Causes aside, however, the ever-increasing company of insane dependents may well excite solicitude, and questions of ameliorating their condition have strong appeal. Even if no question of humanitarianism were involved, the tax-payer cannot overlook the fact that the monetary cost of the care of such insane as are public charges, added to the loss through their removal from the ranks of productive workers, has been computed at not less than $164,000,000 annually— this sum is greater than the value of our annual export of all agricultural products.

And yet, my friends, we are asked to vote for license in order that the tax-payer may be benefited?

Well, are we honest about this, or are we influenced to vote for license by the specious arguments brought to bear on us by those who make money by engaging in the manufacture and sale of alcohol and alcoholic stimulants? Let us discriminate carefully, or we may regret and repent bitterly our lack of discrimination when some loved member of our home or some cherished friend succumbs to the dreadful malignancy of this terrible disease of drunkenness. It has come to many homes and it has ruined many a brilliant youth, dear to friends and relatives. Are you willing to go on record by casting your vote to dignify such a traffic with the stamp of legal prestige?

If you are, and you do so vote, then don't try to shirk the responsibilities of your act by claiming that your motive for so doing was to aid the tax-payer, nor by complaining of the inevitable consequences ensuing therefrom.

Would you, Mr. Voter, be willing to cast your vote to dignify with the prestige of law the dens of infamy, to which the white slave traffic is daily striving to lure our younger sisters and daughters? No, of course you would not. Thank God that no man can be found degraded enough to so forget his duty to humanity.

Well, why is this? Why is this, my friends? It is because we have grown up to a standard of morality that enables us to see at a glance, the gigantic hideousness of this crime against humanity, and its injurious effects upon the physical, mental, moral and spiritual condition of the race. It is universally conceded to be a gigantic wrong. So is the permitting of conditions that engender the spread of the malignant disease of drunkenness. Both are crimes against humanity. If there is a difference in their enormity, it is a difference in degree only, and the perpetration of the one is almost sure to be followed, sooner or later, by the perpetration of the other, its fellow crime.

Have we excuse for licensing or dignifying with the prestige of law one crime or wrong more than another? Especially when the deleterious effects upon human conditions resulting from both are so nearly equal I think not.

Elbert Hubbard says that disease is a crime; and that every man who has been to a hospital and enjoyed the delights of the table returns and gives an organ recital.

Mr. Hubbard may be right concerning disease. Disease is in a way and under some circumstances undoubtedly a crime, but what is eminently and emphatically more true is that crime is a disease; a malignant disease; a death-dealing disease for the cure of which no microbe-laden lymph has as yet been discovered.

Another cause easily ranking second, as the producer of abnormal mentality, or insanity, are the toxins of bacterial origin that have an injurious effect upon the brain. The most important of these is poison generated by the spirochaeta of syphilis.

Syphilis causes degeneration of the arteries of the brain. It causes destructive tumors (Gummata) in the brain and threatens its victim with the most pitiful and hopeless of all forms of insanity: general paralysis or paresis. This terrifying disease hurries its victim to complete dementia terminating in an early death. It comes only to those who have had syphilis, and is the terminal form of that malady.

We are told that the paretics that come to the New York hospitals for the insane each year amounts to 17 per cent. of all men and 8 per cent. of all women admitted.

In an appallingly large proportion of cases syphilis leads ultimately to this result.

Careful analysis recently made of 41,000 cases occurring among the officers of the Austrian army, showed that 4.6 per cent., or about one in twenty of all syphilitics were finally stricken with paresis. What would the percentage be could we obtain correct statistics gathered from persons in civil life?

The painful manifestations of syphilis in its early stages; the likelihood of its leading to the most deplorable and fatal of mental maladies, should be a sufficient warning against lapses of moral conduct through which the disease is acquired, and in justice to and for the protection of human interests there should be, by the power of law, placed over the door of every immoral resort, in blazing letters, the statement of the fact that "Incurable insanity may be contracted here."

This thought should be brought to the mind of every boy, every young man, every father of sons, and every educator of youth in the world.

There is no question about what the influence of these vices is on the manhood and womanhood of the inhabitants of this planet, and if we honestly desire to have them abolished and destroyed, we must use our best efforts, and sanction by every means in our power the earnest, faithful work of those noble men and saintly women who are valiantly striving by earnest, scientific methods to ameliorate the pitiable conditions surrounding us, and thus prevent the mistakes of the past from being repeated in the future.

David Starr Jordan says, “Today is your day and mine: the only day we have; the day in which we must play our part; what our part may signify in the great world we may not understand, but we are here to play it, and now is our time."

Yes, my friends. there are earnest, arduous, important duties devolving upon each and every one of us, and, by faithfully discharging these duties, only, can we attain the right to be counted as true citizes of this great commonwealth.

"We must rise, for the day is passing,

We must not lie dreaming on;
Some leaders are cased in armor,
And forth to the fight are gone.

A place in the ranks awaits us;

Each man has some part to play,
And your arm will never be stronger
Or needed, as now, today.

"We must rise, for the day is passing;
The low sound that you scarcely hear

Is the enemy marching to battle.
Rise, rise, for the foe is here!

Stay not to sharpen your weapons,

Or, the hour will strike at last,

When-from dreams of a coming battle

You may wake to find it past."

Dr. Perrins in discussing this paper stated that he had been for sixty years a strong advocate of temperance. In his opinion the best method to deal with the subject was to compel all manufacturers to make an absolutely pure article, and then allow any person to sell it just as freely as they now sold milk, simply holding them responsible

for selling a pure article. He thought if such a method was adopted that the consumption of alcoholic beverages would be very much. lessened.

*LUMBAGO.

By William H. Hills, M. D., Chelmsford, Mass.

There seems to be a matter of doubt among medical writersauthors as to the name of this affliction; but they mostly place it under the head of muscular rheumatism, and classify it as myalgia, indicating that it is as much a neuraglic affection as a rheumatic one. I think this latter view is as nearly correct as it is possible to obtain. The location of the trouble, as you all know, is in the lumbar region. In your diagnosis kidney troubles would be eliminated, as it is lower down on the back. Lumbar abscess is another affection that would need to be excluded.

All medical writers seem to omit any clinical history of this trouble. It usually comes on so suddenly that there is not time for much. clinical history. The etiology is also mentioned very meagerly. Writers say it generally follows severe labor of some description, such as would strain the muscles of the back. That is about all they have to advance about the cause of the difficulty.

The onset of this trouble comes suddenly without any premonition, without any febrile action or any ill feeling. Suddenly, as the popular saying-he has dropped a stitch in his back-goes, your patient cannot move without great pain. By standing perfectly erect and walking with great care he may be able to move about to a slight degree, but any bending forward is very certain to cause severe pain, and the patient is quite likely to fall forward.

Now it seems to me that the motor nerves that supply the muscles of the lumbar region are in abeyance and do not perform their normal office, although the sensory nerves are on duty with all diligence. I do not think there is really a paralysis of the motor nerves, but for some reason they do not act. Whether some rheumatic poison has stilled them for the time being, or some other toxic condition has invaded that region is a question as yet, I think, unsettled.

In Bell's paralysis the invasion is oftentimes just as sudden, but the pain does not become evident; in fact, this condition is sometimes discovered by accident. Writers do not usually associate neuralgia several years I have held that view, and I

with rheumatism, but for

*Read at Boston District Eclectic Medical Society, Sept. 29, 1913.

think I have noticed one writer that says they are sometimes associated. Most writers give as a cause of rheumatism, the presence of an excess of uric acid in the system. One makes the statement that uric acid never caused rheumatism, but he does not tell us from whence the cause does spring. I have nothing new to offer as to the cause.

The treatment of Lumbago, as given by different writers, is somewhat varied. Some speak of dry cupping as very effective; others laud various stimulating liniments. Ironing the back with a hot flat-iron is highly recommended by others, while still others pin their faith in the external application of plasters. I, myself, have known a good degree of comfort to follow the application of a rheumatic plaster, but I have often thought that the mechanical support was the greatest part of the benefit to be derived from the plaster. One writer says that macrotys is almost a specific for lumbago when given by itself or combined with aconite or belladonna. I have never used macrotys in this disease. There is one remedy that that gave quite prompt relief, although it is not mended in the books, and that is Tinct. Bryonia. more often thought of in thoracic troubles. A medical friend of mine once told me that he thought bryonia aided the action of other remedies. I have seen good results follow the giving of a one minim tablet of Tr. bryonia every hour.

I have seen given specially recomThis remedy is

I met a man on the street one day, and he said, "Doctor, why don't you fix something for my back?" I replied, "Perhaps I will if you ask me to." "Well, go ahead and fix something," he said. He had been laid up, practically, for several weeks, and had paid another physician considerable money without obtaining any relief. I con- . sidered this was rather a severe case, and I felt some anxiety as to what I should prescribe, and whether I would be able to give him any benefit. However, after some study I prepared the following prescription, which you will all say is a shot-gun remedy. I will go farther and say it is a double-barrelled shot gun.

Mix all in a mortar and put in 16 capsules No. o. The Kenyon tablets should all be ground up together with the other ingredients