Chapter XIV: Appendix: Great Precedence Question 287 (13)

Sir E. B. Lytton, in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, observes: We who are lovers of the country are not unnaturally disposed to consider that our preference argues some finer poetry of sentiment--some steadier devotion to those ennobling studies which sages commend as the fitting occupations of retirement. But the facts do not justify that self-conceit upon our part. It was said by a philosopher who was charged with all the cares of a world’s empire, that “there is no such great matter in retirement. A man may be wise and sedate in a crowd as well as in a desert, and keep the noise of the world from getting within him. In this case, as Plato observes, the walls of a town and the enclosure of a sheep-fold may be made the same thing.” Certainly, poets, and true poets, have lived by choice in the dingy streets of great towns. Men of science, engaged in reasonings the most abstruse, on subjects the most elevating, have usually fixed their dwelling-place in bustling capitals, as if the din of the streets without deepened, by the force of a contrast, the quiet of those solitary closets wherein they sat analysing the secret heart of that nature whose every-day outward charms they abandoned to commonplace adorers. On the other hand, men perforce engaged in urban occupations, neither bards nor sages but City clerks and traders, feel a yearning of the heart towards a home in the country; loving rural nature with so pure a fervour that, if closer intercourse is forbidden, they are contented to go miles every evening to kiss the skirt of her robe. Their first object is to live out of London, if but in a suburb; to refresh their eyes with the green of a field; to greet the first harbinger of spring in the primrose venturing forth in their own tiny realm of garden. It is for them, as a class, that cities extend beyond their ancient bounds; while our nobles yet clung to their gloomy halls in the Fleet, traders sought homesteads remote from their stalls and wares in the pleasing village of Charing.

_Recreations of the People._

The preservation of open places for the recreation of the people is watched with much jealousy by those who take an interest in the assertion of popular rights. Mr. J. S. Mill, the historian, has put in this eloquent plea for their maintenance:

There is room in the world no doubt, and even in old countries,
for an immense increase of population, supposing the arts of life
to go on improving, and capital to increase. But although it may
be innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it.
The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain
in the greatest degree all the advantages, both of co-operation
and of social intercourse, has in all the more populous countries
been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be
amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to
be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A
world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal.
Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential
to any depth of meditation or of character, and solitude in
the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle
of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the
individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there
much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left
to the spontaneous activity of nature, with every rood of land
brought into cultivation which is capable of growing food for
human beings, every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed
up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for
man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food; every hedgerow
or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where
a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as
a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must
lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to
things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would
extirpate from it for the mere purpose of enabling it to support
a larger, but not a better or happier population, I sincerely
hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be
stationary long before necessity compels them to do so.

This is picturesquely eloquent; but it may be argued that a public “green” or common, in the neighbourhood of a large town, is often a rendezvous for the idle and abandoned, in their brutalizing sports: the great city, like a cauldron, with more evils than that in _Macbeth_, seems to boil over, and deposit its scum upon the circumjacent ground.

_The Druids and their Healing Art._

We might expect to find, from the universality of their application, remedies for

the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to

preserved _in perpetuo_. In ancient Britain, the Druids were the depositaries of these secrets.

Amongst the early Britons, the ranks of the priests were recruited from the noblest families: their education, which often extended over a period of twenty years, comprehended the whole of the sciences of the age; and besides their sacred calling, they were invested with power to decide their civil disputes. Their dwellings and temples were situated in the thickest oak-groves, which were sacred to the Supreme Deity. The acorn, and above all, the parasitical mistleto, were held in high veneration: the latter was sought on the sixth day of the moon, and when found was only cut by a priest of the highest rank, for it was accounted a sovereign remedy for all diseases. The practice of the healing art has ever commanded the esteem of the rudest nations: hence it was the obvious policy of the priests, or Druids, to study the properties of plants. Of their progress we have no record; but who knows from what a far antiquity come the traditionary virtues of many of our native plants?

Their famous Mistleto, or _all-heal_, was considered a certain cure in many diseases, an antidote to poison, and a preventive of infection. And, we have, in the present day, a very old _nostrum_, named _Heal-all_, the universal virtues of which are described as equalling the mistleto of our ancestors.

_Remedies for Cancer._

A multitude of strange remedies are prescribed for Cancer. When Lord Metcalfe, the Governor of Canada, was beset with this cruel disease, Mr. Kaye, his biographer, tells us: “One correspondent recommended Mesmerism, which had cured Miss Martineau; another Hydropathy, at the pure springs of Malvern; a third, an application of the common dock-leaf; a fourth, an infusion of couch-grass; a fifth, the baths of Docherte, near Vienna; a sixth, the volcanic hot-springs of Karlsbad; a seventh, a wonderful plaster made of rose-leaves, olive-oil, and turnip-juice; an eighth, a plaster and powder, in which some part of a young frog was a principal ingredient; a ninth, a mixture of copperas and vinegar; a tenth, an application of pure ox-gall; an eleventh, a mixture of Florence oil and red precipitate; whilst a twelfth was certain of the good effects of Homœopathy, which cured Charlotte Elizabeth. Besides these varied remedies, many men and women with infallible recipes, or certain modes of treatment, were recommended by themselves and others. Learned Italian professors, mysterious American women, erudite Germans, and obscure Irish quacks--all had cured cancers of twenty years’ standing, and all were pressing, or pressed forward, to operate on Lord Metcalfe.”

_Improved Surgery._

The basis, and no small portion of the superstructure, of scientific surgery, was laid by the famous Ambroise Paré, who possessed the rare gift of seeing things as they were, and not as his preconceived notions would have them to be. Sharing the common belief that gunshot wounds were, by their nature, poisonous, he used to treat them with boiling oil; but having failed once to apply the usual remedy, he was surprised to find that his patients were much the better for the omission. Thereupon, he renounced the ordinary practice, and from that time gunshot wounds have received a more rational treatment. Paré was the first to revive the practice known to the Arabians of stopping the flow of blood from arteries by tying them. The French Faculty of Medicine ridiculed the innovation as the system of hanging life upon a thread, and declared its preference for the use of boiling pitch which had stood the test of so many centuries; but wounded persons could not be brought to see the force of such reasoning. Anatomy was prosecuted with great assiduity and precision of detail throughout the whole of the sixteenth century, and the way was cleared for Harvey’s grand discovery, which he first publicly taught in 1619.

John Hunter introduced what is probably the most capital Improvement in Surgery ever effected by a single man;--namely, the practice in aneurism of tying the artery at a distance from the seat of disease. This one suggestion has saved thousands of lives; and both the suggestion, and the first successful execution of it, are entirely owing to John Hunter, who, if he had done nothing else, would on this account alone have a right to be classed among the principal benefactors of mankind.

_Restoration of a Fractured Leg._

M. Flourens has communicated to the Paris Academy of Sciences a letter from Dr. Mottet, giving an account of the Restoration of a Fractured Leg under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. The fracture had been occasioned by a fall of stones on the limb; it was complex, and such that amputation presented peculiar difficulties; still, notwithstanding gangrene and other untoward circumstances, the fracture, being reduced, was kept in its normal position by a peculiar apparatus for the space of a year, at the end of which time the bone was completely regenerated, and the limb perfectly cured without any diminution in length.

_The original “Dr. Sangrado.”_

Thousands may have enjoyed the humour of _Gil Blas_ without suspecting that the genius of Dr. Sangrado had any living prototype. Yet such was Botal, who revolutionized the practice of medicine by a freedom of bleeding that was quite unprecedented. He bled largely and repeatedly, both young and old, male and female, in all diseases, whether low in type or acute. “The young he bled freely, on account of the rapid reproduction of blood in youth; the old, because he saw in the practice a conduciveness to rejuvenescence. He bled freely in low and wasting diseases, even of a malignant nature, because a richer and better blood was formed; in dysentery, because he recognised in it an affinity to inflammation of the lungs, in which all physicians bled; in all forms of flatulency, because of its power to relieve obstructions; in short, he had a reason for bleeding in every special distemper, and when reproached for the indiscriminate routine of practice, he argued that the more water you draw from a well the purer and better is that which filters in. From him originated the system of bleeding in pregnancy, which is continued to this day.” Botal was a man of happy despatch, like Van Helmont, under whose hands, as his biographer relates, “the sick never languished long, being always killed or cured in three days.” Botal’s patients were probably more often killed than cured; but they did not die in vain, for his practice set medical men observing and thinking, so that good came of it in the end--a great consolation for his victims, could they have foreseen it.--_Spectator newspaper._

_False Arts advancing true._

After the death of Galen, Medicine ceased to make progress. Amidst the Gothic invasions the medical sects “dwindled down to individuals, who achieved for medicine what the monastics effected for ancient classic literature: they maintained it in the condition of a small but continuous stream, in the midst of so much charlatanism that no man could talk nonsense so gross, or profess supernatural powers so incredible, but that the ignorance of the community would give credit to his assertions.” All through the dark and the Middle Ages astrology, alchemy, magic, and cabalistic arts predominated; all physical phenomena were ascribed to occult causes; in short, as Sir John Herschel remarks, “If the logic of that gloomy period could be justly described as ‘the art of talking unintelligibly on matters of which we are ignorant,’ its physics might, with equal truth, be summed up in a deliberate preference of ignorance to knowledge in matters of every day’s experience and use.” Sometimes, however, the false arts served indirectly to advance the true. Alchemy led the way to chemistry, and enriched medicine with new remedies, and at least one crotchet of scholastic divinity may be supposed to have done something for the progress of anatomy; for “the skeleton received, perhaps, an adventitious attention in consequence of the popular belief that, in man, some one particular bone existed of an imponderable, incombustible, and indestructible nature, around which, as a nucleus, all other tissues and organs would collect and re-assume their vital actions at the resurrection. Accordingly, every bone was tested by fire, for the purpose of discovering the hypothetical one.”--Dr. Meryon’s _History of Medicine_.

_Brief History of Medicine._

Great honour is, unquestionably, due to those medical men who by their learning, counsel, and experience, have contributed so many and great things to the improvement of their profession. The art of healing may be considered as a legacy left to us by former ages and enriched by ancient writers, and no doubt ordained by a benevolent Creator for the benefit of His creatures, who, being endowed with reason, are enabled to prosecute Medicine and the collateral sciences with wonderful sagacity. The impossibility of learning medicine properly by experience alone, implies the necessity of studying both ancient and modern writers; but, in the words of Harvey, “men were not to swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity, as openly and in sight of all to deny and desert their friend Truth.” Medical history unfortunately affords many examples of despisers of the mighty dead and of eminent living authorities. Paracelsus burnt the writings of Galen and Avicenna before his pupils, and proclaimed himself the king of medicine. Hahnemann much resembled Paracelsus, for he despised the inspection of dead bodies, and preferred the homœopathic doctrine to pathology; but both had dared to do “aliquid Gyaris vel carcere dignum.” Hahnemann’s doctrine, that numerous chronic diseases originated in the itch, was neither new, safe, nor true. Dr. C. G. Zieger had many years before promulgated the same idea in a dissertation published at Leipsic in 1758, without boasting, as the other did, that he was engaged twelve years in the discovery. False theories, however, with scientific pretensions, have flourished through many ages. Hence arose homœopathy, kinesipathy, table-turning, and various despicable “isms” of the present day. But, happily for the poor, at least, such lies could not exist in the schools of Harvey, Baillie, and Hunter. The low condition of medicine at the time of Linacre, and the improvement with the aid of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey, may next be mentioned. Linacre, the founder of the College, and Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul’s School, of grateful memory to the orator, were among the first to restore ancient learning to this island. The College of Physicians having been established, its members were separated from vulgar empirics; but by a new law homœo-empirics may be registered, which was nothing less than legal homicide, and strongly to be protested against.--_Harveian Oration_, 1863.

_What has Science done for Medicine?_

The practice of Medicine is full of difficulty. Modern Science has done something to aid in the diagnosis, often the most difficult part of the physician’s task. Auscultation and the use of the microscope have substituted certainty for conjecture in many cases. But, for this essential preliminary of ascertaining what is the matter with the patient, a combination of faculties is often needed which cannot be communicated in the schools. The power may be developed and improved by use, and corrected by careful observation; but it is born with certain men, and it is not to be gained by teaching or study. Then, supposing the disease to be ascertained, it constantly happens that there is little or nothing to be done that can with any confidence be expected to shorten or reduce the intensity of the attack. The option lies between a system of slight palliatives, almost or quite inoperative, and the application of stronger remedies whose action is uncertain. Fortunately, the effects of medicine in general are far less considerable than is commonly supposed. The statistics of hospitals in which the most different systems of treatment have been adopted do not, indeed, prove that all the systems have been equally good or bad; but they do show that in many diseases there is no known system of treatment that has any marked advantage over others. It is not too much to say that, for one case in which the medicine administered has been of real use, there are ten where the patients would have thriven as well or better without it.

A further difficulty in medical practice has been less noticed than it deserves to be. All that is known of the effect of remedies is the general or average result of a large number of cases in which they have been applied. But no two men are exactly alike in the manner of action of their various organs. When the chemist who has once tried an experiment brings the same substances together under similar conditions, he is absolutely certain that they will act on each other as they did before. Not so is it with the living organism. The idiosyncracy of each patient is more or less unknown to the physician; and till the experiment has been tried, he can have no certainty as to the result of his treatment. It is quite true that the exceptional cases that sometimes arise present apparent rather than real anomalies. There is no reason to suppose that the laws of physics have been suspended by an independent disturbing power when a drug produces on a particular patient an unusual effect. The conditions of the experiment have doubtless been changed by some peculiarity in his organization, which the present means of science are powerless to detect.

The main cause why medicine is still so little advanced is to be found in the backward condition of the science on which it mainly rests. Physiology, including pathology--the first taking cognizance of all the vital functions of organized beings, the second of the disturbance of those functions by disease--is far from maintaining its place in the general march of physical science.--_Saturday Review._

_The Element of Physic in Medical Practice._

The Element of Physic in Medical Practice becomes constantly more simple. Our drugs are fewer and less complicated.[20] Of course it is all otherwise in pseudo-medicine. Here “specifics” are as rank as weeds. Here little account is taken of natural provisions for the cure of disease. Here physic is everything, and nature and the physician are unimportant. Given the symptoms of a disease and a book of “testings,” every old lady thinks herself as competent a physician as Hahnemann. Every disease and symptom of disease has its corresponding remedy, or rather we should say two remedies, for it will nearly always be found that homœopathic patients take two medicines, in equal doses and with equal frequency. Homœopathy abounds in principles. Its great principle is that of “specifics”--that certain medicines have the most definite and designed relation to certain ailments--are _the_ thing and the _only_ thing. Then there is what we may call the alternating principle, in virtue of which two medicines--each, we suppose, a specific!--are so much better than one. Upon these two principles the enlightened patron of homœopathy is made the receptacle of a most unprincipled amount of physic. We conclude by impressing upon our brethren who are studying medicine in the light of reason and science, the urgency of the duty that devolves upon them of so using the element of physic in medical practice as to make more and more apparent the great gulf that is fixed between their practice and the rival quackeries of the day. Let them use medicine so that the most undiscerning patient will perceive that it is only one of many means to an end, auxiliary only to great provisions in the body itself, and for the most part acting, not mysteriously, like quinine, but sensibly or chemically. Let the form of their drugs be unpretentious and inexpensive, so that whatever the cost to the patient may be, he may understand that he pays, not for physic, but for the attention, the skill, and the judgment, of the physician.--_Lancet._

_Physicians’ Fees._

In the Court of Exchequer in January, 1863, in an action brought by a physician to recover 21_l._ for services rendered to a patient, it was contended that as there was no special promise to pay, the plaintiff could not recover. Such was the state of the law formerly, physicians being presumed to attend for an _honorarium_; but an Act was passed to enable registered physicians and surgeons to recover their reasonable charges, subject to such bye-laws as might be passed by the College of Physicians. The latter body, however, it appears, have thwarted the intention of the Legislature by enacting that physicians shall not recover, even though a contract existed; the object, it seems, being to make the payment of physicians’ fees immediate, and to discourage credit. A verdict was found for the plaintiff, leave being granted to move the Court above on the construction of the Medical Act.

Attention has been called to the careless manner in which
consulting physicians write their prescriptions; more especially
as regards the dose, the drachm often resembling the ounce, and
the writing so generally blotted and crabbed that the dispensers
are often obliged to make guesses, with very little light to
guide them to a right conclusion. The blame, whenever a mistake
occurs, is always attached to the chemist or assistant, without
considering the anxiety and trouble they have in deciphering
writing worse than falls to the lot of a post-office master.
The public have often ridiculed the style of physicians’
prescriptions, but will be unable to joke when a mistake more
serious than usual occurs.

_Prevention of Pitting in Small-pox._

This desirable end is stated to have been attained in the clinical wards of the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh. The application consists of a solution of india-rubber in chloroform, which is painted over the face (and neck in women) when the eruption has become fully developed. When the chloroform has evaporated, which it very readily does, there is left a thin elastic film of india-rubber over the face. This the patient feels to be rather comfortable than otherwise, inasmuch as the disagreeable itchiness, so generally complained of, is almost entirely removed, and, what is more important, “pitting” once so common, and even now far from rare, is thoroughly prevented wherever the solution has been applied. It may be as well to state that india-rubber is far from being very soluble in chloroform; so that, in making the solution, the india-rubber must be cut into small pieces, and chloroform added till it is dissolved. The medical gentleman who has introduced this treatment has tried several other substances, but found none so generally useful. For instance, gutta-percha was tried. It has the advantage of being very soluble in chloroform, and would have been a very admirable application but for the tendency it has to tear into ribands whenever the mouth is used, or even when the features play. India-rubber, on the other hand, is pliable and elastic, allowing free use of the mouth without any danger (as a rule) of its tearing off. If, however, from some cause or other, a portion is torn off, a fresh application of the solution by means of a large hair-pencil remedies the defect, and the mask is once more complete. Several patients who have had this india-rubber mask applied concur in stating that they found it agreeable to wear, and their faces were perfectly free from “pitting,” although other parts of the body, such as the arms, were covered. The credit of this valuable invention and application belongs to Dr. Smart, house physician to the Infirmary.

_Underneath the Skin._

All over the surface of our bodies there are scattered millions of minute orifices, which open into the delicate convoluted tubes lying underneath the Skin, and are called by anatomists sudoriparous glands. Each of these tubes, when straightened, measures about a quarter of an inch; and as, according to Erasmus Wilson, whose figures we follow, there are 3528 of these tubes on every square inch of the palm of the hand, there must be no less than 882 inches of tubing on such a square inch. In some parts of the body the number of tubes is even greater: in most parts it is less. Erasmus Wilson estimates that there are 2800 on every square inch, on the average; and, as the total number of such inches is 2500, we arrive at the astounding result that, spread over the surface of the body, there are not less than twenty-eight miles of tubing, by means of which liquid may be secreted, and given off as vapour in insensible perspiration, or as water in sensible perspiration. In the ordinary circumstances of daily life the amount of fluid which is thus given off from the skin (and lungs) during the twenty-four hours varies from 1⅔ lb. to 5 lb.; under extraordinary circumstances the amount will, of course, rise enormously. Dr. Southwood Smith found that the workmen in the gasworks employed in making up the fires, and other occupations which subjected them to great heat, lost on an average 3 lb. 6 oz. in forty-five minutes; and when working for seventy minutes in an unusually hot place their loss was 5 lb. 2 oz., and 4 lb. 14 oz.--_Blackwood’s Magazine._

_Relations of Mind and Organization._

We may safely assume, as an established fact, that it is only through the instrumentality of the central parts of the nervous system that the Mind maintains its communication with the external world. The eye is necessary to sight, and the ear to hearing; and so with the other organs of sense. But the eye does not see, and the ear does not hear; and if the nerve which forms the communication between any one organ of sense and the brain be divided, the corresponding sense is destroyed. In like manner it is from the brain that all those impulses proceed by which the mind influences the phenomena of the external world. The division of the nerves which extend from the brain to the larynx destroys the voice. The division of the nerves of a limb causes the muscles of the limb to be paralysed, or, in other words, withdraws them from the influence of the will; the division of the spinal cord destroys at once the sensibility and the power of voluntary motion in all the parts below that at which the division has been made.

The brain has a central organ, which is a continuation of the spinal cord, and to which anatomists have given the name of _medulla oblongata_. In connexion with this there are other bodies placed in pairs. That each of these bodies has its peculiar functions there cannot be the smallest doubt; and it is, indeed, sufficiently probable that each of them is not a single organ, but a congeries of organs having distinct and separate uses.

Experimental physiology, joined with the observation of the changes produced by disease, has thrown some light on this mysterious subject. There is reason to believe that, whatever it may do besides, one office of the _cerebellum_ is to combine the action of the voluntary muscles for the purpose of locomotion. The _corpora quadrigemina_ are four tubercles which connect the _cerebrum_, _cerebellum_, and _medulla oblongata_ to each other. If one of the uppermost of these bodies be removed, blindness of the eye of the opposite side is the consequence. If the upper part of the _cerebrum_ be removed, the animal becomes blind, and apparently stupified, but not so much so but that he can walk with steadiness and precision. The most important part of the whole brain seems to be one particular part of the central organ, or _medulla oblongata_. While this remains entire, the animal retains its sensibility, breathes, and performs instinctive motions. But if this very minute portion of the nervous system be injured, there is an end of these several functions, and death immediately ensues.

These facts, and some others of the same kind, for a knowledge of which we are indebted to modern physiologists, and more especially to M. Magendie and M. Flourens, are satisfactory as far as they go; and warrant the conclusion that there are various other organs in the brain, designed for other purposes, and that if we cannot point out their locality, it is not because such organs do not exist, but because our means of research into so intricate a matter are very limited.--_Sir B. Brodie’s Psychological Inquiries._

_Deville, the Phrenologist._

In 1817 a Mr. Deville, a lamp-manufacturer of London, was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He had been originally a pot-boy, then a journeyman plasterer, and afterwards kept a shop for the sale of plaster figures, which he cast. He had risen to a respectable position simply by the force of his natural powers. Mr. Bryan Donkin, a civil engineer, was an early auditor of Gall at Vienna, and subsequently a friend of Spurzheim. He was also, like Mr. Deville, a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers; and when, in 1817, he with others determined to make a collection of casts as records of phrenological facts, Mr. Deville was applied to for his assistance, which he rendered as a matter of business for three or four years. In 1821 he became interested in phrenology, and began to form a collection of casts on his own account. Already, in 1826, Spurzheim said it was finer than any he had seen elsewhere. At Mr. Deville’s death, in 1846, this collection consisted of about 5450 pieces; of these 3000 were crania of animals, and the remainder (2450) illustrations of human phrenology. There were 200 human crania, and 300 casts of crania; amongst the latter, those which Baron Cuvier permitted Mr. Deville to take from all the authenticated human skulls in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy of Paris. Mr. Deville was a practical observer, and possessed the large number of 1500 casts of heads taken by himself from persons while living. Amongst these were 50 casts of persons remarkably devoted to religion: 40 of distinguished painters, sculptors, architects, &c.; 30 of eminent navigators and travellers; 80 of poets, authors, and writers; 70 of musicians, amateurs, and composers of music; 25 of pugilists; 150 of criminals; 120 pathological casts illustrative of insanity, &c. Perhaps the most interesting of all are 170 casts which illustrate the changes caused in the cranial conformation of from 60 to 70 individuals by age, special devotion to one pursuit, and the like. Mr. Deville’s account of some of these has been published.

“_Seeing is believing._”

Supreme disregard of the accuracy of the facts on which its conclusions are based, is one of the marks of an uncultivated intellect. It is a part of the credulousness continued from childhood; and is seen in the acceptance, without misgiving, of any _statement_ of facts which is made confidently, and without obvious motive for deceit. Not only in matters of science, but in matters of daily life, is this credulity observed. You cannot step into an omnibus, or chat with an acquaintance at the club, without hearing distinct, positive, and important statements respecting the _intentions_ of public men,--statements involving their personal honour, perhaps the national safety, and uttered with an air of conviction which would be ludicrous were it not so sad; yet if you happen to ask on what _evidence_ the speaker relies, you find perhaps that there is nothing better than surmise or gossip.

The object of the foregoing remarks is to show how easily an inference may be mistaken for a fact, and how habitually men declare they have seen what they have only inferred. Seeing is, in all cases, believing; but in all cases we must assure ourselves of _what_ we have seen, carefully discriminating it from what we have not seen but only imagined, and carefully ascertaining whether the facts seen by us are all the facts then present. It is by no means easy to see accurately any series of events; nor, when under any strong emotion, is it easy to prevent the imagination from usurping the place of vision. “Many individuals,” says Liebig, “overlook half the event through carelessness; another adds to what he observes the creation of his own imagination; whilst a third, who sees sufficiently distinctly the different parts of the whole, confounds together things which ought to be kept separate. In the Gorlitz trial, in Darmstadt, the female attendants who washed and clothed the body, observed on it neither arms nor head; another witness saw one arm, and a head the size of a man’s fist; a third, a physician, saw both arms and head of the usual size.”[21]

There is no popular adage less understood than that “Seeing is believing.” With an ill-suppressed irritation at any expression of scepticism respecting things said to have been seen, a narrator asks whether or not he may believe the evidence of his own senses? That argument seems to him final; and it often happens that his opponent, evading instead of meeting it, retorts:--“No; the evidence of the senses is not to be trusted, when they report anything so absurd as that. I would not believe such a thing if I were to see it--the absurdity is too glaring.”

Both are wrong. Seeing _is_ believing; and he that distrusts the evidence of his own sight, will find a difficulty in bringing forward evidence more convincing. The fallacy lies in confounding vision with inference--in supposing that facts are seen which are only inferred. There can be no mistake in trusting to the evidence of sense, as far as that goes. The mistake is supposing it to go much further than it does. It is one thing to believe _what_ you have seen, and another to believe that you have seen _all_ there was to be seen.--_Blackwood’s Magazine._

_Causes of Insanity._

From an interesting Report on Lunatic Asylums in Ireland, issued in 1862, we find that the moral Causes of Insanity predominate in females, the physical causes to a larger extent in males, particularly intemperance and irregularity of life. The cause of disease was ascertained in 2186 cases: in 323 it was intemperance and irregularity; in 183, religious excitement; in 115, love, jealousy, and seduction. Thirty-seven per cent. of the cases were ascribable to hereditary transmission and intemperance combined. With regard to the hereditary character of insanity, it is observed that mental, like bodily affections, gradually wear out from the intermixture of blood. There was no case found in Ireland in unbroken descent to the fourth generation. On the important question whether insanity is on the increase, there is no certain proof furnished. We know that, with fresh accommodation for the insane, fresh, though long-existing cases, are presented for admission into asylums, creating an apparent increase of lunacy; and we know that improved treatment and care have tended materially to the prolongation of life among lunatics, and to their consequent accumulation. We know also that science, and even public opinion, now accept as indicative of lunacy affections formerly classed under a different category. Lunacy, also, is now less concealed as a discreditable visitation. Emigration has not taken its proportion of lunatics. But, insanity being in great measure a disease of intellect--one connected with the development of the human mind--it is highly presumable that, in this age of excitement and rapid advancement in arts and sciences, mental affections may be more prevalent than before. In a northern district of Ireland, during the two months of religious revivalism, there were more cases of insanity than in the whole preceding year.

_Brain-Disease._

Dr. Forbes Winslow, whose professional life has been devoted to the study of Insanity, in his work _On Obscure Diseases of the Brain, and Disorders of the Mind_, attaches much importance to premonitory ailments, as indicative not only of the fatal mischief which will inevitably succeed them if neglected, but of the only period when remedies can be applied with a fair chance of cure. This period it is difficult even to the medical expert to detect, for the aversion to own any affection of the mind or weakness of the head is so strong, that both patient and friends will often repudiate and ignore it altogether; yet there are unmistakeable signs, such as “headache attributed to derangement of the stomach, vacillation of temper, feebleness of purpose, flightiness of manner, irritability, inaptitude for business, depression and exaltation of spirits; and even weakness of sight, when the optician has been consulted rather than the physician.” None of these signs, if caused by Brain Disease, can exist, says Dr. Winslow, for any length of time without seriously perilling the reason and endangering life: yet “it is a well-established fact that seventy, if not eighty, per cent. of cases of insanity admit of easy and speedy cure if treated in the early stage, provided there be no strong constitutional predisposition to cerebral and mental affections, or existing cranial malformation. And, even when an hereditary taint exists, derangement of mind generally yields to the steady and persevering administration of remedies, combined with judicious moral measures, provided the first inclinations of the malady are fully recognised, and without loss of time grappled with. A vast and frightful amount of chronic and incurable insanity exists at this moment in our county and private asylums, which can be clearly traced to the criminal neglect of the disease in the first or incipient stage.”

Dr. Winslow insists upon the great importance of self-control as a preventive. He says: “This power is in many instances weakened or altogether lost by a voluntary and criminal indulgence in a train of thought which it was the duty of the individual in the _first_ instance resolutely to battle with, control, and subdue. Nervous disorders, as well as insane, delusive thoughts, are thus often self-created. The morbid soon becomes a deranged mind--the insanity manifesting itself in an exaggerated, extravagant, and perverted conception of a notion which had originally some semblance of truth for its foundation. The self-created, delusive idea may thus obtain a fearful influence over the mind, and eventually lead to the commission of criminal acts.” The forced education of youth frequently leads to mental alienation. “It is,” says Dr. Winslow, “undoubtedly an important element in education to carefully, steadily invigorate and discipline the memory in early life; but, in effecting this most desirable object, it is our duty to avoid mistaking _natural_ mental dulness for culpable idleness, and _organic_ cerebral incapacity for criminal indifference to intellectual culture and educational advancement.” Again, the tremendous strain that now taxes the brain-power of society in every direction, is an additional reason why the voice of this minister to the mind diseased should be listened to in time: in the statistics of insanity the terrible fact is admitted, that there is an absolute increase of madness throughout Europe and America.

Dr. Winslow has assembled some very interesting instances of retention of the vigour of the mind in old age, and arrived at, _inter alia_, these conclusions: “1. That an active and vigorous condition of the mental faculties is compatible with old age. 2. That a continuous and often laborious exercise of the mind is not only consistent with a state of mental health, but is apparently productive of longevity.” It is indeed particularly satisfactory to be told that even in the worst types of mental disease there are some salient and bright spots upon which the physician may act; and that formidable and apparently hopeless and incurable cases of derangement admit, if not of cure, at least of considerable alleviation and mitigation.

_The Half-mad._

The Commissioners in Lunacy have reason to know that there are many, not insane, but who, being conscious of a want of power of self-control, or of addiction to intemperate habits, or fearing an attack or a recurrence of mental malady, but being in all respects free agents, may be desirous of residing as voluntary boarders in an institution for the care and treatment of persons of unsound mind, submitting to a modified control, and conforming to the general regulations of the hospital. There is not in the statutes for the regulation of registered hospitals any prohibition on such persons being admitted as inmates on the terms above suggested; provided they contract alone, or jointly with others, to conform to certain regulations expressed or referred to.

_Motives for Suicide._

In the _Westminster Review_, New Series, No. 23, we find this suggestive return:

In the year 1851, there were 3598 suicides recorded in France,
to each of which the presumed motive was affixed. Out of these
no less than 800 are set down to mental alienation; and to that
number we should add 70 cases of monomania, 39 of cerebral
fever, and 54 of idiocy--all ranking under the general head of
uncontrollableness--which will make a total of 963, or more than
a fourth of the whole cases. If we now examine the remaining
cases, we find “domestic quarrels” next in amount, being no less
than 385; while grief for the loss of children amounts to only
46, grief at their ingratitude or bad conduct, 16; sudden anger,
only 1. Next in importance to domestic quarrels is the desire to
escape from physical suffering: these amount to 313. Debt and
embarrassment rank next--203. Want, and the fear of want, 179.
Disgust at life--which may properly be called low spirits--stands
high--166; shame and remorse, very low, only 7. Thwarted love
shows only 91, and jealousy, 25. Losses at play, 6; loss of
employment, 25.

Fallacious as all such figures must necessarily be, from the
impossibility of always assigning the real motive to the act,
they point with sufficient distinctness to certain general
conclusions:--First, that insanity is the origin of by far the
largest proportion of cases; secondly, that, except the dread of
physical suffering, the other large proportions are all of cases
which belong to the deliberative kind. In literature it is always
passion, and passion of vehement sudden afflux, which determines
suicide: the agonies of despair or jealousy, the arrowy pangs of
remorse, or the dread apprehension of shame, are the only motives
which the dramatist or novelist ever conceives.

_Remedy for Poisoning._

Pouring cold water on the face and head appears to be a good remedy in case of poisoning by narcotics. A young woman accidentally swallowed six drachms of a mixture of laudanum and chloroform with some hydrocyanic acid in it. She immediately vomited a portion of the liquid, and then fell down in a state of coma. Professor Harley being called in, he administered hot coffee and nitric ether, and proceeded to effect artificial respiration. No great improvement was perceptible, but on the application of cold water to the forehead the effect was magical. The patient began to breathe more freely, and she lost some blood from the nose. As soon as the affusion of cold water ceased, the coma returned, and was again removed by renewing the affusion; the patient soon moved her arms and legs, and seemed anxious to avoid the stream of water, as if it caused her pain. This treatment was renewed at intervals until the following day, and after the lapse of sixty hours all distressing symptoms disappeared completely.

_New Remedy for Wounds._

The _Antwerp journal_ states that perchloride of iron combined with collodion is a good hæmostatic in the case of wounds, the bites of leeches, &c. To prepare it, one part of crystallized perchloride of iron is mixed with six parts of collodion. The perchloride of iron should be added gradually and with care, otherwise such a quantity of heat will be generated as to cause the collodion to boil. The composition, when well made, is of a yellowish red, perfectly limpid, and produces on the skin a yellow pellicle, which retains great elasticity.

_Compensation for Wounds._

The Regulations under which pensions and allowances are granted to officers of the Army were revised by a Royal Warrant issued towards the close of 1860. The loss of an eye or limb from injury received in action will be compensated by a gratuity in money of one year’s full pay of his then rank or staff appointment. He may be recommended for a pension also, at a rate varying from 400_l._ for a lieutenant-general, to 50_l._ for a cornet; and if more than one eye or limb be lost, he may be recommended for a pension for each. For minor injuries, “not nearly equal to the loss of a limb,” he may receive a gratuity varying from three to twelve months of his then pay. If the injury shall be so diminished as to be “not nearly equal to the loss of a limb,” at the end of five years, during which the claimant must be twice examined by a medical board, the pension will then be permanent, otherwise it will cease. No pension or gratuity for these causes will be granted unless the actual loss shall have occurred within five years after the wound or injury was received. This scale of compensation is more liberal than by the previously existing custom.--_Lancet_, 1860.

_The Best Physician._

What chiefly characterizes the most eminent physicians, and gives them their real superiority, is not so much the extent of their theoretical knowledge--though that, too, is often considerable--but it is that fine and delicate perception which they owe, partly to experience, and partly to a natural quickness in detecting analogies and differences which escape ordinary observers. The process which they follow, is one of rapid, and, in some degree, unconscious, induction. And this is the reason why the greatest physiologists and chemists, which the medical profession possesses, are not, as a matter of course, the best curers of disease. If medicine were a science, they would always be the best. But medicine being still essentially an art, depends mainly upon qualities which each practitioner has to acquire for himself, and which no scientific theory can teach. The time for a general theory has not yet come, and probably many generations will have to elapse before it does come. To suppose, therefore, that a theory of disease should, as a matter of education, precede the treatment of disease, is not only practically dangerous but logically false.--Buckle’s _History of Civilization_, vol. ii.

In 1857, Sir John Forbes, M.D., after fifty years of professional experience, left, as a legacy to his successors, the emphatic avowal, that Nature is, after all, the real physician--since, however human ingenuity may devise means of alleviation and acceleration, it is Nature and not Art which cures all curable diseases. Sir John is, however, far from implying that the art of medicine is without its use and importance, especially in preventing disease; but he wishes attention to be more sedulously fixed upon the degree to which nature can be left entirely to herself, in order that we might know how, and to what extent, art may with advantage interfere. There are many cases in which nature, left to herself, will infallibly kill her patient--say, for instance, in a case of poisoning--whereas the application of a stomach-pump, or a chemical reagent, arrests the evil at once.

Sir John Forbes invites his brethren to collect and classify the evidence which shows how nature cures disease; and the prejudices which hamper the physician, he indicates in the following enumeration of current delusions:

1. Ignorance of the natural course and progress of diseases which
are essentially slow and not to be altered by any artificial
means, often leads the friends of the patient to be urgent with
the medical attendant to employ more powerful measures, or at
least to change the means used, to give more frequent or more
powerful doses, &c.

2. Ignorance of the power of Nature to cure diseases, and an
undue estimate of the power of medicines to do so, sometimes
almost compel practitioners to prescribe remedies when they are
either useless or injurious.

3. The same ignorance not seldom occasions dissatisfaction
with, and loss of confidence in, those practitioners who, from
conscientious motives, and on the justest grounds of Art, refrain
from having recourse to measures of undue activity, or from
prescribing medicines unnecessarily; and leads to the countenance
and employment of men who have obtained the reputation of greater
activity and boldness, through their very ignorance of the true
character and requirements of their art.

4. It is the same state of mind that leads the public generally
to give ear to the most ridiculous promises of charlatans:
also to run after the professors and practisers of doctrines
utterly absurd and useless, as in the instance of Homœopathy and
Mesmerism, or dangerous, except in the proper cases, as in the
instance of Hydropathy.

5. Finally, it is the same ignorance of Nature and her
proceedings that often forces medical men to multiply their
visits and their prescriptions to an extent not simply
unnecessary, but really injurious to the patient, as could be
easily shown.

The sick man is impatient to be well. Ignorant of nature’s slow processes, “the strongest and most effective powers of art,” says Sir John, “are usually employed for the very purpose of setting aside or counteracting, or modifying in some way or other, the powers of nature. Generally speaking, we may even say that all the heroic arms of physic are invoked purposely to disturb, and obstruct, and overwhelm the normal order of the natural processes.”

_The Uncertainty of Human Life._

Some men there are who cannot bear the thought of the Uncertainty of Life; since, were they to entertain it, their worldly views would be cut short, and the prospect of fruition, or living to enjoy their gains, be considered so insecure, as to lessen, if not destroy, the inducement to extraordinary exertion. One of fortune’s favourites, on being reminded of _the uncertainty of life_, replied, in a confident tone, that had he suffered such a thought to possess him, he should never have got on in the world--the doubt being to him an unwelcome intruder. Every record of human character--every volume of reminiscences that we can take up--almost every day’s newspaper,--abounds with evidence of the uncertain tenure of our existence.

In Lord Cockburn’s _Memorials_, we read of these three remarkable deaths. At the close of 1809, Dr. Adam, of the High School, Edinburgh, died, after a few days’ illness. His ruling passion was for teaching. He was in his bedchamber: finding that he could not see, he uttered a few words, which have been variously given, but all the accounts of which mean--“It is getting dark, boys; we must put off the rest till to-morrow.” It was the darkness of death. On May 20, 1811, President Blair had been in court that day, apparently in good health, and had gone to take his usual walk from his house in George-square round by Bruntfield Links and the Grange, when he was struck with sudden illness, staggered home, and died. The day before his funeral, another unlooked-for occurrence deepened the solemnity. The first Lord Melville had retired to rest in his usual health, but was found dead in bed next morning. These two early, attached, and illustrious friends were thus lying suddenly dead, with but a wall between them; their houses, on the northeast side of George-square, Edinburgh, being next each other.

It has always been said, and never, so far as the writer knows, contradicted, and he is inclined to believe it, that a letter written by Lord Melville was found on his table or in a writing-case, giving a feeling account of his emotions at President Blair’s funeral. It was a fancy-piece, addressed to a member of the Government, with a view to obtain some public provision for Blair’s family; the writer had not reckoned on the possibility of his own demise before his friend’s funeral took place.

Dr. Granville, in his work on _Sudden Death_, has related a number of instances of the uncertainty of life, which came to his knowledge between the years 1849 and 1854, from which we select the following:

Mr. Horace Twiss, whose stout frame and laborious habits seemed to promise long life, while sitting in the board-room of one of the Companies of which he was a Director, and in the act of addressing the members, ceased to live, early in May, 1849.

Not long after, at Florence, Harriett Lady Pellew suddenly expired in her carriage, on the drive at the Cascine; and at Paris, the Countess of Blessington, returning home from dinner at the Duchess de Grammont’s, was seized with apoplexy, and died next morning, June 4.

In the same year, on September 9, the Grand Duke Michael, brother of Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, a prince of gigantic frame, while reviewing his troops at Warsaw, fell from his horse, and expired a few hours after.

At Rome, Richard Wyatt, the sculptor, was suddenly carried off by apoplexy, May 27, 1851; and on June 7, at Fontainebleau, Reynolds, the author of _Miserrimus_, died suddenly.