A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL. By Ian Maclaren. With Illustrations by Fred erick C. Gordon. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1896. Pp. 208.

"They come and talk to me sometimes,'' said the Rev. John Watson, who is the real Ian Maclaren. "A visit from Dr. MacLure with the news he has packed up in a long journey over the moor revives me like a breath of the old air. Drumsheugh when he comes in, just fills the door." The old doctor is so brave, so patient, so lovable, so human, so very real that he becomes a dear friend to every reader of the story, so touching in its simplicity; and it is with real grief that we learn that the old man MacLure had never really existed in actual flesh and blood. But Drumtochty and MacLure and Drumsheugh will live long in the memory and be given a warm place in the heart when many other things shall have passed away. If the test of a book is that one reading it

rises from the perusal a better man then “A Doctor of the Old School,” stands near the head of the list of good books. And how strongly drawn are the characters and how unaffected and charming the style. Aside from the literary ability and skill displayed in the story, the book is a prize because of its truthfulness to nature-its portrayal of real types. Let no doctor permit the year to close without making an acquaintance with good old Doctor MacLure.

THE MEDICAL RECORD VISITING list or pHYSICIAN'S DIARY FOR 1897. New Revised Edition. William Wood & Co., New York.

The table of contents of this visiting list reveals its value. The volume contains a calendar of 1896-97-98, Duration of Pregnancy, Equivalents of Temperature, Weight, Capacity, Measure, etc., Maximum Adult Doses by the Month in Apothecary and Decimal Measures, Solutions for Subcutaneous Injections, Solutions in Water for Atomization and Inhalation, Miscellaneous Facts, Emergencies, Surgical Antisepsis, Disinfection, Dentition, Visiting List, etc. It is one of the best visiting lists published and is gotten up in excellent style.

COLOR VISION AND COLOR BLINDNESS. A Practical Manual for Railroad EngiBy J. Ellis Jennings, M.D., with Illustrations. The F. A. Davis Co., Philadelphia 1896. Pp. 115.

neers.

In his attempt to present a practical work in color vision, the author has succeeded. The volume gives all the modern methods of examination and contains all that is essential to a complete understanding of the subject.

MYSTERIA; HISTORY OF THE SECRET DOCTRINES AND MYSTIC RITESOF ANCIENT RELATIONS AND MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SECRET ORDERS. By Dr, Otto Henne Am Rhyn. New York. J. Fitzgerald & Co., 1895. Pp. 240. On several accounts this work invites the favorable attention especially of members of Freemasons' order and other secret societies, but also of every intelligent person whose interest has ever been awakened regarding one of the most curious phases of psychology-namely, the love of Mystery, especially as it is exemplified in the Cryptic Teachings and Secret Rites of Ancient Greece, Egypt, Assyria, etc.; in the Eleusinian, Dionysiac, Orphic, and other Mysteries of Greece, the secret doctrines of the Egyptian priesthood, and the religion of the ancient Zoroastrians. Whatever knowledge of these matters has been developed by historical and critical research is here brought together and presented in the most attractive literary form.

Mysteria, though it is but one small volume, covers a vast field of historical research; and possesses in an eminent degree a fullness and completeness rarely found in popular compends.

Conducted by

HON. JOSEPH M. Deuel.

A PHYSICIAN writes as follows:

"The regents require a physician who has not taken a State medical examination, and whose diploma does not bear the seal of the regents, to send his diploma to the regents office at Albany and submit evidence of his graduation and moral character. If this is satisfactory, the doctor is allowed to move from one county to another and to register at the county clerk's office. But if the diploma does not bear the seal of the regents, he cannot register nor practice in that county. Is this constitutional?"

The authority of the regents is derived wholly from the statutes. They can interpose obstacles and prescribe conditions in the practice of medicine only as vested with that right by legislative enactment. The matter referred to by the doctor is contained in Section 150 of Chapter 661, Laws of 1893, entitled "An Act in relation to the public health constituting Chapter 25 of the General Laws,'' which reads as follows:

"A practicing physician having registered a lawful authority to practice medicine in one county and removing such practice, or part thereof, to another county, or regularly engaging in practice or opening an office in another county, shall show or send by registered mail to the clerk of such other county his certificate of registration. If such certificate clearly shows that the original registration was of an authority issued under seal by the regents, or if the certificate itself is indorsed by the regents as entitled to registration, the clerk shall thereupon register the applicant in the latter county on receipt of a fee of twenty-five cents, and shall stamp or indorse on such certificate the date and his name, preceded by the words, Registered also in County, and return the certificate to the applicant.”

It will be observed that if the diploma is under the regents seal, or the original registration has been indorsed by them, application may be made directly to the county clerk, and the payment of the fee will entitle the doctor to registration. In other cases the license or the transcript of registration must be indorsed by the regents upon an application made directly to them. As matter of practice they require an exhibition of the diploma and transcript of original registration with proof of good moral character. If these are satisfactory, the diploma is in

dorsed as follows:

"UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE of New York.

Indorsed under seal........189, bylaws of 1893, Chapter 661, as entitled to registration with all rights and privileges of a regents license issued after examination.”

This indorsement seems to safeguard the moral character of the physician forever thereafter so far as registration is concerned.

The statute is silent as to moral character, for the purpose of removing from one county to another, and the right of the regents to predicate their action thereon is open to serious question. It would be an unwarranted assumption of power to withhold an indorsement solely upon the ground that the applicant had omitted to furnish this proof. Why require this proof in one instance and not in all? Once obtain the regents seal and it answers for all time. This seal serves the purpose, so to speak, of moral innoculation, and the physician holding it is thereafter shielded from contamination. There can be no other logic in the regents rule. In one case the physician may move as often as he pleases, without inquiry, by the payment of twenty-five cents; in the other case he must

prove character and get the regents seal whenceforth he is free from the presumption of moral taint, and on paying twenty-five cents may freely register in any county.

It is easier for the physician to submit to the moral inquisition than to contest it. He violates the law if he practices without registering, and the latter is permissible only through the regents, for section 151, among other things, provides that "hereafter no person shall register any authority to practice medicine unless it has been issued or indorsed as a license by the regents."

While not pertinent to the present inquiry, it is nevertheless interesting to note some of the arbitrary power reposed in the regents respecting the practice of medicine in this State. Three State boards of examination are provided for by the Act, neither one of which can make by-laws or rules for its own guidance, save upon approval by the regents; the boards must prepare suitable questions for examination of candidates, and the regents may select such as they please, except upon therapeutics, practice, and materia medica; the seven members of a State board, all of whom must be physicians of at least five years practice, may unanimously pass an applicant at an examination and the twenty-three regents, three of whom only are physicians, may withhold the license; each State Society must nominate twice the number of examiners to be appointed during the year from whom the regents select the proper number. Such extraordinary power over the dignified and honorable profession of medicine may, perhaps, be safely and prudently reposed in the Board of Regents as presently constituted, but we need not travel backwards in history very far to find instances of the most sacred and honorable callings having been prostituted to political purposes.

As to the constitutionality of the Act, which is the doctor's inquiry, there can be no question. We had occasion to discuss this matter in the August number upon another point. Both rest on the same ground and both are sustained by the same argument. The legislature simply exercised its police powers in such a way as to inflict no unjust or unequal discrimination and its authority in so doing cannot be challenged.

The statute fixes the minimum qualification which an individual must possess before being licensed to practice medicine. When this requirement has been met, the evidence of which is the diploma or license, the individual is free to select any county in the State as a field for practice. The selection once made, the authority to practice must be registered with the clerk of that particular county, and, with a few reasonable exceptions, he must confine his practice to that county. The qualification requirement of the statute is to protect the public, so far as possible, from ignorance, incompetence, and charlatanism; local registration is to enable the public conveniently to ascertain whether a person offering his services as a physician is legally competent to perform them. Both concern the health and welfare of the public, and each is equally within the police powers of the State.

In a recent decision, the Supreme Court says, "the State has the right to determine upon what conditions and under what circumstances its citizens shall be entitled to pursue any vocation." These conditions and circumstances must be general and bear equally upon every one who wishes to engage in that particular vocation. The State, for instance, could not discriminate between the different schools of medicine, requiring the members of one to register and exempting others, nor could it prescribe time of study and qualifications which did not affect all schools alike.

T. F. ALLEN, M.D., LL.D.

Plantago Major.

CONDUCTED BY

and

W. A. DEWEY, M. D.

The use of a tincture af this old domestic friend, is lauded as a local application in neuralgia, by Dr. F. P. Stiles, of Sparta, Wisconsin, in a paper read before the Wisconsin Homœopathic Medical Society at its last meeting. Numerous cases were reported illustrative of its action.

Plantago produces in its provings an excessive hyperæsthesia of the fifth pair of nerves, and corresponds to great irritation of the terminal nerve fibres and when neuralgias arise from irritation of these terminal fibres either from exposure to cold or from carious teeth, and the pains are boring and digging in character, it is the remedy.

seems to

Its pathogenesis shows the following symptoms: Neuralgic pains in the right face, aggravated by noise temporarily relieved by pressure and cold. It produces a bruised sore spot over the eye corresponding to the supra-orbital nerve, in fact. its action on the fifth nerve be within the cranium, for the branches of the various divisions seem implicated. That the orbital branches of the ophthalmic division are affected is shown by the following symptoms: Ciliary, neuralgia, tenderness of the eyeball; drawing pain in the region of the malar bone.

There are twinges in the temporal regions extending into the brain and it is one of the most valuable remedies we have for neuralgias of the ears.

The dental nerves are especially susceptible to the action of plantagö and not alone in neuralgias arising from carious teeth but in hypersensitiveness of sound teeth, it is useful

The pains are tearing, sharp and digging or else a sore, bruised, aching, which is very severe. In the temples and frontal eminences the pain is described as boring. It probably affects the gustatory nerves as there is loss of taste in its pathogenesis.

The remedy is deserving of a fair trial internally for these neuralgic conditions. It is also spoken of as a remedy in neuralgias arising from excessive use of tobacco.

Tuberculine.

Behring says that a profound knowledge of tuberculine and tuberculosis is necessary to apply the remedy for the disease. That the tuberculous are much more sensitive to minimum doses of tuberculine than the healthy; he found that tuberculous guinea pigs were 1,000 times more susceptible to the action of the remedy than healthy ones. A pretty good argument for the minimum dose.

Cannabis Indica.

Ten minims of the tincture of cannabis in three quarters of an hour caused a burning pain in the pit of the stomach. The patient became strange, saying that his legs were jumping about and that he heard a ticking like a watch, that he saw the room on fire and the pictures falling. The pupils were dilated and reacted sluggishly to the light. This case, reported in the London Lancet, October 17, 1896, astonished the doctor who reported it on account of the smallness of the dose (thirty minims is the regular amount) producing these symptoms.

EUCAIN, A NEW LOCAL ANESTHETIC.-Vinci says, if instilled into the eyes of an animal, in two to five per cent. solution, it causes complete anesthesia in from one to three minutes lasting on an average from ten to twenty minutes. Injected under the skin or painted on the mucosa complete anesthesia follows. Eucain is physiologically similar to cocain, but is less poisonous, In the eye, the pupils are not affected.— Deutsche Med. Zeitung, April 1896.

PROGNOSTIC SIGNIFICANCE OF ALBUMINURIC RETINITIS -Belt reports out of 419 cases obtained from public statistics in connection with 100 cases of his own, that the duration of life after the first observation of albuminuric retinitis was as follows: seventy-two per cent died within a year, ninety per cent. died within two years and then only nine per cent. lived more than two years.-Journ. Amer. Med. Assoc., Nov. 2, 1896.

TREATMENT OF DETACHMENT OF THE RETINA.-Dr. Casey A. Wood, after a review of the methods of Scholer, Davier, De Wecher, Terson, Galezowski, and Deutschmann says: My own experience in this disease has led me to think, with Bull, of New York, that we have as yet discovered no better device than that resorted to by the older ophthalmologists, viz: rest in bed, bandages, atropine, and the internal use of some absorbent. From the report of the Committee on Retinal Detachment, American Medical Association, May 1896.

ON THE AETIOLOGY OF PARENCHYMATOUS KERATITIS.-V. Hippel carefully investigated eighty-seven cases under his own observation and the literature of 323 publications with the expressed object of finding the possibility of the disease being induced by tuberculosis. His deductions are as follows: It is in the highest degree probable that hereditary syphilis is the most important and most common cause of the disease, but that it is not the only cause as its absence is shown in from thirty to fifty per cent. of the published cases. The author states that, from the fact that tuberculosis in various organs has been recorded, we can assert that most probably a certain number of the cases of parenchymatous keratitis are due to a tubercular infection of the eye of a relatively mild type

V. Hippel found evidences of tuberculosis in eighteen of his eightyseven cases.-V. Graefe's Archiv.. YLII-194.

PANOPHTHALMITIS: ORBITAL CELLULITIS AND SUBDIAPHRAGMATIC ABSCESS.-Bull reports a very interesting case because of the obscure complication which was only revealed at the autopsy and which he considers a possible case of metastasis.-Patient admitted to the New York Eye Infirmary suffering from panophthalmitis with the usual symptoms and appearance of the eye. On the eighth day, patient commenced