times, when a consummate practitioner and learned physician of the "regular" system of therapeutics confesses that "the art of healing is to-day as empirical an art as it has ever been, but that with the advancing knowledge of disease the empiricism of therapeutics has become more scientific," homœopathy's mission is not yet ended. It needs to adhere still more strictly to the inductive method, not of scientific empiricism, but of its own science and art of therapeutics, to establish still more irrefragably the facts of pure drug experiments, and to faithfully verify our principle, by which, linking together the truly known effects of drugs and the truly observed facts of disease, our aims will become still surer and our purpose even more intelligent. If advance in homoeopathic therapeutics can keep even pace with homoeopathic progress in material prosperity, there need be no anxiety about the medical system of the future.

THAT

NEW YORK SOCIETY WORK.

HAT the interest manifested in societies is a measure of a medical man's interest in his own progress and that of his profession, is one of those truths which go without saying. Attending society meetings, and giving thought as to how societies may be made most effective, however, are more honored in the breach than in the observance, by the majority of medical men. Hence it usually happens that societies gravitate to the management of the few who often have a greater love for power and honor than for the advancement of medical interests, as a whole. The result is that societies have their flow and ebb of usefulness, depending upon the popularity, the earnestness, and the sagacity of the leaders who happen to be in the front. The problem of organizing a society so that personal ambition may be invited, and yet so controlled that only the fittest for engaging and directing the energies of the body of members, for the best results, may rise to the management, does not, as a rule, receive the consideration which the importance of the solution deserves. It is a lamentable observation that societies, like machines, are specially liable to get out of gear.

The history of our New York County Society has been an illustra

tion of the above general observations. It has flowed some at times, and ebbed a great deal at others. Fortunately, of late it has been steadily reaching a flood-tide, and has fairly broken down the barriers. of apathy and discontent which have hemmed in its usefulness. Its dignity, as the most numerous body of homoeopathic physicians meeting frequently, in the world, is becoming appreciated, and something of a conception of the part which it can and ought to play in the scientific development of homoeopathy and in promoting esprit de corps is dawning. The plan of vesting the duty of directing in an executive board, the individual members of which lose eligibility for future office from lack of attendance upon its meetings, has resulted not only in quickening interest and developing wiser deliberation, but also in selecting promptly efficient officers. The society has evidently entered upon a higher career of activity which, it is to be hoped, will draw some of the members more frequently from the seclusion of their social clubs to a place where their lights may be seen more by the profession. That it may incite and train good workers, restrain bad workers, and "frame, for the guidance of all alike, a standard of work which will elevate and benefit our art," is the heartiest good-will we can express.

The Society for Medico-Scientific Investigation is another example of well-constructed society machinery. Composed mainly of younger men, through its executive organization it has stimulated effort for the higher class of work. While its ardor for collective investigation has been dampened by a realization of the labor involved in it, which its original study of Hoang-Nan has revealed, it has, nevertheless, called out good individual papers, collected a library, and is on the way to accomplish substantial results in our experimental knowledge of drugs. We look in 1887 for those fruits of original investigation, expressed in the name of the society.

WE

SINGLE EXAMINING BOARDS.

E regret that the press upon our space will not permit the publication in full of the cogent statement of the Committee on Legislation of the New York State Homœopathic Medical Society. Its reasons for opposing a single State Examining Board

should be widely known, in view of the fact that there is a systematic plan throughout the country of getting control of homoopathy through single old school boards of examiners. Homoopathic objections to the scheme are well summed up in the first reason stated: "That the creation of such a board would practically establish a permanent and powerful medical monopoly of the licensing franchise, under the immediate control of one school of medicine, thereby constituting an exceedingly objectionable form of class legislation." How this would necessarily follow appears clear immediately upon the reading of the explanatory reasons which succeed in logical chain. Our readers are referred for the full text of the Committee's statement to the Physician's and Surgeon's Investigator for November, 1886, and to pamphlet reprints.

THE

OUR LOSS IN DR. LIEBOLD.

HE just and true tributes to the memory of Dr. Liebold, paid elsewhere in our columns, can have nothing added to make them more fitting. A loss, not perhaps sufficiently dwelt upon, however, was his knowledge of the application of remedies for the cure of diseases of the eye and ear. Unexcelled as he was as an ophthalmic surgeon, he was facile princeps in the art of the physician, in exalting the conservative restoration of medicine before resort to the mutilating and more mechanic art. Only a few weeks before his death, he expressed his still deeper conviction of the truth of the law of homœopathy, and counselled close study of the homœopathic materia medica as the surest way to clinical success. That he had a great store of original information in the homoeopathic use of drugs, the product of thorough research, profound thought and extended clinical trial, which has been puffed out like the flame of a candle, is the least consoling reflection in the general sorrow that s felt. Doubtless he had his purpose of putting it in form for survival, but living in and for his work, as he did, the greatest regret must be that, save a few fragments, his work cannot live in our literature.

COMMENTS.

ABUSE OF MEDICAL CHARITY.-Charity reform in the City of New York seems to be progressing backward. Notwithstanding the fact that there are now over forty free dispensaries, in which are treated annually over one-fourth of the population, yet the number of dispensaries is continually increasing. In the earlier days these institutions afforded a wonderful relief to the deserving and suffering poor. Founded in the name and for the sake of true charity, they abounded in good works and gained a merited reputation for genuine benevolence. It was not the custom then to measure the good accomplished by the total number of patients treated in a year, regardless of their condition and necessities. Nor was it thought best then to establish dispensaries simply to benefit colleges, honor hospitals, or glorify particular physicians. There was some attempt made to discriminate between the poor and those who dishonestly endeavored to obtain gratuitous treatment. Cases were investigated and assistance given only where it was deserved. But in these later years a different spirit reigns. That which was originally given for the benefit of the really destitute has been misused and perverted. It is known that fully two-thirds of the patients treated at the dispensaries are able to pay a physician. No investigation of cases is made, but prescriptions are written and medicines given alike to the poor and the rich, the just and the unjust. Managers of hospitals use them to swell the number of patients treated; physicians strive to increase the number that attend their respective clinics; colleges, greedily welcome all who come that they may advertise the abundant material for the use of students. And so this present system, resulting in hypocrisy and continued for gain, besmirches the fair fame of charity, lowers professional standards, fosters medical pauperism, defrauds the younger practicing physicians and makes the very name dispensary a by-word and reproach. The Presbyterian hospital has just decided that it must have an "Out Patient Department." That means, of course, another needless dispensary. No one wants it except the managers of the hospital. Several large and well equipped dispensaries are within a few blocks, and the poor connected with the hospital are already amply cared for. It is evident that the dispensary is simply to act as a "supply" to the hospital, swell its list of patients and enable it to demand larger contributions. If people contributing to the support of some of these institutions were made aware of the perverted use of funds their donations would suddenly cease. It is to be hoped that professional sentiment on this matter will find expression in such a way as to compel a reform. Toleration of abuses has a limit. The man who weakly tolerates a known and flagrant abuse is nearly as guilty as he who commits it.

ALLOPATHIC THERAPEUTIC INSPIRATION.-The Medical World has just discovered that thuja occidentalis is credited with the remarkable property of causing the disappearance, in a very short time, of all kinds of vegetative and warty growths by its internal adminis

tration. For many years this drug has been known and used by the new school. Our "friends the enemy" are only half a century behind in finding out the therapeutical virtues of thuja. The British Medical Journal has also contributed its mite to the materia medica. It has found that liquor hydrargyri perchlor. is of great use in a diarrhoea of children characterized by frequent watery offensive stools. The writer, Dr. Millard, says: "When the stools are slimy with, it may be, blood streaks, I give liquor hydrargyri perchloridi, 223 in two ounces of water, of which a teaspoonful every hour meets the case." In another issue he says: "I did not obtain my information from Dr. Ringer's excellent work but from probably the same source that Dr. Ringer obtained his, of which, to any one that knows, the book contains many traces, viz.: from homoeopathic treatises." Verily the dry bones are beginning to rattle. Many other so-called discoveries have been made-a long list-all surreptitiously taken from new school literature. The literary thief finds a brother in the medical pirate. Both appropriate the property of others; both deny the theft and brazenly offer the stolen matter as their own; both resort to vituperation and slander when exposed, and both receive equal condemnation. The policy of denouncing homoeopathy on the one hand, while stealing its methods on the other, does not commend itself as either manly or honest. Our old school brethren in this regard are rapidly getting themselves in that pleasing position popularly known. "between the devil and the deep sea." Adepts as they are at squirming, it is hardly possible for them to wriggle out of this.

as

A NEW HOSPITAL.-The announcement is made that the authorities of the San Francisco Hahnemann Medical College have secured a suitable building which will be opened at once as a homoeopathic hospital. Our friends on the Pacific coast are certainly not laggards. The college is on a solid basis and doing excellent work, and homœopathy is progressing rapidly.

BOOK REVIEWS.

RHEUMATISM: ITS NATURE, ITS PATHOLOGY, AND ITS SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT, by T. J. MACLAGAN, M.D. Octavo. Illustrated. Vol. IX. of "Wood's Library of Standard Medical Authors" for 1886. New York: Wm. Wood & Co. Pp., 285.

The object of this work is to place rheumatism, its nature and pathology upon a new basis. The treatment was introduced to the profession by the author in 1876, about the same time that German authorities began to advocate a similar course. The author first discusses the varieties, symptoms, duration and seat of rheumatism, devoting several pages to proving its favorite site to be those white fibrous structures of the joints and heart which are subjected to the