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cally or mentally unable to support themselves under the most favorable circumstances, should not be licensed to marry, nor should men out of employment, till they have some visible means of support other than a tub and washboard in the hands of the prospective bride.

A physical examination as a necessary requisite for marriage license, if honestly conducted, would prevent untold sorrow and suffering. I would hale with hope the day when men, physically unfit to marry, could not lead pure young girls blindly to the altar. When there need no longer be countless numbers of blind, imbecile, and otherwise diseased children, born to be a curse to themselves and every one else. When the operating table would no longer claim the vast numbers of unsuspecting wives, who are innocent victims of venereal diseases.

I would like to see all persons who are in any way endangering society on account of the above diseases, confined in hospitals, compulsory, if necessary. The state might well take this matter in hand, and it would be an economical measure, and even more far-reaching

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than the establishment of tuberculosis hospitals. But the matter resolves itself into a far different question. A patient of the one class, treated with fear and dread, often by his own family, is glad to find a refuge somewhere. While, on the other hand, the patient of the other class does not even lose his place in society.

Yes, we ought to have restrictive marriage laws; but to whom will fall the work of issuing these complicated marriage licenses? I suppose to members of the medical profession, who would be political appointees. Here would be unlimited opportunities for graft. Not only paupers and imbeciles would be applying for licenses, but men of wealth, political and social influences, might seek to overcome their physical barrier to matrimony with this license board. With the average political appointee of to-day, would they be likely to do it? It would give an immense opportunity for this board to make a good thing out of it. Yet the need of some kind of legislation remains. If we could reform political boards first, the problem might be solved.

Health Board Persecution.

ATTIE B. STANLEY, aged 36, a life-long resident of Chariton, Lucas County, Iowa, has been engaged in teaching in the public schools of that place during most of the years of her maturity. Duly re-employed by the school board, last summer, she entered upon her school year during the early days of September.

Two weeks later the mayor of the city, purporting to act as health officer, at the instigation of parties unknown, and without any complaint upon the part of the school board, notified her to relinquish her position until investigation could be had as to whether she was afflicted with the disease of tuberculosis.

She complied with the terms of the order and at once submitted to an ex

amination by Dr. T. P. Stanton, her family physician, who pronounced her entirely free from the disease complained of. Not satisfied with the decision of this one physician, on the 15th of September, and again on the 25th of September, she sent or caused to be sent, specimens of her sputum, taken in the morning, in accordance with the rule, to Dr. Albert, the bacteriologist of the Iowa state board of health, and in both instances his certificates of analysis were returned with the statement that no tubercular bacilli were found.

These conclusive evidences were presented to Mr. Thomas, the secretary of the state board of health, but they were not sufficient to move him. And so, on a subsequent date, this harassed woman went to the expense of going per

The Arbitrary Power of Health Boards

sonally to Dr. Albert, who, after giving her a thorough and painstaking physical examination, confirmed the conclusions to which he had previously arrived by the examination of her spu

tum.

Then Thomas reluctantly ordered her reinstatement in her position in the public schools, but that he had only temporarily abandoned the trail of this poor woman became manifest in a few weeks, when, under date of Dec. 2 and the great seal of the state board of health of Iowa, there came an autocratic order to this woman, happy in her surcease of trouble, stating that she was again suspected of having tuberculosis and directing her to desist from further attendance upon the public schools of Chariton and all other schools, public and private, until she could furnish the state board of health with satisfactory evidence that she was free from said disease.

Bowed and broken in spirit. Miss Stanley again relinquished her position, but the good people of Chariton were by this time thoroughly aroused and they gave her such consolation as they could by assuring her that if there was any way on earth to establish her innocence, it should not be lacking.

Conning the order of her condemnation, they read therein that "satisfactory evidence" of her freedom from disease must be furnished the Iowa state board of health before its order would be canceled. Satisfactory evidence! They would furnish it if they had to go to the end of the world for it. Plainly the evidence of the board's own bacteriologist was not sufficient, but there were other and greater bacteriologists than he.

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critical examinations of her sputum. They found no evidence of tuberculosis, and so certified.

Armed with the certificates provided by these experts, Miss Stanley's attorney waited upon the secretary of the board, only to be disdainfully informed that they were no account because the examinations were made without the authority of the board. The secretary insisted that there must be a hearing before the full board, and that was held last Wednesday, behind closed doors. What the decision of the august body was I do not know, I cannot find out.

A reporter called upon the secretary yesterday to learn what had been done in the matter and he was impudently informed that while a decision has been reached, he (the secretary) was too busy to tell him what it was. Rumor has it, however, that more examinations will be required in Miss Stanley's case.

Perhaps it is hoped that she may be worried into contracting tuberculosis if her persecution is continued long enough, and thus the board receive complete vindication. Such a thing might happen. At any rate, according to the report that comes from Chariton, Miss Stanley is on the verge of collapse, unable to eat or sleep on account of the unrelentless and fiendish persecution to which she is being subjected.

Representative Charles W. Miller, in commenting on the above atrocity, in the Waverly Democrat (Iowa), says:

"You wonder that such things are permitted in Iowa. Well, so do I. But they are permitted and this is but one case. Tyranny breeds fast. Give men absolute power and sooner or later they will abuse it. The Iowa state board of health has absolute power and in a greater degree than many people realize. The legislature has vested in it more power than is given the governor and all the courts combined-made of it a legislative, an executive and judicial body.

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has the power to legislate, prosecute, judge and condemn, and from its decision in the case of Miss Stanley there can be no appeal under the law as it now exists.

"A man wrongfully accused of crime can seek redress and generally gets it, but a poor weak woman, with the ban of the board of health upon her-a ban that shuts her out of her only means of livelihood and causes her to

be shunned by her most sympathizing friends, placing her, in fact, in a position that the most abject criminal would not exchange for his own-has no hope of vindication except that which may come from the autocratic body that condemned her. No hope, I said—yea, but there is one. The legis

lature that is now in session is made up of men of sense and feeling and conscience, and when they gain a full understanding of the deviltry that is going on in this state under the name of the public health, I doubt not that they will apply a remedy, and a very drastic one.

"The awful power that the legislature has vested in the state board of health and the villainous way in which this power is being abused is strikingly demonstrated in the manner in which the big, hulking men of which it is composed are camping like a Nemesis upon the trail of Hattie Stanley, a poor little inoffensive school teacher at

Chariton, Ia., who, for some inexplicable reason, has been marked for their persecution.

"It is a story so atrocious that, were its scene laid in Russia, the people of Iowa would be circulating petitions asking the president, in the cause of humanity, to exert his kindly offices with the czar in behalf of the innocent victim. But this happens in Iowa, land of vaunted enlightenment and fairness. It happens under the very noses of those chosen of its people to resent tyranny and uphold our rights and liberties. It happens in the state's literary center, where a hundred pens could be exerted to burning words of protest far beyond my power. It hap

pens because it can happen-because various legislatures, through the machinations of the medical monopoly, have vested in a set of men brute power that they choose to use like brutes."

I

How To Help.

HAVE said it a good many
times, and presume I shall say
it many times more:

Medical Journal is by contributing One way to help The Columbus some personal experience of your own, through which you have found a remedy for some trouble in life. It may be a remedy for physical disease, a remedy for the mind, or soul. It matplace. They all help. These are the ters not which. They all have their

truths of real value in the world, such as have come by experience.

My idea is that every one, irrespective of education or station, possesses one or more valuable truths of this kind. People of education are no more likely to have them than any other earnest, sincere person. There are precious truths buried in minds. and hearts everywhere.

The great majority of people do not think of imparting the truths they have to others. Indeed, they do not really know they possess any valuable truths. They disparage what they know. Think it amounts to nothing. Look to others for sermons and lectures and in

structions of all sorts.

It is all right to absorb from others. Every wise person does this. Get all the information you can, in every possible way. But there is one thing necessary for mental growth, and that is to impart the truth which is peculiarly our own truth..

I do not mean read some one else's thoughts and then try to give these thoughts as your own. I mean those thoughts that are born in your own soul, created out of your own experiences. Something you have thought different than you have ever heard any one else say. You owe it to the, world to give that thought out. It is

Gathering Truth, Grain by Grain

It may your message to the world. seem to you a very homely truth, a very ordinary fact. But it has been revealed to you that you might pass it along.

The Columbus Medical Journal aims to be a journal by the people. Won't you help make it so? Make a record of your best thoughts. It may be some religious thought that has helped you in times of trouble. It may be some intellectual habit that has helped your growth of mind. It may be some drug remedy that has cured your disease. It may be some mental discipline that has contributed to your, moral growth. It may be some act of faith or inspiration or hope that has raised you out of the despair and discouragement. Whatever it is you obtained it from the bounty of the Providences by which you are surrounded. It has been given to you for test, that you might become a witness to the truth. It may be more precious to many a languishing soul than anything the doctor could say, anything the minister could devise.

You may never have written anything before in your life. You may not be able to write good English, to spell words correctly. Yet you may be the possessor of a truth worth far more to humanity than many volumes of books. Send it along. I will attend to the language if any correction is necessary, if you can make your ideas clear.

I believe there is a great deal more truth scattered around in the world, here a little and there a little, than is included in all of our colleges and libraries. Truths of practical import. Truths of every-day utility and value. Truths that anybody can understand and appropriate. Truths that touch life in a simple and effective way.

Do not look to the editor as the fount of truth, for he is not. It is barely possible he may be able to recognize truth when he sees it, sort out the chaff from the wheat, but in bringing truth to the world he is only one of the rest of you. The valuable

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truths he is able to impart are simply those that have come to him through the realities of every-day experience. You have the same access to real truth that he has.

Each man's experience gives truth an individual color, a personal element no one else can give it. The glimpse of truth that has been vouchsafed to you is slightly different than has been revealed to any one else.

We need you.

The world needs you. You may be a housewife, overburdened with every-day cares. You may be a toiler in field or shop, with no time for study or writing. You may not have enjoyed a common school education. But you have lived and thought, and felt. You have struggled with the great problems of life in your

own way. You have reached certain conclusions of certain items of your experience. You have discovered certain facts that to you have been step-stones to higher truths, or palliatives for the trials that beset every one. Let us have them. They are yours now. Make them forever yours by trying to give them to some one else.

Truth grows by giving it away. Like the loaves fed to the multitude, truth multiplies the more you break it to others. In fact, there is no othe. way to attain truth except by honestly making an endeavor to help some one e'se e' se by imparting truth. Those who write merely for money or for vanity's sake, do not profit by such employment. But those who write for no other purpose than to help some one else, gain mightily with every such effort.

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the matter the physician only is equal to the task. God cannot cure organic diseases. So say the promulgators of the Emmanuel Movement.

No doubt this system of healing is in "safe hands." So safe that the proprietors will very soon have it all to themselves. It is not at all likely that any one will continue long to be set down as a victim of his own imagination, to be treated as a baby by the preacher, while those who are regarded as really sick are treated by a doctor.

Household Remedies.

By MRS. A. M. JOINER, 4 West St., South, Hillsdale,

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Michigan.

OU ask for medicines or remedies which we keep in the house for emergencies. I keep the Dr. D. P. Ordway plasters, from the Dr. D. P. Ordway Plaster Company, Camden, Maine. They are used for dyspepsia, rheumatism, pneumonia, first stages of consumption, etc. They are good for many other troubles. They work by absorption, draw out pus and relieve pain.

I also use "Mother's Salve," from Mother's Remedies Company. 1035 Thirty-Fifth Street, Chicago, Ill. Excellent for tonsilitis, croup, burns, cuts, etc. I have cured sore throat in one night. Can be used internally as well as externally. Relieves earache and other pains.

I do not use very much medicine. I think suggestion and magnetic treatment fine. People are afraid to use their natural gifts for relieving and curing disease. Physicians are giving them advice and prescriptions. They wonder why they are not cured. One reason in my mind is, they say, "I have no faith in doctors. I have no faith in any remedies. I am so sick and there is no help for me."

These are bad suggestions. Why, if they wish health, can they not see that to get well they must try to help the physician by believing that the medicines do help Nature to readjust itself? Then concentrate their minds on improvement by many times a day repeating, "I am improving, I am getting

well." This concentration impresses itself on the subjective mind and forms new brain cells which tend toward health.

They laugh at you when they are told the above, but nevertheless they are giving themselves, and others, suggestions for good or bad all the time.

Treatment of Typhoid Fever.

By J. W. COLLIER, M. D., Manitou, Oklahoma, in Medical World, September, 1908.

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UT the patient in a well ventilated room and let the wind blow on him if he likes it. Have

no company except those who. nurse, and ask the patient few questions. Give no medicine through the night or while the patient is asleep, except a heart stimulant when needed. Do not begin to give heart stimulants until the second sound of the heart is louder than the first. Don't give antipyretics to reduce the fever if you can control it by bathing; but don't bathe the patient in a way that will worry him. Have gowns made open both in front and in the back so you can remove same often without moving the patient. Use either warm or cold water, the kind that is most agreeable to the patient.

Don't bother about the fever as long as it does not go above 104, unless it makes the patient restless. Do not worry the patient. If any of you! medicine causes nausea, or if any of your treatment worries him, leave it off. At the beginning give a purgative. I prefer calomel. Give enough to act. Then every day or every other day give enough calomel, sodium sulphite, salts, oil, or any laxative that will best agree with the patient and not nauseate. Give enough to keep the bowels cleaned out and don't rely so much on intestinal antiseptics; for keeping the bowels cleaned out is better than all the antiseptics.

Give absolutely no food unless the patient is hungry and wants it. He may not want it for a week or ten days, but that will be all right. Give plenty of water and lemonade and let the patient rest. How many of us give

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