Medical Items.

BALTIMORE.

DR. HENRY M. HURD left Baltimore on November 17 and will spend two months at least in Cuba and Mexico and California. In February he will sail with his family for an extended European tour.

THE Hospital for Crippled and Deformed Children netted $1500 as the proceeds of a recent vaudeville entertainment at the Maryland Theater.

THE Southern Medical College Association met in Baltimore on December 10. The president, Dr. Christopher Tompkins of Richmond, Va., was re-elected for the coming year.

PROF. H. S. FRENKEL of Switzerland addressed the Section on Neurology and Psychiatry of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty on December 5. His subject was "The Treatment of Locomotor Ataxia by Systematic Exercise."

THE Medical Examining Board has lodged information with the State's Attorney for Baltimore city against 13 illegal practitioners. The grand jury has found true bills against II of the number, and the other two have left the State.

THE Baltimore City Water Engineer has made another of his exhaustive investigations of typhoid fever in Baltimore. He concludes with the continuous conclusion that the Baltimore city water supply does not cause typhoid fever.

DR. WILLIAM OSLER, regius professor of medicine in Oxford University, made a brief visit in Baltimore recently. On December 10 Dr. and Mrs. Henry Cushing gave a reception in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Osler. From Baltimore Dr. Osler went to Canada to spend the holidays with his aged mother. He will visit Baltimore again before returning to England.

MR. WILLIAM A. MARBURG and Mr. Francis M. Jencks have presented to the library of Johns Hopkins Medical School two valuable collections of books, together numbering 1800 volumes. One of them is the old Warrington Dispensary collection of Liverpool, England; the other is the Friederich Ahlfeld Library of Marburg, Germany.

DR. SAMUEL T. DARLING, formerly pathologist to the Baltimore City Hospital, now pathologist to the Isthmian Canal Commission, was in Bal

timore on December 9, and on December 12 sailed for Europe. During his two years' service at the Isthmus Dr. Darling has been able to demonstrate a new pathogenic organism, the Histoplasina capsulata, which causes an obscure disease characterized by progress in emaciation, anemia and enlarged spleen.

IN the December JOURNAL we printed an item about some alleged legislation pending in Congress providing for the placarding of houses in the District of Columbia on account of tuberculosis. Some satirical remarks were made in this proposition. The source of our information concerning this legislation was the news columns of one of the best-known medical weeklies. It seems, however, that no such legislation has ever been proposed in the District of Columbia, and our comments were, therefore, misapplied. We are very glad to announce that the District presents no such phase of antituberculosis legislation, and hope we have not furnished any aid or comfort to those who oppose the legislation really needed and now being sought by the District authorities.

DR. ISAAC EDMONDSON ATKINSON died at his home, 609 Cathedral street, Baltimore, on November 24, after a brief illness of pneumonia. This removes the most distinguished general practitioner of his day in Maryland. Dr. Atkinson was born in Baltimore on January 23, 1846. His father was James Edmondson Atkinson of Easton, Talbot county, and later a prominent merchant in Baltimore. He graduated in medicine at the University of Maryland in 1865, being at that time under 20 years of age. He was a vaccine physician in 1873, and in 1883 during the great epidemic of smallpox he was made superintendent of vaccination. It is not generally remembered, and perhaps was not widely known at the time, that this office was brought into existence by the epidemic of smallpox. Indeed the office was created by the then Mayor, William Pinkney Whyte, now United States Senator, for the purpose of engaging Dr. Atkinson against the pestilence, which had for two years baffled the city Health Department. When the epidemic was subdued, Dr. Atkinson retired from the service of the city, and the office which he vacated was abandoned. For several years before that time Dr. Atkinson had been particularly interested in dermatology, and had been professor of that subject in the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He was, moreover, a remarkable clinician, and in 1881 began to give clinics in internal medicine at the University Hospital. The writer was

present at the first ward clinic ever given by Dr. Atkinson. From 1886 to 1900 he was professor of materia medica, and from 1890 to 1893 dean of the Medical School. He retired from the University in 1900, becoming professor emeritus. He was a consulting physician to Johns Hopkins Hospital from the time of its foundation until his death. Dr. Atkinson was always prominent and active in the affairs of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty, having held many of the offices, including the presidency, vicepresidency and trusteeship. He was a leader in the movement which gave the Faculty its present fine library. He was president of the American Dermatological Society in 1888. He was the author of many important contributions to medical literature, though his activity in this line was much diminished in recent years. Dr. Atkinson was a remarkably effective lecturer and an inspiring teacher. It seems a pity that the demands of a great private practice should have deprived him of the great record he might have made as a teacher and writer.

MARYLAND.

SMALLPOX has appeared during December in Frederick and Kent counties.

THE Board of Managers of the Maryland State Tuberculosis Hospital is examining sites for the proposed sanatorium. On December 27 Governor Warfield, with other members of the board, inspected sites on South Mountain, Washington county.

To the Medical Profession of Maryland:

The medical profession of San Francisco lost its medical library, the San Francisco County Medical Society Library, in the fire last spring. Most of the psysicians also lost whatever private libraries they had succeeded in collecting. A committee (named below) has been appointed by the American Medical Association and by the Association of American Physicians to collect and send books to San Francisco, both for the library and for private individuals when duplicate copies are sent on, as they are sure to be. Will you send to Dr. W. S. Thayer, 406 Cathedral street, Baltimore, Md., any medical books of value or bound volumes of journals which you can spare. Fairly recent editions of standard text-books, foreign text-books bound journals (French, German and Italian), hospital reports, monographs of all sorts, books on special subjects, old classics (e. g., Trousseau, Charcot) and the Sydenham Society publications are especially desired. Acknowledg

or

ment of all that is received will be made through the medical journals and the books will be packed and shipped as promptly as possible.

Signed: Charles L. Dana, chairman, New York city; Frank Billings, Chicago; E. Bates Block, Atlanta; J. A. Capps, Chicago; T. D. Coleman, Augusta, Ga.; George W. Crile, Cleveland; W. E. Fischel, St. Louis; F. Forchheimer, Cincinnati; Charles L. Greene, St. Paul; Arthur T. Holbrook, Milwaukee; George M. Kober, Washington; Lawrence Litchfield, Pittsburg; Rudolph Matas, New Orleans; H. C. Moffitt,. San Francisco; John H. Musser, Philadelphia; William Osler, Oxford, England; Henry Sewall, Denver; C. G. Stockton, Buffalo; W. S. Thayer, Baltimore; R. C. Cabot, Boston, secretary.

GENERAL.

THE American Association for the Advancement of Science opened its annual meeting at Columbia University, New York, on December 27. The president of the association is Dr. William H. Welch.

Ar a meeting of the trustees of the Carnegie Institution in Washington on December 11, Drs. William H. Welch of Baltimore, S. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia and John S. Billings of New York were re-elected trustees.

DR. JOSEPH W. HEARN, clinical professor of surgery in Jefferson Medical College, is very ill as the result of a fall from his carriage on December 4. He was thrown to the pavement and sustained a fracture of the skull. He was unconscious for 24 hours, but at last accounts his recovery seemed possible.

THE studies of cholera in Manila have been checked by the death of 10 out of 25 prisoners in Bilibid jail, who were inoculated with anticholera serum. The Governor-General has appointed a special commission to investigate these deaths and has suspended the permission to make anti-cholera inoculations.

DR. ALONZO GARCELON of Lewiston, Maine, died recently at the age of 93 years. Dr. Garcelon has been said (and with reason) to have been known to more members of the medical profession than any other physician of these days. He was quite regular in his attendance at the meetings of the American Medical Association, where his venerable though striking appearance always attracted attention. He was an ex-president of the association, and had also been Governor of his State.