OBITUARY. IT is with deep personal sorrow that we chronicle the death on the 6th ultimo, of DR. FREDERICK CLINTON WOODBURY, the only and much-beloved son of the late Dr. John Woodbury, whose honored memory is still fresh among New-England homœopathists. Dr. Frederick Woodbury was a graduate of Harvard College, class of 1882, and Harvard Medical School, 1886. He filled, at the time of his death, the position of house physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Among his friends it was well known to be his intention, after pursuing for some years his studies abroad, to familiarize himself with homeopathic therapeutics, which were so long and ably employed by his father in his eminently successful practice. From his too brief yet brilliant past, a no less brilliant future was augured for this young physician, whose loss is mourned by many friends. He died of typhiod fever, after a brief illness. PERSONAL AND NEWS ITEMS. DR. MARIA L. DOWDELL, of Troy, N.Y., a graduate of Boston University School of Medicine, class 1877, was married on the 15th of December to Prof. H. A. Wilson of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. THE Archives of Gynecology, Obstetrics, and Pædiatrics, New York, series of 1886 just completed, has met with such warm encouragement, the publishers have decided to issue monthly, and commencing January, the parts will so appear, instead of bi-monthly as heretofore. Leonard & Co., 141 Broadway, New York. AFTER Jan. 1, DR. H. K. BENNETT will be at his office, 165 Boylston St., Boston, from 2.30 to 5 P.M., daily, Sundays excepted. Diseases of the eye, ear, and throat, exclusively. Rare Chance for a Smart Man. A FINE HOMEOPATHIC PRACTICE for sale in a New-England village. Address, M.D., Care New-England Medical Gazette. FOR SALE, CHEAP. One of De Pew's Gynecological Chairs. New. Address Lock Box 87, Keene, N.H. BABYHOOD SOLICITS short articles from the profession on timely topics relating to the care of infants, to be written in a popular style, especially for the instruction of mothers. All accepted manuscripts are paid for at the rate of five dollars per page (about eight hundred words). A sample copy and circular will be sent on application to any physician mentioning this advertisement. Address BABY HOOD PUBLISHING CO., THE New-England Medical Gazette. No. 2. FEBRUARY, 1887. VOL. XXII. Contributions of original articles, correspondence, personal items, et.., should be sent to the publishers, Boston, Mass. EDITORIAL. INDECENCY IN MEDICAL LITERATURE. INDECENCY in medical literature is a phrase which should be self-contradictory and paradoxical. If entire cleanness of action, speech, and habits of thought, is demanded by high moral law, and should be demanded by fixed public opinion, of any class of workers in the community, it is and should be demanded of physicians and clergymen, and of physicians no less than of clergymen. A religious journal which could give space to coarse jokes, conundrums, and double-entendres at the expense of the names, beliefs, and observances which the Church holds sacred, and yet could pass unrebuked of the clergy, and be read and supported by them, would, in the very fact of its continued existence, be a serious reflection on the fitness of the clergy for their high office. The same should, to our mind, be true of any medical journal publishing indecent jokes whose point lies in allusion to those physiological functions of the human body, or those intimate relations of human life, before which wise delicacy draws the veil that science or morality is at any time free to lift, but which should be held sacred from the prurient fingers of a bastard humor. Every conscientious physician to whom the honorable reputation of his profession is dear, should protest, in every fashion open to him, against the publishing in medical journals, and subsequent dissemination by reprint in their contemporaries, of such paragraphs as these under discussion. The smile they excite is worse than wasted. Their appearance can serve no worthy end, and in many very evident ways is most seriously mischievous. The reading of them tends to foster in the minds of physicians, and especially of younger physicians, the idea which, more than any other, will be fatal to their growth in personal character and public usefulness; the idea that the ethical side of professional life is no very serious matter; that the deep respect of a physician for the more intimate life of his patient has its place among appropriate phrases for commencement valedictories, and for the preface to a work on gynecology; but that it is quite permissible for the physician, the doors once shut, like the priests of old, to "wink behind the mask" if not to wholly cast the mask aside. Such paragraphs, sooner or later finding their way to the laity, serve as apt illustration for the theory which, to the crying shame of the masculine side of our profession, is so freely advanced to-day in private conversation, in essay and in fiction, that the diseases of women can and should be treated by women only, since among men the delicacy and dignity of mind, which should be brought to their treatment, are wholly lacking. We are far from desirous to call back any thing of that ponderous solemnity which, with long canes and periwigs, was once held to be a sine quâ non of the medical profession, and which, in conjunction with his murderous methods of treatment, made the appearance of the old-time doctor a "grave" matter, in more senses than one, to his unlucky patient. A humorous habit of mind is among the physician's best allies against those pessimistic views of life and human nature which so press upon him in the lengthening and saddening years. But surely there is quite enough food for wholesome laughter in the cleanly and honest drolleries of professional life, without aid from fictitious anecdotes unfit for public repetition. To the credit of homoeopathic medical journalism be it said that doubtful stories are less commonly found in its pages than in those of the old school. We are far from saying that indecencies are habitual or even common in the journalistic literature of either the old school or the new. But the fact remains, that there do, from time to time, appear in medical journals paragraphs whose fitting place must be sought in the columns of certain publications that creep stealthily through the public mails in terror of that law which forbids the circulation of obscene literature. It is against the even occasional appearance of such paragraphs, that we venture to protest. It is against their appearance, that we would earnestly urge physicians to protest; if not in the interests of higher morality, then at least in those of the dignity of science. THE QUESTION AS TO WHETHER THE HOMEOPATHIC PHYSICIANS OF TO-DAY ARE PRIMARILY HEALERS OF MEN, OR PRIMARILY FETICH-WORSHIPPERS, is raised anew by recent emphatic though limited condemnation of the GAZETTE's editorial mention, in its November issue, of a new treatment for tubercular meningitis. It was hoped that the position of the GAZETTE on the claims and value of homoeopathy was sufficiently well understood to make it clear that no slur on, disloyalty to, or retrogression of belief in the powers of homoeopathy could be implied by a simple statement of the apparently well-authenticated success, in a disease hitherto looked upon as incurable, of treatment not discoverably homœopathic. It seems, however, not needless repetition to say that the GAZETTE holds to the distinction so clearly and so often made by one of the leading exponents of homoopathy in our land and time; the distinction between homoeopathy the ideal principle, and homoeopathy as partially developed and imperfectly applied to the daily healing of the sick. As in the present instance, it were one thing to say that there is no medicine, which, administered under the law of similars, is capable of curing tubercular meningitis; and quite another thing to say that the similimum which will control this dreadful malady has not yet been discovered or applied, and that, therefore, though homoeopathy the principle stands unshaken, homoeopathy in fallible human practice stands almost as hopeless of cure before a fully developed case of tubercular meningitis, as stands and has always stood the therapeutics of the allopathic school. Reports of cases in which tubercular meningitis, after fully developing itself in a patient, has been cured by homoeopathic treat ment, may be triumphantly pointed out in magazine literature; but while such cases are so few, and their diagnosis so unauthoritative, as to justify Hughes in saying that we "cannot but echo the melancholy experience of the old school of treatment, and say that a fully developed tubercular meningitis is incurable," we feel ourselves justified in calling attention to any treatment which, in cases authoritatively diagnosed, has proved curative. To refuse mention of such treatment because our own system has not, in its humanly imperfect development, yet furnished us with the key to a like success, is to distinctly emulate the oldschool bigotry which we vociferously condemn, and to prove that we do not base our claim to be physicians on our deep desire to heal the sick. Homoeopathy is by such bigotry betrayed in the house of its friends, and insulted as no open enemy has power to insult it. Those are no true friends of a cause, or of an individual, who fawn and flatter, fulsomely ascribing perfection where perfection does not exist: those are true friends to a cause or an individual, who, by frankly acknowledging imperfections, hasten the growth which alone can put imperfections away. To heal the sick this, as honest physicians, is our first aim beside which all other aims are as nothing. Humbly and gratefully to avail ourselves of the gentle, well-tested, and potent aids which we have received from homœopathy for the treatment of almost every form of disease, and to assiduously search and test for such aids as we have not yet been able to discover, however firmly we may believe they exist, for forms of disease now pronounced incurable, this, as homoeopathic physicians, is our duty, our privilege, and our joy. But, pending the discovery of these aids, to refuse our patients the benefit of aids discovered and proved by workers in other fields of medicine is to dishonor our high calling, and to belittle, even while claiming to deify, the name of the great founder of homoeopathy, whose example incites not to self-glorification, not to worship of a phrase, but to service to one's suffering fellow-men. MENTION OF THE RECENT MEETING OF THE SOUTHERN HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION was crowded out of the columns of our January issue; though assuredly the omission |