have shown a small quantity of yellowish or high-colored urine. The face is flushed at the beginning but later becomes pale.

The skin and conjunctiva in the majority of cases have a well marked jaundiced hue, so much so that one practitioner in speaking of it to me said he had had an epidemic of jaundice in his locality. I saw one case whose skin was almost the color of bronze. This jaundice I attributed to the extention of the catarrhal inflammation from the duodenum to the gall bladder. Many of these patients complain of earache and noises in the ear, and have more or less cough. But one of the cases I have seen has developed a pneumonia. From the fact that the above series of cases occurred during the time when I had a great many cases of ordinary influenza, I diagnosed them as the same.

So far as treatment is concerned, I must admit that I have found so far no specific treatment. My treatment has been purely a symptomatic one. For the vomiting I have given cocaine and creosote in peppermint water, in doses proportionate to the age of the child. Then followed with gr. doses of calomel with soda for the double purpose of putting a final quietus on the vomiting and for its effect on the diarrhea. the character of the stools have changed, I then give some simple diarrhea mixture like the following:

R Elixir bismuthi Elixir lactopeptin Tinct. opii camph. Listerine .

After

oz. j Oz. J dr. iv dr. iv

M. S. One teaspoonful every two hours until the bowels are checked. For a child two or three

years old.

For the kidneys I give effervescing lithia water ad libitum. I also put them in a mustard bath. The jaundice disappears under the use of calomel in small doses and the phosphate of soda. As a reconstructive I have found nothing superior to the compound syrup of hypophosphites with liquid peptonoids, given separately, the hypophosphites three times a day after meals and the peptonoids every three hours.

A negro recently came into my office suffering from an acute pharingitis. He said he had been using "chamber lye" chamber lye" (urine) as a gargle, but it had not done

his throat any good. He was about on a par with the man who came into my office during the summer. He had come six miles to see me. His wife by mistake took a tablespoonful of tincture of digitalis and he wanted to know if it would kill her. I am not much uneasy, said he, because just before I started I caught a couple of house flies and gave her. They never fail to vomit me if I swallow one, and I am sure she has thrown up all of the medicine before this time. I told him what to do and he returned home. He afterwards told me that she did not vomit from the flies, but soon recovered from the overdose of digitalis.

Dixon, Ky.

C. M. SMITH, M. D.

Stevens Point, Wis.

[Great care should be taken in preparing manuscript for the press; particularly is this true with formulas. In the original as sent us the Doctor forgot to write the part directing the division into 24 powders. This, of course, is a very vital part of the prescription. We felt that the doses were very large, but there was not time to communicate with the Doctor before going to press, so all we could do was to make the comments that we did. Please let this be a lesson to all, and let it be an invariable rule that you always review with care every article before sending it, and devote particular care to the details of any formulas in the article.Ed.]

Colorless lodine.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-A question, "How to make colorless iodine," was asked in a recent number of the Lancet-Clinic, and remains unanswered. As it does not seem to be generally

will make iodine as clear as water:

Iodine, Carbolic acid,

Aqua ammonia,

oz. j. gtt. xx. gtt. xl.

Please find inclosed $2.00 for WORLD, for 1898 and three binders. I cannot do without THE WORLD. Collections are good here now.

Maysville, Ark. L. S. HOLCOMB, M. D. Specific Medication.-The Social Problem.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD.-For the first five years after graduating, having up to that time received all my medical information from "regular" sources, I was led to believe that ours was the broad and liberal school of medicine, and that we were not only at liberty to choose, but that we actually had chosen the best from all sources. As tending to prove that there was evidence to substantiate such a belief, I quote from Prof. Bartholow's standard work, article on aconite, as follows: "We owe our knowledge of this remedy to these quacks" (meaning homeopaths). And I remember having entertained feeling of disgust to think that a separate school of medicine should exist bearing the title of eclectic. For several years that one word, meaning to choose, kept me from what I now consider the best part of my medical knowledge.

a

Unfortunately, the name is very misleading, and gives not the slightest hint of the most important distinguishing feature of eclecticism, viz.-specific medication; meaning, not specifics for diseases under ordinary nosology, but specifics for pathological conditions, the physician being guided in the selection of remedies by signs and symptoms which are recognized as the language of disease, or disease expressions. These, instead of being studied mainly for the purpose of grouping a certain number of them together for the purpose of labeling them with a name, at which remedies are fired more or less indiscriminately, are made to indicate the remedy which will aid in removing the symptoms; and one's success will depend upon the ability acquired in interpreting the language of disease and in making the "punishment fit the crime."

To illustrate Jaborandi is specifi

and

inflammatory conditions, especially f accompanied by severe, dull pain. Prof. Webster, in "Principles of Medicine," tive than gelsemium or veratrum, and as says of it: of it: "It is a more positive sedasure an anti-spasmodic as gelsemium or lobelia. It is applicable in appropriate doses to almost any febrile and infammatory condition, and full doses will relieve the agonizing pain of angina pectoris, inflammatory rheumatism, or muscular spasm more promptly, effectively and safely than any other remedy.

"In any febrile or painful condition, where a dry skin is persistently present, we need this remedy especially, but it is not contraindicated if this symptom be not prominent. The only preparation of this drug that I can recommend from personal knowledge is the specific medicine. cine. Twenty or thirty drops of this constitutes a full dose, and two full doses within half an hour should be the limit of full doses. A dram to four ounces of water will constitute a fair sedative mixture for ordinary cases in teaspoonful doses. This may follow the administration of full doses for the relief of pain of inflammatory nature, or may be used for the ordinary purposes of a sedative."

Veratrum is indicated by a full, strong frequent pulse, surface flushed, usually when fever is present.

I have used these two remedies combined, occasionally adding some other specially indicated remedy, with what might be considered almost wonder: ul results in such diseases as acute inflammatory rheumatism, pneumonia, catarrhal fever, etc.

I have recently treated several cases with symptoms almost identical, and all made a like rapid recovery. There was intense dull pain in head, back and limbs, making rest and sleep impossible; pulse frequent, full and bounding; symptoms of coryza, and one had sore throat; temperature 103 to 1032. Pain was removed in a few hours and temperature reduced to normal in 24 to 48 hours, and patients going about their business by third day feeling as well as before.

In rheumatism I have combined with these remedies cascara sagrada, with the best results in bringing about a rapid

cure.

Other cathartics may do as well, but my experience and that of others leads me to think not. Dr. Waugh, in "Treatment of the Sick," says that cathartics invariably give relief.

The curative effect of both jaborandi and cascara may largely be due in these troubles to their action in eliminating some toxic principle from the system.

If pulse is small and frequent, use aconite instead of veratrum. If alkalies are indicated, as manifested by pale tongue and mucous membranes, give

soda bicarb. in full doses.

You will be delighted with the precision and certainty with which you can prescribe when once you master specific diagnosis and specific medication.

Another problem demanding unprejudiced investigation is the social problem. I recently came into possession of two small pamphlets with which physicians and others can do magnificent missionary work in this line.

They are, "Hard Times, Cause and Cure," and "An Open Letter to the Rich." Five cents each. Address "Appeal to Reason," Girard, Kansas.

I have read many books and papers on the money question, some of them costing as much as $1.50; but, in my estimation, I have seen nothing so convincing as the pamphlet last named. The other gives what, as I have felt for some time, is the main cause of most of the social troubles, viz.: a lawless, method less and, in fact, criminal system of production and distribution. We may as well look the matter squarely in the face. No doctor should expect to cure a disease until the cause is removed.

These pamphlets are so cheap one can afford to purchase a number of them and loan them where they will do the most good.

The following is a short quotation fron the first-named pamphlet:

"In 1890 there were employed 4,250,783 men, women and children, in the 355,401 establishments. This army of workers produced, or created, from the raw material, a value of $4,031,237.271 measured by the factory price. If we add to the factory price the numerous expenses to advertise these goods, pay commercial travelers, together with rent, interest and profits on same, we

shall find it to be more than double the factory price, or $8,250,000,000 as the present value of one year's production.

"The workers receive for producing this vast wealth what to-day is equal to less than $1,650,000,000; or to put it more plainly, the workers receive (1897) for producing one dollar, twenty cents. Here is the true cause of a crisis. The workers receiving one-fifth of what they produce, can buy back only one-fifth; the result is a panic which is now continuous. As labor-saving machinery becomes more and more developed, the "hard times" come more often and last longer, until the tools of production have become so perfected, increasing the army of unemployed and cheapening production to such an extent that we have hard times all the time. No scheme of taxation, tariff or finance will in the least abolish hard times. The hard times are the result of our insane competitive system, and until we change that system we will continue to have hard times. Never in the history of mankind was it

easy to produce wealth as to-day. Never before had man such powers with which to produce wealth. Why is it that those who produce all the vast wealth have so little of it? Simply be cause a class have monopolized all the means of production and distribution. This idle class, having in their possession more than three quarters of the wealth of the nation, compels the workers to compete, one against another, for a chance to earn a livelihood. This competition always tends to force down the already small wages of the worker. The hard lot of the worker grows ever more hard. I know that some people think, or imagine they think, that the times are all right, or would be if we pursued the policy of laissez faire. Others claim we have too large a population, and so on. lation, and so on. We have a country capable of supporting one hundred times its present population. Yet, ex-Senator John J. Ingalls tells us that "there are ten million people in these United States who never get enough to eat or wear."

Ewing, Nebr.

O. C. MASTIN, M.D. [The Doctor has been thinking and investigating, both medically and soci

ologically outside the usual lines of the average practitioner. Let us welcome his thought and see how much of truth may be in that direction.-ED.]

Reflections Concerning Poor Pay for

Physicians.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD-Perhaps a fledgling who is still full of pin feathers ought not to speak. But I wish to inform Dr. G. W. Henry (January WORLD, page 25) that we country doctors are not over crowded-except at times with work. We need here more doctors, more intelligence among the laity, less ignorance and prejudice among the doctors, and a more just division of the proceeds of labor. It is not right that an inheritance of five thousand dollars should earn more than a man at hard labor on a farm. The man who inherits, or collects off the proceeds of others' labor, fifty thousand dollars, has ever afterwards ten slaves, who, if sick, have nothing with which to pay for medicines or physicians' services. As long as this is true we must remain poorly paid. The majority of those who can pay are glad to do so, and most of the rest are proud that they have paid when forced to do so. The only possible remedy for poor pay is to broaden the mind of the physician and increase the intelligence of the laity. It is decidedly narrow to think of trying to keep recruits out of the profession. The vast majority of really worthy and successful physicians are from the farm; two-fifths of the professors of our greatest institutions of learning have sprung from the hayseed majority. Give us intelligence, generosity, "monthly talks" and plenty of hayseed physicians. I like to meet them. I wish I had a hundred copies of the monthly talks every month for distribution.

Maunie, Ill. W. A. STEELE, M. D. [Along the line of the Doctor's thought, it was recently calculated that the income of a certain Boston heiress was equal to the wages of twenty thousand shop girls! A reasonable reflection for physicians is as follows: These shop girls get barely enough to live on. When they get sick they have no money to pay a physician, hence must go to dispensaries and hospitals. Physicians complain loudly of the inroads of the dispensaries

and hospitals upon private practice. Would it not be better for the heiress to get less and the working girls to get more? People do not go to charity institutions for medical attention from choice. They would rather have a physician come to their home, if they could afford it. It is not from lack of industry that they cannot afford it, for those who work hardest often get the least. It is in faulty distribution of the products of labor. This question is of sufficient importance to physicians to merit their thought and study. Taxation of excessively large inheritances and incomes would be a palliating remedy.—ED.]

Collections.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-In the answers to your questions in regard to collections, I find that there are many physicians of many minds. For myself, I can say that I have been located in this community about forty years, and ordinarily my collections are about sixty per cent. of my earnings, but less during the last Cleveland administration and worst. under the Wilson tariff. I do not see that the price of gold or of silver has had anything to do with our collections. It requires very little judgment or common sense to enable one to see that when people are earning money they are able to pay bills and collections will be good. Under the prosperous conditions coincident with the McKinley tariff we had no trouble in collecting the largest per cent. of any time within the past twelve years. Under the operation of the Wilson tariff, the working people-mechanics, mill operatives, etc. were mostly to be classed under the head of charity patients. Being out of employment, they simply could not pay their bills, and many of them had to be helped by the town. Since the Dingley bill went into operation our collections have notably improved. More people are at work, and there are fewer tramps and unemployed to be seen. In these states bordering upon the Great Lakes, the influence of Canadian competition is very marked. For instance, under the McKinley bill, farmers were getting from 45 to 60 cents for their barley. Later, when barley was admitted from Canada almost free of duty, the price of barley went down to