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COMMEDICAL SUMMARY

PRACTICAL

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A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF

MEDICINE,

NEW

PREPARATIONS, ETC.

R. H. ANDREWS, M. D., Editor, 2321 Park Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa.
ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. SINGLE COPIES, TEN CENTS.

NOL. XXXI

PHILADELPHIA, MAY, 1909

No. 3

PRICE OF SUBSCRIPTION PER YEAR.

Mexico

(Payable in advance.)

To Subscribers in the United States, Canada and $1.00 To Subscribers in other Countries (postage prepaid), Five Shillings Six Pence. Price of Single Copies.... ........10 cents Bubscriptions will begin with the current number at the time of their receipt, unless otherwise directed.

HOW TO REMIT: A safe way to remit is by postal money order, express order, check, draft, or registered mail. Currency sent by ordinary mail usually reaches its destination safely, but money so sent must be at the risk of the sender. RECEIPTS: The receipt of all money is immediately acknowledged by a postal card. ADDRESS CHANGE: It is particularly requested that subscribers changing their addresses should immediately notify us of the same, giving present and previous location. We cannot hold ourselves responsible for copies of The Summary sent to former addresses unless we are notified as above.

DISCONTINUANCES: The Summary is continued to responsible subscribers until the publisher is notified by letter to discontinue, when payment of all arrearages must be made. If you do not wish The Summary continued for another year after the time paid for has expired, please notify US to that effect.

Address "THE MEDICAL SUMMARY." 8321 Park Ave. Philadelphia, Pa. Entered at Phila. Post Office as second-class matter

A BUSINESS TALK.

Too many doctors are living in rented property. If you are not in the heart of a great city where the owning of property is as impossible for the mediocre individual as getting a deed for a few acres of sky, it will pay you to buy a home that will make you sweat blood in your efforts to pay for it. It will look like an insurmountable task to think of trying to pay for a place with your present income-perhaps. But that is the only way to save money, to get yourself in a tight place where you will be obliged to work like a beaver to ever get out. Get out you will if you put forth the right kind of efforts, and you will be all the better man for having demonstrated

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your ability along this line. be bought almost anywhere these days by paying a stipulated sum monthly which may, sometimes, amount to little more than the rent which you would be obliged to pay for the same property. There is nothing that nerves you up so well when you go out to collect a bad debt as to be able to tell the debtor with a clear conscience that you are trying to save your little home. It is a difficult matter for anyone to save money unless he has a definite place to put it, and the best place is usually real estate. A little farm is a good thing for rural doctors to connect themselves with. Land never depreciates in value and never goes up in smoke. Leave alone all speculations where big returns are promised. There are smarter financiers than us who are waiting with plenty of money to take advantage of everything in which the profits are big. Did you ever stop to think what small dividends even railroad stock pays? Doctors should judiciously invest their hard-earned money and shun get-rich-quick schemes as they would a leper. The crafty element of the world looks on doctors as being easy marks anyway.

Economy can be practiced in many ways. It does not alone consist in eschewing cigars and cutting out many little things which we can enjoy. Sometimes our worst economy is in purchasing costly things for which we have not much use, and instead of which the money could have been better applied. If the doctor is situated where he makes very few office examinations a hundred-dollar chair could be dispensed with. In the matter of instruments it is better to err on the side of buying the little, usable kind than those with which

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to perform operations. We have known young doctors who, at graduation, bought instruments for craniotomy and laparotomy. Those same fellows have never bursted a baby's head or ripped a belly with their shiny "tools." As a rule, the doctor will be just as well off with a little private practice if he does not encumber himself with too much apparatus that takes up room and catches dust. A good battery or two are good investments, and perhaps a small nebulizer. The idea which so many have in arraying themselves with about everything that can be found in a sanatorium is absurd. The glamour of it wears away, and in time it ceases to lure patients. You will also find yourself using your armamentarium of this kind less and less as years go by, and learning to depend more upon homely devices and ready-made expedients. This is not to discourage mechanotherapy in its various details; everything has a rightful place in medicine. But it does not pay to spend all you make for stuff simply to clutter up your office. It is a good thing to pursue one line, say, electrotherapeutics. This is a branch of medicine much neglected, and one in which there are possibilities for energetic doctors.

Money put into a library is usually well spent. Books the doctor must have. He should take as many medical journals as he can well afford. In buying books doctors should endeavor to get reliable works that are written by men who know their subjects thoroughly, and he should pass up books that are simply written to sell. It is, however, needless to read everything that is written these days, for much is embalmed in books that, in the language of a famous wit, "ain't so." But the studious doctor will usually win out in the end. The studious doctor will, in ten years, outstrip his popular rival who is now telling stories to an anxious crowd from the second-story of a goods-box in the corner grocery.

Be neat in your appearance and cultivate a pleasing personality. These things count for very much, especially in the estimation of women. Study psychotherapy and try to always get the patient's mental index. Impress the patient that you know your business, but do this so gently as never to arouse his antagonism. Do not argue. When a patient tells you he can't do thus

and-so, you should begin to talk of some of the things he can do, but do not take issue with him. Instead of agreeing with the patient it is best to anticipate him, and you will then be prepared to get him to float along with you.

Try to get your money. That's what we started out to say. Make your bill such as you think the patient can pay, and then go after it. Do not be guided doggedly by the dictates of any society in fixing your fees. You are the only fellow who can do that in a satisfactory manner in all cases.

ELECTRICITY.

It matters little how we produce this agent, for the effects are much the same. It is true the revolving disk often used by physicians impresses the patient, and he thinks he is getting a return for his money, and perhaps he is. As to the effect, whether the cell produces the current or the disk, is not of much consequence. Whether the current is interrupted or continuous is also of little moment. Many physicians prefer that generated by cell decomposition, and others use exclusively frictional electricity. Increased mobility of the muscles, and increase in the circulation are characteristics seen after the application. In narcotism, paralysis. and atrophy of the muscles, any kind of electricity is of value. In rheumatism it produces good results. Professor Huchard, of Paris, valued it when used in connection with the bath. Electric light baths are given and hydrotheraphy is commended by physicians who realize that simplicity in treatment of disease will ere long be followed by men of good judgment and experience. In delirium tremens, and those conditions where the skin fails to do its work, hydrotheraphy is an aid to the doctor. In rubiola and typhoid fever advanced physicians use it and are enthusiastic. In any condition where water and electricity are indicated, we can and do get results. Baths were known to the Romans and perfume was used in them, but in modern times electricity and water are combined, and are advocated as an aid, but not a substitute for drugs. In Switzerland baths have been used in typhoid, combined with antiseptics, and recent research has demonstrated their utility. Medicated baths

and salt baths were in common use in Germany as far back as 1870. The combination of electricity and water may not be very modern, perhaps, but both are used successfully, and can do no harm to any

one.

CASTRATION FOR RAPE.

The SUMMARY has several times called attention to a fact which everybody knows concerning carnal fiends of the black race. It is that the hanging and burning of negroes has no restraining effects upon other sensuous brutes, but that on the contrary, such summary and atrocious attemps at wreaking justice are usually followed by other crimes against women and children in the same locality. It is a queer sort of psychology and cannot be easily accounted for, but it seems that fear has no deterrent effects upon other evil-minded negroes. We know full well that the idea of castration brings instinctively revulsive thoughts to the minds of right-minded people. We believe, however, that it is more humane than burning at the stake, and it is probable that the unsexing of these black brutes would exert more deterrent effect upon others than simply taking the life of one thus charged and thus letting the matter soon be effaced from memory. It is the consensus of opinion that unsexed men are, as a rule, quite docile in female society.

Texas is the first state to attempt to enact a law to make castration a penalty for rape. Such a law has just passed the House by a big majority, and is now up to the Senate, and it is thought will readily pass. If so this unique legislation of the Lone Star State wil be watched by other States with great interest. Here are a few paragraphs from the bill:

"Whoever shall be guilty of rape shall be punished by death or by confinement in the penitentiary for life, or for any term of years not less than two, or by castration, or by such imprisonment and castration in the discretion of the jury: provided that punishment by castration shall apply only in case of rape by force, threats, or fraud. Castration, as provided for in the preceding section, shall be performed by the county physician of the county where such conviction is had, if there be such physi

cian; if there be no such physician such castration shall be performed by a competent physician to be appointed by the court trying such case. The physician performing the castration as provided for in this Act, shall receive therefor the sum of twenty-five dollars, to be paid by the State upon the certificate of the judge trying said case.

"The fact that the crime of rape is rapidly increasing and that the additional penalty provided for in this Act will, in a large measure, deter the rape fiend, creates an emergency and imperative public necessity, requiring that the constitutional rule. providing that bills be read on three several days in each house be suspended, and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its passage, and it is so enacted."

DENTAL HYGIENE.

It is not necessary for one to be a devout follower of the great masticator, Mr. Fletcher, to know the value of good and serviceable teeth. A German insurance company has made an appropriation of $25,000 to be used in administering dental work for its policyholders, which points out the fact that they realize a relationship between good grinders and long life. It takes the life insurance people to get at the truth concerning mortuary matters. Physicians should teach the people to conserve the teeth and care for them properly. Barrels of good teeth have been extracted by doctors when a little repairing might have saved them for useful service throughout many years. Dental hygiene, if more generally practiced, would prevent acres of suffering and prevent the sacrifice of many good teeth before their natural decay. The hygiene of the mouth should have more consideration, for upon reasonable oral asepsis depends the life and usefulness of these important members-the teeth.

IF YOU PRACTICE OBSTETRICS.

A great deal of attention must be given to little things. First of all the obstetrician should be pleasing in manners and clean of person and speech. He should make his personality felt keenly in the accouchement chamber, but this in a quiet, unostentatious

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