The Bridge of Life. The famous "Dances of Death" have been quoted for years as the epitome of the chances of human death, as has Shakspere's "Seven Ages of Life" as an epitome of life's progress. Upon these Karl Pearson, M. A., F. R. S., has, merely using them as an inspiration, built the above decidedly original and striking allegorical picture of the "Chances of Death."

The work which the distinguished writer had done in the line of calculating the laws of chance are here strikingly embodied. He had made a close analytic study of the chances of the gambling tables at Monaco, tabulating and classifying results with a view to determining the averages. The illustration he makes of a marksman aiming at a target beneath which are placed receivers to contain the bullets, which are for the sake of illustration supposed to fall perpendicularly after striking, is particularly good. A little thought will show that if the bull's eye is aimed at, the receptacle directly beneath that will of course contain the most bullets, the next on either side the next most, and so on until the furthest from the center on either side will have the fewest.

Bearing this illustration in mind, we will proceed to study the picture. The bridge is represented as incomplete at one end, typifying the fact that all must eventually reach death, even tho they may escape his marksmanship for many years. Man is represented in the act of crossing the bridge by five figures; the babe in utero, the infant, the youth, the mature or middle-aged man and the old man, each at appropriate distances along the uncompleted bridge.

At equal distances with these figures we see Death, typified by a skeleton, taking aim. The babe in utero, represented as in a cave at the beginning of the bridge, is aimed at by Death with a skull. Since naturally the chief cause of prenatal death must be in some way attributable to the ancestry of the fetus, either immediate or remote, the weapon with which Death is here appropriately represented is a skullthe unborn child slain with the bones of its ancestors. Next Death is armed with a Maxim gun, taking aim at the child. This is a weapon of great accuracy of aim, and most deadly in execution, typifying the dangers of the first five years. These two periods represent the time when

the mortality is the greatest. There are comparatively few deaths in youth, and here the marksman is shown as having a bow and arrow for his weapon-a comparatively harmless one. The mortality is also comparatively small in middle life, tho greater than in youth, and the scattering fire of a blunderbuss will be a good type of the chances here. But again the chances for death are great in old age, and here the aim of the marksman becomes again more deadly, and he is artistically depicted with a rifle.

The author, in his article concerning the "Chances of Death," speaking in regard to the mortality rates illustrated by his great picture, says: "Altho I will not assert that my resolution of the mortality rate is final in its values for the chance constants, I am fairly confident that it is correct in its main features. There are five component chance distributions in the resultant mortality rate-five grim marksmen aiming at the throng of human beings crossing the bridge of life. However many

are the diseases and accidents from which men die, I cannot doubt that they may be substantially classed into five great groups centering around five distinct ages in life. * * * Our investigations on the mortality statistics have thus led to some very definite conclusions on the chances of death. Instead of seven (as Shakspere has it) we have five ages of man, corresponding to the periods of infancy, of childhood, of youth, of maturity or middle age, and of senility or old age. In the In the case of each of these periods we see a perfectly regular chance distribution, centering at a given age, and tailing off on either side according to a perfectly clear mathematic law (as exemplified by the illustration of the target and the bullets), defined by the total mortality of the period, its standard deviation, and the necessary variations in accuracy of aim. We thus regard Death as having an aim perfectly regular in the mass if unpredictable in the individual instance."

Professor Pearson's book is a most interesting sociologic work, and altho the illustration and the reasoning accompany. ing it is especially selected as of great interest to the profession which deals so directly with the chances of life and death, there is scarcely a line in it which will not amply repay perusal and open up new trains of thought.

New subscribers may have THE WORLD on trial for the rest of 1898 for only 25 cts.

The Use of Hydrocyanic Acid as an Ant dote to Chloroform.

The extreme frequency with which records of death from the anesthetic administration of chloroform appear in the professional journals must make welcome the addition of another antidotal agent to the list of those with which we are already acquainted. The idea of using hydrocyanic acid as an antidote to chloroform first suggested itself to me about two years ago when watching the different effects of the two drugs upon the respiratory tract when used to produce death, and particularly from having observed the powerful and rapid excitant result which follows absorption of a toxic dose of the acid. In 1896 there was published in detail a list of some forty-three observations upon various animals, including dogs, cats, a horse, sheep and calf, showing the results obtained by this method of resuscitation and also a few cases illustrating the palliative and sedative effects produced on the respiratory efforts by chloroform inhalations upon animals suffering from overdoses of hydrocyanic acid. Since then I have been able to collect fifteen additional consecutive cases in which it has been successfully used in the College canine clinic after respiration had actually ceased, and I have also had confirmatory reports of its antidotal value from veterinary practitioners in various parts of the country. The results have certainly been in the highest degree satisfactory, so much so that when chloroforming animals the only antidotes we now have at hand ready for use are those of hydrocyanic acid and liquor ammoniæ fortior. As soon as breathing ceases or becomes dangerous, artificial respiration is resorted to, the tongue being continuously pulled well forwards in a jerky manner and a full medicinal dose of Scheele's acid placed as rapidly as possible at the back of the throat. When respiration has recommenced, the ammonia vapor is applied cautiously to the nostrils and in the majority of cases a safe termination ensues.

The method of artificial respiration preferred is that of laying the animal in a horizontal position on its right side and pressing the ribs in a short, sharp, jerky manner; we have tried inverting the body, but I am convinced that this is a bad method in the dog and cat, as the intestinal organs press upon the diaphragm and limit the capacity of the thorax. We have also tried placing the body in the opposite

position, with the idea of removing all pressure of the abdominal organs from the thorax and its contents, listening carefully at the same time in each case to the heart sounds with the phonendoscope, but I am firmly convinced that the heart sounds are stronger and less labored when the body is placed horizontally.

When reasoned out theoretically, in addition to the results of practical work, hydrocyanic acid stands foremost amongst agents likely to prove of antidotal value; for what more rapid or powerful respiratory stimulant have we? Its use is attended with no more danger than that of strychnia-in fact, in the dog and cat with far less. Its rapidity of action is unquestionable, it is easily absorbed from any of the entrances of the body, and it has the advantage over ammonia that it does not irritate the tissues to which it is directly applied. Besides these things, not only has it an immediate effect in starting the respiratory mechanism, but when once this has commenced the stimulating effect of the acid is maintained for twenty minutes or half an hour and keeps it going until the breathing is able to resume its normal aspect and the patient is out of danger. I am aware that many cases will recover by the aid of artificial respiration alone, but I am perfectly convinced from tests applied to this point, and from an extensive experience of the results we used to obtain with other antidotes before hydrocyanic acid was tried, that the use of the acid gives an enormously higher proportion of successes. When compared with hypodermic injections of strychnin, ether, or saline solution, or the use of amyl nitrite or ammonia vapor, its effect is visibly much more rapid and powerful.

With reference to the method of administration, the best way to apply it is undoubtedly by means of a graduated droptube on the back of the tongue. Hypodermic injection does not seem to give such good and rapid results, and the direct. forcing of the vapor up the nostrils by means of bellows is decidedly dangerous from the risk of administering an overdose. Full medicinal doses are necessary as when an animal is under chloroform the effect of the acid is not visible quite so quickly as when no chloroform has been used. If an overdose be given, the judicious use of the anesthetic vapor will combat and quiet the spasm of the respiratory muscles until the excess of acid has had time to become eliminated from the sys

tem. In several cases we had opportunities to test this before experience taught the exact dose. This latter averages in the dog and cat about one minim of Scheele's acid for every seven or eight pounds of live body weight. The object must be to give just enough acid to produce the preliminary excitant effect upon the respiratory center, and, of course, like all antidotes, the sooner it is administered after dangerous symptoms have appeared the more likely is the result to be favorable.-The Lancet.

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia anounces thru its committee that the sum of $500 will be awarded to the author of the best essay in competition for the first Nathan Lewis Hatfield prize for original research in medicine.

The subject chosen is: "A Pathological and Clinical Study of the Thymus Gland and its Relations."

Essays must be submitted on or before January 1, 1900. Each essay must be typewritten, designated by a motto or device, and accompanied by a sealed envelope bearing the same motto or device, and containing the name and address of the author. No envelope will be opened except that which accompanies the successful essay.

The committee will return the unsuccessful essays if reclaimed by their respective writers or their agents within one year. The committee reserve the right not to make an award if no essay submitted is considered worthy of the prize.

The treatment of the subject must, in accordance with the conditions of the Trust, embody original observations or researches or original deductions. The competition shall be open to members of the medical profession and men of science in the United States. The original of the successful essay shall become the property of the College of Physicians. The trustees shall have full control of the publication of the memorial essay. It shall be published in the Transactions of the College, and also when expedient as a separate issue. Further particulars may be had on application to the chairman of the committee, J. C. Wilson, M. D., at the College of Physicians.

Dr. A. Lambert, Marietta, O. thus indorses THE WORLD: "If THE WORLD cost three times as much, I could not do without it. Your monthly talks are worth many times the price and are doing inestimable good. Physicians, better than any other class, recognize that things are radically wrong. The people must rule instead of a soulless moneyed class, or we lost as a free and independent people."

A Boston man has his underclothing marked as follows: "I have had my vermiform appendix removed." He says that if he should faint in the street and be rushed off to a hospital, he fears that he might be subjected to that popular operation before recovering consciousness. Having been subjected to the operation once, he does not want it to be needlessly repeated.

Economic Causes of Insanity, and Kindred Subjects.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-I wish to offer my congratulations to THE WORLD on the success and the scope of its Monthly Talk for June. It is a first-hand contribution to our politicoeconomic intelligence, as rare as it is valuable. Surely, when every doctor in our land begins to think seriously of these bread-and-butter matters that concern his every patient, he will then begin to acquire some logical ideas in regard to the basis of his "dead beat" and "poor collection" accounts. Moreover, he will know what steps to take and along what lines he must work in order to eliminate such at present necessary evils.

And yet there are some doctors who have the temerity to declare that such questions have no place in a medical journal! As tho, forsooth, the doctors live on manna sent from heaven, instead of their being, in fact, plain, practical men of business, with commodities to sell and debts to collect, the same as the grocer or any other business man. And so, in contemplating this reform movement thru the columns of THE WORLD, and the spread of economic intelligence among our physicians, I am pained to see that some of the doctors who have it in their power to do so much for the greater comfort and growth and happiness of our people, refuse to bear a hand or do anything. Hence we find that it is generally only those doctors whose patients have felt the economic pressure the hardest that are now rallying to the support of economic reform. But let me illustrate.

A while ago I was preparing an article on "The Economic Causes of Insanity." It is a subject, I believe, with which every practising physician would at the very first thought feel a profound interest, it being notorious that the rapid multiplying of our insane asylums is consequent almost wholly on our frightful commercial necessities. Our pace is too rapid; the economic pressure has become enormous; a few win, but the majority it maims, it murders, or it makes lunatics. And all of this in a land where, no less than in India and Ireland, the mere question of obtaining food, shelter and clothing for every inhabitant willing to work should be one of the simplest questions under the sun, instead of one of the profoundest problems of the age. Why these things are so, some of us know, even as we know that when you subtract 2 from 4 it doesn't leave 5, either in India, Ireland or the United States; and still others of us, I am happy to note, are beginning to know thru the columns of THE WORLD.

Well, in order to help me in the preparation of my subject, I consulted one of the best-known

alienists in the West. I believe he makes a specialty of lunatics, and from my experience with him I judge that he is quite unaccustomed to speaking with anyone else. He was very stiff, very pompous, very ominous.

Doctor," said I, with due humility, "I have called to get your opinion on the economic causes of insanity."

"Humph!" said he, contemptuously, "I don't know what you mean. ""

Furthermore, he didn't seem to want to know. To some doctors an idea is rarer and more offensive than iodoform. He didn't invite me to have a chair, but I took the liberty to sit on the arm of one and explain in detail, feeling that it would be scarcely less than criminal for me to leave that office without first telling this distinguished alienist what was meant by the term "economic causes."

"Pooh !" he panted; "you wish me to understand, do you, that there are some people who find it impossible to obtain work, or to meet their necessities, and so go crazy?" I nodded. 66 Especially," I added, "when there is no longer any chance for them to labor for themselves as before our free land was all given away."

"Bosh!" he cried, with rising anger. "It's all nonsense! Why, there's Government land enough right here in this State of Illinois to give a homestead to every man in Chicago who wants one."

Whereat, so amazed was I at this oversight on the part of Henry George and other economists, I laughed in the doctor's face. I knew it was not polite, but his pompous assurance and confidence were so sublime that the ridiculous was inevitable. If he had told me there was government land waiting for the homesteader on Manhattan Island, I couldn't have been more surprised. Yet he insisted on the truth of there being vast tracts of government land here in Illinois and threatened to send me proof of the same. That was several weeks ago. I have not heard from him, and it is needless to add that I obtained naught save a little original ignorance at his hands.

However, my visit was a disappointment; it is always a disappointment to me to encounter such ignorance in distinguished people. Here was this doctor, a professor in Rush Medical College, posing as a learned alienist, and yet as ignorant as a baby of the great economic forces that have brought his own specialty into existence and created our numerous insane asylums. What do the readers of THE WORLD think of such a case

especially those who wilfully hold that politico-economic questions have no place in a medical journal? Why, such a position is not only childish, but reprehensible. If there be one subject on earth more than another with which every citizen of the United States must be conversant it is the subject of economics. We, the people, are the government; we have no divine monarch to rule us or obtain our food for us. We must, every man of us, help solve this riddle of the industrial sphinx or be devoured. Yet, sad to relate, and as simple as is the subject, there is scarcely one free American out of ten who has yet paused to consider such matters. Our children in school are being taught everything under the sun, save those practical questions that would

"What is the name of the geological formation that supplies the building stone quarried in Wauwatasa ?'

"What geological age does it belong to?' "Construct a square equivalent to a given parallelogram.'

"Find the locus of a point in space equidistant from three given points not in a straight line.'" Now these, mind you, are alleged to be practical questions that every child of sixteen is supposed to have the answer for at his tongue's end! And it is all part and parcel of our colossal idiocy, whether in the library, counting-room, or on the farm. They are questions that will never "touch a man" so long as he lives.

But now, in place of these silly questions, let us substitute three or four that every child of ten, and every doctor, and every free-minded citizen in the Republic, should be competent to answer, independent of politics or religion :

1. In a Republic where all the natural resources and the machinery of production are owned by private capital, what will be the effect on the masses of such ownership?

2. How can a Congressman be made honest: by pounding the New Testament into him? or by legislating those powers out of existence that tend to corrupt him?

3. Do you think you can best throttle such iniquities by voting for free silver or for more protection to infant industries?

In closing, I wish to say that I do not think such questions should occasion any great difficulty in answering. They are quite as simple and as obvious, it seems to me, as to find the locus of a point in space equidistant from three given points not in a straight line. Moreover, I trust they are quite as important; the points are every one of them in a straight line, and the locus of the evil, unfortunately, is not at a point in space, but right here!

One thing more. I am often asked by people who are beginning to consider such questions: "What shall I read ?" Few have the time to read Malthus and Adam Smith, Mill and Ricardo, and, considering the obsoleteness of much of their writings, it is safe to say that such authors, in the light of to-day, may be safely thrown aside in favor of our latter-day economists. All that remains true in them has been preserved in two little books, "Merrie England," by Robert Blatchford, and Mr. Bellamy's "Equality." In reading the former, be sure to get the complete edition, price ten cents (Commonwealth Pub. Co., 28 Lafayette Place, New York, N. Y.)

I feel sure that in reading these two little books, doctors especially will be impressed with the fact of unity in the solid organism. Hence they will come to look upon our economic evolution with the intelligent eye of the trained biologist, knowing that the millenium is not coming to-day, nor to-morrow, hence pessimism is out of

place, while every moment the forces that constitute our environment are constantly changing. and the social organism must change also, in spite of iron-clad Constitutions, or else die. Well, do the doctors as a class propose to assist this organism in its changes, in its wonderful growth and expansion? or do they prefer to trust the body politic to half-bred attorneys and conscienceless quacks as in the past?

Thanking you for space, and again congratulating you on the work THE WORLD is doing, I Very respectfully yours,

am

DR. HULBERT FULLER, Author of "Vivian of Virginia."

6741 Wentworth Ave., Chicago.

[The doctor is a student of sociology, hence They are not so simple, particularly the first one, the three questions suggested seem easy to him. to those, even doctors, who have not read nor thought along sociologic lines. I will propose the following questions, which I hope every doctor will answer in his own mind, and compel an answer from the United States Senators and

Congressmen which represent his State, and every candidate, of whatever party, for such positions in the ensuing election:

When nearly or quite all the progressive nations have Postal or Government Savings Banks, and find them of great advantage to the masses of the people, encouraging thrift and patriotism, hence good public policy, why should we not have them?

Is it more important that we have private banks, for the benefit of a few capitalists, or Postal Savings Banks for the benefit of all the people? (The private banks could continue as at present, but they oppose the least invasion of the profitable field that they consider all their own.)

Shall we continue in the company of Honduras, Bolivia, Cyprus, Cuba and Hawaii in allowing private parties to control the telegraph, for private profit, while all the rest of the civilized world have made the telegraph a part of the postal system?

Shall we continue to pay to the railroads a yearly rental for the postal cars exceeding the cost of the cars? Would you favor allowing farmers to rent their farms to the Government on the same terms?

Many other questions as simple as these might be asked, and such matters should be a part of the education of every voter. And voters should require their representatives to solve these questions satisfactorily.-C. F. T.]

Our Monthly Talk

There is an occasional rift in the clouds. The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the progressive inheritance tax law of Illinois is constitutional. The new war tax law includes a National inheritance tax. No tax is more just nor more needed than an inheritance tax, particularly upon excessively large inheri tances. If no one was allowed to inherit more than say one-half a million, our millionaires would disappear with this generation-a thing greatly to be desired.