er fatal diseases.

These heavy-eyed men with the alcoholized brains, these pallid youths
with the nicotized optic ganglia and thinking-marrows brown as their own
meerschaums, of whom you meet too many,--will ask all your wisdom to deal
with their poisoned nerves and their enfeebled wills.

Nearly seventeen hundred children under five years of age died last year
in this city. A poor human article, no doubt, in many cases, still,
worth an attempt to save them, especially when we remember the effect of
Dr. Clarke's suggestion at the Dublin Hospital, by which some twenty-five
or thirty thousand children's lives have probably been saved in a single
city.

Again, the complaint is often heard that the native population is not
increasing so rapidly as in former generations. The breeding and nursing
period of American women is one of peculiar delicacy and frequent
infirmity. Many of them must require a considerable interval between the
reproductive efforts, to repair damages and regain strength. This
matter is not to be decided by an appeal to unschooled nature. It is the
same question as that of the deformed pelvis,--one of degree. The facts
of mal-vitalization are as much to be attended to as those of
mal-formation. If the woman with a twisted pelvis is to be considered an
exempt, the woman with a defective organization should be recognized as
belonging to the invalid corps. We shudder to hear what is alleged as to
the prevalence of criminal practices; if back of these there can be shown
organic incapacity or overtaxing of too limited powers, the facts belong
to the province of the practical physician, as well as of the moralist
and the legislator, and require his gravest consideration.

Take the important question of bleeding. Is venesection done with
forever? Six years ago it was said here in an introductory Lecture that
it would doubtless come back again sooner or later. A fortnight ago I
found myself in the cars with one of the most sensible and esteemed
practitioners in New England. He took out his wallet and showed me two
lancets, which he carried with him; he had never given up their use.
This is a point you will have to consider.

Or, to mention one out of many questionable remedies, shall you give
Veratrum Viride in fevers and inflammations? It makes the pulse slower
in these affections. Then the presumption would naturally be that it
does harm. The caution with reference to it on this ground was long ago
record