are; so people who remain young in spirit never grow old.

Not one of a hundred students, of whom the writer was one, under Oliver Wendell Holmes, at Harvard, ever thought of him as an old man, although he had then passed his eightieth birthday. His spirit was so young, and he was so buoyant, so fresh and full of life, that we always thought of him as one of ourselves. His vivacity and joyousness were contagious. You could not be in his presence five minutes without feeling brighter and better for it. The genial doctor never practised medicine, yet he did more to relieve human suffering than many practising physicians. His presence was a tonic; it was a perpetual delight to be near him. Success.

TALKING.

TALKING is one of the best of all healthful recreations, and a person who understands the art possesses a most useful and enjoyable accomplishment. No dinnertable is well appointed without good talkers, and the basis of interesting conversation is reality. After a course of London dinners, Sir Walter Scott said: "The bishops and the lawyers talked better than the wits," that is, the wits talked for the sake of talking, and the Church and the Law had something to talk about. Yet specialties and hobbies are not admissible at a dinnertable, and a person who can only talk on his own fad has no business in society, for any conversation at the dinner-table that is a strain on the attention or patience soon becomes irksome; indeed, one of the chief elements of pleasant company is a readiness to talk or to be talked to on any rational subject. The most charming talkers let a bright listener see their thoughts in formation, for talk that has been prepared has a ready-made flatness. It is the aerated thought of the moment that has the sparkle; and a good talker finds the right word by instinct, as a clever horse on a bad road al

ways puts his foot in the right place. This fact makes the good talker also a good listener, because his best conversation will follow brightly and instantly the lead that others give it, and it prevents, likewise, the worst of all conversational faults-monopoly. Dean Swift thought "no one ought to talk at a dinner-table longer than a minute. at a time," and his rules for such conversation are so admirable that they might be printed on our dinner menus—

Conversation is but carving;
Give no more to every guest
Than he's able to digest.
Give him always of the prime,
And but little at a time.
Carve to all but just enough,
Let them neither starve nor stuff.
And that you may have your due,

Let some neighbor carve for you. However, we must make some allowance for our duller intellects. If we all had Dean Swift's genius we might all make minute speeches.

NOAH RABY'S GREAT AGE.

HIS 129TH BIRTHDAY

FOR the last thirty-six years Noah Raby has celebrated his birthdays in the poorhouse near New Brunswick, N. J. To-day he will reach the age of one hundred and twenty-nine.

On his previous birthdays at the institution he has held a reception, many people coming to see him, but this year his extreme feebleness has made it necessary to forbid anything of the kind.

The old man, while having no disease, is so weak that it is believed he has not many days to live. It is feared the excitement of seeing visitors would have an unfavorable result. He sleeps almost continuously, and each day his waking periods are shorter.

GEMS AND BIRTH MONTH STONES.

FROM the earliest times gems have been associated in the minds of men with certain attributes. Similarly the astronomical signs of the birth-month were believed to exert influences for good or evil. A natural combination of these beliefs gave rise to a beautiful custom of giving a gem whose influence in conjunction with that of the natal month would benefit and protect the recipient. This custom has, in several parts of the world, survived the changes of ages and centuries.

The language of gems as applied to birthmonth stones is as follows:

January, Garnet, Constancy.
February, Amethyst, Contentment.
March, Bloodstone, Courage.
April, Diamond, Innocence.
May, Emerald, Success in Love.
June, Pearl, Purity.

July, Ruby, Nobility of Mind.
August, Moonstone, Conjugal Felicity.
September, Sapphire, Prevents evil.
October, Ruby, Nobility of Mind.
November, Topaz, Fidelity of Friend-

ship.

December, Turquoise, Prosperous Life.

INTERNAL ORGANS WHICH MAY BE INFLUENCED REFLEXLY BY APPLICATIONS ΤΟ DEFINITE AREAS OF SKIN.

The brain by application to the head, neck, face, hands, and feet.

The nasal mucous membrane, by application to the neck, face, upper dorsal spine, hands, and feet.

The stomach, by applications to the lower dorsal spine and the epigastrium.

The kidneys, by applications to the lumbar region, the lower portion of the sternum, and the feet.

The bowels, by applications to the feet and the abdomen.

The bladder, by applications to the feet and lower abdomen.

The liver, by applications to the lower right chest.

The spleen, by applications to the lower left chest.

The lungs, by applications to the chest, thighs and upper dorsal region.

The uterus, by applications to the lumbar region, the abdomen, the breasts, the inner surfaces of the thighs, the feet, and to the cervix uteri through the vagina.

Ar the present time, when our whole country is literally running wild, as it were, on the "beef question," perhaps a few timely hints as to the general laws of health may not be inopportune. The American people are and have been for years the most abundantly fed people that perhaps ever existed in the world's history. That we eat entirely too much meat, is now admitted by all medical men. The excessive indulgence in a meat diet is the fruitful source of sickness and disease, and many diseases now being entailed upon our people can be traced either directy or indirectly to its indiscriminate use. Aside from the great expense accompanying its use, there are many reasons which can be given why it should be used with greater caution.

While the writer is by no means a convert to the tenets of the vegetarian, there is no doubt in the mind of every thinking man, that the people of the United States do consume an inordinate amount of meat, and the health of the people at large would be very much improved were a more wholesome law regulating the consumption of meat enacted.

Other peoples than the Americans are more economic in their use of meat, as an article of diet. The workingman, one who uses his muscles daily in hard manual labor, undoubtedly requires more meat than a person leading a sedentary life. Hence, the great meat strike which now seems to

be convulsing our entire country, may not be without its good results, and in the end, redound to the health as well as happiness of our entire country.

When the great English novelist, Charles Dickens, visited this country many years ago the thing that most surprised him was that the laboring men of this country had meat on their tables, all they could eat, three times a day. British workmen were satisfied with having meat on their tables. once a week, and only those who were in affluent circumstances thought of having meat more than once or twice a day. The people of the Orient-Chinese, Japanese and others live largely on a diet of rice and a few other vegetables. In point of health and physical manhood they will compare favorably with their English or American neighbors. Nor is this custom of furnishing meat to the laboring classes, confined to merely a few of the foreign countries-Germany, Italy, France, Austria, supply meat to the laboring classes but once a week, most of them living on the simplest kind of food. I was conversing very recently with a German who was raised in the old country, and he informed me that he never had meat but once a week, and with what he called his "black bread," he managed to live and thrive in the best of style. It is an incontrovertible fact that there is no other nation under the sun where the workingman is so well fed as in the United

States. He is the "best fed, best clothed, and best housed" mortal to be found under the sun. I have very grave doubts whether after all this style of living indulged in by our working classes, is as conducive to health, as the old customs of the fatherland. A too exclusive meat diet is the fruitful source of disease and death and the question naturally arises, Are we not losing much and will we not thus eventually become a nation of gluttons and imbeciles?

Meat is the great blood maker, and those who use it to excess cannot as a matter of course be exempt from those diseases which might be avoided entirely were they satisfied with a lighter form of diet. We are called a nation of dyspeptics-why? Partly because we eat entirely too much rich food, and eat too fast-bolt our food, not properly masticating it, and as a result the poor stomach is worn out with extra work and as the food is not properly assimilated the whole body more or less suffers. The excessive use of meat in the diet has a tendency to an inordinate heating of the blood, which under certain circumstances is a most fruitful source of disease—and besides in those who eat exclusively of stimulating flesh food, there is induced an after tendency to lethargy. Such persons become indolent,-the organs perform their functions in a sluggish manner-and as a result we have a condition in the human economy which renders it a ready prey to diseases of various kinds. Not so with those who are more abstemious, and live upon a lighter form of diet.

I think it would be far better for all concerned were we to return to the dietetic habits of our forefathers and live as they lived on good plain, wholesome diet. Where will we find a grander type of physical manhood than was displayed by our revolutionary ancestors? I am satisfied that the great physical endurance of all kinds. they were capable of and compelled to undergo, had its origin mainly in the frugal manner of living so characteristic of the old colonial days. Their lives were undoubtedly prolonged and they enjoyed a robust old

age. Will we not pause and take a practical lesson from these old, sturdy pioneers, or will we go on in our mad career of eating and drinking to excess everything that comes in our way, and at last give to the world a nation of physical and mental degenerates, as a result of an age given over to vice of every kind, and which an avenging God may sooner or later blot out from the face of the earth.

May God speed the day-and may this, the dawning of the twentieth century, be in fact the golden age in everything pertaining to the moral as well as physical elevation of a race, which now seems to be given over wholly to the lusts of the flesh and the accumulation of the almighty dollar.

THE DIETETIC VALUE OF PASTEURIZED MILK.*

BY J. ODERY SYMES, M.D., D.P.H.,

Assistant Physician Bristol General Hospital.

At the present time there seems to be a general agreement that it is inadvisable to feed young infants on cow's milk in its fresh state, even when properly diluted. The reasons assigned are firstly; that if the cow from which the milk is obtained be suffering from tuberculosis or some modified form of diphtheria or scarlatina, then these diseases may be communicated to the child; and secondly, that during the processes of milking and trade manipulation certain pathogenic and putrefactive organisms are added to the milk, and these when ingested may excite general or gastro-intestinal disorders. The question then arises, To what process should the milk be subjected? Is it desirable that it should be pasteurized, boiled, or sterilized? Sterilized milk is milk which has been heated to a temperature of 105° to 115° centigrade and kept at this temperature for a period varying from 15 to 45 minutes. Although for all practical purposes each exposure to high temRepublished from The Hospital.

perature may be regarded as securing absolute sterilization, yet it is not uncommon for certain spore-bearing organisms to survive, and consequently the sterilized milk of commerce will not infrequently be found undergoing decomposition.

The absolute sterility of milk is not, however, altogether a thing to be desired. Nuttall and Thierfelder have shown that young animals fed on sterilized food and kept under aseptic conditions do not flourish and put on weight so readily as do similar animals under natural conditions. Bienstock has pointed out that the Bacillus putrificus (an organism which, by setting up putrefactive changes in food, is a frequent exciting cause of diarrhea) is inhibited by the Bacillus coli and B. lactis aerogenes, so that, by feeding a child suffering from such diarrhea on sterilized milk we may be actually increasing the evil by excluding the aforementioned organisms, the latter of which (B. lactis aerogenes) is always present in untreated milk. Further, the prolonged exposure to high temperature must destroy the natural ferments in the milk, and these it is supposed bear

an

important part in the processes of digestion. Apart from these objections based on biological grounds

there are others based on the chemical alterations which must necessarily follow in milk which has been subjected to a hightemperature. These may briefly be summarized as follows:-In the process of sterilization a scum of coagulable albumen forms, and this, which contains about onefifth of the total amount of casein, is lost, for the scum is generally removed before using the milk (Winter Blyth). Blackader states that the proteids of sterilized milk are modified and rendered less digestible; the combination of saline ingredients with proteids is more or less broken, and the salts rendered less readily absorbed; the citric salts are altered and precipitated, and the emulsion of the milk is altered and rendered less digestible. Some of these changes are of an unimportant nature and would have little effect upon the nutritive

value of the milk, but the effect of the sum total of these alterations is a more serious matter, and there can be no doubt that the nutritional value of the milk suffers materially by the process of sterilization. More than this, there is at least one constitutional disease, namely infantile scurvy, which may be excited by an exclusive diet of sterilized milk. Cheadle, who first described infantile scurvy was of the opinion that it might arise from exclusive feeding on sterilized milk, although the majority of cases were attributable to to farinaceous foods, condensed milk, and humanized milk. Barlow says: "I have had several cases of scurvy in children taking milk sterilized by Soxhlet's process, which takes 40 to 45 minutes." Barton comes to precisely the same conclusion. The arguments which may be brought against the use of sterilized milk do not apply generally to boiled milk, that is milk which has been brought to the boiling point for a minute and then allowed to cool rapidly. A short period of boiling is sufficient to kill all pathogenic organisms which may be present, but does not destroy the spore-bearing saprophytic varieties, which would seem to play some part in the processes of digestion. Milk that has been boiled for a short time does not lose its anti-scorbutic properties, all writers of infantile scurvy agreeing that this disease does not occur amongst children fed solely on boiled milk. The chief objections to boiled milk are that by some children it is not so readily digested, and gives rise to constipation, whilst most children unless brought up from birth upon it object to the taste of the boiled milk. The objections which have been made to the prolonged use of humanized, sterilized, and boiled milks do not apply to the pasteurized product. Pasteurized milk is milk which has been heated for from ten to twenty minutes at a temperature of from 80° to 65° centigrade and which has then been. rapidly cooled to 10° centigrade. Such milk possesses several advantages. Its taste is not altered, chemical analysis shows that its albuminous value is not lessened; but al