LUNACY LAW AGITATION AND SUICIDE.

LUNACY LAW AGITATION AND SUICIDE.

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offence punishable by law. At the same time it might be diagnosis. The result was that, instead of being properly enacted that really new improvements in pharmacy might treated, in a suitable place, this unfortunate lady was found,

still be patented for a certain period, giving the druggist the same advantages enjoyed by other tradesmen of profiting by his own discoveries, but that the composition of all patent medicines should be registered and published as a protection to thein health and safety of the community. The officials charge of this department would probably be entrusted with the preparation of a Pharmacopoeia, and we might look for a much more complete and efficient one than that with which we are familiar. This system would not interfere with or in any way repress the private enterprise of the druggists, but would rather encourage it, for I have no doubt that they would find the Government certificate of the accuracy of their preparations the strongest recommendation they could offer to the profession, and the surest means of obtaining an extensive sale for their wares. While those preparations which proved valuable would readily obtain the official recognition and be introduced into the Pharmacopoeia. I believe that if this plan meets with the general approval of the profession it only requires the united action of the various colleges, halls, and licensing bodies, together with the powerful advocacy of the medical press, to obtain the attention and aid of the present or any other Government. No corporate body can so properly and so powerfully move in this matter as the Royal College of Physicians of London, for not only does its charter confer upon the College the right to "supervise and examine all manner of medicines" used by physicians in London, but (by 32 Hen. VIIL, c. 40) the College is enjoined to choose four censors from "the best learned, wisest, and most discreet" of the Fellows, who "’shall and may, by virtue of this present Act, have full authority and power, as often as they shall think meet and convenient, to enter into the house or houses of all and every apothecary......to search, view, and see such apothecary wares, drugs, and stuffs as the said apothecaries or any of them have or at any time hereafter shall have in their house or houses; and all such wares, drugs, and stuffs as the said four persons shall there find defective, corrupted, and not meet nor convenient to be administered in any medicine for the health of man’s body, the said four persons......shall cause to be brent or otherwise destroy the same......" The necessity for this inspection and examination of drugs which was felt in the reign of King Henry VIII. probably exists in no diminished degree to-day, and the College may feel that, though the same machinery is no longer competent to fulfil the duties and responsibilities imposed upon the College by statute, it is nevertheless incumbent upon it either to undertake these neglected duties itself or to urge upon the Government the adoption of some suitable method directed to attain the game end. I am,

Sir,

yours

Manchester-square, W., Sept. 27th,

1884

faithfully, F. A. MAHOMED.

LUNACY LAW AGITATION AND SUICIDE. To the Editor of THE LANCET. SIR,-In your issue of June 28th last, and in your last number, there appeared singularly interesting letters from Dr. Adam under the above heading. To be read in connexion with those letters, will you be so good as to publi8h the following statement of facts. " A month ago, a lady in this neighbourhood, aged between forty and fifty, became afflicted with acute insanity, marked by various delusions, and accompanied by threats of selfdestruction. Her medical attendant advised immediate removal to an asylum. The husband signed the necessary order for admission; two medical practitioners, well known and thoroughly competent men, examined and certified the patient. But the proprietor of the asylum in which it was desired to place her declined to send nurses from his establishment to remove her from her home-naturally enough, after Mr. Justice Hawkins’s dictum in a recent trial as to the law of trespass and assault. The medical attendant, more naturally still, declined to move : being of opinion that, having given his best advice, and having certified his patient, his duties ended there. The husband, over eighty years of age, and feeble in mind and body, was not capable of acting with the necessary vigour. The only other person who might have acted perhaps, though not related to the patient, refused, having doubts as to the accuracy of the

a few days later, lying upon a neighbouring railway line, mangled and dead. She had left her home as though for a morning stroll, and had deliberately placed her head under Mark that the disorder was in an an advancing engine. early stage, and (to quote Dr. Adam) easily curable. You, Sir, have favoured us in your journal of late with many disquisitions upon lunacy law and practice, most of them, let me assure you, galling beyond measure to those gentlemen who are engaged in this specialty. Will you ponder over the occurrence which I have related, and say where or with whom, in 3 our judgment, lies the responsibility of this death-I had almost written, of this murder. Is it in the law or in Mr. Justice Hawkins’s interpretation? I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

Laverstock, near Salisbury, Sept. 29th, 1884. H. J. MANNING. %* The fault in this case was obviously that of the friends. The certificates being signed, it was for the friends to take the case to the asylum. If the friends of a sick woman had an order for her admission to the hospital, and while they were wasting time she became delirious and jumped out of window, no one would think of blaming the hospital staff for the accident; still less could the benevolent giver of the admission note be blamed. Surely it is no part of a medical man’s business to take his patients to an asylum. It is this fussy interference with patients that discredits medicine and degrades the profession. Let practitioners remember that they are neither " touts " for asylums nor agents for the removal of refractory lunatics. It is work for which they are unfitted. The way in which insane patients are coerced or cajoled into asylums is most discreditable. The whole blame in this case rests with the friends. We think the managers of the asylum and the medical men concerned acted most judiciously. The neglect of the friends It is nothing to the point that the husband was culpable. was eighty. When a medical man exceeds his duty he lowers his professional character and places himself in a false position.-ED. L.

"BICYCLE

RIDING AND PERINEAL PRESSURE: THEIR EFFECT - ON THE YOUNG."

To the Editor of THE LANCET. A. Allbutt accuses me of bringing forward in my paper on this subject unfounded theories " entirely unsupported by facts." The letter of Dr. G. Herschell pub. lished by you at once disposes of this accusation. Mr. Allbutt asks whether I "have met with a single case of perineal mischief, the result of cycling, within the last ten years." In reply, I beg to inform him that I have met with such a case within the past six months. I am not in general practice, and so have little opportunity of meeting with such cases, but perhaps if a few general practitioners would be so kind as to relate their experiences in this matter, it would be found that, even at this early day in the era of cycling, there are sufficient grounds for calling attention to the excessive use of these machines as at present constructed by growing, undeveloped boys. I was not aware until now that a "healthy look and jully manner" were sure tokens of virtue in young men ; neither did I infer in my paper, as Mr. Allbutt assumes I did, that the results of cycling men. tioned were to be found in the young-men cyclists of to-day, who were, most of them, young men before they mounted a machine. It is ten years hence that we are to look for the results of the excesses of to-day, when our boy-cyclists of ten, twelve, and fourteen have reached man’s estate, or what immoderate cycling has left them of that heritage. Mr. Allbutt’s concluding argument against my paperviz., "that it may injure an industry which is giving employment to thousands "-is weak. The 11 drink traffic," as it is called, gives employment to hundreds of thousands, yet I am afraid that fact would hardly be received as an argument in favour of silence on the subject of drunkenness. By-the-bye, cycling and dunking are somewhat alike. Moderate indulgence in either does little harm and some. times positive good ; in both there are great inducements to

SIR,-Mr. H.