EUGENE ARAM.

1211 is no longer justifiable in connexion with the West Coast of Clarke’s reputed parietal bone turns out on examination to Had Aram and his confederate in Africa to speak of it as"the white man’s grave." Since belong to a roe-deer. the British soldier has to serve part of his time abroad it crime-for the man who turned King’s evidence against is only right that he should have opportunities, as far as him doubtless helped him to bury the corpse-been aware of is practicable, for acquiring some practical knowledge of the existence of ancient bones of animals in or near St. sanitation as applied to tropical conditions ; in this con- Robert’s Cave, the defence would have been considerably nexion the paper by Major R. J. Blackham, R.A.M.O., on strengthened. Aram might even have maintained that his Sanitary Instruction of Soldiers in India, will be read with accusers had lighted upon something in the nature of the deep interest. From what we have stated it is obvious that Ipswich man of latter times. a great deal is being done to protect the health of Europeans residing in our tropical possessions, and the share which the THE TREATMENT OF LEPROSY. Government and the Schools of Tropical Medicine of London and Liverpool alike have had in this good work should not FROM an esteemed correspondent, who has had an ex’ be forgotten. ceptional experience of leprosy in the East, we have received a communication in which he expresses himself as being in EUGENE ARAM. general agreement with the conclusions at which we arrived IT is a question which, with our enlarged knowledge, we concerning the value of nastin in our article on the treatmay well debate at the present day, whether half the ment of leprosy published in THE LANCET of March 30th. criminals, whose executions by hanging, and sometimes by He urges that further attention should be directed to the strangulation and burning, are described in the historic bacteriological researches on which Professor Deycke founded "Newgate Calendar," really deserved their fate even his nastin treatment, and that these investigations should according to the draconic criminal code of the eighteenth be studied in relation with those which have already been century. Turning the leaves of Volume IV. of the Calendar carried out by two officers of the Indian Medical Service, at random we come, for instance, on the trial of Mary Major E. R. Rost and Captain T. S. Beauchamp Williams. Edmondson for killing her aunt, and we are tempted While on the one hand Professor Deycke regarded the at once to doubt whether this was not a case of assassina- presence of the streptothrix which he isolated from his tion perpetrated during the epileptic state by a pious and cultures made from leprous patients as an accident more or usually harmless young woman. Immediately afterwards less, and decided that only the fatty principle obtained from this organism was of service in the treatment of leprosy, we light on the famoas case of Eugene Aram, immortalised and Hood’s rendered memorable novel, byBulwer’s Major Rost and Captain Beauchamp Williams, on the other by poem, and to many playgoers still in middle life by Sir Henry hand, believed the streptothrix which they found in their Irving’s recitation, in which from a quiet beginning the cultures to be the true parasite of the disease, and that a great actor attained to a terrific crescendo that left his vaccine for treating lepers should be prepared from the audiences breathless. Aram’s case, as recorded for us in whole organism and not from the fatty content alone. On the Newgate annals, sets us wondering whether he was looking at Professor Deycke’s last published paper on the fairly condemned despite his confession. He was, as is subject we find that he admits that at first he thought that A profound this streptothrix might be the specific organism of leprosy, well known, a most unlikely murderer. student, a philologist who, as Dr. Garnett has pointed but soon felt himself forced to abandon the idea. He now out, was one of the first to bring the Celtic languages maintains that the specific and favourable reactions arising into the zone of the Indo-European family, a valetudi- after the use of nastin depend entirely upon the infection of narian and a weakling, he seems the last person in the the fatty substance contained in the streptothrix and to which nastin." He states neutral fat he has given the name of world whom one would have suspected of a planned murder, fiercely carried out at night with a great distinctly that it is an error to suppose that his steptothrix is display of physical energy and boldness. Aram was con- identical or even " congeneric " with the true parasite of fronted many years after the murder of his supposed victim, leprosy. In India we understand that, as a-result of the work of Major Rost and Captain Beauchamp Williams, a one Clarke, a shoemaker, with certain old bones, which a man in search of limestone had dug up in St. Robert’s Cave, vaccine has been prepared from the acid-fast phase of the The bones looked old, and Aram streptothrix, which these observers have cultivated from the near Knaresborough. maintained that they were probably ancient. His defence discharges of leper patients and which they regard as the was a masterpiece-the fact was remarked upon by his specific organism of the disease. With this vaccine, it an He that is in some sort out judge. pointed England appears, better results have so far been obtained than antique burial-ground, and that in every old cave lies with nastin or any other remedy that has been tried in the buried a body which, if not prehistoric, may well have treatment of leprosy. Our correspondent is particularly been that of some hermit or other mediasval occupant. careful to remind us that it is far from his intention to The bones he was supposed to have buried might, he belittle in any way the bacteriological researches made by said, have been very ancient or those of a Cavalier or Parlia- Professor Deycke, on which the nastin treatment has mentarian soldier. His speech on cave-burial strangely been based ; these are acknowledged to have been of great resembles a Hunterian lecture, and it is curious to reflect importance, but our correspondent’s contention is that Prothat the Hunterian Museum has to some extent witnessed fessor Deycke has made an erroneous interpretation of his against him many years after his death. We have it on the results. The vaccine, as recommended by Major Rost authority of Professor Keith himself that a fragment of and Captain Beauchamp Williams, is being at present parietal bone, recently examined at the Royal College of prepared in* the Bombay Bacteriological Laboratory at Parel. Surgeons, and credibly believed to have belonged to Eugene’s What seems now to be needed is a careful and prolonged victim, is not really ancient, that it was fractured at the trial of this vaccine in appropriate cases so as to ascertime of burial, and that the fracture is somewhat older than tain whether the claims advanced on its behalf are, It is also the broken outer edge of the fragment. Thus does anthro- or are not, founded on a substantial basis. pological science sometimes support ancient surmise, for suggested that those who have opportunities should Aram was condemned on something much in the nature of make an inquiry into the clinical manifestations of in order to discover what part is played in them sttrmise. Another osseous fragment which accompanied -

deliberately

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leprosy