_Puerperal Fever._—Perhaps one of the most striking of all victories of preventive medicine has been the almost total abolition of so-called child-bed fever from the maternity hospitals and from private practice. In many institutions the mortality after child-birth was five or six per cent., indeed sometimes as high as ten per cent., whereas to-day, owing entirely to proper antiseptic precautions, the mortality has fallen to three-tenths to four-tenths per cent. The recognition of the contagiousness of puerperal fever was the most valuable contribution to medical science made by Oliver Wendell Holmes. There had been previous suggestions by several writers, but his essay on the “Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever,” published in 1843, was the first strong, clear, logical statement of the case. Semmelweis, a few years later, added the weight of a large practical experience to the side of the contagiousness, but the full recognition of the causes of the disease was not reached until the recent antiseptic views had been put into practical effect. THE NEW DISPENSATION IN TREATMENT The century has witnessed a revolution in the treatment of disease, and the growth of a new school of medicine. The old schools—regular and homœopathic—put their trust in drugs, to give which was the alpha and the omega of their practice. For every symptom there were a score or more of medicines—vile, nauseous compounds in one case; bland, harmless dilutions in the other. The new school has a firm faith in a few good, well-tried drugs, little or none in the great mass of medicines still in general use. Imperative drugging—the ordering of medicine in any and every malady—is no longer regarded as the chief function of the doctor. Naturally, when the entire conception of the disease was changed, there came a corresponding change in our therapeutics. In no respect is this more strikingly shown than in our present treatment of fever—say, of the common typhoid fever. During the first quarter of the century the patients were bled, blistered, purged and vomited, and dosed with mercury, antimony, and other compounds to meet special symptoms. During the second quarter, the same, with variations in different countries. After 1850 bleeding became less frequent, and the experiments of the Paris and Vienna schools began to shake the belief in the control of fever by drugs. During the last quarter sensible doctors have reached the conclusion that typhoid fever is not a disease to be treated with medicines, but that in a large proportion of all cases diet, nursing, and bathing meet the indications. There is active, systematic, careful, watchful treatment, but not with drugs. The public has not yet been fully educated to this point, and medicines have sometimes to be ordered for the sake of the friends, and it must be confessed that there are still in the ranks _antiques_ who would insist on a dose of some kind every few hours.