interviewed by a physician duly accredited from his own state; patient's life, and in consequence the Mikado is desirous of hearings will have been had before the proper congressional keeping him within calling distance. Despite the fact that committees, and matters will have been systematized for future nearly all the German teachers have been sent home, German action. The conference can then adjourn, leaving the permanent text-books are still the standard authorities, and bed records committee in Washington and vicinity with full power to act. are kept in German here in Tokio. That committee would then represent in the minds of the Prof. Baelz, in h¡3 clinical teaching uses the German language congressmen, not merely the American Medical Association, exclusively. In former years I have met a good many Japanese but the organized medical profession of the United States. medical students abroad. And after my acquaintance with It could see that the proper bills were introduced, that they these, those I saw at Tokio were a sad disappointment; for were before the proper committees and in such shape as .to be while they were extremely attentive as students, the most of pushed by the next conference when the members came together them appeared to belong to a lower class socially than their fortified by the action, not only of the American Medical fellow countrymen whom I had met in Europe. A majority of Association but of their respective state societies as well. them understand the German in which I heard them taught This move of .the American Medical Association makes it but imperfectly. possible for the opinions of the medical profession to exercise DISEASES PREVALENT IN JAPAN. a steady pressure on Congress for the public good. It furnishes I learned from Prof. Baelz that genuine croupous pneumonia, a means by which the consensus of the mature judgment of the erysipelas and acute articular rheumatism are three diseases medical profession of the United States can find authoritative that are extremely rare in Japan. Nearly all the pneumonia expression, and puts it out of the power of irresponsible physi¬ he encounters here is of the infantile type, which he treats cians, with time on their hands and "money .to burn," to air with oft-repeated warm baths, with little or no internal medi¬ their fads before congressional committees under the guise of cation. I saw a good many cases of typhoid fever in the wards of the at Tokio. He tells me that while the medical opinions. , Respectfully, Imperial Hospital . L. B. Tuckerman, M.D. sanitary condition of the capital has been immensely improved during the last quarter of a century, typhoid fever has con¬ Medicine in the Far East. stantly increased. Before the influx of foreigners into Japan (Front Our Special Correspondent.J the disease could hardly be said to have existed at all; the that the disease from abroad. Kioto, Japan, Oct. 4, 1899. germ produces was imported After a trial to most of the remedies THE FOREIGNER'S STATUS. giving thorough popular for treatment of this a modified form of the When over a was to abandon disease, including generation ago Japan compelled for the last five he has used her of isolation and her doors to the of Woodbridge treatment, years position open ingress but and considers the to western trade, and western ideas, her rulers wisely concluded nothing camphor, drug superior any he has ever He one of the to as much as this new innovation, and allow remedy employed. gives gram drug profit possible by in the divided into six doses. her people to imbibe as much of western learning as it was twenty-four hours, for them to assimilate. Hence, she sent her BERIBERI. possible brightest I here in first to and America, to be instructed in their best saw at Tokio, the Imperial Hospital, my cases youths Europe of that Asiatic disease beriberi. Those I saw were all institutions of learning, as well as inviting men of eminence to nearly the result of fever. A weak circulation, a come to Japan and act as teachers in her own institutions of typhoid rapid pulse, and a condition of were that From some cause or other, was chosen as partial paraplegia symptoms learning. Germany existed in all these. The disease is in the country where most of these young men were sent to be extremely prevalent Dr. Baelz the records of a thousand cases he has and German were called, in the main, to Japan, having educated; professors believes there in fill chairs in colleges. treated. He are 50,000 annually the entire Japanese Those who have had a in the The army that achieved such phenomenal success in the war empire. large experience manage¬ ment of the affection do not agree as to its cause. The chief between and China, was drilled by German officers. A Japan of the Japanese medical marine service, Dr. Takali, thinks that couple of decades ago nearly all the professors in the medical it is caused a of albumin in the diet of the of the Imperial University at Tokio were Germans. by deficiency great department masses of the and hence his chief element in its treat¬ To-day, however, with a medical faculty composed of twenty people, all the Germans but two, viz., Prof. Erwin Baelz ment is to supply this deficiency by giving the patient freely of professors, and the like. Dr. does hold and Prof. Julius Scriba, have been weeded out. egg Baelz, however, not to this as in the of the In this out extends de¬ theory a causative factor production disease, fact, weeding process through every believes that altitude where foreigners formerly held positions. A decade but plays an important rôle in its pro¬ partment duction, and hence sends his when to the ago English engineers ran all the engines on all the railroads patients, possible, mountains, them at the same time in To-day not a single one is to be seen. The German giving digitalis, strychnin, Japan. etc. Statistics show that from to in officers who once drilled the Japanese soldiers have been dis¬ twenty-five fifty every missed and their places filled by natives. In fact, the prints thousand of those attacked succumb. here boast that in a generation Japan has been able to stand DIABETES MELLITUS. abreast of the West in all the higher departments of learning, Contrary to what one might expect among a population and predicts that at the end of another generation she will be whose diet is composed largely of articles that contain a large able to eclipse all her rivals. amount of starch, diabetes mellitus is a very rare disease in In the service of Dr. Scriba I saw considerable surgery, and Japan. Instead of putting his patients who suffer from this though he stands high as an operator and teacher, his technic malady on a meat diet, which is poor in quality and dear in was not what one would have expected from a German as far as price here. Dr. Baelz gives them beans almost exclusively, the cleanliness and antisepsis are concerned. He uses chloroform Phaseolus radiatus. Opium and salicylate of soda are the only exclusively as an anesthetic, because he considers it safer than drugs he gives, and on this plan of treatment his patients ether, and sets his patients upright when operating on the face usually rapidly recover. An unimpressible condition of the and head, because .this position, he says, lessens the-tendency nervous system of the Japanese as a race, may account for to hemorrhage, never hinting at the fact that such a position their partial exemption from this disease. immensely increases the danger of the patient's dying from the TUBERCULOSIS. effects of the chloroform. Tuberculosis is very prevalent, especially among the upper Prof. Baelz is a fine teacher of clinical medicine and, as a and middle classes who live sedentary lives. The laboring general practitioner, probably stands at the head of his profes¬ classes, however, who live out-door lives and take considerable sion in Japan. Speaking of his German colleagues who have bodily exercise, are less liable to the affection. The theory that been let out of the medical faculty here, he told me that he is advanced to explain this condition of things is that persons had wanted for some years to resign his chair and devote the who live on a diet composed largely of rice and the like, must balance of his life to anthropology, but the authorities seem use active exercise to consume its waste products, or the sys¬ disinclined to let him go. The explanation of his being re¬ tem becomes contaminated. Therefore the albuminoids and fats tained is probably the fact that, a few years ago, he attended ought to enter largely into the diet of those who are not em¬ one of the royal family, and was accredited with saving the ployed in manual labor. Downloaded From: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ by a University of Victoria User on 06/04/2015 EFFECT OF VEGETABLE DIET. WORK IN GYNECOLOGT AND OBSTETuICS. An acid form of indigestion is very prevalent among the Prof. Gentatsu Hamada has the chair of gynecology and ob¬ rice-eating Japanese; and is attributed to the fact that they stetrics in the Imperial University, and as an operator in his eat very rapidly, and thus do not mix a sufficient quantity of line is probably the foremost man in Japan. He was educated salivary secretion with their food before swallowing it. I saw largely under Freund, at Strasburg, and has imbibed all his in the out-door clinics a good many patients sent away without master's notions in relation to antisepsis in surgery.