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THE RUSSIAN FLEET AT TOULON.
1016 that it is within the power of one human being so to influence the consciousness of another-so to hypnotise him-as to cause him to perpetrate acts only possible in a condition of moral irresponsibility. Is it more tolerable, we would ask, that a fellow-creature accused of a crime, and who should be assumed until convicted to be innocent, should at such a crisis in his life be rendered irresponsible for his thoughts and actions’? It is doubtful, indeed, whether under such circumstances an unwilling subject could be hypnotised ; but, granting the success of the experiment and the necessarily inconclusive nature of the evidence, we ask our brother practitioners in Holland whether they consider it ’ calculated to enhance the dignity and independence of the profession of medicine to lend themselves as the agents of .an inquisitorial process worthy of the days of Torquemada The intrusion of a period of irresponsibility into or of Alva. .a, legal process which may end in the forfeit of a life is, to our minds, an invalidation of the investigation and an offence againstjustice. To countenance, directly or indirectly, such a method we deem ui-iworthy of a calling which is ’nothing if not rational, beneficent, and impartial.
PHYSICAL EXERCISES.
CHEMISTS’
THE cultivation of physical energy in the youthful members - of any community is, without doubt, a matter of very considerable importance, and it is satisfactory to observe that its recognition is becoming more widespread, especially amongst nations situated in temperate climes. Lord Charles Beresford has been expatiating on the advantages attendant upon exercises which serve to develop uniformly the muscles cf the body, not for the purpose of producing athletes or gymnasts, but that the human organism may be brought into harmonious and vigorous working order, and under the Grace in movement and strict command of the will. in are action promoted by such exercises when rhythm within directed and kept prudential lines. This properly -1,,tst point, however, is apt to be lost sight of by enthusiastic devotees of the t/llrnhalle, who are sometimes tempted to overlook the primary object of such recreations and to allow them to degenerate into mere exhibitions of ostentavtious display. Under such circumstances injury, rather than benefit, is often the result. The committee of the Young ]B,[en’s Christian Association may be congratulated on the selection they made in asking his lordship to preside at the annual exhibition of gymnastic exercises held last week at - the Exeter Hall Gymnasium, Long Acre. -
THE
EPIDEMIC AT GREENWICH WORKHOUSE.
THE exact nature of the outbreak which has recently occurred, at the Greenwich Union Workhouse, and which has attracted so much public attention, seems somewhat difficult to determine. As regards the symptoms, the description given would appear to be not altogether inconsistent with either a modified form of cholera or the effects of ptomaine poisoning ; or, failing these, possibly a theory of gastro’enteric influenza might be found to explain the outbreak. The patients, according to the accounts, are suddenly seized with violent cramps, diarrhoea, and vomiting, and in many instances these symptoms have been accompanied by marked collapse. The vomit and motions do not, however, appear to have been of a typically rice-water character ; specimens of the motions, .,as also pieces of the ileum from patients who have died, have been examined by Dr. Kiein for the Local Government Board, and although he appears in the first instance to have been extremely suspicious of cholera, and to have found by microscopic examination numerous comma bacilli, ,he
was
apparently
unable to substantiate his
to treat it as such were at once taken, under the advice of the Local Government Board. Up to Wednesday afternoon last there appear to have been considerably over two hundred cases of the disease, and nine deaths, including the The incidence of the case of a patient who died at Lambeth. disease seems to have been greater upon the females than the males, and to have attacked more especially the aged of both sexes. Those who died were all advanced in life, their ages ranging from sixty-four to ninety-two yearsin fact, just those whom violent attacks of diarrhoea and vomiting might be expected to exhaust most easily. Curiously enough all the children, some three score in number, have remained well throughout the epidemic ; and this point is of considerable interest in connexion with the well upon which suspicion has fallen-namely, that those who drank most of the water have remained quite free of the disease. Up to the present only two of the staff have been attacked-one a nurse in the workhouse and the other in the infirmary, where the It is cases of illness are being isolated as they occur. gratifying to hear, as we go to press, that the epidemic, whatever it may be, is at an end.
steps
suspicions by
subsequent cultivations. Whatever the nature of the disease - may be, there seems to be distinct evidence pointing towards its infectious nature, and we are glad to learn that active
PRACTICE.
Two cases are reported in the Starr of the 10th inst. in which children died who had been treated at the shop of a chemist in Lambeth. One was five months and the other In both cases the fathers believed the five years old. chemist to be a fully qualified man. The first case was seen by two persons who were not even qualified chemists. In both of them the medical statement was to the effect that proper treatment might have saved the patients. In the first case, which was one of sickness and diarrhoea, calomel was prescribed and was considered by lVlr. Wood to be an improper medicine. The jury expressed the opinion that death was accelerated by wrong treatment and that the chemist was deserving of censure. In the other case the jury asked the coroner to communicate with the Pharmaceutical Society with reference to the party practising as a chemist without the proper qualification. The harm done by delay in cases prescribed for by chemists is only slightly realised by the public ; and if juries would but do their duty in such instances great good would result.
THE RUSSIAN
FLEET AT TOULON.
IN view of the present risks to the public health generally it is sincerely to be hoped that the French authorities, before receiving the Russian fleet at Toulon, took all the precautions which the especial dangers of the situation should have suggested. Toulon is one of the most insanitary towns of France. She has frequently suffered from terrible epidemics, and during the course of this year there have been several deaths from cholera there and in the neighbourhood. Though Toulon has only dwellings for about 70,000 inhabitants, the newspaper correspondents estimate the number of visitors and excursionists who went to welcome the Russian fleet at 300,000. Doubtless this figure is somewhat exaggerated. More certain data may be found in the announcement that the railway company has issued over 165,000 tickets for Toulon. In any case, it is only to the of read accounts the fete to see how terribly necessary overcrowded the town has been. Many thousands of persons were compelled to sleep in the open air, in carriages, in small Food also boats, on the bastions of the fortifications &c. was scarce and dear, and many persons have had to content themselves with irregular meals purchased and eaten in the streets. Dast-besmeared sausages and bread constituted the of such meals. Toulon is not a safe to Nn de resistanee Piece to viit under the best of circumstances, but the ga,thering of such an immense crowd and the necessary hardships and fati6ue endured by homeless visitors must have rendered it
1017 than usually dangerous. There are scarcely any sewers in in a glacier. Night came on, and their sufferings, half-frozen Toulon.. How was the scavenging managed for this immense and without fuel as they were, grew intense. At daybreak, collection of people ?Well-water of a very unsafe character M. Charbonnet crept out of the wreck in which they were is still drunk in several districts, and dust is sometimes blown bivouacking, and, with a view to devise some mode of extriinto the reservoir of the town water-supply. Nor is this cation from their terrible dilemma, he advanced cautiously town water all that could be desired, for in dry weather about twenty paces, when he suddenly disappeared in a water taken from a spring nearer to the town, and more likely crevasse. His poor wife was nearly out of her mind, to be contaminated, is mixed with the smaller but safer but by the aid of her two friends she was helped down supply. Not only has the weather been dry, but the con- the glacier, though slipping at well - nigh every step, sumption of water must have greatly increased while the town till they met a shepherd, who, unheeding their appeals for was so overcrowded. We trust that no evil will result from bread, ’or guidance, or information, turned a deaf ear to .all these circumstances, and that the political excitement of them and went his way. About 2 P.M., when strength the moment has not occasioned any neglect of the extra and and hope were all but expended, they found themselves on rery strict sanitary precautions rendered necessary by the the plateau of the Mussa, about 1700 metres above the seainflux of so vast a multitude of visitors. It is fair to Toulon level, and, coming across some mountaineers, were hospitably also to add that she appears to have at last realised her entertained by them in a chalet. One of the latter descended ’insanitary plight. Our Paris correspondent announces an to Balme and came back with the syndic, the prsstor (the immediately projected reform, and states that, at the instance "sheriff," as we should call him), two carabineers, and of Dr. Sambuc, an ex-mayor, it has been decided by the some peasants, who, having improvised a sedan chair, carried the unfortunate young widow to the Hotel Belvedere, while town to adopt the Shone system of drainage. similar aid was rendered to one of her companions, and the SMALL-POX AT BRADFORD. other, less exhausted, accompanied them on foot. Every care on them in the hotel, and in the meantime six THE recent disastrous destruction of the Scholemoor Small- was lavished started in quest of M. Charbonnet. They found mountaineers pox Hospital at Bradford occurred when the town was of the crevasse, with a large scalp wound and him at the bottom suffering from an exacerbation of the epidemic, and when, both legs broken, quite dead. His body was conveyed to the therefore, the hospital in question was full of inmates. Every chapel of San Rocco at Balme, and the survivors, praise must be accorded to the energy and promptitude with mortuary after regaining a little strength, returned to Turin. There is which the unfortunate inmates of the burning ward were no doubt that M. Charbonnet’s over-confidence was carried removed without any of them being sacrificed in the process ; to foolhardiness, and that the balloon in which he attempted but there has ensued the inevitable sequel to the exposure of so much contagion. This week amongst the first cases so dangerous a voyage was not sufficiently "controllable" amidst the cross currents of the atmosphere above the Alps. the town are noted some of those who were arising in The improvements still in progress in what may be called the in the from concerned the removing directly patients " naval architecture of the air " have, it is obvious, to be building and in transferring them to the Leeds-road carried to a far higher degree of perfection before such a Hospital. How many of the rest who have been attacked can be re-attempted with impunity. this week came into more or less direct contact with voyage more
’these patients it may not be possible to say ; but we - cannot avoid the reflection that, if the people of Bradford had listened to the warnings long since addressed to them to seek protection from infection by revaccination, perhaps not one would have suffered from the catastrophe. The be all in their to doing sanitary authority appear power to is it with the and new state of affairs, doubly unfortucope nate that j just as they were hoping that they had freed the Leeds-road district from the dangerous proximity to a focus of infection by utilising their new buildings at Scholemoor they should have been compelled by this disaster to revert to the use of the Fever Hospital, which, moreover, is sadly needed for its primary purpose.
THE SAVAGERY OF FASHION.
NOT whit too early, but rather too late, has come the protest issued a few days ago by Mr. W. H. Hudson against the indiscriminate killing of birds for the sake of their plumage. Fashion of late has been forgetfully merciful in this matter. Birds for ladies’ wear have not commanded a market, and perhaps a few struggling species owe their still recognisable existence to this cause. Unfortunately, there are signs that the grateful period of oversight has expired, for again we hear of a coming rage" for wings. " In other words, our mothers, wives, and daughters are being persuaded into a return to the old practices of selfwhich it appears were only for a time in THE BALLOONING TRAGEDY IN PIEDMONT. abeyance. What these implied may be judged from the THE tragic fate that has just befallen the aérostier fact that many species of brightly feathered birds, accord1I. Chaibonnet illustrates many important difficulties in the ing to present ornithological records, are already on the management of balloons. He had been but a few hours verge of extinction. Little wonder is it that this can be married when he persuaded his bride to take her honeymoon said when we reflect upon the heedless barbarity and wanton not on, but above the Alps, and accordingly, with two friends, waste of life which commonly characterise the methods of they started in his balloon the 6Stella," at a point not far from the bird-killer, his unconcern either for close time or any Turin. In a few minutes they had soared to 2000 metres- other season, for the kind or number of his victims (if only a height at which they encountered some very powerful he succeeds in making a living by them), and for any form The cross-currents, on which they drifted, now high, now of remonstrance which does not touch his pocket. low, in the direction of the Alps. M. Charbonnet became appeal to which we have referred was made to women, for iully alive to the danger, and whilst he encouraged his wife whose adornment so many ruthless depredations have been he confided to his comrades that a disaster was inevitable. made upon the treasuries of nature. Most of them who Meanwhile all but M. Charbonnet himself, who was steering have any pretensions either to feeling or intelligence will, we the Stella" as best he could, were huddled in the bottom of are assured, admit the force of that appeal. It is, indeed, a the car, half dead with the cold which beset them from the monstrous thing that has evoked it. Forms of life inimitable At in beauty as in adaptation, gems of nature’s workmanship, snow-laden winds through which they were driving. three in the afternoon the balloon came into violent contact antique, enduring, irrecoverable if lost, are to be wantonli with a peak of the Ciaramella mountain in the Graian Alps; destroyed-why2 In order that a dre3s or a bonnet may for A more a large hole was"made in its side, and the car became wedged some pleasant hours attract a little social attention. a
decoration,
PHYSICAL EXERCISES.
CHEMISTS’
THE cultivation of physical energy in the youthful members - of any community is, without doubt, a matter of very considerable importance, and it is satisfactory to observe that its recognition is becoming more widespread, especially amongst nations situated in temperate climes. Lord Charles Beresford has been expatiating on the advantages attendant upon exercises which serve to develop uniformly the muscles cf the body, not for the purpose of producing athletes or gymnasts, but that the human organism may be brought into harmonious and vigorous working order, and under the Grace in movement and strict command of the will. in are action promoted by such exercises when rhythm within directed and kept prudential lines. This properly -1,,tst point, however, is apt to be lost sight of by enthusiastic devotees of the t/llrnhalle, who are sometimes tempted to overlook the primary object of such recreations and to allow them to degenerate into mere exhibitions of ostentavtious display. Under such circumstances injury, rather than benefit, is often the result. The committee of the Young ]B,[en’s Christian Association may be congratulated on the selection they made in asking his lordship to preside at the annual exhibition of gymnastic exercises held last week at - the Exeter Hall Gymnasium, Long Acre. -
THE
EPIDEMIC AT GREENWICH WORKHOUSE.
THE exact nature of the outbreak which has recently occurred, at the Greenwich Union Workhouse, and which has attracted so much public attention, seems somewhat difficult to determine. As regards the symptoms, the description given would appear to be not altogether inconsistent with either a modified form of cholera or the effects of ptomaine poisoning ; or, failing these, possibly a theory of gastro’enteric influenza might be found to explain the outbreak. The patients, according to the accounts, are suddenly seized with violent cramps, diarrhoea, and vomiting, and in many instances these symptoms have been accompanied by marked collapse. The vomit and motions do not, however, appear to have been of a typically rice-water character ; specimens of the motions, .,as also pieces of the ileum from patients who have died, have been examined by Dr. Kiein for the Local Government Board, and although he appears in the first instance to have been extremely suspicious of cholera, and to have found by microscopic examination numerous comma bacilli, ,he
was
apparently
unable to substantiate his
to treat it as such were at once taken, under the advice of the Local Government Board. Up to Wednesday afternoon last there appear to have been considerably over two hundred cases of the disease, and nine deaths, including the The incidence of the case of a patient who died at Lambeth. disease seems to have been greater upon the females than the males, and to have attacked more especially the aged of both sexes. Those who died were all advanced in life, their ages ranging from sixty-four to ninety-two yearsin fact, just those whom violent attacks of diarrhoea and vomiting might be expected to exhaust most easily. Curiously enough all the children, some three score in number, have remained well throughout the epidemic ; and this point is of considerable interest in connexion with the well upon which suspicion has fallen-namely, that those who drank most of the water have remained quite free of the disease. Up to the present only two of the staff have been attacked-one a nurse in the workhouse and the other in the infirmary, where the It is cases of illness are being isolated as they occur. gratifying to hear, as we go to press, that the epidemic, whatever it may be, is at an end.
steps
suspicions by
subsequent cultivations. Whatever the nature of the disease - may be, there seems to be distinct evidence pointing towards its infectious nature, and we are glad to learn that active
PRACTICE.
Two cases are reported in the Starr of the 10th inst. in which children died who had been treated at the shop of a chemist in Lambeth. One was five months and the other In both cases the fathers believed the five years old. chemist to be a fully qualified man. The first case was seen by two persons who were not even qualified chemists. In both of them the medical statement was to the effect that proper treatment might have saved the patients. In the first case, which was one of sickness and diarrhoea, calomel was prescribed and was considered by lVlr. Wood to be an improper medicine. The jury expressed the opinion that death was accelerated by wrong treatment and that the chemist was deserving of censure. In the other case the jury asked the coroner to communicate with the Pharmaceutical Society with reference to the party practising as a chemist without the proper qualification. The harm done by delay in cases prescribed for by chemists is only slightly realised by the public ; and if juries would but do their duty in such instances great good would result.
THE RUSSIAN
FLEET AT TOULON.
IN view of the present risks to the public health generally it is sincerely to be hoped that the French authorities, before receiving the Russian fleet at Toulon, took all the precautions which the especial dangers of the situation should have suggested. Toulon is one of the most insanitary towns of France. She has frequently suffered from terrible epidemics, and during the course of this year there have been several deaths from cholera there and in the neighbourhood. Though Toulon has only dwellings for about 70,000 inhabitants, the newspaper correspondents estimate the number of visitors and excursionists who went to welcome the Russian fleet at 300,000. Doubtless this figure is somewhat exaggerated. More certain data may be found in the announcement that the railway company has issued over 165,000 tickets for Toulon. In any case, it is only to the of read accounts the fete to see how terribly necessary overcrowded the town has been. Many thousands of persons were compelled to sleep in the open air, in carriages, in small Food also boats, on the bastions of the fortifications &c. was scarce and dear, and many persons have had to content themselves with irregular meals purchased and eaten in the streets. Dast-besmeared sausages and bread constituted the of such meals. Toulon is not a safe to Nn de resistanee Piece to viit under the best of circumstances, but the ga,thering of such an immense crowd and the necessary hardships and fati6ue endured by homeless visitors must have rendered it
1017 than usually dangerous. There are scarcely any sewers in in a glacier. Night came on, and their sufferings, half-frozen Toulon.. How was the scavenging managed for this immense and without fuel as they were, grew intense. At daybreak, collection of people ?Well-water of a very unsafe character M. Charbonnet crept out of the wreck in which they were is still drunk in several districts, and dust is sometimes blown bivouacking, and, with a view to devise some mode of extriinto the reservoir of the town water-supply. Nor is this cation from their terrible dilemma, he advanced cautiously town water all that could be desired, for in dry weather about twenty paces, when he suddenly disappeared in a water taken from a spring nearer to the town, and more likely crevasse. His poor wife was nearly out of her mind, to be contaminated, is mixed with the smaller but safer but by the aid of her two friends she was helped down supply. Not only has the weather been dry, but the con- the glacier, though slipping at well - nigh every step, sumption of water must have greatly increased while the town till they met a shepherd, who, unheeding their appeals for was so overcrowded. We trust that no evil will result from bread, ’or guidance, or information, turned a deaf ear to .all these circumstances, and that the political excitement of them and went his way. About 2 P.M., when strength the moment has not occasioned any neglect of the extra and and hope were all but expended, they found themselves on rery strict sanitary precautions rendered necessary by the the plateau of the Mussa, about 1700 metres above the seainflux of so vast a multitude of visitors. It is fair to Toulon level, and, coming across some mountaineers, were hospitably also to add that she appears to have at last realised her entertained by them in a chalet. One of the latter descended ’insanitary plight. Our Paris correspondent announces an to Balme and came back with the syndic, the prsstor (the immediately projected reform, and states that, at the instance "sheriff," as we should call him), two carabineers, and of Dr. Sambuc, an ex-mayor, it has been decided by the some peasants, who, having improvised a sedan chair, carried the unfortunate young widow to the Hotel Belvedere, while town to adopt the Shone system of drainage. similar aid was rendered to one of her companions, and the SMALL-POX AT BRADFORD. other, less exhausted, accompanied them on foot. Every care on them in the hotel, and in the meantime six THE recent disastrous destruction of the Scholemoor Small- was lavished started in quest of M. Charbonnet. They found mountaineers pox Hospital at Bradford occurred when the town was of the crevasse, with a large scalp wound and him at the bottom suffering from an exacerbation of the epidemic, and when, both legs broken, quite dead. His body was conveyed to the therefore, the hospital in question was full of inmates. Every chapel of San Rocco at Balme, and the survivors, praise must be accorded to the energy and promptitude with mortuary after regaining a little strength, returned to Turin. There is which the unfortunate inmates of the burning ward were no doubt that M. Charbonnet’s over-confidence was carried removed without any of them being sacrificed in the process ; to foolhardiness, and that the balloon in which he attempted but there has ensued the inevitable sequel to the exposure of so much contagion. This week amongst the first cases so dangerous a voyage was not sufficiently "controllable" amidst the cross currents of the atmosphere above the Alps. the town are noted some of those who were arising in The improvements still in progress in what may be called the in the from concerned the removing directly patients " naval architecture of the air " have, it is obvious, to be building and in transferring them to the Leeds-road carried to a far higher degree of perfection before such a Hospital. How many of the rest who have been attacked can be re-attempted with impunity. this week came into more or less direct contact with voyage more
’these patients it may not be possible to say ; but we - cannot avoid the reflection that, if the people of Bradford had listened to the warnings long since addressed to them to seek protection from infection by revaccination, perhaps not one would have suffered from the catastrophe. The be all in their to doing sanitary authority appear power to is it with the and new state of affairs, doubly unfortucope nate that j just as they were hoping that they had freed the Leeds-road district from the dangerous proximity to a focus of infection by utilising their new buildings at Scholemoor they should have been compelled by this disaster to revert to the use of the Fever Hospital, which, moreover, is sadly needed for its primary purpose.
THE SAVAGERY OF FASHION.
NOT whit too early, but rather too late, has come the protest issued a few days ago by Mr. W. H. Hudson against the indiscriminate killing of birds for the sake of their plumage. Fashion of late has been forgetfully merciful in this matter. Birds for ladies’ wear have not commanded a market, and perhaps a few struggling species owe their still recognisable existence to this cause. Unfortunately, there are signs that the grateful period of oversight has expired, for again we hear of a coming rage" for wings. " In other words, our mothers, wives, and daughters are being persuaded into a return to the old practices of selfwhich it appears were only for a time in THE BALLOONING TRAGEDY IN PIEDMONT. abeyance. What these implied may be judged from the THE tragic fate that has just befallen the aérostier fact that many species of brightly feathered birds, accord1I. Chaibonnet illustrates many important difficulties in the ing to present ornithological records, are already on the management of balloons. He had been but a few hours verge of extinction. Little wonder is it that this can be married when he persuaded his bride to take her honeymoon said when we reflect upon the heedless barbarity and wanton not on, but above the Alps, and accordingly, with two friends, waste of life which commonly characterise the methods of they started in his balloon the 6Stella," at a point not far from the bird-killer, his unconcern either for close time or any Turin. In a few minutes they had soared to 2000 metres- other season, for the kind or number of his victims (if only a height at which they encountered some very powerful he succeeds in making a living by them), and for any form The cross-currents, on which they drifted, now high, now of remonstrance which does not touch his pocket. low, in the direction of the Alps. M. Charbonnet became appeal to which we have referred was made to women, for iully alive to the danger, and whilst he encouraged his wife whose adornment so many ruthless depredations have been he confided to his comrades that a disaster was inevitable. made upon the treasuries of nature. Most of them who Meanwhile all but M. Charbonnet himself, who was steering have any pretensions either to feeling or intelligence will, we the Stella" as best he could, were huddled in the bottom of are assured, admit the force of that appeal. It is, indeed, a the car, half dead with the cold which beset them from the monstrous thing that has evoked it. Forms of life inimitable At in beauty as in adaptation, gems of nature’s workmanship, snow-laden winds through which they were driving. three in the afternoon the balloon came into violent contact antique, enduring, irrecoverable if lost, are to be wantonli with a peak of the Ciaramella mountain in the Graian Alps; destroyed-why2 In order that a dre3s or a bonnet may for A more a large hole was"made in its side, and the car became wedged some pleasant hours attract a little social attention. a
decoration,