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The reputation of this drug as a therapeutic agent was first gained through its employ. ment in the form of an infusion; and in the fifty years following its introduction into medical practice, a continuous effort has been made by manufacturers to perfect a preparation which would represent all the active principles of the drug, without the high price of the salts, either alone or in combination.

The most prejudiced writers on Materia Medica, accord to the late Wm. S. Merrell the largest share of credlt in the introduction of Hydrastis preparations, and to the present organization the reputation of being the largest consumers of the drug in the world. For more than a half-century, Hydrastis has been made a study in our laboratory, and we do not think we exaggerate its importance when we assert that it stands pre-eminent to-day as the most valuable exponent of our vegetable Materia Medica.

The following preparations in fluid form are receiving our special attention at this time : Fluid Hydrastis-MERRELL.

Is what its name implies—the active, medicinal principles of the drug in natural combination and in a fluid form. It has a bright, yellow color, perfectly clear, free from sediment, and with an unmistakable odor of the fresh drug.

Fluid Hydrastis is a pure, neutral solution of all the alkaloidal constituents of the drug, rejecting the oil, gums, irritating and offensive resins and inert extractive matters. The success attending its introduction is the best evidence of its therapeutic value.

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Unsuccesful imitations and would-be substitutes are met with on every hand. Preparations said to be "just as good" or "about the same thing," but always a little cheaper,' attest the wide-spread and growing popularity of Fluid Hydrastis. All such, compared with the latter as to physical appearance or as representatives of the drug, are condemned; dispensed in prescriptions, they are readily detected; tested therapeutically, they are promptly rejected as unworthy of confidence.

Fluid Hydrastis is applicable to the treatment of all irritable, inflammatory and ulcerative conditions of the mucous tract.

This statement of a well-known medical writer and journalist has become axiomatic: "No remedy for physician's use has been received with such universal approval."

Solution Bismuth and Hydrastia-Merrell.

An invaluable and scientific combination, wherein the beneficial action of the white alkaloid is increased by association with Bismuth. This solution contains 21⁄2 grains of the double Citrate Bismuth and Hydrastia; twenty-five per cent. of which is Hydrastia Citrate.

The cordial reception accorded this preparation marks it as the most valuable combination in the market in which the white alkaloid alone represents the valuable properties of the drug. Used in diseases of the nasal passages, of the eye, of the throat, of the stomach and intestines, of the reproductive organs and bladder it is equally beneficial.

Colorless Solution of Hydrastia-MErrell.

This is a permanent solution of the white alkaloid, without the addition of any other medicinal agent to modify or increase its action. It is offered without special recommendation to meet the views of an unlimited number of physicians, with whom the color of the Fluid Hydrastis is an objection. This solution contains in one fluid pint the same proportionate strength of white alkaloid as exists in an average quality of crude root.

See notes above on Solution Bismuth and Hydrastia.

"Merrell's Hydrastis Preparations" are for sale by Wholesale Druggists throughout the United States. Please Specify "Wm. S. M. Chem. Co." in ordering or prescribing.

The WM. S. MERRELL CHEMICAL CO..

CINCINNATI.

ORR, BROWN & PRICE and BRAUN & BRUCK, Columbus, Wholesale Agents.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

J. F. BALDWIN, M. D., Columbus,

EDITOR.

Communications, reports, etc., are solicited from all quarters.

Authors desiring reprints, will receive fifty, free of charge, provided the request for the same accompanies the article.

Subscribers changing their location, are requested to notify the Publishers promptly, that there may be no delay in receipt of the journal, stating both the new and the former post-office address.

We have no authorized Collectors, except such as carry properly made out bills, countersigned by the Publishers. HANN & ADAIR, Publishers, Columbus, ().

The Alleged INCREASE OF INSANITY.—In our last issue Dr. Wilson presented a valuable and interesting study of the statistics of the insane. in Ohio. Similar studies have been made elsewhere, and have, we think, excited unnecessary apprehensions as to an increasing tendency to insanity among our people.

Most of this increase is apparent and not real, as has been shown by Dr. Andrews, of the Buffalo Asylum. Science and humanity have greatly extended the boundaries of insanity, so that many are now treated as insane who would a few years ago have been regarded as merely eccentric. A few years ago it was only the actively maniacal or the helplessly demented that were admitted to asylums or placed in jails and poor-houses; now almost every form of neurotic disorder affecting the mental powers is deemed a proper matter for treatment. Again, the census reports, previous to that of 1880, are too uncertain and poorly constructed to be of more than relative value; they cannot properly be used in comparison with that of 1880. For instance, the census of 1870 gave the total insane of Illinois as 1,621; while the State Board of Charities placed the number at 2,376. That the insane population of the United States, from 1870 to 1880, increased five times as fast as the general population, is incredible. We must look elsewhere than to these census returns for safe comparisons.

The greater longevity of the insane is another important factor in producing the numerical increase. Better treatment, medicinal and hygienic, and better surroundings have added many years to the lives of the insane.

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One of the most exhaustive studies of this subject which we have seen was reported to the American Public Health Association in 1883, by Dr. Foster Pratt, of Michigan. He shows conclusively that it is to our foreign-born population, and their immediate descendants, that we are indebted for our increased insane population. The foreign-born, in 1850, were one-tenth of the population and furnished one-seventh of the insane; in 1860, were one-eighth of the population, and furnished one-fourth of the insane; in 1870, and also in 1880, were one-seventh of the population, and furnished nearly one-third of the insane. In other words, the foreign-born, from 1850 to 1860, had increased nearly one hundred per cent., their insane 181 per cent.; from 1860 to 1870, the foreign increase was thirty per cent., their insane nearly one hundred per cent.; from 1870 to 1880, the foreign increase was less than twenty per cent., their insane 150 per cent. Or, for further illustration, of native population, in 1860, there was one insane in 1,545; in 1860, one 1,559; in 1870, one in 1,258; in 1880 (a more careful census), one in 662; while of foreignborn population, in 1850, there was one insane in 1,095; in 1860, one in 717; in 1870, one in 497; in 1880, one in 250. proportion of insane among the foreign-born was among the native-born, each succeeding census has revealed a rapidly increasing proportion of the foreign insane. Dr. Pratt's charge that other governments have been quietly unloading their defective class upon us, by assisting" emigrants, is not capable of successful denial.

While in 1850 the nearly the same as

In direct connection with this subject of foreign population, must be considered that of their descendants. In 1880 there were 1,811,098 persons in this country the children of the intermarriage of native and foreign-born parents, and 13,011,646 whose parents were both foreign-born; total, 21,494,074, or nearly one-half the entire white population. We know of no figures which show the proportion of insane among this class of "native-born," but it must inevitably be large.

That there is, in modern times, an increasing number of persons becoming affected with insanity, or other nervous diseases, who would not have become thus affected fifty years ago, is true. As Dr. Pratt puts it : "We see more, hear more, read more, think more, feel more, know more, do more and worry more in ten years than our grandfathers did in thirty. Where does the strain of this intensity fall? Not on our physical strength; for we do not labor as hard, physically, as did our fathers before The strain of intensified life falls, and of a necessity must fall, on the brain and nervous system." But, on the other hand, these influences

us.

are nearly or quite counterbalanced by those exerted by the better food and clothing of the laborers of to-day, by the better care taken of our indigent poor, and by the better hygiene that pervades the living of all classes, as contrasted with the conditions of fifty years ago.

To determine whether or not there is an increasing tendency to insanity, only the new cases must be considered, and these should certainly be classified as to birth and parentage. We know of no statistics in this country that can be thus used. In England such records have been kept since 1878, and they show, says D. Hack Tuke, “ very little variation indeed in the occurrence of mental disorders ***; in fact, there is a slight tendency to diminution." Dr. Clouston's figures, he says, accord with those of Dr. Tuke, as do also those of Dr. Cobbold and the Commissioners of Lunacy of Great Britain.

Taking all things into consideration, then, we are inclined to think that there is no cause whatever for alarm over the apparent increase in our insane population. That our State and National Governments should take steps to protect us against "assisted" emigrants, is self-evident. If this influx can be stopped, the natural growth and development of our people will soon bring the proportion of the insane to the sane to what we must accept as about natural. The insane, like the poor, we must expect to have always with us.

STINKAPATHISTS, THEIR FAITH AND PRACTICE.-Classification is a great thing. To arrange in a convenient manner the separate items of our knowledge on any subject, calls for our best analytical and synthetical powers. Aside from dermatology, the proper classification of doctors most perplexes the medical profession and the laity. True, we may divide into two classes—regular and irregular—the entire mass; but here again there is a difference of opinion as to the characteristics of either. With each individual doctor he is regular who follows the speaker's belief and practice. But our object is not to discuss this subject, only to direct attention to a decription of one class of doctors, as given by Dr. Raymond in the Miss, Valley Medical Monthly, Feb. 10, 1886. Concerning the "stinkapathists,' ," he says it makes no difference when or where they graduated, or whether they had graduated at all, they all practice in the same general way, and their confession of faith and practice is about thus:

1. When a physician has located in a place he should advertise himself in every conceivable way; let him practice a year free for some blatherskite newspaper editor to get him to blow for him. He should sign his name with F. R. S., M. Ď.

2. A physician should never, under any circumstanees, or for any consideration, allow himself to speak favorably of any other doctor, and if some one else does so in his presence, offset the remark as far as possible by one of his own.

3. If a neighboring physician happens to lose a couple of cases of diphtheria, it is the bounden duty of any struggling stinkapathist to remark in the right place, in a casual way, that he is sorry for Dr. Blank's misfortune, and then add, that since adopting the new treatment, he hasn't lost a case from the disease.

4. If a physician is called accidentally, or through the courtesy of another doctor, to consult in a case of simple remittent fever, he should examine the case a long time, and ask about eleven hundred questions which he knows from the nature of the case, and the good sense of the physician in charge, have not been asked, and when he has ascertained what the treatment has been, it shall be his duty to suggest a change, at any rate. If the physician in charge is giving sulphate of quinine, suggest the bromide or valerianate; and he should always make it a point to have these things somewhere about his old clothes, as the patient might recover entirely before the prescription could be sent for.

5. When a physician is called to consult in a case of puerperal fever, for instance, and the patient is not likely to recover under any plan of treatment, and the consulting doctor fails to get an invitation to treat the patient farther in connection with the physician in charge, he should go about town and tell everybody he can that the patient is not dangerously ill at all, and will be up in a few days if properly handled.

6. If a physician is called to consult in a case of cerebro-spinal meningitis, and the patient is in articulo mortis when he arrives, he should not examine at all, but take in the situation at a glance, remembering that his opportunity for "turning a Jack" in the case will not last long enough to find out what he hasn't done. Then it shall be his duty to pull off his coat, push up his sleeves and go to work He must order water heated, and a tub full of cold from the well or cistern, put some bricks in the fire, go into his saddle bags, if he be a country physician, and get out something and give it to the patient, get out his hypodermic syringe, but don't use it, give the patient half a pound of epsom salts if he can swallow. Send a fellow five miles for a big old-fashioned syringe, and another for some whisky, and by this time the patient is in paradise. The physician shall then make sure of death, slowly gather up his instruments and things, and sorrowfully bid his audience adieu, and tell some one he may meet as he goes away that he was too late.

When you find a doctor who adheres religiously to such rules, you have a genuine uncomplicated case of cussedness that is past the art of man to cure, no matter where he hails from, to what school he belongs, how large his practice, or what hold he may have upon the hearts and pockets of the laity. And to talk to him about being honorable is like singing psalms to a deceased horse.-Am. Lancet.

THE death of Joseph Samson Gamgee, the celebrated English surgeon, occurred September 18. He had chronic Bright's disease, but the more immediate cause of death was a fracture of the neck of the thigh bone. His age was fifty-nine.