subscription book he travelled over a large part of the United States for seventeen years, thus securing means enough to erect his ideal at Binghamton, superintending every ideal of its construction. This was done under great difficulties and discouragements, as many ridiculed his efforts, saying he would never succeed, but he raised every dollar in money or material for the building, and the corner stone of the asylum was laid September 24, 1858. Not until this, the principal work of his life, was accomplished, did he think of marrying, and October 11, 1862, he was united to Gertrude, the daughter of Colonel George Middlebrook, one of the early settlers of Wilton, Conn. By this union he had five children, all now living. his hopes. He made many ineffectual efforts to restore his beloved institution, while the State had converted into an insane asylum. Among other projects he conceived the plan of building an inebriate asylum for women, spent several years of his life working on that idea, saying that when the latter was built he would be in a position to restore the Binghamton asylum to its original work. The idea of the woman's hospital was never completed. He broke ground for the institution seven ΟΙ eight years ago, but in a few years some ill-advised persons succeeded in taking away its charter. This was a severe blow to him and the cause of a severe illness. Soon as he recovered, however, he went to work again, but while the old-time fire was in his eye his body was not equal to the work he was constantly putting upon it. He had succeeded in having the greater part of the original stockholders of the Binghamton asylum transfer their stock to himself, so that when he died he was in truth and equity the absolute owner of the institution. Among the presidents of the New York State Inebriate asylum during the superintendency of Dr. Turner, were The asylum at Binghamton was informally opened in June, 1864, with only a few rooms completed, but at once entered upon a car er of prosperity. In a few years, however, some of those he had invited to help in his benevolent work became dissatisfied with his plan of carrying on the institution, which was one of total isolation from stimulants or narcotics, not even allowing the sale of anything of the kind within half a mile from the building-ex-Attorney-General Benjamin F. Butwhile the other plan was to put the inebriate on his honor, allowing the sick man, as it were, to choose when he should take his medicine. As the inebriate's sense of honor is inevitably blunted, that plan could not possibly be successful, and though the party in opposition to Dr. Turner succeeded in having its way, even to turning out the doctor from the institution of his own creating, they soon found they had an elephant on their hands, and at last sold the institution to the State of New York for the sum of $1. This illegal act was on a par with many others, while Dr. Turner could only look on, and in agony contemplate the wreck of ler, Chancellor Walworth, Dr. Valentine Mott and Dr. John W. Francis, all of whom were warm personal friends of the founder, and their reports and addresses refer in the highest terms to the integrity and industry of Dr. Turner and his mastery of the needs and possibilities of the institution. When death suddenly overtook him he was, under many difficulties and discouragements, engaged in a suit to recover the asylum to its legitimate uses, never doubting the righteousness of his cause or the final triumph of his life work. A noble man has fallen, but his work will live forever. The world is now fast coming to his advanced ideas of the treatment of the inebriate, and may the time soon come when the people of the great State of New York shall see the wrong that has been done to their benefactor, and through him to themselves, and restore to its rightful and legal use the New York State Inebriate Asylum. NOTES AND COMMENTS. The Kansas Medical Journal is a new, enterprising and very readable medical monthly published at Topeka. It is reported that one out of every five school children in Philadelphia is obliged to make use of glasses, and the proportion is rapidly increasing. The tapeworm has become a general form of malady in Servia; but much was done last year to get rid of this by careful sanitary precautions being taken by the veterinary staff in examining the swine and pork imported from other countries. The authorities of Memphis have issued an order to the effect that all persons practising medicine in the taxed district must register their full names, residence and years of practice. The reason this has been done is on account of the irregularity of issuing death certificates. Professor Lowenthal, who has lately made experiments on the action of salol in cholera bacilli in Professor Cornil's laboratory in Paris, has received a special mission from the French Government to proceed to Tonquin, in order to study up the effect of salol on cholera patients. Professor Lowenthal is for this purpose nominated a navy medical officer a' titre d' etranger, but is allowed full liberty of action. This is the first time that the French Government has selected a member of another nation for such a post, and it well indicates the tendency of science to draw nations nearer together.-Maryland Medical Journal. The St. Louis Polyclinic is a new monthly published by the Faculty of the St. Louis Post-Graduate School of Medicine. It is reported that the various medical colleges of this country, in ten years from 1877 to 1887, turned out thirty-six thousand and ninety-seven doctors. A London health inspector reported that a number of cases of diptheria had been caused by cats going from house to house, and thus carrying the virus. A petition has been addressed to the Municipal Council of Paris, praying for the substitution of electricity for the guillotine in the execution of capital sentences. Those ladies (says the American Medical Journal) who desire to stand next on the list of futures, of a certain fashionable obstetric nurse, will require to be endowed with an unusual amount of prescience, as she informs her patrons. that her dates are full up to a year in advance. The Pharmaceutical Journal gives the following test for antipyrin: Place in a test-tube a few grains of potassium nitrate, add a little water and then excess of strong sulphuric acid, and fill up the tube with the suspected liquid. A green coloration is immediately produced if antipyrin be present. test is delicate and reliable and has the advantage of being specifically characteristic of antipyrin. This Professors Du Bois-Reymond and von Helmholtz are at the head of a branch committee in Berlin to co-operate with the central committee in Munich for the erection of a national monument to George Simon Ohm, one of the greatest of European electricians. The English and French committees for the same object have now their counterpart in an Italian one, which includes Professors Blaserna of Rome, Righi of Bologna, and Macaluso of Palermo. Spain joins the movement through her Professor de Luna. The American Pharmaceutical Association lately met in San Francisco, with an attendance of 375 delegates. Three of the crew of the bark Lamar, at Highland Light, Mass., from Tamatave, died on the voyage with beri-beri. The vessel was not detained at quarantine. The people of New Orleans are determined to do away with the system of surface draining so long in use. They are agitating for underground drainage. Recent news from Madras indicates that that portion of the world is ravaged both by famine and cholera. The province of Ganjam is where the epidemic has reached its greatest intensity. The official figures put the deaths at one thousand per week from cholera. A New Prize in Hygiene has been founded by the widow of the late Dr. Pier d' Hony, of Milan, in memory of her husband. The prize amounts to 1000 fr., which the Royal Italian Society of Hygiene will award for the best memoir on a question of industrial hygiene, special attention being paid to prophylaxis and precautions against disease, injuries, and accidents of any particular field or fields of labor. The memoir must be in the hands of the Society by February 29, 1890. FORMULA FOR A MUCILAGINOUS OINTMENT.-Vigier suggests the following in the Gazette Hebdomadaire, May 3, A Homœopathic Congress is to be held in Paris this year. Nashville, Tenn., has appropriated $20,000 for a new city hospital. M. Berthelot has been elected perpetual secretary of the French Academie des Sciences in the place of M. Pasteur. The late Wm. J. Syms, of New York City, has left the munificent sum of $350,000 for building and maintaining an operating theatre in connection with Roosevelt Hospital. high dilution homeopathic physicians It is reported that several leading have adopted the practice of "mindhealing, Christian science" and the like. It must be admitted that they only had a short step to take.-Medical Times. The Astley-Cooper prize, amounting to $1500, will be awarded in 1892. The question is, "The Influence of MicroOrganisms upon Inflamation." The papers of those contesting for the prize should be written in English, or accompanied by an English translation, and should be addressed, before January 1, 1892, to Guy's Hospital, London. The prize will not be awarded to two or three working together. A Pittsburg physician, named Cooper, has recently applied for a patent on a process to preserve human bodies by compression. By curious combination of steel presses and hot rollers, he excludes all the moisture and reduces a full-grown body to a very small size, twelve by fifteen inches, rendering it as hard and imperishable as marble. It is thought that the process will supersede cremation, as bodies thus preserved are not only not offensive, but can be made to assume various ornamental shapes and be kept in the parlor or elsewhere as constant reminders of the departed. The doctor has on his centre-table the remains of a child pressed into the form of a cross. It resembles the purest marble, is highly ornamental and is perfectly odorless.-Exchange. Mrs. Jane C. Stormont, the widow of Dr. D. W. Stormont, has given $10,000 to the Kansas Medical Society. On June 4, 1889, the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania elected Dr. John H. Musser Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine. Dr. George H. Makuen, of the staff of Cooper Hospital, Camden, has been appointed Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Jefferson Medical College. The largest professional fee for limited service is said to have been paid to Surgeon-Major Freyer, of the Indian medical service, for treating the Nawab of Rampoor for three months' suffering from rheumatic fever. The Nawab gave him a lac of rupees, 50,000 dollars. REMARKABLE ELASTICITY.-In experiments recently made in France on the elasticity of cork, it was found that disks of that substance, when submitted to a pressure of sixty-six tons to the square inch, were compressed to onefifth their thickness, and recovered their original dimensions in exactly ten minutes after the pressure was removed. The municipality of Berlin intends to create a new establishment for 700 epileptic patients, capable of being so enlarged as to receive 1000, at Bissdorf, a village near the city. It is to have a farm and ample grounds attached to it, and is to consist of a central building and many cottages scattered over the grounds, each with a garden round it. The whole will cost 4,730,000 marks (about $1,182,500). We understand that there is an attempt being made to form a trust in medical journalism in this country. It will probably result in combining some of the weaker ones, which will be no loss to readers, and the remaining papers will be the gainers. We have no idea that the old established journals will have anything to do with the effort.-Medical Times. The observations conducted by Dr. Gates showed that the best of the anti pyretics for phthisis is antifebrin, so far as the limitation of the daily temperature fluctuation is concerned. It is, however, more depressing than phenacetic, and has no appreciable effect upon the number of bacilli to be found in the sputum. Its continued use has also been followed by colliquative sweating of unusual profuseness and obstinacy, followed by diarrhoea of the same character, in a case where doses gradually increased to forty grains per diem failed to keep the temperature below 103°. The substitution of Febricide Pills gave better results. Each pill produced a reduction of temperature equal to about five grains of antifebrin and the depression of the latter was more than neutralized by the tonic effect of the other ingredients.-Philadelphia Medical Times, April 1st, p. 452. GENERAL DEBILITY.-In all cases of prostration, either during the course of an acute disease or a chronic affection Colden's Liquid Beef Tonic will be found invaluable. It is radically different from all other preparation in containing Leibig's Beef Extract, brandy and a soluble preparation of iron. STERLING, ILL., Jan. 19th, 1889. Messrs. Reed & Carnrick, GENTLEMEN: Allow me to congratulate you upon the efficient and elegant combination Phospho-Caffein Compound, for headaches, neuralgia, insomnia, neurasthenia and general nervous irritability. I have never found its equal. I have had the satisfaction of getting early and satisfactory results, and therefore cheerfully recommend it to the general practitioner as a valuable combination. Very truly yours, JNO. B. CRANDALL, M. D. Health Commissioner City of Sterling, President U. S. Examining Board of Surgery for Pensions. There is no other exhibit of the class in the United States section to rival that of Wm. R. Warner & Co. From the globe-advertising Philadelphia merchant comes an exhibit which the native pharmaciens can look at with both admiration and wonderment. The display is enough to make any Frenchman curious, and their arrangement such as to be above deprecatory criticism; and those Frenchmen there could not be a people with better taste for the proper and harmonious exhibition of products. A glance through their own magnificent section of pharmacy will verify this. Readers would find superfluous a description in detail of the Messrs. Warner's essentially fine installation covering all their soluble sugar-coated pills, salts, &c. Suffice it to remark that at the Paris Universelle their exhibit is thoroughly representative, comprises all the makers' fabrications, and is decidedly an honor to the concern.— Pharmaceutical Record. THREATENED ABORTION.-M. D. Makuna, M. R. C. S., Eng., Lic. Med. University, Bombay, 1876, Trebeebut, Rhondda Valley, South Wales, says: I have much pleasure in expressing my satisfaction with the results I have obtained by the use of Aletris Cordial. One of my patients who had miscarried three times previously took Aletris Cordial during the last three months of pregnancy, and was delivered of a fine, healthy boy. I ordered it at her own solicitation, as she expressed so much ease and comfort after the use of the first bottle. I am now giving it to two more patients who have miscarried several times before, and I am in hopes of good results. I consider it a valuable addition to the Pharmacopoeia, on account of its antispasmodic and nervetonic properties, and I should not like to go without it. We notice in the London Lancet, July 13th, 1889, in an "Abstract of the Croonian Lectures," T. Lauder Brunton, M. D., F. R. S., on the subject of Hypnotics, page 60, that he says of Sulfonal: "Sulfonal appears to be one of the most effective of all the newly introduced hypnotics, and although it does not, like morphine, compel sleep, it induces sleep in a pleasant manner and has few disagreeable effects and little or no danger." The price of Sulfonal has been reduced and now is within the reach of all. |