Various

“ Of the truth of this view we have no question, nor can any editor of any experience or success fail to have many personal experiences in this sort of work. In the very best sense of that term, the medical editor is a teacher; and this, too, in causing others to work for the common good. The education follows from the efforts of the young doctor to learn something of profit or interest to the profession, and then place this before the profession in the most attractive shape. The medical editor, in order to make his journal a success, is compelled to get the best work expressed in the best way. ”

“ In Rome we have reason to believe that they were more independent, as the physicians used a society seal as a label for their medicine. Truly independent society organization and work is comparatively of our own day. ”

“ So much is certain, that in that region, where arteries and veins are not to be seen, there are also no separate nerve twigs, and that here the union or coalescence of nerve and tissue which the nerves are to influence must have taken place. If one considers the fine meshes of the capillary network enveloping the ducts, and keeps in mind the abundance of nuclei belonging to the capillary, the membrana propria and the duct cells proper, he can imagine how difficult it must be to follow the course of the nerves through and among all these structures. ”

“ Practical surgeons who have arrived at years of maturity, not infrequently have occasion to notice that young men of brilliant parts who enter upon the practice of that art, seem to think they are unjustly kept in the background because no notice is taken of their efforts to gain position in their profession by the arts of the rhetorician or the tricks of the essayist. Nevertheless, no man can become a surgeon, save by surgical works, or be entitled to speak as one except he be a man of learning or experience—or both. ”

“ We can well imagine the interest with which some practitioner in a comparatively isolated locality—in the sense of being far from some one of the great Atlantic cities where all new medical and surgical works are kept in stock—reads over the titles of forthcoming works in the particular department in which he is most concerned, and the eagerness with which he anticipates their arrival after he has gone so far as to order them. ”

“ Most of the older members of the profession have never learned to write, and as they become burdened with the cares of a large business, it becomes impossible for them to learn the art of writing. Much they possess of positive value to the profession, but from the defect of not being able to write with comfort, their knowledge dies with them. The medical editor can get little help from them. There are a considerable number of the members of the medical profession who could not write a decent article, if they had any distinct ideas to put in it. ”

“ About three hundred years later the great Alexandrian school or society—for it was a society as well as a school—trimmed the light and set it higher, but it was so obscured and encompassed with exclusiveness and secrecy as to be a long time in reaching the masses. ”

“ I believe everything presented should be in writing, for very few physicians are good extemporaneous speakers, and all members should have such notice of the subject of all papers to be read before the society as will give them time to prepare for intelligent discussion; for unless a man has a clear idea of his subject he is liable to wander off into a labyrinth of side issues. ”

“ We should have more papers published, and to better prepare them for publication, each society should have an editor and a publication committee, with ability and power to revise, correct and publish papers and reports of the society.
Third. We should support our society with our influence. All have an influence, and there is no neutral ground. It must be for or against.
Never was there a time when there was more need of the support of the good men in the profession. ”

“ BLOODVESSELS. It was somewhat surprising to me, and not a little interesting, to find that the ducts have a decidedly richer blood supply than the gland substance proper, the meshes of the capillaries covering the ducts very closely indeed.
I will also call attention to the fact that, along the terminal portions of the ducts, no arteries or veins can be seen; and what is still more important, no free nerve-fibres can be discovered. ”

“ By encouragement, by personal solicitation, by aid in matters of reference, by stimuli of ambition, of professional pride, by appealing to the sense of his obligations to do for the general profession that which lies in his power, many of this class are brought into active service in medical journalism. Having encouraged to habit of expression, the editor stimulates the habit of original research. Of course, different individuals will be stimulated in different directions. So, at last, the editor will have writers in every portion of the field of the art and science of medical surgery. ”

“ We should be prompt in paying our dues and all other necessary demands that may be made on us by our society. Negligence—for it is seldom or never inability—on our part may not only embarrass the society, but tend to destroy our interest in it. ”

“ To every young man who would make the most of his powers, we say: think, observe, and write for the medical press constantly. It may be that one article a year is all that any particular person can produce. ”

“ It has been a power for good to American medicine. It has elevated and is elevating the standard of our American medical colleges.
The progress in society organization, work and usefulness in the last thirty-six years is greater than in all American medical history previous to that time. We had then a few isolated independent medical societies without unity and without influence. We have at present a society in almost every county, a State society in every State, all united in an association and wielding an influence national and world wide. ”

“ The old parlor trick of placing two pins in the wall and putting a cent on them and directing the patient to stand across the room and then walk over to the cent and knock it off with the outstretched finger without hitting the pins, may be made use of as a test in simulated blindness, for with one eye the patient always falls short of the mark the first time the experiment is tried. The most simple method of detecting simulated blindness in one eye is by noticing the movement of the pupil under the influence of light. ”

“ Support with our intellect. We may not all have an equal number of talents, but he that has five should use them, and he that has one should use it, and the use of that one may be just what the society needs at the time. ”

“ If there are any such structures as specialized nerve-endings present in the glandular elements, we might look for an analogy either to the striped muscle fibres or to the capillaries, in both of which nerve-endings are known to be present. In the former case we have the so-called end-plate—the nerve fibre ends in a multi-nucleated mass—but as the muscle fibre, standing for a number of cells, is so different a structure from the gland-cells, we might, with greater probability, expect some such arrangement as we see on the capillaries. ”

“ In our own country, previous to the organization of the American Medical Association, about thirty-six years ago, there was very little system in society work. That organization marks a new era in society usefulness. ”

“ It was in this fifteenth century that the sect of chemical physicians arose, who claimed that all the phenomena of the living body could be explained by the same chemical laws as those that rule inorganic matters. Although the illustrations and proofs which they adduced were completely unsatisfactory, yet the tendency at the present time is in the same direction, since chemistry and physiology are better known. ”

“ A word with alternate red and bluish green letters is painted on glass and placed in the window, and the patient is asked to read the letters. If a bluish green glass is held in front of the good eye, he will see only the green letters unless he can see with the other eye, for all but the red rays in the red letters are cut off in the transparency in the window, and the green glass cuts the red off, leaving those letters a perfect blank to the well eye. ”

“ The distance apart of two objects held up in front of both eyes can be readily told by the patient if he sees with both eyes, no matter how the objects are held with relation to each other. But if there is vision with one eye only, the patient can tell the distant apart with accuracy only when the objects are both held at the same distance from the eye, but not when one is held considerably in front of the other.
One who sees with one eye only always thinks he is nearer to the object than he really is when reaching out for that object. ”

“ Here they have been seen to apply themselves to some bloodvessel and are now lost out of sight, being hid by all the many structures mentioned above, the nuclei of membrane, capillary, duct cells, and the fibre cannot so readily be distinguished from the membrana propria of the duct upon which it rests. But I do not wish to be understood that because the nerves have been lost out of sight, along-side of vessels, that they have their “ending” there, inasmuch as the network of bloodvessels is such a close one that the nerves cannot but help coming in contact with them. ”

“ If an eye is blind, the light has little or no effect upon it when the other eye is closed. The pupil is usually dilated. It may be well to mention here that atropine dilatation is generally wider than that due to amaurosis, and also that a cone of light from a strong convex glass thrown upon the sound eye will contract the pupil of the blind eye if the dilatation is not due to atropine. ”

“ I have been staining with this method for years, yet I cannot say why the results differ so much. Some time ago I stained a frog for the nerve-endings in muscle and obtained the most beautiful results, but in the number of stainings I have made since (trying to follow the same method) I have not been by far as successful as then. In breaking up the gland I do not always separate all the pieces, but try to remove the connective tissue holding together the small lobules with the dull end of a needle, and then throw the coherent mass into the stain. ”

“ Hence, it comes about that the editor sends men to work with the microscope, in the chemical laboratory, in the pharmaceutical laboratory, in the physiological laboratory, in the anatomical room, in the hospital, in the dispensary, in the tomes of medical literature of every language and of every age. In short, he has these men at work in every field congenial to them, and such that they can reach it. ”

“ The efficient laborers of the last eighty years in the field of medicine have been so numerous that it would be impossible to notice at this time even those deemed most celebrated, while it would be invidious to attempt such a selection. ”

“ Compressing very small fragments of gland-substance (always of course in glycerine) , by means of the cover-glass, beating and pushing it from side to side, thus bursting the alveolus and tearing the membrane and isolating it from the contained gland cells, one can prepare for examination greater or smaller pieces of this membrane. There are by such means obtainable fragments with all sorts of processes and fringes, short and long, many and few, which undoubtedly may remind one of “connective tissue cells.” ”

“ In the sixteenth century the study of human anatomy may be said to have been fairly established by the zeal and labors of Vesalius, and in this and the succeeding centuries we meet with the names of many physicians whose anatomical and physiological investigations tended either directly or indirectly to advance the science of medicine. ”

“ BY DR. WILLIAM FORSTER, RETIRING PRESIDENT VENANGO COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY, PENNSYLVANIA. Though at best societies in their present form are not very old, medical associations, differing somewhat in their organization 220and aim, are as old as the science of medicine itself. Even in the fabulous ages it had its heroes, and some rose to the height of deification. In earlier ages those who practiced medicine were looked upon as inspired. They, in addition to belonging to a profession, constituted a class or caste. ”

“ What do you expect us to find in our anatomical investigations on the nerve-endings in the submaxillary gland, he would undoubtedly answer: “You will find an arrangement analogous, if not similar, to that in the striped muscle; the nerve-fibre will be seen to approach the alveolus, penetrate its covering, and the protoplasm of 200the nerve and the gland-cell will be found to come in contact, if not to coalesce.” ”

“ I cannot otherwise explain the glistening lines, which we see in examining sections VI extending from the alveolar wall between the cells, resembling altogether the sections of the alveolar walls. To investigate this matter more accurately, I have stained sections with carmine, also with log-wood, and have found that the alveolar wall and these lines stain the same way. Further breaking up such a section by manipulation with cover-glass, one can obtain fragments of these processes, thus demonstrating that these lines are not merely optical illusions. ”

“ When the masses stained are large, or the whole gland is subjected to staining, of course the outer parts are more deeply stained than the inner ones, but it is at times convenient to have material of different depths of staining. After the process has continued long enough—the nuclei at least should be very distinctly colored—the material is transferred into a fluid containing glycerine five parts, water and alcohol each two parts, acetic acid one part. ”

“ Before this time, as already intimated, the medical profession was divided into several sects, who were always disputing with one another. After him, all these sects seem to have merged into his followers. The subsequent Greek and Roman medical writers were compilers from his writings, and being translated into Arabic, Galen’s works became authority in the East as well as in Europe, and continued to be so for fourteen hundred years. In 1559, Dr. Geynes was cited before the college of physicians for impugning the infallibility of Galen. ”