malignant and will kill whether it is removed or not, but
the general result of ovariotomy has been the saving of thousands of
women from untimely death. Bell, of Edinburgh, had imagined the
operation and had mentioned it in his lectures, but none the less to
McDowell is due the credit of demonstrating its feasibility.

Medicine bore quite its full share in the mitigation of the horrors and
hardships of war that marked the Nineteenth Century. Its work was shown
in the great reduction of pestilential disease incident to camp life, in
prompt aid to the wounded, in the establishment of salubrious field and
general hospitals, and in improved methods of transportation of the sick
and wounded. Certainly the soldier on the sick list never before had
such a fair prospect of rejoining his comrades safe and sound as he
has now.

In the care of the insane, too--care not only in the sense of humane
treatment, but in the systematic employment of measures for their
restoration to mental soundness--the century has been marked by notable
progress. This has been chiefly in the direction of preventing insanity,
and although mental disease is said to be on the increase, it may
undoubtedly be said with entire truth that its growing prevalence is not
in proportion to the heightened frequency of "the strenuous life." We
may confidently expect that a more pronounced mastery over diseases of
the mind will come when physicians in general are taught psychiatry
clinically, so that the beginnings of mental alienation may be
intelligently met by the family practitioner.

The supreme achievement of the medicine of the Nineteenth Century
undoubtedly has been the development of its preventive feature. When we
recall the fact that but a few years ago an attack of infectious disease
was interpreted as a visitation of Providence, by a perversity that even
the triumphs of vaccination did not serve to do away with; when we
contemplate the well-ordered and well-understood measures that are now
resorted to in an ever-increasing number of communities (and resorted to
not solely on the outbreak of an epidemic, but at all times), to purify
the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink; and when we
reflect upon the greatly reduced morbidity as well as mortality of most
infectious diseases--we must realize the immense service that has been
rendered by preventive medicine. No doubt we must all die some time, and
the day is yet far remote when the