MR. DOOLEY ON CHRISTIAN

SCIENCE.

"WHAT'S Christyan Science?" asked Mr. Hennessy.

"'Tis wan way iv gettin' th' money," said Mr. Dooley.

"But what's it like?" asked Mr. Hen

nessy.

"Well, said Mr. Dooley, "ye have something th' matther with ye. Ye have a leg cut off."

"Th' Lord save us!" exclaimed Mr. Hennessy.

"That is, ye think ye have," Mr. Dooley went on. "Ye think ye have a leg cut off. Ye see it goin', an' says ye to ye-erself: More expinse. A wooden leg.' Ye think ye've lost it. But ye're wrong. Ye're well as iver ye was. Both legs is attached to ye, only ye don't know it. Ye call up a Christyan scientist or yere wife does. Not many men is Christyan scientists, but near all women is, in wan way or another. Ye're wife calls up a Christyan scientist, an' says she: Me husband thinks he's lost a leg,' she says.

'Nonsense,' says th' Christyan scientist, she says, f'r she's a woman, too. 'Nonsense,' says she. No man iver lost a leg,' she says. 'Well, 'tis sthrange,' says th' wife. He's mislaid it thin,' she says, 'f'r he hasn't got it,' she says. 'He only thinks he's lost it,' says th' Christyan scientist. 'Lave him think it on again,' she says. 'Lave him raymimber,' she says, 'they'se no such thing in th' wurruld,' she says, 'as pain an' injury,' she says. Lave him to put his mind hard to it,' she says, 'an' I'll put mine,' she says, 'an' we'll all put our minds to it, an' 'twill be all r-right,' she says. So she thinks an' th' wife thinks an' ye think th best ye know how, an' after awhile a leg comes peepin' out with a complete set iv tootsies, an' be th' time th' last thought is expinded, ye have a set iv as well-matched gambs as ye iver wore to a picnic. But ye mustn't stop thinkin', or ye're wife or th' Christyan scientist. If wun iv ye laves go th' rope, th' leg'll get discouraged an' quit growin'. Manny a man's sprouted a limb.

on'y to have it stop between th' ankle an' th' shin because th' Christyan scientist was called away to see what ailed th' baby." "Sure, 'tis all foolishness," said Mr. Hennessy.

MORE ABOUT FORMALDEHYD.

LATELY seeds have been treated with a solution of formaldehyd before planting, serving the two-fold purpose of reducing the amount of decay during germination, and killing the spores of harmful parasites which might attack the plant after germination. It has extensive use in embalming, and has recently been used in treating paving blocks so as to preserve them.

Its most valuable service so far is in general disinfecting for control and prevention of contagious diseases.

As already indicated the usual method is to use the commercial product (in solution) and either allow it to evaporate slowly from sheets hung in the room, or rapidly by driving off the vapor by means of heat. As stated, the former method is overrated because full effects cannot be secured owing to the polymerization into other aldehydes which give the odor without the disinfecting power or properties. The latter method requires the use of heat, usually by means of alcohol, and needs more or less attention.

"The Schering method" is open to criticism because the gas is dry and therefore not a good disinfectant. Abba and Rondelli have found that it has poor penetration, and that it completely disinfects only polished surfaces. (Cent. f. Bak. par. 1, chap. xxvill, p. 377.) Disinfection by making the formaldehyde directly is the most reasonable means both as to effectiveness and economy. Very little more than the amount of wood alcohol required to furnish heat for vaporizing the formaldehyde in solution is needed to furnish the same amount of gas directly. Furthermore, in making the gas in this way (directly) it is accompanied by watery vapor, and a small amount of the vapor of wood alcohol, both of which add to

its efficiency as a disinfectant. No doubt the current of air caused by the heat aids in the equal distribution of the gas and its consequent greater penetration.

It is claimed that formaldehyde is beneficial in the treatment of lung diseases and catarrhal diseases of the throat and nose. A small lamp generating the gas directly furnishes the best means of administration because most easily controlled.

In view of the great usefulness of formaldehyde, particularly as a disinfectant. it would seem that the public in general should be better informed as to its merits and use. While cleanliness is one of the most important factors in good sanitation, periodical destruction of germs in living rooms is almost, if not quite, as important. If this practice should become general, dust would be less dangerous as a factor in the spread of disease.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FELIX G.

PRYME.

From the September Success.

"A ROLLING stone gathers no moss," but it enjoys all the advantages of travel.

When you are growling about your work, think of the poor fellow who has none.

Patriotism, in the mind of a not uncommon citizen, is another name for partizanship.

Obscurity has its compensations; he who flies the highest sometimes falls the farth

est.

You cannot, with much success, judge a man's character by the cost of his Panama hat.

Sometimes the loftiest monument towers above the grave of the poet who starved to death.

Much talk is no demonstration of ability; the noisiest automobile does not always win the race.

The average financial magnate feels that you are taking an unfair advantage when you attempt to engage him in a conversation concerning mental development.

If the camera could photograph our thoughts, how would you like to have your picture taken? I am asking the question of you, the man or woman who is reading this paragraph.

THE MAN-CHASE.

A CONVICT had broken bounds and the dogs were put on the trail, that was still warm. It was an exciting scene. No one was near except a few prison officials in charge of a hundred desperate felons, and I felt the exciting sense of a sentinel on a lonely outpost as the six bloodhounds bounded through tangled forest, baying madly at every leap. Eager was my desire to see the finish. It came soon. The negro's force was spent, and he took to a tree in his effort to save himself from the baying dogs. I could not help thinking of the scene when a 'possum is treed. But I doubt whether the simile occurred to the wretched felon. He had broken off a branch and was desperately lashing Dynamite, one of the finest bloodhounds in the State, whose mouth was only a foot or two below him. Dynamite has been known to climb trees, and to make a spring of ten feet in getting up to the first branches. Then the dogs were called off, and the negro, unharmed, was taken back in less than an hour after he began his run for liberty. Frank Leslie's Popular Magazine.

GETTING RID OF RATS.

COMMON green copperas, pulverized, and thrown pretty plentifully about where the rats travel and also in their holes so they must walk over it, will effectually drive them away, where traps, poisons and cats fail to dislodge the pests. The copperas makes their feet sore and they will speedily leave. This remedy has proven so entirely successful that it is a pleasure to make it known. Country Gentleman.

AMUSING ADVERTISEMENTS.

AN English periodical offered a prize the other day for the best collection of such announcements, and the following is the re

sult:

"Annual sale now on. Don't go elsewhere to be cheated-come in here." "A lady wants to sell her piano, as she is going abroad, in a strong iron frame." "Wanted, experienced nurse for bottled baby." "Furnished apartments suitable for gentlemen with folding doors." "Wanted, a room by two gentlemen about thirty feet long and twenty feet broad." "Lost, a collie dog by a man on Saturday answering to Jim with a brass collar around his neck and a muzzle."

"Wanted, by a respectable girl, her passage to New York; willing to take care of children and a good sailor." "Respectable widow wants washing for Tuesday." "For sale-A pianoforte, the property of a musician with carved legs." "Mr. Brown, furrier, begs to announce that he will make up gowns, capes, etc., for ladies out of their own skin." "A boy wanted who can open oysters with references." "Bulldog for sale; will eat anything; very fond of children." "Wanted-An organist, and a boy to blow the same." "Wanted-A boy to be partly outside and partly behind the counter."-Westminster Gazette.

THE Health Commissioner of the city of New York has applied for an extra appropriation of $10,000 to continue the work commenced in the experiments in the extermination of the mosquito in malarial districts. These attempts to destroy the larvæ of the mosquito by distributing petroleum oil upon the surface of shallow pools and ponds is said to have produced good results in the destruction of the mosquito; but, owing to the large areas involved and which must be treated, it has been found more efficacious to expend time and money on the perfection of drainage of these shallow

water areas.

ERGOAPIOL IN DISEASES OF THE

FEMALE.

BY CHARLES H. SHEPARD, M.D., Physician to Lincoln Hospital, Durham, N. C.

A DEEP and general interest is attached to all knowledge pertaining to the treatment of common diseases of the uterus, to which women are subject, and a vast literature is the outcome of this profound and focussed interest. We live to-day in an age of transition-a period of change. A great many of the former theories in medicine are fast passing away. New medicines are made, achieve a short-lived success, and then pass on to obscurity. This is true most especially in medicines for gynecological diseases. Of the newer remedies it is hard indeed to get one that may be depended upon for long. They soon lose their reputation and potency and are relegated to the past.

We know that all diseases of the womb. have not the same eitology nor the same pathology, therefore they should not all have the same treatment. Far too often the general practitioner groups all these diseases together as one and gives the routine treatment. It is not enough to give anodvne medicines for dysmenorrhea no more that it is sufficient to treat alike all forms of dysmenorrhea.

The operation of curettement has a most important place in these conditions, but like other remedial agencies it has its limitation. When we curette the uterus we rid it of a pathologically obnoxious lining membrane, and afford a normal membrane the opportunity to be formed.

The healthy woman with normal genitalia menstruates regularly and painlessly once a month from puberty to the "turn" of life, except that this regularity is interrupted by pregnancy and afterwards by lactation. Any departure from this rule constitutes an abnormality. normality. Amenorrhea is less frequently met with than dysmenorrhea and irregular menstruation. The present age of transition has brought forth what is popularly

known as the "new woman," and she has brought with her new ideas and practices which in very many cases retard growth and the natural process necessary for perfect health. For leaving the old landmarks, she has to suffer.

The most generally useful medicine in the conditions of amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, irregular, scanty and fetid menstruation, in my judgment, is a preparation of the Martin H. Smith Company of New York, known as Ergoapiol (Smith). In the female ward of the Lincoln Hospital, Durham, N. C., I have used this medicine very extensively, and it has not only never failed to benefit and cure, but I know no remedy with which I could replace it were I deprived of it. Its efficacy may be tested by any physician who properly tries it.

Ergoapiol (Smith) is put up as a small capsule, and is made up of a special form. of apiol which is of the very highest quality. Combined with this are some other most valuable hemagogues and they all go to make a fine preparation. It seems to be a scientific pharmaceutical preparation, nontoxic, tonic, as well as emmenagogue. What I have to say of this preparation is based entirely upon clinical experience, and I feel safe in saying that it will bear a clinical test whenever properly administered.

THE BEST METHOD OF MODIFYING COW'S MILK.

A PROMINENT New England physician. states that, "For the past twenty years it has been my habit in infant-feeding to use one part cream to seven of sterilized water, adding sugar of milk as to taste; this was by far superior to anything I could obtain until I began using Eskay's Albumenized Food, which, added to cow's milk, obviates the necessity of extemporizing as formerly. I have never seen children thrive better than when feeding was restricted to Eskay's Food alone. Nothing more seemed to be required."

BACTERIA WHICH KEEP THE SEA FRESH.

ONE of the most recent discoveries of Professor Hensen, the German State marine biologist, is of bacteria which keep the sea fresh by attacking the surplus organic matter in it. Other researches in Plankton show that in some places the sea is a mass of liquid food, which fish and birds inhale, as it were. Even around the arctic and antarctic poles this minute life exists in such a quantity as to permeate and color the sea. The Nineteenth Century and After.

SIR HENRY THOMPSON ON DIET.

SIR HENRY THOMPSON, who until he relinquished active practice, was the foremost genito-urinary surgeon in Great Britain and worked contemporaneously with Bigelow, is now hale and hearty at the age of eighty-two (Jour. A. M. A.). He is not only a great authority on his own branch of surgery, but also on dietetics. He has just published a remarkable book on "Diet in Relation to Health," in which his personal experience is a striking object-lesson. Thirty years ago, at the age of fifty-two, he gave up alcohol. For the sake of experiment five or six years back, he tried the effect of a claret glass of good wine at dinner every day for two months. Then the sick headaches and pains in the joints from which he had suffered in early life came back until he abstained again. Moreover, "after abandoning alcohol, the joints gradually lost their stiffness and ultimately became as supple and mobile as they were in youth, and continue absolutely so to this day." He adds that his is not a single example, "and really designates a very large class of active men possessing a more or less similar temperament." Half our bodily ills are due, he believes, to improper feeding. The necessity for diminishing the amount of nourishment taken as one grows older is not appreciated. "The extra glass of cordial, the superlatively strong extract of meat, are mistakes." Even the dentist shares in his condemnation. He gives the patient a set of masticators as efficacious as the originals, but he does not warn the patient that the body needs less food than in the heyday of life. Though not a vegetarian, Sir Henry maintains that threefourths of our food should be vegetable. This ensures a lighter and more active brain. The light feeder, after his meal, has fresher wit and more cheerful temper. He does not snore in the arm-chair. Dyspepsia is unknown to him.

NUTS AS FOOD.

NUTS are destined in the future to become more and more sources of food. Their great richness in nutrition, and the ease and cheapness with which they can be given, makes this certain. There is one nut, native to the Hawaiian Islands, called the candle nut, which should be added to our list of imported ones. Speaking of this nut, one of the principal inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands says: "Should you collect some of the nuts you will find them good eating, but I should advise that you stop at one or two, or you will find you have an emetic and a cathartic. The natives roast the nuts in the ashes, and, having removed the shell, crush the kernels to a paste, mixing them with salt and pepper. This is one of the most delicious and appetizing zests imaginable, and is an essential element to a good feed of raw fish and poi. It may be that if some of our enterprising capitalists would go into the manufacture of inimoni, as the natives call this paste, they might find an ever-increasing market for it. It certainly is preferable to the suspicious Russian caviare. The burnt shell of the kukui was used for making an indelible ink, with which tatooing was done. The green husk contains an acrid juice, which has a reputation as a remedy in diseases of the throat. From the bark of the tree there exudes a gum called pilale, which is as useful as gum arabic or gum tragacanth for many purposes. It was also used as medicine by the Hawaiians in cases of dysentery. Being harmless, it could be useful in confectionery in making gum drops and jujubes."

THOSE who talk volubly about their joys and their griefs are not generally those who are capable of the profoundest happiness or the most intense suffering. Those who can put into ready words the sanctities of love, and fluently express all its hopes and fears, have seldom penetrated to its depths. Those who utter glibly and unrestrainedly