should remember that such has been the story of nearly all the meritorious laboratory products. Priestly and Lavoisier were accounted quack scientists when they announced the isolation of oxygen; yet oxygen asserted itself and still asserts itself as the most universal and most potent of all the chemic elements. Without it neither sounding brass nor tinkling cymbal could either sound or tinkle. It is and ever has been, as it will ever be, a sine qua 1011 of all chemical and vital affinities-the sole condition of life itself. An inadequte supply of it to the vital economy means degeneration and disease. Whatever learned phrases we invent to describe the condition, in the end most mortals are asphyxiated. Not in a crude way, like beautiful Desdemona, but by the refined processes so prevalent in civilized society.

Spurgeon's now much-quoted Jeremiad against Debt, Dirt and the Devil may sound a trifle blunt, coming from a reverend source, but it is a valuable object lesson for the medical profession.

Debt is a monster millstone about the neck of many a struggling mortal, and is answerable for much of the current mental, moral and marital misery and for social crimes innumerable.

Dirt is the omnipresent and incessant foe to human life, happiness and longevity. Against it Lieutenant General Cleanliness and Admiral Antisepsis led the reorganized and newly-weaponed Army and Navy of attack and invasion.

The Devil is not now quite so necessary to theologians as he once was, but he still heads the wavering and decimated hosts of the mythologians. Instead of a distinct entity he is now held to be a symbolic embodiment of the whole D family, Debt, Dirt, Divorces, Darkness and Death.

To his list of antidotes and antagonists -Hard Work, Honesty, Soap and Scrub Brushes the great preacher might have appropriately added that Mauser-Maximthat Mauser-Maxim

Machine-gun-Lyddite of modern ammunition-Oxygen. This is the explosive which can reach the enemy, even behind his most effective breastworks, and in lurking ambush! This element is always to be had for the asking, is prepared by Nature, who is an honest expert and is an always loaded magazine rifle. It can be safely and successfully sent on reconnoisances into the most intricate passes. It protects its own sharpshooters from harm and is a faithful ally in the effort to locate and dislodge the germ enemy, whole platoons of which it eventually annihilates if it be persistently invoked. The treatment of wasting diseases, and especially of consumption, has finally settled down to the constant and unrestricted use of fresh air. All the other vaunted specifics have proved delusive and are being quietly discarded. Climate (oxygen) and hygiene now hold the boards.

HALF TRUTHS AND HUMDRUM IN THE FIELD OF HYGIENE.

THE world is full of "cranks," the term generally being applied in a more or less deprecatory if not sometimes despicable sense. Many people look upon "cranks" as the direct or indirect cause of most of the social troubles of the day and age. To such people a "crank" is a criminal by implication, if not in fact.

This is an unwarranted and perhaps often unconscious misconception of the character and of the facts in the case. In the mechanical world the crank is a most essential factor, the very keynote to power. In its crude form power is merely pressure in one direction, and therefore unavailable for human processes. The crank transforms this into rotary motion and thus makes locomotion and every form of machinery possible. Without the interposition of the crank to turn their energy into useful work the steam engine and the dynamo would be no more than curiosities and playthings.

The social, sanitary and "moral" crank is quite as essential in the general makeup of human society. Each has his specific and usually legitimate mission. That portion of society coming in immediate contact with him is compelled to make due allowance for the one-sidedness of his particular fad; but in the grand whole he has no occasion to apologize for living, or for his presence in any particular community.

Premising our remarks by this general disclaimer of prejudice against the genus "crank," our immediate business is with "hygienic" cranks. They form a numerour family, are as dissimilar as if each included a distinct family of his own, and are annually multiplying. One has never looked beyond the bathtub, and so is a hydropathist, or a "hydriatist," a term dragooned into use since the Century Dictionary was compiled. He swears by Priessnitz, Shaw and Trall, or else he never heard of these pioneers, and imagines himself a discoverer! He baptizes his patients, right and left, early and late, soaks, showers, steams and sponges them, squirts water over, under and through them, or pumps them full and parboils them alternately and at regular intervals.

Shoulder to shoulder with this modern reminiscence of Neptune and the Seanymphs stands the Diet crank. His name is legion, but each one is a man of a single fad. The latter varies from train oil emulsion and terrapin-on-toast to unleavened bran mash, and from the cannibalism of raw meat to roasted potatoes, rice croquets and raw wheat. One is morally certain that the unpardonable dietetic sin consists in partaking of more than one meal in twenty-four hours; and the next one recommends feeding every two hours during the day, regretting that the night cannot be broken up into lunch hours with omelets and oysters, broiled steaks and lobster salads galore. One is convinced that mastication is the keynote to the Millennium; another that water drinking will ward off the ingestive sins of the world; another sounds the praises of a milk diet,

and the next denounces the products of the dairy as the most prolific source of tuberculosis.

Thus the masquerade goes on, no two advocates in agreement, but each confident he is the trusted custodian of a saving grace.

Near of kin are the exercise cranks. According to these you have but to become a Sandow, a football captain or a golf champion to mock at the health teachers and outlive the centenarian.

The latest fanatic in this line hails from Chicago, and proves beyond a peradventure, by at least three or four examples. and numerous inferences, that after reaching thirty-five no man or woman should take any exercise whatever! He insists. with apparent seriousness, that, in effect, every muscular movement indulged after reaching that age is a physical injury and a menace to longevity!

The next specimen of the genus worships Psyche. Everything is mind, soul, suggestion. Think a thing and you are that thing. There is no such thing as feeling. Toothache is a groveling delusion, and a broken leg a figment of the imagination. This too, too solid earth is a physical fraud, a phantom of a sinful and unbelieving brain. God is, and Mother Eddy is, and that is all that is necessary. Finally, the humdrum hygienists are a host. They have been telling the same story, reciting old saws and see-saws about orthodoxy in diet, "taking cold," regular exercise and systematic coddling for the last four generations. All their philosophy consists of folklore that was old when Moses made love to Zipporah in the Kenite Oasis. A new idea would endanger their reason; so they are satisfied with the old, which they con, over and over, year in and out, like poll-parrots, or flesh-and-blood phonographs that can be rewound to the end of time, but who remain unconscious of their own stupidity and proud of their accumulations of dry-as-dust platitudes.

GOETHE'S HYGIENE.

THE fame of Goethe, the great age to which he lived, and his reputation as a model of physical as well as mental manhood give a special interest to Dr. Bode's article on "Goethe's Hygiene" in the Hygienische Rundschau, No. 15, which is commented upon in Janus for November. Though justly considered one of fortune's greatest favorites, Goethe owed physically less to nature than is generally supposed. "He suffered much in lungs, heart and kidneys, his digestive organs troubled him greatly, gout gave him bad hours, besides which came external evils or ulcerations on cheeks, eyes, feet, etc." He had serious hæmoptysis in his 18th year, and was “given up" several times, 1767, 1768, 1817, 1823. In 1788 Schiller found him looking much older than his years. His sentiveness was sometimes a burden to him. He loved warmth and light and hated the winter He was upset by some decayed apples in Schiller's desk, which did not affect the weaker poet. Neither tea nor coffee agreed with him, and his temperament varied with the barometer.

All these disadvantages, however, were outweighed by an excellent appetite and power of sleeping, and a deliberate care for his health, the absence of which he blamed in Schiller. He thought much of the power of will in warding off infection and maintaining strength and vigor and he used it to convert his naturally passionate and excitable temperament into the Olympian serenity which characterized his later years. Equally important was his love of fresh air and exercise. He introduced river bathing at Weimar, and converted the local physicians to his views. Walking and riding were his favorite exercises and he was among the first to practice mountaineering as a sport. His teeth were perfect to his 83d year, and he could boast that he had never suffered from tooth or headache. He was fond of fruit and drank wine to the extent of a bottle, or a bottle and a half, daily. Tobacco he abominated. With regard to

medicine, he held the curious view that, though physicians might maintain or restore health, they could not prolong life. "We live so long as God has ordained, but it is a great difference whether we live like poor dogs, or are well and vigorous, and here a clever physician can do much." Of his own medical adviser, he said in 1827. "That I am still so well is owing to Vogel," and a year later, "Vogel is a born doctor and one of the most genial of men"; while the latter said of the poet, "Goethe had a singularly high opinion of genuine disciples of healing art, and was a grateful and compliant patient."

SANITATION IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CONSUMPTION.

EVERY well informed and reflecting physician knows, says the N. Y. Med. Journ., that it will not do to concentrate our efforts in any particular direction to the exclusion of other points. The segregation and enlightened treatment of persons actually affected with tuberculous disease, as well as measures for destroying or sterilizing their sputa, are indispensable, but one great element in any successful strife against the spread of the disease lies in strengthening the resistive powers of persons who have not yet been attacked, and chiefly by improving the homes of the poor and their modes of life. This was very effectively pointed out by Dr. Beverley Robinson, of New York, in the January number of the St. Louis Courier of Medicine.

If we admit, says Dr. Robinson, that without the bacillus there is no tuberculous disease, yet, even with the bacillus, there must be the soil ready or prepared for its growth and development, with all its evil consequences. In a healthy individual, he thinks, it is more than probable that the bacillus will prove innocuous, for it will meet with a barren soil and, taking no root, will breed no disease; susceptibility, hereditary or acquired, must exist, or the mi

crobe's attack is ineffective-literally, it does little or no haim to persons who are in perfect health. On this point, we think, the profession is quite in accord with Dr. Robinson; indeed, the opinion he expresses seems an almost unavoidable inference from the observation that so many escape the disease throughout a long life, although practically exposed to it well-nigh continually.

Dr. Robinson would have legislation enforcing an adequate supply of pure air in the tenement-houses, with the free penetration of sunlight and cleanliness made obligatory. Perhaps it is not practicable for legislation to do more in these directions than to enforce a certain minimum of requirements; but, seeing what reforms have already been brought about in the sanitary surroundings of the poor, mainly as the result of medical teaching, we may confidently hope for a speedy and ample extension of these improvements-with legislation if necessary, but independently of it by preference.

蛋蛋

ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS OF STERILIZING AND PASTEURIZING MILK.

MILK, said Dr. Blackader, of Montreal, in a paper read before a recent meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, obtained under unfavorable conditions and kept at a rather high temperature contained many bacteria, and in addition, their spores and toxins. According to our present knowledge, all forms of bacteria were undesirable in an infant's food. It had been shown that 99.8 per cent. of the bacteria could be destroyed by pasteurization. The older the milk was the more difficult it was to pasteurize it. Pasteurization at 70° C. destroyed the vast majority of the forms. liable to produce extensive and rapid change in the quality of the milk. It was It was necessary in most instances to maintain the pasteurized milk at a low temperature in order to preserve it from further change.

However, the same could be said of milk heated to 100° C. Milk exposed to 60° C. or 140° F. had ninety-six to ninety-nine per cent, of its bacteria destroyed. Russell had found that when milk was heated in tubes to 140° F. tubercle bacilli were not entirely killed because the little pellicle which formed on the surface of the milk protected the bacilli to some extent. If this pellicle was broken up complete destruction of the tubercle bacilli was assured. Milk raised to 100° C. was markedly altered in taste, smell, and chemical composition. The albumin and globulin were coagulated, the lecithin and nuclein were destroyed, and the organic phosphates converted to some extent into the inorganic phosphates. For the coagulation of milk. in the stomach calcium must be present in a more or less free form. It was probable that the preliminary curdling of milk was an aid to digestion. It was also probable that in milk heated in this way certain useful ferments were destroyed. As long as milk could be rendered practically sterile at comparatively low temperatures it seemed useless and even deleterious to subject the milk to a higher temperature. It was generally stated that milk was pasteurized at 157° F.

EXAMINATION OF DRINKING WATER IN ILLINOIS.

DURING the last few years, according to Science, several thousand samples of drinking water from various ordinary housewells throughout the State have been sent to the State University of Illinois for analysis and report as to quality. By far the greater proportion of these water samples have proved, upon analysis, to be contaminated with drainage from refuse animal matters, and consequently have been regarded with grave suspicion, or have been pronounced unwholesome for use as drink. The present prevalence of typhoid fever in a number of places in the State makes it de

sirable that the public should remember that the State has made provision for the examination of all suspected waters. It is not practicable to isolate actually the typhoid-fever germs or to prove directly their absence from waters submitted for analysis; this for the reason that the work entails more labor and time than are made available by the means which the State provides. However, the chemical examination is sufficient ordinarily to show whether the water is contaminated with house drainage or drainage from refuse animal matters or whether it is free from such contamination. Any citizen of the State may have examinations made of the drinking water in which he is interested, free of charge, by applying to the Department of Chemistry of the State University.

It would, no doubt, be advisable if this practice were general throughout the various States. It is altogether probable that by such means, carefully carried out, a considerable protection against epidemic disease might be secured.

fered by our great-grandfathers were borne by the volunteers and soldiers of to-day with a grumble only when their "smokes" failed them. We have it from many who took part in the forced marches leading to Paardeberg, to Bloemfontein, to Pretoria, and beyond, that when rations were but two or three biscuits a day the only real physical content of each twenty-four hours came with the pipe smoked by the smouldering embers of a camp fire. This pipe eased the way to sleep that might otherwise have lingered, delayed by the sheer bodily fatigue and mental restlessness caused by prolonged and monotonous exertion. It is difficult, then, to believe that tobacco is anything but a real help to men who are suffering long labors and receiving little food, and probably the way in which it helps is by quieting cerebration-for no one doubts its sedative qualities-and thus allowing more easily sleep, which is so all-important when semistarvation has to be endured. The cases of acute mental derangement in the course of campaigns such as the present are many. There have, indeed, been many in South Africa. It would be most profitable and

SERVICE.

IN the face of all that has been said, and apparently proven, against the use of alcohol and tobacco, we occasionally meet with some one who advocates the use of one or the other or both, under certain conditions. The London Lancet says that the war in South Africa has taught many things of greater and of less importance. Perhaps nothing that it has demonstrated has been more marked than the important part which tobacco plays in the soldier's existence. Whether this is to be reckoned as a great fact or a small one there can be no doubt about the truth of it. Yet the Duke of Wellington's armies had no tobacco worth speaking of. If they did not forbid its use, at any rate the Iron Duke's officers were directed to advise their men strongly against it. What a curious contrast with the campaigning in South Africa, where marches and privations as long and as stern as any suf

special note of the capacity for sleep previously evidenced by those who broke down, and also of their indulgence or non-indulgence in tobacco. We are inclined to believe that, used with due moderation, tobacco is of value second only to food itself when long privations and exertions are to be endured. Two features are to be noted with regard to the smoking practiced on active service. It is almost entirely in the open air, and it is largely on an empty stomach. The former is always an advantage; the latter we generally reckon a most unfavorable condition. Shall we see in the near future patients with tobacco amblyopia or smoker's heart acquired while the trusting friend of tobacco thought that he was enjoying unharmed the well-earned solace of a hard day's march? We believe not, and that the open air will have saved what might have been the untoward results. of smoking when unfed.