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THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE HEALING ART.
751 struck, in the Gallery of the Geographical Maps, with the
and females separately. The result of such examination is to show that the increase of unoccupied males aged upwards of ten years between 1881 and 1901 did not exceed H7 per cent., whereas the increase of males at those ages returned as following definite occupations was equal to 31 per cent. Among females at those ages, on the other hand, the number returned as unoccupied showed an increase of 37 per cent., while the increase among those returned as following some definite occupation did not exceed 23 per cent. The number and proportion of males engaged in definite occupations thus showed an increase during the 20 years referred to, whereas the number and proportion of females so engaged had declined. The decline in the proportion of females following definite occupations was one of the most surprising features of the report on the last census in 1901. The marked increase between 1881 and 1901 in the proportion of women engaged in professional and commercial occupations was far more than counterbalanced by the marked decline in the larger number of women engaged in domestic indoor service, in agricultural occupations, and in textile manufacture This is not the place to discuss the economic result of this apparent decline in the definite employment of women of the workingclasses apart from their household and family duties, but should this decline be mainly due, as seems to be very probable, to the improved condition of the weeklywage class, rendering it decreasingly necessary for women to follow definite occupations after marriage, the changes noted may be viewed with satisfaction. Any decline in the proportional employment of married women in definite occupation or handicraft should clearly promote the cause of public health and tend to reduce the present excessive rate of infant mortality. According to the report on the census in 1901 52’3 per cent. of unmarried females in England and Wales, aged upwards of ten years, were engaged in definite occupation, while of the married or widowed women no less than 13’2 per cent. were so engaged ; and in Blackburn, for example, 37’ 9 per cent. of the married or widowed women No similar information was were definitely employed. published in previous census reports, and we must wait for the report on the next census for further explanation of the evidence of the decline in. the proportion of women following definite occupations, derived from published census statistics.
sagacity of the missionaries who framed them-the watershed of sub-equatorial Africa, for example, being given, hypothetically indeed, but with an approximate accuracy
___
THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE HEALING ART. AN Italian
correspondent, writing
under date
Sept. 8th,
says:"The event
of the week, ecclesiastical and political, has been the election of theBlack Pope,’ as the General of the Jesuits is familiarly called, and the occasion may be utilised to remind us of what may be set down to the credit of a society not too favourably regarded by the non-Catholic world-namely, its services to the sciences in general and to the healing art in particular. Founded by Loyola to counterpoise, and if possible to defeat, the Reformation promoted by Luther, it pressed into its service every weapon that could reinforce it in the conflict, and, strange as it may seem in an organisation accused of ’obscurantism,’ it enrolled the man of science and the medically trained missionary under its banner, inscribed Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.’ In nature-study, as well as in mathematics pure and applied, the Jesuit in the early post-Renaissance period made his mark in nearly every department, and the missionaries of the , society, mainly Portuguese, in furtherance of its poet.
laureate’s idealLoyola
Lutheri triumphos Orbe Novo reparabit ultor’-
world and the unexplored regions of the converts to the Church and enriching the scientific knowledge already theirs by concurrent observationL and research. What visitor to the Vatican has failed to bE !
over-ran
the
old, making
new
it was reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century to complete and to ratify ? Again, what student of the medical past has forgotten the beautiful story of the discovery of the quinine-bearing cinchona and the introduction into the physician’s armoury of ’Jesuits’ Bark,’ first exhibited in the seventeenth century, and since then, by pharmaceutical refinements, developed into the salt which is to the European sojourner in the tropics what the Davy lamp is to the miner? Finely told in Sir Thomas Watson’sPractice of Physic ’—a ’professional classic,’ if only for the scholarly finish of its language and the artistic cadence of its periods-the story redounds to the credit of the Society but for whose emissary the discovery might have had to wait, who knows how long 1 Even in the modern day the Jesuit remains true to his scientific traditions-witness those worthy descendants of the Pere Boscovich, the Padre Secchi, famed for his ’Solar Physics,’ and his successor in the directorate of the Vatican Observatory, the Padre Denza. The latter, indeed, besides his work in seismology perpetuated on identical lines by members of the Society throughout Italy, will always be remembered for his demonstration of the origin of that scourge of the Mediterranean seaboard, the wind known as the scirocco.’ Having surmised that the said wind was always coincident with a sand-storm in the Sahara, he stationed a correspondent at the border-land between the Tell, as cultivated Algeria is called, and the great desert, with instructions to telegraph to him on the Italian littoral whenever a sand-storm was brewing. ’ Detto fatto’-the correspondent acted accordingly. On came the wind, the Padre Denza. being duly prepared for its advent, at various points of the Italian shore, with huge façades of cardboard wet with gum. And sure enough, as it passed oversea inland a thick layer of sand was deposited on the said ’facades,’ thus explaining what. had been observed, but not traced to its cause, by Celsus-namely, the sense of heat, of weight, of general depression, and lowered vitality experienced during the prevalence of the scirocco-an experience not to be escaped till, by reclamation and crop-culture, the Sahara ceases to be thesand ocean’ it has been from time immemorial. Inspired by the traditional genius of the Society, the Padre Massaia in his thrilling record of mission work thirty-nay, forty-years ago in the Galla country (west of Abyssinia), ascribes to his nature-study and his command of the healing art the success of the enterprise which brought him the gratitude of the Pope and the title of Cardinal. Setting out as a simple monk about the middle of last century long before the opening up of Egypt to civilisation and the present facilities for travel, he reached the scene of his labours with only the Bible and the crozier of St. Francis. First he began to make friends with the savage natives by teaching them the ’ arts of peace’ and of civilised lifedown to tenement structure, cooking, and clothing. All this time he was quietly mastering their language, till he constructed its grammar for them, and finally translated into it portions of Holy Writ. Then he set up a printing press (thanks to subsidies from the Propaganda) and taught the younger of the natives to read. Still his progress-well-nigh single-handed-was slow, till the periodical outbreaks of small-pox gave him his opportunity. He vaccinated as many of the natives as he could prevail upon to submit to the operation and when the tribe at the next epidemic of the disease found his patientsimmune,’ while those who had held back from becoming so either died or emerged from it disfigured, their liking for him deepened into love and a superstitious belief in his power. The success of his mission was then assured. Yes, the poet-laureate of the society was which
752 warranted in
thatj obtained the services of a woman living in the neighbourhood to take charge of her temporarily. The relieving officer returned to the workhouse about half-past ten at Tellus gigantis sentit iter; simul Idola nutant; fana ruunt; micat night, took no steps to have the patient removed, and left her Christi triumphantis tropaeum, in charge of the attendant mentioned. Shortly afterwards Cruxque novos numerat clientes. Xaverii she became violent, overcame the resistance of the woman in Videre gentes jubar Igni corusco nubila dividens, charge of her, whose cries for assistance were either unheard Ccepitque mirans Christianos Per medios fluitare Ganges.’ or disregarded, and escaped through a window, committing But it was in the degree in which they reinforced religionsuicide by drowning herself before she could be recaptured. with science, above all with the healing art in its widestj The conduct of those in immediate charge of the worksense, clinical and hygienic, that the Jesuit apostles effected house and their responsibility in the matter do not their most salutary work-a work which made them the pro- appear to have been very closely inquired into by the genitors, so to speak, of Livingstone and Bishop Pattison coroner, who seems to have told the jury that they and Dr. Stewart of Lovedale-a work which, if pursued in were not concerned with such questions. The attitude the spirit of these pioneers, will go far to conciliate for the of the Chard guardians, however, seems to be shown Society an admiration and a sympathy hitherto withheld fairly clearly by a speech which their chairman made at the inquest before the proceedings began. This gentlefrom it even among Catholics themselves." man, according to the report referred to, "expressed to the coroner his own regret and the regret of the board POISONING BY BROMOFORM. on the unfortunate occurrence which had occasioned A NUMBER of fatal cases of poisoning by bromoform have his (the coroner’s) presence that afternoon. He held, been recorded in a recent number of La Semtaine Médieale. and the board of guardians held, that it was not the fault In 1890, shortly after the introduction of the drug into of any of the officers within the walls. They, however, medicine, M. Nonwelaers of Brussels described the case of a thought that greater care should be exercised by medical child, 15 months old, who died 14 hours after the adminis- officers in admitting cases of that sort to the workhouse. tration of a mixture which was ordered to be given daily in The workhouse was not a lunatic asylum, iti was a place doses corresponding to 12 drops of bromoform, but this dose for the relief of the poor and others who were was exceeded. In 1902 Dr. Krioull of Wenden reported the from time to time glad to seek refuge there. The workhouse was not a place for people who were case of a girl, aged three years, who died after the daily ad7ann He begged to express their deep ministration of several dessert-spoonful doses of a 12 per compos mentis. and inform the coroner that they would be very cent. mixture which had been prescribed previously for regret future careful see that in no persons who were suffering to a child 11 years old. In 1904 Dr. Roth of Brunsas woman this unfortunate suffered would be a wick witnessed the death of poor child, five years old, from taking a dose of a mixture corresponding to admitted within the walls." This address seems to be in five grammes of bromoform. The child died in coma accord with the views of the board which held a meeting in spite of medical attention. Quite recently a similar case shortly before the inquest took place. We would point out to the Chard board of guardians, however, that while came to the notice of Dr. Haakma Tresling of Winschoten. A child was told to empty a bottle containing a bromoform a workhouse is not a lunatic asylum, and possibly mixture which had been prescribed for another member of the Chard workhouse may be ill fitted for an emerthe family. Instead of obeying he administered it in play to gency such as that which occurred, the temporary charge of a person who has suddenly become insane is not a younger brother, aged four years, with serious results. The child was seized with dizziness, followed by collapse, by any means an unusual thing to be undertaken at a stertorous breathing, and relaxation of the muscles. It was workhouse, and constitutes a form of relief of the not found possible to make him vomit, and eventually he poor which sometimes is greatly and urgently needed. succumbed. In this case a dose of from four to five grammes Perusal, moreover, of some of the sections of the Lunacy of bromoform proved fatal. As bromoform is so largely used Acts, 1890 and 1891, should satisfy the Chard board of in the treatment of whooping-cough the danger of adminis- guardians that the legislature has done its best to provide that temporary safety should be obtainable for the afflicted person tering excessive doses should be recognised. in a workhouse until the somewhat complicated machinery provided for his necessary protection can be set in motion. WORKHOUSES AND THE TEMPORARY CARE OF In particular, Section 20 of the Lunacy Act, 1890, orders that INSANE PERSONS. "if a constable, relieving officer, or overseer is satisfied A SAD case of suicide recently took place at Chard, the that it is necessary for the public safety or the welfare of an facts of which we take from a full report contained in the alleged lunatic, with regard to whom it is his duty to take Cha’l’rl and Ilminster Neros of Sept. 1st. Briefly they are as any proceedings under this Act, that the alleged lunatic follows. Mr. Napier Close of Chard was visited at his should, before any such proceedings can be taken, be placed surgery late one afternoon by a young woman in an under care and control, the constable, relieving officer, or excited condition who asked him to take care of overseer may remove the alleged lunatic to the workhouse of her. He formed the opinion that she was insane the union in which the alleged lunatic is, and the master of and having sent for the relieving officer, who was the workhouse shall, unless there is no proper accommodanot at home, obtained the assistance of a police sergeant, tion in the workhouse for the alleged lunatic, receive and who conveyed her to the workhouse, taking with him the relieve and detain the alleged lunatic therein; but no following written message to the master from Mr. Close: person shall be so detained for more than three days, and "Mary Jane Hayball is suffering from melancholia and has before the expiration of that time the constable, relieving threatened to do away with herself. Please admit her to the officer, or overseer shall take such proceedings wibh regard workhouse until the return of Mr. Hawker [the relieving to the alleged lunatic as are required by the Act." The officer] who will take over the case." At the workhouse the question of the control of lunatics, whether paupers or not, master refused to accept responsibility and was unwilling to with regard to whom it is evidently of urgent importance take the patient in, protesting that the workhouse was not a that they should be placed under care and control, has been fit and proper place for her, but afterwards he allowed her to considered in framing the Lunacy Acts, with a view to prebe placed in the reception room and Mr. Close himself venting precisely such occurrences as took place at Chard ;i
of
a
typifying the mission march well-meaning, beneficent giant :-
of
Loyola
as
and females separately. The result of such examination is to show that the increase of unoccupied males aged upwards of ten years between 1881 and 1901 did not exceed H7 per cent., whereas the increase of males at those ages returned as following definite occupations was equal to 31 per cent. Among females at those ages, on the other hand, the number returned as unoccupied showed an increase of 37 per cent., while the increase among those returned as following some definite occupation did not exceed 23 per cent. The number and proportion of males engaged in definite occupations thus showed an increase during the 20 years referred to, whereas the number and proportion of females so engaged had declined. The decline in the proportion of females following definite occupations was one of the most surprising features of the report on the last census in 1901. The marked increase between 1881 and 1901 in the proportion of women engaged in professional and commercial occupations was far more than counterbalanced by the marked decline in the larger number of women engaged in domestic indoor service, in agricultural occupations, and in textile manufacture This is not the place to discuss the economic result of this apparent decline in the definite employment of women of the workingclasses apart from their household and family duties, but should this decline be mainly due, as seems to be very probable, to the improved condition of the weeklywage class, rendering it decreasingly necessary for women to follow definite occupations after marriage, the changes noted may be viewed with satisfaction. Any decline in the proportional employment of married women in definite occupation or handicraft should clearly promote the cause of public health and tend to reduce the present excessive rate of infant mortality. According to the report on the census in 1901 52’3 per cent. of unmarried females in England and Wales, aged upwards of ten years, were engaged in definite occupation, while of the married or widowed women no less than 13’2 per cent. were so engaged ; and in Blackburn, for example, 37’ 9 per cent. of the married or widowed women No similar information was were definitely employed. published in previous census reports, and we must wait for the report on the next census for further explanation of the evidence of the decline in. the proportion of women following definite occupations, derived from published census statistics.
sagacity of the missionaries who framed them-the watershed of sub-equatorial Africa, for example, being given, hypothetically indeed, but with an approximate accuracy
___
THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE HEALING ART. AN Italian
correspondent, writing
under date
Sept. 8th,
says:"The event
of the week, ecclesiastical and political, has been the election of theBlack Pope,’ as the General of the Jesuits is familiarly called, and the occasion may be utilised to remind us of what may be set down to the credit of a society not too favourably regarded by the non-Catholic world-namely, its services to the sciences in general and to the healing art in particular. Founded by Loyola to counterpoise, and if possible to defeat, the Reformation promoted by Luther, it pressed into its service every weapon that could reinforce it in the conflict, and, strange as it may seem in an organisation accused of ’obscurantism,’ it enrolled the man of science and the medically trained missionary under its banner, inscribed Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.’ In nature-study, as well as in mathematics pure and applied, the Jesuit in the early post-Renaissance period made his mark in nearly every department, and the missionaries of the , society, mainly Portuguese, in furtherance of its poet.
laureate’s idealLoyola
Lutheri triumphos Orbe Novo reparabit ultor’-
world and the unexplored regions of the converts to the Church and enriching the scientific knowledge already theirs by concurrent observationL and research. What visitor to the Vatican has failed to bE !
over-ran
the
old, making
new
it was reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century to complete and to ratify ? Again, what student of the medical past has forgotten the beautiful story of the discovery of the quinine-bearing cinchona and the introduction into the physician’s armoury of ’Jesuits’ Bark,’ first exhibited in the seventeenth century, and since then, by pharmaceutical refinements, developed into the salt which is to the European sojourner in the tropics what the Davy lamp is to the miner? Finely told in Sir Thomas Watson’sPractice of Physic ’—a ’professional classic,’ if only for the scholarly finish of its language and the artistic cadence of its periods-the story redounds to the credit of the Society but for whose emissary the discovery might have had to wait, who knows how long 1 Even in the modern day the Jesuit remains true to his scientific traditions-witness those worthy descendants of the Pere Boscovich, the Padre Secchi, famed for his ’Solar Physics,’ and his successor in the directorate of the Vatican Observatory, the Padre Denza. The latter, indeed, besides his work in seismology perpetuated on identical lines by members of the Society throughout Italy, will always be remembered for his demonstration of the origin of that scourge of the Mediterranean seaboard, the wind known as the scirocco.’ Having surmised that the said wind was always coincident with a sand-storm in the Sahara, he stationed a correspondent at the border-land between the Tell, as cultivated Algeria is called, and the great desert, with instructions to telegraph to him on the Italian littoral whenever a sand-storm was brewing. ’ Detto fatto’-the correspondent acted accordingly. On came the wind, the Padre Denza. being duly prepared for its advent, at various points of the Italian shore, with huge façades of cardboard wet with gum. And sure enough, as it passed oversea inland a thick layer of sand was deposited on the said ’facades,’ thus explaining what. had been observed, but not traced to its cause, by Celsus-namely, the sense of heat, of weight, of general depression, and lowered vitality experienced during the prevalence of the scirocco-an experience not to be escaped till, by reclamation and crop-culture, the Sahara ceases to be thesand ocean’ it has been from time immemorial. Inspired by the traditional genius of the Society, the Padre Massaia in his thrilling record of mission work thirty-nay, forty-years ago in the Galla country (west of Abyssinia), ascribes to his nature-study and his command of the healing art the success of the enterprise which brought him the gratitude of the Pope and the title of Cardinal. Setting out as a simple monk about the middle of last century long before the opening up of Egypt to civilisation and the present facilities for travel, he reached the scene of his labours with only the Bible and the crozier of St. Francis. First he began to make friends with the savage natives by teaching them the ’ arts of peace’ and of civilised lifedown to tenement structure, cooking, and clothing. All this time he was quietly mastering their language, till he constructed its grammar for them, and finally translated into it portions of Holy Writ. Then he set up a printing press (thanks to subsidies from the Propaganda) and taught the younger of the natives to read. Still his progress-well-nigh single-handed-was slow, till the periodical outbreaks of small-pox gave him his opportunity. He vaccinated as many of the natives as he could prevail upon to submit to the operation and when the tribe at the next epidemic of the disease found his patientsimmune,’ while those who had held back from becoming so either died or emerged from it disfigured, their liking for him deepened into love and a superstitious belief in his power. The success of his mission was then assured. Yes, the poet-laureate of the society was which
752 warranted in
thatj obtained the services of a woman living in the neighbourhood to take charge of her temporarily. The relieving officer returned to the workhouse about half-past ten at Tellus gigantis sentit iter; simul Idola nutant; fana ruunt; micat night, took no steps to have the patient removed, and left her Christi triumphantis tropaeum, in charge of the attendant mentioned. Shortly afterwards Cruxque novos numerat clientes. Xaverii she became violent, overcame the resistance of the woman in Videre gentes jubar Igni corusco nubila dividens, charge of her, whose cries for assistance were either unheard Ccepitque mirans Christianos Per medios fluitare Ganges.’ or disregarded, and escaped through a window, committing But it was in the degree in which they reinforced religionsuicide by drowning herself before she could be recaptured. with science, above all with the healing art in its widestj The conduct of those in immediate charge of the worksense, clinical and hygienic, that the Jesuit apostles effected house and their responsibility in the matter do not their most salutary work-a work which made them the pro- appear to have been very closely inquired into by the genitors, so to speak, of Livingstone and Bishop Pattison coroner, who seems to have told the jury that they and Dr. Stewart of Lovedale-a work which, if pursued in were not concerned with such questions. The attitude the spirit of these pioneers, will go far to conciliate for the of the Chard guardians, however, seems to be shown Society an admiration and a sympathy hitherto withheld fairly clearly by a speech which their chairman made at the inquest before the proceedings began. This gentlefrom it even among Catholics themselves." man, according to the report referred to, "expressed to the coroner his own regret and the regret of the board POISONING BY BROMOFORM. on the unfortunate occurrence which had occasioned A NUMBER of fatal cases of poisoning by bromoform have his (the coroner’s) presence that afternoon. He held, been recorded in a recent number of La Semtaine Médieale. and the board of guardians held, that it was not the fault In 1890, shortly after the introduction of the drug into of any of the officers within the walls. They, however, medicine, M. Nonwelaers of Brussels described the case of a thought that greater care should be exercised by medical child, 15 months old, who died 14 hours after the adminis- officers in admitting cases of that sort to the workhouse. tration of a mixture which was ordered to be given daily in The workhouse was not a lunatic asylum, iti was a place doses corresponding to 12 drops of bromoform, but this dose for the relief of the poor and others who were was exceeded. In 1902 Dr. Krioull of Wenden reported the from time to time glad to seek refuge there. The workhouse was not a place for people who were case of a girl, aged three years, who died after the daily ad7ann He begged to express their deep ministration of several dessert-spoonful doses of a 12 per compos mentis. and inform the coroner that they would be very cent. mixture which had been prescribed previously for regret future careful see that in no persons who were suffering to a child 11 years old. In 1904 Dr. Roth of Brunsas woman this unfortunate suffered would be a wick witnessed the death of poor child, five years old, from taking a dose of a mixture corresponding to admitted within the walls." This address seems to be in five grammes of bromoform. The child died in coma accord with the views of the board which held a meeting in spite of medical attention. Quite recently a similar case shortly before the inquest took place. We would point out to the Chard board of guardians, however, that while came to the notice of Dr. Haakma Tresling of Winschoten. A child was told to empty a bottle containing a bromoform a workhouse is not a lunatic asylum, and possibly mixture which had been prescribed for another member of the Chard workhouse may be ill fitted for an emerthe family. Instead of obeying he administered it in play to gency such as that which occurred, the temporary charge of a person who has suddenly become insane is not a younger brother, aged four years, with serious results. The child was seized with dizziness, followed by collapse, by any means an unusual thing to be undertaken at a stertorous breathing, and relaxation of the muscles. It was workhouse, and constitutes a form of relief of the not found possible to make him vomit, and eventually he poor which sometimes is greatly and urgently needed. succumbed. In this case a dose of from four to five grammes Perusal, moreover, of some of the sections of the Lunacy of bromoform proved fatal. As bromoform is so largely used Acts, 1890 and 1891, should satisfy the Chard board of in the treatment of whooping-cough the danger of adminis- guardians that the legislature has done its best to provide that temporary safety should be obtainable for the afflicted person tering excessive doses should be recognised. in a workhouse until the somewhat complicated machinery provided for his necessary protection can be set in motion. WORKHOUSES AND THE TEMPORARY CARE OF In particular, Section 20 of the Lunacy Act, 1890, orders that INSANE PERSONS. "if a constable, relieving officer, or overseer is satisfied A SAD case of suicide recently took place at Chard, the that it is necessary for the public safety or the welfare of an facts of which we take from a full report contained in the alleged lunatic, with regard to whom it is his duty to take Cha’l’rl and Ilminster Neros of Sept. 1st. Briefly they are as any proceedings under this Act, that the alleged lunatic follows. Mr. Napier Close of Chard was visited at his should, before any such proceedings can be taken, be placed surgery late one afternoon by a young woman in an under care and control, the constable, relieving officer, or excited condition who asked him to take care of overseer may remove the alleged lunatic to the workhouse of her. He formed the opinion that she was insane the union in which the alleged lunatic is, and the master of and having sent for the relieving officer, who was the workhouse shall, unless there is no proper accommodanot at home, obtained the assistance of a police sergeant, tion in the workhouse for the alleged lunatic, receive and who conveyed her to the workhouse, taking with him the relieve and detain the alleged lunatic therein; but no following written message to the master from Mr. Close: person shall be so detained for more than three days, and "Mary Jane Hayball is suffering from melancholia and has before the expiration of that time the constable, relieving threatened to do away with herself. Please admit her to the officer, or overseer shall take such proceedings wibh regard workhouse until the return of Mr. Hawker [the relieving to the alleged lunatic as are required by the Act." The officer] who will take over the case." At the workhouse the question of the control of lunatics, whether paupers or not, master refused to accept responsibility and was unwilling to with regard to whom it is evidently of urgent importance take the patient in, protesting that the workhouse was not a that they should be placed under care and control, has been fit and proper place for her, but afterwards he allowed her to considered in framing the Lunacy Acts, with a view to prebe placed in the reception room and Mr. Close himself venting precisely such occurrences as took place at Chard ;i
of
a
typifying the mission march well-meaning, beneficent giant :-
of
Loyola
as