events which are afterward fulfilled." In one of these visions he "discovered the science of osteopathy." The Shaman (or medicine-man of the races that have passed slightly beyond the lower fetichic stage) used to haye visions before his patients, whereafter, to quote Burns: "Baith thur disease and what well mend it At ance he tells it." Judging from the case he reports, Smith is not far behind his chief in "seeing visions." Hogarth, when he ridiculed Madam Mopp and bonesetting, little thought

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... hat her pretenses would reappear in a pre¬ sumedly enlightened Anglo-Saxon land a century later, thanks to the control of legislators through lax incorporation acts permitting banks to loan money on the wild-cat stock of rupture-cure "systems," and "med¬ ical institutes" or "colleges" for the manufacture of osteopaths. This Association has just completed its seventh annual meeting at Harrisburg, Pa., under the presidency of Dr. W. T. Bishop of that city. The scientific business of the meeting embraced a wide range of subjects extending from committee reports on the standardizing apparatus for the medical use of electricity to wider considerations of the expenditure of electric energy in therapeutic applications and its special uses in various diseases. Among the subjects of a practical nature that were considered were the value of electricity in the uric acid diathesis by Drs. Robert Newman and J. G. D. Davis of New York. Goiter and its treatment by electricity was considered by Dr. Caleb Brown of Iowa, the chief point made being the easy curability of the earliest manifestations of this affection in young girls and the neglect of physicians in instituting treatment at this stage. An interesting point was raised by Dr. Coover of Harrisburg as to the value of electricity in impending heart failure. In the discussion it was brought out that the members present thought elec¬ trization of any nerve trunk, particularly the pneumogastric, unwise, but that any faradic brush battery, or even the severed wires of an alternating house-lighting current of 100 volts made to press lightly on the bare skin would act as a valuable stimulant by reflex action. The most novel feature of the meeting was the pre¬ sentation, by Dr. Massey of Philadelphia, of a paper on a new treatment of cancerous growths, the essen¬ tial element of which was the cataphoric injection of mercury, in a nascent condition of its oxychlorid, into the cancer in such massive doses as to cause a death of the cancer cells. It was claimed that this method permitted the minutest prolongations of the cancerous infiltration to be followed by the mercury-laden cur¬ rent, which caused death and absorption of cancer cells beyond the point where all the tissues were killed by the very strong current used. A paper by Prof. Dolbear of Tufts College, Boston, on " The Molecular Effects of Electricity," was most interesting to merely practical ears and was an invi¬ tation to wider views of the possible control that may be exerted by electric currents over normal and abnormal nutritive processes. To the Editor:\p=m-\To one who takes a little dip into the history of medical quackery (there are all sorts), the methods all seem so threadbare. Each new "boon to humanity" is such a wearying repetition of the last that it would seem nothing new could possibly be developed. Perhaps this is true, but as far as one with a limited education in medical history can see, the present popular plan of the nostrum-vendors and quack discoverers within our ranks, of ignoring the laity directly and preying upon the gullible portion of the medical profession, is no less than a grand glorious inspiration. All quackeries have "worked the profession," but as a specialty I believe this is new. Many of us are familiar with the more conspicuous (not more successful) of these gentry, but even with the most suspicious of us in the beginning these quacks are hard to detect. The pages of many of our journals teem with the advertise¬ ments of pharmaceutic nostrums, patent and proprietary, some few of slight value or convenience perhaps, but the vast bulk of them flared forth with bright labels and catchy names, dif¬ fering in no particular from the nostrums offered the laity : Beautiful waters to dissolve stone ; devitalizing phosphates of many brands-"jingoine," "hurraho" and the like. There is hardly any doubt that the long humbugged and suffering laity swallow yearly a much larger amount of patent cure-alls on prescriptions from their confiding family physicians than they do of the much decried, open and above board nostrum, whose sole support is the certificate of the elderly female in Oshkosh, who sends her portrait with it to show that she has an honest face. It is not, however, of these I would speak at present, but of the well disguised commercial gentlemen within our ranks. These, according to the letter of code are in good standing ; they belong to all medical societies and are so prominent and ever present in the columns of the medical press that one, the least unsuspicious or ethically near sighted, is apt to be overcome by them before he knows it. Why is our army of confiding innocents so large and what convenient remedy (necessarily a nostrum, they would take no other) can we offer them? What Widal's ear marks whereby they may know these germs they fatten? This army is large because of the state of medical education. A large proportion of the practitioners of the country were edu¬ cated before there were any laboratories; or in the cheap Downloaded From: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ by a Osaka University User on 05/27/2015