alligator.

In a market wagon was a very large woman driving past. She had just finished marketing her produce and was probably starting for home. She was a very large woman. I should judge she would weigh three hundred pounds, at least. Maybe more. Her arm was as big as a telegraph pole. She was symmetrically obese. Universally huge. Her hips bulged out over either side of the narrow seat on which she was perched.

I noticed the colored man sleepily looking at the woman, with one eye half shut and the other entirely closed. To pass away the time I spoke to the colored man. I said:

"A pretty large woman, isn't she?”

He looked up sleepily and eyed me rather suspiciously, but perceiving that I was serious he looked back again at the woman and said: "Yes, she is very large. I see her here on the market nearly every market day. She gets on and off that wagon almost as spry as any one could. They say she weighs three hundred and fifty pounds. She is a country woman that lives ten miles out and works hard every day. Works her own little truck farm, with the aid of a hired man.

'Now, you see," he continued, "that woman is just naturally fat. She can't help it. I don't suppose she eats any more than anyone else. She takes a great deal of exercise. She doesn't drink beer. She is very hardworking. Very saving. She is too stingy to buy a glass of whisky or beer. She is just naturally fat. "Now, some folks are fat that ain't naturally so. They get themselves that way by the way they eat and live. Now, look at that man over across the street. See what an awful paunch he has. But he isn't fat anywhere else. Just his stomach sticks out. Now, he is a great deal different from that woman. He made himself pussy by the way he lives. See, he is going into that barrel house now. He is there a good deal of his time, guzzling beer and whisky. All paunch. His arms and legs are skinny. But that woman, she is fat. Even her head is fat. Her cheeks hang down like the jowls of a prize pig. Now, the man has no excuse for being fat at all, while the woman could not help it if she tried."

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His impromptu lecture began to flag at this point, so in order to encourage him to go further, I said: "I suppose there would not be any use of that fat woman trying to reduce her fat by taking drugs, would there?"

"Oh! no," the negro replied. "She might half kill herself with drugs, and she would be fat just the same."

"Well, don't you suppose if she would diet that would help?"

"Oh, she might starve herself half to death, but that would make her weak, unfit for her day's work. It would do no good in the end. Even if she starved herself so weak she could not work at all, she would still be fat. She will be fat when she dies. So fat they will have to make a special coffin for her accommodation. No, you can't doctor that kind of fat away. It's just natural."

"But how about the man? Don't you think he could be cured of his obesity?"

"Of course he could. All he would have to do is to quit boozing. I suppose if some antifat doctor would get hold of that man's case he could give him some stuff to make him quit drinking beer and whisky, then he would be cured. But no anti-fat doctor could cure that woman."

"Well, then, there is a difference, is there, in fat people, about being cured?" I continued. "Why, of course there is: I see fat people every day that could easily get thin if they would quit drinking and go to work. It is easy to cure such fellows as that. Most any drug will do it. Or no drug at all."

At this point my car came along and the impromptu lecture was interrupted. The negro went back to his dozing as if nothing had happened, and I rode away thinking.

Tell me the common people know nothing! Tell me that you have to go to college to find out things! In my judgment, what that colored man told me presents in a nutshell all that is known about obesity, all that is known about reducing fat.

There are some people who are fat, as the colored man said, just naturally so. There is no use whatever trying to reduce their fat.

I saw a picture the other day of a fat man who had undergone treatment; two pictures were there, before and after. Before treatment there he sat, with a tremendous paunch, the waist line of his pants amazingly long. But he did not appear to be fleshy anywhere else. As the negro put it, "just his paunch." The other picture represented the same man three months later, after having gone through the treatment at some sanitarium that was using the picture as an advertisement.

But

The ad. went on to describe very minutely how the man was treated. How he was dieted. What exercises he had gone through. And they were holding this man up as a wonderful achievement in their anti-fat treatment. what the negro had just told me explained exactly the case presented by the advertisement. I know fat people, men and women, people of prominence, scholars, lecturers, artists, musi

cians, people in all walks of life, so fat that they are simply huge, a burden to themselves. Yet they are active, brainy and enjoy life as best they can with the handicap of a great deal of extra adipose tissue.

These are the people who look in vain for relief from anti-fat remedies and treatment. They may diet, they may exercise, they may swallow anti-fat pills, powders and elixirs, but there is nothing doing. They make themselves feeble, they put themselves on the bum by their treatment, and may get rid of a little flesh temporarily, but it comes back.

These people are often very absteminous. Many of them eat no meat. Others try to cut out the carbohydrates. And all that, and all that. They deprive themselves of water. Refuse to eat potatoes. Go through all sorts of exercises daily. And there they are, just as fat

as ever.

It is this class of people that are feeing, futilely feeing, a flock of anti-fat doctors. Some one with an obese paunch has been cured. They see no reason why they should not be cured. Some one with gross, gluttonous habits has reduced his flesh. This other class of people cannot understand why they, too, cannot get rid of their flesh. But they cannot. There they are, as the old negro said, "just naturally fat." That is the explanation of it. When they die they will be fat. Even sickness would not reduce their flesh very much.

But those people who are carrying around a fat paunch as the result of beer drinking, as the result of lazy, slothful habits, such people can get rid of their fat. They can get rid of it very easily. It is not necessary for them to even take drugs. If they will just quit their boozing, get a move on themselves, eat moderately, those beastly bellies will disappear, and then they will become a standing advertisement for the anti-fat doctors.

F

Fumes of Burnt Sugar.

ROM time immemorial the common people have had a notion that to burn sugar in a sick room was good for the patient. The physician has generally regarded such practice as a superstiA great many of the physicians allow it to be done simply because they regard it as innocent, but laugh in their sleeves at it.

tion.

But it turns out that there is a basis, a real scientific basis, for this practice. Prof. Trilbert, of the Pasteur Institute of Paris, says that the burning of sugar develops formic acid, which is an excellent antiseptic. He believes it to be a very practical and effective mode of cleansing the sick room.

This is only another instance in which the people were right and the doctors were wrong. Somehow or other the people, wholly ignorant of chemistry and the science of medicine, get hold of things and practice them in spite of the protests of the physician, sometimes for centuries, and at last some one takes the

trouble to look into the matter, and finds that the people were right all the time.

It is a good thing to burn a little sugar in a sick room, especially if the patient has been ill for a long time and the means of admitting ventilation and sunlight have been limited. It is a splendid thing. And now that it has the sanction of an eminent authority on the subject, probably the medical profession will quit laughing at it.

W

Cockleburr Consumption.

By S. T. Record, Bessemer, Alabama. HILE working in the garden when about twelve years of age, a cockleburr got in my mouth. In attempting to remove it I drew a deep inspiration, and the cockleburr passed down into the bronchial tubes. I was thrown into a paroxysm of coughing.

My mother hurriedly sent for the family physician. He came, but said that I surely coughed the burr out in the next breath, or immediately, leastways, otherwise my breath would be suppressed, and that my continuous coughing was caused from the pricks of the burr as it went down and came out again.

Well, I coughed practically all night ana a great part of the next day. Gradually the coughing subsided somewhat, and yet not entirely, for, indeed, I have had more or less of a cough ever since.

When I was about sixteen years of age my father and mother became uneasy about me, fearing that I was contracting tuberculosis. Then of all the syrups and emulsions and nostrums and atomizers and inhalers that for the next three years I swallowed and squeezed and "pulled" horrifies me now to think of it. Still, believing I was in the right church, but in the wrong pew, I would quit one thing only to try another.

Finally I concluded I would go West, and decided upon El Paso, Texas. While there McFadden's Physical Culture fell by chance into my hands, and his tirades against drugs put me to thinking, and I quit the "drug habit." I stayed in El Paso nineteen months, and returned home and re-entered the school that I had left. Was in school there one year, then the next year in college, then taught for two years.

In the spring of 1905 my health again waned considerably. In May, for fifteen successive days, I had a chill in the mornings about ten o'clock, but would not give up, but continued with my classwork as best I could. On Friday afternoon I decided I would go to my home to stay till Monday, a drive of sixteen miles. I was there taken considerably worse. My mother and sisters, over my protest, summoned a physician, a different one, however, from the one mentioned above, for he was dead.

The doctor came and said I had a bad case of pneumonia. The next day he said my right lung was "gone" entirely-hopeless. And while

he did not tell me, he told others that even if I should get some better, I would never get up; consumption would claim me in a few days, at most.

I said to him: "Doctor, don't you think that cockleburr might be giving this trouble?" He said: "Why, if that burr had been in your lung you would have been dead long ago."

On the third day, I think it was, as I raised up in bed, one of those severe coughing spells Some、 that I was then having, came on me. thing broke loose, seemingly, under my right nipple, and almost cut my breath off as it came up. A hard piece of something lodged in my mouth. I took it out with my hand, and my mother, who was holding my head, became frightened and said, "What's the matter?" In answering I said, "I think I've got a piece of that darned old burr."

Well, what I had in my hand was not the burr, but a piece of the calcareous formation that had gathered around the burr. The burr itself was found in the cuspidor. I have it now, and some of the calcareous formation, But I was back to put away in my trunk. work in just a few days, not well, no, and may never be, from that twelve years of hacking and coughing.

But no one ever expected to see me up again. My good friend and chum even went so far as to prepare my funeral oration.

This was three years ago last month. So you see one need not die, even though he have so poisonous a thing as a cockleburr in his lung.

At present I am working as a timekeeper for the T. C. I. & R. R. Co. I work from twelve to eighteen hours a day, seven days in the week, and have not lost a minute during this more than two years.

A

Vaccination Tetanus.

NOTHER case is reported, in which tetanus follows vaccination. Walter Lloyd, the six-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Smith, No. 21 Lincoln avenue, Cortland, N. Y., died June 7. He had been vaccinated. It was reported that the vaccination took well, the scar healed, everything going on nicely, when to their consternation the boy developed symptoms of lockjaw, and in spite of all the physicians could do he soon died.

Of course the doctors deny that the vaccination was the cause of the lockjaw. They always do that. In spite of the fact that all the leading writers on the subject admit that cause lock jaw, vaccination does sometimes whenever a case comes up the attending physician will vigorously deny the possibility of vaccination ever causing lockjaw.

It is curious to note how the doctors will grasp at every straw to save vaccination from disrepute. For instance, in the case of the It got into the papers Smith boy referred to. that the boy scratched his fingers with a wire,

Work

This is also true of institutions. houses. Almshouses. The inmates are expected to eat their meals in a very few minutes, much to the harm of their digestion.

The other day I boarded a street car at the end of the line. The conductor and myself were the only occupants for a short distance. He told me he had a headache. He described some of his symptoms, and I said, "I think the trouble is with your stomach."

He said, "Yes, of course it is."

"Well," I said, "you must take more time to eat."

He said, "That is just exactly my trouble. If I had even ten minutes to eat my dinner But the I know it would be better for me. company does not allow any time for eating. I have to catch my dinner between cars, which sometimes is less than five minutes, and if I eat my dinner at all I must swallow it as rapidly as possible. I know it is harmful for me to do so, but I cannot be eating while I am doing my work, and I am allowed no interval for my dinner. I live near the end The motorman of the line. I get off the car. goes on to the end of the line, and when he comes back I must be ready to board it. The trip is made generally in five minutes."

The question I wish to raise is, has the street car company, or any other company, the right to do such things? They certainly have no moral right to injure their employes bodily. One of the very first things that municipal reform ought to take up is the question of the health of the employes. No man or woman should be deprived of plenty of time to eat dinner. Instead of hurry, everything should be done to produce the opposite result.

This street car conductor was taking physic every day or two, suffering headaches and all that, simply because the company did not allow him time to eat his dinner.

The public, too, suffers from this. The conductor's health is disturbed. He does his work in an imperfect way. Maybe he is surly or discourteous to passengers, merely because the company did not see fit to arrange their schedules in such a way as to allow him time to eat his dinner.

Remedy for the Blues.

By Adelaide B. Cox. 626 Randolph St., Water100, Iowa.

S

EEING a request in a late number of The Medical Journal that its readers write about some remedy which they have found for trouble of any kind, I take the liberty of contributing a word, though I am far from being a writer of any merit.

My "remedy" is no new idea, simply "look on the bright side." It may be a sort of negative course of reasoning, but I have found that by making comparisons one may sometimes be most thankful. For instance, if one is inclined to be dissatisfied with his present circumstances as regards the possession of this world's goods, just take yourself to the slums of your city and see the environment of those people, and the chances are you will return home feeling very grateful that your lot has been cast in such pleasant places. Or go visit some of the sick people, who have long been shut-ins, and see if you do not come away rejoicing in your physical ability to enjoy God's beautiful out-doors.

And who of us does not know the happiness there is in bringing a change, be it ever so small, into the lives of these people who are denied the pleasure of getting out in the world, mingling with various people, witnessing interesting events, etc.

Perchance any of my sisters who are in the business world, at times lament their inability in aesthetic directions. Let me just say that I have found high-class reading matter a good aid to self-improvement; that instead of spending one's evenings in a social way, it is more profitable to spend them either listening to a good lecture or in reading standard literary works.

However, we all have certain social obligations which must be met, but for those of us who are not privileged to attend some institution of learning, it is quite possible to

keep from becoming altogether rusty if we will but try to improve our minds by making the best use of leisure moments outside of office hours.

T

The Doctor's Remedies.

HE question is being discussed nowadays, should the doctor carry his remedies with him?

A dispensing doctor is one who carries his medicines and gives them direct to his patients. A prescribing doctor is one who carries no medicine with him, but writes a prescription, which is taken to the nearest drug store and filled. Therefore, there are two kinds of doctors, the dispensing doctor and the prescribing doctor.

The dispensing doctors defend their practice with good arguments, while the prescribing doctors attempt to defend their position also.

Indeed, in some states there have been laws proposed making it illegal for a doctor to carry his remedies with him and dispense them directly to the patient. In England and some other countries it is already illegal for a physician to do so. In this country many doctors would like to have it that way. They would compel every doctor to write his prescription, to be filled at the drug store, except in cases of extreme emergency.

Both sides of this question are being ably discussed in the medical journals today. It is well for my readers to have some insight into the arguments, for and against. In defense of the doctor who dispenses his own medicine, I am quoting a few paragraphs from an article on the subject by E. S. McKee, M. D., of Cincinnati, Ohio, which appeared in the Medical Summary of March:

"Environment-city, town, village or country practice makes a difference. The country practitioner, far removed from a reliable, up-todate drug store, should have a liberal supply of drugs, all necessary proved pharmaceuticals pruning his supply, as all doctors should limit their use of drugs to those which will stand the test, eliminating the worthless, unreliable fads of today. We obtain our best results in the practice of our art, not through the careless, indiscriminating use of numerous drugs, but by the proper selection and appropriate application of a few with which we are well acquainted, and in the use and abuse of which we are well informed.

"Prestige, as well as valuable time and possibly a still more valuable life, is lost in urgent cases by not having some few picked remedies at hand. For the relief of pain, the prompt evacuation of the stomach and bowels, one should always be prepared; also for the checking of hemorrhage and the relief of syncope and cardiac affections.

"The self-administration of drugs at the hands of the physician to a patient in dire distress, outside of the question of time saving. has a psychical effect, for who has not seen

the anxious expression on the face of the sufferer, who, with good reason, fears that all may be over before the messenger returns from the pharmacy. In case both the physician and his prescription leave, it seems to the sufferer that all hope has departed. Selfadministered, the physician is assured that the patient has the remedy properly given, and has time to wait and observe its mode of action.

"Pecuniarily speaking, there are remedies which should be kept on hand. Those drugs and combinations which are in every day use and which keep well.

"Pills, tablets or ready-made mixtures are not the only remedies which can be kept on hand by the busy practitioner. While these are most convenient, yet many useful combinations may be readily made with the aid of a few active principles, tinctures and fluid extracts.

"The confident and friend of him who, in distress, confides to us not only his sufferings, his sorrows, but also his shame, we should

537

administer ourselves, where practicable, the remedies which become necessary in these cases. If they went to a drug store they would divulge to the drug clerk and his many chums the nature of the malady for which your patient was, in all confidence, consulting you alone. Emmenagogues are sometimes properly advisable, yet what drug clerk and the numerous young loafers who are in his confidence, will not surmise the worst, with reference to both patient and physician, when a lady patient hands him a prescription for these drugs. Syphilis and gonorrhea should be treated, in the majority of cases, without the aid of the druggist. The latter treats numerous cases without the aid of the physician. They should be kept in close confidence, and a drug store is, in the great majority of cases, not a secret service bureau. Aside from this there is the danger of the patient repeating the prescription indefinitely, thus injuring both himself and his medical attendant. The various remedies for the treatment of these confidential cases and their sequelae should be kept on hand by the general practitioner."

I

By Florinda Twichell,

AM coming, more and more, to believe in the redemption of society, and ultimately the salvation of the world; that in some way it will be purged and brought back, and God will come into possession once more of His own.

When we sit in the cushioned pews, in the soft, subdued light, and listen to the music of the great organ and hear from the modern pulpit the story of the advancement of the cause of righteousness, how a single denomination is building a church a day, how the Gospel is being accepted across the seas before, carrying a freer, better life to thousands who sat in darkness, every year, we say, "Surely the evolution of good is going on."

as never

But when we study the problem from another standpoint, and see the rascality and selfishness that avarice has fostered, when we study the conditions that poverty and crime have made, especially the evil we have been writing about in previous articles, it seems as if the purging would have to come by literal fire.

But it is going to come. Not through any physical evolution by which good is evolved from evil, but by the efforts of those who have seen a vision of a redeemed world, brought back to God, and who have worked with Him to accomplish it.

Though I believe the Son of Man came to save the world as a world, everywhere in His teachings He emphasizes the importance of the individual. He did not heal the crowds. It was the individual touch that brought phy

East McDonough, N. Y.

sical healing, the individual words that brought peace and pardon. He set great value on individuality-the lame, the blind, the deaf, the imbecile, the crazy, the prisoner and the prostitute.

He wept over the Jews, but I don't know as He made one class any more important than another.

We have been considering the effect of an We evil upon the home and upon society. now turn to the class who are most affected by this evil, and who are usually considered The quite outside the pale of civilization. women who have abandoned their lives to the business of prostitution in a public way are in a peculiar position; not that they are greater sinners than their patrons, or many other women who have not come under the ban of public disfavor by letting their immoral lives be known. But, condemned by the world, they themselves often feel the awful condemnation of self-accusation.

If we were to seek excuse for them, we might find many in the various causes that have led to their present way of living. Thousands of ignorant girls are enticed to this country from foreign lands every year, and virtually sold to the proprietors of houses of ill-repute. Once in these places there is little chance for them to escape. They are ignorant of our language, are closely confined, and there is little chance in a strange land for these poor, penniless creatures to gain their liberty or to get employment at honest labor. They