0 to 1861 there were treated
without cold water, at the hospital at Kiel, 330 cases of typhoid fever,
with 51 deaths--a mortality of about 15-1/2 per cent.; from 1863 to
1866, 160 cases were treated with cold baths, with 5 deaths--a mortality
of only 3-1/10 per cent. In the hospital of Bale, from 1843 to 1864,
there were 1718 cases without antipyretic treatment, with 469 deaths--a
mortality of about 27-1/2 per cent; from September, 1866, to 1873, 1121
cases were treated antipyretically, with 92 deaths--a mortality of a
little over 8 per cent. Assuredly, we may claim that this
water-treatment in typhoid fever is one of the greatest gains of modern
medicine since the discovery of anaesthesia.

Some of my readers may here say to themselves, "Why, this is
hydropathy!" Not so. It is the legitimate, not the illegitimate, use of
cold water. It is the use of it as a single weapon, not as the only
weapon of the armory. It is the employment of it in a single affection,
not as a cure for all diseases.

Perhaps, in concluding this essay, I may be pardoned one word of counsel
to my lay audience. Any physician who proclaims himself a follower of
any special doctrine, be he a hydropath, an electropath, an allopath, a
homoeopath, or any other _path_, should be viewed with suspicion. Water,
cold, heat, electricity, drugs, are all agents capable of being used
advantageously in the treatment of disease. Above all men, the physician
ought to have that teachable spirit which is the offspring of true
humility. Knowing the grave responsibilities which he assumes, living
almost beneath the shadow of that past whose life-imperiling mistakes
are so plainly visible in the light of the present, he, of all men,
should be ever seeking for new knowledge, gathering with equal zest the
seeds of healing in the waste as well as in the cultivated places,
amongst the lowest and most ignorant of the populace, as well as in
far-famed schools of medicine.

H.C. WOOD, JR., M.D.

SONNET.

Young bride, that findest not a single star
Shining to-night with longed for prophecy,
Though snowy drifts are swelling near and far,
They need not chill thy happy hope and thee.
If blue had overarched the earth all day,
And heaven were brilliant with its stars to-night,
"A happy omen!" many a guest would say,
And think that Fortune blessed the sacred rite.
Be superstition far from thee, sweet soul:
This snowy robe, in unison with thine,
Nature