and honor to the progressive enterprise of the publisher, to whom the profession is already deeply indebted.

In the arrangement of space 600 pages are devoted to the eye, 200 to the ear, and 400 to the nose and throat. In the preface the editor pointing out the greatest use of the "collaboration method" quotes "the student gains the point of view of a number of teachers, reaping in a measure, the same benefit as would be obtained by following courses of instruction under different teachers."

In as much as this volume is, primarily, one of reference, although valuable as a text-book, the embryology, anatomy, histology, physiology, etc., of the various organs involved are given in detail, by men recognized as authorities, while the same care is shown in the medical treatment and surgical technique of the diseased conditions. The close relationship of these subjects in many pathological directions is the raison d'etre in the mind of the editors for placing them in one volume. The writers of the articles, almost without exception clinical teachers, and trained to present only the salient points of a subject, are thus able to group in minute detail valuable material on each subject, previously scattered through medical literature and various text-books. The illustrations are numerous and of great value in elucidating the text, which follows the revised spelling, such as omitting the final "e" in bromide, iodide, and allied words, substituting the single letter for the diphthong, etc. An example worthy of imitation by all writers in books or journals.

To specialists a copy of this work seems absolutely essential, while its possession by any practitioner will assure to him the latest and best thought on these subjects. Among the contributors we find the names of Drs. Blake, Farlow, Green, Leland, and McCollom, of this city. T. M. S.

REPRINTS AND MONOGRAPHS RECEIVED.

The Serum Treatment of Diphtheria. By William Cheatham, M.D. Reprinted from the American Practitioner and News.

The Use of Gloves in Surgery, with a Report of an Investigation as to the Efficacy of Cotton Gloves. By W. R. Lockett. Reprinted from the Philadelphia Medical Fournal.

Twenty-First Annual Report of the Presbyterian Eye, Ear, and Throat Charity Hospital, of Baltimore.

1898.

PERSONAL AND NEWS ITEMS.

DR. GIVENS' Sanitarium for Mental and Nervous Diseases and Habitues of Drugs and Stimulants at Stamford, Conn., offers unexcelled advantages for those requiring special treatment. It is located within fifty minutes of New York City, on a hill overlooking Long Island Sound, and with forty-two trains each way daily. During the past year another cottage and many improvements have been added and the place is up to date in every respect.

FOR SALE. Practice in town of 5,000 inhabitants, twentyeight miles from Boston. Collections $3,000 yearly. Will sell right. Address "A. E. C.," care of Otis Clapp & Son, 10 Park Square, Boston, Mass.

FOR SALE. A good $3,000 practice for sale in a town on the coast of Maine. Best of reasons for selling. Address 'Doctor," care of Otis Clapp & Son, 10 Park Square, Boston, Mass.

THE PRINTING DEPARTMENT of the South End Industrial School, designed to teach boys and girls to print, and fitting them to fill good positions in large offices, solicits aid in the shape of orders for printing business cards, bill heads, reports, small pamphlets, etc., which they are prepared to do neatly, quickly, and at reasonable rates. Only advanced pupils are given order work. This is a charity which helps others to help themselves. Further information will be gladly given. Address 45 Bartlett Street, Roxbury. Telephone Roxbury, 229-2.

LUCILLE A. JAMES, M.D., class of 1897, Boston University School of Medicine, has removed to 222 West Newton Street, Boston.

MARGARET M. SANFORD, M.D., class of 1898, Boston University School of Medicine, has located at 1300 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington Heights, Mass.

THE NEW

HE NEW ENGLAND

MEDICAL GAZETTE

No. 5.

MAY, 1899.

Vol. XXXIV.

COMMUNICATIONS.

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY.

BY HERBERT C. CLAPP, M.D.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Homœopathic Medical Society:- When we, as a society, review the history of homoeopathy in Massachusetts during the year which ends to-day, three events of especial interest to our cause seem to stand out in prominent relief.

First. The old State Board of Lunacy and Charity, which, in the conduct of its affairs, had given great dissatisfaction in many quarters in other respects, and which (as more particularly concerns us) had by gross misrepresentation tried to explain away and deny our superior success in the treatment of the insane at our hospital in Westboro, and to make unfounded charges against that institution - this proud board was, in the year just passed, made to step down and out; and by a kind of retributive justice, the chairman of the board of trustees of our Westboro hospital, who in his representative capacity had been the target for the assault, was made a member of the new State Board of Insanity which replaced the old Board of Lunacy and Charity, so far as the treatment of the insane was concerned.

Second. Our Commonwealth, through its Legislature, as if to resent the insinuations just referred to, and as a further expression of approval of the good work done there by the homœopathic profession, has completed within the past year, at a cost of more than $50,000, on the grounds of our West

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193

boro hospital, a new and handsome building, complete in all its appointments, for the isolation and treatment of the acute insane. At the extra mid-winter meeting of this society which was held at this hospital in January last, those of you who were present had an opportunity to examine this new building. Valuable as it is, however, it is but the natural outgrowth of the policy of the State with regard to an institution which has been in active operation on the same lines for more than a dozen years.

Third. By far the most important public measure in the advancement of homoeopathy during the past year, marking as it does an entirely new departure in the policy of our government, has been its recognition by the State of Massachusetts on an equality with the system of the old school, in the opening of the new and large Massachusetts Hospital for Consumptives and Tubercular Patients, at Rutland, Mass., in its remarkably beautiful and healthful location in the geographical centre of our State. A part of my excuse for dwelling particularly upon this third division of my subject is that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

This is the only instance where our Commonwealth gives practical recognition to the two schools side by side; although the practice of establishing and endowing by private munificence such joint hospitals in our smaller cities and towns, notably in Newton, Chelsea, Malden, Somerville, Brockton, Lowell, etc., has been becoming rather popular.

This Rutland hospital was opened just six months ago, and has already become an established institution. The board of trustees comprises two medical men, one an honored member of this society, and the other a broad-minded member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, together with three liberal laymen-one a lawyer, one a manufacturer, and the other an editor. Acting under the requirements of the act of the Legislature which created this board, they appointed, to have supervising charge of the medical treatment, one visiting physician of the old school and one homoeopathist, with equal rights and privileges, and also graduate internes or house

physicians of like diversity. The superintendent and matron are fair and impartial, and the nurses have been trained in hospitals of both kinds. Up to the present time there has been no clashing, and the greatest harmony prevails. While the hospital was filling up, patients, on entering, were assigned to successive beds without distinction as to modes of treatment. In other words, the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the tares, the lions and the lambs, provided they were of the same sex, were mixed up together, like this metaphor.

For obvious reasons no detailed report can yet be made; but what has happened so far gives promise of many recoveries. Already, even in this short time, there have been a few cases which have been apparently cured, and others in which the disease appears to have been arrested, for how long a time it yet remains to be seen. The cases of improvement have been so numerous as to include the great majority, in spite of the fact that often, especially at first, cases were received which were undesirable because too far advanced. In future it is proposed to draw the line more strictly, and to receive only incipient cases or those which have made little progress. The decrease in fever, cough, expectoration, blood-spitting, and night sweats, and the in. crease in appetite, digestive and assimilative power, strength, and weight have been so marked and so frequent that in many cases they are now looked for almost as a matter of course. Recovery is not expected in every instance. No such extravagant and ridiculous claims are made. No magic wands are waved, no marvellous incantations are uttered, no weird subterranean powers are summoned, no secret or occult influences are invoked. No principles or methods of treatment are employed, except such as might be proclaimed from the housetops.

And yet the opinions of those most competent to judge, of those who have treated the disease for years in our cities and larger towns, especially among the same class of people as most of the Rutland hospital patients, are and must be that for some reason or other physicians in cities lack the peculiar advantages which Rutland possesses, which accounts