CHELSEA, OKLA., Feb. 14, 1915. C. F. TAYLOR, M.D.,

Editor Medical World,

Philadelphia, Pa.

DEAR DOCTOR:-Inclosed find another get-rich scheme for the hard-working doctor. I just received it this a. m. I presume it's to be my "valentine"provided I bite. We Oklahoma physicians who are here in the oil belt know better than to nibble at a thing like this. I am mailing it to you, Doctor Taylor, for others in this state and outside will receive like letters and believe it is a sure way to get rich.

I know full well if there is any valuable oil land here in our grand state it's not going to be peddled in this manner. I have personally owned a lease in this shallow field with production, and I did not have to advertise to sell same. If it's a good proposition, the buyer will see you.

Yours for the further conservation of the physician's income. Fraternally,

WALTER H. HOWARD.

A Denver brother sends me a regular "whoop-er-up" promotion letter of three pages concerning a Cattle and Hog Ranch Company in Missouri. Simeon T. Thornton, of New York City, sends out the letter, and he says in red ink, on a separate paper: "My guarantee! Your money back within 30 days if you are not satisfied with your investment and no no questions asked. Simeon T. Thornton."

So many trusting souls have been misled by "guarantees" that the word has ceast to have any meaning to them. A guarantee is of value according to the honor and responsibility of the guarantor, and no more. And usually those who have no honor nor responsibility make the most noise about their 'guarantee." "Money back" sounds good, but it is seldom realized. When your money goes in response to a promotion letter like that above referred to, you might as well kiss it good-bye. I guess WORLD readers are never caught on such things any more.

66

A Troy, N. Y., medicin company makes a very questionable proposition to doctors. If a shoemaker should stick to his last,' a doctor should stick to his legitimate business and not allow himself to become connected in any way whatever with any medical manufacturing concern.

Whiskey Does Not Pay as Well as Formerly. This clipping from the Financial World is rather encouraging:

DISTILLERS SECURITIES AT LOW LEVEL.

The low prices of the securities of the Distillers Securities Co. reflect not only the demoralization in the whiskey trade and the uncertainties which it faces on account of the growing prohibition movement, but also fears of the holders about the future. In September of this year $1,472,000 of the 6%

The

bonds of the American Spirits Manufacturing Co., an underlying company, will become due, and it is doubtful whether the parent company will be able to extend this debt. shares of the Distillers Securities Co. are freely offered in the market around 12, while its first 5% bonds are at 54.

None of these securities has evidenced any recuperativ power. To the contrary, their weakness is too pronounced to dispel doubts about the dangers which confront the company. The fiscal year ended June 30, 1914, showed a balance after payment of all obligations, but it is not known how the company is faring this year.

There is a Lesson in This.

HOW A TIMBER FORTUNE SHRANK.

Not quite three years ago the C. A. Smith Timber Co., with extensiv timber tracts and mills in several parts of the country, but largely on the Pacific Coast, sold an issue of $5,000,000 6% serial bonds to a Chicago syndicate of bankers, which in turn sold them to investors, bankers and large interests associated in the lumber industry. At that time Mr. Smith, the head of the company, who controlled it thru stock ownership, was reputed to be worth $30,000,000, and, in addition to the first morgtage on the timber lands, Smith personally guaranteed the principal and interest on the bonds. They looked like a gilt-edged investment then.

The company has confest its inability to meet an interest payment of $135,000 and an installment of $112,000 on the principal, altho at the time the bonds were issued the property under the mortgage was estimated to have a worth of $22,000,000. In other words, Smith, with his $30,000,000 fortune and the property worth $22,000,000 are embarrast to the point of bankruptcy when confronted with comparativly small maturing payments. A protectiv committee for the bonds has been formed, and Smith has agreed to a sale of some portion of the property in parcels, provided the bondholders will waive their mortgage right and take their chances on getting the worth of their bonds out of the proceeds of the sale of the property piecemeal. Only a few of the big individual bondholders have sent in their bonds, and it is not unlikely that if it is finally demonstrated that the bondholders will insist on holding on, a receivership will be the outcome.

The company, it is believed, has a large floating debt, in addition to its indebtedness to the bondholders. The timber business began to slump just about the time the company had the heaviest obligations to meet and it has been going down ever since. The value of the timber shrank rapidly, but no faster than Smith's fortune of $30,000,000, and for more than a year timber has been so deprest as to be below the cost of production in some sections. A pump mill, costing over $500,000, and saw mill improvements were other burdens. The history of this company is similar to that of the HiltonDodge Lumber Co., which went to pieces last year and caused disaster to the bondholders, who were askt to take preferred stock in exchange for their bonds. Probably there never has been a time in the history of the lumber business that a situation has been presented where the losses have been as severe or the shrinkage as rapid as in this industry.

The bankers are free to acknowledge that their estimates were far astray and the future financing of this industry will have to be on a more restricted and conservativ basis. Čarrying too big a load will have to be eliminated and smaller units operated, instead of having the holdings scattered over widely separated sections. There were sinking fund provisions for the retirement of these bonds serially, which would have retired the entire bonded debt before 36% of the timber had been cut, but as the bonds were retired the company evidently contracted floating debts to take their place, and the whole situation is now one almost of chaos. Bondholders are disturbed. In fact, the bankers themselves are more or less dazed by the startling change that has come. Some of them did not sell all their allotment of bonds and will have to share in the losses. Certain it is, the great majority of large ventures of this sort in the last few years have proven disappointments.Financial World.

Conveyancing Real Estate.

EDITOR MEDICAL WORLD:—

Doctors thruout the country as a rule are owners of their own homes and occasionally dealers in real estate, and it might be an advantage to them as a class to consider an article about every three months on this subject, for the ordinary notary public is not an expert in formulating legal papers, having been appointed without any examination as to his qualifications as a proper person to serve the public.

Therefore I will submit the following practical points to be remembered and acted upon with confidence in every state in the Union.

Always comply with the law of the state where the land lies, and it is a good plan to remit five cents

to the recorder or register of deeds of any county in the state and ask for two short deed or mortgage blanks, enclosing a large, self-addrest, stampt envelop for return; and the context of these blanks will indicate to a certain extent the legal requirements, for the substituting of the legal forms of one state to be used in another is often immaterial, but at other times it is a dangerous practise and leads to irregularities and unnecessary complications.

In many states witnesses are not required, but extra signatures do no harm when plainly written, otherwise they become a nuisance.

Private seals after the signature is a relic of the past and have been abolisht in nearly half of the states.

Papers are not eligible for record without acknowledgment, and if recorded are not good as evidence until their execution is proved.

While a prospectiv purchaser is in possession of the property he need not record his contract, but may deposit in a safe place, and it is immaterial what you call the contract, whether an agreement, stipulation or bond for deed, it is all the same and the courts are not technical, unless, however, some unusual wording is employed.

If papers are acknowledged out of the state, go before an officer with a seal; otherwise a certificate of his official character may be required, and a notary cannot take the acknowledgment of a stranger without liability, but will soon become acquainted when the party is introduced by a reliable person who is well known to the officer and the subscriber.

A notary public should show expiration of his commission, whether it is required by law or not, for this information is due the grantee, for the best of us overlook our birthday and wedding anniversary.

Adopt the rule of making every word count, and then better ask twice than lose your way E. W. ALBerty.

once.

Pittsburg, Kan.

NOTE. Mr. Alberty has issued a little book containing about 400 items, relativ to conveying real estate, which he offers at 15 cents, paper, or 25 cents, cloth bound, one-half the original price.-ED.

Thompson's Malted Food Co.

The following arrived just in time to crowd into this issue with my reply:

ROSSVILLE, ILL., March 16, 1915.

Dr. C. F. Taylor, Philadelphia, Pa.

DEAR DOCTOR:-How about Thompson's Malted Food Co. Stock as an investment? Price, $1.50 per share. An agent was just here and will sell to medical doctors or druggists from one to two hundred shares.

Stock sold through Barry & Wilson, Kansas City, Mo.; Food Co. at Waukesha, Wis. Please answer. Very respt.,

C. E. BROWN.

PHILADELPHIA, PA., March 18, 1915.

Dr. C. E. Brown, Rossville, Ill.

DEAR DOCTOR:-Yours of March 16th just at hand. I am surprised to learn from you that stock of the Thompson's Malted Food Company is being sold in your community. I have a letter from the Thompson's Malted Food Company, Waukesha, Wis., dated February 10, 1915, in which they say:

"This Company is not engaged in the sale of stock,

"The Company has paid no dividends and will not pay any dividends until it is thoroly establisht and its products well known in every state in the Union, at least, not so long as the present management is maintained, and when it does begin to pay a dividend it will be a steady dividend payer. "We have approximately six thousand stockholders in all. Of this number a fair estimate of the physicians would be 4,000, druggists 1,500 and 500 dentists, nurses and laymen. This is as near an estimate as I can give you of the occupation of the stockholders at this time. I would estimate that the physicians are very largely in control, possibly owning between sixty and seventy per cent. of the stock."

In reply to this letter I said:

"You state that physicians own between 60 and 70 per cent. of the stock of your Company. A copy of your treasurer's report was inclosed in Messrs. Barry & Wilson Company's letter to me, and in it I see that $635,796 of the $1,000,000 stock has been issued. Sixty-five per cent. of this amount would equal $413,267.40. I am surprised that doctors have been induced to put this amount of money in a nondividend paying stock. In this treasurer's report I notice that $247,335 is invested in patent rights and $79,293.50 is invested in trade-marks, good will and etc. Here we have $326,628.50 in the capital not represented by tangible property. I am looking at this from an investor's point of view on behalf of the physicians of this country; and these facts give me considerable surprise.

"Please realize that there has never been any question as to the quality and standing of your goods; I presume and assume that the goods are all rightA1. This is not the issue at all; the issues are the following: Your stock as a desirable investment for physicians both from a financial point of view and an ethical point of view. I have emphasized the latter not in reference to your goods alone, but in reference to all the houses that have sought to sell their stock to physicians in order to induce them to prescribe their goods to their patients. I have exprest my views upon this subject so often that I think the entire medical profession and yourself are familiar with them, so I need not repeat them here. I have been drumming on this thing for a number of years and expect to keep at it as long as I live. This plan of exploiting goods is unfair to patients; and physicians who indulge in it are rightly subject to criticism, and any house that pursues this policy cannot escape similar criticism. That is the entire point at issue unless the purely financial point should arise, and your letter and the treasurer's report seem to bring this subject up also. Here is an immense amount of money, the savings of physicians, invested in a non-dividend paying stock, and the treasurer's report has the feature above referred to all of which is not a very good showing for the physician investors, even from a purely financial point of view."

The above quotations from correspondence answer your letter. The figures in my letter would be changed if all the stock sold to physicians was sold at $1.50 per share instead of $1 per sharethis would make the showing of physicians' investment in this stock that much worse. That is, if they have put in $1.50 per share instead of $1 per share, they have that much more of their savings locked up in a non-dividend paying stock; and when we consider that they are expected to make their patients buy the product in order to make this stock a dividend payer, the showing is still worse. Very sincerely,

C. F. TAYLOR.

THE MEDICAL MONTH.

It is well known that bullet wounds immediately painted with tincture of iodin in the majority of cases are aseptic and benign. Similar painting done in ambulances where the soldiers are not received until hours or even days after having been wounded is likely to be inefficacious. To do good, tincture of iodin must be applied at once, and this is possible only if the soldiers themselves are able to apply it. To provide the soldiers with tincture of iodin in a utilizable form without encumbering them too much is a problem which presents great practical difficulties. Iodin tablets, which are quite practicable for the ambulances, are not so for the soldiers, who have no facilities for dissolving them. A pharmacist in Paris, M. Ronert, has produced sealed ampules about 6 mm. (nearly a quarter of an inch) in diameter and about 6 or 7 cm. (2 inches) long containing tincture of iodin mixt with an iodid to make it unchangeable, and put up in a little case, taking up no more room in the pocket than a little pencil.-Jr. A. M. A.

"Typhoid fever in Kansas is costing the state $8,000 a day," said Dr. S. J. Crumbine, secretary of the State Board of Health, at Topeka, December 6th. "There are three typhoid districts in Kansas now, more than at any time in several years. Twelve hundred students at the Agricultural College have been inoculated with the typhoid serum and 1,000 more doses were sent to the college. There were 356 deaths from typhoid in Kansas this year and about 4,500 cases. The economic value of a life in Kansas is estimated at $5,000, and the average cost of medical attendance and funerals is $300. Figuring on this basis, typhoid cost Kansas more than $3,000,000, not counting the loss of time of the patients. We will ask the Legislature to give the Board of Health $10.000 a year to fight the disease. This will pay for locating each case, finding its cause, making a water survey and seeing that the proper steps are taken to stop the use of water that carries the disease."

Plans have been drawn for improvements to cost upward of half a million dollars for the Bell Memorial Hospital and the School of Medicin of the University of Kansas, in Rosedale. The board of administration will submit the plans to the Kansas Legislature, with a request for an initial appropriation of a quarter of a million dollars.

The Georgia State Sanitarium at Milledgeville has been selected by the United States Government as a station for experimental work in

pellagra cases. According to examinations made by specialists from the State Board of Health. the percentage of hookworm infection is about 50%. It is estimated that 1,000 cases exist in Baldwin County.

In one year of application, serious accidents at the plant of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, employing 7,500 men, have been reduced 33% by the safety-first movement. Minor injuries to employes have decreast in the same proportion.

The Texas Surgical Association was recently formed at Galveston.

Motion pictures of the life of a woman medical student were shown for the first time at a private exhibition held at the Woman's Medical College, Philadelphia. The pictures, entitled "The Making of a Woman Physician," recently were made at the college and consisted entirely of actual scenes, showing professors and students at their work and play. These films are to form part of the college exhibit in the Educational Building at the San Francisco Panama-Pacific World's Fair.

The U. S. P. H. service plans to prevent disease entering the U. S. A. when the present European war is over.

Great interest is being taken in the case of concealed tuberculosis as a valid ground for divorce. Lawyers and physicians generally characterize the decision of Justice Blanchard, of New York, annulling a marriage on that ground, as one of the most important and far reaching which had ever come from the bench on a public health matter. Altho the decision was based on common-law grounds pertaining to false pretenses, the Justice also considered the case with reference to public policy.

Dr. Franco Bonnarito, professor of surgery in the University of Palermo, Sicily, held a clinic and delivered a lecture at Grace Hospital, Detroit, recently.

French troops, in marching, are now to be groupt according to the length of the leg from the great trochanter to the ground.

The Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the English League of the Knights of Malta, has now united its forces with the British Red Cross under Director-General Arthur Sloggett. The order has 107 hospitals, containing 4,610 beds. England; also 78 convalescent homes with 2,665 beds. Of these hospitals 28 are in use and 14 are now mobilizing. The order has also 3 hospitals of 100 beds each in France.

In the lately revised sanitary code of New York City there is one new section regulating the manufacturing, sorting and handling of cigars and cigarettes, so that no person engaged in such work shall at "any time touch with lips, teeth or tongue" any cigar, cigarette or tobacco to be offered for sale, nor "moisten with saliva."

The war has not interfered with the recent founding of the University of Presburg, Hungary, forty miles east of Vienna.

For his pioneer work on treating pulmonary tuberculosis by an artificially induced pneumothorax, Professor Forlanini, of the chair of clinical medicin at the University of Pavia, has been awarded the Santoro prize of 10,000 lire ($2,000). This prize is given every two years

by the Academy of Sciences at Rome for the most important contribution to science that has direct practical application.

Fifty dollars will suffice to change an ordinary automobile into a motor ambulance, the American Ambulance Society of Paris has found.

Oklahoma now supplies free Pasteur treatment to those unable to pay.

Rigid quarantine against all communities that refuse vaccination in the presence of variola marks the outbreak now under way in the Upper Mississippi Valley.

The University of Virginia Alumni Association was lately organized.

One of the greatest features at the San Francisco World's Fair this year will be the huge building devoted to social economy and filled with displays made by foreign and state governments. These will be chiefly working displays and automatic wax and blown-glass models, designed to popularize hygiene, physiology, sanitation, factory regulation and the like. These models, for the United States Government and for some of the largest business and philanthropic corporations in the country, will be created on an elaborate scale never before attempted by the celebrated Dr. Philip Rauer and a corps of trained specialists who in April of last year came over from Stuttgart, Germany, at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation and of the PanamaPacific Exposition to take charge of such work. Rauer is the man who created the greatest series of models ever seen, called "Der Mensch" (The Human Being) for the Dresden Exposition, and which it is intended shall be shown at San Francisco. He will install a still greater lot of models for the United States health exhibit, on which a considerable part of the $500,000 appropriation will be expended.

Another exhibit at the San Francisco World's Fair this year of importance to the medical and surgical world is the model emergency hospital which the exposition already has installed. It is in charge of Dr. R. N. Woodward, superintendent of the United States Marine Hospital in San Francisco, and will be maintained by the United States Department of Health, altho most of the equipment-which represents the highest achievements in sanitary appliances-has been contributed by various manufacturers. As in all other exposition departments, practically all these displays are products of the past decade. This hospital exhibit includes model automobile ambulance, a sterilizing room, an X-ray room, a library, operating chairs, surgical instruments and equipment, a drug room, and the like. It will be used as the exposition emergency hospital.

The publication office of the Iowa Medical Journal, the official organ of the Iowa State Medical Society, is to be changed from Washington to Des Moines. Dr. David S. Fairchild, Clinton, is editor of the journal.

The campaign against the hookworm in Texas promises to become statewide in time.

The new $500,000 St. Luke's Hospital (American, Episcopal) at Tokyo, Japan, has just received $25.000 from the Mikado. It will be the model institution of East Asia.

Austrian troops are to be immunized against cholera.

The Rockefeller Hookworm Commission has establisht a station on the Isthmus of Panama for systematic work against hookworm, which seems to prevail to a degree hitherto unsuspected. Of the first 1,000 persons examined at the laboratory, more than 700 were found to be harboring hookworm.

Tetanus antitoxin, to the amount of 6,000 packages, was lately sent to the Allies in western Europe from Philadelphia.

The death was announced at Paris December 24th of Prof. Alfred Fournier, member of the French Academy of Medicin, famous specialist on skin diseases, pupil of Ricord, and for years connected with the Lourcine and St. Louis Hospital in Paris, and author of many books on skin diseases.

At its last session, the Académie de Médecine decided to ask for Belgian physicians who have taken refuge in France the privilege of practising their profession in the numerous localities which have been deprived of medical assistance by the general mobilization.

Many French localities have been left without doctors, while other doctors there are minus patients, due to the war.

Dr. Robert N. Willson is delivering a series of lectures on diseases of the heart and lungs on Friday afternoons from 5 to 6 in the amphitheater of the Philadelphia General Hospital. The following are the lectures and dates for April: 2, The Heart in the Acute Infections and in Pregnancy; 9, The Cardiorenal Syndrome; 16, The Nonmedicinal Treatment of Cardiac Disease; 23, The Treatment of Cardiac Conditions by Medicins; 30, The Diagnosis and Prognosis of Cardiac Disease. All physicians and students of medicin are welcome.

The amazing fact of the present Pan-European war is that all the belligerent nations have practically stopt the use of alcoholic drinks. What an argument for total abstinence universally.

The Winston-Salem (N. C.) City Hospital, opened November 11th, represents an investment of more than $100,000.

Dr. Emile Reymond, noted French surgeon, who left his seat in the Senate at Paris to perform aeroplane reconnoitering, was lately fatally shot while aloft.

The New York Board of Health has just completed a revision of the sanitary code, this being the first time that the rules have been changed in fifteen years. There are twenty-three new sections in it, one of the most important of which regulates the sale of proprietary medicins, requiring that the name of every ingredient shall be registered with the Board of Health. This regulation goes into effect on December 31, 1915. The board deemed it best to allow this time to the druggists so that they might dispose of the stock already on hand. The section states that the information listed with the department is to be strictly confidential and will not be open to public inspection. If the board considers the medicin injurious to the public it will not allow it to be sold. The section does not apply to any medicin obtained upon the individual prescription of a physician, which must be filed for five years at the establishment where the compound is dispenst.