ceived a circular in which I was taught a prescription for subdividing a certain quantity of a synthetic drug and white sugar into twelve powders.

As our medical schools are to furnish not only scientific specialists, but the physicians and the sanitarians of the country, I trust the time will come when, like the present anatomic, physiologic, histologic, and bacteriologic instruction, a course in a pharmaceutic laboratory will be compulsory.

SPECIALISM AND SPECIALISTS

EVER since medicine envolved from the stage of genuine popular medicine, when the sick were no longer carried to the market place to be benefited by the advice of the wayfarers, who, as always, then and now, had enjoyed the same disease-there have been specialists. The ancient Egyptians had nearly as many as we have, and even all the savage nations-according to Bartels' (Medicin der Naturvölker, 1863, p. 61), have several classes of medicine men and specialists.

Limitations to a special remedy is nothing modern.

Old Cato, the arch enemy of Carthage and of the Greek physicians who immigrated into Rome, cured everything with cabbage and incantations. Antonius Musa, who lived one and one-half centuries later was the first exclusive hydropath of the old style that used cold water only. He cured the Emperor Augustus and enjoyed riches and honors. The Emperor's nephew, Marcellus, however, died under the treatment, and Dio Cassius charges the doctor with having killed his patient-tout comme chez nous.

According to Suetonius, Vespasian cured the blind by his saliva, and the lame by his touch. His hospital was the temple of Serapis in Memphis, Egypt. According to Nepotianus, King Pyrrhus of Epirus cured diseases and deformities with his right toe-row-a-days some corrections require the application of the whole foot. Remedio erat si cujus remes tumentes eo teligisset. The fact can

easily be proven; for when the body of the king was cremated the beneficent toe remained intact and was preserved in a gold box in the temple of Dodona. No further proof is required.

Amongst the old specialists ranks Edward the Confessor, of England. Amongst the numerous beneficent kings of England-all kings are the Edwards, Charleses,

Georges, etc., he was the first to display the peculiar power claimed for the kings of England of curing patients afflicted with scrofula, and to found the special service of the healing." But Joseph Trask Payne, in the Fitzpatrick lectures for 1903 (Oxford, 1904), with the fortunate lack of piety characteristic of some historians, tells us that the story is first found in the Gesta Regum of William of Malmesbury, written some eighty years later. Edward's rivals in the same special line were Robert, son of Hugh Capet, Philippe of France, and Olaf of Norway in the eleventh century. So Scrofula was called the King's evil. But they were only second-class miracle specialists. They were not the real thing, they required actual physical touch, while to-day we or some prefer distant treatment-equally efficacious.

The belief in the specialistic powers of the kings remained alive until the end of the eighteenth century. Louis XVI. had it and touched the scrofulous until he was guillotined. The French revolution and Napoleon believed in less mystical procedures. But even Ambroise Paré, the great surgeon, who fought the poisonous character of shot wounds, who ligated arteries instead of cauterizing them, who abolished castration as a part of the radical operation for hernia, who introduced the truss and improved trephining, who, moreover, was unprejudiced enough to dislike a quack only when he could learn nothing from him, believed in the efficacy of the royal touch for the King's evil. Nevertheless, there was no accomplishment of the secular mighty that could not be improved upon by the holy.

St. Agatha restored the milk in the breasts of women. Her martyrdom consisted in having her breasts cut away. That is why the faith of the people endowed her with that peculiar beneficent gift.

In Northern Italy the pilgrimage to the small church of S. Mammante, in Belluno, and the drinking of a nearby spring had the same effect.

St. Anne cured the eyes.

St. Judas, the coughs.

St. Valentine, epilepsy.

St. Rochus cured animals, the first specialistic veterinarian to whom I have been introduced.

They were all saints. Perhaps some of our miracleworking specialists would do well to add sanctity to their other accomplishments.

Urine specialists developed in early medieval times. Two thousand years previously the urine was utilized by Hippocrates as a diagnostic acid; Galen distinguishes its many colors and sediments; the Arabs and the mediæval Hebrew physicians studied it very carefully. The physician and patient's urine appear to have been correlated; if in Venice a slave died-about 1100, under the berevolent rule of the Christian Conqueror Godfrey of Bouillon -the doctor, if a Christian, had to pay his master the full value; if a Hebrew, he was hung with a urine glass in his hands. Specialistic practice is no longer so dangerous in our time. It is probable, however, that the publicat present for instance-is more credulous in regard to fads than the doctors.

He

The following is reported of the doctor of Charles IX. of France, about the middle of the sixteenth century. was a great astrologist and uroscopist who diagnosticated. out of the urine the patient's age, sex, constitution, temperament; also location of rooms, curtains, bed, and what not. A great lady sent him the urine of her cow. The great man studied that urine and told the messenger: Your lady feeds too much on vegetables."

It

As a remedy, urine has been utilized for centuries. is still holding its power over the misguided popular mind. In connection with all the excreta, intestinal and others, of man and animals, it forms the contents of the "Dreckapotheke," filth medication," of Paullini, an otherwise meritorious practitioner and writer of over two centuries ago.

Organ specialists were numerous in mediæval times; they had traveling operators for calculus, for hernia. Some had a high repute, some the reverse.

There was a man by the name of Taylor, who somehow or other was in possession of personal recommendations written by Boerhaave and by Haller. He really had the