Racial acial immunity, problem therapeutic status of, in Reaction, Von Pirquet, 123 Rectum, cancer of-Drueck, operations upon the, under Registration, birth, 683 of-Weinstein, 548 case ing of feeble-minded chil- rapid growth of open air, teaching of eugenics in, 553 Seasickness, mystery of, 8 section of-Ferguson, 44 Servants, public need of med- Sex emotions in their rela- Stekel, Wilhelm, 665 Sterilization of the skin, Stock American, is the old Stomach, cancer of the, 689 Suffragettes, 831 Suicide, imitational, 199 temptation to, 760 role of the, in certain forms Surgeons, American College Surgery, orthopedic, what gen- eral practitioners should Symptoms of bismuth poison- Syphilis or bad habits? 335 the, with demonstration Thyme, oil, use of, 268 of the status, 689 Tipple, is a small daily, of Titles, new medical, econom- ria in-Baines & Camp- ical men-Kovacs, 118 York farm colony for, 137 ical men-Kovacs, 118 childhood-Campbell, 360 day camp for, 193 diagnosis of, in young chil- following acute or chronic Friedmann "cure" for, 131 of lung, 626 passing of Philip, 285 cough in, 124 secret notification of, 559 pital for, 707 industrial colony for the, infection in infancy and Tubules, uriniferous, cells Tumors, fibroid, treatment of, reduction of, greatest vaccine treatment of, 765 Ulcers, gastric and duode- nal, points gained dur- Uteri, cervix, cancer of the- pernicious, of pregnancy- Kingman, 519 Von Pirquet reaction, 123 Walker, J. T. Ainslee, 95 & Wallace, Alfred Russell, death War, Balkan, medical experi- Wightman, Orrin S., 20 Williams, B. G. R., 41 & 603 emi- nence, the ethnic signif- Window, open, 767 lower mortality rates of, necessity for, to work, 456 American Medicine H. EDWIN LEWIS, M. D., Managing Editor. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE AMERICAN-MEDICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY. Complete Series, Vol. XIX, No. 1. New Series, Vol. VIII, No. 1. JANUARY, 1913. The ethnic significance of Woodrow Wilson's eminence has not been suspected, though a flood of biographical literature has tried to explain him. His grandparents were immigrants from Great Britain and his elevation to the Presidency seems to mark the beginning of the end of control of the nation by the descendants of the people who achieved our independence. The Colonial families are now more interested in genealogical research than in the welfare of posterity. The sons of something or other have therefore been neglecting their control of the nation's destinies, and the new stocks are taking up the burden. The late Governor Johnson of Minnesota was the son of Scandinavian peasants and if he had lived there is little doubt that he would have been President. More than half the nation is foreign born or of foreign born. parents and they all seem to have developed more or less distrust of the ancestor hunting enfeebled descendants of really great men of Revolutionary fame. Many voters do not think of this side of the matter at all, though the fact that a candidate is Irish or German is sometimes advertised locally to catch a few votes. This trick is not so popular as it once was, for it may cause greater loss than gain. The rise of the more recent stocks must be explained on other grounds and this is where the medical profession is keenly interested. Is the old stock of Americans decadent? That is the usual explanation for the failure of the sons of our great men to be as great as their ancestors, but the same phenomenon is seen in every other nation. Great men rarely marry great women and the children may inherit from the feeble parent. In the lower walks of life, exceptionally able people occasionally mate together, and produce children who become eminent. Great families therefore are constantly producing great men, generation after generation, though the majority of their children are below the average. At the same time new blood is just as constantly forging ahead and occasionally snatching control from the hands of scions of old families. Unfortunately the scions of the old stocks in America are not as numerous as in Europe, and there is ample ground for the belief that an unsuitable climate or other adverse factor is causing such racial deterioration as to prevent great achievements. It is certainly a fact that our great fortunes were begun, as a rule, by immigrants like Astor, Carnegie, Guggenheim, or by the first or second generation as the first Vanderbilts. Foreigners figure quite largely in science and invention, such as Carrel and John Ericsson. Foreign names wholly different from those of pre-Revolutionary families seem to monopolize many lines of industry. All this rather hints at racial decadence of the old stock, but it must be remembered that new conditions require new types which would have been utter failures in the colonies, and that even George Washington might have been as much out of place in modern New York as was General Grant in Wall Street. There is no question that both factors are true. Mr. Wilson might have been a failure among the farming communities of the 17th century, but he seems to fit into new conditions and has lost little, if any, of the energy of his foreign born grandfather. In any case, he shows that the nation's destinies are drifting into the hands of those whose ancestors came to America in the 19th century, long after the nation became a great reality. The old stock is being elbowed to one side. The food value of cottonseed meal is a matter for serious consideration now that the high cost of living is bringing want to so many of the poor. The seeds are so rich in fats as to be indigestible, even to cattle, but after the oil is pressed out the meal becomes a valuable animal food quite rich in starch and protein. No one has considered the meal in any other light than as cattle food, fertilizer or fuel, but it should be practicable to purify or refine it to make it acceptable to human stomachs. We can no longer subsist on crushed wheat and must depend upon refining processes to remove the irritating outer layers of the grains. Special treatment may render cottonseed meal acceptable as a food, instead of waiting as we do now to turn it into beef. Perhaps the pure starch itself might be as profitably extracted as from the grains or tubers. The enormous quantity of cottonseed yearly available as a side product in cotton growing, almost staggers belief as it is measured in millions of tons, our yearly crop of cotton being fifteen million bales. We should not wait for private enterprise to invent ways of extracting this food from the seed, though of course it will be done as soon as it is profitable. Necessity is the mother of all such inventions, but we should anticipate necessity by working out the methods by governmental agencies. A great industryor many of them-may be created from what was recently a waste product. The food value of cottonseed oil has finally been recognized in spite of the prejudice of peoples who have depended upon solid fats so many thousand of years that they cannot relish the fluid ones. While the Mediterranean nations have in the comparative absence of animal food obtained their fats from the olive, the northern races have been forced to resort to butter, lard and tallow. There is then ample reason for the habit of soaking everything in oil in the south, and the apparently extravagant use of butter and suet in cakes and puddings in the north. The Italians have long been in the habit of selling their high priced olive oil and subsisting on imported cheaper cotton oil-the food value being the same, the difference being one of taste recognizable only by the trained. palate. Indeed immense quantities of refined cotton oil are reimported in America as olive oil and few, buyers know the difference. There is no sense in this expensive roundabout way of getting food, and sensible people are therefore buying cottonseed oil for the table in preference to the ex pensive imported article whether it be pure or spurious olive oil. The new industry of changing fluid fats into stearin has sprung up in a night and has made it possible to furnish northern races with the solid fats they prefer, but now derived from plant cells instead of animal. It is one of the first of the long predicted steps of the synthesis of foods by chemical means. Only a few years ago it was discovered by chemical investigators that it was possible to introduce an atom or two of hydrogen into the olein molecule and thus produce stearin. Before we even knew of this remarkable discovery, it was made a commercial success because stearin being an animal product is quite expensive, but that produced from vegetable oils is comparatively cheap. The new synthetic fat is now manufactured in large quantities as a basis for synthetic butter, lard and suet. The chemical composition, digestibility and wholesomeness are identical with the natural products, and being much cheaper are brought within the reach of those who now stint themselves. The stupid class legislation which taxes synthetic or manufactured butter to protect the dairy farmer now reacts against the cotton grower and must be repealed-and the sooner the better. The dairyman has been impudent in demanding that new sources of food be taxed out of existence, and the consumers have been injured to that extent. Let there be free trade in foods, for there are too many hungry people in America in spite of our great production of food. The day of synthetic food has at last arrived, and the population will increase in proportion. A few years hence the land will not produce near enough-and an increasing percentage of us will subsist on the synthesized fats and proteins. Our cotton field may soon supply us with food as complete as milk-protein, fat and starch-perhaps sugar also if we can without the intervention of plant enzymes. change the starch into sugar profitably Cotton must never be King again, but the grower must not be enslaved to the dairyman. The vicious legislation must be repealed at once and probably will be by the new administration and Congress. Women and wine have been linked together in song, and now they are yoked together in practical politics. Since the granting of the suffrage to the women of California there have been numerous local elections on the subject of prohibition or license, and in nearly all of them, the liquor interests have won by the aid of the women the most amazing of all the amazing paradoxes of our political history. The cause is very evident. A very small minority of women banded themselves together in the W. C. T. U. to lessen or eliminate the curse of drunkenness,—a noble purpose in which they have accomplished wonders for the good of the nation and mankind. The most wonderful result of all was the way they deceived themselves into believing that all the rest of the women in the land were solidly behind them for prohibition. They have repeatedly clamored for the franchise as the first step in ending the liquor traffic forever. It must be a great shock to them to learn what so many have vainly tried to tell them; namely, that women are divided in opinion on this subject in about the same proportions as the men, and that female suffrage might damage the usefulness of the W. C. T. U. in its legitimate sphere. The army canteen is now put in an entirely different light. The W. C. T. U. |