WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE.

MEDICAL ANNOTATIONS. made in other parts of London under various pretences. And one of the most shocking of these has been recently brought to light, and will hereafter be made the subject of a trial. Adjoining to a large chapel in Moorfields is a closely-packed burial-ground, now, of course, disused. On such a site the THE secret of success with governments so conservative in General Board of Health, for some unexplained reason, sanctioned the erection of a school in connexion with the chapel. action as our own is agitation. Abstract right is not often Accordingly, (as the case was stated the City solicitor,) those recognised; silent claims slumber on unsatisfied; but a good who undertook the work excavatedbya portion of the burial cause long and ardently struggled for succeeds. We have a ground, removing numerous bodies, and " it appeared that a long vista of columns in our eye of retrospection when we look vast quantity of human bones had been taken away, and sold back upon our editorial assaults upon the management of army to dealers in marine-stores." Numerous witnesses deposed to medical affairs. All that we have asked for has been founded the offensive effluvia during this wholesale disinterment. One of them, engaged in building some new houses in the neighupon obvious principles of justice, and all that we have asked bourhood, where soil was wanted, statedfor will doubtless be given in process of time. For the present, "I have seen a quantity of earth carted there. The man however, we must give ourselves up to the pleasure of congra- said he had some very good stuff to make mortar of. Several of bones were taken from the earth. Men used to come tulating our army medical brethren upon the increased rate of bushelsthe earth every day for bones, which they took away m raking pay ordered by Royal warrant to be given to assistant-surgeons. bags. I sifted some of the earth myself. Some of the bones I have also The document is as follows :were fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen inches long. bits of coffin. One oldchap’ who came there picked picked up "VICTORIA R. " up a rare big bagful of bones." " Whereas it has been represented to us that advantage Another witness deposedwould arise to our Army from an increase in the rate of pay of "I went to Victoria Park, where I observed some newlyAssistant-Surgeons, our will and pleasure therefore is, that removed earth, which was to be used to make the road with. from and after the date of this warrant, the minimum rate of a quantity of bones and pieces of coffins. Cloth and I found of of our shall be Ten Army Shillings pay Assistant-Surgeons lining" were adhering to the bones. The soil smelt very offena dav. " Given at our Court at Windsor this 23rd day of November, sive." Dr. Letheby said1857, in the twenty-first year of our reign. " " By Her Majesty’s Command, On visiting the place I found that a number of men were " PANMUEE." engaged in digging a trench from one end to the other of the In this accession to the general wish of the profession and the graveyard, and in carting away the earth and broken bones which they had taken up....... I noticed twoheaps of human testimony of persons well able to form an opinion, we see, bones, and on one of them were fifteen skulls, upon which however, only the first step of a series of improvements. We there still remained portions of hesh and hair....... 1 perceived want real instead of 1’elative rank. We want some considera- an unpleasant smell. The disinterment of bodies under such circumstances was calculated to be very injurious and dangerous tion to be given for foreign services, a possibility of quicker to the public health. It appeared to me that two or three feet earth had been carted away from the surface at the back of promotion and earlier retirement upon full pay, and other con- of the graveyard....... I found in the general vault under the cessions as reasonable. As opportunity occurs, we shall not chapel, immediately on the inside of the opening, thirty-seven fail to represent these things in their proper light; and we feel coffins piled up on each side of the way. I had the lids, which were fastened, lifted from some of the coffins, which were of as assured of ultimate success as we always have done in the wood, and contained bodies in a state of decomposition." matter of increased pay to assistant-surgeons. What must be the condition of the air of a chapel beneath which lies such a festering heap of human remains, with no other enclosure than wooden coffins ? The description given was illustrated by,a large. bag of decomposing remains brought into the police-court, where the odour was so overpowering that they had soon to be hauled " N quid nimis." away by two policemen. Well might the magistrate have BRICKS AND MORTAR RESURRECTIONISTS. exclaimed with Hamlet, Did these bones cost no more the THE abominations practised in London graveyards before the breeding but to play at loggats with them ?-mine ache to think discontinuance of intramural interment were so terrible and on’t." For all these proceedings, of course no one was to inhuman that the mere recollection of them causes a shudder. blame-the old story. But the facts detailed prove what The fabled Ghoul was a delicate-minded gentleman, compared amount of respect is likely to be paid to the dwelling-places of to an old, hardened sexton. The turning up of the bones of the dead, unless some stringent law be passed to inhibit their the dead as if they were potatoes; the burning of the sodden being in any way disturbed for building purposes. The ground coffin boards; the human remains piled in festering heaps; they occupy is not large, and the spaces thus left free are clear the iron bars thrust through coffin lids to test the degree of gain, now that burials have ceased, to busy dwellers in the decomposition;—all these and other still more disgusting pro- closely-pent houses surrounding these homes of the dead-these cesses were of constant recurrence. And it was with a feeling little oases of rank green grass, where, "In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed ; of relief at having heard the last of such things, that rightDaily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them: minded men read the order to close all city graveyards, to Thousands of aching brains where theirs no longer are busyThousands of toiling hands where theirs have ceased from their laboursreturn to the good custom of our forefathers prior to the sixth Thousands of weary feet where theirs have completed their journey." and inter our as did-" farre dead out of all century, they towns and cities." Then commenced another abuse. Efforts were made in several WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE. directions to build on the disused graveyards. In the crowded THERE are bounds to everything: so says the old proverb, cemetry of the chapel in Tottenham-court-road, the whole sur- In Horatian phrase, "Sunt certi denique fines face was levelled, and the grave-stones taken away without any Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum." mark being left to indicate what lay beneath. Further prowhere to draw the line is the main difficulty of statesmen ceedings were luckily stopped. Similar attempts have been

Not

only will the physical well-being of the

heavy blow will be struck the greatness of this country.

a

at his moral

citizen suffer; but and

independence,

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Medical Annotations.

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and philosophers. The impossibility of satisfactorily drawing and thousands like him, to trifle with the health of the people, social and political lines is the standing problem of the age. This immediately bestirred itself when the majesty of those having is equally so in modern science. You cannot define a plant from authority was assailed. So this fellow was immediately aranimal; a horse-chestnut bears a physical as well as a rested for exhibiting these gross placards, was committed by a logical relation to a chestnut horse. You cannot draw the magistrate, and last week was brought to trial at the Old limit between the forms of physical force; they are correlative Bailey. and convertible. Nature used to abhor a vacuum. She has Perhaps the scene in Court was one of the most- audacious That wonderful lad, every schoolboy, exhibitions of what is called the " liberty of counsel," (which overcome this distaste. knows that now she is indifferent on this score. She has sub- seems to mean taking liberties,) ever witnessed. The prisoner stituted a modern abhorrence of limitation. Where to draw was attired decently, placed at the bar, and told to plead the line in any domain of thought or action ? There is the rub. guilty to the charge brought against him. Then thus spake How to distinguish between economy and stinginess, between the learned sergeant retained on his behalf :prudence and meanness, courage and fool-hardiness, liberality "The defendant, he was instructed, was a ’medical gentleand indifference, enthusiasm and fanaticism, piety and cant. man’ of great skill and of considerable practice, residing in Some figures emanating from a committee on Beneficent Westminster, and in a moment of excitement he had put forth Institutions of the Statistical Society may well set us certain placards which were undoubtedly of an illegal cha. racter, and he had explained to him that they were so, and the thinking upon the difficulty of defining the limit between defendant was now satisfied that he had done wrong, and he useful and well-meant charity, and an ill-conceived prohad pleaded guilty, and would undertake not to repeat the digality which apes the name of Benevolence. From a series offence." of complete returns from all the dispensaries and hosAnd thus the fellow got off on the plea of belonging to a pitals in London, we learn that upwards of .Sl,000,000 of profession, to which his relation is about on a par with that of money is spent in the metropolis in the bestowal of medical the pediculus to the human being on whom it preys. aid, and that nearly 700,000 persons-one-tenth of the whole Verily, justice is very blind, and the criminal lawyers, her population-receive medical service for which they do not pay. dutiful sons-in-law, take most noble and honourable advantage Here is a gigantic abuse. It is not possible that one-tenth of of her failing. It is told that the little animal which supplies the population are entitled to this gratuitous service. Ill- the ermine is caught by driving it towards a muddy place, directed charity becomes injustice here. It is a double-edged when the hunter wades through the dirt, however foul, to evil; it wrongs the medical man; it injures those who impro- seize it; since the little creature will sooner be taken than soil perly lean upon his kindly staff, by giving birth in them to an its delicate fur. The purity of those who sit on the judicial bench is above doubt; but we should be sorry to think that improvident spirit of dependence. These startling figures may suggest another thought. Is it the seekers after the judge’s ermine, like the fur-hunters, are charity, or a penurious and deceptive imitation of it, which careless what amount of dirt they go through to attain it. prompts Dives in Belgravia to subscribe the annual guinea that entitles his gouty butler or dyspeptic valet to the best A HINT FOR EXAMINING BOARDS. medical advice in London ? or which induces Mercator in THE proceedings disclosed in the subjoined correspondence eastern Babylon to barter an annual three guineas for the are of importance both to the profession and the public. That power of giving hospital letters and immediate dismissal to his sick "young men"? Under this aspect, these tables supply such frauds are frequent cannot be supposed; but that their perpetration is possible speaks little for the care exercised by an index to some very indifferent pages in our social economy. examining boards. We suppress the names, but these, as well They represent a vast amount of unrewarded labour and unpaid as the original letters, are in our possession. A correspondent service unjustly exacted from the most laborious, intelligent, writes that, having advertised in August last for a situation, and of professional men-the members, we mean, of the staff of hospital and dispensary medical officers in this he received the following answer :" In reply to your advertisement in THE LANCET, I am commetropolis. missioned to obtain for a country practitioner, in the West Riding of this county, an assistant; and will, therefore, thank A MEDICAL GENTLEMAN ! you to forward me references and qualifications. The situation A WRETCHED, illiterate mountebank, named James Cowan, is one of permanency and the salary liberal if the party suits." He forwarded his references, &c., and then received the subwas brought before one of the magistrates some time ago for a number libellous in of of obscene and front placards joined detailed account :exposing " his house. He was a slovenly old creature, who, after having In reply to your letters, I beg to say that my employer been several times in prison, had undertaken to cure all human requires a gentleman to go up for him for examination at one ailments, at a miserable hovel in Pimlico ; this trade in health of the boards that is empowered to grant licences to practise in and life being the only business which our merciful and con- England. He is an M.D. of a foreign university, but has no from London, Edinburgh, or Dublin; and he is siderate Government specially invites any individual without qualification desirous of obtaining a qualification that will enable him to conscience, capital, or education to enter upon. The theory is, register himself according to the pending Act of Parliament." that if people are " fools enough to entrust their lives to such Our correspondent wrote with indignation at such a proposifellows, they deserve the certain prolongation and probable tion, but received his letter again through the dead-letter office. increase of their disease as a reward for their folly." Now this Possibly the scoundrel who could thus calmly suggest someman Cowan applied the same theory in a new form. He plathing very like perjury had met with a needy adventurer as carded the-walls of his house with seditionary, " libellous, and unscrupulous as himself; for we have many black sheep in the obscene placards, calculated to create dissension amongst the flock. As a guide to the members of examining boards before Queen’s troops-one of these contained a most indecent attack whom such a fraudulent impersonation would be attempted, upon an illustrious personage." The theory so blandly mouthed we may state that the letters above-quoted are forwarded from where the health of the people is concerned, was equally appli- Riccall, Escrick, Yorkshire, and that the proposer of this little cable when the political health was threatened. If fools be- arrangement is stated to reside in the West Riding. lieved these placards, they would deserve the punishment entailed by any active ’demonstration of their folly. Mùtatis ANOTHER BIRD OF PREY. mutandis—the argument was just as good-i. e., good for In the nothing. advertising sheet of The Time. occurs the subjoined But the impartial law which permitted this creature Cowan, I an

deserving

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