Biology in America

the subject. Medicine is already overloaded with terms, and since, in these days, Greek and Latin are "dead" languages in fact as in name for the vast majority of students, we make a plea for the retention of the English designation "carriers," amply and well defined as "an individual who harbors and transmits pathogenic parasites without showing the usual evidences of infection." An important fact, too little realized, is that -the "chronic carrier state is really an infection sharply localized," an infection liabte to recrudescence. We strongly endorse the statement that "the discharge of a patient without release cultures and appropriate action is as unprofessional as treatment without diagnosis," yet such a program is Utopian. Even in diphtheria, perhaps the most easily carried out examination, and the one for which there is most abundant provision, release cultures are often not made. Indeed, diagnostic cultures are often not made even by graduates of our best colleges. Here is a fertile field for professional education by officers of health. The real disappointment in the book is in the matter of treatment. This is partly due *to the nature of the cases under consideration, and partly to a lack of fullness in discussion. Removal of the focus of infection by surgical -means, when this can be determined, is lauded