element in the problem is that of the nagging wife or husband. This is a very old problem. In the Shakespearan epoch, when a revolt from occultism voiced itself in Dr. Reginald Scott's "Discovery of Witchcraft" and in Harsnett's "Detection of Religious Impostors," the problem found utterance in "The Comedy of Errors." The shrewish wife of Antipholus of Ephesus admits her fault through the keen questioning of the Abbess in whose cloister the Syracusan Antipholus has taken refuge. ABBESS: You should for that have reprehended him.

ADRIANA: Why, so I did.

ABBESS: Ay, but not rough enough.

defect of the higher inhibition on action, and causes an intellectual sense of fatigue or prevents primary egotism rising into. consciousness. This evil is increased by the tendency of the neuropathics to intermarry. As W. L. Bannister de Monteyel and others have shown, this is peculiarly great. It lies behind the notoriously great neuropathy of the Jews.

Nagging, as an expression of incompatibility, is a frequent factor in divorce assigned to other causes, under varying names, according to local statutes. Many suicides of husbands during the first year of marriage are due to a feeling of mental

me.

ABBESS: Haply in private.

ADRIANA: And in assemblies too.
ABBESS: Ay, but not enough.

ADRIANA: It was the copy of our conference;

In bed he slept not for my urging it;
At board he ate not for my urging it;
Alone, it was the subject of my theme;
In company, I often glanced at it;
Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.
ABBESS: And therefore came it that the man was
mad.

The venom clamors of a jealous woman,
Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.
It seems his sleep was hindred by thy railing,
And therefore comes it that his head is light.
Thou say'st his meat was sauced with thy up-
braidings.

Unquiet meals make ill digestions,
Whereof the raging fire of fever breed.

And what's a fever but a fit of madness?
Thou say'st his sports were hindered by thy
brawls.

Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy,

Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair? And at her heels a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures and foes who In food, in sport and life preserving rest To be disturbed would mad or man or beast. The soundness of the psychophysiology of the Abbess is quite clear. The toxemic elements resultant on nagging are not neglected. The lesson is one which today we could well heed. The great foe to mental and physical health in the neurasthenic is introspection, which directly causes depression and doubt of mental peace and indirectly aggravates these through creating a vicious circle by inhibiting the poison-destroying function of the liver and the eliminatory power of the kidney.

The case is the worse, as nagging is most often the result of acquired or inherited

researches of the Feudists have shown, sexual "knowledge" of a disturbed variety is very frequent in female neuropaths. This "knowledge", like that of the "lostmanhood" quacks, is used freely on the unfortunate marital victim of the neuropath vampire.

MUSHROOMS AS CHEAP FOOD

The increased cost of living! Everybody bewails it. Meat, eggs, milk, sugar, flour, every article by which life can be sustained is being pushed up, until people are paying "all the traffic will bear;" and still the greed of suppliers is unsated.

Meanwhile crime increases on all sides. Burglary, robbery, theft, cheating, murder, every species of guile by which money can be gotten without work becomes more frequent.

The Report of the Chicago vice commission places the blame for women's fall upon the inadequacy of wages to provide for necessities. As surely as the sun rises and sets, so surely will an increase in the cost of living impel men and women to disregard law and to step across the invisible line that separates morality and respectability from sin and shame. Make the loaf dear, and you make thieves; skimp the employee, and you make an embezzler. The more difficult to earn a living seems, the more alluring the ways. of vice, and the easier it becomes to slip down into the underworld.

Men begin to calculate diet tables, to measure the nutritive values of food against wages, to think less of sapids and more of calories. Life grows harder, the struggle for existence sterner as the earth becomes crowded.

Meanwhile bounteous nature spreads for us, in every forest dell, on every lawn and pasture field a wealth of wholesome and delicious viands which we pass by unnoting or crush under our heel ruthlessly. Of the six thousand fungi of the United States, three are poisonous, further three unwholesome, but the larger number of the rest afford as appetizing and nutritious food as man could ask. In the shops, cultivated mushrooms bring from fifty cents to a dollar a pound. Many of the wild ones are finer flavored, and are to be had for the gathering. In the city of Chicago alone fifty thousand persons could dine daily on this food for the gourmand without exhausting the supply to be gathered within the municipal limits. Ignorance is costly!

In New York City it is reported that thirty persons have died this summer from eating poisonous mushrooms, gathered with the wholesome varieties.

Truly, ignorance is costly!

Six bad varieties of the mushroom family prevent the utilization of six thousand good ones and yet, it is easy to distinguish the poisonous kinds, nor difficult to identify the others. The trouble is that the works treating of the fungi are rare and costly, hence not to be found outside of libraries.

Here is a field for public intervention, and some of the states have recognized this. The state of New York has published a volume, beautifully illustrated, describing the fungi found growing within its territory. Mr. T. C. Clements, State Botanist of Minnesota, has issued the fourth volume of "Minnesota Plant Studies," which deals with the mushrooms of that state. He describes over three hundred varieties. The three deadly amanitas (phalloid, vernal, and fly) are figured and described, so that they could not fail to be recognized by any person of average intelligence. Several others are listed as

unwholesome, others as doubtful, many as unfit for food for various reasons, or untried; but a surprising number are pronounced "edible," "excellent," or "delicious." A chapter is added on the manner of collection, together with various methods of cooking the different edible sorts. Any family possessing and utilizing this book may have, for the slight trouble of collecting, a daily meal of this, one of the costliest dishes set before the epicure.

If you like mushrooms or feel willing to enjoy a wholesome delectable dish for the trouble of picking it up, get a book on fungi like the one named. Gather all the mushrooms you find, putting each variety in a separate paper bag. Do not take any old ones, but be sure to dig out the whole stem, so that the variety may be recognized.

The three poisonous fungi are all amanitas. These have a centrally inserted stem, the top separating readily; around the stem is a ring or collar, and the base of the stem is bulbous and surrounded by a volva, or onion-like scaly sheath. Place a ripe specimen on a sheet of colored or black paper and shake it, when the spores falling out are seen to be white. Other wholesome mushrooms have the ring or the volva, but no others have both and also the white spores, as is true of the three deadly amanitas.

The amanita phalloides, or death-cup, is 12 x 4 inches wide, white (rarely olive, brown or yellow), shiny when moist, smooth or rough with fragments of the volva; stem, 3 to 6 inches long, 1-3 to 1-2 inch thick, white, rarely dark, smooth, bulbous, and hollow above the ring close to the cap. The volva may be overlooked if covered with dirt. The deadly amanita grows in the woods from June till October. It contains two poisons, phallin and muscarine.

Phallin is a hemolysin, causing solution of the blood-corpuscles, like snake venoms. It is destroyed by cooking it thoroughly. There is no known antidote, although recent observations indicate that arsenic has some antihemolytic power.

Muscarine is an alkaloid that causes sweating, purging and vomiting, with de

pression. It is antidoted completely by atropine. If one eats only cooked mushrooms he is safe from phallin, and cannot die from muscarine if he takes enough atropine to keep his mouth dry.

The amanita verna is a variety of the phalloid, and equally deadly.

The amanita muscaria, or fly-cap, is 4 to 6 inches wide, bright-red, or orange, yellow or whitish when old; the top is rough with corky fragments of the volva, which in the early form envelops the whole plant. These fragments may disappear as the fungus ages. The margin is striate, the stem thick, 3 to 6 inches long, white, scaly, bulbous, hollow, the ring large, the volva forming concentric scaly rings on the bulb. It grows in the woods and clearings till frost. It contains only muscarine-no phallin-hence can be antidoted by atropine. These are the three deadly mushrooms, or socalled "toadstools." Learn to recognize them, even in forms varying from the typical dimensions, but with the ring, volva, and white spores the three characteristics of the amanitas.

Of the others, Clements pronounces 125 varieties edible, 54 excellent, 24 delicious, 16 doubtful, 10 distasteful, 3 unwholesome, 1 pleasant, and 21 not tested.

Surely, such a wealth of food-resources should not be allowed to go to waste. There is no danger so long as one adheres to the one safe rule of eating no fungus until he has first identified it botanically.

However, to know that a given mushroom is not one of the three deadly amanitas is not enough, since several others are poisonous to some persons. Old, decayed, wormy mushrooms or those gathered the day before may be unwholesome. Many varieties are only of value when quite young, as the puff-balls, which should not be eaten after they turn yellow and wrinkle.

The most common mushroom of the Chicago lawns is the hypholoma. It is exceedingly fragile, and decays before its first day of life has ended. It is wholesome, nutritious, and of pleasant flavor, some would say "excellent," but hardly "delicious." The writer and his family use it as any other vegetable, and have consumed bushels of it. The horse-tail

coprinus (coprinus comatus) is sometimes found, and fully merits the term delicious. The russulas seem to be doubtful, being unwholesome at some seasons, to some persons or under some conditions, but not under others. An enormous mushroom, as large as a dinner plate and weighing several pounds did not answer the description of any variety listed, but proved to be poisonous probably a fly-amanita.

STATISTICS

A correspondent writes to inquire if we can give statistics as to the results from the active-principle method of treating such diseases as pneumonia and typhoid fever, compared with the usual methods described in the textbooks.

Among the readers of CLINICAL MEDICINE we know there must be hundreds who keep accurate records of their cases, and who can give us these reports. Will not every one who has such a record send it to us, covering if possible the period before he began the use of the active-principle remedies and since he has used them? These reports should not only tell the number of cases, the duration of each case, the outcome, the complications, and the treatment, but also whether the diagnosis was verified by laboratory methods or not.

We urge everyone who does not keep a record of his cases to begin. The pneumonia season is here, and there are few men who read this issue of CLINICAL MEDICINE who will not have seen a number of cases of this disease before spring comes. Please record these and report them. These reports need not be written out in the form of articles, but may be jotted down briefly on single sheets, if so desired. We ask everyone to give this matter personal attention. Statistics, to be worth while, must be complete, and they must cover a sufficiently large number of cases to make the results reported convincing. We do not want these figures to convince ourselves of the superiority of positive therapeutic methods. We know. But there are thousands of physicians who need evidence which cannot be gainsaid. Will you help us furnish it?

with hyperchlorhydria, may be responsible for the development of the disease in certain instances. Large cutaneous burns may be followed by gastric, as also by duodenal, ulcer. Arteriosclerosis, by diminishing the blood supply to the stomach and thereby lowering the vitality of the gastric mucosa, may predispose to the disease. There are certain occupations that seem to predispose; thus it is common among cooks, shoemakers, domestics, and mirror polishers. Geographical distribution or environment also seems to favor development of this affection, for records show that it is rare in Russia, fairly common in certain provinces of Germany, and four times as frequent in England as in the United States.

Among the exciting causes of the lesion may be mentioned anything giving rise to an interference with the vitality of the tissues of the stomach. Thus it has been supposed that thrombosis and embolism accounted for certain ulcers of the stomach; but if this is so, emboli are but seldom found by the pathologists. The same is true of thrombosis. The drain upon the system by certain menstrual disorders has been thought to be responsible by some. It is certain that gastric ulcer may result mechanically, as from the pressure by tumors external to the stomach; the constant churning of the pyloric extremity of the stomach (Mayo), tight lacing, and direct injury from the presence of foreign bodies may produce an ulcer; and a very common cause is the excessive acidity of the gastric juices (gastrosuccorrhea, or hyperchlorhydria) in certain pathologic states-hence the term "peptic ulcer." The taking of unduly hot food or drink may induce sufficient irritation to give rise to ulceration. Finally, there is an undoubted bacterial infection (Robson) originating in the mouth and producing a bacterial necrosis of the gastric wall, in a certain proportion of the cases.

Pathogenesis

Certain theories have been advanced to

account for the development of gastric ulcer. Thus it is claimed by many that certain circulatory disturbances lie at the basis of the disease. Virchow first advanced

the theory of thrombosis or embolism; Klebs attributed it to spastic contraction of the arterioles; and others regarded it as due to a transitory venous stasis from muscular contraction of the walls. The theory of hyperchlorhydria, or abnormally increased acidity of the gastric contents, associated with local or general anemia, has a strong following and is probably largely correct. Closely allied to this is the theory of diminished alkalinity of the circulating blood, as is chlorosis, gastric ulcer being not uncommon in chlorotic girls. Stockton has suggested the trophoneurotic theory, which regards gastric ulcer as a morbid process not unlike herpes or Raynaud's disease. Lastly, there must be mentioned the theory which ascribes the disease to the absence of natural power of the gastric mucosa to cover defects that may occur in it.

From all of the foregoing it is possible to derive the following recognized facts which have a decided bearing upon the pathogenesis of gastric ulcer:

1. The disease is commonly met with in chlorotic and hyperchlorhydric individuals, although it may be associated with normal blood and achlorhydria. (2) The disease is characterized by the digestion of a circumscribed area of the stomach-wall. It is well known that dead tissues in the stomach-wall are naturally digested, while the autodigestion of the normal gastric mucosa is impossible. (3) In gastric ulcer certain factors are present that render repair of the lesion difficult. These factors are probably circulatory in nature, since it is known that mechanically produced wounds. of the stomach heal readily, while ulcerations of the stomach have occurred under all the pathologic conditions enumerated above.

Pathology

The morbid anatomy of gastric ulcer is intensely interesting. The common site of the ulcer is the pyloric extremity, 80 percent of the cases occurring there. Usually it lies upon the posterior wall. If occurring in the lesser curvature (anterior wall) of the stomach, it also commonly lies toward the pylorus. The ulcer is usually single, but in a small percentage of the cases