sary interference with the rights of those who really need the poison.

Meanwhile, it might not be out of the way to call attention to the fact-an entirely superfluous one, of course that while such a poison as mercury kills its hundreds, a much more popular poison, familiarly known as alcohol, kills its tens of thousands, and somehow, explain it as you will, there is no great rush among our legislators to get into the alcohol-destroying bandwagon. Why?

TOO MUCH LAW.

Reform is a good thing, and that we stand in need of it in numerous directions no one will deny, certainly not a physician. But like other good things it can be overdone, and there is more than a suspicion on our part that this is exactly what our law-makers are doing in the matter of legislation affecting the public health. Last winter fortytwo state legislatures were in session. While it is impossible to state exactly how many public health measures were proposed, we know that between eight and nine hundred have been reported, and probably the number would exceed a thousand, were complete data obtainable.

The trouble with most of these bills, as one writer puts it, is that they were "hastily drafted, and were in many cases proposed, framed and advocated by men or organizations with so little knowledge of the particular situation or its needs as to make one a willing convert to the bureau plan now working so admirably in such states as Wisconsin or Rhode Island." Hundreds of these half-baked bills, often passed without adequate study of their effect on social and industrial conditions, and hurried through, evidently from a sense of fear that their passage would be blocked if those vitally interested were consulted at all, are now on our statute-books and, as a rule, neither respected nor enforced.

What we need is not more law- it is better law. We are being sadly overgoverned, and governed by amateurs. Our legislators, with rare exceptions, are not students of social or economic conditions, nor familiar with the complexities of legal practice. They are the too-willing agents-not to say tools-of men or organizations who "want a bill introduced." Too often the real author of the bill lurks in the background, while the real object of the bill is obscured by its very verbosity.

The bureau plan referred to has much to commend it. Every important measure which a legislative body thought worthy of consideration should be submitted to a group of experts before incorporation into law. Such a body could arrive at its

real significance, uncover any hidden intent, simplify it so that it could be understood, and strengthen it, so that it would stand the test of the courts.

If it were not quite so easy to railroad bills through our legislatures we should not have so many dangerous laws; and the legitimate business interests of the country would not be so constantly in peril. Real reform would not be impeded but aided, because with fewer laws there would be greater opportunity for the discussion of bills of real merit.

Especially is such legislative reform needed in the drafting of bills affecting the medical profession. Every man with a crazy reform (?) idea in his mind immediately sets out to run amuck with that stiletto which he calls "law." And hysteria of this kind unfortunately is contagious.

THE POISON NEEDLE.

The latest newspaper sensation, and one which is going the rounds in all parts of the country, is the report that mysterious individuals are frequenting places where women are to be met, such as department stores and nickel theaters, and by means of a "poison needle," in other words a hypodermic syringe, injecting some mysterious poison which immediately deprives the woman of consciousness and renders her a victim ready to be forced into "white slavery."

On the face of the reports, these cases are fiction pure and simple. Probably the story originated in the mind of some unfortunate woman who had gone astray, who may have been a victim of a drug habit, was drunk or hysteric, and seized upon this ingenious method of extenuation. The story naturally lends itself to the willing pen of the newspaper news-fiction writer. As every doctor knows, the drug alleged to be employed by these "poison needle" experts is very much like the farmer's idea of the giraffe "there ain't no such animal." As a matter of fact, there is no drug known which, when injected hypodermically, renders a person immediately unconscious. All the narcotics known to medicine act with relative slowness and give ample time for any woman thus drugged to make known her difficulties to surrounding people.

The "poison needle" is another of these bugaboos which are here today and gone tomorrow. However, if the fear of this mysterious drug, given in this mysterious way, will keep young and unsophisticated women away from questionable places of amusement, the stories about it have not been written in vain.

DR. MARIA MONTESSORI. Chicago has just been visited by one of the greatest women in the world; and this woman is not only a great teacher, but a great physician. Dr. Maria Montessori, before beginning her remarkable pedagogic career, was carefully educated at the University of Rome, after which she took a six years' course in medicine. She gave special attention to the psychic side, and might have achieved as great a reputation as an alienist as she has as a teacher, had she devoted herself to that branch.

It is fortunate for the world of childhood, however, that she became interested in pedagogy. When she finally decided to devote her life to this subject, she again entered the university and devoted three more years to study. Only then did she deem herself sufficiently fitted to undertake her special work, and it is only six years ago that she opened her school to the children of some of the working people of Rome. In that short time she has probably done more to change the conception of instruction than has been accomplished since the days of Froebel and Pestalozzi.

In an editorial of this length it is difficult to give a clear idea of the methods of Dr. Montessori. Perhaps the central idea, however, is that old-new one of "liberty.". The child is treated as a free person, capable of making its own choices, and instinctively choosing the things that make for its own development in the most natural way. The old idea of teaching was to put into the child's mind things from the external world, and in so doing we often violate nature's way of development.

Instruction-if we may call it by that formidable term begins at a very early age-from two and a half to six years. The child is first given the proper stimuli to develop its sense perceptions. Various simple materials are used, but they are selected, in a sense, by the child itself, who learns form, tactile sensitiveness, color, sounds-even the significance of silence-and at the same time develops its mental and moral side. The child learns by doing; and it does things eagerly, showing a capacity of prolonged attention little dreamed of by most people. Writing is learned almost without an effort because the child has been prepared for it by a development of the sense of outlines, by learning the use of the materials of writing, by constant familiarity with all the mental, physical and physiologic tools of writing.

The whole system is one of constant drawing out of the child's powers, not by others, but by the child itself. The teacher observes and directs, but the essential force resides within the pupil. And it is really wonderful how much these children

.

THE KEY TO SUCCESS.

In no profession or occupation is competition more intense than it is in medicine. While it is popular to deplore this fact the writer has always believed that it was good that it was so. Competition increases effort. It stimulates men to harder work. It sets them to thinking about the development of new and better methods. It makes them students, investigators, dreamers, creators, and ⚫ heroes.

The moral of this, for the young man entering the profession, is not necessarily the desirability of cutting down the number of medical schools. For him, certainly, it is the necessity of outstripping his fellows in his qualifications for practice. "If you are in search of the direct route to true success," says Dr. Henry L. Elsner, in the New York State Journal of Medicine, "that success which is enduring, let me advise you to reach it through application, concentration and thoroughness, the systematic use of your time and energies to the day's work, and remember that the master word in medicine is work. Take nothing for granted, learn to investigate for yourselves. The scientist is a revolutionist and that he must remain. It is often difficult to concentrate, to be thorough, once the habit is acquired you are relieved and your work becomes a pleasure. 'Concentration is the price the modern student pays for success.'

This is not a bad sentiment with which to begin the New Year.

炭烧

SPICE!

As to whether you like the Illinois Medical Journal in its present reincarnation will depend. largely on which side of the fence you belong. If you belong to the modern, dominant and dominating, kill or cure, rule or ruin oligarchy you will doubtles sympathize with the editor of the Indiana State Medical Journal, which says regarding our state organ: "With a change in management came a change in policy, and few will admit that the change was for the better. It is bad enough to appeal to the prejudices and passions of disturbers within the ranks of the medical profession, but worse to court the favor of the pharmaceutical houses that have ceased to