OYSTER PATTIE MIKE ON TIP

PING.

To the Editor of the Sun-Sir: Now and again I see complaints in your paper about the habit of tipping waiters. Usually these complaints come from people who want to practise economy. Now, no firstclass hotel can cater to that class of trade and be a success. A first-class hotel is a very expensive institution. In the first place all the material in use has to be first class, and fresh from the market every day. What is not sold must be given away or thrown in the swill. The house cannot afford to shove it out to customers the next day at cut rates, for, if they did, their good customers would become suspicious of them and leave the house at once. This habit of tipping was never instituted by the proprietors or the waiters. Why blame the waiters for the practice? It is the patrons who are responsible. They have inaugurated it, now let them live up to it.

However, there are some tippers who are very annoying to a respectable waiter. By this I mean the bribing tipper. He doesn't tip for the good service he receives but to inspire the waiter to bring him more than his money's worth.

There are three grades of tippers. The first-grade tips because they are satisfied with the service that is what I call a proper tip. Second-grade tippers tip to advertise themselves as good fellows. The third-grade tips because he wants more than his money's worth.

OYSTER PATTIE MIKE,
Formerly of Astor House Rotunda.

。 。

THE ART OF LETTING GO.

Thinking of

mortified or humiliated us. them not only does no good, but it robs us of peace and comfort. The art of forgetting useless things is a great one, and we should learn it at any cost.

It is just as important to learn to let go as to hold on. Anything that cannot help us to get on and up in the world; anything that is a drag, a stumbing-block, or a hindrance, should be expunged from our memory. Many people seem to take a positive. pleasure in recalling past misfortunes, sufferings, and failures. They dwell upon such experiences, and repaint the dark pictures until the mind becomes melancholy and sad. If they would only learn to drive them out, and banish their attempts to return, as they would banish a thief from the house, those painful thoughts would cease. to demand entrance. We want all we can get of sunshine, encouragement, and inspiration.

Life is too short to dwell upon things which only hinder our growth. If we keep the mind filled with bright, hopeful pictures, and wholesome thoughts, the things only which can help us on and up in the world-we shall make infinitely greater progress than by burying ourselves in glowing retrospection.

HOW TO SWEEP AN INVALID'S ROOM.

We all know how untidy a sick room becomes, and how annoying the dust of the sweeping is to the patient. "To remedy this," said a trained and capable nurse recently, "I put a little ammonia in a pail of warm water, and with my mop wrung dry as possible, go all over the carpet first. This takes up all the dust, and much of the loose dirt. A broom will take what is too large to adhere to the mop, and raise no dust. With my dust cloth well sprinkled I go over the furniture, and the room is fairly clean."

DO SOMETHING FOR SOMEBODY.

(WITH apologies to Owen Meredith.) From a poetical but somewhat penurious patron, one of our doctors received this inquiry:

"Doctor, Doctor, can you tell,

What will make a sick man well? Whiskey toddy, ham and eggs— Will these not put him on his legs?" In reply the doctor wrote:

You may live without whiskey, you may live without eggs;

You may live without ham, and live without legs;

But one proposition common horse sense defends

A man doesn't live much if he lives without friends.

So live like a gentleman, and share with your friends

All the good things of life that good fortune sends;

Your wealth and your comforts, your pleasures and pains;

Ambition's successes and each venture's gains.

Then some eye will soften and some heart grow tender

When your race is run. Some one will re

member

That your soul was as warm as your own whiskey toddy

That some of the time you did "something for somebody."-Indiana Med. Jour.

One of the first lessons in life is to learn to be absolute master of one's own mind, to clear it of its enemies, and to keep it clear. A well-trained mind will never harbor thoughts inimical to success and happiness. You have the ability to choose your mind's company; you can call up at will any guest you please. Then why not choose the noblest and best.-Success.

THE TRUTH IN RHYME.

GEO. S. STEWART.

WHO, when tempests loudly roar,
And rain descends with torrent pour,
Goes forth to some poor sufferer's door?
The Doctor!

Who, on the dreadful field of strife,
When carnage round about is rife,
Is seen engaged in saving life?
The Doctor!

Who, when the conflict fierce is spent,
Returns uncrowned, yet quite content
Without a name on glory bent?
The Doctor!

Who, when the King of Terrors dread Lays waste a land, contagion's spread, While others flee, remains instead? The Doctor!

Who, in the Temple's niche of Fame,
Which warriors, statesmen, poets, claim,
Conspicuous is by absent name?
The Doctor!

Who is the last, when all arrayed
Are divers bills with marks of trade,
To be considered or be paid?
The Doctor.

-Baltimore Sun.

LOUIS PASTEUR, THE MAN.

LOUIS PASTEUR is the subject of a fine biographical sketch by Ida M. Tarbell in the June McClure's. The work of this great man can be understood only in relation to his life; and no better brief account than this has been given to English readers of the great scientist who counted his work good only as it might aid in the alleviation of human suffering and redound to the glory of France.

THE HYGIENE OF THE HEATED TERM.

THE season is at hand when many of the menaces to health are much more active than in other portions of the year. Under the influence of heat and moisture the various infectious germs multiply with incomputable rapidity.

Extremes of temperature are more common and there is a tendency to carelessness in the matter of personal exposure. Water that is wholesome during cold weather often becomes contaminated during the heated term. For these among other reasons a few extra precautions will prove to be sanatory economy.

A few condensed hints to our patients may be timely.

As the days lengthen and the dog star dominates, every one, but especially the invalid or semi-invalid, should take account of stock and recompute his bearings.

Look to the water supply. It is the principal source of typhoid, dysentery and digestive troubles. Even the best of the spring waters are not always free from

suspicion. Distilled water is always safe, and every household can now prepare its own at little cost.

Eat less, and lop off such items as are more appropriate for a winter diet.

Eat less meat, less fat, more cereals and fruit, and more fresh, watery vegetables. This will better the health and hurt the beef trust! In short, do not overdo the table, and religiously avoid iced drinks. They inhibit the digestive process, and in this lurks danger. The temptation is great and so is the risk. Avoid it as you would the cholera or the bubonic plague.

Live much in the open and take plenty of exercise, but do not sprint nor do stunts.

Bathe more frequently and wear more porous clothing. Linen is the best underclothing and flannel the best material for outer garments. There are too many sudden changes to warrant the use of too gauzy apparel. But you can accustom your body to more and more airy exposure and thus teach it to help your lungs breathe. Few people breathe enough. Fresh air is your most reliable antiseptic.

Don't start for the doctor or the drugstore every time your toe aches or you sneeze-sneezing is a physiological act and not necessarily a danger signal. It is caused by some transient irritation of the Schneiderian membrane-dust or an odor-quite as often as otherwise.

Protect yourself from mosquitoes lest they pepper you with "malaria.”

Sleep sufficiently and at proper hours, and sleep alone. Two in a bed is one too many-even when amiable!

SCIENCE BY PERCENTAGE.

SOMEBODY had his fling at the inaccuracy of ordinary statistics when he impatiently declared that there were three species of lies-"lies, damned lies, and statistical lies." This is more blunt than elegant, but it embodies an excusable protest against a prevailing evil in scientific literature.

For example, a good many graduatesthe young bumblebees of the profession, biggest when first hatched, amateurs yet in the tadpole stage, hind legs in evidence and caudal appendage still dragging anchorseem to imbibe a mania for statistics. Every child that is born counts one toward a percentage; every individual that dies, or suffers from any particular disease, from rhachitis to rheumatism, helps to pad a table of averages.

So when a prize essay or buncombe thesis to be read (by favor) at the next meeting of some county, state or national society, is undertaken, the author begins by addition and multiplication and ends in division, proportion and percentage. He groups statistics, good, bad and indifferent, reliable and unreliable, by the column, adds the columns into totals and divides the sum by the coefficient of the unknown quantity that is the bete noire of every medical man's mathematics.

The result is a paper so profound that it is inscrutable, and so stupid that its own author goes to sleep reading the galley proof.

It proves, if anybody can stay awake long enough to plod through its mathematical equations, that two and two make four in 99.9 per cent. of all the recorded cases, and that the remaining tenth will undoubtedly be cleared up and satisfactorily accounted for by the end of the next generation.

This is what is meant by the term, Science by Percentage.

A considerable percentage of medical literature is based on this kind of science, and it is therapeutically about as valuable on an average as the binomial theorem or a problem in Euclid that ends in a repeating decimal.

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE.

Every decade, every year and every day that passes adds to the accumulating evidence that the coming practice will give its chief attention to restorative medicine. The battle with the wasting diseases has been a long one. It has exhausted the resources of the pharmacopeia and of the materia medica of all the schools. In the drug treatment of these maladies the progress during a decade has been disappointing if not distinctly retrograde. The new remedies from time to time vaunted with much acclaim have each had a brief day and have been reluctantly shelved. Nevertheless progress has been made. The age may be aptly termed the Renaissance of the Reconstructives. The lesson has been learned that whatever restores the vital economy to its normal vigor and condition is curative in all these cases, and no treatment is successful that does not distinctly recognize this fact.

The enthusiastic and ambitious efforts to to eradicate the more formidable of these diseases by destroying the germs has proved a disastrous failure. It even begins to be asked whether the germs are in every case causes, or in many cases merely concomitants.

There is no

Take the infective diseases. doubt but that every human being in the civilized world is sooner or later and frequently exposed to the sources of infection, be they germs, spores, toxins, ptomains, or infectious dust; and that those only are susceptible in whom the vital tone has been lowered by the depressing and prolonged influence of unfavorable environment, or as the result of some acute attack that has left the organism enervated and therefore susceptible. That each case is not followed by an epidemic is because a majority enjoy normal vigor, live in fairly favorable environment and are as a direct consequence of these conditions insusceptible.

Every morgue and dead-house produces abundant evidence that a large number of those dying of other diseases or of accident

have at some time in their history been the subjects of degenerative infection, but that by means of recuperative influences they have been able to overcome them.

The susceptibility to infection, for want of a better term, is usually called a cachexia. When a depreciated, depraved or exhausted system recoups its energies to the required degree the cachexia is said to be thrown off, and the patient recovers.

Tuberculin,

But there are no specifics. creosote, guaiacol, and the antitoxic serums, from which so much was anticipated, have all proved a broken reed. When not ineffective they have been found dangerous to the patient. It is of no use to destroy the germs if the means used also proves fatal to the patient.

The profession is slowly and reluctantly but steadily falling back upon the demonstrated and fundamental principles of therapeutics. Thinking physicians are dropping the use of palliatives and placebos and are substituting the building-up process in all cases of the wasting diseases. They are rejecting the many far-fetched and muchlauded remedies, and relying only on such "tonics" as have stood the test of time and retained their preeminence as restoratives throughout the passing years. In conjunction with hygiene, sanitation, sunshine and outdoor living, they are looking to the nutrition of the patient. This is the foundation of all successful treatment, whether at home, at climatic resorts or in sanatoria. In short, an open-air life and a regulated dietary are the main resources.

Climate and environment alone are not sufficient. They are valuable adjuvants and should be invoked as far as possible in every case. But there are thousands of cases in which a radical change of climate and environment is not feasible. In fact the benefits of a new and more favorable climate are beyond the reach of a large majority of invalids. It is for this large army of sufferers that nutrition alone becomes the sheet-anchor. And it is wonderful what a transformation for the better can be brought about by a judicious combination of easily

appropriated nutrition and a judicious selection of moderately stimulating tonics.

There could be no happier blending of these properties than has been provided in Colden's Liquid Beef Tonic. It is a nutritive par excellence, and it contains just those tonic principles which have won and retained their reputation ever since the Princess of Cinchon, as a result of her own restoration to health, made known the virtues of Peruvian bark.

With its nutritive and tonic properties is added just that degree of stimulation, by means of the finest brandy, that is so often required to bring a jaded or depressed system up to normal function, to enable it to recover lost vigor and throw off disease.

It is found especially available after typhoid, la grippe, and pneumonia; but it is equally valuable after vital exhaustion of any kind and from any cause.

BORIC ACID IN ORANGES AND LEMONS?

THE following item appears among the editorial notes of the Medical Record of June 7.

In all chemical modesty we would ask whether the standard analyses of fruits and food products are to be ruthlessly set aside by every "professor" at will; and whether the next announcement will put oxalic acid in our apples and-why not?-carbolic acid in our plums?

We emphatically object. We have become acclimated to malic, tartaric and citric acids, and want boric acid kept out of our oranges and all other fruits. Furthermore, when was it discovered that boric is an organic acid?

Stand up, Professor, and tell us that!

This is the item: The German Sanitary Department, after an examination extended over a long period, and an exhaustive series of experiments, has decided that the use of boric acid or borax preparations to the extent necessary for the preservation of meat