elected Chairman of the Bureau of Clinical Medicine for the ensuing year.

ALTERATION OF THE BY-LAWS.

DR. LILIENTHAL: Mr. President: I herewith offer a report from the committee appointed yesterday morning to consider the subject of publishing the papers of the Institute, the rules now being very strict. Your committee having carefully considered the whole subject, respectfully recommend that Sections 19 and 21 of Article VII of the By-laws be stricken out. By striking out these sections the Committee of Publication will find themselves free to publish such papers as they may see fit, even though they should not be on the subject selected by a bureau.

DR. JOHN E. JAMES, of Philadelphia: I move the report of the committee be accepted.

Agreed to.

DR. J. H. MCCLELLAND, of Pittsburg, Pa.: I move that the recommendations of the committee be adopted, and the bylaws amended.

Agreed to.

DR. LILIENTHAL: Your committee likewise offer the following resolution:

Resolved, That all papers rejected by the Committee of Publication and not published with the Transactions of the Institute, be referred back to their authors by the General Secretary, to be disposed of as they may see fit. On motion, this resolution was adopted.

SPEEDY PUBLICATION OF THE TRANSACTIONS.

T. P. WILSON, M.D., of Cincinnati, O.: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I beg to offer the following as a report from the committee to whom was referred Dr. Kellogg's resolution to devise some means by which the annual volume of Transactions may be gotten out promptly after the close of each session:

Your committee beg leave to report that they have carefully examined the many questions connected therewith, and would respectfully recommend the adoption of the following resolutions:

Resolved, First. That the annual dues be raised to seven dollars.

Second, That the office of General Secretary be changed to Permanent Secretary, and the incumbent be removable for cause only.

Third. That the Permanent Secretary be paid an annual salary of one thousand dollars; and in view of the foregoing, that the Permanent Secretary be instructed to issue the Annual Proceedings within three months after the close of the session, and deliver the same without expense to each member entitled to receive them.

Signed,

T. P. WILSON, Cincinnati, O, Chairman.

L. H. WILLARD, Allegheny, Pa.

GEO. A. HALL, Chicago.

O. B. GAUSE, Philadelphia.

DR. WILSON: Dr. L. E. Ober, of La Crosse, Wis., a member of the committee, dissents from a portion of this report. If the report is received, we will be able to make some further explanation in regard to it.

On motion, the report was received.

DR. WILSON: Now, Mr. Chairman, I would say that this committee has had a great deal of work on its hands to get at all the facts connected with this subject. It is very obvious to you. all that a large amount of work has been done by our worthy Secretary, just for the love of it, for a number of years; and this work has been constantly increasing, and the Institute has been growing in membership. It is impossible for any one to perform the work incident to the Secretary's office without compensation, and we as a body have no right to ask for such a thing any more than our patients have a right to ask us to give them our time and talents without pay. We have been unable to find any per-son willing to carry the load and do the work that Dr. McClatchey has so nobly done for us, and do it as he has done it. Hence we find that it is a matter of necessity as well as of right that we should compensate the man who does the work for us. To make the whole matter shape itself, therefore, and to do as other associations have done, and as business men do, we recommend the payment of a reasonable salary to the Secretary, one thousand dollars per annum, so that he may hire as much help as he requires, if so disposed, and to meet which we further recommend the raising of the dues from five to seven dollars per annum —an increase of two dollars, which we can all stand, and for which we will be more than compensated in receiving the

Proceedings promptly, and in knowing that the Secretary is paid for his labor; and thirdly, to give the Secretary security in his office, and to prevent all "log-rolling" and "wire-pulling" annually for this office, we elect him a permanent officer, removable only for cause.

DR. MCMANUS: I call upon Dr. Ober.

DR. L. E. OBER: I dissented from the report as presented by the committee. I am in favor of the Secretary having a salary; it is a mere act of justice, and I am in favor of doing justice to our present faithful Secretary. I certainly would be the last man on this floor to ask a man to do honest work for nothing. But I do not think it is best to make the office of Secretary permanent, and I was in favor of a term of years. Five years was the time specified.

DR. D. S. SMITH, of Chicago: I would like to have a definition of the words "for cause," the Secretary is removable only "for cause." Is it meant incompetency or inattention to business, or both?

DR. WILSON: The meaning is, that so long as the Secretary discharges the duties of his office in a proper manner, that is to say, competently and without neglect, he cannot be removed; and so long as he does this, it will not be desirable that he should be removed.

It was moved and seconded by several that the suggestions embodied in the report be adopted.

DR. LEWIS BARNES, of Delaware, O.: I move as an amendment that the Secretary's term of office be limited to five years. My reason is, that five years from now this body may be entirely different from what it is now-there will be so much new material taken in, and so much old let out, that it will hardly be the same body—and this being the case, why should we elect a Secretary for those who will come after us, and who will then be a majority. This should be thought of, in justice to them. Let us fix the term of office for a reasonable time. It should be for several years, for if we change the Secretary every year we will have our work botched. It takes considerable skill and experience to make a good Secretary, and five years is as short a time as he should be elected for. The labors of the Secretary are

much greater than any one here who has had nothing to do with printing has any idea of. As an editor of a newspaper I have received communications from scientific and professional men who were graduates of colleges, and I do not remember more than one man who ever sent me an article that I could at once place in the compositor's hands without some overhauling. The Secretary attends to matters of this sort, and sees to it that our reports are gotten out in decent English at least. It requires both time and labor to see to that, and the Secretary should be paid, and in my opinion he should be elected for five years. A permanent secretaryship is not republican, according to my views of it.

The amendment of Dr. Barnes was seconded, and agreed to by a vote of fifty-five to forty-nine.

A MEMBER: I wish to offer another amendment to this report, and that is, that instead of increasing the annual fee to seven dollars, the initiation fee be increased to ten dollars.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that would destroy the object of the report. I am informed that the committee have recom mended the increase after an actual count and comparison of figures. It is not mere guesswork, but absolute fact.

The amendment offered was then withdrawn.

THE PRESIDENT: The question will now be taken on the resolutions embodied in the report, as amended.

The resolutions as amended were then adopted by a unanimous

vote.

THE PRESIDENT: We will now proceed with the regular order of business. The papers of the

BUREAU OF ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

will be presented by Dr. H. B. Van Norman.

H. B. VAN NORMAN, M.D., of Cleveland, O.: Mr. President, I have the honor to announce that the bureau I represent, in the absence of its chairman, has the following papers :

New Views on the Physiology of the Nervous System; by A. R. THOMAS, M.D., of Philadelphia.

A Study in Mental Physiology; by A. C. COWPERTHWAITE, M.D., of Nebraska City, Neb.

Vicarious Excretion; by O. S. RUNNELS, M.D., of Indianapolis.

On Masturbation; by H. B. VAN NORMAN, M.D., of Cleveland, O.

The paper by Dr. Runnels will be read by that gentleman, and the other papers I desire to have referred without reading. O. S. RUNNELS, M.D., of Indianapolis, then read his paper on Vicarious Excretion.

On motion, the papers of the bureau were accepted and referred to the Committee of Publication, and the bureau was declared closed.

H. B. VAN NORMAN, M.D., of Cleveland, was elected Chairman of the Bureau of Anatomy and Physiology for the ensuing

year.

AMENDMENT OF BY-LAWS.

T. P. WILSON, M.D.: I find, Mr. President, on looking over our by-laws, that the resolution affecting the office of Secretary which was just adopted by a unanimous vote is in conflict with the By-laws as they now stand, and that an amendment to Article II will be necessary. I therefore move the following alterations and amendments to the By-laws, which will make Article II to read as follows:

ARTICLE II.-OFFICERS.

SECTION 1. The officers shall be elected by ballot at each annual session of the Institute (with the exception of the General Secretary, as hereinafter provided), and shall enter upon their respective duties the first day of January following.

SECTION 2. The officers of the Institute, viz., the President, Vice-President, General Secretary, Provisional Secretary and Treasurer, shall constitute an Executive Committee, which shall arrange the business of the meetings, attend to matters of business not otherwise specially provided for, and perform such other duties as may by vote of the Institute devolve upon it.

SECTION 3. The General Secretary shall be elected for a period of five years (removable only for cause), and shall be paid an annual salary of one thousand dollars.

The By-laws were then altered and amended as above by a unanimous vote.