IN Pagan Rome the great event of this month was the Lupercalian festival of purification, an institution that had its origin in the earliest and most primitive days of this people-days when the shepherds invoked the god Lupercus (or Februus) to keep the wolves from their flocks, and to preserve their wives from disease and barrenness. When the Calendar received its present form February was designated as the month of purifying (februare).

The modern world has not only outgrown the barbarous rites of the Lupercalian purification, but it has grasped the truth that the only way to maintain purity is to apply the purifying process every month and every day. Not once in the year, but all through the year must we observe the laws of health-civic and individualif we would preserve our integrity and make any progress in well-being. We know that the old Romans, in spite of their tenacious adherence to superstitions and precedents, failed utterly in accomplishing the ends that they sought. Centuries of failures and mistakes, illuminated here and there by the discoveries and teachings of sages and philosophers, have given to this age of the world a degree of enlightenment greater than any prophet could foretell. To-day any schoolboy has at his command stores of wisdom far in advance of the lore of the greatest philosophers of Rome.

But this is not saying that cur people are all of them wiser in their thoughts and habits than the ancients whom they have left so far behind. Even in the application of our knowledge of physiology and sanitation many of our good people are as careless and as loose as any of our pagan ancestors.

We need not go far to find people who believe that they can eat, drink and be merry to the limit of their desires until the end of winter warns them that the time has come for moderating the strenuousness of their enjoyment and they cast about them

usually searching the columns of the daily paper in quest of a suitable "blood medicine" or other "tonic" to put their jaded systems to rights and prepare them for the joyous springtime. Have you any idea how often the druggist, the doctor, the nurse, or any old woman, is consulted as to the best "spring medicine?" It is a relic of the old prehistoric yearning for some special ceremony of purification before the grass grows green and the first birds make their appearance.

No! Although we have hundreds of columns of newspaper advertisments to the contrary, we stoutly maintain that the "spring medicine" business is an ancient fake in a new form. Prevention is better than cure especially the patent medicine cure- and if our backs ache or our chests feel flat about the middle of this month it doesn't prove that we need our annual

purification like the Roman populace; it merely shows that we have allowed bad habits to get the upper hand of us,-that we have paid too little attention to the primary laws of health which demand for every human being oxygen, wholesome food, cleanliness and sleep in their just proportions every day of the year.

How crude are the notions which many people hold on matters of human physiology and pathology. "Every boil is worth five dollars to you," is the comforting remark which a neighborhood sage addressed to a poor fellow who was supporting a crop of these afflictions on the back of his neck. The sage went on to explain how the boils were purifying the blood of rank poisons that would certainly cause more serious mischief if they were denied this form of exit. At about the same time we met a domestic oracle who seriously objected to any effort to cure a poor child of a running ear. She felt sure that if the matter stopped flowing from the ear it would lead to more serious matters further inside the body; and so, in spite of our protests and appeals to reason, the child was allowed to suffer from this loathsome discharge in the belief that the disease was preferable to any sort of cure.

After this manner does superstition triumph over reason in every nook and corner of this enlightened land! What wonder that quacks and impostors thrive upon all sides! We have as many fakirs in our day and place as there were in old Rome -and just as smooth. Our good Christian people do not pour out their libations to heathen divinities, like the pious Romans, but they pour quarts and gallons of tonics and bitters down their devoted throats and believe that they are obeying an innate law of their being-while the fakir smiles, and pockets his dollars, and paints more and bigger signs on every barn and fence and on the landscape that flanks the railroad tracks.

Yes, it is the month of purification just the same as of old. Let us hope that the quiet influence of intelligent nurses and doctors and sensible folk generally may in

deed work a miracle of purification upon our people,-purging them of superstition and ignorance and lifting them by degrees out of the Dark Ages.

A BOOK FOR EVERBODY. Know then thyself, presume not God to

scan;

The proper study of mankind is man. -POPE.

POPULAR ideas on scientific problems are, strange to say, often quite erroneous; they may be true as far as they go, but they represent the half-formed conclusions of minds that have not followed the problem to the end. They are half-truths, or perhaps they represent only a small fraction of the truth, -a bit of fact which the mind can grasp without much effort or training. We must all admit that our own notions on many abstruse subjects, while they represent a little knowledge, represent also our own indolence. We have learned just so much and we have come to the end of our acquisitions because we lack the interest, or the incentive, to go ahead in that particular direction; or perhaps we lack the facilities for studying further and we give up the learning of the science because we think it useless to proceed without books or apparatus or good teachers. We have often encountered the man of "a little learning" who fails to realize that it is "a dangerous thing" and has the impudence to come forward on all occasions and pose as an authority. We take warning from such presumption, if we are sensible and rather than make fools of ourselves we prefer to be entirely ignorant of many subjects that we believe to be beyond us. Life is too short and too practical for us to penetrate far into the mysteries that surround us-unless we can go to school with other students. "Art is long, and time is fleeting."

This represents the attitude of many intelligent people on the scientific problems which are usually relegated to the college and university for study and solution.

Psychology is a science which the great

from a charity to a plane on which it is. all but self-supporting.

Dr. Hall has contributed a very interesting report to the Journal of the American Medical Association which should be read in full by those interested in this development of therapeutics. The author does not claim to have originated the idea of using manual work as a curative agent. He acknowledges his obligations to a number of authorities in America and abroad, but he believes that his is the first institution in this country devoted to "the systematic use of manual work for therapeutic purposes." The experiment had all the features of a medical research in which the doctor and his students realized the necessity of a work-cure and the great difficuity of developing a satisfactory system. He says:

The normalizing effect of suitable manual work or even of well-chosen intellectual work on the neurasthenic or psychasthenic who has been idle or overworked and who has been for years the prey of mental and nervous complications, has only to be seen to be profoundly appreciated. In these cases in which the tired mind tortures itself with doubts and fears and spends the long days in useless self-analysis and in appreciation of mental and physical suffering, it is probable that progress toward health is often indefinitely delayed because no occupation is found or even attempted. But the difficulties in the way, first, of finding a suitable employment for the neurasthenic, and then of inducing the patient to exert himself in his own behalf are very great and have made progress along such lines quite slow. Unfortunately, it is also true that ill-advised work can be productive of positive harm and may result not only in deepening discouragement, but in the intensifying of all symptoms.

I have for a long time felt that adequate study of this problem could be made only in an institution devoted to that object. It is no more reasonable to suppose that such a complex remedial measure as work can be successfully used haphazard than that drugs and other agents should attain their fullest usefulness without the aid of laboratory or hospital experience.

The story of this pioneer "shop" and its successes is full of encouragement for those who will dare to undertake a similar work in their own neighborhoods. A method of

treatment that puts wholesome work in the place of enforced idleness and ennui will be a revelation to many a discouraged patient and a sweet relief to the nurse, the cook, the doctor and all others who have to look after the wants of this most exacting of patients.

It was Judge Lindsay, if we are not mistaken, who deplored the fact that a boy has to become a criminal before he can get into an institution that will teach him a useful trade. Has our "civilization" come to such a pass that a man of leisure must become a neurasthenic before he learns the necessity of having some occupation for his hands? If so, the workshop is teaching the people a most valuable truth and impressing it by the best sort of an object lesson. Dr. Hall states that "the patients, as a rule, enjoy the novelty of the treatment and forget for the time something of their worry and suffering.".

Have you never had charge of a patient whom you just ached to put to work at something worth while-and you lidn't dare even to breathe the idea to the friends or the doctor? If you are mechanical yourself and like some form of handicraft better than "smoothing the wrinkled brow" as a steady employment just look into this matter a little. There will be a position for you sometime as a "manual training nurse."

THE STOMACH TUBE AFTER OPERATION.

INTESTINAL obstruction and the enforced torpor following abdominal operations assumes a most threatening aspect in view of certain experiments lately reported from the research laboratory of Columbia University by Dr. J. W. Draper Maury, who writes for the Journal of the American Medical Association. The experiments have proved beyond a doubt that, in cases of obstruction near the beginning of the small intestine, the contents of the duodenum and stomach are distinctly and dangerously poisonous, owing to a process of autointoxication. In all obstructive cases, therefore, as well as operative cases affect

ing the gall-bladder, stomach, and small intestine, it is important to cleanse the stomach in order to prevent the absorption of poisons from this region. In discussing this paper at the last meeting of the Association, Dr. W. J. Mayo, of Rochester, Minn., said:

Dr. Maury brought out a very important point, and that is the great necessity of keeping the stomach empty and removing the fluids that regurgitate back into the stomach. We say to our internes in the hospital at Rochester: "Take the stethoscope off vour neck and carry a stomach tube around in place of it." We reduced the mortality in gallstone and stomach cases 50 per cent. when we discovered that with the stomache tube we could remove these fluids, and that, by removing, many cases that formerly terminated fatally went on to recovery. It can be pretty nearly put down as an axiom that when the surgeon sees the patient on the morning after the operation and notices a little grcen spot on the clothing, or if the patient is restless and uneasy, he should pass the stomach tube. There is nothing to which we can draw attention that will be of greater importance to us in getting results than the proper use of the stomach tube. Keep the stomach empty. We can think of cases-in the country or in small, private hospitals where that most important of all functionaries, the interne, is not in evidence at all times-that might demand prompt use of the stomach tube by the nurse in order to avoid the fatal results of autointoxication. Some doctors do not believe that the nurse should learn the technic of gastric lavage. Dr. Maury's researches and Dr. Mayo's testimony should set the training schools teachers to thinking upon this question. To us it seems quite essential that the nurse should know the use of the stomach tube as well as any other technic that may be demanded as an emergency measure in surgical cases.

however, the narrator speaks of as a "characteristic episode." So it may be, but we think that such things do not happen in our own country-perhaps because our countrywomen do not "like emotions" to the same degree as the nurses of sunny Italy. Here is the romance as it is related by a correspondent of the British Journal of Nursing.

Apropos of the earthquake period, a very characteristic and delightful episode has just occurred amongst the pupils of the Croce Azzurra, which I think I may relate in Miss Baxter's words without indiscretion: "Hear the latest development! It appears that Signor Z- (one of the Sicilian victims nursed at the Gesù e Maria; a business man, well educated, a very Lazarus from multitude of wounds and the philosophical fortitude with which they were borne), went back to Messina and related such miracles and wonders of Signorina Emma's abnegation and ability and other womanly qualities that an unknown) impiegato (clerk) whose wife and only child were buried under the ruins decided that she was the wife for him, and that he would have her. In fact, he came up to Naples, went to see her, was struck with Signor Z-'s veracity, proposed, and was accepted. . . . The tragedy about this romance is that Signor Z had meant to obtain Signorina Emma for himself, only he thought he would be in plenty of time, and did not propose until too late. How is this for a hospital love story?" I am told that it would be an excellent réclame for nursing!

The Signorina herself wrote me a very charming account of the double event (it seems that Signor Z-'s letter of formal proposal arrived almost immediately after she had accepted the other gentleman), asking if it "did not seem strange to me that she should receive two offers." As she is as modest as dignified, and exceedingly unselfish, she is sure to think that one proposal at least should have fallen to a fellow pupil! She adds that her fiancé desires a speedy marriage, but that she is trving to follow the advice given by her beloved directrice, and first finish her training and gain her diploma. She concludes by saying, "It may be my destiny to go and live in the ruined city (citta distrutta) in the wooden houses; I will do so willingly. I like emotions, and care greatly for those who suffer: mi piacciono le emozioni e molto mi affeziono con quelli che soffrono."