one or more articles for its pages every month. He is every way competent to do full justice to this branch of medical science.

Prof. THOMAS NICHOL will remain at his post, editor of the department of Diseases of Women and Children, and will doubtless give it such attention as its importance merits.

CARL MULLER, a distinguished microscopist, will edit the department of Pathology and Microscopy.

For the liberal patronage which has been extended to us by a constantly enlarging circle of readers, we feel very grateful. Their confidence we shall endeavor to maintain by studying their interests and wishes, and contributing our part toward the promotion of the true Art of Healing.

During the last twenty years Homœopathy has advanced far beyond the narrow limits within which the genius of its discoverer and of his first disciples had sought to confine it. Our School is teeming with movement, with new views, new explanations, even new generalizations, yet all of them revolving round the central doctrine that a drug can not act as a remedial agent in any given case unless it acts as the homoopathic simile of the pathological process. The very idea of a simile has expanded beyond the horizon of former years. Pathology, pathological anatomy, the microscope, all the resources of the great science of medicine are brought to bear upon an elucidation of the question: What constitutes a simile in a therapeutic point of view? We are no longer satisfied with a mere simile: we require the simillimum, the very drug whose pathogenetic series shall meet the pathological series in spirit as well as in form, fully and truly as its material representative in the drug - world.

When our Materia Medica shall have been reconstructed as the correspondential type of the fixed facts of pathology, the great problem of healing disease will, in a measure, have reached a mathematical solution, and all minor questions of dose, and the like, will no longer distract the attention of our practitioners.

We shall welcome every contribution to our pages that may have a tendency to enrich our already vast treasure of knowledge, and perfect our noble science and art.

Surgical Department.

BUSHROD W. JAMES, M. D., PHILADELPHIA, EDITOR.

NEW ENDOSCOPE.

The European endoscope, as imported into this country, is a complicated, bulky, and expensive affair, costing about $150, complete, but American ingenuity has overcome all of these difficulties, and to Dr. P. S. Wales, of the U. S. Navy, is due the credit of bringing out the most improved instrument of the present time, and one that fulfills every indication and which costs only about $30 or $35, as manufactured by Mr. J. H. Gemrig, of Philadelphia. Every careful surgeon and physician desires, in complicated cases, and, in fact, in every case, to avail himself of all practical means of aid in forming a correct diagnosis of the disease he is about to treat, and if he can get a view of the diseased structures, it is infinitely preferable to a verbal description alone of the symptoms which such disorders give rise to. In treating constantly diseases of the uterus, rectum, urethra and bladder, an endoscope is one of the essential diagnostic means to be brought into use in the present advanced state of medical science. If a better illumination is needed than the sun or ordinary artificial light affords, the magnesium light can also be used in connection with this endoscope by means of an additional apparatus, and thus a more clear and striking view of the parts be obtained. The instrument consists, as seen in the figures 1 and 2, of illuminating mirror, urethral,

*For sale at Detroit Homeopathic Pharmacy.

vesical, and rectal tubes, a stricture knife, porte - caustic, and a twisted-pointed wire stylet.

The peculiarity of the instrument is the mode of illumination, which is effected by a concave mirror, three inches in diameter, and twelve inches in focal length, perforated at its centre. The mirror is supported in a metallic frame, consisting of a broad ring, which is intended to slip ever the proximal end of the tube; two slender arms, about five inches long, project posteriorly from the ring, and clasp the mirror at opposite points of its periphery where the connection is secured by two little milled-headed screws. By this arrangement the mirror is movable around its vertical and central axis, so that it can be set at any desired angle to receive the light, which is to be conveyed into the tube.

Just above the pavilion of the tube, and supported in one of the branches of the frame work, is a spring clip, for the purpose of holding lenses of various magnifying powers, which, enlarge the field of vision, and enable the observer to study its details with accuracy.

The source of light may be either natural or artificial. Sunlight yields the best results, enabling the observer to see distinctly the minutest details of the field under observation. As it is impossible, in the majority of cases, to use sunlight, a gaselier may be employed. Tobold's Lamp furnishes a good source of illumination also.

In using the instrument, the patient may either stand up or lie down; the lamp is placed at his side in a darkened room, and the surgeon, having put his eye behind the perforation in the mirror, adjusts the latter with his right hand, so that the light may be thrown into the tube, which is supported in the bladder or urethra by the left hand. As soon as the interior of the tube is fully illuminated, the field formed by the mucous membrane covering its end will come into view. B. W. J.