aromatised sugar and white of egg, in the manner in which confectioners make their "iceing" for cakes, and dropping on a tile from the truncated end of a paper cone, portions of the mixture suitable for a dose, they soon dry when exposed to the air, and will be eagerly sought after by children.

In prescribing mixtures oftentimes a bitter salt or alkaloid might be dissolved in sirup of ginger, or of tolu, or of lemons, instead of simple water, as is most commonly done.

Quinine is more soluble in glycerine than in water, and may be administered in that vehicle without the addition of an acid.

Many very bad tasted salines may be rendered palatable, or, at least, not so disagreeable as usual by dissolution in water charged with four or five times its volume of carbonic acid gas. Sea water itself is said to be rendered quite an agreeable purgative draught by being so administered.

FOR CHAPS.-Cold cream, mixed with half its weight of glycerine and one-fiftieth of finely powdered camphor, is an admirable remedy for these unwelcome chaps.

An intelligent and reliable correspondent has sent us a paper containing the advertisement of a traveling aurist and dentist, with a testimonial appended, signed by Dr. Spilman and others. We have no doubt that our old friend, Dr. S., has become in this instance the victim of some ingenious form of imposition. Probably his generous impulses have led him astray. At all events, the character of the information we have received, and the source from whence we obtained it, lead us to suppose that

he has been grossly deceived, and thus has permitted the influ ence of his good name to be prostituted to a purpose he would be among the last of men to approve. Under favor of this particular instance of it, we would take occasion to call the attention of the profession to "certificate mongering" in general, which, in various forms-some of them very covert and unsuspected-is doing a great deal among us to sustain pretensions which would otherwise obtain no countenance.

Joseph C. Neal once remarked that there were but two kinds of people in the world-one was a "mouse-kind, and the other a "cat-kind," and that the latter fed upon the former.

There are no more decided manifestations of a disposition to prey upon their fellows, than are exhibited in the characters of those who have reduced the business of obtaining signatures, or plying the arts of the parasite, to a science. In the commercial world, a man with some credit, some capital, and an unusual amount of kindness and pliability of feeling, will be found out by men who are not so fortunate in their financial status, but who are worthy specimens of the genus "felis," sometimes combining the stealthiness and rapacity of the cat with canine servility, and before the unfortunate individual of the mouse species is fairly aware of the fact, he is converted into a "Certificate man," and sooner or later is called upon to take up the protested bills of his proteges. Just so in our profession: men with but little professional or moral merit, foist themselves upon those who are more fortunate in possessing a share of both, and adroitly procure their indorsement, either verbal or written, and the innocent doctor of the "mus" species is ultimately astounded when he is called out of his quiet hole in the corner to give an injured profession his reasons for having patronized a quack, and given countenance to unprofessional and disgusting trickery. The one of these two characters deserves our pity, mixed, it may be, with a spice of contempt for his weakness; the other, our execration for having taken advantage of native kindness for the furtherance of his own selfish and impudent purposes. "Certificate men" abound in our land generally, indeed, prompted by the better impulses of humanity, but not unfrequently actuated by less worthy motives such as a particular private gain, or the gratification of a corroding pique, all equally mischievous in results, though far

from being equally culpable. We know them of all these various classes, and we know also some that they indorse, and can testify that few exhibitions of selfishness and fawning hypocrisy are more revolting to our taste and moral judgment than that presented by those men, who, to bolster up their equivocal professional reputations, play satellites to some one whom they acknowledge as their superior, until they win his permission to use and abuse his respectable name to sustain their own unfounded pretensions, and broken-winded characters. We do not aspire to the position of detectives in medical ethical police, but would be gratified with some excuse sufficient to relieve us of the charge of procuring indecent exhibitions, when we lift the curtain and show these cunning artists, both high and low, in the very act of working their wires, and accompany the spectacle with a brief history of their machinations, certificate vending, and utter disregard of professional honor for the past

year.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

We are indebted to the publishers, Messrs. Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia, for a copy of Gerhard on Diseases of the Chest. Fourth edition. 1860. This is an octavo volume of near 450 pages, printed and illustrated in the highest style of art. We recommend it to our readers as one of the latest and very best authorities upon the very important class of diseases of which the author treats.

Our thanks are likewise due to Messrs. Morton & Griswold, of this city, for a copy of Parrish's Practical Pharmacy. This work is designed as a guide to the dispensing druggist and practical pharmaceutist, while to the physician who compounds his own medicines, it will be found a valuable assistant in enabling him to arrive at the important desiderata of preparing his remedies so that they will be most efficient, most palatable, and best preserved.

Dr. R. Griscom, of New York, will also accept our acknowledgments for a copy of the report of the Third National Quarantine and Sanitary Convention. This report contains many valuable papers, of which we promise extended notices when more time and space are at our command.

Such as have not known the cares and anxieties of editorial life, and who desire to spend their nights in rest and their days. in peace, will do well to remain covered by the veil of ignorance, for the delights of knowledge are dependent upon the kind of knowledge you attain and the price at which it is purchased. One year ago we determined to strike out upon the sea of medical politics, with no other chart than a conscience void of offense, and a sense of professional honor and dignity which we determined to uphold at any and every hazard. How faithfully we have adhered to that determination others must decide. How faithfully we have performed the promises made in our salutatory others must determine. We have not to reproach ourselves with wrongs intentionally committed, or justice withheld, but we must confess that some professional derelictions and conduct in high places have not been criticised as perhaps they should have been. Our silence in this respect has been misconstrued, and cotemporaneous journalists have wielded weapons which we would have used, but from a morbid delicacy which no longer controls us;-thanks to many flagrant violations of ethical propriety for its removal. When our batteries do open they will not open upon a pigmy tribe, skirting the margin of a circle, whose center lights up with smiling benignity when the fawning voice of adulation or the cringing praise of toadyism plays court to vanity. We will fire upon the center itself, and lift the curtain from corruption. Breaches of propriety which have only local effect must, of course, pass by; but there may be others more diffusive, in which, perhaps, the whole profession will be interested.

To those gentlemen who have encouraged and sustained us by counsel and subscription, we tender our sincere appreciation of their kindness and good will. Some have thought that we were more plain than pleasant in our language. This we expected; but when we offered our columns for reply, they had no right to complain because we did not think proper to enter into a private correspondence upon printed and public topics, emanating from public men. Anonymous communications we have not inserted-none but moral cowards write them. Of course, we allude to such as are to us anonymous. Parties, therefore, who have written them will find their answer now, if their own conscience have not forestalled us and rendered the reply unnecessary.

Our editorial department has not been as full as we intended it to be, but absence and illness deranged our plans.

Semi-Monthly Medical News.

YO. I.

LOUISVILLE, KY., DECEMBER 15, 1859.

NO. 24.

RUPTURE OF VAGINA-ABDOMINAL SECTIONDEATH OF PATIENT.

BY SENIOR EDITOR.

I was called at 9 o'clock, p. m., on the 7th April, to see a colored servant girl, aged 28, in labor. She had reached the full period of pregnancy, and had experienced uterine pains for three hours. She was of average stature, much inclined to. obesity, and in appearance very robust.

The following history of the patient was obtained:

She had, previous to marriage, suffered from dysmenorrhoea, but since that time had enjoyed excellent health. Her first child was still-born at full term. She had borne one living child from her second gestation-had miscarried about the second month of the third pregnancy; had then given birth to two full term fœtuses at successive periods, both of which were in a state of incipient putrefaction. Her labors had always been protracted and painful, but her recoveries had been ordinarily good.

She had now arrived, as stated, at the full period of her sixth pregnancy. Her health during gestation had been unusually good. She had complained of nothing, except an occasional pain in her side, and once or twice of hysterical choking. Her bowels had been twice evacuated during the afternoon, and free discharge of urine occurred shortly after I entered the

room.

Upon examination I found the mouth of the uterus dilated over two inches in diameter, the lips of the os not rigid, and the vagina moist and apparently healthy. The pelvic canal was ample, and without impediment of any description to the progress of labor.

VOL. 1, No. 24—47