ing in most cases either impossible or dangerous, but by introducing agents which render the microbes themselves inert and unable to multiply, and antagonizing or eliminating the toxins which the germs have produced in the system. Failure to cure the disease by destroying the germs has caused the whole germ theory to be questioned by eminent men in the profession, but it has been men who have failed to study the subject with sufficient thoroughness. It is a notorious fact that in rearly every case of diphtheria the pathognomonic germ can be detected in the fauces long after the patient is to all appearances fully recovered. These cases are often the source of a fresh dissemination of the disease.

THE MANAGEMENT OF DIPHTHERIA.

THE season in which this dread scourge is most prevalent is here. It is not difficult to account for its greater prevalence in cold weather. More than half the diseases to which human kind are subject are produced by impure air. House air is almost invariably impure air. During the warmer season children spend much of their time in the open air and houses are necessarily much better ventilated. As cold weather comes on people close down the windows, guard the outer doors and by every possible means shut out "drafts" and doom themselves to six months of dust-laden, germ-permeated and germ-fostering house air. This is the source of the infections and wasting diseases -consumption, diphtheria, pneumonia and typhoid. The subject of ventilation is one on which the densest ignorance prevails. Most people think that in cold weather it is not only allowable but necessary to exclude all outside air, and many who pride themselves on their intelligence and knowledge of hygiene imagine that if they open a transom or a door into a hall that is even more stuffy than the bedroom itself, they are doing wonders in the way of ventilation.

The coming winter, even if the great strike has really been declared off, will be one in which fuel will be almost a luxury— at least costly. It is appalling to contemplate the suffering that will inevitably ensue, not wholly because people will be chilled and frost-bitten, but because thousands will be still more parsimonious in their use of fresh air than is their usual custom. House air, always bad enough, will be rebreathed until it will reek with poison, and the infectious diseases will no doubt have an inning eclipsing anything witnessed in recent years. Among these diphtheria will undoubtedly head the list.

The vital question will arise in the minds of many who have not investigated the more recent method by antitoxin, what to do.

A certain class of medical writers-particularly those who write for popular health journals violently denounce the use of antitoxin as nothing more and nothing less than a scientific form of blood-poisoning. They base their opinions on the earlier experiments which were no doubt with an imperfectly sterilized product.

The weight of recent evidence is in favor of a prompt and unhesitant use of this remedy, and the earlier in the case the better. The chief precaution is to make sure that the preparation emanates from a reliable. house, and that it is reasonably fresh.

FOUR HUNDRED DOLLAR PRIZE.

DR. J. B. MATTISON, Medical Director, Brooklyn Home for Narcotic Inebriates, offers a prize of $400 for the best paper on the subject:

"Does the habitual subdermic use of morphia cause organic disease? If so, what?"

Contest to be open two years from December 1, 1901, to any physician, in any language.

Award to be determined by a committee: Dr. T. D. Crothers, Hartford, Conn., Editor Journal of Inebriety, Chairman; Dr. J. M. Van Cott, Prof. of Pathology, Long

Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, and Dr. Wharton Sinkler, Neurologist to the State Asylum for the Chronic Insane, Philadelphia.

All papers to be in the hands of the Chairman, by or before December 1, 1903, to become the property of the American Association for the Study and cure of Inebriety, and to be published in such journals as the committee may select.

CURE FOR MALARIA-DARKNESS
IS THE LATEST THEORY
TO BE ADVANCED.

We have light cures for various diseases, but for malaria, it would appear, we must go to the opposite extreme and withdraw all light. This suggestion is based on a plausible theory advanced by Dr. A. F. A. King of New York.

The demonstration of the plasmodium as the vera causa of malarial fevers, and the successive sporulations of the parasites as the exciting cause of paroxysms, have exploded many popular and traditional beliefs, and have explained those that experience has established as to the conditions under which these diseases prevail and the means by which they may be prevented, as being simply such as are most favorable to the multiplication of the Anopheles and such as tend to its extermination. But there are still some facts hitherto unexplained pointing to conditions connected with solar phenomena, and not unnaturally ascribed to the sun's heat as the most obvious and palpable of these. But it is not easy to imagine how the parasite can be influenced by external temperatures, since it is itself in a medium, the blood, which is not affected thereby, the pyrexia of the paroxysm being the effect, not the cause of its intermittent activity. *

*

Dr. King puts forward an ingenious suggestion that the actual factor in question is the light, not the heat, of the sun, and that the relative immunity of the very dark and black races of man is due to the lesser trans

lucency of their skins. Celli and Tacchnini had noticed that the years in which the fevers were most severe in Italy were by no means the hottest, though the number of cloudless days was above the average. Jackson remarked that in Jamaica a camp over which a fog hung all day suffered less than did those apparently better situated, and the beneficial effects of several days of heavy rain have often been noticed. Flint states that paroxysms very rarely occur at night, and that, recurring some hours later each successive day, when they fall after dark they are usually deferred to the following morning, when they may sometimes be avoided by the patient lying in bed through the day. The experiments of Harrington and Leaming on the common ameba lend considerable support to this hypothesis, for they found that the ameba "streamed" under the influence of bright sunshine, but still more actively when exposed to red light, whereas the process was arrested in the darkness and was completely inhibited by the violet and ultra-violet rays. Since the skin of all but the blackest races, and especially that of white men, is more or less translucent, it is evident that blood parasites may be susceptible to the influence of the light of the sun, though protected by the constant heat of the body from that of external temperature, and that it is chiefly the red rays that can reach them through the medium of the blood.

Until it shall have been proved that the blood of the negro is darker than that of the white man, and that the color of the latter can be perceptibly altered by practicable dosage with methyl blue or can be made. fluorescent by the administration of quinine, we must forbear following Dr. King in his speculation on these points; but we think that he has made out a fair case for his light theory, and for the trial of what may be called "scototherapy" in the treatment of malarial fevers-that is, of keeping the patient in a dark room, and in the intervals between the attacks of clothing him in garments with linings impenetrable by light. Scientific American.

WON BACK FROM DEATH BY MU

SIC OF HIS BAND.

Music played by his band while he lay on his deathbed brought Bandmaster Samuel D. Pryor back to consciousness and to life, at St. Joseph, Mo. He declared he would recover, and his physicians, who had given up all hope of his recovery, said 't was not a possibility.

Bandmaster Pryor was on his deathbedthere is no doubt about it. While he lay in bed he talked with a man on one side about the business of his band, and with another man on the opposite side of the bed he made arrangements for his own funeral. The physicians had told him that he would diethat possibly he would not live through the day.

On several occasions he had expressed a desire to hear his band play once more, and when all hope was gone the members of the band were told of his desire and of his condition.

They gathered under his window and played softly for the dying man, who had been a father to all of them. The men in the band were dressed in their full uniforms, and as they stood there they constituted Pryor's Military Band of thirty-two pieces. The band is widely known throughout this section and is to the West what Gilmore's Band was and Sousa's Band is to the entire country.

The band played first the favorite of the old bandmaster, "Recollections of the Opera," and Walter D. Pryor, the eldest son of the dying musician, played a cornet solo. Tears were running down his face as he played, and the other members of the band were similarly affected. The old bandmaster heard and was awakened from the stupor in which he lay. He recognized the familiar strains and asked that the men be brought into his room where he shook each by the hand.

Then the musicians went out, certain that they would never again see the old bandmaster alive. Mr. Pryor began to grow better from that hour. The music wrought a change in him which the physicians are un

able to explain. It aroused him when he was dying, and he came back to life and took renewed hope.

"I had not thought of it until I heard the band playing," said Bandmaster Pryor, "but I had promised to go to Europe this fall with Sousa, and I cannot die until I have fulfilled that promise."

Arthur W. Pryor, the trombone soloist now playing with Sousa's Band, is a son of the old bandmaster of St. Joseph. Young Pryor first made a favorable impression on General John A. Logan at a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic in Denver, when he was a mere boy, and since then he has won world-wide fame. It was through Arthur Pryor and on account of his long friendship for Samuel D. Pryor that John Philip Sousa invited him to make a tour of Europe during the coming season as his guest.

Twenty-five years ago the elder Pryor toured the country with a band composed of young women, and his wife played the trombone. She was famous then as a soloist, and her talent in that particular line was transmitted to her son.

The other two sons of the old musician, Walter D. and Samuel A. Pryor, are musicians of great ability and have always played in the bands conducted by their father. An adopted son, "Harry" Montgomery, known as "Harry" Pryor, bids fair to equal Arthur Pryor as a musician and as a soloist.

The elder Pryor was at one time an actor, going on the stage in Denver as a comedian. His success was a surprise to himself, and he might have attained fame in that line, but left the stage to resume the calling he liked best-that of a bandmaster. His success in recent years has been all that he could have desired.

The pathetic incident of Pryor's band playing for him when he was believed to be dying and his subsequent improvement is considered remarkable. He asked that a letter be addressed to John Philip Sousa, notifying him that he will join him when the start is made for the European tour of Sousa's Band.-N. Y. Journal.

SHOTS THAT HIT.

"OFFICERS and men alike must realize in battle that the only shots that count are the shots that hit, and that normally victory will lie with that side whose shots hit oftenest." When the president uttered these words at the commencement exercises of the Naval Academy a few days ago, he preached an all comprehensive sermon, which has its application in every walk of life.

History is but a record of the shots that hit, and the men that aimed them are the successful men, the heroes; the vast majority, which history has refused to notice and the world has forgotten, is made up of those who shot, perhaps countless times, but whose aim was unsteady and who failed to hit the mark.

There are daily instances where the shot goes true and brings success to the marksman. Sometimes it is the result of mere chance; far more often it it the result of years of practice and preparation. Just as the cadets at Annapolis are drilled through a long course so that at the crucial moment, when on the steadiness and accuracy of their aim may depend the safety and honor of the nation, so the world is constantly training men in every vocation that they may be ready when opportunity offers. Envious onlookers may call it luck; they forget the course of preliminary practice. They see the shot going true to the mark, and fail to consider that in its success are numerous failures. They may attempt to duplicate it, as the Spanish nation once tried, only to find that in their unskilful aim the shots go wide.

The successful man, like the victorious nation, is the marksman whose shots hit, and hit oftenest.-Columbus Citizen.

INSURE your family against sickness for the fall and winter.

Germs have developed in your home during the hot weather. Sickness and expense will be avoided if the waste pipes, sinks, closets and cellars are at once purified with Platt's Chlorides, the odorless disinfectant.

HOMESICK.

I WANT to go back to the orchardThe orchard that used to be mine; The apples are reddening, and filling The air with their wine.

I want to wake up in the morning

To the chirp of the birds in the eaves; I want the west wind through the cornfields

The rustle of leaves.

I want the old song of the river, The little, low laugh of the rills; I want the warm blue of September Again on the hills.

I want to lie down in the woodland, Where the feathery clematis shines, God's blue sky above, and about me The peace of the pines.

I want to run on through the pasture And let down the dusty old bars,

I want to find you there still waiting, Your eyes like twin stars.

O nights, you are weary and dreary,

And, days, there is something you lack, To the farm in the little, old valley,

I want to go back.

ALICE E. ALLEN, in September Lippincott.

CANUTE.

NATURE no kingship knows nor lord's es

tate;

Against the sea no sceptre can prevail.

He only rules whose courage cannot fail, And he alone is great whose soul is great.

GEORGE S. SEYMOUR, in September Lippin

cott's.

AMONG the great advancements of medical therapeutics made in recent years, few have attracted such general attention as the improved treatment of chronic heart diseases, as applied at Nauheim, Germany. Nauheim has suddenly become famous, and is now the center where sufferers from chronic heart disease go in steadily increasing numbers in search of relief. According to statistics the number of patients visiting Nauheim amounted in 1895 to no less than 12,000, a large proportion of whom were heart cases. The medical fraternity all over the world seems to have been aroused by the numerous reports of wonderful "cures" there effected; physicians from all parts have gone there to investigate, and the subject has been thoroughly discussed, both in medical societies and journals. This extraordinary interest has in part been due to the fact that the new treatment seemed to upset some of the old established rules for the treatment of these cases, particularly as to exercise. This is only apparently so, as will be shown later. There may have been exaggeration as to results, as is generally the case when some new treatment is "sprung upon" the public, but aside from this fact remains that the Nauheim treatment has come to stay, and is beyond all doubt a very great improvement upon former methods.

But here comes the curious fact that the Nauheim treatment in reality is not new,

*Read before the New York Medical Gymnastic and Massage Society.

but simply the combination of two old methods, each, however, but little known to the world at large, but highly valued where they were in vogue, viz.: Medical gymnastics with massage, and carbonated brine baths. The home of modern medical gymnastics is, as you are all well aware, at the Royal Central Institute of Stockholm, and at this place and also in other parts of Sweden chronic heart disease has been treated by gymnastics with marked success for more than a quarter of a century. This is equally true as to the carbonic brine baths at Nauheim, as shown by Beneke, physician to the baths between 1857 and 1866, in several articles, the most important of which appeared in 1872, since which time patients with heart disease have been going to Nauheim for treatment. Later August Schott published a very important and exhaustive article on the Nauheim baths and their particular action on chronic heart disease. It was, however, not until he adopted the Swedish medical gymnastics as an adjuvant to the treatment by baths that the brilliant results later recorded took place, and thus it is that the combined systematic application of baths and gymnastics is now often referred to as the Schott method. The Schott method has been minutely described in the book on the Nauheim treatment by the English physician, Bezly Thorne. To Heinemann, of New York, belongs the credit of having introduced it in this country.

In describing the treatment let me begin. with the baths. The baths at Nauheim con