Protective Association THE ORGANIZED AT WINNIPEG, 1901 Under the Auspices of the Canadian Medical Association HE objects of this Association are to unite the profession of the Dominion for mutual help and protection against unjust, improper or harassing cases of malpractice brought against a member who is not guilty of wrong-doing, and who frequently suffers owing to want of assistance at the right time; and rather than submit to exposure in the courts, and thus gain unenviable notoriety, he is forced to endure blackmailing. The Association affords a ready channel where even those who feel that they are perfectly safe (which no one is) can for a small fee enrol themselves and so assist a professional brother in distress. Experience has abundantly shown how useful the Association has been since its organization. The Association has not lost a single case that it has agreed to defend. The annual fee is only $2.50 at present, payable in January of each year. The Association expects and hopes for the united support of the profession. We have a bright and useful future if the profession will unite and join our ranks. EXECUTIVE. President-R. W. POWELL, M.D., Ottawa. Vice-President J. O. CAMARIND, M.D., Sherbrooke, SOLICITOR F. H. CHRYSLER, K.C., Ottawa, Send fees to the Secretary-Treasurer by Express Order, Money Order, Postal Note or Registered letter. If cheques are sent please add commission. PROVINCIAL EXECUTIVES. ONTARIO E. E. King, Toronto; I. Olmsted, Hamilton; D. H. Arnott, London; J. C. Connell, Kingston; J. D. Courtenay, Ottawa. QUEBEC F. Buller, Montreal; E. P. Lachapelle, Montreal; J. E. Dube, Montreal; H. R. Ross, Quebec; Russell Thomas, Lennoxville. NEW BRUNSWICK-T. D. Walker, St. John; A. B. Atherton, Fredericton; Murray MacLaren, St. John. NOVA SCOTIA-John Stewart, Halifax; J. W. T. Patton, Truro; H. Kendall, Sydney. PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND-S. R. Jenkins, Charlottetown. MANITOBA-Harvey Smith, Winnipeg; J. A. MacArthur, Winnipeg; J. Hardy, Morden. NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES-J. D. Lafferty, Calgary; M. Seymour, Regina. BRITISH COLUMBIA-S. J. Tunstall, Vancouver; O. M. Jones, Victoria; A. P. McLennan, Nelson. Published on the 15th of each month. Address all Communications and make all Cheques, Post Office Orders and Postal Notes payable to the Publisher, GEORGE ELLIOTT, 203 Beverley St., Toronto, Canada. VOL. XXV. TORONTO, DECEMBER, 1905. No. 6. COMMENT FROM MONTH TO MONTH. The province of Ontario has ever been to the fore as regards its public school system; and now that the province has a Minister of Education who is a physician and, therefore, can appreciate some matters in connection therewith, more than others, and having in mind also the fact that the entire school system of the province is to be enquired into at a near-by date, a consideration of one aspect of the subject which is of very material value will be timely at this instant. The subject has been brought to our attention at this particular moment by what is virtually a "sweating" system, using the term in no figurative sense. A boy of twelve, after his attendance at school regularly, has two or three hours of nightwork assigned him to prepare at home, and the result is that he has been having profuse night-sweats, and the cause can be traced to nothing but excessive nerve activity. This has been amply proven by withdrawing the boy from his studies when the night-sweats ceased. This continuous brainwork and nerve excitement would in time break and forever damage the constitution of all except the very hardiest; and the process is even in them a decidedly dangerous as it is most certainly a pernicious one. This villainous cramming system is well known to medical men as a strong etiological factor in the production of hysteria, chorea and other nervous disorders, to say nothing of undermining the physical health of the child and so preparing the way for other serious ailments. One question for a Commission on Education to enquire carefully into would be as to how these baneful influences which are on the increase and constantly working havoc with the nervous systems of school children could be guarded against; and no doubt any such enquiry should go along the lines of educating parents, guardians, nurses, and especially the teachers themselves, particularly in our large cities, of the danger of continually subjecting the immature nervous systems of these young children to the constant excitement, strain, and mental activity, which is the accompaniment of our common school education. Dr. William Townsend Porter has probably investigated and given more study to the influences of school life, which go to produce these all too common neuroses of childhood, than any one else. His extensive researches demonstrate that children who are advanced in their studies have greater weight, greater height and greater girth of chest than those who are not so far advanced in their studies but of the same age. He would establish then a physical as well as a mental examination, and would prohibit the entrance of a child into a given class until his mental and physical condition corresponded to his associates in that class. A child physically weak will not be, in the great majority of instances, capable of keeping pace with his class, and in the effort to do so will be all too often spurred on by appeals to his young ambitions and possibly by threats of physical punishment, both tending to work upon an already over-tried nervous system, and hence the calamitous results. As Dr. Porter then points out, there should be a great deal of importance attached to a methodical examination of the physical system as well as the mental, which still further emphasizes the need of medical inspection in the schools of the large cities where our social systems have assigned more excitement, strain and mental activity than in the quieter rural districts. It is the opinion of well-informed neurologists that such a system would be a preventive measure of the greatest value, and that many children would be thereby spared from the clutches of many neuroses. There is another factor which must not be lost sight of and which tends to act as a fore-runner to neurotic diseases. The seats in our schools, the desks, the light, the ventilation are all designed to produce health and physical well-being; and we presume, there is the ever-watchful eye of the teacher to correct any abnormal positions. At home with two or three hours of nightwork, where all these prime and essential factors are neglected, the good that may be accomplished in the day-time is counteracted at night, and thus the evil cycle proceeds on its way. Time and again, physicians, as well as others, have had exhibited to them clever, "precocious" children who, in later life, turned out to be physical nervous wrecks or subjects of tubercular disease; and so the desire for mental strength predominates the desire for physical strength to the infinite disaster of both. The subject is one which may well commend itself to any Commission the Government may choose to issue, and is one which may possibly properly be met by a wise system of medical inspection of schools, especially in towns and cities. The site which has been mentioned for the new Toronto. General Hospital, inasmuch as it is on a prominent car-line, and may some day have another alongside its western or eastern boundary, seems not to be an ideal one. Rest and quiet are often two good productive factors in hastening a return to normal health, and in the location of a hospital should have careful and full consideration. Street cars dashing past when making a stethoscopic examination of either the heart or lungs cannot be very conducive to proper examination; and patients when distracted with pain crave for quietude. The Medical News, New York, makes editorial announcement in its Nov. 11th issue, that after the first of the year the publication of that journal will be assumed by the publishers of the New York Medical Journal, which only a few years ago attached the Philadelphia Medical Journal to itself. It is sixtytwo years since the well-known house of Lea Brothers & Company founded The Medical News, and it has had an honorable career and has been a credit to American medical journalism. The merger makes of the New York Medical Journal a powerful consolidation of three well-known medical journals, and will, no doubt, be appreciated by its numerous subscribers. It is understood that Dr. Frank Foster, the veteran medical editor, will continue to be editor-in-chief of the consolidated journals. A Gonorrhea is a disease in the treatment of which every one has had his successes as well as his failures. The reason for this may lie in the fact that most may be prone to forget at times to treat the patient for gonorrhea, and consequently fall into routine treatment of the disease. It is said to be a self-limited disease and that, without any other treatment than rest in bed, diet and hygiene, a complete cure will be effected in from five to eight weeks. If such be the case, all the best-and there is no best -treatments are of practically no more use than, and probably not as much, as hot water. Medicines have been given internally and by injections galore; urethral irrigation has been practiced and the result is that we get no nearer than telling our patient that he cannot be cured under, practically, six weeks Like some one said once of rheumatism, the best cure for this disease is "six weeks." And a writer in the Buffalo Medical Journal has had experience and so states his dictum. It is certaily not to our credit and is humiliating to have to tell a patient that we cannot effect a cure under six weeks, the prescribed time in all text-books, and about the time from all practical experience. Every physician will tell you, as he has told the patient, that if he takes to bed and rests, a cure will most likely result the sooner. But what patient will take to his bed? None. Because rest in bed being recognized by the profession as an essential factor to effect a rapid cure, is not insisted upon; for the physician, instead of ordering all the treatment, practically allows the patient to order the most important part of it, simply because the patient does not think he is sick enough to go to bed, and naturally shrinks from the ever-inquisitive friend: “What's the matter with you?" As one of the social diseases, then, which all surgeons know causes unlimited damage to numberless women, to say nothing more of its far-reaching and disastrous influence, is the profession doing its proper duty by treating patients with this disease as it now does? Should they, when the disease accomplishes in such short time such hellish ravishes in womankind, continue to be assistants to their patients in the treatment of their disease? In practically no other disease does the patient hold the whip-hand; for it amounts to that. The general principle of REST in this disease whilst recognized as of essential importance cannot be enjoined upon the patient until it has become an established and a universal practice by the profession. An interesting and instructive article appears as our initial paper this month. It is on "Trachoma and Immigration—Our |