emergency work.

For a number of months, however, the writer has been using his dilator for all purposes of cervix dilatation, and it has been found very efficient for dilatation before curettage. With it wider dilatation of the multiparous cervix can be secured than by any other method, so that in certain cases, where it may seem advisable, sufficient dilatation may be obtained to introduce the finger and explore the cavity of the uterus.

Boston, Mass.

THE RIGHT TO LIFE OF THE UNBORN CHILD.

This time honored subject has recently been made the subject of a most learned controversy between Professor Hector Treub, of Amsterdam, the Rev. Dr. R. von Oppenraay and Dr. Th. M. Vlaming. The controversy has drawn out two scholarly articles by Professor Treub and an equal number from each of his opponents, though the second papers of his opponents are published conjointly. We feel certain that the result of this controversy will be exactly similar to all its many predecessors. It will fail to convince either side that the views of the opposing side are in the least more sound than they were considered primarily.

The controversy arose from the calling in consultation of Prof. Trenb to see a woman practically moribund, and who subsequently died, as the result of incoercible vomiting of pregnancy, whom a prompt scientific abortion a week earlier would undoubtedly have saved. The woman, however, being a Catholic, the performance of the abortion was prohibited by her priest.

Professor Treub at first accused the priest of personal narrowness but later learned from the Bishop of Haarlem that the

The Right to Life of the Unborn Child. Wagner. See notice on page 55 of this issue of the ANNALS.

New York. 1903.

narrowness laid in the decree of the Holy Office, and that the priest was left no choice or opportunity to consult his own discretion.

In a journal of this sort we can certainly not express an opinion, but to all those who are in doubt as to the legality of scientific abortion, for there is no question in the minds of any of the disputants and should be none in the minds of any civilized person as to the moral status of abortion under any other circumstances, we can but recommend the very excellent translation by Rev. C. Van der Donckt, which has recently been issued.*

Both sides of the controversy have left much unsaid, and on one side many things have been said which lack substantiation of any actual proof, and we should be glad to see the controversy taken up by others and threshed out until the actual scientific status of abortion is established. And it can be so established. There is but one truly right side to the question, and it is a stigma to science to have men of equal scientific attainments constrained by extraneous circumstances and early teachings to decide the same question in different ways. Both sides of the question have perhaps never had a better, more forceful and more scholarly simultaneous exploitation than in the present instance. Why not build the edifice which shall decide this question upon this foundation?

THE GENERAL PRACTITIONER.

The great mass of writings which has recently come before the medical profession purporting to be done for the benefit of the general practitioner can but arouse a few thoughts as to the advisability of thus using the aforesaid general practitioner as a literary scape-goat.

There is a comparatively small percentage of all this mass which is truly written for the benefit of the general practitioner and there are a comparatively small number of authors who have a perfect right to assume the responsibility of instructing the general practitioner, but aside from this small quota the authors write papers, and even text-books, entirely and abso

lutely for their own self-aggrandizement absolutely irrespective of the needs or desires of the much paraded general practitioner.

Another aspect of the question which should call forth the resentment of a majority of the dearly beloved general practitioners, for whom the wonderfully self-sacrificing author gives up so much time and labors so assiduously, is the fact that it is always assumed that he needs sadly the instruction conveyed and that the wisdom of the author is so great as to enable him to give it. To this sentiment we cannot subscribe. A man of rather limited ability both as a student and as a technical performer can, by strict application, usually become reasonably competent in one, or a limited number of subjects. On the other hand, any man who has had an experience of general practice, especially in rural districts far from a source of supplies and far from the able consultant upon whom the urban man can ever call at short notice, knows that such a general practitioner must be a man rich in resource and fairly well versed in the whole broad field of medicine and surgery. He may not pack an emergency grip and go to bed with the serene consciousness that being called in only certain cases he will certainly be ready if the call comes.

But even in the foregoing does not lie the basis of protest but in the fact that the often presumptuous writer invariably classes all general practitioners in one ignorant category. Any thinking person knows that so doing means entirely unwarrantable flattery of some poor incompetents and equally unjustifiable disparagement of many of the brightest luminaries in our profes sion. Our best representatives are not always specialists nor are they men who care to write but prefer to read.

It is an indisputable fact that the specialist often finds his brightest consultants among the much beloved and highly respected family physicians of rural patients. By all means men who have a taste for writing on scientific subjects should be encouraged, but they need not apologize for so doing by assuming that every general practitioner is hungering for, or ought to be, the mental pabulum which they have to offer.

QUACKERIES.

In the ANNALS of December, 1903, we called attention, editorially, to the recent article By Dr. Cathell on Medical Ethics. The further consideration of this subject has led to the question as to whether homœopathy is the only irregularity of practice which the medical profession of America has aided by its ill directed attacks. Are we not today as prone as we were an hundred years ago to attack the individual rather than his principles! If so, we are unquestionably aiding him by enabling him to pose as a victim of persecution and thus enlisting the sympathies of the mass which are ever with the under dog.

Systems should either be ignored or should be condemned only after thorough investigation and then in an absolutely impersonal manner. And it is our honest opinion that the time necessary to such thorough investigation could be much more wisely spent in investigating legitimate means of so perfecting oneself as a rational scientific physician that patients would be led to consult him in preference to all others. Emphatically the fittest survive in medicine and surgery as elsewhere.

DR. LYDSTON AND DR. FITCH.

In the December issue of the ANNALS we published a letter received from Dr. Lydston, together with our reply. Dr. Lydston felt justly outraged at the use of extensive excerpts from his recent text-book without the slightest acknowledgment of their source by Dr. Fitch. He expressed his views on the subject very freely in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Associ ation. Dr. Fitch has lamely apologized by stating that the fault arose in his being too negligent to read over the work of his secretary. Dr. Lydston has accepted the apology, therefore there secms no occasion to longer keep the subject open, but, nevertheless, we can but feel, from the false position in which the ANNALS has been placed that Dr. Fitch still has another letter to write.

HYDROTHERAPEUTICS.

It is not a far cry back to the days when a person practising a "water cure" was looked upon by many as a charlatan of the