DR. EDWIN G. OGDEN who has spent the past two years in bacteriological study in Europe has returned, and is spending the summer at Sing Sing, N. Y.

PHILADELPHIA ABROAD.-Drs. T. H. Carmichael, Goodno, Korndorfer, Mitchell, Neville, Platt, Closson and Reading, all of Philadelphia, are summering abroad.

DR. A. W. PALMER removed August 1st to the residence recently purchased at 138 West Eighty-second Street. The doctor spent August at Warwick, Orange County, N. Y.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE SKIAGRAPH.-A Boston court has ruled out X-ray photographs of injuries to a boy's head which figured as exhibits in a $50,000 suit for damages.

ABROAD.-Drs. W. F. Grosvenor, Chicago; J. Kent Sanders, Cleveland; J. H. McClelland, Pittsburg; T. Franklin Smith, New York; N. W. Emerson, Sarah N. Windsor, and Alonzo Boothby, of Boston.

FIVE HOMEOPATHIC COLLEGES IN CHICAGO will open their doors to students for the session of 1896-97 about the middle of September. Of course "Old Hahnemann" and the "Chicago Homœopathic'' are in the lead.

HERING MEDical College, CHICAGO, has broken ground for a new building, to cost $30,000. It is at Rhodes Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street. The Eastern people must wonder where all the money comes from to build so many colleges in Chicago.

IN THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIETIES will be found much important matter this month. The memorial address upon the death of Dr. Leslie A. Phillips; the value of antitoxin as officially reported; the announcement of the Electro-Therapeutic Society, etc.

THERAPEUTIC HINT.-Thermometers should be soaked in boiling hot water after having been in the mouths of phthisical patients, to insure destruction of the bacilli. The dead bacilli should then be carefully scraped off and thrown away-also the thermometer.

THE REGISTRARS OF THE VARIOUS CHICAGO COLLEGES (Homœopathic Medical) report applications from the usual number of students. Notwithstanding the "hard times," the boys seem to have enough money in their stockings to continue their educational careers.

WE REGRET TO LEARN that Dr. Walter Sands Mills, of Stamford, Conn., has been compelled by ill-health to leave this locality and go to Texas where he expects to remain for a year or two. We sincerely hope that a residence in the southern clime may prove fully restorative.

THE MEDICAL BENEFIT ASSOCIATION, an assessment organization for paying a prompt cash sum to the families of its deceased members, held its annual meeting on June 11th and elected the following officers: President, Dr. H. M. Dearborn; Vice-president, Dr. S. F. Wilcox; Secretary, Dr. W. H. King; Treasurer, Dr. Charles McDowell.

AT THE LAST QUARTERLY MEETING of the Monroe County Society, held July 21st, the society voted $100,00 toward the entertainment of the State Society and appointed a live committee of arrangements, consisting of Drs. P. W. Neefus, F. R. Smith and L. F. Chamberlayne. Aside from this it is expected that the Ladies' Aid Association of the Hospital to entertain us as before.

A LIFE OF PLEASURE.--What with the jealousy of the various colleges over hospital assignments, the Bellevue Medical College trust, the resignation of the late sanitary superintendent from his affiliations in order to boom his little private cure-all, and the recent expulsion of a county society member for an attack of un-ethics, there seems no good reason why an allopath cannot be as happy in New York as elsewhere.

THE WESTERN NEW YORK SOCIETY were invited to unite with the State meeting in September, and omit their October meeting which should properly come to Rochester. The invitation was unanimously accepted, with the understanding that whatever papers were presented by the Society were to be credited to it in the program for the meeting. The State meeting will, in all probability, be held at the Hospital, 224 Alexander Street, as before.

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO Hahnemann, his household and his writings, comprised the whole homoeopathic profession, journals, hospitals, dispensaries and societies. To-day, according to the New York Medical Record, the best known journal of the old school and noted for its conservatism, there are in the United States alone, 143 homœopathic state societies, 112 homœopathic hospitals, 59 dispensaries, 35 homœopathic medical journals, and 14,000 practitioners, graduates of 20 homœopathic colleges.

THE MISSOURI VALLEY HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION will meet at Omaha for a three days session, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, September first, second and third, 1896. The second session held at Kansas City last year was an unqualified success. Every moment of the time was occupied with valuable papers and their discussion. All the great States of the great Missouri Valley were well represented by the brightest physicians of our school. Over sixty new members were added to the members of the society. The Omaha meeting promises even greater things if possible than those already realized.

THE NEW YORK STATE HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY.-The semi-annual meeting will be held in Rochester, N. Y., on September 22d and 23d. The first day there will be three sessions, commencing at 10 A. M., in the Chamber of Commerce rooms at the corner of East Main and South St. Paul Streets. Luncheon will be served by compliment of the Monroe County Society from 1 to 2, the same day and place. The session on Wednesday, the 23d, will be held at the Rochester Homeopathic Hospital, 224 Alexander Street. After the meeting adjoins an opportunity will be given to those who desire to inspect the hospital. Dr. P. W. Neefus, 124 East Avenue, is chairman of the Committee of Arrangements.

THOUGHT CAN NOW BE PHOTOGRAPHED.—A man thinks before a sensitive plate, and an image of his thought appears upon it. The subjects on which his mind dwells are depicted. This statement sounds incredible, but the subject has occupied the attention of the Societe de Medicine of Paris, the highest medical body in France. It makes perhaps a greater draft on the credulty than any modern discovery, but the Roentgen rays were a preparation for it. Professor Roentgen discovered rays which enable us to see through metals, human bodies, and other opaque substances. Dr. Baraduc, the latest scientific magician, has succeeded in photographing thought. After these things nothing can be believed impossible. The inventor of thought photography, Dr. Baraduc, is a Roumanian, living in Paris.

DEATH OF DOCTOR CHARLES EDWARD VAN CLEEF.-In the death of Dr. Van Cleef, which occurred August 4th, at his residence, No. 12 East Mill-street, Ithaca, loses a valued citizen and the medical profession a dignified, earnest, progressive member. Dr. Van Cleef, a son of the late Alexander M. Van Cleef, was born in Seneca Falls, September 29th, 1850, being in his forty-sixth year at the time of his death. He entered Cornell University with its first class, graduating with distinction with the class of 1871. After completing his course at Cornell he studied medicine, graduating from the New York Homopathic Medical College. He then settled in Brooklyn for the practice of his profession and lived there until he removed to Ithaca, in 1880 While in Brooklyn, Dr. Van Cleef was connected with the Homopathic Hospital as resident surgeon. for a time, and subsequently was visiting physician to a number of similar institutions. He was a member of the State Society and American Institute, one of the original directors of the Ithaca Trust Company, and a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity.

THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN a good deal of mystery about the purpose for which the large quantity of worn-out horses annually shipped from England to France were intended. This is now explained by a correspondent, who says that some years ago certain speculators made artificial swamps on the banks of the Garonne, and filled the swamps with leeches. To be profitable, these leeches must multiply themselves by millions; to do this they must be liberally supplied with food. To meet this supply, old and worn-out horses were brought up, driven or dragged into the swamp, and cast into wooden compartments from whence they had no escape. They sink into the mud of these compartments and the leeches. fasten upon them by thousands. The horse is in a few moments black with crawling creatures, the blood-suckers attacking first the open wounds and galls. Bleeding from all their sensitive parts the poor animals try vainly to shake off the leeches, and are at last sucked down into the noxious slime and seen no more. Nearly 200,000 horses are said to be thus sacrified annually at Bordeaux. It has been pointed out that leeches nourished on diseased horses are very likely to convey maladies into the human system.

CHOOSING AN OCCUPATION.-In one of the State Normal schools of Pennsylvania 157 pupils were asked to write on slips of paper the occupations of their parents and also what work they elected to take up as a means of livelihood after they should have left school. The parents of 100 children were laborers, but only two of the pupils out of the entire number chose to become laborers. The parents of only eleven children belonged to the professional class, but eighty-one of the scholars announced their intention of adopting some profession. In nineteen cases the parents of the children were mechanics, but only six of the 157 children chose mechanical pursuits as a future means of livelihood. Eightyseven of the pupils were girls and of this number forty-six wished to become teachers and twelve selected the law, medicine or the ministry. Eight girls were ambitious to become dressmakers, four wished to enter stores and thirteen aspired to be milliners. In no instance did a girl express a desire for any kind of housekeeping or domestic service. The motives which led to these various selections of an occupation were of interest. Twenty-four of the children were influenced in their selection "because it pays well." Sixteen selected an occupation which appeared easy, while six made their selection "because my father is ; " four wished for fame, and eleven of the 157 wished "to do good in the world."

Series

NORTH AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF HOMEOPATHY.

IT

ORIGINAL ARTICLES IN MEDICINE.

MEDICAL TREATMENT OF APPENDICITIS.*

By J. S. MITCHELL, M. D.

Chicago, Ill.

T IS said there is no medical treatment of this condition, that every case is a surgical one, and that as soon as the diagnosis is established a surgeon should be called in and an early operation performed. This dictum has been very largely assumed by the profession to be law. One who does not operate early or advise it is regarded as cowardly or ignorant. At the least he is considered as too conservative for this age of brilliant operative procedures.

It is somewhat refreshing that just at this time the accomplished and practical President of the American Medical Association, Dr. Beverly Cole, should sound a very loud note of warning against the too pronounced operative tendency of the gynecologist and surgeon. He said among other pertinent things, "that he looked with suspicion upon those who claim that as no use can be assigned to the vermiform appendix, it should be removed upon the slightest provocation or excuse.' It is also worthy of note that one so high in surgical ranks as Dr. Nicholas Senn should emphasize, at the same meeting, in a valuable paper, that it was high time to call a halt in the furor operativus.

At the last meeting of the American Gynecological Society, at least one prominent member questioned very sharply the ruthlessness with which the extirpation of the ovaries and uterus was practiced.

I have no objection to the knife. It has indications just as clear as the remedies. No one more fully appreciates the marvelous developments of the last few years in surgical pathology and diagnosis, the wonderful ingenuity and skill displayed by surgeons in their operations and the admirable technique with which they are accom

* Read before the Chicago Homoeopathic Medical Society.

panied. The saving of life which they have accomplished is one of the proudest monuments to our art. But I do insist that too many operations are undertaken without sufficient careful judgment being exercised.

In the Windrath case several days were occupied in determining whether the man was insane. A number of experts were examined, and opposing counsel spent many hours in eliciting a very careful judgment. How many cases would be thrown out of a surgical court if even a few hours were consumed in settling the question of an operation and both sides well considered?

McArtney, in his article in the Record May 2d, among twentyeight others, relates two cases of appendicitis that recovered under medical treatment that would have undoubtedly died under surgical, as one had diabetes and the other tuberculosis. I can quite agree with him, as two of my patients who had laparotomies recently performed, contrary to my judgment, both died three days after operation, one being diabetic, and the other tuberculous.

In an experience of thirty-one years, I have had ninety-two cases of appendicitis, if I may count the cases we used to call years ago, typhlitis, perityphlitis, and idiopathic peritionitis in men and children as this affection which we now know they doubtless were. I have had to call in surgical aid in only three of them, which happily terminated favorably, so I have no death to report in this long experience. Only one was recurrent.

Of course some of the cases treated twenty to twenty-five years ago have been lost sight of. I have never had a fecal fistula or a persistent sinus remain.

I wish to call particular attention to these points, as they confirm my view that we are less apt after homœopathic treatment to have serious lesions remain in our grave cases.

I am well aware of the difficulty of establishing such a fact, but with me it is a firm conviction based on a large experience. I have had very few fulminant cases, some have been mild, the recurrent cases the most so of all, others were very serious and caused me great anxiety. Few cases terminated in abscesses which discharged, as far as I know. In the others the product of inflammation went where the woodbine twineth. Dr. J. A. Wyeth who has a national reputation as an experienced and skillful operator in appendicitis, and who believes cases for operation should be selected with care, admits that in some instances these may be "rapidly hedged in and arrested by rich plastic exudate with adhesions, the canal of the tube being meanwhile restored, permitting drainage of the infected tube into the