MEDICAL DESPOTISM. The bill which has been introduced into the Rhode Island Legislature for the suppression of independent physicians by confining all practice to those licensed by a medical board, is so great an outrage on common sense and justice, that it meets with strenuous opposition. The editor of the JOURNAL made an address in opposition to the bill in the hall of the House of Representatives on the sixteenth of February, occupying about an hour and a half, showing that the proposed legislation was more despotic and unjust than the laws under European despotisms. The _Providence Star_, in reporting the address, spoke of it as the most eloquent ever delivered in the House on any subject. "MIND IN NATURE," the best monthly publication of its kind in the world and the nearest approach in its character to the JOURNAL OF MAN, has just expired at Chicago after issuing two volumes. A few bound copies may be obtained at $1.25 per single volume, or $2.25 for two volumes, by addressing the editor, J. E. Woodhead, Chicago. PHYSIOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN THE COLLEGE OF THERAPEUTICS. The resolutions of my most recent class in Boston are the same in spirit as have been expressed during forty years, and will no doubt be expressed again by my students in May, 1887. They not only know the truth of the science but recognize sarcognomy as "the most important addition ever made to physiological science by any individual," and their testimony was based on their own personal experience. To the students of sarcognomy this is a familiar idea, but to others some explanation may be necessary. What are the greatest discoveries in physiology? Common opinion would mention as the foremost the action of the heart in circulating the blood,--a discovery not originated but consummated by Harvey; and yet the discovery is of so simple and obvious a nature that we wonder now, not so much at the ability manifested in the discovery, as at the stupidity which permitted it to remain so long unknown, and even to be denied and ridiculed when published. Harvey's work on the generation of animals entitled him to a higher rank as a pioneer in science than his theory of the circulation. A far greater discovery was that of Dr. Gall, which embraced not only the anatomy but the functions of the brain as a mental organ--a discovery twenty times as great, whether we consider the superior importance of the brain, or the greater investigating genius necessary to the discovery. It easily ranks at the head of the physiological discoveries of the past centuries. Next comes the discovery of the motor and sensory roots of the spinal nerves by Majendie and Bell, which did not, as commonly supposed, include the motor and sensory of the spinal cord. This was a small discovery compared to Gall's, but not inferior to Harvey's discovery of the cardiac function.