g the whole field of surgical possibilities.
The Boer war and the war with Spain proved this truth in a way that
could not be denied. Smallpox is almost a medical curiosity in New York
City, where it once was a scourge. The mortality of childbirth has been
reduced to about one-fifth of what it was by the introduction of
antiseptics and anesthetics. The new methods of making and preparing
drugs, the sterilization and inspection of milk, the methods devised for
the care of and preparation of infant foods have all enormously
contributed to checking disease, to preventing disease, and to
increasing the length of life and its happiness.

These are all facts which may be proved by any one, no matter how
incompetent they may be. If we were to give up all these hard earned
victories, cease to investigate or experiment, deny the existence of
disease, and depend upon the questionable methods of hysterical
emotionalists we would soon find ourselves facing all the horrors of the
past. Can we afford to lose the priceless benefits we have achieved and
are attaining? Can we sit still and permit the profession of medicine,
which has always contained the best of the race in its membership, the
best intellects, the most sympathetic and unselfish characters, the
noblest and most steadfast souls, to be maligned and assailed, to have
its means of well-doing assaulted and threatened, when we know that it
should be supported and protected for the sake of all it has done in the
past in the interest of humanity?

Every mother should be acquainted with these facts so that she may lend
her influence in behalf of honest effort and honest inquiry.

The following summary comprises a brief review of what medicine has been
doing in the recent past:

Radium.--This element was discovered about fifteen years ago by
Professor and Mme. Curie. It possesses the wonderful property of giving
out inexhaustible stores of energy. It virtually possesses the property
of perpetual motion. Professor Becquerel was the first one to suggest
that it might possess therapeutic or healing powers. The suggestion came
to him in a curious way. He carried a tube of radium in his vest pocket
and was severely burnt as a consequence. The incident suggested to him
that, if radium could attack healthy tissue in such a short time, it
should be able to similarly attack diseased tissue. Experiments were
soon instituted, and are still being conducted to exactly define its
curative v