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THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN.
949
strongly desire to support. But, in towns at children. The actual kind of movement varies much in least, where space is narrow and one’s next-door neighbour different cases-in some a rapid revolving of the body is unknown, there are serious drawbacks to her position. around its horizontal axis, in others a rotation in a large She is too dependent on the goodwill of her customers to circle, and in others a movement recalling that performed all respect and
by
some clowns. The highest expression of consciousnessbe able to enforce a quarantine of infected linen if it be offered to her, and probably too little acquainted with their if this be perfect control over volitional efforts-is evidently domestic affairs to know whether there is or is not lost, since the patient cannot prevent himself from perground for suspicion. Hence housekeepers who take a forming these absurd antics. wise view of their responsibilities will prefer to avail themselves of the facilities and guarantees offered by laundries THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. on a larger scale, where the capital employed suffices to THE Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children accommodation and the scale of the
provide adequate has now been in existence for five years. During that operations enables the managers to exercise a judicious it has 1000 cases of cruelty in London supervision over the work which they undertake, and makes period and a investigated still number in the country. It has alone, larger it not only possible, but also commercially necessary, for been found that to technical difficulties only 150 of owing them to decline such as would involve the risk of introthese were punishable, and penalties have actually been ducing contagium to their general stock of clothes. Such inflicted in 130 cases. Taught by this experience, the laundries are at work, and it is, we hope, a question of time a Bill have drafted proposing to confer fuller powers only, and that not a long time, for their better and more Society of restraint interference and upon any who will interest scientific methods to supersede entirely the dangerous themselves in the welfare of neglected or ill-treated children. laxity of the washerwoman industry. the more Among noteworthy provisions included in this measure are a clause for the suppression of begging by SURGEON-MAJOR LAWRIE ON THE HYDERABAD means of childreia-the parent, not the child, being made responsible; another for the regulation of street-hawking; COMMISSION. and a third which by extending the operation of the IT is matter of regret that, instead of complying with our Factory Act to the streets would provide for the education request for fuller information, Mr. Lawrie has contented of many homeless waifs. himself with mere assertion and iteration of his
Children who are insured or otherwise connected with a money interest are particularly farmer statements. Whatever may be the value of the liable to ill usage, and special provision has been made for work done by the Hyderabad Commission-and Mr. Lawrie them. Among the difficulties encountered in dealing with seems inclined to accept the conclusions arrived at, rather such cases, those of search in households where cruelty than those of well-known and tried scientists,-it is quite prevails, of obtaining evidence from near kin and from impossible for those who have neither seen the experiments children themselves which would be sustained in a court to which Mr. Lawrie refers, nor received an authoritative of law, of arrest of parents or others in time to prevent statement as to the methods employed and precautions imminent bodily injury to their young charges, and of taken, to accept as evidence the results to which he refers. arranging for the custody of rescued children, are particuNo mere ipse dixit can shake the weight of the large noticeable. The new draft contains clauses dealing with accumulation of facts of which we are now possessed con- larly each of these conditions. We may describe the measure as, cerning the depressant action of chloroform upon the heart. on the whole, a sensible and moderate endeavour to deal It is not a begging of the question to say that, whereas with what is at once a very pressing matter, and one human beings are found to die not infrequently from which bristles with perplexing legal difficulties. In effect, heart failure in the very early stage of chloroformisation, it merely claims for children the protection due to every dogs, probably a great deal more terrified, do not die from citizen, and allowed even to the lower animals. It accepts heart failure at this stage. Mr. Lawrie has never seen a parental rights, but at the same time enforces parental death from chloroform in the initial stage of narcosis; but duties. The necessity for some such Bill is evident; its he seems to forget that others, whose authority we are motive is wholly salutary; and its method, so far as we can bound to accept, have done so, and the argument, from the is see, open to no valid objection. absence of experience, is at the best of times of little value. Werefrain from further criticism, as Mr. Lawrie bases his AN EXPOSURE OF ELECTRICAL QUACKERY. conclusions upon premises the value of which we must decline to accept until full publicity be given to the last A SERIES of letters and articles which have appeared in detail of the modes in which the Hyderabad Commission the pages of the Electrical Review, dealing with the tricks of electrical quacks, has just been reprinted in pamphlet form, pursued its researches. and should, if well circulated among the public, do some" PROCURSIVE" EPILEPSY. thing to counteract the effect of lavish and unscrupulous THIS term is in far more common use amongst the French advertising on the part of so-called " medical electricians." than with us. It signifies an attack the chief feature of which Some of the correspondence displays, perhaps, more warmth Es a propulsion of the body in some special direction ; it is of indignation than soundness of judgment on the part of apparently not accompanied by actual lossM consciousness, writers ; but the sentiment is a sound and generous or followed by coma; its duration does not exceed that of one, for it is impossible to consider without honest anger an ordinary epileptic fit; how shamelessly these quacks practise upon the ignorance to Bourneville and according Biicon, it is attended with marked congestion of the face. of the public, and especially of members of that poorer These cases are known to be epileptic by their associations middle class to whom the guineas which they waste in as well as by the character of the attacks, the element of worthless belts and other fanciful appliances are of consuddenness being very marked. In the same individual sequence. To any person who has even the most elementary they may be replaced by epileptic fits, or they may replace knowledge of the construction of a voltaic battery, the a true epilepsy with loss of consciousness. There is, indeed, description here given of the constituent parts of one of nothing so very remarkable in their occurrence if they be these belts will serve to show that its capability as a regarded from a physiological standpoint. They are the generator and distributor of electricity is altogether inconNeither better nor worse than the amulet to equivalents of head-banging and head-shaking in infants and
dogmatic
-
siderable.
strongly desire to support. But, in towns at children. The actual kind of movement varies much in least, where space is narrow and one’s next-door neighbour different cases-in some a rapid revolving of the body is unknown, there are serious drawbacks to her position. around its horizontal axis, in others a rotation in a large She is too dependent on the goodwill of her customers to circle, and in others a movement recalling that performed all respect and
by
some clowns. The highest expression of consciousnessbe able to enforce a quarantine of infected linen if it be offered to her, and probably too little acquainted with their if this be perfect control over volitional efforts-is evidently domestic affairs to know whether there is or is not lost, since the patient cannot prevent himself from perground for suspicion. Hence housekeepers who take a forming these absurd antics. wise view of their responsibilities will prefer to avail themselves of the facilities and guarantees offered by laundries THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. on a larger scale, where the capital employed suffices to THE Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children accommodation and the scale of the
provide adequate has now been in existence for five years. During that operations enables the managers to exercise a judicious it has 1000 cases of cruelty in London supervision over the work which they undertake, and makes period and a investigated still number in the country. It has alone, larger it not only possible, but also commercially necessary, for been found that to technical difficulties only 150 of owing them to decline such as would involve the risk of introthese were punishable, and penalties have actually been ducing contagium to their general stock of clothes. Such inflicted in 130 cases. Taught by this experience, the laundries are at work, and it is, we hope, a question of time a Bill have drafted proposing to confer fuller powers only, and that not a long time, for their better and more Society of restraint interference and upon any who will interest scientific methods to supersede entirely the dangerous themselves in the welfare of neglected or ill-treated children. laxity of the washerwoman industry. the more Among noteworthy provisions included in this measure are a clause for the suppression of begging by SURGEON-MAJOR LAWRIE ON THE HYDERABAD means of childreia-the parent, not the child, being made responsible; another for the regulation of street-hawking; COMMISSION. and a third which by extending the operation of the IT is matter of regret that, instead of complying with our Factory Act to the streets would provide for the education request for fuller information, Mr. Lawrie has contented of many homeless waifs. himself with mere assertion and iteration of his
Children who are insured or otherwise connected with a money interest are particularly farmer statements. Whatever may be the value of the liable to ill usage, and special provision has been made for work done by the Hyderabad Commission-and Mr. Lawrie them. Among the difficulties encountered in dealing with seems inclined to accept the conclusions arrived at, rather such cases, those of search in households where cruelty than those of well-known and tried scientists,-it is quite prevails, of obtaining evidence from near kin and from impossible for those who have neither seen the experiments children themselves which would be sustained in a court to which Mr. Lawrie refers, nor received an authoritative of law, of arrest of parents or others in time to prevent statement as to the methods employed and precautions imminent bodily injury to their young charges, and of taken, to accept as evidence the results to which he refers. arranging for the custody of rescued children, are particuNo mere ipse dixit can shake the weight of the large noticeable. The new draft contains clauses dealing with accumulation of facts of which we are now possessed con- larly each of these conditions. We may describe the measure as, cerning the depressant action of chloroform upon the heart. on the whole, a sensible and moderate endeavour to deal It is not a begging of the question to say that, whereas with what is at once a very pressing matter, and one human beings are found to die not infrequently from which bristles with perplexing legal difficulties. In effect, heart failure in the very early stage of chloroformisation, it merely claims for children the protection due to every dogs, probably a great deal more terrified, do not die from citizen, and allowed even to the lower animals. It accepts heart failure at this stage. Mr. Lawrie has never seen a parental rights, but at the same time enforces parental death from chloroform in the initial stage of narcosis; but duties. The necessity for some such Bill is evident; its he seems to forget that others, whose authority we are motive is wholly salutary; and its method, so far as we can bound to accept, have done so, and the argument, from the is see, open to no valid objection. absence of experience, is at the best of times of little value. Werefrain from further criticism, as Mr. Lawrie bases his AN EXPOSURE OF ELECTRICAL QUACKERY. conclusions upon premises the value of which we must decline to accept until full publicity be given to the last A SERIES of letters and articles which have appeared in detail of the modes in which the Hyderabad Commission the pages of the Electrical Review, dealing with the tricks of electrical quacks, has just been reprinted in pamphlet form, pursued its researches. and should, if well circulated among the public, do some" PROCURSIVE" EPILEPSY. thing to counteract the effect of lavish and unscrupulous THIS term is in far more common use amongst the French advertising on the part of so-called " medical electricians." than with us. It signifies an attack the chief feature of which Some of the correspondence displays, perhaps, more warmth Es a propulsion of the body in some special direction ; it is of indignation than soundness of judgment on the part of apparently not accompanied by actual lossM consciousness, writers ; but the sentiment is a sound and generous or followed by coma; its duration does not exceed that of one, for it is impossible to consider without honest anger an ordinary epileptic fit; how shamelessly these quacks practise upon the ignorance to Bourneville and according Biicon, it is attended with marked congestion of the face. of the public, and especially of members of that poorer These cases are known to be epileptic by their associations middle class to whom the guineas which they waste in as well as by the character of the attacks, the element of worthless belts and other fanciful appliances are of consuddenness being very marked. In the same individual sequence. To any person who has even the most elementary they may be replaced by epileptic fits, or they may replace knowledge of the construction of a voltaic battery, the a true epilepsy with loss of consciousness. There is, indeed, description here given of the constituent parts of one of nothing so very remarkable in their occurrence if they be these belts will serve to show that its capability as a regarded from a physiological standpoint. They are the generator and distributor of electricity is altogether inconNeither better nor worse than the amulet to equivalents of head-banging and head-shaking in infants and
dogmatic
-
siderable.