, so vastly different from those pertaining to preceding ages, forever preach their everlasting buncombe. They and their principles and convictions are the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Those who attempt to shape their lives according to a rational and progressive morality are cordially hated by the moral standpatters. Who are the anti-social? Those who see, with Ibsen, that there is no stability in the world of ideas, and who, because they happen to be delicately keyed to changing truths, are called erratic and dangerous by their stable brothers, yet who spend their lives in earnest thought and ardent work having to do with racial, rather than with individual betterment, or those who cling (O Lord, how long!) to the theory that truths are eternal and who lay claim to personal possession of the only reliable, 24 carat, guaranteed under the Pure Thought and Morals Act of Moses brands of truth? The representatives of the latter class think that the moral principles by which we live to-day do not. differ from those by which good men of old lived, that they should not differ, that they must not be allowed to These able propagandists have their differ, and that, moreover, every pre |