many who are physically well qualified maternity has become a burden instead of a joy, and hundreds of invalids must refer the beginning of their invalidism to criminal aborton done for the sake of avoiding pain and care and for enjoying the socalled sweets of society. These and many like causes demand proper preventive treatment. But they are not the cause that most urgently call for removal.

Statistics are not sufficiently abundant, complete and unprejudiced to make them of much value, Still I venture the statement that specific vaginitis and its extentions cause more trouble than any other pelvic inflammations. And yet while the prostitute claims these inflammations as her rightful inheritance, she can by no means claim a monopoly on them. Thousands of thoroughly virtuous women are daily called upon to help reap the wild oats of their husbands; and thousands of these husbands are called virtuous men.

An acient philosopher says that virtue is summed up in a knowledge of good. He who knows what is good will do good. Evil arises from ignorance. Men are immo al because they are

not sure that their acts are wrong.

While we may not fully agree with Socrates it is quite probable that if men and women and boys knew more about these matters, and the suffering that follows and spreads from improper sexual indulgence a healthful wave of reform would sweep over our land and purify our murky atmosphere.

Unmarried men need to know that sexual indulgence is not at all necessary for their health and vigor and the maintenance of their virility. They need to know, and many of them do realize sadly, that it is not an essential factor in happiness, but always shows unhappiness as a part of its product. They need to know that occosional emissions are not inconsistent with good health. They need to know that gonorrhoea and its congeners are not cured half so easily as they are contracted, and that often when these diseases are not apparent, they are still latent and may remain so for months and years. They need to kuow that hosts of women are victimized and made chronic sufferers because of these latent cases in their reformed husbands. Men need to know that sensualism saps both mind and body. They need to know that impurity of thought and deed dulls and de

bases man's ideas and converts the glory of life into a miserable existence with no higher joys than fast vanishing sensual pleasures. They need to know that the good Book which gives so many instances of impurity among the chosen children never commends that impurity, but always condemns it and commands us to abstain from it.

To recapitulate: 1. One great crying disease among women is Specific Inflammation of the pelvic organs and tissues.

2. Its cause is impure intercourse.

3. Prevention is best secured by a reform in morality.

4. Our Duty as physicians is to tell the people plainly that prostitution and its kindred evils debase the mind, debauch the body and constantly curse and degrade the human race, the noblest of all things created.

THE IDEAL ANTIPYRETIC.*

By E. G. GOODMAN, M. D. El Paso, N. C.

N the discharge of the duty imposed on me as Chairman of the Section on Materia Medica and Therapeutics, I shall not essay on the enumerations of the many additions to the materia medica, with an epitome of the literature on the same.

Such a procedure would be prolix, and devoid of interest to those who have kept abreast with the current literature of the subject.

The field of experimental research for every observer is necessarily limited, and the period of a few months is far too short to demonstrate the true merit of a valuable remedy, or to relegate a worthless one to the shades of oblivion.

The conscientious practitioner is accustomed to regard with skepticism the extravagant claims of excellence made in behalf *Read before the North Carolina Medical Society June 3, 1897.

of every new remedy by those who are accustomed to bow at the shrine of novelty, and worship at the altar never graced by genius.

Medical literature is teeming with wordy productions which represent only the gush of enthusiasm inspired by every innovation which offers a transient gleam of hope for the success in the conflict with disease. These productions of the pen, laudatory of the improved virtues of some medicament, are often based upon the imperfectly observed results obtained by the administration of a sample package gratuitously distributed by the manufacturer.

Before a therapeutic remedy can receive the stamp of permant utility, it must be thoroughly tried in the crucible of clinical investigation based on scientific principles; for a few favorable results attending the use of a certain kind or method of medication may be coincident with the recuperative energy of nature, and not due to the means employed.

In asking your attention to the consideration of the subject selected, it may not be unecessary for me to preface further remarks with the statement that "the ideal antipyretic" is a hypothetical substance and not an actual entity.

We have not yet reached that stage of perfection in which the materia medica is enriched with a remedy that measures up to the ideal treatment of pyrexia, though such an attainment is a "consummation devoutly to be wished."

In recent years the labors of the synthetical chemist have been rewarded with no more brilliant results than the production of that class of drugs known as antipyretics. Others, indeed, having been announced to the world by some of the master minds of medical science, have enjoyed a short lived notoriety due to the expectation of usefulness inspired by the prestige of these great names.

The old-time conception of the conservative nature of pyrexia as being a manifestation of the reaction of the human organism against pathogenic germs, and therefore eliminative, has led many to depreciate the use of antiypretics and to assign them to a place of secondary importance in the treatment of disease.

Such a conception is too vague and speculative to be entitled to serious consideration, However ingenious the hypothesis;

however plausible the theory; and however illustrious may be the names of the advocates of such theory; yet, the accumulated evidence of clinical experience stamps it with an emphatic nega

tive.

The field of therapeusis almost entirely is circumscribed to symptomatic trea:ment. To reduce temperature;to relieve pain ; to regulate disturbance of the circulatory apparatus; to sedate an excited nervous system or to stimulate the same when depressed; to check or neutralize abnormal discharges; to stimulate the glandular organs to normal activity; and to nourish the patient with suitable aliment;-these are indications for the exercise of every therapeutic resource at command.

It is a lamentable commentary on the boasted achievements in medicine that, at this late day, we know of no remedy entitled to be called a specific, if we except the action of quinine on the hæmatozoon of malaria and the influence of mercury on syphilis.

Ever since the search-light of modern science has revealed a hitherto unknown world of living organisms as the potent cause of many of the ills of human flesh, it has been the cherished object of therapeutists to take the shortest route to success by administering the death dealing portion directly to the invisible causative agent of disease.

However laudable the object in view, the means for its attainment are unknown, save in two exceptions noted above; and, until such remedies are found, therapeutic skill finds its legitimate exercise in combatting symptoms as they arise, and in aid. ing nature to resist the inroads of disease.

Of all the symptoms that manifest the presence of disease, there is none more often encountered, and none more deleterious in its effects on the human organism than pyrexia.

However imperfectly understood may be its cause, whether due to the action of the product of pathogenic organism on the thermic centers, or some other cause equally obscure, its results are such as to remove the "flattering unction" that it is a conservative process rather than a pathological element that decimates the human family by its own destructive influence.

Beginning as a symptom it soon becomes the initiation of a series of morbid phenomena more wide reaching and destructive than those which properly characterize the primary cause.

When we consider the almost uniform temperature of the human organism, and the narrow limits of variation compatible with life, we read the hand writing of nature in legible characters dictating the course to be pursued when the temperature departs from normal.

Bacteriologists have abundantly proved that the lowest forms of life are far more resistant to the action of heat than is the highly complex and delicately formed structure of the human body. With this fact established beyond all cavil, we are forced to the conclusion that fever is conservative to the human body in the same way that the sword of Hamlet was conservative to the body of Polonius when it made of him a supper for "convocation of politic worms."

The injurions effects of fever are clearly manifested to the most casual observer in the sick room, and are demonstrated by the pathologist on the post-mortem table. It is itself a toxic agent, perverting the function of every organ, and acting destructively on every tissue; and, if long continued, needs but to pass very narrow limits to effect the dissolution of the body with a certainty and rapidity that shame the tardy action of the much dreaded bacteria.

The constant attendance on pyrexia of such symptoms as restlessness, jactitations, delirium, hebitude of mind, convulsions and coma, and the rapid subsidence of these symptoms on abstraction of the excess of heat, would plainly indicate that, whatever may be the source and cause of disease, pyrexia as a disturbing element is second to none.

Parenchymatous degenerations of muscular tissue is a constant accompaniment of, and often dependent on pyrexia, and increases with increment of temperature. No muscles participate in the degenerative process more than does the heart, and in fevers long continued, this becomes a source of trouble that baffles the skill of the physician, and often consigns the patient to an untimely grave.

The role which fever plays as a factor in disease is well illustrated by the phenomenal reduction of mortality in enteric fever by the cold-bath treatment.

Here, obviously, no fine-spun theories of germicidal action can share the glories of the triumph which therapeutics wins over