WE

E HAVE BEEN interviewing a military nurse of China, and the rest of the world, a gray-headed old gentleman of thirty-six strenuous years, who is marked with many wounds, who has had three bullets and a foot of intestine taken from his abdomen, nearly died with cholera, been through every kind of Oriental epidemic, been tortured by natives, joined "heathen" religions to get inside of their temples, and "doctored" and nursed the whole world round. In his proper character, he is an International Red Cross Nurse and has many things to show and tell.

And he has his opinion of doctors in general, and of some in particular: the former class he likes; the latter unit he often dislikes. Evidently he has run across all kinds, and he has most respect for the plain civilian doctor. His main criticism of this type of physician is that he gives a hundred times too much morphine. He says it is the same everywhere in the Occident, and that the Occidental physician should visit the Orient and see for himself what morphine and opium does to a people, and is very gradually doing to the people of the United States. A dreadful charge, he says, will ultimately be brought against Oc

cidental medicine for its thoughtless abuse of narcotic drugs and its unphilosophic attitude toward venereal conditions as they actually are.

He takes us sharply to task here for depending too much upon surgery and doing too many unnecessary operations for the money there is in it. We mildly disagreed with him, but he would have none of it, and claimed that the best proof of it was in the practice of our army and navy surgeons, who are called "surgeons" but do little surgery, being mostly taken up with medicine and sanitation, in which latter line of endeavor he considers America away behind. He says we are very insular here in the United States, and have a vast deal to learn from the doctors over the ocean and in the Southern hemisphere, "where doctors nearly run the government instead of the government running them." He says we have no spirit, and put up meekly with unfair conditions that we could change were we to assert our prerogative a little

more.

Of all men he considers the "therapeutic nihilist" one of the biggest frauds. Nowhere in the world does one learn the absolute necessity for drugs like one does in practice in the tropics, where diseases are quick and positive, and quick and positive remedies must be used. We lay too much emphasis upon the "know" and too little upon the "do."

He takes no stock in State medicine except as every doctor in the State is made an integral part of State medicine, and that is not practicable here until after the profession as a whole intelligently studies public and military hygiene. He says the political aspect of public hygiene here is sad for the country, but a condition largely the fault of the profession itself. The doctors here worship the "almighty dollar" too much to be true altruists, and are standing in their own light by reason of it. considers a standing army and conscription a good thing for manhood, especially for medical manhood. Our army and navy surgeons are too domineering and our

He

civilian doctors too meek, both conditions being due to our bad organization.

He has a poor opinion of American hospital organization, and says our hospitals are too full of amateur nurses, and too little under medical control. They do these things better over on the other side.

Very positively does he assert that we are "queering" serum medication. He has personally used every kind of serum we have here and some we never see, and asserts we give them ignorantly, without the co-operating effect of proper medication, and too much as a fad. So long as the American doctor runs after every passing fad, we will have with us all the present medical sects and will achieve some new ones: medical sects in the United States are the fault of the regular profession.

He regards our institutional care of the insane, the epileptic, the tuberculous, the defectives and first offender criminals as a result of corrupting politics and little science, and as away behind the age. Only by colony management and correct industrial development can we look for improvement.

Being something of an economist, his view is that we divide our political régime too much among a lot of States, and their detracting from the Federal administration of affairs plays into the hands of the trusts, who control legislatures and a weak congress to an extent unknown abroad. predicts that, unless we get together in our national affairs, we will add to our present "captains of industry" the ones Europe would like to get rid of, and that one thing the "interests" will control is medicine.

He

Last month we printed optimism. In this article we pass along some pessimism. for what it is worth, and distinctly not as our own expression. Sometimes it is well to look at ourselves through another's spectacles, especially in January, when we "turn over a new leaf," and make new resolves.

Calcium chloride and calcium lactate is suggested for bronchial asthma.

We Should Rejuvenate Quinine.
EFORE THE vogue of the synthetic,

quinine was a popular fever remedy. Probably its use was overdone, and especially was this true as regards its more or less constant use as a prophylactic against malaria. Koch asserted that its indiscriminate use for this purpose in tropical countries was provocative of "black-water fever," due to the quinine-user becoming immune to the drug. It is quite generally agreed that the drug becomes useless as a remedy after the individual has acquired a quinine tolerance.

But in turning away from quinine one can go too far. Not so long ago the most eminent writers were inclined to scout the use of quinine until after the malarial organism was demonstrated in the blood. We were inclined to agree with them, and we turned to our microscope for diagnosis. We know now that they and we were in error. Whatever may be said about the ease in finding malarial parasites in typical cases of malaria, the fact remains that we utterly failed in finding them in many cases showing every clinical evidence of malaria; and very capable laboratory specialists have confessed to us that they have had the same experience. Not for one moment do we call in question the value of the microscope in the diagnosis of malaria, but there are two sources of error from the clinical standpoint: cases of real malaria in which we fail to find the organisms, and cases clinically resembling malaria but due to some protoplasmic or zymotic poison other than the malarial plasmodium.

We are inclined to the view that these latter cases are rather numerous, and may even occur in the winter months. Some of them may be hold-over cases from fall infection, and others may be due to insanitary cellars, basements, closets and other portions of our houses. Be this as it may, we find that quinine clears up a good many of our obscure cases. And why should it not? Were we to get out a new remedy proven to be tonic, antiseptic, antiperiodic,