Blanchet determined the occurrence of a phenomenon which he had already observed in his vivisections, viz., a peristaltic action of the bowel, speedily followed by an evacuation, and the passage of the obnoxious pencil.

Another deaf mute intending to commit suicide swallowed several pieces of glass; with the assistance of the house-surgeon on duty, Mr. Blanchet introduced a probe in the sae manner, and in a few hours the fragments of glass were ejected from the rectum, fortunately without having caused any material damage.

It is not, however, for the expulsion of foreign bodies only,

that Mr. Blanchet resorts to this method. In two instances of ileus or intestinal obstruction in which the most powerful drastics had failed in giving relief, the introduction of the probang proved successful, and in another instance the operation arrested vomiting which had continued for twenty-five days, and entirely prevented the patient from taking any food. In the first instance of obstruction, rapid movements imparted to the probe induced in the course of three-quarters of an hour alvine evacuations followed by a prompt recovery. In the second case, the patient, a woman of forty-one, submitted for thirteen days in succession to the introduction of the instrument, when the symptoms at last yielded. The operation would seem to have checked spasmodic action, and facilitated the passage of fluid nutriment beyond the pylorus.

ON THE EFFICACY OF JUNIPER-BERRIES IN ASCITES AND ANASARCA. We formerly published (Art. 5539, and 5942), the formula of a diuretic wine for the preparation of which Mr. Trousseau gives the following directions :Fol. Digital purpur, 3ijss. ; Scillæ, 3j.;

B

Fruct. Juniperi Contus, 3xijss. ;
Vini albi, xxiv.

Macerate during six days; strain; add

Potassæ acetatis, Ziv.

Dose: Two or three table-spoonfuls every day. The Gazette Médicale de l'Algérie relates a case communicated by Dr. Ronzier-Joly, in which this preparation was found most serviceable; the author further remarks on the efficacy of Juniper-berries in the treatment of the ascites occasionally consequent on attacks of paludal fever.

The case was a serious one; the patient, aged forty-one, was afflicted with organic disease of the heart, induced by rheumatic fever, and the ascites and anasarca were attributed to the disturbance of the circulation. The serous effusions had existed for several months, and were so considerable that Dr. Ronzier-Joly prescribed, more for form's sake than with any sanguine expectation of their good effects the following measures of treatment: embrocations with tincture of digitalis and squills; diuretic wine of the Hôtel Dieu of Paris; flannel clothing, and cotton wadding and oil cloth covering for the limbs.

These remedies at first caused diarrhoea, but the renal secretion promptly became extremely copious, and in the course of six weeks the oedema and effusion disappeared altogether. Two and subsequently three table-spoonfuls of the wine were exhibited every day, the total quantity taken during the entire treatment amounting to three pints.

"In many instances of anasarca resulting from the deleterious action of marsh miasma," says Mr. Ronzier-Joly, "the diuretic mixture here alluded to, which can be altered in its composition to suit the requirements of each case, will certainly prove beneficial. The learned Valmont de Bomare's remarks on the Juniper tree, and on the wine prepared with its berries, which he called the poor man's wine, imply that this composition will be often found a useful substitute for, or at least an adjuvant of other bitter tonics, such as bark wine, for instance. Lieutaud, an eminent practitioner well acquainted with the paludal diathesis, esteemed highly the wine made with Juniper-berries, and exhibited this remedy as a diuretic, a diaphoretic, and a most efficient tonic of the stomach. Alibert considers the Juniper tree as one highly interesting to the Medical botanist. 'Its invigorating effects on the system are well known; the berries are supposed to be possessed of

diuretic virtues, and Dr. Hecker's observations confirm the surmise.' In nephritic colic and in gravel, Muller extols the therapeutic properties of the distilled water of Juniper-berries. Acetate of potash, which is an ingredient in Mr. Trousseau's formula, has been discovered by chemists in the berries, and is the most appropriate diuretic in cases in which debilitating or irritating drugs would be improper."

In his excellent treatise on indigenous medicinal plants, Mr. Cazin, after speaking favourably of the use of the berries in mild cases of anasarca and ascites, on the authority of Hegewisch, Van-Swieten, Vitet, Alexander, etc., states that he has often derived much advantage from the exhibition of the watery or vinous infusion of the berries (from half-an-ounce to one ounce of bruised berries for every quart of water or white wine). Mr. Cazin often superadds parsley or horseradish roots, especially in dropsy consequent on intermittent fever, or coincident with chronic albuminuria.

ON THE GOOD EFFECTS OF ICE IN DIPHTHERIA.-Three years ago, Dr. Grand Boulogne published in the Revue de Thérapeutique, several cases in which he endeavoured to show that when small fragments of ice are uninterruptedly exhibited generally assumes a benignant aspect. Subsequent extensive to persons suffering from diphtheritic sore-throat, the disease experience at Havana, has confirmed this practitioner's opinions on this point, and he now reverts in the same journal to this important subject.

diphtheritic angina broke out at Havana; adults were the "In March and April 1861," says he, "an epidemic of

chief victims of the scourge, and in one house of the Chaussée de la Reine, three girls were carried off in the course of a week. I was in the habit of visiting professionally in an adjacent house a young lady affected with granular ophthalmia. One morning she complained of severe sore-throat, and I was summoned in haste, but happening to be otherwise engaged, I was not able to see her before a late hour in the evening. Another physician had in the interim been called in, and struck with the malignant character of the sore-throat, he had prescribed an emetic and an astringent gargle. No relief had yet been experienced; the patient was terrified, could speak but of her approaching dissolution, and her friends were in the greatest anxiety.

"The tonsils were much tumefied, and covered with a thick false membrane. The case was obviously one of great peril; I unhesitatingly pronounced, however, that in a few hours the patient would be entirely out of danger. As I had foretold, the exhibition of ice was followed with its usual good effects; in the course of the night the swelling of the tonsils subsided, and the false membrane vanished almost entirely. Convalescence was evidently at hand; I recommended, nevertheless, the use of the ice to be persevered in, and on the same evening the sufferer was enabled to take food."

A few days after the brother of this young lady was suddenly attacked with a sore-throat similar to that of his sister, but he did not think it necessary to call in a physician; he took ice and was well in a few hours.

At Vera Cruz, Mr. Grand Boulogne was consulted for a

young man suffering from genuine diphtheria. Astringents and muriatic acid had unavailingly been resorted to. Ice was exhibited, and convalescence set in in the course of twentyfour hours.

Mr. Grand Boulogne trusts that these instances of the efficacy of ice will induce the profession to have recourse to this simple and trustworthy remedy, in pseudo-membranous angina.

PRESCRIPTIONS AND FORMULAS.

ON THE IODISED SOLUTION OF MORPHIA.-We stated in our last number that the iodised solution of morphia which Mr. Bouchut has prescribed with benefit in neuralgia, is prepared by dissolving half a drachm of sulphate of morphia in half an ounce of tincture of iodine. We should add that Mr.

Réveil, the learned chemist attached to the Hospital for Infancy, has analysed the preparation, and that from his researches it appears that one-half only of the amount of morphia added to the tincture remains unchanged; the other half is decomposed, and gives rise to the formation of morphous acid, and of a peculiar substance called iodo-morphia. Enough of the morphitic salt remains, however, in solution, to modify the counter-irritant action of the tincture of iodine, diminish the pain of the application, and act as a direct sedative.

PROFESSOR PIAZZA'S NEW HEMOSTATIC.-An interesting paper was recently read at the Brussels Society of Medical Science, by Mr. Janssens, on a New Hemostatic Fluid, discovered by Mr. Piazza, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Bologna.

This gentleman having ascertained that alkaline chlorides increase the consistency of the fibrinous coagulum formed under the influence of sesqui-chloride of iron, proposes to increase the efficacy of the latter by the addition of a concentrated solution of chloride of sodium. In order to reduce to 15 deg. (Areom.), one part of liquid sesquichloride of iron at 30 deg., two parts of water are required, hence the following formula for a safe and effective coagulating fluid :

B Ferri. sesquichloridi liquidi (30 deg.), 3v. ;
Sodii, chloridi purificati, 3iv. ;
Aquæ. destill., 3ij.

Dissolve the chloride of sodium in the water, add the salt of iron, and the result is a mixture weighing 20 deg. by Baumé's areometer.

It is important to use absolutely neutral sesquichloride, which is not easily procured, even by following the directions of the French Codex. The above preparation will, however, be found useful in cases of hæmorrhage; it arrests immediately the escape of blood, and the application causes but a transient and easily bearable sensation of pain.

or sago.

GRANULAR PREPARATION OF SOAP-WORT.-Tisanes, and more especially sudorific and depurative diet-drinks are frequently prescribed to persons who can neither prepare, nor readily procure them.

Patients and physicians have, therefore, often expressed a wish that it were possible to obtain, in a convenient and easily preserved form, the ingredients of the tisanes in most common use. In order to satisfy this desideratum, Mr. Guyot d'Annecy employs the system of granulation, and proceeds as follows, for instance, in the preparation of the granular extract of soap-wort (saccharure de saponaire) :—

B Extr. saponariæ., ijss.;
Aquæ., iijss.;
Sacchari, 3x1.

Dissolve the extract, add the sugar, boil over a quick fire, and stir uninterruptedly with a wooden spoon during refrigeration, until the mass is reduced to a granular form.

Each table-spoonful weighing 3iiss., contains fifteen grains of the extract and is equivalent to 3j of the dry leaves, the quantity required for each tumblerful of tisane.

SYRUP OF PEPSINE.-On account of its very unpleasant flavour it is often desirable, especially in the case of women and children, to exhibit pepsine in the form of a syrup, and the Union Pharmaceutique proposes the following formula for its preparation :

pregnated with atropia, for the use of oculists. A sheet of unsized paper, white or coloured with some inert substance, is ruled into divisions of about three square lines each. The paper is then immersed in a concentrated solution of atropia (two grains to the ounce), so as to incorporate into each small

It is used as follows:-The patient is directed to look upwards, the inferior lid is lowered, and the moistened paper is laid upon the eye-ball. The eye is then closed and a monocular bandage is applied. In the course of a quarter of an hour the iris has fully expanded, and ophthalmoscopic investigation may be proceeded with. Mr. Squire binds this paper into small books which оссиру but very little space.

THE DEATH OF DR. DIAPER, garrison surgeon, at Chunar, on the 31st of July, is reported in the Delhi News.' He had long been in declining health, suffering both from spleen and liver disease. The funeral ceremonies were conducted in the usual manner, except that there was no salute fired over the grave.

IMPORTANT SANITARY MEASURE FOR LIVERPOOL-The Liverpool Town Council, on the recommendation of the Health Comchase the courts and alleys of the borough, in order to effect a inittee, have resolved to apply to Parliament for powers to purcomplete sanitary reform, and check the growth of fever in overcrowded localities.

Che Medical Circular.

NETLEY HOSPITAL.

OPENING OF THE MILITARY MEDICAL COLLEGE.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE BY DR. MCLEAN.

The objects this school is intended to fulfil, as laid down in the warrants of October, 1859, and March, 1860, have so often been explained in the introductory addresses which have been delivered on similar occasions at Chatham, and given to the public by the press, that I am spared the irksomeness of repeating a thrice-told tale. Before proceeding, however, to make a few observations on a subject of great public, as well as professional interest, I feel it incumbent on me to endeavour to remove some misapprehensions regarding the ordeal to which candidates for medical commissions in the army are subjected before they enter this school. I feel this to be all the more necessary, because these misapprehensions prevail in quarters of considerable professional influence, where we should least expect to find them. These it is desirable, if possible, to remove, as they have been used as arguments to deter competent candidates from entering on a useful and honourable public career. We all know that commissions in the army medical department are open to public competition. Into the general question of competitive examinations I do not mean to enter. Like almost every important change in the conduct of public affairs which has come into operation in our time, it has given rise to much discussion, and to that wholesome conflict of opinion and enquiry which it is the privilege of this nation, alone of all the nations at this particular time, freely to enjoy. Under such an ordeal, if there be truth in the principle, it will prevail, if not, it will perish-as is right it should. For my own part, I believe this principle was born in the fulness of time. The extension of education, and the increase of wealth over a greater breadth of society, made it impossible to restrict public employment within the comparatively narrow limits of former days; and, if it be true, as undoubtedly it is, that some inconveniences attend its operation, it cannot, on the other hand, be denied that the recognition of this principle, and its more or less general application by the great officers of State, is, at least, one of the many causes of that political contentment and tranquillity, which, above all people, past or present, we enjoy.

If we are correctly informed, objection has been taken to the principle of competition in relation to medical commissions in the army, and not only is it by some desired that we should return to the old system of nomination, but it is proclaimed that an examination test of any kind prior to admission is an injustice to candidates or nominees, a work of supererogation, and an insult to the licensing bodies and universities of the kingdom. It is argued that as nothing but a degree or a diploma is required of a civil practitioner, nothing more should be demanded of those who are to follow the same profession in the army; that the life of a soldier is not more valuable than that of a civilian. It is curious that those who so argue do not see that the two cases, put in this way, will not bear comparison. Is it true that civil practitioners enter at once into the confidence of the public and the rewards resulting therefrom? Is it not rather the case that there is for them a trial, a competitive examination if you so choose to call it, so stringent, so chilling, so long continued, that in comparison with it, that which stands at the threshold of the public service, and bars the way to incompetence, sinks into insignificance. Into the cold and rapid river of public life those who seek public confidence must adventurously plunge; in that swift stream the strong swimmers only live; the idle, the dissolute, the incompetent, sink in its waters, or are swept away, and heard of no more. To drop metaphor-the public can protect themselves. With the soldier it is different; he has no choice, no freedom or selection, and the State must protect him. If the authorities could so far forget their duty to the sick or wounded soldier as to throw open the public service without a preliminary test, the medical department would soon become the refuge of the intellectually destitüte, and the hope of the professional lounger, to whom the struggles of private practice offered nothing but starvation. In a brief time a department so constituted would become a national reproach; public indignation would be kindled against it, and consume it away.

When last I discharged the duty it has again fallen to me to perform to-day, I expressed a hope that the amalgamation of the British and Indian Medical Services would be soon effected, that success would crown the efforts of those who were seeking to bring about a real union between the two services, and that united under one head, and working together under one system and administration, I anticipated the final extinction of petty jealousies and conflicting authority, hurtful alike to the public interests, and the well being of the two services. My anticipations unhappily are not to be fulfilled. The desired union is not to take place, the banns have been forbidden. It has been found that difficulties bar the way. What these are it is useless to inquire, as the decision has been come to, and is final. The medical affairs of India, in time to come, as in time past, are destined to be conducted by two

separate services, working under different administrations. Without offering any opinion on the cause of failure, I must take leave to express my unfeigned regret that this desirable amalgamation has not taken place. Some bonds of union, however, there will be. It is proposed that the medical staff corps of India shall be recruited from the departmental list of the British Army. The medical officers of both services will thus own a common stock, and as all will study here, two links at least will bind them one to the other, and we may hope that the only contention between them may be such as Bacon says should alone prevail among Christians, "who should contend, not as the briar with the thistle which can wound deepest, but as the vine with the olive, which bears the best fruit." I understand that the Government of India has resolved to make its medical staff corps attractive by a scale of emoluments and pensions framed with wise liberality.

Disappointed on the subject of amalgamation, the anticipations indulged in by me on another subject on the same occasion have been more than realised. The Royal Commissioners, appointed to inquire into, and report on, the sanitary state of the Indian army, have presented their report. From this time forth between 70 and 80,000 British soldiers will constantly be quartered in India, requiring a large and competent staff of medical officers for their care. It is therefore certain that whatever may be the immediate destination of the young medical officers who pass through the Army Medical School, sooner or later they must take a tour of service in India, while no inconsiderable portion electing to join the medical staff corps of India will have a more permanent connection with that country. This being the case, all that relates to India, its military and political history, its physical geography, its climate, productions, and commerce, the ethnology and strange religious systems of the races that people it, and, above all, its endemic and epidemic diseases should be to those who have such a destination subjects of anxious study.

With the suppression of the Sepoy mutiny, we may, it is to be hoped, consider that the era of conquest has closed, and that India, emerging from blood and strife, is now entering on a new and happier phase of existence. Obliged to use the term conquest, I mean to express by it, not the hateful tyranny of a dominant over a subject race, such as we see exemplified in the position of Russia towards Poland. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the government and people of England have a far different conception of the duties they owe to the races brought, we cannot doubt, for some great purpose, ordained in the counsels of God, under the mild sway of one powerful sceptre. The people of this country desire the moral, religious, political, and social regeneration of India. The conquest of India by such a people, whatever may have been the immediate motive, was the first step towards this regeneration. Without the help and guidance of a power resolved to govern it on such principles, India could no more advance out of its condition of semicivilisation than the leopard can change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin.

has

The process of conquest was doubtless attended with suffering, not confined, however, as we shall presently see, to the conquered race, but so it has ever been--it is through much sorrow that nations, as well as individual men, are born again into a higher condition of life. Casting our eyes over India, everywhere we see hopeful signs, a turbulent soldiery that threatened destruction to the race it served, and oppression to that whence it sprung, been effectually humbled, a highly-disciplined army secures peace, and does not oppress where it has subdued. Military expenditure, reduced within proper limits, leaves funds available for productive purposes. The railway, that great civiliser of modern times, is spreading its iron arms over ancient rivers, and across boundless plains, to cities renowned of old. Works of irrigation are sending fertilising streams that make glad the wilderness. The surplus population, instead of being sent across the, to them, dread waters of the ocean, to cultivate foreign lands, will soon, under the guidance of our countrymen, flood the markets of Europe with something better than "barbaric pearls and gold;" with tea, and sugar, and coffee, and silk, and with that staple more precious at present than them all, for which Lancashire, turning from the west to the east, looks with desiring eyes. Large grants of public money are being devoted to the work of education, for the generous policy of England in India is" to spread the page of knowledge, rich with the spoils of time," before the eyes of all the people, and, most marvellous of all, she has given to this subject race that which she most prizes herself-the right of free petition and free discussion; in a word, "freedom to him that would read, freedom to him that would write," in a measure to which some nations, deeming themselves in the very van of civilisation, are strangers up to this day. So many improvements in the condition of the army at home resulted from the labours of the Royal Commission appointed to enquire into its sanitary state, that in 1859 a second commission was appointed to perform a similar service for the Indian army. After an interval of three years, devoted to collecting evidence and examining witnesses, this commission, towards the close of last session, presented to Her Majesty the result of their labours in the shape of an elaborate report with the evidence on which it is based. Most of my hearers remember the profound impression made on

the public mind by the publication of the first report. We all remember the cry of indignant horror which followed the publication of the fact that whereas the deaths among 1,000 of the English male population between the ages of 20 and 25, amounted to 84, the mortality among the Foot Guards at the same ages amounted to 216 per 1,000. When instead of a hearty desire to abate so shocking a mortality, a disposition was evinced in certain quarters to explain away these terrible statistics, the feeble and irrelevant criticisms of such opponents were not listened to for an instant, and Lord Herbert, riding on the high flood of public opinion, was able to carry out those reforms with which his name is imperishably associated-reforms which may be described as obedience to Nature's laws. Under the system, to borrow the language of Miss Nightingale, applied to a similar case, "the requirements of nature were disobeyed in almost every particular, and in the terrible mortality that ensued she left an everlasting vindication of her broken laws." Under the new system nature is more perfectly obeyed, and the stigma of her displeasure has almost ceased to appear. It ought not to cause surprise in our minds that the report on the army in India did not create so great a sensation. The novelty of such disclosures has worn off. People who had learnt what the state of the British army was at home under their very eyes, were prepared to hear that things were at least no better in so distant a possesion as India. Making due allowance for this, I do not think that those who are interested in this important question have cause to be otherwise than satisfied with the reception given by the press, lay and professional, to this report. Accurate summaries of its leading facts, comments and recommendations, have been published for those who do not see blue books, the terrible waste of British life in India is acknowledged and deplored; and if the writers are less peremptory in their demands for reform, it is because military hygiene has so vindicated itself that it no longer stands in need of passionate advocacy. It is evident that educated men assume, as a matter of course, that government once enlightened as to evils so shocking as those disclosed by her Majesty's Commissioners, have no choice but to set to work diligently to remove them.

What, then, is the price paid by Great Britain in flesh and blood for that possession so sorely grudged to her by other nations? The death rate of the British soldier since the first occupation of the country down to the present day has oscillated round 69 per 1,000. "If the mortality," the Commissioners go on to say, "is set down at 69 in 1,000, it follows that besides deaths by natural causes, 61, or taking the English standard, 60 head per 1,000 of our troops perish in India annually. It is at that expense that we have held dominion there for a century-a company out of every regiment has been sacrificed in twenty months. These companies fade away in the prime of life, leave few children, ard have to be replaced, at great cost, by successive loads of recruits." This, gentlemen, it must be confessed, is a terrible charge to bring against the system on which we have held India. Clearly the proof rests with those who make it. Her Majesty's Commissioners admit "the extreme difficulty of obtaining results at once, exact and precise," and they explain the pains they were at to obtain accurate data. A collection of annual casualty rolls, kept at the India House, was placed at their disposal. These were compiled upon the principle of accounting for every man becoming ineffective in the year. These documents "were all verified by the signatures of the commanding officers and adjutants of corps." They had therefore a perfect right to deem them essentially correct, and to analyse them for their purpose. The result demonstrates a mortality of 69 in 1,000 during the present century. Sir Alexander Tulloch, than whom a higher authority on this subject does not exist, gave in his evidence a series of War Office returns of the strength, deaths, and mortality of the Royal Army in India during 39 years, and from these showed that the annual rate of mortality was "70 in 1,000." I have alluded to the feeble attempts made in certain quarters to cast discredit on the statistics of the 1st Army Sanitary Commission. It would have been strange if critics of the same kind had been wanting on the present occasion. Accordingly, we hear it said in various quarters that the Royal Commissioners have exaggerated the deathrate. Now, one would think that it would be an all-sufficient answer to say, in reply to such criticisms, so many men are proved to have gone to India, in the service of Government, of whom so many died. Here are the returns in which every man is accounted for; there is, therefore, no room for controversy about the matter. But this is not the way in which the statistics of the Commission are met. For example, it is said the Commissioners have no right to go so far back as they do, in dealing with the mortality of the Indian army; they ought to confine their inquiries to more recent times. Nothing can be more unreasonable than such an objection as this. The Commissioners, as it appears to me, were not appointed to make a report on half the case-to tell as much of the truth as would be agreeable, and to suppress the rest; it was their business to show what India had cost this country in human life. this, it was plainly necessary to deal honestly with the whole case, and not to proceed upon what may be called the Hudsonian method -to cook the statistics, for the sake of "making things pleasant." Moreover, all vital statists know that, in such inquiries, if we are

To do

in search of truth, not merely seeking to bolster up a system, we must deal with large numbers and long periods of time. Again, it has been said that the Commissioners, to make out this heavy mortality, included the exceptional mortality of war. For instance, the objectors say, and they say truly, that the death-rate during the first Burmese war, and the two following years, was 129 per 1,000, 157 per 1,000, and 158 per 1,000. Now, if the Commissioners felt called on to reply to such an objection as this, I think they might turn round and say, "if you make war on such principles as to cause a mortality so shocking as this, you are justly chargeable with it all, all the more that the frightful lesson taught in Burmah in 1824 was utterly thrown away, for you commenced the war in China in 1840 with the same reckless disregard of military hygiene, and the result was the same; and, if anything was wanted to clench the argument, referring to the last war in China, for the first time almost in our history, conducted on something like sound principles of military hygiene, the Commissioners might prove that the death-rate, wished to be excluded, was due not to the exigencies of the situation, or the stern necessity of war, but to a presumptuous and ignorant contempt of the resources of sanitary science in preserving health. It is curious, too, that the objectors admit almost in the same sentence, that the death-rate in India just before the Burmese war was-my hearers will, of course, expect to hear something much less than the rate for the whole period of occupation given by the Commissioners-not at all, they admit it to have been as high as 75 per 1,000.

Another objection urged against the statistics of the Commissioners is, that they allow the mortality from cholera to swell the death-rate; the mortality from this disease, like that caused by faulty health arrangements during war should be, according to the critics I refer to, left out of the calculation. The Commissioners say that in India, since 1817, cholera has engrafted itself on the endemics of the soil, and has become a disease of annual occurrence at many of our large stations. Why then, I ask, should it be left out any more than dysentery, or malarial fevers, or diseases of the liver? Ah, gentlemen, what pleasant reading the returns of the Registrar-General would be, if constructed on such a principle as this. In what a fool's paradise we should live for a few weeks, how we should hug the notion that all the foul fever-breeding courts, alleys, and noisome dens in our great cities were at last purified. No more small-pox to scar the face of beauty, no more scarlatina to steal into our nurseries and rob us of our children, no more consumption to plant its hectic on the cheek, no fevers to destroy.

I cannot, of course, tell what answer the Commission might have patience to give to such an objection as this, but I know that if it were my duty to reply to it, I should have no hesitation in saying, not one jot or tittle, not one unit, can be abated from the sum total on this score. It is very true that physicians in India cannot tell what the precise cause of cholera is. But it is equally true that they can tell, and have told, any time for the last twenty years and more, of many simple ways by which its ravages can be held in check. They have often told that the loss from it on the line of march during the reliefs of regiments, almost always bear a direct ratio to the distance traversed; that to relieve a regiment serving in Nagpore by one marched from Cannamore, on the western coast of India, is the surest means that can be taken to develope the disease. Yet in Southern India this practice, so often exposed, so often protested against, was common until a very recent period.

The Commissioners do not, as has been insinuated, deny that of late years there has been a diminution in the death rate of British troops in India.

They nowhere assert that things are so bad there as they were a century ago, and I, too, gladly bear my testimony to many improvements introduced in my time. Nor is this all. What I conscientiously believe to be sounder principles of treatment, in regard more especially to the endemic fevers of the country and dysentery, begin everywhere to prevail, with a sensible diminution of mortality under these heads, due, I do not doubt, to the fact that both the curative and prophylactic virtues of quinine are better appreciated than before, and to the substitution of ipecacuanha in large doses for the preparations of mercury in the treatment of dysentery; probably the greatest improvement in Indian therapeutics that has taken place for a century. I hail the successful introduction of the cinchona plant into the mountain ranges of India as a measure fraught with good not only for the races of India, but for the whole tropical world; great credit is due to the Indian government for its wisdom and liberality in this matter, and also to Mr. Markham, the gentleman who conducted this difficult enterprise.

It is, of course, quite impossible for me, even were it suitable in a discourse such as this, to enter even on an enumeration of the various causes to which the Commissioners trace the lamentable waste of human life they have unveiled. These, in the course of the lessons it is my duty to deliver from this chair, will all pass in review, when we study together the formidable zymotics which are the chief agents in its production, and they will further be un(Continued at page 238.)

THE MEDICAL CIRCULAR.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1863.

THE DIET OF PRISONERS, PAUPERS, AND
LABOURERS.

It has too often happened in this country that offences are committed by our ragged and hungry outcasts for the express purpose of being sent to prison, where they can obtain shelter, food, and clothing; and the refractory inmates of some of our workhouses wilfully commit acts of damage or insubordination in order to procure for themselves in gaol the superior comforts which their sentence will procure. Bitter, indeed, is the reflection that while men willing to work are often doomed to compulsory starvation, criminals are lodged and boarded in comparative luxury; and that while the aged, infirm, or invalid pauper, whose only reproach is his poverty, is treated too often with harshness and brutality, the offender who has waged systematic war against society, is the object of anxious care by a paternal government. Such reflections may well occur to the politician and the philanthropist as he surveys the classes of mankind to which we have just alluded; but our own object at present is rather to regard the matters in a purely practical light by the aid of physiological and chemical science.

The remarks we are about to make have been suggested by a very able paper written by Dr. Guy, the Medical Superintendent to the Prison at Milbank, "On Sufficient and Insufficient Dietaries, with Special Reference to the Dietaries of Prisoners," read before the Statistical Society at one of their recent meetings, and now published in the form of a small pamphlet.

Dr. Guy informs us, as a statistical fact, that by a comparison of certain tables obtained from various sources, he finds that while the independent agricultural labourer receives in each week 122 ounces of solid food, the soldier receives 168 ounces, while the able-bodied pauper receives 151 ounces,

with the addition, in most workhouses, of vegetables, soup, milk-porridge, and table-beer; but the suspected thief receives from 181 to 203 ounces of solid food in the week, the convicted felon receives 239, and the transported felon receives 330. That it appears that the worst offenders have the best diet, the independent agricultural labourer receives less than the ablebodied pauper, but the latter has far less than the worst criminal, who again has more solid food than the soldier or the sailor.

But the mere fact that one class of persons receives a certain amount of solid food, does not necessarily imply that the food is of the same nutritious character as is afforded to other

classes, and indeed there is a very great variety in this respect. Chemistry, in fact, informs us that food must consist of two kinds of elements-namely, the plastic, or that which builds up the tissues, and the respiratory, or that which supplies the waste of the body caused by respiration. Hence it might happen that the full quantity of food may be given, by weight, to any class of persons, and yet they would not receive sufficient to support life. It is therefore necessary to regard carefully the chemical constitution of each kind of food when studying its nutritious properties. Meat is generally, and very truly, considered to contain the largest proportionate amount of nutritive matter, from its being rich in nitrogen, and it accordingly enters into the composition of all liberal dietaries; but it is a fact, taught by every-day experience, and confirmed by

chemical science, that many vegetable substances contain quite sufficient nitrogenous material for the support of human life. It is clearly demonstrated that a diet consisting of bread, potatoes, and oatmeal, even without milk, is quite adequate to sustain life and to preserve health; but it does not, therefore, follow that the quantity of food required to support any given body of men in health and efficiency can be precisely determined. Dr. Guy caused ssveral of the prisoners in the Milbank Penitentiary, all being under the same conditions as to diet and other particulars, to be periodically weighed, and the results were anomalous and discordant, for some gained and others lost weight without any assignable causes. Dr. Guy, therefore, concludes that there are great and constant fluctuations, in short intervals of time, in the weights of men whose diet, occupation, and mode of life remain unchanged; and as a further result of his experiments, he finds that even men who are differently occupied, though fed on the same food, and in other respects similarly treated, differ from each other in the order as well as the degree of fluctuation in weight, and therefore that weight cannot be considered a perfectly trustworthy test of sufficiency or insufficiency of diet.

Notwithstanding the advance in later days of chemical and physiological science, it is very difficult to explain the difference which exists in the quantity of food required to keep different persons in health and strength, but it appears certain, in opposition to merely chemical theories, that the agricultural labourer, who lives most of his time in the open air, requires less nitrogenous food than the denizen of large and crowded towns and cities; and certain conditions of mind, which are, of course, incapable of relative measurement or weight, appear to have very considerable influence upon well-being of different individuals, the diet being the same. Thus, for instance, it would appear that the person whose mental faculties are but little employed requires proportionally a smaller quantity of nitrogenous food than he who is engaged in mental labour, and, indeed, this point has been experimentally elucidated and proved in some recent physioM.D., of Trinity College, Dublin. logical investigations made by the Rev. Professor Haughton,

the

The monstrous apparent injustice of treating criminals in the article of diet nearly as well as soldiers and sailors, and much better than paupers and free labourers, has lately excited very much attention in a medical and scientific, as well as in a political point of view, and as we write, a correspondence is proceeding on the subject between the Home Secretary and the Middlesex magistrates in reference to the dietary of the Coldbath Fields' Prison, the magistrates desiring to reduce the allowance at present granted to the prisoners.

It is alleged by those who advocate the liberal scale of diet, that it is necessary, both for the mental and bodily support of the prisoners, that their food should be augmented in quantity and improved in quality in proportion to the duration of their sentence, because a lengthened term of imprisonment has a depressing effect upon the mind, while a diet deficient in nitrogen has an injurious effect upon the body, inducing scurvy, dysentery, or other fatal or wasting disorders.

Both of these assumptions, however, are controverted by Dr. Guy, who writes from experience, and whose practical and theoretical views are alike deserving of attention. Without denying altogether that imprisonment exercises a depressing influence upon the mind, he considers that the mental depression and consequent loss of strength from this cause are much less considerable than is generally supposed, and he