dull, aching pain in lumbar sacral region, affecting sacrum and hips, worse stooping forward and walking, back and legs weak, can hardly walk, must lie down limbs, feel heavy, feels joint weak, (Hering's Cond. Mat. Med..) that I would suggest a fair trial of said remedy in 2x trituration. If this cures, which it ought to, it will prove the present condition to be one of blind internal piles.-Dr. Sarah C. Harris in U. S. Med. Investigator.

The Ocean as a Health-Restorer

A member of the profession, writing in the current number of Chamber's Journal, discusses the advantages of long sea-voyages in the cure or alleviation of disease. As the subject is one of much interest, and the writer speaks from considerable personal experience, we will summarize his conclusions for the benefit of our readers. He recommends the Australian voyage on the grounds of "its length and variety, the average warmth, and calm weather which prevails, and the ample provision made for the traveler's comfort on the best ships." A sailing vessel is preferable to a steamer on a variety of grounds. "The invalid does not desire to make 'the quickest run on record;' he has come to sea in order to enjoy, as long as possible, sea air, sea-life, and sea leisure. The longer the voyage, provided it fall short of producing intolerable ennui, the greater the gain to health. Again, in the comparatively slow moving sailing ship, the changes of temperature are gradual, while the fast steamship, going at a uniform rate of fourteen or fifteen knots per hour, flies through degrees of latitude like a steeplechaser over his fences, and the invalid is hurried too quickly from the fogs and cold of Britain to the heat of the tropics; and again with equally undue rapidity from the burning equator to the icebergs of the southern ocean." The first advantage of life at sea is the perfect rest and quiet which can be enjoyed. "There is no morning newspaper. no postman's knock, no telegrams, no daily confinement in close offices, courts, or consulting-rooms, no daily duties calling for energy which is so often lacking. The passenger has only to eat, sleep, and live. The strain of life is withdrawn. The wheels of existence move easily, and with lessened friction. The incessant emulation, the keen anxieties, the worrying cares which beset modern commercial and professional life, are as things that never have been. The next important point is the pure atmosphere and the long hours of uninterrupted enjoyment of sunshine and fresh air. In the warm latitudes, the passengers live on deck, going below only to eat and sleep, and frequently spend fifteen hours daily in the open air. This is an advantage of the first magnitude. Half the diseases of modern life, and more than half the minor ailments which embitter existence, are due to contamination of the air we breathe. Not the least terrible discovery of molern science is the revelation that this liquid ether, apparently so pure and spotless, which surrounds us on every side, is, in reality, swarming with invisible forms of life, capable of becoming the ministers of disease and the harbingers of death. But "the air that sweeps the surface of the oceans bears no trace of contamination or impurity. Hence, in a large measure, is explained the immense advan

tage of the long sea-voyage to the consumptive, to whom pure air is, in the literal sense, the very breath of life."

The equability of the ocean climate is another important point. "The variations of temperature at sea, from day to day, are trifling, and steadily progressive with the latitude, sudden changes being almost unknown. The winds are all sea breezes, all laden with moisture, and usually blow from the same point of the compass for many days together. Chillthat word of fearful import on land-has no existence at sea. Sailors rarely suffer from ordinary catarrhs or cold, and even sleep with impunity upon the bare deck. The changes of temperature at sea are gradual, and can be reckoned on, and proper preparation made." The saline particles in sea air, and the abundance of ozone, are also alluded to as favorably influencing the course of disease. The high average range of the barometer at sea is mentioned as a fact worth weighing. If we had the materials, it would be very interesting to compare the effect upon respiratory disease of a barometer averaging over thirty inches as at sea, and one standing at twenty-four inches or twenty five inches, as at Davos.-Medical Age.

EDITORIAL.

A Happy New Year.

Year by year as I write the New Year's greeting I wonder how long we will continue to travel together. This is the twenty fifth "Happy New Year" that I have sent to the readers of the ECLECTIC MEDICAL JOURNAL, and we have subscribers now who were regarded as old subscribers when the JOURNAL came into my hands.

A quarter of a century is a long space of time in the life of a generation, and in it we should have done some useful work. As I look back the retrospect is pleasant. As a school of medicine we have come up from our greatest adversity (1861) to our greatest prosperity (1885). In 1861 it was a question whether there was sufficient vitality in the body Eclectic to survive the year. We had but one college with 23 students. The only journal had been obliged to suspend. Many were bankrupt in purse. Many were bankrupt in principles, and many of our successful practitioners were seriously considering whether or not it would be better to affiliate with the old school.

Commencing with 1862, we have renewed our youth, renewed our faith in medical reform, renewed our practice of medicine, and have counted every year a success. As a school of medicine we should be thankful at Thanksgiving, merry at Christmastide, and happy at New Year. For our practice has lost the barbarisms of the olden time, and is something that people can be thankful for. It is good news and peace to the sick, and a promise of rational medicine for the years to come.

In 1862 I wrote: "Whilst we congratulate ourselves on the progress of medicine. we must not forget that there is work to do." I have repeated it every year since, and it is as true to day as it was a quarter of

a century ago. In 1863 the burthen of the greeting took this form: "What have we to do? We have to fight our battles over again with the regulars. In Ohio and some other States for the rights guaranteed us as freeman; in all places for our peculiar doctrines and remedies." We say the same to day, and would like to emphasize it.

Making the first decade, the New Year's greeting takes this form: "We send with the first number for 1872 our New Year's greeting to all the friends of the JOURNAL, and we not only wish for a 'Happy New Year' to all, but we feel like working for it as well.

"The physician's life is a hard one at best-can it be made easier? There are a great many unpleasant things in its every day routine-can these be avoided? It is poorly compensated, either in money or in kindly grateful thoughts-can our compensation be increased?

"We answer these queries in the affirmative, and in answering them we point out some of the objects for which we have labored in the past, and for which we will labor in the future.

"What is it that makes the physician's life hard? Ask yourself the question. Let your mind travel over the work of the last month, the last year, your professional life-you can get but one answer-it is, 'the uncertainty of medicine.' When you have been able to prescribe with certainty, your work has been pleasant, and you have felt it easy.

"It is not the long cold rides, or the night work, that makes the physician's life hard, though surely there is enough of physical toil here; but if the heart is light and the head clear, we only rest. the sounder after such fatigue. On the contrary, it is the wearying uncertainty of disease (of treatment), and the care constantly brooding over us, that makes haggard faces and weary limbs, and gives us broken sleep.

"The uncertainty of medicine increases our physical toil. We feel uneasy in mind, frequently make unnecessary visits, and always do more brain work (and of the most exhaustive kind) in one case, than need be expended on ten, if we had certainty. As we near the house of the very sick, the face clouds, care broods, and the spirits sink. We have all felt often enough that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick."

"The uncertainty of medicine has a like influence upon our patrons. They feel that the progress, duration, and termination of disease is uncertain, and know by bitter experience that there is nothing so uncertain as medicine, as commonly used. As a case progresses the shadow deepens; all feel it-patient, friends, neighbors-and all unite in making the doctor feel it. It is this that gives us the majority of our unpleasant calls, our night rides, and our unprofitable business.

"I could not practice medicine in the old way; I would not practice medicine in the old way. No money could compensate me for what I have suffered from the uncertainty of old medicine. Feeling thus, the reader can readily see why I have been so anxious that our materia medica should be re-studied, and that we should learn to prescribe definite remedies for definite pathological conditions.

"The old practice of medicine (I don't mean old school) was not only uncertain, but it was unpleasant. Medicines were nasty, disgusting to the senses, and the stomach would revolt at their very thought. In the

olden time you could smell the doctor as he entered the gate, and the odor of his pill-bags-faugh! 'my gorge rises at it; it was enough to make a well man sick. Medicine was a synonym for all that was offensive. "Could you expect a profession to be pleasant that thus outraged all the finer feelings of humanity. As soon expect it if you were a vault cleaner, an old soap grease man, or engaged in any other vile pursuit. "Medicines were not only unpleasant to the senses, but their influence intensified the unpleasantness of disease. The sick became sicker, and the doctor and his medicines were only endured because it was supposed that the increase of disease was necessary to recovery. Could one expect his profession to yield him pleasure under these circumstances? Must not the doctor sympathize with those afflicted-if he has any "bowels of compassion?"

"People don't feel that they owe much gratitude after they have suffered in this way, and as a rule they don't feel like paying money for the privilege of enduring it. I know by experience that people are willing to pay promptly. pay well, where they feel the doctor has been a blessing in the house; when it is evident he has relieved suffering, and shortened the duration of disease.

"Just in proportion as we prescribe with certainty we have success, and just as we have success our labor is lightened and we have more strength to give it. Just in proportion as our medicine is pleasant in form, and kindly in its action-relieving suffering in place of intensifying disease-just in that proportion we will be compensated for our work.

"Old things are passing away, in our school as well as in others, and we are steadily working for that better day when medicine shall be pleasant, kindly in its action, and certain in its results. We may be going too fast, we may be 'going to the d- -1,' as some of our good friends are kind enough to say; but we are glad to go anywhere to escape the hideousness of old physic.

"Working now, as we have worked for years, for a rational practice of medicine, giving all our time and thought to its development, we feel that we can not only wish our readers a 'Happy New Year,' but that we can aid in making it."

Reaching another decade in 1882, the editor "feels to rejoice," "like a strong man running a race."

"And so the years roll round; a d having made another in our cycle of seventy years (or less), we brace ourselves for the work of another year. "You may have some time read that 'man was made to mourn,' and it may be scripture, but scripture or no scripture, it is a pure fiction. On the contrary, man was made to work, and in work and in a right life to find happiness and pleasure.

"If one should write it, 'man was made to laugh,' he would put it truthfully. Man is the only laughing animal known. Why this capacity if he is not made to laugh? The thing is conclusive, and whatsoever our sanctimonious sobersides may say, we will endeavor to get the laugh. "The subject is pertinent, for if there is any one season of the year more than another, in which this purely human faculty is to be exercised, it is from the 20th of December to the 20th of January. The

season opens with 'Joy to the world, the Lord has come,' and according, to an old tradition, 'even the animals laughed for joy.'

"As a school of medicine we should 'feel to rejoice.' It has been a good year for us, not only in increase of numbers, but in that material prosperity which enables one to enjoy holidays. A practice of medicine that gives small doses of pleasant medicine for direct effect, and cures its patients, must succeed. It will get the better class of patients, those who give character to the community and can also pay the physician.

"The old fashioned drugging most certainly looked towards the orthodox saying that 'man was made to mourn.' Possibly this is why it was called the orthodox practice. Come, sing to me of calomel and jalap (or podophyllin straight) to wring my bowels; of tartar emetic (or lobelia and sanguinaria) to wrench my stomach; of diaphoretic, diuretic, and alterative, ad nauseum; of quinine to ring my ears, ache my head, and put my nerves on stretch; of morphine to take what little sense I have; of mustard plasters, blisters, and suppurative counter-irritants. Is there anything of Thanksgiving, of Christmas, of New Years' in this? Is there anything in this to excite laughter? No; unless possibly it be that risus sardonicus,' or a resemblance to the laughing hyena.

"Give us the new, the better way, where good hygiene, good nursing, good food, and the right remedy fitting the needs of the patient, make sickness tolerable. Of course good health is that which gives a benison to the Christmas holidays, and good health is the right object of the practice of medicine. In so far as the physician can influence right living and prevent disease, he is doing good, and in so far as he can rectify the wrongs of life, and bring health to the sufferer, he is doing good. Thinking of him in this way, the doctor might be regarded as much a part of Christmas as the turkey. Why not think of him as an appetizer, and a good thing to have in a family?

"One of the promises for that better land-a continuous Christmasis, that there shall be no sickness there. Fortunately for us it does not say there shall be no doctors there, though possibly some have suggested that they will not be needed."

If we live to see the new year of 1892, may we be able to say that this decade has brought us an increased knowledge of disease, and of means to lessen suffering, to shorten the duration of disease, and to save life. To all workers in this direction we send the greeting, a happy New Year for 1886, and for all coming years.

Mal-Diagnosis-a Suit for Damages.

A Dr. Purdy, of New York, gave notice to the Health Department that, in his opinion, a young woman who was under his treatment was suffering with small-pox. Thereupon the Department sent one of its medical officers to visit the patient; and it appears that he agreed with Dr. Purdy as to the nature of the case, and the woman was removed, contrary to her will, to a public hospital set apart for infectious diseases. Her sickness proved to be of short duration, and she was not