can be no doubt that his female friends (and their name was legion) did their best to gratify his amiable weakness.

Richard Cumberland tells us that his inordinate demands for his favorite beverage were occasionally difficult to comply with. On Sir Joshua Reynolds reminding him that he had already consumed eleven cups he replied: “Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine; why should you number my cups of tea?" adding laughingly and in perfect good humor: "Sir, I should have released our hostess from any further trouble, but you have reminded me that I want one more cup to make up the dozen, and I must request Mrs. Cumberland to round up my score."

When he saw the complacency with which the lady of the house obeyed his behests he said cheerily: "Madam, I must tell you, for your comfort, you have escaped much better than a certain lady did a while ago, upon whose patience I intruded greatly more than I have yours. She asked me for no other purpose than to make a zany of me and set me gabbing to a parcel of people I knew nothing of; so, madam, I had my revenge on her, for I swallowed five and twenty cups of her tea."

Cumberland declared that his wife would gladly have made tea for Johnson "as long as the New River could have supplied her with water," for it was then, and then only, he was seen at his happiest moment.

DRAWING AN INFERENCE.

A DIVERTING tale, which is found, with slight variations, in older collections of English anec

dotes and of which a version exists also in Sicilian folk-lore, is told of a doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master proved that his was not the stuff of which a Zadig or a Sherlock Holmes is made.

One day, while accompanying the doctor on a professional visit, he heard him say to the patient: "I know what is the matter with you; it is useless to deny it-you have been eating beans." On the way home, the young man, much impressed by his master's sagacity, inquired how he knew that the patient had been eating beans. "A simple matter," answered the doctor, "I drew an inference. When we came to the door, I saw the shells of beans lying about, and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner."

A few days afterward it happened that the doctor went his rounds without taking his apprentice with him, and during his absence a message came summoning him to the house of a man who had been suddenly taken ill. "Here," thought the apprentice, "is a chance for me to put my last lesson into practice." He went, accordingly, to see the patient, felt his pulse, assumed a knowing air, and said to him gravely: "Don't deny it; it is plain from your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I shall send you some medicine that will relieve you."

On his return, the doctor inquired whether any one had called for him and was told by the youth what he had done. "What in the world," asked the astonished practitioner, “made you think he had eaten a horse?" "Why, sir," was the answer, "I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer-I drew an inference. As I entered the house, I saw a saddle hanging on the wall."

THE year begins with a festival to Janus, god of the past, present, future, patron of all gates and doors and of everything that is beginning. He was a most important divinity and the old Romans charged him with a multitude of theocratic responsibilities. He had the difficult role of presiding over peace as well as enterprises of war, and while war was raging in Rome the doors of the temples of Janus, all over Italy, were flung wide open to receive the votive offerings and the prayers of worshipers who longed for peace. Peace close:1 these temple doors, and Janus had rest from his intercessions with Mars and the other patrons of strife. The God had two faces -and he needed them-so that he looked east and west at the same time.

Centuries ago the old Romans began the year aright by making visits and giving congratulations and presents upon the first day of the first month. The custom stil! lives in Rome and to a degree in all Christian lands.

Ours is a time of so many new ideas. new inventions, new projects, that we are likely to go to extremes in our adoration of the new. In entering upon another Happy New Year let us not forget Janus' other face; and may his temple doors be closed for twelve months more!

Janus am I; oldest of potentates;

Forward I look, and backward, and below

I count, as god of avenues and gates,

The years that through my portals come and go.

-WHITTIER.

I block the roads and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow;
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.
-LONGFELLOW.

OUR ANNUAL RESOLUTIONS. "MAKE good resolutions this year, if you want to, but don't fail to make good afterwards," advises a modern Solomon who has a cynical warp. We would add that if there is any liability to failure in this respect it would be well for you to pass your resolutions in secret session, so that even your best friends will not have knowledge of your new ambition and be on the lookout for your downfall. A strong personality may be able to engross the new year's resolutions and hang them up in a conspicuous place for twelve long months without being overwhelmed with shame at his own waverings. But for the ordinary mortal to hold firmly to a new course, day in and day out, is a most exacting test; in the case of automobiles and such craft it is called the "endurance test" and it reveals many weak points that would never come to light by any other means.

So when it comes to the making of resolutions, every day is a new day and is good enought for a fresh start on life's adventurous journey. The old Romans understood this principle and while they honored their great God, Janus, as the patron of the

year's beginning, they also represented him with three hundred days in one hand and sixty-five in the other, and the advent of every month, even the dawn of every new day, was committed to his care by the devout worshiper at his shrine. Unless we are stronger than the noble Romans we will do well to look upon every beginning as sacred to Janus-prophetic and momentous and we will renew our resolution as we renew our courage, every morning.

ANESTHESIA IN THE HOSPITALS.

AGAIN an authority has spoken favorably of the employment of women as expert anesthetists in the hospital. It is true that he does not give women the first rank in this field of work, but he places them in a position where it is quite possible for them to come to the front if they have the proper qualities, and that is all that any woman need ask.

The public has but little idea, affirms Dr. Robert L. Dickinson, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "of how preposterously ill-balanced the operating table often is, with a resourceful and fearless expert at one end and a scared and clumsy novice at the other." The remedy, says the doctor, is to employ a salaried staff of expert anesthetists in the largest hospitals. In the medium-sized hospitals, abounding in all cities and towns, the doctor believes that "ether is administered in the most haphazard fashion," and he proposes the following plan as a relief for this situation and a means of securing good anesthetists for every community:

Chosen for fitness, an ex-intern who has shown natural aptitude for the work, or one of the attachés of the surgical staff who will undertake to give a reasonable time to the work, is elected by the professional staff as anesthetist. He appoints an associate or assistant, or more than one, according to the amount of surgical work done in that particular institution.

In this way responsibility is fixed. If patients are drowned in ether, or complications are frequent, or after-distresses prominent we know to whom to go. Duties are defined.

Whenever the staff rotates the anesthetist shall train the new house anesthetist or determine whether previous experience has qualified him. In the gravest charity operations always, and in others whenever called on by the operating surgeon, he shall give or supervise the giving of the anesthetic. In private cases, when called on to anesthetize, he may claim a reasonable fee, either in the form of a percentage of the fee or, preferably, as a separate charge. The separate charge adds dignity to the work and attracts a better type of man into it.

As to the period which the incumbent should serve, it is to be specifically understood at the time of appointment that the office is not a narrow stepping-stone, but that the work must be seriously undertaken for a time, such as two or three years. The surgeons do not bind themselves in any way to employ this hospital officer in their operations outside of the hospital. They should, however, extend a reasonable hope that if he will better the anesthesia and lessen the dangers in their charity surgery he will be rewarded by calls to their outside work. Success inside the building will eventually make the anesthetist wanted outside. So the situation takes care of itself, and to the young man an assured sum, even $500 or $1,000 a year, is no small matter. In regard to the length of time that the anesthetist shall give or supervise the anesthetics at the time of rotation of service of the house staff, this will depend on the capabilities and quickness of the particular intern who becomes house anesthetist. When a man is entirely inapt serious cases may have to be watched throughout his house. service.

In any consideration of anesthesia we must not lose sight of our three obligations:

I. To furnish to the particular patient the best possible anesthesia.

2. To supply to the general public as many members of the profession as may be who will have a fair working knowledge of the administration of anesthetics. And our duty shall always be, first to the members of the house staff, and, incidentally, to advanced medical students.

3. To train for the profession, and for one's own hospital and for other hospitals, a few expert anesthetists.

The last two duties are in practice not incompatible with the first, for the reason that it is the general experience that a patient used for teaching is better studied by the teacher, and is cared for with more detail, than the less observed "case."

This position is to be made attractive by extending certain hospital privileges to the anesthetist, giving him a position on the visiting staff, and paying him a fee for administering anesthetics to private patients whenever possible. The work is drudgery, the author admits, and if it is not paid for the present malpractice will continue. The time will come when the public will be willing to pay for such service, because they will demand a higher degree of skill than now goes into the administering of anesthetics. Besides the money reward, there is in store for this specialist recognition, promotion, praise for improved results, and, finally, "the personal satisfaction in good work, bitterly needed and weil done."

We know of many nurses, to say nothing of "physicians of moderate ability," whose ambitions will be stirred by this suggestion which Dr. Dickinson makes concerning

noman

the small group of private hospitals, which can hardly do better than follow the plan of Baldy and the Mayos, who train an intelligent Such to do that one thing well. Salaried service is reliable and unvarying. The work is dignified and permanent. Under such condition it would no longer be considered a makeshift position as it so often is at present by the men of the stop-gap services. Indeed, we may reasonably assume that physicians of moderate ability who have found themselves, in some ways, unsuited for general practice will be glad of a suitable income from such a source.

THEY SAID "BOO!"

AND they wouldn't apologize! Look ye, gentle English cousins, have you ever heard of such atrocities in the uncouth wilds of America as these which were suffered by no less a personage than a school nurse of Derbyshire. My word! What is Merry

England coming to?

""Violent and abusive' are the epithets applied to the conduct of three mothers of school children at Horsley Woodhouse School, Derbyshire, when summoned to account for their treatment of Nurse Adams,

the school nurse, and ‘noisy' might be added also, on the evidence of Police-Constable Wilkins, who said that when he arrived on the scenes they were making a great disturbance by shouting, clapping of hands, booing, and rattling of pans. The nurse made visits on September 22d and 30th, and while making a third visit on October 7th she was, the prosecution stated, subjected to ill-usage. The police had to be requisitioned to accompany her through Horsley Woodhouse to the next village. Nurse Adams fainted after officially reporting the incident. The defendants, who declined to apologize, were let off with payment of costs amounting to 13s. 6d each." (Brit. Jour. of Nursing.)

THE PLIGHT OF WIGHT.

ENGLAND is noted for the excellence of the training given to nurses and it seems almost incredible that such conditions could exist in any English institution as are described in the following words from the British Journal of Nursing:

At a meeting of the Guardians of the Isle of Wight Workhouse Infirmary, the chairman, Alderman George Fellowes, J.P., said there had been a clean sweep of the staff of the infirmary, where a disgraceful state of affairs existed, the place being a perfect pandemonium. Old bedridden patients were absolutely neglected, and the helpless creatures were found trying to feed themselves, not knowing where their mouths were. Patients were absolutely dying from neglect and starvation, vermin were all over the place, decaying food in the patients' lockers, and indescribable filth beneath the beds. He asked the Guardians to back up the new superintendent nurse who was acting splendidly in a very difficult situation.

Under no circumstances whatever can seven nurses look after ninety patients. The cruel understaffing in nursing and domestic departments of country infirmaries is the real reason of their inefficiency, and until we have women inspectors dealing with such matters, women will continue to be overworked and underpaid. One additional nurse is to be appointed at the Isle of Wight Infirmary-at least three are required.

Speaking elsewhere of a similar situation, The Journal says:

Conscientious nurses will not work shorthanded, with the result that ignorant semi

efficient women are employed, to the untold suffering of the poor patients. Surely the Local Government Board has the power to put down nurse sweating if it chooses, and it should take a firm stand with recalcitrant Guardians, and insist upon just conditions of labor. It all comes back to the same old system-where women workers are employedthe maximum of drudgery for the minimum of pay.

We fear that many a fair-looking institution, not only in England but in our own progressive land, would draw down on itself the same condemnation if its affairs were scrutinized by capable inspectors. Surely the Government should make its own institutions models for the whole people in matters of equipment, management, administration and salary.

ARE WE PSYCHOLOGISTS?

FLOATING about in our mental environment there is a vast lot of loose ideas and still looser expressions on the subject of the mind and its workings. It would shame any "smart" person not to have definite ideas on the various psychologic problems arising and coming into vogue from time to time; and yet, many a smart person would be greatly bewildered if he were required to define or explain the terms which he uses freely in everyday conversation. Even the commonest words applied to mental phenomena have a very deep significance when we trace them to their sources, and show that the pioneers in psychology were wiser than we are sometimes inclined to believe. Indeed, the best text-book one could have in beginning the study of the mind is the dictionary-employed with the purpose of getting at the root of mental science. And we venture to add that the production of a dictionary in the midst of one of our modern parlors during some of the psychologic parleys to which we have listened would cause as great consternation as a ghost at a feast. For the ideas of "the average person" are too shallow and crude to stand much searching, speaking now of the science of mind.

Just as one may have a healthy body, conforming to the principles of physiology without knowing or caring what physiology is, so, indeed, may he have a normal mind, acting with exact conformity to the great laws of mental function, while he is utterly devoid of any knowledge of the science of mental phenomena. And, just as the laws of physiology are simple enough to be understood and learned by anyone of ordinary capacity, so it is with the laws that obtain in the realms of the mind and its phe

nomena.

We have the idea, however, perhaps we inherit it from the mythical age of our history-that there is a great amount of mystery inseparable from any law or theory that concerns itself with the mind. And so the whole subject, call it psychology or mental science or mind or whatever you please, is shrouded in mist and clouds. This is an unwarranted discrimination against mental science. All sciences, of course, have their insoluble problems, for we are not able to take in all the natural world within the scope of our reasoning powers, and yet, if it is possible for us to learn enough of physiology, or chemistry, or astronomy, to make the study worth while, it is certainly within our power to get a grasp of the science of psychology that will be of great service to us as educated people.

Especially is this statement true of the nurse, who is often called upon to express an opinion of some new fad in this lineor out of the line-of her work. How about mental healing, Christian Science, hypno tism, suggestion, obsessions, brain-storm. and so on ad infinitum? How many good people lose their bearings and forget "where they are at" as soon as they attempt to discuss these common but abstruse terms. Here, if anywhere, it is wise to bear in mind that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But, fortunately, this little knowledge can be greatly multiplied and strengthened by a little well-directed work. It will pay in these days of make-believe psychology!