SOCIAL ETHICS
To the Editor:
The following is a remarkable illustration of the advance in our conception of social obligations to unfortunates:
The president (of the Chicago Medical Society, December 13, 1867) “appointed a committee to consider the wisdom of the members of the society signing a petition requesting that the physician who was then imprisoned (Dr. Mudd) for caring for the wounds of Lincoln’s assassin should be released. The members of the society were of various opinions in regard to the ethical position of the unfortunate doctor.”[[2]]
[2]. Chicago Medical Recorder, April, 1913, p. 238.
Julia I. Felsenthal.
Chicago.
THE BACK FENCE
To the Editor:
One of the greatest disfigurements to the landscape as one looks out the back window of the average house is the row after row of unsightly wooden fences which rigorously mark off each twenty-five or thirty feet of land and constitute a barrier of exclusiveness very chilling in its effect on one’s friendly disposition. Of course one does not want his neighbor’s children to tramp unceremoniously over his little flower or vegetable garden, but could not the same results he brought about by a simple wire division covered with virginia creeper, grapes or clematis? Think of the beauty of such an outlook, and the aesthetic humanizing effect such a display of floral wealth would have on the minds of young and old! It might possibly result also in breaking down some of that proverbial coldness and hauteur which is said to characterize city neighbors. Life is short at best and sufficiently lacking in familiarity and cordiality to warrant some attempt to reform the wooden back fence out of existence.