Spoiled Children and Spoiled Adults.It is a common reflection of the older generation that the youth of today is spoiled. The criticism, tho correct, reflects only onehalf the truth-the other half is that adults are just as spoiled. In fact, the distinguishing work of our entire epoch is that it is the era of the spoiled. Parents who had trying times in their youth but who survived them and attained prosperity and ease are wont to complain that their offspring, not toughened by adversity as themselves, are a disappointment. Their complaint is generally highly justified, for, where they themselves may once have been happy to be assured of tomorrow's bread, their pampered children grumble if they have to exert themselves in the slightest for luxuries which their parents did not dream of as youths. But, in their own way, adults are just as open to similar criticism. Their relation to the government is exactly like that of the spoiled child to its parent, and they are only too prone to grumble, just like their children, if the government makes them exert themselves ever so slightly for the luxury to which they have become accustomed. The situation in New York is an admirable example. Whatever may have been said from time to time against corruption and maladministration in the New York Police Department, critics of civic government and visitors from foreign parts have again and again lauded the police department as one of the most efficient in the world. New York police methods and innovations are the standard and have been adopted in the capitals of the world. It is as nearly perfect a machine as any system, dependent on the undependable human element, can be made. Of course, there are flaws, but these very flaws merely emphasize the perfection of the machine. For example, the average individual rarely pauses to realize what an easy thing it is to steal. The case of the girl bandit of Brooklyn, who has been carrying out her exploits successfully

even after giving ample notice in advance. of her coups, is an excellent demonstration of how simple a matter it is to be a successful thief or highwayman. Now, only a cynic would dare reveal what a high percentage of every population has all the latent instincts of the thief. And if this percentage is not visible, it is merely because of the efficiency of modern protective methods which discourage a development of this latency. However, the machinery of this system is not immediately visible to the naked eye, and so the average citizen has come to the quite erroneous conclusion that human nature is fundamentally honest. No student of psychology would concede this for a moment. And yet, when occasionally human nature asserts itself a little more vigorously than the protective system which is meant to hold it in check, the outraged citizen blames, not the frailty of human character, but the weakness of the police system. Every unusual outbreak of burglary is thus laid to the inefficiency of the guardians of the city. Every breakdown in traffic is ascribed to poor traffic methods. The smug citizen has been so spoiled by the perfection of our police and traffic systems that the slightest miscarriage is at once resented.

Of course, much of this resentment is encouraged by elements who have a special reason for encouraging it-political motives which it would be out of place to deal with here. But for ourselves, who have no axe to grind and no political platform to bolster, we are quite ready to acknowledge, even in the face of certain weaknesses, that the New York Police System is about as efficient and as highly developed a machine as any which has to cope with the uncertainties of human nature. And we do not hesitate to take this occasion, when many pens are flinging ink at certain individuals in this department, to remind New York's residents that they are spoiled adults and that their parents would have been delighted with half the

near and soon rob us of the great privileges and benefits we have so much enjoyed and profited from thru the wonderful friendship that Dr. Marcy has shown us. But, alas, the Grim Reaper has exercised his sinister power, and deeply indeed do we feel the loss we have suffered. Dr. Marcy is gone from among us and we shall not soon see his like again.

The following details of his valuable life, appeared in the J. A. M. A., January 26, 1924:

Dr. H. O. Marcy, a graduate of the Medical School of Harvard University, Boston, 1864, died January 1. Dr. Marcy was born in Otis, Mass., in 1837. Following graduation he became medical director on General Sherman's staff in the Carolina

campaign. He was the first American pupil

of Lister and introduced the Lister methods into the United States. He attended the Seventh International Medical Congress to London, England, 1881, and was president of the section on gynecology of the Ninth International Medical Congress at Washington, D. C., 1887. For many years, Dr. Marcy conducted the Cambridge Hospital for Women. He was instrumental in building the Harvard Bridge, the Charles River Basin, the Cambridge Esplanada

Parkway and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of whose site he was chief owner. He served as Vice-President of the American Medical Association, 1880, a member of the Section on Obstetrics, Gynecology and Abdominal Surgery, 1882, and a member of the Judicial Council, 18861889. He was elected President in 1891 and presided over the Detroit meeting in 1892. Dr. Marcy was a member of the American Academy of Medicine (president, 1884), the British Medical Association and corresponding member of the Bologna Medical Chirurgical Society. Among his publications were "The Perineum, Its Anatomy and Surgical Treatment"; "The Anatomy and Surgical Treatment of Hernia," and "Semi-Centennial of the Introduction of Antiseptic Surgery in America." He also published a translation of the works of Prof. G. B. Ercolani, Bologna, Italy, on "The Reproductive Processes."

Dr. Marcy was a great lover of old books and had a valuable collection. He was one of the organizers of the American Medical Editors' Association over half a century ago and was not only one of its first presi

dents, but by a strange coincidence was its president when he died. He never missed a meeting of the Editors' Association if he could help it.

The world is poorer indeed by the passing of this great American surgeon, who was a true exemplar of all that is best in American surgery and medicine, but we thank God that he has lived and not only has contributed so much to the welfare of mankind, but has so enriched the profession he so deeply loved and so nobly adorned.

cine to the oil scandal, but it has always Oil.-It may seem a far cry from medibeen our contention that no subject touching on the well-being of the body politic is

alien to the physician.

It will

The practice of medicine, for many years submerged in the obscurity of tradition and dogma, has in recent years emerged as a calling with a kinship to all the other callings, a profession which has its roots, many of them perhaps only slender, to be sure, reaching out into every stratum of society and probing down to the bedrock of our social crust. not, therefore, we hope, appear out of place to deal here with certain outstanding features of a problem which is occupying much space in the press thruout the country and which is certainly occupying the attention of the physician as much as the layman. And if we do not here evince the horror expressed in newspapers and other publications with fixed political policies or the sycophantic approval shown by others with equally fixed tho contrary political tenets, it is because our only interest is that of the unbiased student. This is not the first time that certain distinguished names, personalities associated with the highest offices of the country, have been whispered. in connection with oblique methods. And it certainly will not be the last. The price of democracy is not only eternal vigilance— it is, as well, eternal peccancy. No system of government has yet been devised which will protect a community or the individual against the frailties of ambition or greed. But no system of government has yet been devised which so surely leads to the development of greatness in single individuals as democracy. And the finest proof of this is the course President Coolidge has taken in the oil scandal.

Faced with the danger of the dismembering of his party as the result of an apparently serious scandal, faced with the temptation to make a heroic play for popularity in a cheap and effective way, President Coolidge has chosen a course which only real bigness of character and great breadth of vision could achieve. Before he assumed the Presidency, Mr. Coolidge was a man of acknowledged probity, of admitted ability, but he gave no evidence of calibre exceeding the vast average. Since assuming executive leadership of the country, however, he has again and again shown marks of greatness, and never so manifestly as in the case of the oil imbroglio. It would have been easy to capitalize popular sentiment, fall in with the obvious drift of public opinion, and find a scapegoat-or severalwho could be charged with the burden of the disgrace and thus clear the party and the public conscience. Instead, Mr. Coolidge took the difficult, the courageous, and the only just course, when he decided to take no drastic steps until the scandal had been investigated calmly and thoroly, according to the best traditions of legal procedure. Mr. Coolidge may have thus alienated both camps, one for proceeding too timidly, the other for not seeming to proceed at all, but he certainly earned the admiration of unprejudiced observers by his intelligent stand. And those who realized how great was the temptation he resisted, how easy it would have been for him to win a cheap and immediate popularity by making capital out of his opportunity, feel more than admiration for the course he assumedthey were given final evidence that Mr. Coolidge has in him the stuff that makes for great leadership. Most leaders of men attain their objectives by following the crowd. Mr. Coolidge proved that he was truly a leader by remaining in the van, even if there was danger of his remaining there in rather scant company. And, after this proof of what the Presidency does to its incumbents, one is tempted to wish that the Constitution of the United States does not give the country more than one President every four years, since election to and occupation of this great office seems to have the magic faculty of bringing men from obscurity into real greatness, and giving to the nation the leaders it so truly needs.

Periodic Physical Examinations for Physicians. At a recent meeting of the West Side Clinical Society, Dr. Haven Emerson gave a talk on physical examination of the apparently healthy. This was emphasized and further elaborated by Dr. Otto H. Leber, the President, who stressed the importance of periodic physical examinations for physicians. The American Medical Association at its San Francisco meeting determined to make an effort to set machinery in motion whereby the public might be advised as to the importance of a thorough physical examination from time to time. This is in line with the best in preventive medicine, and it is likely to succeed if the interest of individual physicians can be roused and the proper method can be worked out thru the various county medical societies; but at the present time the profession at large is not sufficiently interested in the subject to emphasize its importance to patients. It has happened that a patient has gone to his physician for a complete physical examination, and, being seemingly of a robust nature and in good health, has been dissuaded from his purpose by the indifference of his medical adviser, who has "pooh-poohed" the necessity for any such procedure "in so healthy a person.' Perhaps, if physicians themselves would submit to such physical inventory from time to time, their advice might be more readily accepted by the layman. In any case, there seems to be very good reason for giving the project a thoro trial, and there ought not to be any objection to putting forth the effort. Like many other modern medical measures, the success of the venture must depend upon widespread education and enlightenment.

"Boost."

"Boost and the world boosts with you; Knock, and you're on the shelf; For the world gets sick of the one who kicks

And wishes he'd kick himself. Boost for the town's advancement; Boost for the things sublime;

For the chap that's found on the topmost round

Is the booster every time."

-Kiwanis, Bakersfield, Calif.

CRITICAL AND DESULTORY REMARKS BEARING ON THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT MEDICINE.1

BY

JONATHAN WRIGHT, M. D., Pleasantville, N. Y.

XXX.

I have had something to say of the medicine of Virgil, but there is something more to say of it, and of the magic in his poems aside from the magic of verse. Virgil was no doctor and his environment was no more favorable to his being a philosopher-even poetry, nay literature itself was a menial calling, tolerated it is true, like jesters' jokes, by the lords of creation but unworthy of the Roman patrician. It is singular that Virgil, making no pretense to medical knowledge or to philosophy, indeed with every social reason to disclaim any such pretensions, was regarded as pre-eminent in both by the Middle Ages, for magic in a way was the business of both and the fine distinctions we draw today between the men learned in physics and in medicine and the man who does enchantments on a

mat were scarcely possible in the præ

"The former sections of this series of papers may be found in the columns of the Medical Record, November 26, 1921, February 4, 1922, April 15, 1922, AMERICAN MEDICINE, November, 1922, April, 1923.

Renaissance. Virgil, however, was no doctor and we cannot expect him to solve the question as to what is normal and what is abnormal. Philosophy, as distinct from medicine, teaches us to look upon such antitheses as mere figures of speech, which have no real existence-a sort of symbols derived from Mosaic theology. So as we read we perceive that disease is a disturbance of the pneuma, and health is the progress it makes along the path marked out for it by the divine effluence. Now this, as I have insisted on various occasions, confuses the concept of disease with the concept of sin. One is a corporeal deviation and the other is a spiritual deviation and they both have to be purged away, and both of them in the hereafter as well as when mortals still see the light of the day-if we can expect the gods to be pleased.

Whatever we may think of this Virgil leaves us just as much in the dark as to the boundary line between normalcy in which angels are blithe and happy and the Stygian depths of disease as we are in pathology. No one, we have come to know, is entirely angelic, even modern biographers no longer pretend to believe they are telling the real truth about their heroes; no one is entirely devilish, wholly sound or entirely riddled by disease. We all have some spark of the divine in us, even tho we are told every one is a little tuberculous. Our