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The literary work was decidedly better than that of last year, and, while we have not reached a point of excellence where we would be willing to rest our reputation, it is a matter of immediate concern that, having finished the laborious task of entering into the possession of a new territory, we should not rest here, but show by our actions that the higher cultivation we have been aiming at, and to which we have tacitly committed ourselves, is about to be practically demonstrated.

The number present exceeded 250, including the 72 applicants for license, and all these were not only cared for, but bountifully entertained by the hospitable citizens. For all this, there was felt a lack of facilities for personal interviews, such as a large hotel offers. Such intercourse is not only pleasant, but indispensable to that thorough interchange of views necessary to shape the policy of such a large body as the North Carolina Medical Society with its important auxiliaries.

On every hand we heard the Board of Examiners commended for its unselfish and impartial labors. We cannot imagine a more severe taxing of the brain than a week's work in examinations. The intensest strain the practitioner has to endure in anxious obstetrical and surgical operations do not exceed the wearing toil in this work, and that seven gentlemen can be found to serve six years at it, is a striking manifestation of the earnestness with which our physicians have set their hearts upon professional advancement. The new Board will undoubtedly ascend the higher plane which their predecessors have wrought out for them, aud in their turn still farther advance the standard. We have safely passed the period of experimentation, and we can safely offer to our dear old mother, Carolina, our finished work as an earnest of what we still have it in our hearts to do towards compelling the education of those who are to be our successors.

The election of officers in open meeting by ballot has been forecast in a resolution now lying on the table until the Asheville meeting. It should be seriously discussed, because it may involve the destiny of the Society. It is not new. The Society formerly conducted its elections by ballot in open meeting, and found it best to abandon it, and our action was simultaneous with that of the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and most of the flourishing societies in this country. The

reasons are that elections beget the spirit of party politics, consume time, and at last succeed in selecting the most popular man, and this result may be most prejudicial. In a Society receiving large accessions as ours does each year, it is necessary that we should give ourselves time to assimilate this new material before we devolve upon them the important task of selecting the higher officers. These new members must have time to know the history and traditions of our work, and to know the men and the means necessary to continue a healthful succession. Furthermore, as the matter stands, at every yearly session we have an election hereafter, one year for two members of the North Carolina Board of Health, the next year for two for the Board of Examiners. In this new order of things we will consume quite enough time of the sessions in elections, and we cannot increase this without cutting short the time, now already too limited (witness the increasing number of papers read by title and referred) in which we receive scientific literary contributions. The time now much needed for the discussion of the several papers presented is altogether too short. Lastly, the old method of nominating by committee has given us a line of officers, with hardly an exception, who have been imbued with our traditional necessities and inspired with the ambition of future successes. These are some of the reflections which have been suggested by the proceedings of the Oxford meeting, and we hope our readers will give us the benefit of their reflections during the year.

OUR NORTH CAROLINA DOCTORS.-Our esteemed contemporary, the Boston Medical and Surgical, reprints from the Raleigh Chronicle an extract which we are glad its keener eye caught before us. Speaking of the late meeting of the Medical Society of North Carolina, it says: "There is no profession in the State that stands higher-and deservedly so-than the medical profession. Learned, kind, sympathetic, benevolent, they are an honor to the Commonwealth, and deserving of all the esteem and love that an affectionate and grateful people can show to the best product of their civilization."

REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES.

FEVER, THERMOTAXIS AND CALORIMETRY OF MALARIAL FEVER. By Isaac Ott, M.D.

We have had before us for sometime this stout pamphlet from the pen of Dr. Ott, stndying the exceedingly interesting laboratory experiments on the profoundest of all subjects and the most interesting of all subjects, and we may add the most subtle of all subjects-fever. The profession owes a great debt to such plodders in the scientific realm, but they hardly give just weight to the influence that such studies have upon our theories.

Dr. Ott's experimental researches lead him to believe that fever is due to an agent from within or without which deranges the harmony of the thermotaxic, thermogenetic and thermolytic apparatus, by which in the initial stage the metabolism of the tissues. usually temporarily increased, and this increment is usually greater than that generated upon a restricted amount of increment. It is highly probable that during the chill heat dissipation is temporarily diminished, but it usually follows the fluctuations of heat production.

Again, he says: "High temperature does not cause gravity in fever, for in nervous disorders and in relapsing fever we have high temperatures of 106° F. and no serious symptoms are present. High temperature is an indication of danger in specific fever, not the cause of it. But temperature is only a part of a specific fever, there are many other morbid processes going on, the essence of which has not been grasped."

The experiments are detailed upon which he bases his deductions, and will bear the scrutiny of physiologists and pathologists.

The instrument designed by the author for the study of the calorimetry of malarial fever he describes and figures. Heretofore the fever phenomena have been studied only from a leg or arm-his studies were made from the whole body.

There is an additional paper on the "Thermo-Polypnoic Centre and Thermotaxis." Some of his conclusions are "that the thermotaxic centre situated in the gray matter at the most anterior part of the third ventricle is the same of the thermo-polypneic [centre of Richet] polypnoea is a function of the thermotaxic centre." "That in fever neither increased production nor decreased dissipation, nor

high temperature arc necessary, but that fever is mainly a disease of thermotaxic disorder of the four basal thermotaxic centres. It is true that in septic fever, in its initial stage, heat production usually runs temporarily ahead of dissipation, but exceptionally both are immediately diminished.

That antipyretics, as a rule, neither inhibit nor excite metabolism in a direct manner, but act upon the thermotaxic centres disordered by fever, to restore order or normal thermotaxis."

CYCLOPEDIA OF THE DISEASES OF CHILDREN, Medical and SurgICAL. By John M. Keating, M.D. Philadelphia:

J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1890.

Vol. III.

Our readers already know that we think well of this superb American work, and we trust that they have been adding the volumes to their libraries. This volume is of great importance, covering the Diseases of the Digestive System, which is by far the most important of all the practice we have to do with children. The second part treats of the Diseases of the Urinary Apparatus. The separate treatment of the Blood, its diseases and the diseases of the blood-making organs would seem at first glance to have no special connection with children, but, after treating a few cases of leukemia, he would gladly find here much that would elucidate his study of his cases. In fact, Dr. Griffith's article on The Blood is full of interest to the student and the practitioner, and gives the latest and the best of all the valuable studies which the microscope has revealed.

Much in the department of Surgery is common to all good works on Surgery, but the editor has had the good fortune to obtain articles on general Surgery and Orthopedic Surgery of such good quality that it will prove acceptable, and not seem out of place in a special work on diseases of children.

The illustrations in the book are excellent, the paper and presswork of a character to delight the eye, and the binding to make it serviceable. Upon the whole, this Cyclopedia easily takes its place with the best work that has been done in this country.

A TREATISE ON ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY. By Edward H. Bradford, M.D., and Robert W. Lovett, M.D. Illustrated with 789 Wood Engravings.

A careful examination of this volume convinces us that it is just

the work the profession has been wanting for the past few years. The excellent book of Dr. Sayre on the same subject is unique and strongly marked by the individual impress of its author and had no equal in its day. In this volume we have a more elaborate consideration of the subject, both in curative and preventive surgical therapeutics, and a better representation of the whole field of orthopedics as practiced by the numerous younger surgeons who have so intelligently followed, and received the stimulation of their impetuous master-Sayre.

The activity of the human brain has no more admirable manifestation than in its application of surgery-mechanical and operative—to the cure of deformities. To bring this varied material together and present it in a clear and practical volume of convenient size has been successfully done by the authors, and the general practitioner who must work out many of these problems will find this book an indispensable aid.

There is a cut for nearly every page in the book, some of them are old, some are new, but they are in the main helpful adjuncts to the text. The rarest thing about this volume is that it is a Boston book. Who ever sees a medical book from Boston now-a-days? One has to go back almost to the days of Bigelow's Medical Botany (1821) to find such a rarity. Perhaps this is the good move in the right direction, if so, we say let us have more Boston books.

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL MEMOIRS-Containing Investigations of the Geographical Distribution, Causes, Nature, Relations and Treatment of Various Diseases.

By

Vol. III. Part I. ENDEMIC, EPIDEMIC, CONTAGIOUS AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES. Measures for their Prevention and Arrest. Joseph Jones, M.D., 1890. Pp. 542.

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL MEMOIRS. Part II.

Containing Monographs Illustrating the Philosophical Principles of Education and their Scientific Application to the Development and Perfection of the Medical Profession;

Vital Capacity of the Human Lungs in Health and Disease; Contributions to Teratology;

General Medicine, Diseases of the Nervous System, Congenital and Acquired Insanity, Advancement in the Treatment of the

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