caution must be taken to prevent the morality of a thousand years hence being any different from that of today.

Who, then, in reality, are the antisocial?

A Neglected Class.

The poor are taken care of in what one might term a sumptuous fashion in our hospitals. The rich, of course, have every luxury that money can buy in the way of institution care. But there is a very large class of people of moderate and less than moderate means who, when ill, have a serious problem to face. It is this class, too, that feels feels all social hardships so keenly; that is affected so seriously by economic pressure. This middle class is crushed between the upper and the nether millstones always, the rich

above, the poor below. The poor are well-provided for, so to say, in these days. A huge amount of capital is devoted to their needs. But when the man of less than moderate means, or one of his family, is taken ill and has to go to a hospital, there is but little accommodation to be had at a cost within his means.

What we should like to see is an adequate amount of accommodation. for this class, at, say, ten dollars a week, this to secure private rooms.

We have been assured by experienced and capable hospital superintendents that the thing is perfectly feasible. But they have no expectation that anybody is going to consider the problems of the people of moderate and less than moderate means in any serious way. Only the rich and the poor, seemingly, are considered as the components of our society.

"Keep the room full of fresh air. Sponge the child when the fever seems. to be high. Give plenty of milk." Picture the futility of giving such advice under the surroundings suggested by the cartoon in this issue. What a frightful sensation of inexpressible doubt creeps over the conscientious physician when brought face to face with the dark image of the grim reaper.

How inert are drugs against darkness and dirt; against squalor and starvation. Sunshine and pure, undefiled air can not be dispensed from a bottle; nor does the prescription for proper nourishment provide for its administration.

The mortality rate of pneumonia is higher in the hospital than in the home,

but what is the thoughtful doctor to advise? Here and there are found adequate agencies for the solution of the problem. The visiting nurse, the parish visitor, the relief organization, the convalescent home, will secure the necessities for the stricken child that will supplement the wise counsel of the anxious physician.

Calling forth the social resources at his disposal the dilemma of the doctor becomes less worrisome. Fighting the disease singlehanded under conditions that beggar description may mean death, disappointment and despair. Nursing, food and intelligent care in united action will lessen the likelihood of the gasp, the gurgle, and the prolonged silence.

HEART TO HEART TALKS WITH THE DOCTOR

When a bore of a detail man (most of them are gentlemen of sense and discretion) "presumes" that you are familiar with certain details of the digestive process, and then, for fear that they may have passed out of your recollection for the nonce, proceeds to give you a resumé of the latest researches in this field of physiology, do not toy restlessly with the articles on your desk, and do not permit repressed exasperation to send your blood pressure up to 280. Express your thanks to the messenger of the proprietary gods, hand him a cigar, and promise to use, and to write testimonials, for Bink's Vitalizer and Alterative.

When a gentleman puts before you a proposition to relieve a young woman friend of good family who is greatly concerned because of the non-appearance of her catamenial flow, and who is greatly distressed because of the symptoms which tell her that the suppression is doing her much harm, be greatly interested and display a hearty sympathy. Also feel flattered, particularly if the parties concerned have avoided taking counsel with their regular medical advisers, thereby showing their superior faith in your skill in difficult cases and their belief in your greater trustworthiness as regards professional confidences.

When, ten days after the crisis of pneumonia, you find the lung unresolved and unresolving, maintain a cheerful expectancy. When, ten days after this, you find the lung in the same condition, look pleased and give

an optimistic prognosis. When, ten days later again, the lung has not improved, be philosophic and reflect upon the limitations of the physician's art. When, at last, after forty days in the wilderness of therapeutic uncertainty, the lung clears up, be chastened in spirit and never again talk glibly anent the abortive treatment of pneumonia.

Never, in a moment of forgetfulness, advise the parents of a child whom you operated upon a year before for the removal of adenoids that the child is suffering from impeded nasal respiration and should have its adenoids removed.

After you have treated a case of chronic urethritis for a year, during which time you have irrigated the patient regularly, stripped his vesicles, massaged his prostate, and his urine. still resembles a biological aquarium, where would you say you were at? We have no message to deliver on this point.

When, at the close of the year, you look over your accounts and ponder on the bad money on your books, representing conscientious effort and often self-sacrifice on your part, and human failure on the part of others, there is no regret that the service was rendered, for it was rendered to sick people. 'Nuf said.

Never cultivate a grouch, even if in one day you have been supplanted on a typhoid case by an unethical practitioner, written a death certificate, missed an obstet., and are called to court on a day taken up fully by engagements. What's the use?

ALLEN: The Reign of Law.

Ailing man has ransacked the world to find balms to ease him of his pains. And this is only natural, for what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his digestion? Let the tiniest nerve be but inflamed, and it will bend the proudest spirit: humble is a hero with a toothache! It is doubtful if Buddha himself could have maintained his equanimity with a bit of dust on his conjunctiva. Caesar had a fever-and the eye that awed the world did lose its lustre, and the tongue that made the Romans write his speeches in their books cried like a sick girl. Our flesh is heir to many ills, and alas when the heritage falls due. Even pride and prejudice are then forgotten, and Irishmen in need of purgatives are willing to use Rhubarb grown on English soil, while the Foreign Colombo gathered by the feral natives in the untamed forests of Quilimani is consumed by ladies who never saw anything wilder than a Fabian Socialist.

LUDLOW: The Hasheesh Eater.

fringed lichens from raw-winded Iceland; sweet flag from the ponds of Burmah, coto bark from the thickets of Bolivia, sleeping nightshade from the woods of Algeria, brownish rhatany from the sands of Peru, purple crocus from the pastures of Greece, aromatic vanilla from the groves of Mexico, golden seal from the retreats of Canada, knotty aleppo from the plains of Kirghiz, fever-tree from the hills of Tasmania, white saunders from the mountains of Macassar. Idols are broken boldly nowadays, but the daughter of Esculapius does not fear, for Hygeia knows she will always have a frenzied world of worshippers to kneel at her every shrine in every land.

All the reservoirs of nature have been tapped to yield medicines for man. From the mineral kingdom we take the alkali metals, the nitrogen group, the compounds of oxygen, the healing waters, the halogens, the nitrate of silver, the sulphate of copper, the carbonate of sodium, the chloride of mercury, the hydroxide of potassium, the acetate of lead, the citrate of lithium, the oxide of calcium, and the similar salts of half a hundred elements from Aluminium to Zincum.

that blossom and bloom, we knead them as we list: the broad rhizome of iris, the wrinkled root of lappa, the inspissated juice of aloes, the flowerheads of anthemis, the outer rind of orange, the inner bark of cinnamon, the thin arillode of macis, the dense sclerotium of ergot, the ovoid kernel of nutmeg, the pitted seed of rapa, the pale spores of club-moss, the spongy pith of sassafras, the bitter wood of quassia, the smoothish bark of juglans, the unripe fruit of hemlock, the fleshy bulb of scilla, the brittle leaves of senna, the velvet thallus of agaric, the balsamic resin of benzoin, the scaly strobiles of hops, the styles and stigmas of zea.

The animal kingdom has likewise been forced to bring tribute to its highest brother: we use in medicine the blood-sucking leech, the natural emulsion from the mammary glands of the cow, the internal fat from the abdomen of the hog, the coppery-green Spanish fly, the globular excrements of the leaping antelope, the fixed oil from the livers of the cod, the fresh bile of the stolid ox, the vitellus of the hen's egg, the fatty substance from the huge head of the sperm-whale, the odorous secretion of the musk-deer, the swimming-bladder of regal fish, the inner layer of the oyster-shell, the branched skeleton of the red polyp, the dried follicles of the boring beaver, the bony horns of the crimson deer, the thyroid glands of the simple sheep, the coagulated serum from the blood of the horse, the wax and the honey from the hive of the busy bee, and even the disgusting cockroaches that infest the kitchen-shelves and climb all over the washtubs, are used as a diuretic and for dropsy.

ing agent was ushered in, for mankind in its frantic search for health asks not the creed or color of its medical savior: Pipsissewa was introduced into medicine by the redskins, buchu by the hottentots, quassia by a negro slave, zinc valerianate by a French prince, krameria by a Spanish refugee, ipecac by the Brazilian aboriginees, guaiac by a syphilitic warrior, aspidium by a Swiss widow.

"Medicine," wrote the greatest of literary physicians, "appropriates everything from every source that can be of the slightest use to anybody who is ailing in any way, or like to be ailing from any cause. It learned from a monk how to use antimony, from a Jesuit how to cure agues, from a friar how to cut for stone, from a sòldier how to treat gout, from a sailor how to keep off scurvy, from a postmaster how to sound the Eustachian tube, from a dairy-maid how to prevent small-pox, and from an old marketwoman how to catch the itch-insect. It borrowed acupuncture and the moxa from the Japanese heathen, and was taught the use of lobelia by the American savage.'

And all these substances are daily being powdered, sifted, granulated, desiccated, percolated, macerated, distiled, sublimed, comminuted, dissolved, precipitated, filtered, strained. expressed, clarified, crystallized, ignited, fused, calcined, torrified and deflagrated into powders, pills, wafers, capsules, ampoules, extracts, tinctures, infusions, decoctions, syrups, cordials. essences, magmas, suppositories, tablets, troches, ointments, plasters, abstracts, liniments, stracts, liniments, collodions, cataplasms and so on and so on.

And all these finished preparations