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London Clinical Society, Mr. G. Lawson read the notes of a case of a cancer of the breast following eczema of the nipple. In the subsequent discussion a number of prominent surgeons took part, including Sir James Paget and Mr. Hutchinson, and some interesting facts were brought out. It was pretty generally agreed that there were a number of chronic disturbances of nutrition, which, if neglected, ended in cancer, when the cancerous period of life came on. Thus, eczema of the breast, if it were really eczema, was shown in a certain per cent. of cases to be a precursor of cancer, and the question of the early extirpation of the breast was a very important one. A similar clinical history was ascribed to ichthyosis of the tongue. This, in course of time, is likely to eventuate in cancer. A like remark applies to old burns or scars on the lower extremities. If in advanced life these begin to ulcerate, they are liable to become cancerous. So, too, of other conditions, such as syphilitic disease of the tongue.-Medical Record.

TAR AS A MEDICINAL AGENT.-In the Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, Prof. Peclam reports some of his personal experience with this agent. He does not consider tar water at all efficient, and always administers it in pills or capsules. One constant and curious effect he noticed, was that the urine of a patient taking tar does not decompose for five or six days, instead of in twenty-four hours, as usual. The general indication for tar is a chronic catarrhal inflammation of the mucous passages of the respiratory or urinary tract, as bronchitis, vesical catarrh, gleet, etc.

ADVICE TO MEDICAL STUDENTS.-It is a mistake to suppose that marriage is essential to success at the beginning of a medical career. There is a peculiar charm, a subtle indescribable mystery, about the unmarried doctor, which makes him at once a favorite and confidential female adviser.

On entering your profession remember you are not a tradesman. About fees there should be no unseemly fuss.

Patients are what you professedly want, and they are to be found in every class. To the man of science, the prince and the blacksmith are embryonically identical with the hog, the dog and

the rabbit, and are nothing more than a mass of red pulp when born. It cannot, therefore, matter to the physiologist whether his observations are made in the palace or the cottage; but his manners in either place should be always those of a gentleman who respects others because he respects himself. The great opportunities opening out before you will be comparatively lost without a sound basis of science. This is the helping hand which brings you from darkness into light, and disperses the thick shadows of prejudice and custom. For this reason I would recommend you, instead of sitting with your heels on the mantelpiece and smoking a pipe, with a lively expectation of patients (who never come), to devote the early disengaged years of your life to the study of the Unknown. Do not so overcrowd your life with practice that you find no time to replenish either mind or body. Your duties to your patients will be better rendered the more conscientiously you fulfil your duty toward yourself. Overwork means indigestion, indigestion begets irritability, and irritability means short measure for your patients and inability to reason clearly.

An M. D. and a gentleman will not convert the chimney-shelf of his consulting room into a photographic gallery of celebrated patients. Neither will he advertise their names in society, or unduly display and be puffed up by his coroneted correspondence. Nor will he make himself a propagandist, and thrust a tract, together with his prescription, into the hand of his patient. In a word, the consulting room should be as sacred and as purely official as the confessional.

Finally, gentlemen, your social and professional position will always be what you yourselves choose to make it.-London World.

WHO ARE DOCTORS OF MEDICINE.

In the October number of 1879, we published several decisions rendered by the courts of New York; and notwithstanding the decisions which have been rendered, and the heavy judgments obtained against medical men, for calling others quacks, some of them have already forgotten how justly they have been made to pay for their attempt to injure fellow practitioners. A few years since a

Doctor F., of Sing Sing, N. Y., called Doctor B., of the same city, a quack. Doctor B. resorted to the courts and obtained a judgment against Doctor F. for calling Doctor B. a quack, amounting to twenty-five hundred dollars, which was collected; and notwithstanding that Doctor F. had to pay this judgment, we are informed that only a few days since he had the courage to call several medical gentlemen, his equals in every sense of the word, so far as medical education and reputation are concerned, quacks. One or two more such doses, being like himself allopathic, if properly administered, would teach him his duty, as well as a sense of justice, which belongs to gentlemen in the medical profession, regardless of schools.

LYCOPUS EUROPEUS.

BY HENRY BRADFORD, M. D., OMAHA, Neb.

In the list of new, and many of them valuable, remedies selected from our indigenous plants, which have been introduced to the profession within a comparatively few years, I do not notice one to which I have been led to attach a great deal of importancelycopus europeus.

I became acquainted with its value some years since by accident. Where I formerly lived in Maine, it was a domestic cure-all, and certainly its value as a tonic was quite marked. I once returned from the South much debilitated, and with much enlargement and tenderness of the liver and spleen, a sequel of the congestive fever of South Carolina. To gratify my wife, I made use of her herb tea, with some benefit. I then made a tincture of the whole herb, from the use of which I soon recovered my health. Shortly after removing to Nebraska, where remittents and intermittents were of frequent occurrence, I made trial of it with my patients, in the debility and glandular engorgements so liable to follow such fevers, and have been so well pleased with its effects, that I now use it in such cases in preference to anything else.

In prescribing it and noting its effects, I find it quite an efficient prophylactic against malarial fevers; at any rate, many to whom I have prescribed it have had no relapses, when from their surroundings such might have been expected, and in a number of cases of

families who seemed much exposed to such fevers, they have almost always escaped when they could be induced to make use of the lycopus europeus. The exceedingly unpalatable taste of the medicine either as a tincture or acidulated solution, the only forms in which I have exhibited it, has been a serious objection to its use. It contains, I am satisfied, one or more alkaloids, having similar physiological effects to the alkaloids of the cinchonas; a decoction in acidulated water is precipitated by alkalies and the precipitates are readily soluble in acids. I have never tried to isolate the active principle, and would very likely fail if I undertook it, from want of familiarity with chemical manipulations.

As I have intimated, the tincture and acid solution in water are both very unpalatable, and many patients who might be benefited refuse to take it on this account.

It has occurred to me that if some of our enterprising pharmacists were to prepare a solid extract, which, made from the precipitate before mentioned, would much resemble chinoidine both in color and consistence, or, perhaps still better, if they were to isolate the active principles, they would add a very desirable article to the materia medica, and one of especial value in malarial regions.

The plant grows sparsely in Maine, but much more plentifully in the West, and could be cultivated with ease to any desirable extent. It flourishes best in quite wet situations, or where the ground is shaded somewhat by trees.-Therapeutic Gazette, January, 1880.

SOMETHING MORE-BY HENRY W. BEECHER.

What is there in every human life that does not need something more? What thought is there that does not need completeness? What affection is there that does not need purification? What conception is there that does not need growth and glorification? What relationship is there that we do not feel is miserably incompetent to our idea? How large a number of the human race find in this life almost nothing but care and drudgery? Is there nothing more for them? stand straight by reason of much as their little finger! to be right, find every cup

How many of the human race never burdens which men will not lift by so How many who strive to do right, or that is put to their lips a bitter cup!

How many noble women live with a body of death; and, when at last he goes, find themselves sickened, and see their children, reaping the heritage that a vicious father has left them, sickening and going, one after the other, until life itself is one unrolled sackcloth, and at last die, unfriended and unknown! How many there are that are in the ditch, and that never have come upon the dry soil, being yet slaves of the rice swamp! How many men in life have seen their highest aspirations dashed like a crystal vase that can never be put together again! And out of all this is there no refuge? Is there no opportunity to begin? Is there no hope of ever seeing perfectness of love? Is there no place where we shall ever see the symmetry of so noble a machine as the human soul? Is there no realm where men can walk by twos, or fives, or scores, together? Is there no neighborhood, no society, no nation, anywhere, where we shall ever see that which is hinted at here come out in full measure and power?

By all the hope of manhood, by all the longings and aspirations of an unsatisfied soul, as well as by the impulses of sanctified reason itself, I declare that there is a life hereafter. I shall not die. Death shall not have dominion over me! And why should a man want to believe anything else? What but beneficence is the result of it to those who are careworn and burdened? What but comfort is there in the imagination that informs men of a heavenly home that may be theirs through all eternity?

In the whole field of revelation is there a line to be blotted out? Is there a thought to be extinguished? Is there a single color that is meretricious? Not one. Every picture, every fiction, points to those of most noble and heroic service. They washed their raiment in blood; therefore they are white. They wept, and all tears shall be wiped from their eyes. They walked in malarial times for the sake of others, and they shall know no sickness forever more. Every conception of power and beauty and color that fascinates the imagination of man on earth, exalted toward the heavenly sphere, is made to signify things that do not yet appear.— Exchange.

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