rents. God has constituted the parent the rightful governor of the child. He knows no teacher above his father, no instructress above his mother. He catches the word as it drops from the lips of either. He watches the parent's eye when he speaks, and ere three winters have passed over his head, he knows whether he can disobey with impunity or not. If he is not taught obedience at home, it will be like the drawing of teeth to pay it abroad. The parent, then, should be careful what words he drops in the child's ear respecting his teacher. I have known a good school completely disorganized by the blindness of a single parent to the faults of his darling child. For a slight correction which the child really merited, the parent was enraged. The idol of his heart had been touched, and the furious breaking forth of his passion was the consequence; when, had justice been done on all sides, the parent would have received ten, where the child had a single blow. Such has often been called affection for the child, but it is such an affection as vultures have for lambs. It is one of the tender mercies of the wicked, which are cruel. It is doing the child the greatest possible injury. It is rendering him one of the most unhappy beings that inhabit this world of misery. Were the child of a different spirit, had he not a heart averse to good, were he in a world of perfect bliss, or could he pass through life without ever having a wish crossed or hope disappointed, such conduct would not be so cruel to him: but as he has within him the seeds of passion; as he is in a world of changes, crosses and disappointments, as the greatest part of his happiness must arise from the faculty which he possesses of accommodating himself to his circumstances; from his own mind; I say again, such a conduct is deadly cruelty. A person who thus deals with his child, though in his own eyes he may be wiser than Solomon, yet in the end he will find the remark true, "he that withholdeth correction from the child, where it is due, hateth his son.' [To be continued.] THE PRACTICE OF DENTISRY. From a Valedictory Address before the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, by CHAPIN A. HARRIS, M.D., D D.S. THE indolent practitioner of dental surgery may well pause at the threshold of his professional career, and calculate the dull chances of his success. As well might a buzzard copy the eagle's sky-ward flight, as for a dull, unambitious practitioner, to think of reaching the lowest bough of the tree of eminence, in the profession of dental surgery. The dentist who has one sluggish, drownish feeling running through his nature, may as well retire from a profession which never yields a single laurel that is not achieved by toil and high enthusiasm. A determination that can surmount difficulties of imposing form and fearful front—an unwearied and tireless reaching forward to perfect achievement— a will that must inevitably find a way through cases most perplexing a warm heart, but a cool hand and judgment—all, all must belong to a dental practitioner who would unite moral worth, intellectual eminence, and surgical skill in the elements of his professional character. Who would be a mere "jack in the profession," and unite no more science in the operations he performs on those delicate organic gems, the teeth, than a shoewright would in driving pegs? For such a one the field of American dentistry is overgrown with briars and thorns-and affords but a barren waste, on which he may 66 sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind!" A bad dentist is fit for nothing in this age! There is not a gap in creation of the right shape for him to fill, except it be the mouth of credulity, which is ever ready to swallow all kinds of absurdities. The time has well nigh arrived when men will not be able to quit another occupation one day, and commence the practice of dental surgery the next, as too many heretofore have done. The state of the world demands talent and proficiency in all the learned professions; and, if the reign of quackery be not over, the empire of dullness and mediocrity, it is to be hoped, has, at least, come to an end. There will always be quacks, and if they were the only ones that had to suffer from their unskilful operations, it might be well to encourage them until they had consumed themselves, and thus have succeeded in ridding the profession of its interlopers and empirics; but, alas! the bungling dentist is not the victim. Years will not obliterate the track of his desolation through the once beautiful, sensitive, delicate and priceless organs of health and utility. To treat defective teeth in an unskilful and unscientific manner, is, in effect, to destroy them. But, notwithstanding all this, quackery will always thrive, for the reason that it is always active and unwearied in its efforts to impose upon the credulous and unsuspecting. While truth and science are found in the field of sober investigation with the lark at early daybreak, it is always found that error has been up all night with the owl and bat. The pretenders to science—to marvellously sanitary operations on the human frame-have almost monopolised the newspaper press for more than a quarter of a century, and the astonishing virtues of the most worthless medicines of most wonderful surgical operations, have been read and believed, wherever a newspaper has travelled. Had science and truth been half as active, dental surgery would not, at this advanced age of improvement, be compelled to protest against the odium it must bear yet a little longer, arising from the widespread mischief done, all over the world, by pretenders to skill in this department of the healing art. Yet the dental surgeon labors under the malign influence of this species of popular prejudice, only in common with the general practitioner of medicine. It, therefore, should be the consolation of the scientific dental surgeon while he is remedying, as far as possible, the injuries resulting from the blunders and badly performed operations of the uneducated and uninformed of the profession, who have caused so much mischief throughout the land—that every successful operation-every remedial effort to retrieve the errors of the ignorant, will remove a mass of prejudice from the public mindwill reflect honor both upon himself and his scientific associates, as well as upon the dental branch of medicine. It will be a source of gratification to him, which will a thousand times overbalance the pains and expenses of his acquirements, to be able to say, when he comes across the track of a vandal irruption into the dental arch by some ignoramus, whose chief preparation for his business, was, perhaps, gained as an operative in an oyster cellar, "this is not my operation!" No! Such is not the operation of an accomplished dental surgeon. He comes to save, he touches to beautify-" non tetigit quod non ornavit ;" he eradicates only where necessity sternly commands; he makes nature his teacher; while, by the aid of science, he repairs her decays, heals her defects, and prunes her redundancies. Where defect sits like an incubus on the form of beauty, Dentistry comes with pure and balmy breath to eradicate the wrong. It comes "with healing in its wings," like an angel of benevolence, from whose mild benignant eye of power, the demons of the neuralgic rack-the agonizers of the dental nerves-flee far away. VOMITING PRODUCED BY TITILLATION OF THE FAUCES. BY N. WILLIAMS, M.D., OF PHOENIX, N. y. DEAR SIR,-Although there may be nothing original in the treatment of the following case, yet I consider it of some im portance, inasmuch as it tends to show that the practice is entitled to more consideration at the hands of the profession than it has hitherto received. A few years since I was called to a case of pneumonia in a child about one year and a half old. The patient, prior to my visiting it, had gone through with a regular course of Thomsonian treatment, and to all appearance was beyond the reach of the most judicious prescription which could be devised. The countenance was pallid in the extreme; pulse scarcely perceptible; surface cold, and of a cadaverous appearance; eyes fixed, and turned back in their sockets; respiration laborious; whilst to all these was added the prospect of suffocation from a large accumulation of mucus which had taken place along the whole course of the respiratory organs, and which the prostrate energies of nature in vain might labor to remove. Antimony and ipecac. were prescribed as an emetic, in the most liberal doses; but without producing the slightest apparent effect; and, indeed, under the circumstances which existed, I very much question whether vomiting could have been produced by the most efficient remedies in doses compatible with the safety of the patient. Recourse was consequently had to the titillation of the fauces by the use of a goose quill, previously dipped in warm water, and the use of which was followed by immediate vomiting, and the discharge of a large quantity of mucus from the stomach and respiratory organs. The result was a temporary relief of all the symptoms, which was at length followed by a return of them, when the same means were again put in requisition, and with the same satisfactory effect. The operation was repeated at intervals (according to circumstances) for several times, without any further use of emetics; and it may be proper to add, that vomiting only occurred when produced by titillation of the fauces in the above manner. To say the least of it, the fauces could at all times be excited to a sufficient extent to produce a revulsive action of the stomach, whilst that organ was incapable of such an effect from the more direct and common means. The happy termination of the above case, and others which I have had more recently, seem to warrant the following conclusions, viz., that vomiting may be produced sympathetically, through the medium of the fauces, when the same effect cannot be produced by the most active means when directly applied to the stomach itself; and that in many cases titillation of the fauces is the most safe, successful and immediate means for producing vomiting, whilst emetics only fulfil a subservient office, and should be depended on as an auxiliary solely. Bost. Med. and Sur. Jour. |