Sambaquis of Santos, in which the stricture was deeper than in many of the apes. And then how puerile was Virchow's warning, "Darwinism leads to Socialism!" Since when has it been the duty of the scientist to worry what anything leads to? It is the function of the scientist to find the fact and accept the conclusion, be it saccharin or gall. It may be unpleasant to contemplate that man is a freak of nature, and will ultimately disappear from the earth, but if such be the facts, then scientists must announce them, or cease to lay claim to the title of truthseekers. Virchow's admonition deserves to be placed by the side of Agassiz's complaint, "Darwinism seems to dethrone God, and replace him by a blind force called the law of evolution." Virchow's attitude attitude towards Darwinism was so unfair, that the ever-gentle Darwin, who could rarely be provoked to retort, wrote to Haeckel, "Virchow's conduct is shameful, and I trust he will one day feel the shame of it." But Virchow evidently did not repent, for as late as 1894, at the Anthropological Congress in Vienna, he said, "a man might just as well have descended from a sheep or an elephant as from an ape." Virchow, in later years, liked to speak of "the point where science makes its compromise with the church." Perhaps this is the reason why Virchow is thrice quoted with approval in J. J. Walsh's The Popes and Science, an alleged medico-historical volume, recommended by Archbishop Farley and dedicated to Pius X. on Our Lady's Day. Shall we say of Virchow as Nietzsche said of Wagner: "He succumbs at the cross of Jesus Christ?" But Father Time has amusing little tricks of his own: yesterday, Rudolph Virchow, the scientific founder of cel lular pathology, rejected Darwinism, and to-day the Jesuits themselves are accepting it! Semmelweis now saw that he must do what he had long declared he could not do-write not do-write a book. "I cannot write," he told his devoted friend Markusovsky, who continually urged him. "I have a congenital aversion to all that is called writing." But the groans of the lying-in women dying. of childbed fever caused by the pupils that Carl Braun and Scanzoni sent out into the world, thrust the pen into unwilling fingers. One day in 1860 Dr. Hirschler was strolling along the streets, when he was seized by an excited individual who insisted that he come to his home at once. Dr. Hirschler complied with the urgent demand, and no sooner did the friends seat themselves than the host opened a drawer, pulled out a huge manuscript, and began: "My Doctrine is not established in order that the book expounding it may moulder in the dust of a library: my Doctrine has a mission, and that is to bring blessings into practical social life. My Doctrine is produced in order that it may be disseminated by teachers of midwifery, until all who practise medicinę, down to the last village doctor and the last village midwife, may act according to its principles; my Doctrine is produced in order to banish the terror from the lying-in hospitals, to preserve the wife to the husband, the mother to the child." So Hirschler learnt that Semmelweis had at last completed his book: The Etiology, Nature, and Prophylaxis of Puerperal Fever. Semmelweis had underrated his literary ability: he could write. His book is one of the medical masterpieces of the nineteenth century, for the first requi site of art is sincerity. As far as its scientific value is concerned, no praise can be too high: page after page could stand, without revision, in the most modern treatise on the topic. Arnold Lea's Puerperal Sepsis, just off the press and fresh from the bindery, does not antiquate Semmelweis's work-it supplements it. But the book did not sell. And the lecture-rooms still re-echoed with ancient nonsense about epidemic puerperal fever, while the examining finger and the operating hand still committed murder. Semmelweis called his discovery "the puerperal sun which arose in Vienna in 1847," but its rays were dimmed by Breisky mist and obscured by Carl Braun clouds. Semmelweis was a disappointed In Disraeli's Quarrels of Authors, there is no controversy more fierce than Semmelweis's Open Letters to Professors of Midwifery. In these letters we do not recognize the gentle man of earlier days; we see instead an exasperated antagonist, desperate, emotional, fanatical, furious. "My Doctrine," he writes to Scanzoni, "is based on my experience. Your teaching, Herr Hofrath, is based on the dead bodies of lying-in women slaughtered thru ignorance; and I have formed the unshakable resolution to put an end to this murderous work as far as lies in my power. If, Herr Hofrath, without controverting my teachings, or giving reasons for assum ing them erroneous, you continue to teach your students the doctrine of epidemic puerperal fever, I denounce you before God and the world as a murderer, and the History of Puerperal Fever will not do you an injustice when, for the service of having been the first to oppose my life-saving Lehre, it perpetuates your name as a medical Nero." These terrible Open Letters only amused the professors. "Have you been scorched by the puerperal sun? asked one. "The Hungarian crank is simply crazy," said another. No longer able to control himself, Semmelweis stopped laborers and business-men on the streets, and tried to make them listen to his Doctrine. They tapped their foreheads significantly, and passed on. It was not these people, however, that caused Fritsch's epigram: "There is a dark chapter in the history of midwifery, and it is headed-Semmelweis." During a meal, Semmelweis behaved strangely, and when Marie looked into his eyes she saw that reason had left him. She ran to his friend, the editor of Orvosi Hetilap. "Nonsense," said the good Markusovsky, "nonsense, I assure you. He is excited; can you blame him? blame him? He will be all right tomorrow. I will come to see him. There is no cause for worry." But Ludwig Markusovsky knew he lied, for he himself had sickening suspicions. A few days later it was no longer possible to conceal the circumstances, and it was decided to remove Semmelweis to a lunatic asylum in Vienna, where he would be under the care of Dr. Riedel, the eminent alienist. On the last day in July-his birth-month in 1865, when he was forty-seven years of age, the journey was begun. Some friends and relatives, his wife and infant child, accompanied the invalid. By means of a stratagem, Ferdinand Hebra induced him to enter the asylum. Fifteen years ago, Semmelweis had left Vienna-angry; now he was brought back-mad. Perhaps he had often dreamed of returning, but hardly like this. Within a day or two it was discovered that Semmelweis had a wound in his finger, the result of his last gynecological operation. Gangrene set in, cellulitis developed along the arm, metastases followed, and soon Semmelweis lay in the dead-house, ready for a post-mortem examination. Just as Laennec died of phthisis, the disease which he had studied above all others, so Semmelweis fell a victim of pyemia, which he had discovered to be identical with puerperal fever, and which he sought to exterminate by antisepsis. had hardly closed when Pasteur and Lister began to make a microscopic bacterium reveal its deadly secret, and then all the world knew that Semmelweis had been right since 1847, and a magnificent monument was raised to his memory. The great obstetrician is seen in full, holding his book under his arm; on the step of the pedestal sits a woman, with her infant in her arms, gazing reverently at her benefactor. "I stood to-day with uncovered head by the monument of Semmelweis," writes Dr. W. J. Robinson, from the International Medical Congress at Budapest; "it is very beautiful, and is kept green and is well taken care of by a special watchman." Ah, if they had been as tender to the man as they are to his statue, his career would have been happier. Yet it is well that Semmelweis has been thus honored, and tho that marble mausoleum at Budapest may crumble in the course of centuries, there is one monument to the beloved physician which shall endure as long as the human female bears children: Motherhood is safer because Ignaz Semmelweis lived and worked. VICTOR ROBINSON's interesting article on Hasheesh which should have been concluded in this issue has been held over for our May number. It contains an account of the author's own experiments with the drug and will be found highly interesting, amusing and instructive. The Opportunities for Professional Work Afforded to Medical Officers of the U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service. By RUPERT BLUE, M.D, WASHINGTON, D. C. Surgeon General of the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service. The selection of medicine as a profession implies an interest in and an intention to care for the sick. In a broader sense, it implies studies of the causes of disease, the methods of their transmission and the measures necessary for their prevention. The medical profession is regarded, and properly so, as the conservator of life and health, and this means not only the treatment of the sick, but the protection of health and the improvement of living conditions. By reason of its organization and the manifold functions to be performed, the U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service offers to its medical officers opportunities along a number of different lines. Organized over a century ago to provide care and treatment of the sailors of the merchant marine, the Service has continued to perform this function, more than a million of such patients having been treated in hospitals and dispensaries located in different parts of the country. At the present time, there are operated for this purpose 21 hospitals and 115 relief stations. As time went on, additional duties were imposed on the service, the object being to encourage commerce and safeguard the lives and health of those affected by it. Provision was subsequently made for the conduct by the Service of all visual examinations of masters and pilots, physical examinations of surfmen of the Life Saving Service, and medi cal recruiting of the personnel of the Revenue Cutter Service, and medical officers are stationed on the vessels of this latter Service when engaged in patrol duty and on voyages for the relief of Alaska Indians and others. The rapid development of commerce and the occasional occurrence of epidemics in connection therewith emphasized the necessity of some national provision for their control. Prior to February 15, 1893, such quarantine measures as had been taken were enforced by local authorities, but on this date a law was passed by Congress, which provided for a national system of quarantine. These additional duties were imposed upon the U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, and because of the comprehensiveness of the law it not only operates 43 quarantine stations at continental ports in the United States, but has supervision over quarantine procedures in Porto Rico, Panama, Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands, and has medical officers stationed at a number of foreign ports such as Libau, Russia; Naples, Italy; La Guira, Venezuela; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Guayaquil, Ecuador; the Central American fruit ports; Yokohama and Kobe, Japan; Shanghai and Hongkong, China. The great stream of immigration that has been flowing into our country during the past quarter of a century rendered necessary some provision whereby sick and disabled aliens should be prevented from entering and thereby becoming public charges. Laws were accordingly passed in 1891 and subsequently which provided for the examination of all aliens, and these examinations are made by officers of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, a total of 1,093,809 such aliens having been examined during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1911. Not only are medical inspections required, but any immigrants who are sick on arrival must be cared for. Hospital facilities are, therefore, provided at a number of the principal ports, such as New York and San Francisco, and at the former port during the year mentioned, there was admitted to the hospital a total of 6,043 cases. Since such cases come from all parts of the world and represent all classes of populations, there is thus presented a clinic unrivaled in any hospital of its size. Provision is also made by the federal government for the protection of interstate commerce in laws having for their object the prevention of the spread of contagious and infectious diseases from one State to another, and with this authority the Service cooperates with State and local health authorities in the prevention of the spread of diseases and the management of epidemics. As instances, there may be cited the outbreak of yellow fever in New Orleans and vicinity in 1905, the outbreak of plague in California in 1907, and the numerous outbreaks of smallpox in different parts of the country. It was early recognized that in the discharge of its duties, the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service must engage in investigations of contagious and infectious diseases and matters pertaining to the public health, and its first laboratory for this pur pose was organized in 1887. It became more and more apparent as time went on that one of the chief duties of the Service in relation to health was scientific research, the collation and dissemination of facts relating to the progress of diseases and the means necessary for their prevention. Other laboratories were in consequence established for specific purposes, and among these laboratories may be mentioned the federal plague laboratories at San Francisco and Seattle and the laboratory of the Leprosy Investigation Station at Honolulu. By a recent provision of Congress, a limited number of patients suffering with infectious or contagious diseases may be admitted into Marine Hospitals for the purpose of studying them in relation to the public health. In consequence, the U. S. Marine Hospital at Savannah, Ga., is being utilized for special studies of pellagra, and the U. S. Marine Hospital at Wilmington for special studies of the animal parasites of man. Systematic investigations of matters pertaining to public health have been conducted in the Hygienic Laboratory for years. This laboratory in reality consists of four distinct laboratories as follows: Division of Pathology and Bacteriology, Division of Zoology, Division of Pharmacology, and Division of Chemistry. All of these laboratories are capable of great growth, and they will undoubtedly enlarge in response to the increasing needs for studies in public health problems. From the above brief description of the organization and functions of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service it is evident that there are many lines of work to be followed. Officers on entering the Service must |