words, the members have received at one meeting, or shortly before, the Transactions of the preceding meeting; and of course this has been very unsatisfactory to all concerned, members and officers. When the Institute was a small affair, and its annual volumes made up at the most from a hundred and fifty to two hundred pages, it was an easy matter to get out the Proceedings, and even in those days there was no great degree of promptness, except occasionally. The present General Secretary for several years got out the volume with a commendable degree of promptitude; but the load has now become too great for any one man to carry, even as a labor of love, and something must be done to lighten the burden that officer has to bear. I therefore move, Mr. President, that a committee of five be appointed by the chair to consider the means by which the Transactions of the Institute can be published and issued promptly after every session, and to report thereon as soon as possible during the session of the Institute.

The motion of Dr. Kellogg was unanimously agreed to, and the President subsequently appointed the following

Prepared by HENRY D. PAINE, M.D., of New York, Necrologist.

The report, was on motion, accepted and referred to the Committee of Publication.

B. W. JAMES, M.D., of Philadelphia: Mr. President: It seems fitting in conjunction with this subject, the necrology of the Institute, that resolutions should be passed by this association, expressive of our feelings in regard to our late President,

Dr. Carroll Dunham.

I therefore move that a committee of

five be appointed by the chair, to report on the subject at the present session.

Agreed to.

THE PRESIDENT: The committee will consist of the following members:

F. R. MCMANUS, M.D., of Baltimore, Chairman of the Board of Censors, presented the names of a large number of applicants for membership, with the request that if any member had any objection to offer to an applicant, it should be offered at once.

S. LILIENTHAL, M.D.: Mr. President: Before we begin with the business of the bureaus, I wish to call the attention of the members to the fact that, according to the present rules or by-laws of the Institute, the bureaus are required to select special subjects for presentation here, and that papers not treating of the subject selected by a bureau must be excluded from the Transactions, as only papers on the selected subject can be published; and on the other hand these excluded papers cannot be published in the journals, because they are the property of the Institute. This seems to me to be unjust, and I think our rules should be so amended as to allow of such excluded papers being referred back to their authors, with permission to publish them in such journal as they may select. I make this as a motion.

THE PRESIDENT: You have heard the motion of Dr. Lilienthal. The subject is now open for discussion.

R. LUDLAM, M.D., of Chicago: I would like to inquire whether in case a paper is irregular, it will not be proper and feasible for the Institute to suspend the rules and order the publication of that paper, if the members think it sufficiently meritorious to warrant publication.

O. B. GAUSE, M.D., of Philadelphia: It seems to me that

the intervention of the World's Homœopathic Convention caused these new rules adopted at the Put-in-Bay meeting to fade from the memories of a great many of the members. I am told by the Secretary that but a single bureau has complied with the rules as there adopted. It seems to me that it would be right and proper to disregard these rules this time, and get the papers brought here in good faith presented, and published if they are worthy of publication. We cannot afford to do without Dr. Ludlam's paper. I know the importance of the subject on which he has written, and I know something of the writer, and I believe that his paper will be so valuable that it should not be excluded simply because it is "irregular." I think the rules should be suspended for this session, and I make that a motion.

THE PRESIDENT: The motion to suspend these rules I decide to be out of order. They are by-laws, and it is provided only that they may be altered or amended by a two-thirds vote of the Institute.

DR. LILIENTHAL: What we want to get at is the publication of these outside papers somewhere. The Secretary says he has no power to hand them back to the writers, or to give them to journalists. They are the property of the Institute, and yet they cannot be published because they are not on the subject selected; and so they must go into the waste-basket or accumulate in the hands of the Secretary.

DR. GAUSE: I think the Institute should keep its own property, and yet it can provide for the publication of meritorious papers.

T. J. PATCHEN, M.D., of Hot Springs, Ark.: I would like to ask what this property is worth if it is to go into the waste-basket? I am in favor of having those irregular papers published in the journals, if they cannot be printed with the Transactions.

DR. LILIENTHAL: I would ask Dr. McClatchey to give us the rules relating to these matters. As I understand them, they work about as follows: In my Bureau of Clinical Medicine, the subject selected is spinal diseases. Now if a member presents a paper on inflammation of the lungs, it is necessarily excluded from publication in the Transactions because it is not on spinal disease, and yet as the Institute accepts it, it becomes its property, and goes

into the hands of the Committee of Publication, who have, however, no power to print it anywhere.

PHILO G. VALENTINE, M.D., St. Louis, Mo.: I don't agree with Dr. Lilienthal. These papers are not the property of the Institute if the Institute does not desire them or intend them for publication.

BUSHROD W. JAMES, M.D., of Philadelphia, Pa.: It seems to me that we are spending a great deal of time in discussing a matter that can be better managed through a committee. As the laws at present stand, we can have no papers printed in the annual volume excepting these that have been already printed and distributed to the members viz.: the report of the Bureau of Materia Medica and a part of the report of the Bureau of Surgery. Dr. LILIENTHAL: Let us hear from the Secretary.

THE SECRETARY: In response to Dr. Lilienthal, and for the information of the Institute, permit me to make a statement. The Institute has a number of rules relating to its publications, and they are all comprised in Article VII of the By-laws. They provide, first, that every bureau shall select a special subject to be reported on by them, or to be discussed by the Institute; and, again, it is provided that no bureau papers shall be published in the Transactions but those bearing on the special subjects selected. At the meeting at Put-in-Bay, in 1875, the By-laws were amended to provide that all papers presented to the Institute should be in the hands of chairmen of bureaus at least three months prior to the meeting; that the chairmen should forward to the General Secretary the papers on the special subjects or a selection therefrom, and the titles of all papers in their possession, at least two months prior to the meeting, that the Secretary may have copies printed and furnished to the respective bureaus before the meeting and to the members at the meeting. Now the object of all this legislation was to prevent the introduction into the annual volume of a miscellaneous assortment of papers, of which great complaint had been made, to pin the bureaus down to one subject per annum, and get all their working capacity into one direction, and thus secure a better class of papers, and to compel care in their preparation by providing that they shall be in the hands of chairmen at least three months prior to the meet

ing, and thus do away with the hasty preparation of unconsidered papers on the way to the meeting or even during the session, and finally to secure intelligent discussion of the subjects presented by having them printed and distributed to the members of bureaus in advance, and to all others at the time of meeting. This seemed at the time it was adopted to be wise legislation, and these amendments passed by a unanimous vote. One bureau-Materia Medica-has complied with the rules entirely, and another bureau-Surgery-has partially complied with these rules. In relation to ownership of papers presented by the bureaus which have been termed irregular; if bureaus present these papers to the Institute, knowing the rules, and the Institute accepts them and refers them to the Committee of Publication, they entirely pass out of the ownership of the writers and of the bureaus and become the property of the Institute. They are referred to the Committee of Publication, but the committee cannot publish them in the Transactions on account of the rules, and it has no right to give them back to the writers or to publish them in journals because they are the property of the Institute. In this way quite a number of papers have accumulated in the hands of the Secretary, and members have written angrily to know why their papers were not published with the Transactions. Dr. Carroll Dunham had the papers on Primary and Secondary Symptoms presented by the Bureau of Materia Medica at Put-in-Bay, and which were excluded from the Transactions, published in the journals, with the advice and consent of the writers, but he assumed all the responsibility of the transaction. Members of the Institute and members of bureaus are supposed to know the rules, and if members see fit to write irregular papers, and chairmen of bureaus see fit to present them here, the Institute can do no less, as an act of courtesy, than receive and refer them, and having done so they become the property of the Institute, as much as do the regular papers of the bureaus, concerning which the Institute has very emphatically asserted ownership. Now, notwithstanding all this, the Institute is paramount, and I believe it can order the publication of any paper, regular or irregular, or it can alter or amend its By-laws by a two-thirds vote of the members present at any annual meeting.