While the microscopists and various ologists are discussing this, we will tell a story of a certain worthy practitioner of our acquaintance. The doctor's hobby was malaria. If a person came in with a headache it was “malarial headache;” backache, “malarial backache;” legs ache, “malaria.” One day a man came in with his arm hanging helpless. Our friend promptly began about malaria. The man said he had heard of break-bone fever, but that he had fallen off a street car and didn't think this was a malarial fracture. Some of the best fellows we know ride hobbies, but let those who now bestride the bacillus beware where the creature carries them. OLEOMARGARINE. The subject of artificial butter continues to agitate the public mind and stomach. There are involved a few plain principles which, if applied, will elucidate the whole matter. Good glycerine can be made from dogs or horse fat, sugar from rags; sea water or the most impure lake or river water can be changed to _azua pura_ by distillation; good suet or tallow can be so treated as to make a nutritious and harmless article of diet. Now, if old grease can be so manipulated and modified as to give a pure and edible result, cheaper than old-fashioned butter, the latter will have to go out of fashion. In that case, wrong would lie only in selling the article for what it is not, and not in the fact of its being also injurious to the user. Just as in many synthetically manufactured wines and cigars, which are not chemically essentially different from the article they imitate, but are fraudulent because they are sold as imported or genuine, which they are not. If the goods are good, let them be sold for what they really are; and if the old-fashioned butter is higher priced, let those of us who like pay the difference for our fastidiousness. The manufacturers of the new butter should expend their efforts and their money in perfecting their process, so as to give an innocent and useful food, and in proving that it is so, instead of opposing the action of the Board of Health. The verdict of the health authorities should be regarded as final by every individual of the public, and until the new article is pronounced at least harmless, no one should think of using or handling it any more than they would measly pork or spoilt fish. MEDICAL DEFENCE ASSOCIATION. We have selected a few recent cases of suits for malpractice with the object of calling the attention of physicians to the importance of adopting some plan looking toward the suppression of quackery and the protection of professional rights when assailed by hostile influences.