THE NEW LOWER SCHOOL AT THE ROYAL MEDICAL BENEVOLENT COLLEGE.

1591 He has been Arabic by a species of transliteration. told by a native of Egypt that at the present time the word "matz" is used to indicate the operation of massage, and seems to pin his faith to the assertion. We are not aware that there is such a term current in modern Arabic, but there is another way of accounting for the origin of the namemasseur" which we have much pleasure in bringing to Dr. Forestier’s notice. The country which we call Egypt is, in reality, Masr, which is commonly pronounced Musser. If the process of massage was really introduced by one of Napoleon’s Savoisien medical men, what more natural than the bestowal upon its professor of the THE ABUSE OF STREET COLLECTIONS. name of the country whence he brought it : the new art IT may seem ungracious to check the kindly impulses of hailed from Musser, and hence the person who practised it the charitable, but we must enter a grave protest against came to be called a masseur ? the growing practice of street collections, which, if permitted to continue uncontrolled, can only have one effect, and that a disastrous one, upon the cause of charity itself. THE NEW LOWER SCHOOL AT THE ROYAL MEDICAL BENEVOLENT COLLEGE. It would almost seem as if the promoters of charities of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent, had found HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES, whose it to be more profitable for the cause they champion interest in medical politics has before now been prominently to sit at the street corners or perambulate the foot- manifested, has consented to lay the foundation stone of the ways with money-boxes than to deluge the householder new lower school buildings at the Royal Medical Benevolent with circulars and appeals. Doubtless they are justified College, Epsom. The day fixed for the ceremony is Tuesday, from their standpoint in this change in their mode of July 9!.h, and full details will shortly be issued. It is an attack upon the purse, but its very aggressiveness will in interesting coincidence that about forty years ago His Royal time do much harm to collective charity. The "man in the Highness was present upon the occasion when his father, street" will not discriminate between the different objects the Prince Consort, opened the buildings of the original for which he is importuned in this fashion, and, following Royal Benevolent College. The Prince Consort bad by the wholesome rule he applies to the vagrant beggar, he previous promise arranged to lay the foundation stone of the will resolutely abstain from responding to any such appeal building, but was prevented from doing so by an attack of in person. We fear, too, that the abuse of this practice measles. will react injuriously on causes which really deserve recogniTHE EVICTION OF MR. T. M. WATT. tion, and that the apathy of the Londoner, which has been so strikingly evinced in respect to Hospital Sunday, THE eviction of a medical man from his home may be will be confirmed and extended by reason of this importhe greatest hardship that can be inflicted upon him, tunity. and from the case of Mr. T. M. Watt no single element of hardship would seem to be absent. He has resided THE ORIGIN OF MASSAGE. at Hovingham for twenty-four years, and has now been DR. FORESTIER of Aix-les-Bains has an interesting paper turned out of his house by his landlord, Sir William in Le Progres Medical of May 25th last on the Origin and Worsley, whose opponent he has been in rural politics. He Terminology of Massage. The physician of 1’Hospice had invested all his capital in his practice, and the is of opinion that the method of treatment now action of Sir William Worsley must go far to deprive known as massage was first introduced into Europe by him of his livelihood, for on geographical and other some of the returning members of Bonaparte’s Egyptian counts no chance remains for him in an attempt to hold expedition of 1799, aud relies for his information upon a book his own against a rival established in his old headquarters. entitled I I Des Eaux Thermales d’Aix en Savoie," published With regard to Sir William Worsley’s perfect legal right to at Chambery in 1808. Dr. Daquin, the author of the work in treat his own property as he chooses and to re-enter into its question, after a passage à propos of the douche, speaks of possession at any time that his legal covenants permit him the manipulations and frictions which were observed by to do so, there can be no question. On a minor point as to Captain Wallis amongst the aborigines of Otaheite, and then the correctness of the wording of the notice to quit, the proceeds as follows: "Those who followed the Emperor legality of his action was unsuccessfully disputed by Napoleon in Egypt inform us that this method was also Mr. Watt ; but on the broad case there can be but one in existence amongst the people of that country, and opinion-Sir William Worsley has acted within his legal that it was employed after the bath ; the name of rights. We propose to consider his conduct, however, on the massement has been given to it, and it is administered lines of his duty towards his neighbour, and viewed in the to the person whom they want to masser by rubbing suc- light of the written words of the Book of Common Prayer cessively the entire surface of his body....... According to and the unwritten code of common sense we find Sir this account I think that this operation, which strikes me as William Worsley, wanting in charity and reason. It has a very salutary procedure, might with great advantage be been Mr. Watt’s duty, as he conceived it, to oppose the head put in practice, after their bath or douche, upon those who of the village in questions of rural policy. Therefore he make use of our thermal waters." Dr. Forestier is satisfied must go. We cannot conceive a step more damaging to that this evidence is conclusive ; but if confirmation of the the order to which Sir William Worsley belongs-the antiquity of the term massage be needed it is forthcoming. In English squirearcby of which it was an English fashion 1838 Dr. Despine produced a work under the title, "Observa- to be proud-than such arbitrary exercise of authority, tions de Medecine Pratique faites aux Bains d’Aix en Savoie " albeit legal. Why should Sir William Worsley judge (Anneoy, 1838), and in it the following passage is to be for the villagers of Hovingham and district what medical found : "Since the renaissance of our Thermes in 1816 we man they should employ?1 But by driving out Mr. Watt bathe and we douche we scrub, we masse, we stew." and supporting a successor to him that is precisely what As regards the etymology of the words massage, masseur, he will do. And in questions of public health, why not the medical man, who knows the technical &0., Dr. Forestier believes that they are derived from the should

accident which, without such supervision, is

sure to come ?7 From Mr. Stuart Brooke’s letter in our last week’s issue the East Indian Railway, the largest undertaking of the kind in India, has made its medical officers responsible for the sight and colour vision of its employés, and has thus made every endeavour to protect the travelling public from accidents attributable to this cause. If it can be done in India why cannot it be done in England ? We travel more than any other nation in the world, and it is only right and fitting that our risks should be reduced to a minimum.

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Evangelique

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