nion the important part of the physician's duty. His
treatment of fever shows the application of his principle: cold baths,
cold compresses, and a cooling diet, were his favorite remedies. He
encouraged diaphoresis nearly always, and gave wine and stimulating
drugs only when the patient was very weak. He differentiates two kinds
of quartan fever. One of these he attributes to an affection of the
spleen, because he had noticed that the spleen was enlarged during it,
and that, after purgation, the enlarged spleen decreased in size.

Alexander was a strong opponent of drastic remedies of all kinds. He did
not believe in strong purgatives, nor in profuse and sudden
blood-lettings. He opposed arteriotomy for this reason, and refused to
employ extensive cauterization. His diagnosis is thorough and careful.
He insisted particularly on inspection and palpation of the whole body;
on careful examination of the urine, of the feces, and the sputum; on
study of the pulse and the breathing. He thought that a great deal might
be learned from the patient's history. The general constitution is also
of importance. His therapeutics is, above all, individual. Remedies must
be administered with careful reference to the constitution, the age, the
sex, and the condition of the patient's strength. Special attention must
always be paid to nature's efforts to cure, and these must be
encouraged as far as possible. Alexander had no sympathy at all with
the idea that remedies must work against nature. His position in this
matter places him among the dozen men whose name and writings have given
them an enduring place in the favor of the profession at all times, when
we were not being carried away by some therapeutic fad or imagining that
some new theory solved the whole problem of the causation and cure of
disease.

Gurlt, in his "History of Surgery," has abstracted from Alexander
particularly certain phases of what the Germans call external pathology
and therapeutics. For instance, Alexander's treatment of troubles
connected with the ear is very interesting. Gurlt declares that this
chapter alone provides striking evidence for Alexander's practical
experience and power of observation, as well as for his knowledge of the
literature of medicine. He considers that only a short abstract is
needed to show that.

For water that has found its way into the external ear, Alexander
suggests a mode of treatment that is still popularly used. The patient
sho