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RECREATIVE EVENING SCHOOLS.
433 This we knew before. Anyone who has watched remarkable fact," say the Commissioners, "that there are the manceuvres of anglers on the banks of the Thames is practically no curing ebtablishments in Ireland....... In aware that they select in preference places near to the sewer consequence of this state of things, when the take of outfalls. A more scientific and a more conclusive proof of herring or mackerel is abundant no adequate market the purification of the sewage water than is afforded by the exists at the time for fresh fish ; great waste and depres- presence of fish is assuredly necessary. Nevertheless, if the sion of prices therefore takes place, quantities of fish sewage water is only partially purified, this is, in any case. being sometimes thrown into the sea or used as manure." The same point was made by the late Mr. Blake, M.P., some improvement on the actual state of affairs. even more forcefully. "Notwithstanding," said he, "the vast quantity of f!3h rcund the coast of Ireland, there is THE PHARMACY ACTS AMENDMENT BILL. about £200,000 worth at least of cured fish brought into THis Bill, practically the same as last year, has been Ireland, which might be all caught on the Irish coast .again introduced. On this occasion it appears in the House and cured if there were means for it....... I may refer of Lords, with the name of the Earl of Milltown. The to the Artane Industrial School, in the neighbourhood chief purpose of the Bill seems to be to give power to the of Dublin; and I was there a short time ago, and inquired Council of the Pharmaceutical Society to make such bye- how tne boys were fed. They said the greater part were laws as will regulate more eff actually the curriculum of Roman Catholics, and were fed on fish on Fridays. I said, study to be required of those who seek to be registered ’Where do you get the fish from ? ’ The answer wasGreat " under the Pharmacy Acts. There is nothing in the Bill Grimsby.’" It is of course very possible that it pays which alters the well-defined line between the study and Irishmen to import their fish in exchange for other products the rights of those registered under these Acts and those of their industry, but on no principle of political economy registered under the Medical Acts. We think the Pharma- can it be other than a lamentable waste of precious opporceutical Society is right in asking for more powers to tunity that shoals of wholesome and nutritious food which regulate the curriculum, which is now occasionally apt visit our shores should be suffered to float away again to to be somewhat short and of the nature of a cramming sea, or be taken only to b9 little better than wasted on process. We should not approve of too much interference land for want of a little well-directed enterprise in taking with outside teaching, but such a Society as the Pharma- them and utilising them when taken. ceutical Society, with its history, its plant, and its teachers, self-supported as they are almost entirely, deserves to have URTICARIA PIGMENTOSA. No change in the more power to control inferior teaching. curriculum in this Bill would come into force before 1893, IN an elaborate monograph on this disease, containing an or without the assent of the Privy Council. exhaustive analysis of previously recorded and several new cases, and some interesting chromo-lithographs, Dr. Paul Raymond discusses a disease of much interest, first studied IRISH FISHERY. in England. This affection of early infancy is characterised THE Second Report of the Royal Commission on Irish by urticarial eruptions succeeded by raised or flat patches Public Works is probably one of the most striking documents of a brown colour. It has a variable duration, averaging that have been presented to Parliament for many years. about ten years, and the author thinks it allied to urticaria, Rarely nowadays do we hear of any industry that, instead of but differing very distinctly clinically and in its pathological being overcrowded, is perishing of sheer neglect, or which anatomy. He concludes that it is a special angio-neurosis, woos capital in vain with all the attractions of philanthropy marked by a vaso-motor hyper-excitability, and an indepencapable of returning 5 per cent. Yet such seems to be the dent dystrophy or tropho-neurosis of the dermis, ending in present plight of the deep-sea fishery upon the west coast the formation of the peculiar cells described as " mastzellen." of Ireland. In 1816 this industry employed 19,883 vessels, The peculiar and characteristic colouring of the eruption, manned by 113,073 men and boys; whereas, in 1886, after an which is so interesting a feature, is thought to be due to interval of forty years, the numbers had fallen off to 5683 the accumulation of " mastzellen"and superadded elements, vessels, manned by 21,482 men and boys. And this falling and secondarily to hematin crystals and pigmentation of off is not attributable to any change in the habits of the lowest cells of the epidermis. the fish or the condition of the fishing grounds. On the contrary, the fish come to be caught as heretofore, and RECREATIVE EVENING SCHOOLS. in the absence of the fishermen must
-water.
presumably
they
have recourse to the unsatisfactory expedient of eating one another. Here is what Sir Thomas Brady told the Commissioners : "The old Irishmen up to 1830, and even later, who knew all the banks round the coast and how to sail vessels, have died out, and the present generation, to a great extent, are deplorably ignorant, and, having got into the system of fishing from open boats within a short distance from the shore, could not handle a sailing craft such as is at present used in any deep-sea fishing. The boats now used on the west coast-and in most places, indeed, round the whole coast, save where deep-sea fishing has been vigorously prosecuted of late years, such as from Baltimore, Kinsale, &c.—are not fit to go any distance from the land, except on rare occasions. When they do succeed in getting to the fishing banks, perhaps fifteen to twenty miles from the land, they are loaded with fish in a few hours—so much so, that sometimes they are not able to bring all to shore, and have to throw a quantity overboard." It is, however, not only in the capture of fish that the west c)ast Irishmen are remise. " It is a
LAST Monday a deputation, headed by Lord Derby, waited upon the Charity Commissioners to ask for assistance in establishing a system of recreative evening schools for the benefit of boys between twelve and eighteen years of age. The scheme which the deputation has at heart is a most praiseworthy one, and is somewhat imperfectly described under the above title. It aims at satisfying a long-felt want by providing a course of secondary education in evening classes to supplement that now afforded in the primary Board and voluntary schools. Its purpose, notwithstanding that it is described in terms suggestive rather of play than of work, is entirely educational. As might have been expected, special provision is made for imparting technical instruction, and an element of interest is thus introduced which ought to go far to popularise the new undertaking among those whose mental and social development it is intended to promote. The Association interested in this movement has now been two years in existence, and has already organised 110 classes in London alone, utilising for this purpose the accommodation afforded by the primary
434 It has also extended its operations to provincial The value of its efforts in thus labouring to procure for boys at a critical age the stimulus and the means of selfimprovement, an occupation for leisure, a direction of energy and a prospect in life, can hardly be over-estimated. The deputation, it is satisfactory to learn, was favourably received by the Commissioners, and it may reasonably expect to receive from this source, as well as through other channels of public sympathy, material proof that the soundness of its views and practice is generally recognised.
schools. towns.
effect that it was thought the deceased would sleep off his insensibility, for he was left alone in bed and there subsequently found dead. Of course, it is quite easy to suggest a
number of theories to account for the symptoms and their termination. The verdict may record the truth, as well as the opinion of thejury, but we find no evidence to warrant us in accepting it as so doing. The possibility of poisoning, accidental or otherwise, was not disproved. Men have been known to become somnolent, then insensible, and die, from a strong potion of alcohol taken without particular reason -from sheer fool-hardiness or to satisfy the terms of a wager. It is true, the witnesses called before the coroner SMALL-POX ISOLATION NEAR BRISTOL. disclosed no such motive or act, but then history sometimes SEVERAL authorities, including St. George’s, the Horfield, repeats itself, and such things as we have just mentioned and the Stapleton Local Boards, met in Bristol last week to have had foundation in fact. consider the expediency of joint action in providing a temporary small-pox hospital; but inability to agree on SUCCI, THE PROFESSIONAL FASTING MAN certain points, such as the most eligible kite, has led to an AN Italian correspondent writes : The well-known adjournment of the conference. In the meantime, according fasting man, Signor Succi, has just arrived in Florence to a member of the Bristol Sanitary Committee, the disease and presented himself to the Medico-Physical Academy is extending, and is crossing the border into Bristol. The to undergo a series of scientific tests as to how long fact is, these sudden efforts to deal with small-pox efficiently there, he can with impunity subsist without food. His one object, by isolation come too late. Emergency hospitals are generally he says, is to persuade men of science that for periods failures, even for the emergency to be dealt with; and in hitherto reckoned impossible he can maintain the organism, the case of small-pox hospitals the precautions to be taken and without nutrition, and without morally, far exceed those which are known to exist as regards other materially on the stomach any of the disturbances supposed inflicting infectious hospitals. A house-to-house visitation for the to be consequent on famine. On March 1st he will begin purpose of securing universal vaccination and revaccination his twenty-fourth fast, which will be prolonged for thirty would be far more helpful, and it would give the authorities under the assiduous surveillance of the Medicodays, time to prepare a proper hospital for the prevention of Physical Society. He will practise this abstinence from . epidemics in the future. food in quarters provided for him in the Royal Institute of Superior Studies, and kept specially apart from those EXTRAORDINARY INQUEST. ordinarily in use for the purposes of the Institute. The ON Feb. 23rd an inquest was held at the Punch-bowl Inn, experiment will be conducted under the immediate superSefton, by S. Brighouse, Eq., touching the death of James intendence of the Cavaliere Luciani, Professor of Physiology Cross, a farm labourer, aged twenty, who died somewhat in the Institute, who has received from the Directorate suddenly on Feb. 21st. From the reported evidence it does every sanction and every facility for ensuring the bo22ctfide& not appear that deceased was known to have been the sub- of the ordeal. On the 31st of the month a report will be ject of any grave disorder; in fact, up to within a few made as to the results of Signor Succi’s fast. hours of his death he seems to have been in the enjoyment of good health. At seven o’clock on the evening of the 20th AMERICA: PRE-HISTORIC AND PRESENT. Cross met a farmer named Rothwell at the Punch-bowl THIS subject, in its largest anthropological significance,. Tavern. Shortly after eight they repaired together ’in a cab to the Grapes Hotel, Thornton. They arrived there will be discussed in a series of four sittings by the Interat 8.30. According to the evidence of Rothwell, the national Congress which meets at Berlin on Oct. 2nd next. deceased man had " two Scotch whiskies," but he appeared to The provisional committee, whose members are Drs. Virchow, be sober. Suddenly someone called out in the hotel, " Cross Reiss, Bastian,vonRichthofen,Voss, Olshausen, and Hellmann, is down." Rothwell assisted him into the cab, which had held a conference on the 12th inst. with a view to arranging been kept waiting, and he himself got on the box seat the order of proceedings. The Congress, it may be well to with the driver. Upon arriving at the house of his remind our readers, invites the co-operation of all who are stepfather, at 10.30 P.M., Cross was found to be insen- interested in the civilisation of the New World, its inhabisible. He was then put to bed, but never recovered con- tants before and at the time of its discovery by Columbus, sciousness, and was found dead in bed the following their origin or affinities, their social development, their morning about half-past four o’clock. No doctor was called racial differences, the introduction of domestic animals, the in to see the man either before or after death-a fact cultivation of food-plants, and generally the conditions which .eems to us, to say the least, to have shown great which underlie the progress and expansion of the whole want of judgment on the part of the relatives of thedeceased. hemisphere. The first Congress of the kind was held at But it is more particularly with regard to the coroner’s Nancy in 1875, the second at Luxembourg in 1877. the third inquisition that we are concerned; for, if correctly in- at Brussels in 1879, the fourth at Madrid in 1881, the fifth formed that no post-mortem examination was made and at Copenhagen in 1883, and the sixth and latest at Turin in no medical evidence taken, we do not hesitate to say that 1886. The considerations that decided the choice of Berlin the termination of the case-viz., a record by the jury to for the next meeting were chiefly her great wealth in the c-ffect that death was due to " natural causes "- archæological collections illustrative of pre-historic America and the prominence of her investigators in every aspect of the was most unsatisfactory; and we trust that the matter will be taken up, and Mr. Matthews communicated physical and moral development of the new world. In the cities with either at the Home Office or by interrogation hitherto selected as the rendezvous of the Congress the highest in the House of Commons. It is evident that a fatal dignitaries of the State have assumed its patronage, and the issue was not anticipated by the stepfather of the heir to the throne, or the nearest in rank or position to him, deceased man, or surely he would have sought medical has filled the post of honorary president. The period of assistance. Moreover, there was direct testimony to thE anxiety, however, through which the Imperial Court of -
-
-water.
presumably
they
have recourse to the unsatisfactory expedient of eating one another. Here is what Sir Thomas Brady told the Commissioners : "The old Irishmen up to 1830, and even later, who knew all the banks round the coast and how to sail vessels, have died out, and the present generation, to a great extent, are deplorably ignorant, and, having got into the system of fishing from open boats within a short distance from the shore, could not handle a sailing craft such as is at present used in any deep-sea fishing. The boats now used on the west coast-and in most places, indeed, round the whole coast, save where deep-sea fishing has been vigorously prosecuted of late years, such as from Baltimore, Kinsale, &c.—are not fit to go any distance from the land, except on rare occasions. When they do succeed in getting to the fishing banks, perhaps fifteen to twenty miles from the land, they are loaded with fish in a few hours—so much so, that sometimes they are not able to bring all to shore, and have to throw a quantity overboard." It is, however, not only in the capture of fish that the west c)ast Irishmen are remise. " It is a
LAST Monday a deputation, headed by Lord Derby, waited upon the Charity Commissioners to ask for assistance in establishing a system of recreative evening schools for the benefit of boys between twelve and eighteen years of age. The scheme which the deputation has at heart is a most praiseworthy one, and is somewhat imperfectly described under the above title. It aims at satisfying a long-felt want by providing a course of secondary education in evening classes to supplement that now afforded in the primary Board and voluntary schools. Its purpose, notwithstanding that it is described in terms suggestive rather of play than of work, is entirely educational. As might have been expected, special provision is made for imparting technical instruction, and an element of interest is thus introduced which ought to go far to popularise the new undertaking among those whose mental and social development it is intended to promote. The Association interested in this movement has now been two years in existence, and has already organised 110 classes in London alone, utilising for this purpose the accommodation afforded by the primary
434 It has also extended its operations to provincial The value of its efforts in thus labouring to procure for boys at a critical age the stimulus and the means of selfimprovement, an occupation for leisure, a direction of energy and a prospect in life, can hardly be over-estimated. The deputation, it is satisfactory to learn, was favourably received by the Commissioners, and it may reasonably expect to receive from this source, as well as through other channels of public sympathy, material proof that the soundness of its views and practice is generally recognised.
schools. towns.
effect that it was thought the deceased would sleep off his insensibility, for he was left alone in bed and there subsequently found dead. Of course, it is quite easy to suggest a
number of theories to account for the symptoms and their termination. The verdict may record the truth, as well as the opinion of thejury, but we find no evidence to warrant us in accepting it as so doing. The possibility of poisoning, accidental or otherwise, was not disproved. Men have been known to become somnolent, then insensible, and die, from a strong potion of alcohol taken without particular reason -from sheer fool-hardiness or to satisfy the terms of a wager. It is true, the witnesses called before the coroner SMALL-POX ISOLATION NEAR BRISTOL. disclosed no such motive or act, but then history sometimes SEVERAL authorities, including St. George’s, the Horfield, repeats itself, and such things as we have just mentioned and the Stapleton Local Boards, met in Bristol last week to have had foundation in fact. consider the expediency of joint action in providing a temporary small-pox hospital; but inability to agree on SUCCI, THE PROFESSIONAL FASTING MAN certain points, such as the most eligible kite, has led to an AN Italian correspondent writes : The well-known adjournment of the conference. In the meantime, according fasting man, Signor Succi, has just arrived in Florence to a member of the Bristol Sanitary Committee, the disease and presented himself to the Medico-Physical Academy is extending, and is crossing the border into Bristol. The to undergo a series of scientific tests as to how long fact is, these sudden efforts to deal with small-pox efficiently there, he can with impunity subsist without food. His one object, by isolation come too late. Emergency hospitals are generally he says, is to persuade men of science that for periods failures, even for the emergency to be dealt with; and in hitherto reckoned impossible he can maintain the organism, the case of small-pox hospitals the precautions to be taken and without nutrition, and without morally, far exceed those which are known to exist as regards other materially on the stomach any of the disturbances supposed inflicting infectious hospitals. A house-to-house visitation for the to be consequent on famine. On March 1st he will begin purpose of securing universal vaccination and revaccination his twenty-fourth fast, which will be prolonged for thirty would be far more helpful, and it would give the authorities under the assiduous surveillance of the Medicodays, time to prepare a proper hospital for the prevention of Physical Society. He will practise this abstinence from . epidemics in the future. food in quarters provided for him in the Royal Institute of Superior Studies, and kept specially apart from those EXTRAORDINARY INQUEST. ordinarily in use for the purposes of the Institute. The ON Feb. 23rd an inquest was held at the Punch-bowl Inn, experiment will be conducted under the immediate superSefton, by S. Brighouse, Eq., touching the death of James intendence of the Cavaliere Luciani, Professor of Physiology Cross, a farm labourer, aged twenty, who died somewhat in the Institute, who has received from the Directorate suddenly on Feb. 21st. From the reported evidence it does every sanction and every facility for ensuring the bo22ctfide& not appear that deceased was known to have been the sub- of the ordeal. On the 31st of the month a report will be ject of any grave disorder; in fact, up to within a few made as to the results of Signor Succi’s fast. hours of his death he seems to have been in the enjoyment of good health. At seven o’clock on the evening of the 20th AMERICA: PRE-HISTORIC AND PRESENT. Cross met a farmer named Rothwell at the Punch-bowl THIS subject, in its largest anthropological significance,. Tavern. Shortly after eight they repaired together ’in a cab to the Grapes Hotel, Thornton. They arrived there will be discussed in a series of four sittings by the Interat 8.30. According to the evidence of Rothwell, the national Congress which meets at Berlin on Oct. 2nd next. deceased man had " two Scotch whiskies," but he appeared to The provisional committee, whose members are Drs. Virchow, be sober. Suddenly someone called out in the hotel, " Cross Reiss, Bastian,vonRichthofen,Voss, Olshausen, and Hellmann, is down." Rothwell assisted him into the cab, which had held a conference on the 12th inst. with a view to arranging been kept waiting, and he himself got on the box seat the order of proceedings. The Congress, it may be well to with the driver. Upon arriving at the house of his remind our readers, invites the co-operation of all who are stepfather, at 10.30 P.M., Cross was found to be insen- interested in the civilisation of the New World, its inhabisible. He was then put to bed, but never recovered con- tants before and at the time of its discovery by Columbus, sciousness, and was found dead in bed the following their origin or affinities, their social development, their morning about half-past four o’clock. No doctor was called racial differences, the introduction of domestic animals, the in to see the man either before or after death-a fact cultivation of food-plants, and generally the conditions which .eems to us, to say the least, to have shown great which underlie the progress and expansion of the whole want of judgment on the part of the relatives of thedeceased. hemisphere. The first Congress of the kind was held at But it is more particularly with regard to the coroner’s Nancy in 1875, the second at Luxembourg in 1877. the third inquisition that we are concerned; for, if correctly in- at Brussels in 1879, the fourth at Madrid in 1881, the fifth formed that no post-mortem examination was made and at Copenhagen in 1883, and the sixth and latest at Turin in no medical evidence taken, we do not hesitate to say that 1886. The considerations that decided the choice of Berlin the termination of the case-viz., a record by the jury to for the next meeting were chiefly her great wealth in the c-ffect that death was due to " natural causes "- archæological collections illustrative of pre-historic America and the prominence of her investigators in every aspect of the was most unsatisfactory; and we trust that the matter will be taken up, and Mr. Matthews communicated physical and moral development of the new world. In the cities with either at the Home Office or by interrogation hitherto selected as the rendezvous of the Congress the highest in the House of Commons. It is evident that a fatal dignitaries of the State have assumed its patronage, and the issue was not anticipated by the stepfather of the heir to the throne, or the nearest in rank or position to him, deceased man, or surely he would have sought medical has filled the post of honorary president. The period of assistance. Moreover, there was direct testimony to thE anxiety, however, through which the Imperial Court of -
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