have some influence on pathogenic bacteria. Whether this influence is favorable or otherwise is difficult to determine by present bacteriological methods.

FALLING HAIR:-As to the falling of the hair, a strong solution or infusion of capsicum applied to the scalp every other day until the hair quits falling will relieve this trouble. The solution should be strong enough to cause a burning sensation of the scalp whenever applied. I have used this for falling hair and have never known it to fail.—I. B. Hammer in the Medical World.

FEE SPLITTING IS "CRIMINAL DISHONESTY":-The secret divison of fees between physicians and surgeons is "criminal dishonesty," said Dr. William D. Haggard of Nashville, who addressed the Fellows of the American College of Surgeons, at the San Francisco meeting.

"Fee-splitting," Dr. Haggard declared "is criminal, because it leads, first, to unnecessary operations; second, to incompetent work resulting in unnecessary death; and, third, to a constant lowering of the moral and professional standards in medicine. The practice has all through it the element of theft.

"When a physician refers a patient to a surgeon under an agreement that the surgeon later is to divide with him the fee collected, the crime is not primarily one against the pocketbook of the patient. It is a crime against the health or life of the patient. This practice means that the physician auctions off his patient to the highest bidder, who naturally is the most incompetent and unscrupulous surgeon available.

"Another evil is that the surgeon feels under obligation to accept the diagnosis of the physician to operate, whether or not on examination he agrees with the diagnosis of the physician. If he does not operate in such cases he discredits the ability of the physician and loses further bus

iness with him. Thus is perpetrated the meanest of crimes, an unnecessary surgical operation.

"The sovereign remedy for commission-giving by physicians is publicity. If we don't cure the evil by extermination the public will do it by legislation and the elimination of the unfit. The physician who diagnoses a case is quite as much entitled to compensation as is the surgeon, but separate bills should be rendered by the physician and the surgeon to the patient. In other words, the patient should always know what he is paying for. To stamp this practice out of the profession of medicine is one of the chief tasks of the American College of Surgeons."-Pacific Medical Journal.

RELIEF IN NERVE PALSIES:-After many years of despondency and darkness it would seem that many of the intractable cases of chronic invalidism in children are giving way before scientific progress in therapy.

For many years orthopedic surgeons have labored with chronic bone conditions and the results, often brilliant, have come to be the expected thing in this branch of pediatric therapy.

Lagging behind, but yet as full of interest, have been the muscular and bony deformities resulting from nerve tissue lesions. The many little patients with Erb's palsy, with facial palsy following otitis and anterior poliomyelitis, have been doomed to live with fragmentary and unhappy lives.

It is a signal of great promise that within the recent decade neurologists and surgeons have been working together to obviate these particularly chronic defects; and further, their efforts are commencing to be crowned with success.

Ballance and Stewart, Faure and Foret. Spiller and Frazier, Kennedy, Cushing, Clark and Taylor and others have now reported cases of obstinate and long-standing nerve palsies in which the patients have been cured by nerve anastomosis.

Kennedy first reported a successful cure of nerve anastomosis for a spasmodic tic. Frazier cured a case of facial palsy by grafting the distal stump of the facial nerve on the healthy stump of the spinal accessory, and more recently Clark and Taylor have done the same thing with the hypoglossal. In Erb's palsy promising results are looked for, and more recently Spiller has had some very encouraging results in anterior poliomyelitis.

We feel persuaded that in nerve anastomosis a fruitful field of therapeutics has been opened up and that it only needs refinement in technique to literally make the dead limbs walk.—Pediatrics.

GREAT MEN ARE BIOLOGICAL SURPRISES:-Survival of the fittest is nature's plan of raising healthy plants, animals and children. Our higher sense of responsibility and scientific efficiency directs us to take proper care of unpromising infants. We cannot adopt the Greek plan of throwing undesirables away. The Spartan infant-if a male, was exposed to public view, and if found deformed or weakly, was put to death. Some of the most efficient individuals have been born in ill health and with bad bodies.

Emmanuel Kant, the great philosopher and teacher of modern intellect, was so delicate as a boy that his life was despaired of.

Herbert Spencer was so feeble that he was not given a regular education, but no Englishman had a more marked influence upon his generation.

Pope had Pott's disease of the spine and could not stand erect without his leather jacket.

Sir Isaac Newton, the philosopher who saw the apple drop, was in his childhood so small and frail that he was thought not worth while keeping alive.

Genius means hard work, close observation, patient application and indefatigable perseverance. Eugenics could never prognosticate a Martin Luther, a Napoleon nor an

Abraham Lincoln. What eugenics could produce a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Wagner? What combination of Adonis and Venus will give us a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Michael Angelo, a Raphaello, a Luther Burbank or an Edison? These are "Sports" or biologic surprises.-Pacific Med. Jour.

METHOD OF DESTROYING LICE AND BODY VERMIN :-For practical purposes, Kinloch, British Med. Journal, states, the destruction of lice and nits is best secured by immersion of verminous garments and bedclothes in a petrol or benzene bath. Danger from fire and waste of petrol are avoided by using such a bath and extractor as are employed in a dry-cleaning apparatus. In such an apparatus 90 per cent of the petrol or benzene is recovered for future use. A petrol or benzene bath is necessary, especially for uniforms and woollen garments generally. In cases in which the clothing is such that it is not injured by immersion in water, steeping the garments for half an hour at 12 C. (54 F.) in a soap solution containing 2 per cent of trichlorethylen or 10 per cent of tetrachlorethan secures destruction of lice and nits. For cleansing the body itself, bathing or sponging with soap solutions containing 2 per cent of trichlorethylen or 10 per cent tetrachlorethan gives the best results.

QUININE AFTER OPERATION:-A. Bonnot, St. Louis, gives his experience with the use of rectal injections of muriate of quinin after operative procedure. He first noticed the good January 9, 1915, gives his experience with the use of rectal injections of muriate of quinin after operative procedure. He first noticed the good effects in a case of appendicitis in which he had instructed the nurse to give the patient ten grains of quinin muriate every six hours until the patient was able to take it by the mouth. The nausea and vomiting, gas pains, backache and postoperative thirst were lacking in the patient and he has since used it

in later laparotomies with strikingly good results. In all cases, the postoperative thirst was much retarded, gas pains were lacking in nineteen cases out of twenty, and in none. was there the usual backache. In only four cases was nausea and vomiting pronounced, in ten there was none, and in six it was only slight. Doctor Willis Young, of St. Louis, has also used this method with similar results.-Journal A. M. A.

FOOD AND GASTRIC ULCER:-The observation of relief of gastric distress by food ingestion is of prime importance in diagnosis of uncomplicated peptic ulcer. If its history is constantly obtained, it is practically pathognomonic in three out of five cases. While patients, on casual questioning, frequently state that food distresses them, yet careful inquiry will elicit the fact that food does not at once cause discomfort, but that such comes on from one to four hours following ingestion. If the gastric lumen is not obstructed (hour-glass contraction) or if the pyloric channel remains patent, our observation is that the duration of food relief of pain bears direct proportion to the size and character of the meal taken. Small amounts of food give relief for a shorter period than do large, and liquid food relief is not infrequently more prompt than that obtained by solids. The dread of pain following food intake often leads to an anticipatory attitude on the part of the patient.-FRANK SMITHIES, in Interstate Medical Journal.

MAGNESIUM SULPHATE IN ACUTE RHEUMATISM:-Thiroloix and Mairesse extol the value of intra-muscular injections of a 25 per cent. aqueous solution of magnesium sulphate in doses of 4 cubic centimeters daily. This method of treatment not only relieves the pain but also lessens the fever and shortens the course of the rheumatic attack. The magnesium sulphate may be given alone or in conjunction with sodium salicylate. Generally four injections suffice to effect a cure.-Bulletin General de Therapeutique.