The work before us contains twenty-three chapters. The first chapter is devoted to demonstrating that inebriety is a disease. Other chapters are devoted to the consideration of the Etiology of Inebriety, the Pathology, and the Treat ment. The author considers among the exciting causes of inebriety a peculiar diathesis. Exciting causes, he states, such as sudden joy or sorrow, would be unable to provoke to inebriety in action unless there were something within the organism ready to be acted upon, as it were an inflammable entity easily fanned into a flame by a spark from without or from within. Many persons who drink, but never become intoxicated, are tried by as many vicissitudes, experience as many calamities, suffer as many bereavements; undergo as great hardships, as those who drink and get drunk. Why is this? Credit may be attributed to the fortifying influences of religion, of social and other environments; but after ample allowance for the operation of all such influences, there are large numbers who are indebted for their inability to keep from indulgence in the hour of extremity, to some inherent physical defect which renders them prone to surrender to inebriety, and this physical defect constitutes a diathesis which is marked by a deficient tonicity of the cerebral and central nervous system, with an accompanying defective inhibition or want of self-control. If the brain and nerve-cells are healthy, so are their functions. If the brain and nerve substance is imperfectly nourished, the willpower is heavily handicapped. This defective controlling power may be inherited or may be acquired. Self-indulgent parents, though never themselves intemperate, but never used to self-restraint in indulging themselves, may originate pre-existing inborn constitutional deficient power of inhibition, by begetting progency all of whom may be more or less wanting in that normal amount of self-control with which fairly sound human beings ought to be endowed. Lack of sufficient brain-will and restraining power may be handed down by parents who have never tasted an alcoholic or other inebri This inheritance may have taken its origin simply in infraction of the ordinary laws of health, the morbid state having been gradually set up by irregular and improper feeding, mental or physical overwork, the neurasthenic sequelæ of various lowering ailments, etc. But we have not space to follow further Dr. Kerr in considering the pathology of inebriety. Though we do not agree with him in many statements he makes, yet it must be confessed that much that he says is true. He has given the pathology of drunkenness very profound consideration, and has established a series of pathological principles which can not well be gainsayed, demonstrating scientifically the fact that confirmed drunkenness is the result of a morbid condition of the brain and nervous centers—a disease—which is as amenable to treatment as are other diseases. Vicious men often purposely get drunk to increase their vicious enjoyments and to subserve vicious ends, but such cases are recognizable, and we do not suppose that Dr. Kerr would include them among the classes whose inebriety resulted from pathological causes. The chapters of the work upon the treatment of inebriety contain much that is interesting and valuable. The author shows the absurdity of resting any hopes for the cure of inebriety upon any single remedy which will give the drunkard a distaste for intoxicants and save him without any effort of his will. The disease must be treated like all other diseases according to the indications that are presented in each case-the patient desiring to be cured and willing to subject himself to the treatment proposed. Dr. Kerr asserts that there need be no fear of collapse or an attack of delirium tremens as the result of the immediate withdrawal of all alcoholic stimulants. He urges, however, that the patient should be given an abundance of stimulating and easily digestible food. If the stomach and liver are deranged, bowels constipated, or diarrhea exists, appropriate remedies should be exhibited. The main indication is to keep up the strength. In the way of medicines, carb. ammon., tr. hyoscyam., bromid., potass., nux vom., strychnia, quinine, valer., zinc, hydrat. chlor., etc., will be indicated. As much as possible, narcotics should be done without. We cordially recommend the work to physicians as one worthy of study. Editorial. MARRIAGE OF A Distinguished Dentist.—Dr. J. Taft, « distinguished dental surgeon of Cincinnati, having become weary of living alone, like a sensible gentleman took to himself very recently a wife, marrying Miss Mary Sabine, an intelligent, cultivated lady. Dr. Taft holds a high position in the dental profession of this country. He is the author of a number of standard works on dental surgery; he has been editor for many years of the Dental Journal, the leading journal of dentistry of the West; and for a quarter of a century, or longer, he has been a teacher of dentistry. For several years he has filled a chair in the Dental Department of Michigan University, at Ann Arbor, Mich. Previous to his connection with Michigan University, for many years he was a member of the faculty of the Cincinnati Dental College. The Doctor and his wife, at the time of our writing, are spending their honeymoon in the East. His many friends congratulate him in taking a partner to share his prosperity and the esteem which he has acquired, and sincerely wish that he and his wife may enjoy together many years of happiness. BIOGRAPHY OF EPHRAIM MCDOWELL.-We were recently called upon by Mrs. Mary Young Ridenbaugh, of St. Louis, a granddaughter of the distinguished surgeon, and father of ovariotomy, Ephraim McDowell, who informed us that, at the earnest solicitation of many medical gentlemen and admirers of her grandparent, she had prepared a life of him at great expense of time and labor, and would place the manuscript in the hands of the publisher for immediate publication so soon as a sufficient number of subscribers were secured to meet the cost. Although Mrs. Ridenbaugh has only just started out to bring the work to the attention of physicians, yet she has met with most flattering success. Previous to visiting Cincinnati she called upon the medical gentlemen of Chicago, and every one of those to whose attention she brought the proposed biogra phy subscribed for a copy. Mrs. Ridenbaugh is an accomplished, educated lady, and possesses fully the qualifications essential for preparing a biography of her illustrious progenitor. She has diligently collected all the facts pertaining to his life as a physician and citizen that would be interesting to physicians and his admirers generally; and, in detailing these, she will exhibit the status of the profession, and the manners and customs, too, necessarily, of society, when Dr. McDowell was in his zenith. Though famous as the father of ovariotomy, having been the first surgeon in the world to perform that operation, Dr. M., in addition, during his time, was the most eminent surgeon in Kentucky and the Southwest. There will be published in the work considerable correspondence of the highest interest to the profession. Medical men not only of this country, but of England, have furnished Mrs. R. letters which were not known before to be in existence. Besides a plate of an accurate likeness of Dr. McDowell, there will also appear in the work excellent pictures of other distinguished physicians and surgeons. Dr. Ephraim McDowell was born in Virginia on November 11th, 1771, one hundred and eighteen years ago. His father, Samuel McDowell, was, for many years, a member of the Legislature of Virginia. The Doctor was the ninth of twelve children. It will be seen that, in those days, when young women got married, they expected to become mothers of large families. They were not ashamed of it, but rather were proud of it. When scarcely two years of age Ephraim McDowell was brought to Kentucky. It is stated that he attended a classical seminary first at Georgetown and then at Bardstown. Soon after leaving school he began the study of medicine with Dr. Humphreys, of Staunton, Va., who was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. After studying medicine two or three years with his preceptor, he went to Scotland and entered the medical classes of the University of Edinburgh He attended the lectures for the sessions of 1793 and 1794. This institution, says Dr. Gross, Sr., was in the zenith of its renown, attracting pupils from the whole civilized world. Three famous men lectured in it, Gregory, Black and Munro. We have in our library the Practice of Gregory, which, in its day, was the text-book upon practice in every medical school in this country and Great Britain, and probably of many on the Continent. Young McDowell did not like the lectures upon surgery at the University, and so he joined the private class of Mr. John Bell, whose name is familiar to this day. He was probably the most profound teacher and eloquent lecturer of his time. It will thus be seen, though the young American may have been regarded as a backwoodsman, and, in fact, was one, yet he "drank in the waters of science as they gushed forth from the eloquent lips," while a student, of the most famous medical teachers of the age. It can not be said of him, therefore, that, possessing the boldness and rashness of ignorance, he stumbled upon ovariotomy because he dared do what no intelligent surgeon, enlightened by the knowledge of that time, dared to do. Dr. Gross says that Mr. Bell is said to have dwelt with peculiar force and pathos upon the organic diseases of the ovaries, speaking of their hopeless character, when left to themselves, and of the possibility, nay practicability, of removing them by operation. He, however, had never ventured to remove them. The instruction he gave no doubt made a powerful impression upon his student, which he did not lose after he left Edinburgh. After a residence abroad for two years, during which he stored his mind with valuable knowledge, he returned to Kentucky in 1795, and settled at Danville, the scene of his future labors. The fame of his foreign tour preceded him, and he was soon overwhelmed with business. It was known that he had been a student of John Bell, the most celebrated surgeon of the age, and that he had devoted himself, with special assiduity, to the study of anatomy and surgery. The consequence was that patients flocked to hin, not from his neighborhood only, but from all parts of the Southwest. All the important operations that were required for hundreds of miles around were performed, for a number of years, by him. Dr. Dudley, who afterward became so celebrated for his surgical exploits, had not yet begun his professional studies, and none of the larger towns of Kentucky had any surgeons of distinction, or even ordinary capacity. We will now mention the first case of ovariotomy the world had ever known to be performed, performed by Ephraim McDowell, and which has saved the lives of thousands of women, and which continues to save the lives of hundreds every year, who, before Dr. Ephraim McDowell demonstrated could be saved by ovariotomy, were permitted to die-it being believed that there was no help for them. In 1809. Dr. McDowell was consulted by a Mrs. Crawford, the subject of a large ovarian tumor. He had heard Bell lecture upon the ovaries in Scotland, and he had thoroughly studied the relations of the pelvic viscera, and felt fully persuaded, according to the statement of Dr. Gross, of the practicability of removing enlarged ovaries by a large incision through the walls of the abdomen. He knew very well that the Cæsarian Section had been repeatedly per |