Funny, isn't it, that so many men are dishonest in business? When you find one who is strictly honest, treasure him. A Pure Speculation.

THE MEDICAL WORLD:-Having been warned thru your columns of the "get-rich-quick" schemes, I am writing you to know what you think of the Prepayment Fan Co.'s stock of Vincennes, Ind.? They are incorporated under the laws of Arizona. The proposition looks good on paper, but I do not know how it will work for the small stockholder.

The prepayment fan seems to be a success. Works like a slot machine and is intended to be placed in hotels, etc.

The agents can readily show what the Bell Telephone stock is worth, the Coca Cola stock, etc., and are very positive that this stock will pay a better dividend than either.

The General Electric Co. makes the fans and sells them to the company and they operate them on the percentage basis with the proprietor of the house where installed.

The agents, Bell & Barnett, of Memphis, Tenn., seem to be ready to meet any argument that I have been able to put up against the buying of their bonds.

Will you kindly investigate this concern and let me know at once? I will appreciate an early reply by letter. W. W. HICKMAN.

Doctor, this is discouraging. When agents begin by telling about the Bell Telephone stock and other well-known successes to boost their stock, let it alone. I have said this so often. Of course, the agents can meet all arguments. Show them a copy of THE MEDICAL WORLD and say that you have read it for years, and they will go away and let you alone. I never heard of this "fan" company before, but I can see with half an eye that its stock is a pure speculation. It might It might go among undiscriminating investors, but ask your banker to invest in some of it and see what he will say. Why are the agents running around among doctors to sell the stock? Why don't they go to investors in Vincennes or Memphis, instead of going away down in Mississippi among the doctors? The General Electric people have plenty of money. Why do they not buy the stock if it is such a good thing? Doctor, don't touch it, nor anything of this kind. Keep your money in bank. Whenever these slick talking agents come into your office, show them THE MEDICAL WORLD, and then the door.

Please read this letter, and then read the one immediately following, which was written on the other side of the same sheet. DENNOS FOOD SALES CO. 220 W. ONTARIO ST. CHICAGO, ILL., May 27, 1915.

Dr. H. J. Saunders,

929 Grand Ave., Kansas City, Mo.: DEAR DOCTOR:-This is to notify you that your

second cash payment on your subscription for the Preferred Stock of this Company, amounting to $10, comes due on the 1st of June.

We trust that you are finding Dennos Food beneficial to you in your practice and that you are making use of Dennos in your adult practise as well as for infants. Remember that Dennos will meet your requirements wherever a delicate diet is indicated.

Thanking you in advance for your remittance, we beg to remain

Very truly yours,

DENNOS FOOD SALES CO.,

per A. C. Fitzpatrick, Asst. Cashier. Dr. C. F. Taylor, DEAR DOCTOR:-I_write_you for information regarding the Dennos Food Sales Co. As per this letter you see "I also fell." The fellow who sold me must have been the same one that Dr. W. L. Rukenbrod, of Decatur, Ill., wrote about in the May issue. He said, "I bet you dollars to doughnuts his equal has never been born," for he surely was a spellbinder that sold

me.

As I look back at him now, however, I wonder why I bit. I have been reading your most valuable Business Talks to Doctors for over four years now, and to think, at this late day, I would get into something I did not know about is indeed a surprise

to me.

You know, if we doctors would only say to these spellbinders, "submit your proposition to me in a letter," and then the doctor read this letter in his own sober state of mind, when not under the irresistible influence of personal argument, not one in ten of these schemes would result in us fool doctors giving up our hard-earned dollars.

Now this company may be O.K.; but I do not know a thing about them. So I write to you for advice before I squander another ten.

Yours most sincerely,

HARRISON J. SAUNDERS.

Doctor, I am inclined to think that the commercial reputation of this company is good, but that is not the point. The question is, what is their stock worth? What can you get for it? What will they give for it? What is it worth on the market? What income does it pay? What is the capitalization of the company, what the assets in tangible property, and the annual expense and gross and net income of the business? As a stockholder you have a right to all this information. Write and get it. With this information you will need no further word from me. But if you do, send me the information and I will help you to interpret it.

But there is one thing I want to call to your attention, and also the attention of all who read these lines. The company's letter to you asks you for $10 and at the same time very nicely boosts their product. This is a nice combination for them. This is what I have preached so much about for ten years or more. You are furnishing their capital and also their market. They

expect you to keep on paying for the stock, and to keep up a good demand for their product among your patients. Other agents will go around to other doctors and tell them how fast they will get rich by subscribing for certain stock, and then other doctors will be in the same position that you are in. I will go on preaching, but I will not be able to prevent all of this kind of business, but I will keep working away at it. Doctor, please be sure to tell us what the rate of income is on this investment; or is it still in the prospect stage, like a lot of gold mines are? When stocks are in the "blow" stage, and you ask the rate of income they tell you the rate of income on Bell Telephone stock! How that has helped to wheedle innocent believers!

Southington, Conn., May 28, 1915. DEAR DR. TAYLOR:-Are U. S. Government bonds sold in fractions of $1,000? Would they

of the business is done there-the pruning of investors. The little formality of some land for the fig trees to grow on-when they grow, if they ever grow, is in Mississippi. They have a tract of land down there. You can get a tract, there, also, if you will go down and look around; and you will be surprised how much land a little cash will buy. And then you will wonder why you bought it and what you are going to do with it. Well, these Pittsburgh people will take your money (they want lots of it), and will agree to plant your fig trees on terms that will make you rich, they say. Beware of people who want to make you rich. A lot of innocent people tried to get rich thru the flame Tokay grape land route, and the eucalyptus grove route and other similar routes. The schemers get the money, and the investors get the experience. If they

a few hundred dollars saved during these critical times? True, he would lose 2% or 3% interest, but the chance of banks breaking would be out of the question, and if he wanted coin it could be easily raised.

You see I'm looking for safety now, instead of 10% and "good things," as previously.

Once bitten, twice shy," you know; and I think I've learned my lesson.

Am learning it every day. Years ago I planned for my boys to go to college, and carried endowment insurance to help out when the time came.

The time has come, and now they must go to work, while the sons of my formerly "poor" patients go to college-in spite of the fact that their parents still owe me. PAUL PLUMMER.

Doctor, I never bought U. S. bonds, so I do not know if they sell in fractions of $1,000. Your banker can tell you. But, Doctor, aren't you flying to the other extreme? Your banker can sell you something conservative and safe that will yield. from 4% to 5%, or possibly 6%.

is out there in California-land that the victims paid $300 an acre for, which is probably abandoned again now. Here's another similar scheme. One of our trusting subscribers who "has a little money to invest that will bring quick results, but cannot afford to lose it," sends me the literature and asks my advice. This dear subscriber will receive a personal letter from me right away. The above is written for any others of the "family" that may be tempted. What do you want to bet on the condition of this fig farm in five years or ten years? or that those who invest in it with this smoky city company will ever get half their money back? I don't know anything about these people, but I know about these schemes.

THE MEDICAL MONTH.

Now that systematic propaganda is in progress on cancer, it will be well for medical societies in nearby counties to join with The American Society for the Control of Cancer. This public-spirited body (Curtis E. Lakeman, executive secretary, 289 Fourth Avenue, New York City) co-operates to supply able speakers and carry on an efficient press campaign in any state or section.

The Florida legislature has appropriated $500 to investigate the State's need of an institution for the epileptic and feeble-minded, the commission in charge to report to the next legislature. The State Medical Society has indorsed this action, and it is to be hoped that two years hence the legislature will see fit to appropriate a sufficient sum to establish an institution along colony lines for these classes of dependents. Dr. D. C. Main, of the Sisco Fruit Company, a farm colony for epileptics, has been untiring in his work in behalf of this

bill and, in addition, a big part of the sentiment in favor of State care of these classes is due to the work of Dr. William P. Spratling, formerly of Baltimore but now of Welaka, who has talked before numerous women's clubs and county medical societies, as well as the State Medical Association recently in session at De Land.

Dr. George E. Malsbary, editor of the Southern California Practitioner, had caused to be drawn up an ordinance for the employment of municipal nurses to visit tubercular patients in Los Angeles. The initiative petition was signed by 20,000 voters, more than four times the required number, and was passed at the June election by a large majority. The initiative is thus of value and permits health improvements that might not otherwise be made.

Arthur Denison Light, described as principal of the British Health Institute and publisher of a periodical called Power, Purity and Progress, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment at the Old Bailey recently upon a charge of attempting to obtain money by false pretences.Lancet.

Dr. Paul F. Eve, a distinguisht Southern surgeon, died from septicemia December 26th, in Nashville, Tenn., aged 58 years.

Information was received at Trenton, April 8th,

that the Bureau of Animal Research to be establisht in New Jersey by the Rockefeller Institute will be located near Princeton on 480 acres of land adjacent to Carnegie Lake.

After long consideration the Drs. William J. and Charles H. Mayo have recently consummated their plans for the endowment of the graduate medical instruction and research work which has for years been a feature of the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minn. The result is the incorporation of "The Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, Incorporated," with an initial endowment fund of $1,500,000. The founders are: William J. Mayo, Charles H. Mayo, Henry S. Plummer, Edward Starr Judd and Donald C. Balfour. The board of temporary trustees having in charge for the present the investment of the fund is composed of Bert W. Eaton, George W. Granger and Harry J. Harwick. The board of scientific directors is composed of Louis B. Wilson, William F. Braasch, E. Hessel Beckman, A. H. Sanford and Walter D. Sheldon. For the present the expenses of the foundation will be met by annual contributions from the Mayo Clinic, the income from the endowment being allowed to accumulate and increase the principal.

On March 27th, President Wilson and former President Taft assisted at the laying of the cornerstone of the new building for the American Red Cross to be erected at a cost of $800,000 as a memorial to the heroic women of the Civil War. The building is to be completed by April, 1916.

In the presence of distinguisht foreign scientists, the Thomas W. Evans Museum and Dental Institute of the School of Dentistry of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, was dedicated February 22d and 23d. Over $1.000.000 is represented in this bequest of the late Dr. Evans, the noted Parisian dentist.

Smallpox exists in nearly every "copper country" town and in many of the "iron country" towns in Michigan. The outbreak at Crystal Falls is said to be the worst in the history of

the upper peninsula, altho the disease itself is present as yet only in a mild form. There have been no deaths. Dr. Joseph A. Crowell, Iron Mountain, has been appointed a special agent of the State Board of Health to investigate the situation in that vicinity.

Major-General Gorgas, Surgeon-General U. S. A., has resigned his commission in the service so as to head the American Red Cross Commission that is to stamp out the typhus epidemic. The Rockefeller Commission will finance this great philanthropy.

The death is announced at Berlin, April 9th, of Prof. Friedrich Loeffler, the German scientist who in 1884 discovered the diphtheria bacillus. Dr. Loeffler was born in 1852.

With the passing out of existence of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission on January 1, 1915, the Tennessee State Board of Health has faced the necessity of discontinuing the hookworm campaign initiated by the commission. The hookworm campaign has made a deep impression and aroused great public interest. Surveys have been conducted in over sixty counties, and dispensaries have been operated in forty-four of these. There pensaries should be operated. are a number of counties, however, in which dis

Where there is a possibility of diphtheria infection, test all those exposed by the Schick percutaneous method (Jr. A. M. A., April 10, 1915). This definitly differentiates the well from the sick.

The Italian Line steamship Duca d'Aosta, which sailed from New York April 3d for Naples, carried nine sanitary experts, composing the American Red Cross Sanitary Commission, which will endeavor to conquer the typhus fever and other dread diseases epidemic in Servia. The expenses of the commission will be borne jointly by the Red Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation. From Naples they will go to Saloniki, Greece, and then proceed into the heart of the plagueridden regions. The commission will be under the direction of Dr. Richard P. Strong, of Harvard University, who already is in Europe. Those who sailed to-day were Dr. Thomas W. Jackson, chief sanitary inspector; Dr. Hans Zinsser, bacteriologist: Dr. Andrew W. Sellards, Dr. George C. Shattuck, Dr. F. G. Grinnell, Dr. F. W. Caldwell, Hobart D. Brink, W. S. Standifer and Louis de la Pena. The last two named were members of General Gorgas' staff in the sanitary campaign that rid the Panama Canal Zone of fever.

California's compulsory vaccination law is now upheld by the state's legal department in an opinion just issued.

Those wishing to compete for a prize of one thousand dollars for a social hygiene pamphlet for adolescents, suggested and generously provided by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, should address the American Social Hygiene Association, 105 W. 40th Street, New York, N. Y.

Sir George Turner, who was knighted in recognition of his self-sacrifice in fighting leprosy, died of that disease March 12th at Colyton, Devonshire, where he had lived in seclusion for two years. Sir George worked for many years in South Africa and discovered a cure for the rinder pest. He had also seen service as Medical Officer

of Health in Cape Colony and the Transvaal, and later was engaged in research work in England. He was born in Melbourne in 1851.

A public celebration was held in Vienna on March 1st in honor of the 80th birthday of Professor Winternitz, father of scientific hydrotherapy.

The cable brings word of the death of another victim to exanthematous typhus among noted specialists in infectious diseases, Prof. Georg Cornet, of Berlin, aged 57. He was the first to discover the tubercle bacillus outside of the body and preach its non-ubiquity, thus providing a basis for prophylaxis. He was assistant to Robert Koch in the Institute for Infectious Diseases at Berlin, and the list of Cornet's works, especially on tuberculosis, is long and imposing.

The Canadian Medical Association meeting, scheduled for Vancouver, B. C., July 7-10, has been cancelled. Too many members are activ in war duties this year.

The council of the Society of American Bacteriologists will hold a special meeting in San Francisco, August 3-5, 1915. Dr. Wilfred H. Manwaring, Stanford University, Cal., is the local chairman.

Dr. Dudley Sharpe Reynolds, one of the South's distinguisht ophthalmologists, died near Louisville, Ky., February 4th, aged 72 years.

A special cable dispatch in the Philadelphia Ledger from Paris, March 18th, states that what is described as the greatest surgical discovery since Lister's antisepsis is now at the service of the French wounded. It is an antitoxin discovered by the well-known bacteriologists, Professors La Chaineheand and Vallee, and it is likely to supplant other antiseptics in preventing infection of wounds. The new serum, called "polyvalent," is effectiv against all malignant germs, actually stimulates the tissue surrounding the wound and promotes rapid healing.

The first "get together" held in Boston took place in its Medical Library, October 31st last, when the Suffolk County District Medical Society had as guests the Boston Section of the Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society. This wiping out of "treatment" distinctions must spread. Force everyone who treats injury or illness to prove his skill in differentiating diseases or hurts before an impartial single State Department of Education. Then, as for treatment, permit a separate State Board examination by each school of practise. Then, and then only, is the public protected.

Another typhoid fever outbreak has been traced to "typhoid Mary" Mallon at New York. It is now impossible for her to escape detention and an effort is being made to eradicate the focus in her case.

Putting local quarantine under national control is a growing movement in U. S. A. seaport cities. A memorial to the late Dr. Justin Steer is proposed by the alumni of Washington University medical school at St. Louis, Mo.

The American Ambulance Hospital, in Paris, has now nearly ninety ambulances in service, most of them at the front. The statistics show that the mortality in the American Hospital has been less than 8%, and that up to January 31st,

the hospital had received $440,000, of which $120,000 was contributed by Americans in Europe. There are at present 398 patients in the hospital, and the average cost per patient per day is $1.50. The cost of the maintenance of an ambulance is about $200 a month.

The city health officer of Cumberland, Md., has recommended the establishment of a sanatorium on Haystack Mountain for the care of negroes afflicted with tuberculosis.

The Springfield Lake, Ohio, Tuberculosis Sanatorium, jointly establisht by Summit, Portage, Mahoning, Stark and Columbiana counties, at a cost of nearly $250,000, was opened February 1st. The institution has accommodations for seventytwo patients and this can be doubled in case of necessity.

The Maryland General Hospital, at Baltimore, is raising $200,000 to enlarge and modernize. It is under Methodist Episcopal control.

The trustees of the Presbyterian Hospital of New York City have taken an option of the former American League baseball grounds on Washington Heights. This tract of ground contains about six city blocks and is valued at $2,000,000. The purchase of this site has been made possible by the bequest of the late John S. Kennedy, by whose will the hospital received $2,500,000. It is planed to use a large part of the site for hospital purposes, but considerable space will be used by buildings for special purposes, scientific and educational, in connection with Columbia University.

Thru the Rockefeller Foundation six new doctors will be added to the medical staff of the School at Chang Sha, Fu-Nan Province, China, which is being operated by Yale men co-operating with the Chinese government.

Dr. Charles McDonald, of Washington, head of the American War Relief Hospital in Budapest, who recently arrived in New York, predicts that when warmer weather comes typhoid will become very prevalent in the Austrian army. He says conditions, relativ to sanitation in the camps, are similar to those prevailing in the American camps in 1898. Conditions among the wounded are deplorable. As many as 70,000 wounded had been in Budapest at one time.

Col. George E. Bushnell, M. C., U. S. A., Fort Bayard, N. Mex., has been detailed to visit the Public Health Service sanatorium at Fort Stanton, N. Mex., and the Navy Sanatorium at Las Animas, Col., and report on the advisability of consolidating these institutions with the United States General Hospital (the Army Sanatorium) at Fort Bayard, N. Mex. Colonel Bushnell's report will be considered by the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Treasury. Colonel Bushnell is the present commandant of the Fort Bayard institution and during his régime this old adobe army post has been converted into the finest institution of its kind in the world at an expenditure of $1,000,000.

The new $1,000,000 Beth Israel Hospital in New York City will be twelve to fifteen stories in height and will accommodate 500 patients. A special feature of the hospital will be the accommodations for persons of moderate means who do not wish to be charity patients and yet are unable to pay high charges for services and attendance.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS

Short articles of practical help to the profession are solicited for this department.

Articles to be accepted must be contributed to this jour nal only. The editors are not responsible for views exprest by contributors.

Copy must be received on or before the twelfth of the month for publication in the issue for the next month. We decline responsibility for the safety of unused manuscript. It can usually be returned if request and postage for return are received with manuscript; but we cannot agree to always do so. Certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else.RUSKIN.

The Treatment of Cancer by Radium.*
BY HOWARD A. KELLY, M.D.
BALTIMORE, MD.

Radium, our newest therapeutic agent, is proving to be of the utmost value in the treatment of cancer of all kinds, whether operable or inoperable. Two of the three rays emitted by radium, the beta and the gamma rays, affect the tissues of the body most profoundly, fortunately, however, acting much more potently on the weaker cancer cells than upon the normal cells of the body. No one claims and no one ever has claimed that radium would cure all cases of cancer-that erroneous statement is due to the daily newspapers, hunting for something dramatic for their columns.

Radium has, however, won for itself a definite place in cancer therapy, and with time and experience, and above all, with increased amounts of radium and newer methods of applying it, its domain over this dread realm will undoubtedly extend from year to year.

Radium therapy is analogous to x-ray therapy, with the striking differences that radium is far more potent and is less likely to cause any irritation or injury to the sound tissues. Radium acts more speedily than x-ray; for example, it is the rule to finish the treatment of a fibroid tumor with one or two applications of radium, while many x-ray treatments are called for extending over weeks or even months. I include here under the broad term cancer, sarcomata as well as epithelial growths.

At first the question was: does radium really cure. But now that query can be answered positively and in the affirmative after the lapse of years. This fundamental

Publisht simultaneously in THE MEDICAL WORLD and Maryland Medical Journal.

matter has also been set at rest by autopsy made years after treatment of inoperable

cancer.

Cancers of the skin are most amenable to radiation. The only obstinate and refractory group of cases here is the cases which have existed for years and which have been treated by cautery, caustics, etc. Those cases are also obstinate which have invaded the deeper tissues or which have crept over on to the mucous surfaces. The most obvious advantages of radium are seen in cancers around the eye, the ear, the lips, the nose, where the healing takes place without mutilation, in marked contrast with exsective surgery. Even where there has been extensive ulceration there is often a surprisingly good restoration of form.

The entire surgical world has been startled by the results secured so rapidly in treating with radium that hitherto hopeless groupthe lymphosarcomata. Here great tumors interpenetrating all the anatomic structures even to the base of the skull, the neck or into the chest, literally melt away in a few days' time. The rays act like myriads of microscopic knives attacking every individual invading cell, while sparing normal tissues.

Many other sarcomata are also helped in a remarkable manner, but not in such a large percentage of the cases. Epitheliomata of the mouth, tonsils and larynx, especially the basal celled, even in totally inoperable conditions, can be cured in a fair percentage of instances.

A favorable form of cancer is that of the thyroid gland. Thymus growths of the small round-cell type are very amenable to treatment. Lip cancers yield more and more as our experience grows, but the block dissection is always called.

Nearly all breast tumors respond in some measure, the larger medullary form being the most susceptible. The best rule here is operation first, when feasible, and radiation afterward. Cancer of the vagina usually disappears rapidly under radiation.

I am glad to report that cancers of the cervix are among the most amenable to radium therapy, and this remarkable statement holds good not only for the early, but even for the later cases where the disease, tho massive, still remains localized.

In nearly 30% of the inoperable cases even the disease has disappeared under efficient radiation with large amounts of radium element. This was true in a group of over two hundred cases treated by Dr. C. F. Burnam and myself. It is a common