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school age is 1,620, of whom 1,262 attended school some portion of

the year.

The common school system was established in 1812. In 1816, the superintendent reported 2,755 school districts in the State, with an aggregate attendance of 140,000 pupils. In 1839 the number of school districts had increased to 10,583, and the aggregate attendance to 529,000: but the population of the State had increased to two and a half millions. In those years school age was from 5 to 16 years, and the legal school year was three months. The school age now is from 5 to 21 years, and the legal school year is twenty-eight weeks. The United States census of 1876 shows that there were then 163,500 New Yorkers over 10 years of age who could not read.

THE GOVERNMENT DOCTOR.

To the Editor of the Herald: The interest the professors of the healing art are taking in having nobody doctor us who does not know how, is truly good. I wish the plumbers, and the masons, and the hod carriers, and the horse shoers, and, in fact, all the working classes, would do the same thing. Let each class have a board of State examiners, .so that nobody shall be allowed to work at what he does not understand. Only think how much precious crockery would be be saved from everlasting smash if we had a board of State examiners for servant girls! There is nothing like having a paternal government, with plenty of State officers to supervise and look after everything. A government officer is always eagle eyed, pure, noble and disinterested. He always overlooks and never underlooks-no, never, or hardly ever. His salary is nothing compared with the good he does. And then, by the multiplication of offices, shall we not hasten on that blessed millennium when we shall all hold office, and there shall be "no more see❞—or seeking of office? The modesty of the various medical schools, who seek a law by which all incompetent persons shall be dammed out of the practice of medicine, is as refreshing as their wisdom is sublime, and their benevolence godlike. In October, 1846, the Massachusetts Medical Society discussed and demonstrated, in the Massachusetts General Hospi

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tal, the fact, "that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility to pain." Did the society disgrace itself by giving any credit to the quack" who suggested the experiment, and had himself tried it a little earlier? By no means. History records nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it is recorded in granite, in the Boston public garden, exactly who made the discovery, in the following words: "This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working." Unless the medical schools which unite to ask a State board of examiners reckon themselves as the Lord's hosts, they modestly disclaim any share in the great discovery which so excited the gratitude and hope of our good fellow citizen, Thomas Lee, that he inscribed, from the Apocalypse, on one side of his magnificent monumental gift, the words: "Neither shall there be any more pain."-Rev. This extreme modesty of highly educated, scientific, college bred and diplomatized people is good; but would a little more recognition of the benefits which have come, or may come, to the world from the Lord, through his larger hosts of the unlicensed, do much hurt?

The prayer of all corporations and privileged classes always is, "Lead us not into competition." But why should they not pray to God, rather than to the State legislature? The questions the people have to ask these medical scientists are:

If your prayer should prove a success,
Will you prey on the people the less?
Small doubt about your skill;

But how about your bill?

-Herald, Boston, March 4, 1880.

A BREAD PILLAR.

PRISON HORRORS IN KENTUCKY-CONVICTS SLAUGHTERED BY FOUL AIR AND UNWHOLESOME FOOD.

CINCINNATI, Jan. 20, 1880.-A despatch from Frankfort, Kentucky, gives the report of the prison sanitary committee made yesterday to the Kentucky legislature, on the condition of the Penitentiary. It describes a deplorable state of affairs. The committee says that there are eight convicts confined there who cannot live longer than a few months. There are at least fifty others, some of whom are confined to their beds, who, in all prob

ability, cannot live longer than the latter part of next spring, and about 200 others who are in a state of debility and weakness practically unfitting them for duty or work. The rest of the convicts do not present a healthy appearance, and seem affected by the injurious influences which have prostrated the others. The causes of this state of affairs are found by the committee to be numerous. The penitentiary grounds are badly drained, and the sewerage is so defective that in damp weather water stands in portions of the inclosure, from which arises a malaria rendering the air impure. The yards, cells and workshops are overcrowded, and the accumulation of filth and general lack of cleanliness within the prison contribute to the generation of disease. There is a general lack of ventilation in the houses and cells. The committee expresses the opinion that one of the direct causes of the unhealthiness of the convicts is due to their not being supplied with a sufficient variety of wholesome food.

(How long will the public neglect the subject of sewer gas?)

MANACA.

FRANSISCEA UNIFLORA.

BY PARKE, DAVIS & CO.

Fluid Extract of the Root. Dose from five to twenty drops.

Natural History.-Manacá, mercurio-vegetal, is the name given by Brazilians to fransiscea uniflora, Pohl., nat. order scrophularineæ, a shrub, with alternate, oblong acuminate leaves, shortly petioled; flowers solitary and terminal, of a penetrating odor, resembling that of a narcissus. Several plants are known in Brazil under the name of manacá; in Pernambuco, the Durante bicolor, nat. ord. verbenaceæ, bears this name; and in Minas and other provinces, the admosma superflua is known as manacá, or manacan de matte. The fransiscea uniflora is indigenous to the greater portion of equatorial America. The root is the part employed in medicine.

Therapeutical Properties.-Manacá is officinal in both Brazilian dispensatories. They describe it as being a powerful anti syphilitic, purgative, diuretic and emmenagogue, the dose being given at eight to twenty grains of the powdered root. In the province of Amazonas, no remedy is more extensively used than the manacá;

in the damp, shady forests, rheumatism, principally in the chronic form, is a very common disease, and manacá is regarded by all classes as the remedy. Two doses generally suffice to control even severe attacks. A decoction is made of a small piece of the root, of which one half is taken in the afternoon, and the other at bedtime. After the second dose, the patient complains of severe pains about the head and along the spine, which, after a few hours, end in profuse perspiration and sleep. In the morning the rheumatism has disappeared, and the patient is happy, till another attack calls for more manacá.

An American lady at Santarem informed me that she once commenced taking the manacá in comparatively small doses, but that it produced such an intense headache, that she became frightened and discontinued the remedy, when the headache soon disappeared. She described the sensation in her head as if a band had been tied so tightly around it as to produce pressure on the brain itself. In the province of Maranhaô, manacá is the principal agent used in the treatment of secondary syphilis, generally combined with the leaves of bignonia Baziliana (Lamk), called by the natives caroba, another agent, which appears worthy of attention.

Although having had no opportunity of trying the manacá myself as yet, I conclude from the information received from medical men and others during my residence in Brazil, that it is a powerful catalytic, with a circumscribed specific action on some morbid materials in the blood. The Brazilians, in calling it mercurio vegetal, would seem to have accorded to it the same properties as mercury, and they are probably not far from being correct. If so, the danger attending the use of mercury would render it valuable as a substitute. Necessarily the physiological and therapeutical action of catalytics differ materially, and the only way to ascertain their value is at the bedside. It is in the various chronic forms of rheumatism that manacá becomes almost a specific in Brazil, and I consider it worthy of a careful trial in this disease. The small dose would probably be the best form of administration, five drops of a fluid extract three or four times daily. I append an extract from Dic. de Bot. Brazileira:

"The whole plant, but especially the root, excites powerfully the lymphatic system, eliminating morbid matter by the skin and

kidneys. It is anti syphilitic, the interior bark is nauseating and stimulates the throat. In small doses it is resolvent; in larger, purgative, diuretic and emmenagogue. In large doses it is an acrid poison."-C. W. Hansen, M. D., in New Preparations.

Dr. C. W. Hansen, of Jamaica, in the October number of New Preparations, called the attention of the medical profession to the above named remedy, which I have no doubt is very little, if at all, known in this country.

My first knowledge in regard to manacá extends as far back as 1861, when I began to study my profession in Prussia. My text book on materia medica at that time was Dr. F. L. Strumpf's, published at Berlin, in 1855, two volumes, a very valuable work, and dedicated to Dr. Carl Gustave Mitscherlich, late professor of Materia Medica in the King Fried Wm. University at Berlin.

At that time manacá was known in the above work as a powerful drastic, and named by Pohl, fransiscea uniflora (scrophularineæ salpiglossidea), and named by Sprengel, schwenkfelda lineria.

The first opportunity of seeing and trying the manacá by myself was in 1867, when I was a resident of South America, at Vaunoo, in the Amazon country.

I found the manacá to be a shrub, with alternate oblong acuminate leaves, flowers solitary and terminal, of a penetrating odor. Its name is not alone manacá, but it is also known by the names of gerotaca, camgamba, manacá des piso; and in Para it is mostly called mercurio vegetal.

The whole plant is used for medical purposes, "not the root alone," as stated by Dr. Hansen. The plant has a bitter, nauseating, sharp taste, as has also the root, and is one of the most important purgantia drastica which Brazil has furnished up to this date.

I have used manacá in my practice for one year, and would say, I found it to be an emeto-cathartic, diaphoretic, diuretic, alterative and a powerful anti syphilitic. It is prescribed as a specific in snake bites on account of its specific action on poisonous matter in the blood. It is also used as an eliminant of other morbid matter by the skin and kidneys.

The dose of the powdered root is five to ten grains three or four times a day.

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