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REPORT
ON
A DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE
AND
PHYSICAL CULTURE
IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,
BY A COMMITTEE OF THE UNIVERSITY SENATE.
ANN ARBOR:
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY.
�monj
NOTE.
JV
At the meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of
Michigan, September 22d, 1869, the following resolution was adopted:
Resolved, That the University Senate be requested to examine and
report to the Board in regard to the propriety of establishing a Gym
nasium in connection with the University, as also in regard to the re
lation which it shall hold to the University Course, if so established ;
and to collect information and present their views respecting the entire
subject of introducing Gymnastic Exercises as a part of a course of
Education.
The following report, prepared by a committee of the University
Senate, in response to this request, is published by authority of the
Board of Regents.
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�REPORT.
A vast expansion of the scope of our American college
system is the characteristic educational fact of the last fifteen
years. One very important direction in which this recent
enlargement has shown itself, is towards systematic physical
culture, as a regular part of the work of a college course.
This latter movement was, indeed, to have been expected.
It would have been more than strange, if, while our colleges
were providing greater facilites for the study of the sciences,
of modern languages and literatures, of history, of the fine
arts, they had done nothing for the instruction of students
in hygiene and gymnastics. For it is impossible to advance
very far in the construction of a scheme of education without
confronting the fair claim of the body for orderly scientific
culture along with the culture of the mind. The mere state
ment of the great object of education as being the systematic
development of manhood and womanhood, really settles the
question; for there is no other spectacle of a want of sym
metry in the development of a human being so glaring and
so painful as that of a cultivated mind inhabiting a neglected,
feeble and incompetent body. And the declaration just made
is confirmed by the fact that the principal modern writers on
education—Roger Ascham, Bacon, Cowley, Milton, Locke,
Rousseau, Dr. Arnold, Horace Mann, and Herbert Spencer—
have insisted upon the equal rights and the equal needs of
the body and the mind, with reference to systematic training.
Yet, in America fifteen years ago, no contrast could have been
greater than that which was presented between theory and
practice upon the subject. All our educational authorities
sanctioned physical culture; and all our educational institu
tions neglected it.
Within the brief period which has been mentioned, how
ever, in consequence of a general awakening of American col
leges to a new and larger life, and especially in consequence of
a ripening of public opinion upon the necessity of attending to
�4
the education of the body, in several of the leading colleges a
department of physical culture has been established. Already,
gymnasiums have been erected at the following colleges:
Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Harvard, Amherst, Williams, Yale and
Princeton. Some of these gymnasiums, particularly those at
Dartmouth, Williams and Princeton, are large, imposing and
costly edifices. At all these colleges, with the exception of
Princeton, the experiment of physical culture has been tried
for a number of years. Ample time has elapsed for the results
of this experiment to appear. What these results are your
committee have sought to ascertain by corresponding with the
proper persons.
At four of the colleges just named, the experiment seems
to have been made with peculiar thoroughness; and for the
sake of simplifying the present report, the results obtained at
these four colleges will be particularly referred to. These
colleges are Yale, Dartmouth, Williams and Amherst.
It appeared to your committee that the experience of these
colleges was to be sought as to the effects of a Department of
Physical Culturt in three particulars :
1. Upon the physical condition of the students.
2. Upoijr the scholarship of the students.
3. Upon the morals and general behavior of the students.
Our informant" are Mr. F. G. Welch, Instructor in Gym
nastics at Yale, whom we have consulted chiefly as to methods
rather than results, Professor A. M. Wheeler of Yale, Presi
dent Smith of Dartmouth, President Hopkins of Williams,
and Professor Edward Hitchcock of Amherst. Professor
Hitchcock, also, very kindly! sent to us a pamphlet entitled
“ Physical Culture in Amherst College, by Nathan Allen,
M. D.,” one of the Trustees of the college. From this pamphlet
we have obtained most valuable information, a part of which
will be given in this report. Before proceeding to quote the
testimony which we have received from these gentlemen it
may be well to say that the Yale and Amherst gymnasiums
have been in use eight years, and those of Williams and Dart
mouth about half that time ; that at Williams and Yale the
attendance at the gymnasium has been voluntary, and conse
quently has been but partial; while at Dartmouth and Am
herst, physical education has been recognized as of equal im
portance with intellectual education, and has been put upon
the same basis with it; and that, consequently, at these two
colleges the influence of the gymnastic department being felt
by all the students, has been more fruitful of results.
1. Effects of the Department of Physical Culture upon
the bodily condition of the students.
Under this head the committee made three inquiries ; first
whether any serious accidents had occurred in the gymnasium ;
second, whether there had been any cases of injury from over
�5
practice; third, whether any improvement had taken place in
the physical development and in the general health of the
students.
To these inquiriegwe have received the following replies:
Yale. Mr Welch says : “ No serious accidents have ever
happened here. In all my experience I have not known a
dozen falls that amounted to anything. Undoubtedly there
are some who are injured more or less permanently by over
practice. Sometimes the results are manifest during the time
of practice ; at otherSlater in life. In my experience I have
known of but two instances. One, a delicate young man,
who seldom frequented the gymnasium, came in one day and
attempted a most difficult feat, rupturing a blood-vessel. His
accident was not of a serious nature] The other was myself,
at a time when I taught and studied too much.”
Dartmouth. President Smith says
Very few serious
accidents and none fatal. Fewer, I think, than in many of
the out-door sports. But few cases of injury from over-prac
tice. When classes enter they sometimes spend too much
time in the Gymnasium, particularly mt the bowling alleys.
But the matter soon regulates itself. As to the effects of
gymnastic practice on the physical development and health of
the students, I give below the testimony of Prof. A. B.
Crosby, now lecturing at Ann Arbor, aslpublished in our
Catalogues. ‘ Since the opening of the Gymnasium, I have
taken occasion to witness frequently the exercises, and the
results have more than equalled my expectations] There has
been no case of severe illness in the College during that time,
and there have been fewerKnstances of slight indisposition
than I have eve]known in the same length of time before.
Dyspepsia, debility, and similar affections incident to a seden
tary life, and which have hitherto been frequent in the change
of seasons from winter to spring, have, during the present
season, been unimown. There has been a manifest improve
ment in the general physical tone of the College, and the
increased muscular power and agility of the young men have
forced themselves on the attention even of unpracticed eyes.
I am fully satisfied, that these exercises have greatly subserved
the general health of the students.’ ”
Williams. Pres. Mark Hopkins says: “ We have had
no serious accidents. I am aware of no serious injury from
over-exertion. I have no statistics, and ca] only say that I
think well of the department of physical training, if the right
man can be in charge of it.”
Amherst. The testimony from Amhers]College, both
on this point and on every other connected with the practice
of physical culture, is very full. Prof. Hitchcock says : “We
have had but two serious accidents] one, that kept a student
from study three months, and one that compelled a young-fnan
�6
to drop behind one year. No cases of injury from over-prac
tice. As to the effects of gymnastics on the physical devel
opment and health of the students, see Dr. Allen’s pamphlet.”
Accordingly we turn to the pamphlet alluded to, and we find
a careful and deeply interesting sketch by a physician of the
history of the department of physical culture in the College.
Upon^the^points now under consideration Dr. Allen, p. 18-19
says:
“When the subject was first agitated in respect to intro
ducing into college gymnastic exercises, there were various
prejudices and objections to such a course. One of the orig
inal objections to the establishment of a gymnasium—and it
still exists to some extent—is the danger of some serious harm
or injury befalling those engaged in such exercises. But such
accidents very seldom occur in the regular practice of gym
nastics. It should be remembered, that the more one exer
cises in this way the better command of his limbs and body
he obtains, and therefore is less likely to meet with injuries.
During the eight years since the establishment of this depart
ment there have been quite a number of bruises and sprains,
one broken limb and one dislocated joint, but no really serious
or permanent injury. Considering the great number and
variety of exercises and the extraordinary exposures in the
performance of daring feats,—that over six hundred students
have taken a part in these exercises, and most of them, for a
time, entirely inexperienced, the accidents have certainly been
very few in number and slight in character. And those that
have taken place occurred generally out of the regular exer
cises, for the want of care, or on account of some physical
weakness of the individual injured. It is stated on good
authority, that the accidents arising in ball-playing,—practiced
only a few weeks each year,—are four times larger than those
from gymnastics.”
With regard to the effects of gymnastics upon the physi
cal development and health of the students, Dr. Allen, pp. 22
—26, says:
“ When the erection of a gymnasium was first agitated,
and even for some time after gymnastics were introduced, it
was said by some persons that the whole thing was an experi
ment ; that after the novelty was over the interest would soon
subside, and the enterprise would prove a failure. It is now
eight years since this department was established,—eight dif
ferent classes, numbering in all over six hundred students,
have taken part in its exercises, and four classes have enjoyed
its benefits throughout their whole collegiate course. What
then has been the effect of these upon the health of the
students, as well as upon the sanitary condition of the Insti
tution ? This may be exhibited in a variety of ways.
1st. There has been a decided improvement in the very
�7
countenances and general physique of students. Instead of
the pale, sickly and sallow complexion once very commonly
seen, with an occasional lean, care-worn and haggard look,
we now witness very generally, fresh, ruddy and healthy
countenances, indicative of a higher degree of vitality, and
that the vital currents, enriched by nutrition and oxygen,
have a free and equal circulation throughout the whole
system. This change is so marked as to attract the attention
of the casual observer, and has been commented upon by
those formerly attending Commencements or other public
occasions here, as exhibiting a striking difference between the
personal anpearance of students at those times, and, that at
the present day.
2d. In the use of the limbs and the body,—in the physi
cal movements and conduct of student® generally, there has
been, we think, decided improvement. Once the awkward
ness of manner and the ungraceful bearing of scholars were
matters of common remark, and such characteristics not unfrequently followed them through life. This resulted not so
much from the want of early training and instruction on this
subject, as from the formation of bad habits in study, and the
long continued neglect of proper exercise. It was frequently
exhibited in stiffness of the joints, a clumsy use of the limbs,
in round shoulders and a stooping postuia and sometimes by
a countenance set, stern and almost devoid of expression.
Now gymnastics, when properly practiced, are calculated to
produce in this respect, a surprising effect upon the use of all
parts of the body, as well as upon its development. They
give not only agility and strength to all the muscles, but a
quick and ready control of them, thereby begetting an easy
and graceful carriage of the person.
*
*
*
*
4th. We come now to consider what has been the effect
more directly upon the health of the students, and the sani
tary condition of the Institution. It is needless to state how
many students formerly impaired or broke down their consti
tutions for want of sufficient exercise, or from irregular or
excessive hours of study, or from some improper habits, or for
want of suitable attention to diet, sleep or some other physi
cal law. Perhaps the effects of violated law were not always
visible at the time, and did not apparently impede the college
course, but the seeds were here sown which afterwards brought
on disease and premature death, or crippled the energies and
limited the usefulness through after life. This may still hap
pen : but with such exercise and instruction as can now be
obtained it is not near so likely to occur. Besides, where the
vitality of the 'system is kept up by regular muscular exercise,
to an even healthy state, it is one of the strongest safeguards
against disease; and then when any organ or portion of the
body iq affected, nature is more powerful to throw off the
�8
attack. In a community thus trained and instructed the more
common complaints, such as colds, headaches, sore throats,
feverish attacks, will seldom occur, and the diseases to which
scholars are peculiarly liable, such as dyspepsia, neuralgia and
consumption stands a far less chance of finding victims. Any
skillful and experienced physician will testify at once, that
such a community is possessed of a wonderful power to pre
vent as well as throw off disease. The common proverbs,
‘ a stitch in time saves nine' and 1 an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure,’ are not more truthful than the
statement here made of the remarkable exemption from dis
ease of a community trained and educated as above described.
5th. A comparison of the present health of students
with what it was ten or fifteen years ago, shows a surprising
improvement. It is rare wow for any student to break down
suddenly in his health, or to be compelled to leave college on
this account. In 1855-6-7 and 8 such cases were common,
as may be seen by referring to the statements of President
Stearns; and the truth of the statements is moreover con
firmed by others personally conversant here for twenty o?
thirty years. As no record was formerly kept of the amount
of sickness from year to year, or of the number of students
leaving college on account of illness, no exact comparison on
these points in figures can be instituted. But the experience
and observation of those who have been on the ground a long
time must bear decided testimony to a greatly improved state
of health among the students over that of former times ; and
as for those who once were members of the Institution, and
return here on public occasions, they cannot fail to see a
great improvement in this respect.
6th. But the evidence of improved health does not rest
wholly upon individual opinions or upon loose comparisons.
Since 1861, a register has been carefully kept of the kind and
amount of sickness in college, an analysis of which presents
some striking facts. No student is placed upon the sick list,
unless he is detained two consecutive days from the usual
exercises of the Institution. The number of students re
ported sick ranges in the course of the year from twenty-five
to sixty, showing a far greater amount of sickness in some
years than others, which depends very much on the fact,
whether some epidemic prevailed, or whether the year as a
whole, either on account of the weather or from some other
cause, was not generally unhealthy. If allowance is made for
this extra sickness in two of the years out of the eight, the
register shows that the actual amount of sickness in college
has diminished in these eight years more than one-third.
That is, in the year just closed, there were only two-thirds rs
much sickness as in 1861, the year when gymnastics were
introduced.
�9
Again, the average number of students sick each year of
these eight was thirty-eight, and the average number present
in college was two hundred and twenty-four, showing that
there were one hundred and eighty-six students on an average
each year who did not experience two days’ sickness at any
one time. The register reports forty-one different diseases or
complaints to account for this sickness, and a careful inspec
tion of the list shows a remarkable exemption from what
are considered generally the more violent and dangerous dis
eases.”
2. After seeking information as to the effects of gym
nastics upon the physical condition of the students, your com
mittee enquired concerning the effects of gymnastics upon
scholarship. The question had been raised among ourselves
whether the gymnasium might not prove a distraction from
study, and especially whether some young men might not
become so proud of their success as athletes as to disregard
the pursuits of the mind. Accordingly into the list of ques
tions sent to the different colleges, your committee intro
duced this: “ Are the great gymnasts apt to be satisfied
with that eminence, to the neglect of study?” The follow
ing replies have been received:
Yale. Professor Arthur M. Wheeler, of the chair of
History, in a letter dated Dec. 20, 1869, says : “ Our gymna
sium is much frequented by the students ; and the general
opinion here is—shared alike by the older and younger officers
—that the students are more vigorous and healthy in conse
quence of it, and that in this way it contributes toward higher
scholarship. Of course it would be difficult to say to what
extent it does this; but we all feel sure that we are much
better off for it, physically, mentally and morally.
There is no tendency among us to cultivate muscle at
the expense of brains, yet now and then a case of that kind
occurs. Nearly all the men who do this, however, are boat
ing men ; and the evil, so far as it exists, is to be attributed
to the boating fever; and boating, as you know, is not an
outgrowth of the gymnasium ; for it existed before we had a
gymnasium.”
Dartmouth. Pres. Smith says: “ The effect on scholar
ship has been good, in that health and physical vigor have
been promoted. We have had no trouble of the kind you
speak of to any extent worth mentioning.”
Williams. President Hopkins includes his answer to
this question in the general answer given to the preceding
one ; which answer is favorable.
Amherst. Professor Hitchcock says: “ Effects on
scholarship, good generally|| Since the first two years, have
known of no neglect to study by any student or set of stu
dents.” Upon the same subject Dr. Allen [p. 29,] says:
.
2
�10
“ There is still another very important consideration, viz: has
the standard of scholarship in college been raised by means
of gymnastics ? As the system of marking or mode of
exhibiting this standard was changed a few years since, an
exact comparison in figures cannot here be instituted; but it
is the decided opinion of the Registrar, (the College Officer
who has charge of these statistics,) that there ‘ has been an
elevation of rank.within the past few years.’ It may be that
some individuals in a class formerly reached as high scholar
ship as any now do ; but the aggregate scholarship of a whole
class, we are confident, is higher now than it once was, and,
to say the least, is much easier obtained, with fewer hours of
study, and less loss of health and life.”
3. The third general question proposed by your commit
tee had reference .to the effects of gymnastic training upon
the morals and manners of the students. To this question the
replies from Yale and Williams are in general terms that the
effects are good.
Dartmouth. Pres. Smith says : “ The effects on morals
are good, in that the sane body is conducive to entire sanity
of soul. A vent is opened also, for superfluous animal spirits,
which sometimes pass with young men into a ‘ superfluity of
naughtiness.’ ”
Amherst. Prof. Hitchcock says: “ Less rough and
rowdy students. Do not make so much noise on the street or
by night; as I oncourage noise and considerable rough play
during the regular exercises.”
In 1862, Professor Hitchcock, in his first report to the
trustees, made this remark ; “ During a portion of the exer
cises, I urge upon the captains the necessity of introducing
playful exercises, such as running in grotesque attitudes,
singing college songs, &c. Sometimes this may seem boister
ous and undignified, but it seems desirable to me that a por
tion of the animal spirits should be worked off inside the stone
walls of the gymnasium, under the eye of a college officer,
rather than out of doors, rendering night hideous ; and in no
instance has the captain found the slightest difficulty in bring
ing his men into line at the word of command.”
Dr. Allen [pp. 17-18] quotes upon this subject the testi
mony of the “ Congregational Journal,” of Concord, N. H.,
for Oct. 23, 1862, a correspondent of which paper writes from
Amherst College as follows:
“The gymnastic exercises greatly promote the good
order and morals of the students. Their animal spirits work
off.by the correct movements of the gymnasium. They are
indisposed to the unmauly and often mischievous doings of
students too frequent in our colleges. A citizen of the town
assures me, that the amount of injury done to the college and
other buildings in the village is almost, nothing since the open
�11
ing of the gymnasium, compared with what it was before.
No less advantageous, probably, is the gymnasium to the
mental progress of the students. They come from the gym
nastic exercises to their studies with healthful bodies, clear
minds and cheerful spirits. The 4 blues,’ those most formid
able enemies of successful study, assail thenf not. All is
bright and promising, all hopeful. Time will undoubtedly
show that no one adjunct, no one department of college, will
conduce more to the noble object for which the Institution
was founded, than the Gymnasium.”
Later in his pamphlet [pp. 31-33] Dr. Allen, refers again
to this subject
follows :
“ There is another advantage from these exercises worthy
of notice, that is in preventing vicious and irregular habits.
While no system of gymnastics alone can be expected to
break up settled habits of dissipation, such as intemperance,
licentiousness, and the excessive use of tobacco or any other
stimulant, still, combined with other good influences, they
have a direct tendency to forestall or arrest such practices by
giving a safe vent to the animal spirits, by regularity of phy
sical exercise, by improving the general health, and producing
a more normal condition of the brain. But there is a vice,
(nameless here,) more terrible in its effects, both physical and
mental, upon the student, than either of the above, and over
which gymnastic exercises have great influence. In fact, it is
the testimony of the highest medical authorities, that regular
and tolerably severe gymnastic exercise is not only the most
effective means of preventing or checking this vice, but is
really the best curative agent. And it is a gratifying fact that
we can add the testimony of the Professor of this department,
that gymnastics have been working to a like result in this in
stitution.
“ It is found that a regular system of gymnastics operates
in a variety of ways as a powerful auxiliary of discipline;
that it answers as a kind of safety-valve to let off in an indirect
way that excess of animal spirits which is characteristic of
some young men, and which not unfrequently leads them into
trouble or conflict with authority. Again it serves with others
as a kind of regulator to the system, exercising certain parts
of it to such an extent as to produce weariness and fatiSue, so
that the individual seeks repose; and with another class it
tends to remove any unnatural or innate weakness of the
frame, and by such improvements serves to equalize and regu
late all the forces of nature. Thus such a system of gymnas
tics sets up a standard of law for self-government ; for it is
based upon those great laws of life and health which are a
part of the will and government of God in this world, as much
as the ten commandments. No by-laws or code of ethics
established by any humen teacher or institution can compare
�12
in authority or final appeal to these great natural, primeval
laws engraved upon our constitntions by the Creator. It will
be seen at once what a power the instructor has over the con
science and reason of a student thus trained. Said President
Felton to the writer, shortly before his decease, referring to
the gymnastics at Amherst which he had just witnessed:
4 Such a system of physical exercises thoroughly understood
and applied by the members of Harvard University, would aid
me in the matter of discipline in P e Institution more than
a,nything else.’ We are here authorized to state, that the
Faculty of Amherst College have found great assistance in
government from this source ;—that since the introduction of
this department, the cases requiring discipline have been far
less numerous, and more easily managed, than formerly.”
Thus upon the three great questions which can be raised
respecting a department of Physical Culture in the University,
namely, as to the effects of such a department upon the bodily
condition, upon the scholarship, and upon the manners and
morals of the students, your committee have submitted—not
abstract theories of their own, but the authentic results of
actual experience, obtained in the four celebrated American
colleges which have tried the experiment of physical culture
the longest and most thoroughly. These results are communi
cated to us in the form of testimony from two college Presi
dents, from two college Professors, from one college Trustee
who is also a physician, and from one practical instructor in
gymnastics, who is very noted in his calling and of whom
President Smith has written to us in the highest praise.
This testimony can not fail to be regarded as decisive.
Your Committee are of the opinion that in the light of
such testimony, this University may proceed to the establish
ment of a department of Physical Culture, not as if it were
venturing upon an untried and a dubious experiment, but un
hesitatingly, boldly, with entire confidence in the complete
success of the measure, if it be but carried out with reasonable
care in its details. Moreover your Committee are of opinion
that in view’ of the great benefits which other colleges have
actually found to proceed from such a department, and in view
of the great needs of our own students with respect to physi
cal culture and healthful regulated exercise, when the
funds of the University shall permit, vigorous action should
be taken upon this subject—providing for the students a de
partment of Physical Culture with a building, with an instruc
tor, and with all the necessary appliances, commensurate with
the greatness of the institution, with the wants of the students,
and with the demands of enlightened public opinion. It has
not been usual for the University of Michigan to be either
timid or laggard in moving towards improved and generous
educational methods. Its true place is in the van of the great
�13
army of educators. At last, however, there is great danger of
its violating its own instincts and traditions. On this im
mense anxious and most urgent business of providing, in a
scientific and efficient manner, for the physical education of
its students, and through that for their highest intellectual and
moral development, the University has dropped*from its hon
ored place in the front; unless speedy action be taken, it will
lose even a middle position; it will drag hopelessly and un
worthily in the rear.
Should it be decided, then, to establish a department of
Physical Culture in the University, a number of very import
ant questions at once arise for determinaion, with reference—
1. To a Gymnastic Building;
2. To the qualifications and duties of the Professor at the
head of the new department;
3. To the relation which the department shall hold to the
various University courses already established, both profess
ional and collegiate.
Your committee are very clearly of opinion that with ref
erence to each of these questions mistakes are not only possi
ble, but are extremely liable to be made—mistakes, too, which
would be absolutely fatal to the utility and success of the
department.
Some of the colleges which have established gymnasiums
have made such mistakes upon these points as have rendered
their gymnasiums nearly useless, thus bringing distrust and
reproach upon the whole cause. These mistakes can be
avoided by us—by our being on our guard against them, by
our remembering that the opinions of experts alone are of
much worth upon this subject in matter a of detail, and by
studying still more minutely the methods pursued in the col
leges which have made this department a success.
We would particularly recommend further study of this
department in Amherst College. That noble institution un
doubtedly leads not only America, but the world, in the suc
cessful solution of the problem of uniting physical and mental
culture. We may safely take it as almost® perfect model in
the arrangement of a department of physical culture. Should
the Regents find themselves enabled to establish such a de
partment here, we would suggest to theifljBthat before finally
deciding as to the dimensions and the interior arrangements
of the gymnasium, upon the choice of an instructor, and upon
the relations of gymnastic instructiointo the other courses, it
would be prudent to send a suitable person to at least six of
the colleges which have been named—Princeton, Williams,
Yale, Amherst, Harvard and Dartmouth—authorized to find
out upon the spot, by actual observation, and by conversation
with officials of experience there, all that can be ascertained
�14
with reference to the mistakes to be avoided, and the right
conclusions'to be reached.
Your committee have already obtained nearly all the in
formation that could be got by correspondence, and they are
able to submit, if it were desirable, a great many facts and
opinions upon the several particulars now referred to. As to
some of these particulars, however, they feel the need of
more information than they have been able to obtain by let
ters, before coming to an absolute conclusion.
For example, if it be decided to have a gymnasium, the
very first question which arises is as to its dimensions. Here,
at the outset is a serious danger. At some of the colleges it
is found that the gymnasiums are too small, or that they are
unfortunately proportioned. One great practical authority
says that whatever may be the length of the building, it must
by all means be as broad as it is long. Yet at Yale the gym
nasium is 120 x 50 ; at Amherst 70 x 40; at Dartmouth
90 x 45 ; at Princeton 81 x 55; at Bowdoin 75 x 30. Now,
we need upon this single point alone, to have some one
enquire upon the spot the results of experience as to these
dimensions. None of these buildings are square. Is this
fact found to be an inconvenience ? It would be a pity to
ascertain, after our building was up, that its utility to us
would be impaired by a mistake that might have been so
easily avoided, as to its size and proportions. Professor
Hitchcock writes to us that he cannot introduce a very im
portant and attractive method of exercise, for want of room.
How unfortunate that that want was not foreseen. Dr. Pea
body of Harvard writes to us : “ If we were to build anew we
should make the gymnasium at least 25 per cent larger, and of
two stories,” instead of one. When we build, we want to
build it as it should be the first time, without having to tear
down and build anew. Too often gymnasiums are built with
out consulting gymnasts; they are built apparently on a
priori principles. Such a course is as foolish as it would be
to build a chemical laboratory without consulting a chemist,
or an astronomical observatory without getting any advice
from an astronomer. This, then, is but a specimen of the
practical questions which present themselves the moment we
set about carrying into effect the resolution to establish a
Department of Physical Culture; and your committee would
repeat their statement that in order to settle these questious
wisely more information must be obtained than can be pro
cured through the channel of letters. Yet as the Regents have
expressed a wish for such recommendations as we could make
upon these questions we will give concisely the conclusions
which we have drawn from our present knowledge upon the
whole subject, conscious that these conclusions may require
some modification under the pressure of further knowledge
that may yet be obtained.
�15
1. We recommed the establishment in this University
at such time as circumstances may permit, a Department of
Hygiene and Physical Culture, believing, as we do upon ample
evidence, that the establishment of such a department would
be attended with no such difficulties, or risks as may not be
overcome by cautious and intelligent foresight, and that if
successful it would result in incalculable good to all our stu
dents, and to an increase of the good reputation of the Uni
versity.
2. In dealing with the next topic, that of the gymnasium
building, the committee have had peculiar difficulty. The
discrepancy between the sort of building we ought to have,
and the sort of building we may be able to have, is so wide
as to make it nearly impossible to determine what to recom
mend. Formerly it was thought that any room, however
cheap, dark, cheerless, and inconvenient, if only large enough
to admit a few ropes and pulleys and bits of timber, was suita
ble for a gymnasium. But the opinions of enlightened edu
cators upon this subject are now changed. At" the principal
colleges the gymnasiums are made as spacious, attractive and
convenient as possible.
The following description of the new gymnasium at
Princeton, written by Professor Schank, and politely commu
nicated to us by President McCosh, may give some idea of
the sort of building which liberal men have provided at that
ancient seat of learning: “It is a two story stone build
ing, the main body of which is 81 x 55 feet, flanked by two
octagonal towers, each about twenty feet in diameter, the en
tire measure, including these, being 92 x 60 feet. On the first
floor, besides both rooms, &c., there are bowling alleys. The
second story, which is open to the roof and high, accommo
dates the ordinary gymnastic fixtures, with a gallery for spec
tators over the ball rooms. The towers are pointed spires
above the roof and terminate on rods with balls and vanes.
The cost when completed and equipped will be about $35,000.”
The gymnasium at Yale cost $14,000 before the war, ex
clusive of the apparatus; and at present prices Mr. Welch
thinks it would cost $30,000.
President Smith informs us that the Dartmouth gymna
sium cost $22,800, with about $1,500 for apparatus—total
cost $24,300.
We did not learn the cost of the Williams gymnasium,
but it could not have been less than $30,000. It is the most
beautiful building in Williamstown.
The gymnasium at Amherst cost $8,000 in 1859, with an
an additional cost of $2,000 for apparatus.
The committee began with the attempt to ascertain what
could be done for $5,000, the sum named in the resolu
tion of the Regents in March 1869 ; but we soon found that
�16
*
no building of the size required could be put up for any such
amount, unless it should be one that would be an eye-sore and
an offense to all beholders. A great ungainly shed would not
answer the purposes of the Department of Physical Culture;
and even if it would, the committ' e would hesitate long before
taking the responsibility of recommending any further dese
cration of our noble University grounds by architectural mon
strosities.
What is really needed by the University to meet the pres
ent demands of scientific physical culture is a building either
of brick or of stone (the latter being preferable) of dimensions
hereafter to be determined, to consist of two stories and a
large well lighted cellar; the cellar serving as a store room,
as a place for heating apparatus, and ultimately, when means
should permit, for ample bath rooms ; the first story to be used
for bowling alleys, superintendent’s and janitor’s rooms, dress
ing rooms and offices; while the second story would contain a
large hall of exercise in both heavy and light gymnastics, as
well as smaller rooms for sparring, fencing, etc., a room for
simple refreshments, like tea and coffee, and a suite of rooms
supplied with a piano, and with newspapers, to be used by all
the students as the University parlors and reading-rooms, and
to be kept open every day in the year, from sunrise until ten
o’clock at night. Such an edifice, especially in the absence
of the dormitory system, would be a most beneficent one to
all our students. It would be the University home. Besides
furnishing the students with a means of bodily health and
development, it would be a boon to them socially; and by its
joyous and hospitable privileges open to them, even when all
the other University buildings are closed, it would both afford
an unspeakable enjoyment to hundreds of young men, and
would save many from temptations now fatal both to health
and character. Such a building, properly furnished, at the
present rate of materials would require not less than $25,000.
3. We recommend the appointment of a Professor of
Hygiene and Physical Culture, to have the full salary of a
Professor in the collegiate department; and as to his qualifica
tions and duties we would adopt the admirable description
given by President Stearns in his Annual Report to the Trus
tees of Amherst College for the year 1 860:
“ What we need is a professorship extending over the
entire department of physical education. 1st—The officer
should be a skillful gymnast, capable of conducting his classes,
by example as well as precept, through all the exercises which
the best training would require them to perform. 2d—He
should have a good medical education, with sufficient know
ledge of disease, if not to manage severe cases, yet to know
whether a student is sick or well, obeying the laws of health
or breaking them, and, as a wise friend, to caution him, ad
�17
vise him and put him on the track towards physical vigor.
3d—That he should have such knowledge of elocution as
would enable him to teach those movements of the body,
lungs and vocal organs which are essential to graceful and
effective oratory. Elocution is properly a branch of gymnas
tics, and the highest degree of health, to say nothing of good
manners and good speaking, can hardly be secured without it
or a substitute for it. This officer, while having charge of
gymnastics, would naturally teach the laws of health and the
physical part of oratory; and as he would be much with the
students, and would be likely to have great influence over
them, he ought to be a man of cultivated tastes and man
ners—a man of honorable sentiments and correct principles,
having high aims and a Christian spirit. Such a man, with
such a work as I have now marked out successfully pursued,
would be an incalculable advantage to the college and to
mankind.”
4. In order to avoid over-crowding of the building, and
inconvenience to the students, we recommend that during the
Law and Medical terms, the several parts of the day and
evening, to be hereafter determined, be divided among the
students of the three departments, and that for at least one
hour each day the building be also appropriated to the use of
the University Faculties; that attendance at the gymnasium
be entirely optional with all the students; only that the stu
dents in the collegiate department be called upon, at the be
ginning of each year, to determine whether they will attend
the gymnasium, and that those who decide to do so shall
be required to exercise in light gymnastics with their respec
tive classes for at least one-half hour each day, for four
days in the week; all work in heavy gymnastics and in the
bowling alleys to be taken by them according to regulations
hereafter to be determined.
5. We recommend that in order to meet the current ex
penses of the Department of Physical Culture, a small fee,
(say $2 per semester, and $3 per professional term) be charged
to each student who avails himself of the privileges of the
department; it being understood that so soon as, either by
private munificence or by State endowment, the expenses of
the department shall be otherwise provided for, its privileges
shall be extended to all without any charge whatever.
In conclusion, the Committee would remark that the
foregoing plan for a Departm^it of Physical Culture involves
an expenditure which is probably quite beyond the present
resources of the University; and that without some special
gift of money for the purpose, either by the legislature or by
private individuals, the University will be unable to confer
upon its students certain very important advantages in the
process of a complete education. We would call particular
�18
attention to the fact that the beautiful and spacious gymnasi
ums at Princeton, Williams and Dartmouth were built by
private generosity. Is there no rich man in Michigan, or
even in the United States, (for our students represent all the
States) who would be willing, by a timely benefaction, to
connect his name forever with the destinies of this great
University, and to bestow an incalculable boon upon all the
multitudes of students who are to resort here for the pursuit
of knowledge ?
MOSES COIT TYLER,
Chairman.
EDWARD OLNEY,
C. L. FORD, M. D.
THOMAS M. COOLEY.
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Report of a department of hygiene and physical culture in the University of Michigan
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Tyler, Moses Coit [1835-1900]
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Place of publication: Ann Arbor, Mich.
Collation: 18 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. 'by a Committee of the University Senate'. [Title page]. Moses Coit Tyler was Chairman.
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1870
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G5381
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Health
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Report of a department of hygiene and physical culture in the University of Michigan), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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Conway Tracts
Hygiene
Physical Education
University of Michigan
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Text
LAWS
OF THE
STATE OF NEW YORK,
RELATING TO TIIE
PASSED IN 1866 & 1867.
USEEW YORIA:
BERGEN & TRIPP, STEAM PRINTERS,
114 rr^ssA^-cr steeet.
1867.
��LAWS OF 1866.
CHAPTER 74.
AN ACT to Create a Metropolitan Sanitary Di^rH and Board
of Health-Therein, for the presciwation of Lifcjgnd Health, and
to Prevent the Spread of Disease. PikSgj'eb ®a|gg6, 1866,
three-fifths being preseiwM
The People of the State oflj[ew
Assembly, do enact
follows :
Section 1. So rnuclwof the territory of the State oWNcw
York, and of the cities, plages and t JlE1 gf
w com' Limits of dis
trict.
poses the Metropolitan police district of ty St|^^ of New York,
shall constitute, and is hereby declared, a district to be known
as ‘‘The Metropolitan Sanitary DMM‘ict MW) State of New
York.”
§ 2. Within fifteen days after the passage of this act the Gov
Mode of appoint
ernor shall nominate, and, by and feithfehe^SEn of the Senate, ment of tirst
commissioners.
shall appoint four suitable pcrsofl indents ggid distfflcAthree
of whom mist be physicians, and one E™!0
all^J resident
of the city of Brooklyn who, wife the HetMh OffiHer of the port
of New York for the time being, shall bcEnitaEComiffissioners Sanitary Com
in and for said district; andlh^^Kl Sanitary Commissioners, missioners.
together with the Commissioners, for any time being, of the Metro
politan Police, (not exceeding four,fend being the pi^nt four and
their successors,) shall constitute a board of health for the said
Metropolitan sanitar/district, and said btferdtfhallbe denomi Designation of
nated “ The Metropolitan Board of Health®’ anjlfivemembers of Board. .
which, at any regularly called or adjourned meeting, shall organ
ize and constitute ^quorum for the transaction of business; and Quorum.
the phrase “ said board, | or ‘"he board,J” when used herein un
less clearly referring to some other body, shall be construed to Mean-ng of
mean said “The Metropolitan Board of Health” and the phrase phrases.
“ said district, ” or “the district, ” unless the same clearly refers
�4
Official term of
first Commis
sioners.
Oath.
Term of Office
and appoint
ment of subse
quent commis
sioners .
Vacancies.
to some other district, shall be construed to refer to said “The
Metropolitan Sanitary District of the State of New York.” And
the term “ sanitary commissioners” shall refer to the members of
said board who are not also members of the Board of Police, and
whenever the words “police,” “board of police,” or “police
commissioners” are used in this act, they shall be taken and con
strued to mean the “ Board of Metropolitan Police Commissioners
of the Metropolitan police district of the State of New York.”
And whenever the words “place, matter or thing,” or cither two
of said words, are used in this act, they shall, unless the sense
plainly requires a different construction, be construed to include
whatever is embraced in the enumeration with which they are
connected in either and both clauses of the fourteenth section of
this act.
§ 3. The said four persons so appointed shall hold office as
such Sanitary Commissioners respectively for the terms following
namely: One for one year, one for two years, one for three years
and one for four years, and until their successors are appointed
and qualified. Immediately after the appointment of said four
persons as aforesaid, they shall meet in the office of the Secretary
of State, and shall proceed, under his direction, to determine by
lot which of them shall hold, for the respective terms of one, two,
three, and four years, the said office of Sanitary Commissioner.
Immediately, and before entering upon the duties of the office,
they shall take the oath prescribed for State officers by the con
stitution of the State, and shall file the same in the office of the
Secretary of State, who upon receiving the said oath of office,
shall issue to each of said commissioners a certificate of appoint
ment for his respective term of office so determined as aforesaid ;
upon receiving which they shall severally be and become San
itary Commissioners, and shall possess and exercise the powers
and perform the duties of said board as defined in this act.
§ 4. The term of office of each of the said Sanitary Commis
sioners, after the expiration of the terms aforesaid, shall be four
years, and they shall be appointed upon the nomination of the
Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Any vacancies that may occur by reason of death, resignation,
removal from office or otherwise, shall be filled in like manner,
But if any vacancy shall occur during the recess of the Senate,
the Governor may fill such vacancy by appointment, and the per
son so appointed shall hold office until twenty days after the next
meeting of the Senate.
�§5. * Immediately after the four appointed Sanitary Commis- Organize,
sioners shall have taken the oath of office as above provided, they
shall meet with the Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police,
and the Commissioners ofMetropolitan Police with them and the
Health officer of the port of New York, and organize as a Board
of Health by electing one of saLd^fed-d tzBMMmesident. and one president,
of said Board to be Treasurer thereof, and by appointing a proper
person to be Secretary of said Board. And the successive Presi
dents of said Board of Health shall be annually e'ectcd by the
said Board from the members thereof, and the successive Treas
urers shall be members of said Board; but the Secretary shall
not be a member of the Board. The Treasurer and Secretary secretary^and
shall respectively continue in office as such until removed by the
election of a successor or otherwise. 'The said Sanitary Com- Salaries,
missioners shall each receive a salary of two
hun
dred dollars a year ; and each Police Commissioner who may be
a member of said Board of Health, and the Health officer, shall
as such receive a salary of five hundred dollars a year and the
member of said Board of Health, who acts as Treasurer, shall re
ceive an additional compensation of five hundred dollars a year
for his services as Treasurer. All salaries allowed under this law
shall be payable as the Board shall provide. But for every regu- tend meetings,
lar or special meeting of said Board, which any Sanitary Com
missioner or the Secretary shall fail to attend, there shall be de
ducted from the salary of the person so failing the sum of ten
dollars ; and for every failure of a Police Commissioner, or of said
Health officer to attend any such meeting, there shall be deducted
from his said salary the sum of two dollars; and
be the
duty of the Treasurer to see that all such deductions are made
before payments of said salaries.! The Board may appoint a Cor- sew’etai°"dinS
responding Secretrrl thou
sand dollars.
§6. The
|Mscrve president,
order at the meetings oaifeWBo1 Cygbs^nce of
or inability of the regular Secretary to attend, he shall appoint a
Secretary pro tern., who, for
gg’form any
duty of the Secretary.|| The President shall have all the power Sucpt Cleanin
and authority given to the “City Inspector,” in
hundred
and forty-sixth chaptfljof ^^a^ oBgightgi hundred and sixty* Amended,
+ Amended,
t Amended,
|| Amended.
Laws of 1S66, Chapter 6S6, Section 4.
Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 16.
Laws of 1866, Chapter 6S6, Section 4.
Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 1.
�6
Old contracts.
Officers, pro.
tem.
Duties of Sec
retary.
Salary of Secre
tary.
Seal.
Treasurer.
Bond.
Treasurer’s ac
counts.
five, (passed May first, eighteen hundred and sixty-five), in res
pect to the making, awarding or executing of a contract or con
tracts for street cleaning, or any matter thereto pertaining. But
nothing herein contained shall be construed as effecting in any
manner the validity of any contract heretofore made by virtue of
said act. And the Board at any time, in the absence of the Pre
sident or Secretary, may elect a President or Secret ary pro tem.
from their number, who shall exercise the powers of such officers
*
respectively. The Secretary shall, subject to the direction of
said Board, keep and authenticate its acts, records, papers, and
proceedings, preserve its books and papers, conduct its corres
pondence and aid in accomplishing the purposes of this law, as
the Board may direct ; and said officer (as well as the other offi
cers and agents appointed by said Board) shall be subject to re
moval by the Board for cause, to be entered in its minutes, and
said Board may appoint his or their successor ; and his salary, to
be fixed from time to time'by the Board, shall not exceed three
thousand fivehundred dollars annually!] ■ Said Board may design
and adopt a seal and use j,he same in the Authentication of its
orders and proceedings, commissioning its officers and agents,
and otherwise, as the rule®. of the Board may provide.
§7. The Treasurer of said Board shall be the fiscal officer'
of the Board. He shall hold, and on check and voucher, duly
disburse, as said Board may order, and for the purposes of
and in conformity to this act, the moneys he may receive, or be
longing to the fund herein provided; and shall deposit the same
when paid to him by the Treasurer of the State of New York, or
otherwise, and pending the regular disbursement thereof, in a
bank or banks in the city of New York designated by such last
named officer. He shall execute a bond, with not less than two
sureties, conditioned in a penalty of thirty thousand dollars, to
the people of the State of New York, for the faithful discharge of
his duties as such Treasurer. The sureties, not less than two in
number, shall justify before a Justice of the Supreme Court, in
the aggregate in a sum not less than twice the last named
amount; but before the said Treasurer shall enter upon his duties
the said bond shall be approved by and filed with the Comptroller
of the State. The Treasurer shall keep, or cause to be kept,
books showing all his receipts and payments, and shall preserve
his vouchers therefor ; and should any collections ever be made
on such bond, or in suits or proceedings, or otherwise, by said
* Amended, Laws of 186T, Chapter 956, Section 1.
�7
Board, the amount thereof shall be received and accounted for
by the Treasurer, or in case of collection on his bond, by the re
cipient thereof, to the State Treasurer, and be deposited in the
bank or bariks aforesaid, applied for the legitimate uses of said
Board, or as herein elsewhere provided.
8 8. Any sanitary commissioner of s®d Board who shall ac®
n
,. • T
• I J
i
-TI ki® term ot office, no other
p Hold
cept or ,hold any polwicajl or municipal office during t- +
office, or shall b® publicly nominated for any office eljgti^e by the
people, and shall not, within ten days succeeding his knowledge
thereof, publicly decline the said nomination, shall, in either case,
be deemed thereby to have vacated his membership of said Board,
and the vacancy so cii^Wd||}aB|l befi11
to other
vacancies; but membership of this Board shall not affect member
ship in the Board of Police or the office of Health officer.
§ 9. Any member of the said Board may, at any time, be re
moved from office by the Governor, under the provisions of thelaws commissioners,
relative to the removal of sheriffs from office, which provisions are
hereby extended so as to relate to the members ofSMIBoaWl; but
before such removal, suclt^Bmber'^lill
specific
charges, stating the der^icMon of duty complained of; and shall
be afforded an adequate opportunity to publicly answer the same
and to make his defen c’flgretg, upon reasonable notice to IpKven
him; and on tha application of the Governor, or the party charg
ed, any judge df the SiAenwGoi^Mhll have as full power and
authority to compel the ^tegdam^^m examination of witnesses,
touching such charges oilfefe&ice^MMthe production of books
and papers relating the»to,ft the place and time where the afore
said proceedings or hearing may take place, as is given herein in
respect to the e^ii^myion
the production of pa
pers, on the application of said Board, in the fourteenth section of
this act. And it shall be the duty of such judge (and olany
other judge named w said section) to exercise such authority,
and to take or supervise the taking of such examination to be
used on the hearing of suM charges or defence. And if, by re
movals or other cause, the members of the Board shall be less Powers of Boarfl
than five (but not less than threa) the existing members shall flyeenless than
still constitute a Board, competent, by unanimous action to exer
cise the powers delegated by this act.
§ 10. Said Board shall have powe^jloHreate a chief executive
office, and appoint a suitable person to fill such office, who shall indent.UP
be an experienced and skillful physician, resident in said district,
whose full name of office shall be, “ The Sanitary Superintendent
�8
of the Metropolitan Sanitary district of the State of New York,”
but he may be designated as “Sanitary Superintendent.’ It
shall be the duty of said officer, as he may be directed, to exe
cute, or cause to bo executed, the orders of said Board, and gen
erally, according to its instruction, to exercise a practical super
vision in respect to the inspectors, agents and other persons
(other than the Secretary, Treasurer and members of the Board,
or the members of the police force,) who may exercise any
authority under this act; and said officer shall devote his services
to the aforesaid purposes- as the Board may from time to time
direct. He shall be entitled to receive a salary to be fixed by
Salary of Super the Board, which shall not exceed five thousand dollars annually
*
intendent.
Such Superintendent shaft make report® weekly, or oftener, if di
rected by the Board, in writtag, ‘stating generally his own action
and that of his subordinates, and the condition of the public
health in said district,.‘and any causes endangering life or health
that have come to his knowledge during said period. And said
Assistant Su
Board may appoint two f Assistant Sanitary!
S
* uperintendents,
”
perintendents.
one of whom shall be a resident of th® city of Brooklyn, and shall
principally perform his duties in that city, whose duties shall be
of the same nature as those of the last named officer; and their
Salary of Assis salaries,, not to exceed thirty-five hundred dollars a year each,
tants.
shall be fixed by the Board.f
§ 11. Sail Bdlard may appoint and commission such number
Sanitary Inspec of “ sanitary inspectors
■
as the Board may deem needful, not
tors.
exceeding fifteen, and, from time to time prescribe the duties and
*
salaries J of each of said inspectorsand the place of their perfor
mance (and of all other persons exercising any authority under
said Board, except as herein specially provided ;) but at least ten
of such inspectors shall be physicians of skill and of practical
professional experience in said district, and the residue thereof
shall be selected with reference to their practical knowledge of
scientific or sanitary matters, Wvhich may especially qualify them
for such inspectors^ Each of such inspectors shall, twice in each
Duties of In
week, make a written report to said Bwd, stating what duties
spectors.
he has performed and where he has performed them, and also
such facts as have come to his knowledge, connected with the
purposes of this act as are by him deemed worthy the atten
tion of said Board, or as its regulations may require of him; and
Deports pre
such, and the other reports herein elsewhere mentioned, shall be
served.
* Amended, Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 15.
■t Amended, Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 15.
J Amended, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 15.
�9
preserved among the records of said Board. The Board may
also employ such number of clerks and servants, and fix their Clerks.
salaries, and take such legal advice and employ such attorneys, Attorneys.
as may be necessary to the efficient, safe and economical dis
charge of the duties by this act d<Bolw4 on said Board. And Offices,.
may also rent, lease, fit up and furnish such officK^affillhe conven
ience of the Board, its officers, agents and employees, and the
prudent and proper discharge of the duties of thcapM’d may re
quire ; and may make siuMncffleffial and additional expenditures, Incidental ex
penses.
having due regard t® economy, as the purposes ai^^RvBions of
this act and the dangers to lifHand public hmlth may justify or
require; and ma^provide
anHmlwe of a|H officcMagent
Forfeiture of
or employee of the Beard to du^Kulfill his engagements or dis pay.
charge his dutyj shall cause a fiS^ture of the whole or any less
portion of the salary oiwjompenmtion of such officer, agent or
employee, as the Vul® or practice of the Board may provide.
And the Board of Police iM^mhorized to allow the Boar® of
Offices.
Health to occupf afportio] of its pren^H,
§ 12. * The authoritrndu^^^Mpowe^^^MthergivenMany
have
law; or by any ordinance ma^^fflhereunder heretofore (for the Board tohereto
powers
fore exercised
purpose of presetting or protecting life oahealtl™ oiBpr eventing by .other boards
disease) conferrecyupon or now belonging to, or being exercised and officers.
by the board of ffimth, or the board of public health of or
in the city of New York, or of or in the city of Brooklyn, or else
where in saidjgmB®, the mayor andcommon council of either
of said cities, the mayor of the city of New Yorfl by and with
the advice and consent of the board of aldermc^BtlHpresident
of the board of aidermen, the jHsident of the board of psistant
aldermen (or councilmen,) the resident ^^HcianMthe health
commissioner, the mayor ancMtlfflBommiRioiiera of health, the
commissioners of health, the city inspector,(or the city inspect
or’s department of either of said cities ; or conffired upon or
now belonging toMy tu® or more of the said bodies or officers,
or last named boards or deparmnentH or to any board of health
or health officer or agent in said distril or exR’cRed by any of
ficer or person appointed by or deriving aumority from any one
or more of the bodies, officers, departments or last named boards
(so far as said powersRnd Authority can be exerfflLfland such
duty performed bjMie board hereby^S'eated, without interfer
ence with the proper discharge of the duties, other than san
itary duties, heretofore imposed upon the board of metropolitan
* Amended, Laws of 1866, Chapter 68G, Sec. 3.
2 -
�10
police), are hereby exclusively conferred upon, and shall hereaf
ter bo exclusively exercised by the aforesaid “ The Metropolitan
Board of Health
the members and officers thereof, as herein
How to be exer provided ; and the same are to be exercised as herein set forth,
cised .
(and to such an extent and in such place and manner as said
Board may provide,) for the greater protection and security of
health and life in said district, and the appropriate parts thereof;
and after this act goes into effect no salary or compensation shall
Cities to pay no be paid to any officer, board or agent, or in respect to any ser
salaries.
vice, expenditure or employment under the authority of any
health law, ordinance, regulation, or appointment of or in said
cities; or any part of said district, unless such salary, expendi
ture or employment shall be authorized by the Board hereby cre
ated and contemplated by the provisions of this act.
*
And the
aforesaid power, duty and authority hereby transferred to and
Power conferred
by certain Ordi conferred upon said Board shall be held to include all the power,
nances of New
York, transfer duty and authority given, or conferred or purporting to be given
red to Board.
or to be conferred to or upon any person, officer or board, in or
by any ordinance contained or purporting to be contained in the
first ten chapters of ordinances, being numbered from one to ten
inclusive in a compilation of “Laws and Ordinances relative to
the Preservation of the Public Health in the city of New York,”
and purporting to be published under the authority and by the
direction of the Mayor and Commissioners of Health of said
city, in the year one thousand eight hundrefl and sixty, and by
any existing amendments and additions thereto. But no fees of
No fees.
any kind shall be charged for the performance of any duties im
posed by said ordinances. And said board shall also possess
(and may exercise by its own agents, or by order to be executed
by said board of police,) throughout said district, all the power
and authority for the protection of life or health, or the care or
preservation of health, or persons diseased or threatened there
with, conferred by any law or ordinance relating to any part of
Powers given
said district, and especially by the act of the seventeenth of April,
by Brooklyn
charter transfer
eighteen hundred and fifty-four (being the three hundred and
red to Board.
eighty-fourth chapter of the laws of eighteen hundred and fiftyfour,) upon the Mayor, Common Council-Board of Health, or
the Health Officers, (or upon any two or more of them, or other
officers) in said act mentioned. But the powers and authority in
W.iatboardsnot
this section given shall not be held to interfere with the powers
to tie affected.
and duties of the Croton Aqueduct. Board, Street Commissioner,
* Amended, Laws of 1S66, Chapter 6S6, Section 3.
�11
Superintendent of Unsafe Buildings, Comptroller of New York
city, or the board authorized to contract for street cleaning (un
der the law of eighteen hundred and sixty-five;) nor shall anytliing in the aforesaid laws or ordinances contained be construed
as a limitation of any power in this bill elsewhere given to the
said board, or to limit the penalties and expenses it may enforce
or collect; and all the power recited or given by said ordinances
shall belong whollH^^Ml board, who may exercise the same
without the advice, assent or co-operation of any municipal board
or officer, and in any manner not inconsistent with the other sec- thor/tyPnotato
tions of this law, without being limited to the means or by the lnterfereprocedure in .....
said ordiAnd no muni W al body or
x „
1
1
H
A or appoint ofhothcr authority inIMgL diMMW 1 EHeafHMm»e or employ pense.
c«-rs orincurexL j
any officer or agent, or incur any expense, under any of said (or
other) health la wo or orMnanct® or in any respect of any matter
concerning wl«i said board is by this act given control or juris
diction. All the aforesaid powers are to be possessed and exer
cised as fully as if herein repeated and separately confc^Sl upon
said board.
8 13. Said BoaMfiialMpMcEBMtheBmthorilEind be chBrffcd th-,, deaths
MBH
E
°
anct niarriages.
with all the duties conferred or imposed on the City Inspec
tor of the City of New York, by the act passed on the sec
ond day of ApHBme thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, or
by any and all acts relative to births, deaths or marriages ; and
the duty of all persons and officers in any such (or any aforesaid)
acts mentioned shall hereafter be the same, in respect to said
Board, as if said law or laws had contained
name H^aid
Board instead of that of the City Inspector of the City cBMjew
York (or other officer,) and said acts are hereby extended
throughout said district; but the powers now possessed by the
*
City Inspector with reference to the inspection of weights and
measures, are herebwcoimjrcd^En the Manor of the City of Weisrhts and
New York. And it shall be the dutH of said Inspector, and Mcasures‘
of whoever may have possession or control thereof, to transfer City Inspector
and deliver to said Board all public books, records, statistics and
papers in his or their possession, or under his or their official or
personal controlMid to give such information to said Board as
he or his department may possess relative to any matter in this
section, or in either of said last mentioned laws referred to, and
his authority and duty unH® Baid laws shall cease when this
act goes into effect, and the JusticeBof the Supreme Court shall
* Amended, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 11.
�12
No fees to be
demanded.
Duty to report
births and
deaths.
Penalty for
omission.
"What Board
may order done.
Declare nui
sance.
have jurisdiction to enforce this provision by mandamus. And
said Board shall perform all the duties by this section imposed,
as a part of its regular duties, and no fees shall be demanded or
received by reason thereof or anything in said act or acts con
tained. It shall be the duty of the next of kin of any person de
ceased, and of each person being with such deceased person at
his or her death, and of the perso^ occupying or living in any
house or premises in or on which any person may die, and of the
parents ofan^chil^ born in Igaid district, (and if there be no
parent alive thatjfcas made such report, then of the next of kin
of such child born,) and oH every person present at such birth,
within five days after such birth or death, to report to said
Board in writing, so far as known, the date, ward and street
number of said birth, and the sc^ftid color of such child born,
and th#’ names of the parents, and the age, color, nativity, last
occupational d cause of death of such deceased person, and the
ward and stye^^g^ place of such person’s death and last resi
dence. AiSw every Emission of any person to make and keep
the registry required by the acts referred to in this section, and
for every omission to report a written copj^of the same to said
Board within ten days after any birth or marriage provided to be
registered, andl&r every omission by any person to make the re
port of anJKleJmBWfflrth, with the particulars as herein requir
ed, any person guilty of said omission shall be liable to pay a fine
often dollars, whiclA»^ be^uedjifflr ar$8wj#covered in the name
of said Board, for the benefit of said Board. But no person
shall be liable for such fine for not making the report herein re
quired, if he or she shall prove that suchBeport had been made
to the Boar®H some other person before suit brought for such
penalty, or that he or she was ignorant of such birth or death.
*
§ 14. First—Whenever any building, Brection, excavation,
premises, business pwsuit, matter orRUwig, or the sewerage,
drainage or ventilation thereof, in said di'sttl’ict, shall, in the opin
ion of said Board (whether as jayvhole or in liny particular,) be
in a condition or in effect dangerous to life or health, said Board
may take and file among its records what it shall regard as suffi
cient proof to authorizJfe^tefelaration that the same, to the ex
tent it may specify, is! a pffiR nuisance, or dangerous to life or
health ; and said Board may thereupon enter in its records the
same as a nuisance, and order the same to be removed, abated,
suspended, altered or otherwise improved or purified, as said or* See Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 11,
�13
<3er shall specify; and shall cause said order, before its execu Service of
tion, to be served on the owner, occupant or tenant thereof, or orders.
some of them, which to said Board, may appear most directly in
terested in its execution, provided said parties, or any of them,
are in said district and can be found, and such service can be
conveniently made, and if any party so served, (or intended to
*
be according to this law,) shall, before its execution is commenc
ed, or within three days after such service or attempted service,
apply to said Board, or the President thereof, to have said order
or its execution stayed or modified, it shall then be the dutv of
said Board f to temporarily suspend orKnodify said order or the
execution thereof, (save in cases of imminent dtHer from im
pending pestilence, when said Board may exercise extraordinary
Impending pes
powers, as herein elsewhere specified,) and to give such party or tilence.
parties together, as the case in the opinion of the Board may re
Hearing.
quire, a reasonable and fair opportunity to be heard before said
Board, and to present facts and proofs, (according to the pules
or directions olsaid Board,) against said declaration and the ex
ecution of said order, or in favor of its modification, according to
the regulations of the Board,J andlhe Board shall enter in its
minutes such facts and proofs as it may receive, and its proceed
ings on such hearing, and any other proof it may take; and
thereafter may rescind, modify or reaffirm its said declaration
and order, and require execution of said original, or of awiew or
modified order to be made, in such form and effect as it may
finally determine.||
Second.—Said Board may order or cause any excavation, erec
What Board
tion, vehicle, vessel, water-craft, room, building, place, sewer, may order done.
pipe, passage, premises, ground, matter or thing (in said district
or adjacent waters) regarded by said Board as in a condition
dangerous or detrimental to life or health, to be purified, clean
ed, disinfected, altered or improved;, and may also order any
substance, matter orE.hing, being or left in any street, alley,
water, excavation, building, erection, place or grounds (whether
such place where the same may be, be public or private,) and
which said Board may regard as dangerous or detrimental to life
or health, to be speedily removed to some proper place ; and may
designate or provide a place to which the same shall be removed,
when no such adequate or proper place, in the judgment of said
Board, is already provided. The said Board may require the
* See Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 5, and Laws of 1867, Chapter 908, Section 9.
+ Amended. Laws of 1S66, Chapter 686. Section 6.
JSee Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 12.
I Amended, Laws of 1866, Chapter 6S6, Section 6. Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 10.
�14.
said Board of Police to execute any of the orders referred to in'
this act. It shall be the duty of the Board of Police to execute
the orders of the said Board of Health, and the said Board of
Police may employ the necessary persons and means about such
Health Board
execution. "Or the said Board of Health, if it shall consider the
may execute its
own orders.
public health or interests so to require, may execute such orders
through its own officers or persons, and means to be engaged by
the said Board of Health ; and about the execution of the said
orders, both the said Aard of Police and the said Board of
Health shall lAe, each as well as the authority conferred by this
§53 and 54 of Act
act as all the poweiHand^®oritBconferred by the fifty-third and
of 25th April,
|fc64.
fifty-fourth sections fflthe^ffltropolitan Police act, passed on the
twenty-fifth daS of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-four, and
of any ameiBntsnfl|to said act or to be made enlarging
sucfoauthoritB and all powers and authori^BpoBesscd and exer
cised by said Boardof Police under saitfflact pertaining to sani
tary matters, or in conflict witliB.be obj As and'purposes of this
act, |hall hereafter be enjoyed, possessed and exercised by said
Health powers
Board of Health, and the orders of theffiid in this section sec
of police, trans
ferred to Board ondly mentioned shall, BheHopcr peiAn or persons are known
of Health.
to the Board, and can be ccffljenien tly found in said district, on
whom to make the service, be seriBd upon one or more of the
owners, occupants, lessees or tenaiBs of the subjecB matter to
which said order relates, or upon one or more of the persons
Service of
orders.
whose duty it was to have done what isBtherein lAuired to be
done, as the cast^ffly rettleiBust and proper in the opinion of
said Board; an^^^Bd orc® is not complM with, or as far
*
complied with as the Board may regard as rfflonable, within five
days after such service or MeinBtod serHc, or Bithin any short
er time which, in case of pestilence, the Aard may have desig
nated, or is not thereafter speedily and fullB exBcuted, then any
such ordcr^B be executed as herein elsewhere provided in re
gard to any of the orcflrs of said Board. And if personal ser
Service of order.
vice of any aforesaiB order cannot be made under this section by
reason of absence from said district, or inabilitIto find such per
*
sons therein, to be shown by the official certificates of the officer
having such ordeAo serffl then servicefflay be made through
the mail, or by a copy left at the re^rence or place of business
of the poison sought to be AAd, witll a peBon of suitable age
and descretion, and the expensfflattending the execution of any
and all such orders respectively shall be a several and joint
Police to execute orders.
* Amended. Laws of 1867, Chaj'ter 956, Section 5; Chapter 90S, Section 9.
�15
personal charge against each of the owners or part owners, and Expenses a
charge.
each of the lessees and occupants of the building, business, place,
property, matter or thing to which said order relates, and in icspect of which said expenses were incurred; and also against ev
*
ery person or body who was by law or coiBractboufel to do that
in regard to such business, place, street, propertM matter or Expenses a lien
on rent and
thing which said order requiH, and said expenses shall also be a compensation.
lien on all rentrand compensation due, or to groiBduB, foBtheuse
any place, roomBbuilding, premises,^Mtter or thing to which
said order relm.es. and in respect ofB'hich
wre in
curred; and also from the time of filing, as afore«d, f alien cn
all compensation due or to groMdue for the cleaning of any
street, place, ground or thing, or for theMeansing (or removal)
of any matterBthing or placeBU® failure to do which by the par
ty bound so t® do, or the dofflig of theBa^MnBdiole or in part
by order of said Board, was the cause or occasion of any such or
der or expense.■ Said Board of Health, its assignee, or the party
who has under its ordcB or that of the Board of Police, acting
Action by as
thereunder, incurred said expense, or has Hidered service for signee.
which paymeiB is due, and as the rules of said Board of
Health may provide,, may institute Bmd^^^^BnBaBuit against
any one herd™ declared liable fcBexpeiBes as aforesaid, or a®inst
any person, firm or corporation BwingBoB who im^Bo^^Kuch
rent or comftnsation, and may rBiover the expenses so incBrred
under any order aforesaid.I| And only one or more of such par
ties liable or intercsHl may be made parties to such action as the Parties to suit.
Board may elect; but the parBes made responsible as aforesaid
for such expenses shall be liable to^Bntribu® or to make pay
ment as betwaJiBthenBclves, in respect of such ^Mnses and of
any sum reco^Md for such expenses or compennBor by any
party paid on account thereof,Biccordigr to the legal or equitable
Every body’s
obligation existing^fflveen them. And it is her^B' declared to duty to eh an,
drain, Ac
be the duty of ever^Mvner andMirt ownH an® person interest
ed, and of every lessee, tenant and ocMpant of, or in any place,
water, grountB lBo^^^^MaBartment, IMWiigsa erection, vessel,
vehicle, matter and thing in said district, and of every person
conducting orBiterested in busineiB therein or thereat, and of
every person who has undertaken to clean any place, g«md or
street thereint’and of evcr^HrBm, public officer and Board hav
ing charge of any gBmnd, place, IjuildH; oBcrectiMtherein, to
* See Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 13.
+ Amended, Laws of 1866, Chapter 6S6. Section 5.
J See Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section IS.
[ Seo Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 13.
�16
keep, place and preserve the same, and every part, and the sew
erage, drainage and ventilation thereof, in such condition, and to
conduct the same in such manner that it shall not be dangerous
Authority of
or prejudicial to life or health. And in any suit in this action, or
bepre' elsewhere in this act, authorized to be brought, the right of said
Board or the Board of Police to make any order or cause the ex
ecution thereof, shall be presumed. Any member of the police
force. and every inspectMoM officer of said Board of Health, as
spectoiV&c11' ^1G regulations of either ofBaid boards may respectively provide
relative to its own subordinates, may arrest any person who shall
in view of such member or officer, violate, or do or be engaged
in doing, or comiiMiMO said district any act or thing forbid
den by this act, or by any law or Ordinance, the authority con
ferred by which is given
saffl Board of Health, or who shall
in such pr(gen(Sr«g|, or be engaged in resisting the enforce
ment of any of said orders of said Board, or of the Board of Po
lice pursuant thereto. And any person so arrested shall be there
after treated and disposed of as any other person duly arrested
for a misde 1 nMMMWdBoard of Health, having first enArrests orJ.ered
. .
•
by Board.
tered on its minutes, or filed in its records, what it may regard
as adequate proof of a violation or resistance by any person in
said district, of any such law, ordinance or order, may order (by
its warrant, under its seal and r®sted by the signature of its
president and secretary, and iMKating, as far as conveniently
practicable, the time, place and nature of the offence committed)
the arrest of any such person, and such order of arrest shall be
of the same effiMBaMiKBi 1 be executed as a warrant from a jus
tice or judge, duly issued ; and the party arrested shall be taken
before a magistrate, and thereupon and thereafter shall by all of
ficers, be treated as bffing and have the rights and liability of a
party under arrest by ordeflof the proper officer or tribunal, for
a misdemeanor of the nature indicated in the said order of arrest.
Proof, by whom p(-Oofs, affidaiMMmMMa mi nations as to any matter under this
taken.
■
act may bp|Moi by or before one or more members of the
officers may ad-Board, or othi^RHson. as the Board shall authorize; and the
secretary, the saWary. and assistant superintendents, and any
member of said Board shall, severally, have authority to admin
ister oaths in such matters, and any person guilty of wilfully tes
tifying falsely shall incur all the pains and penalties of perjury.
Any judge of the Supreme Court of any judicial district, wholly
der examin-cr' or partly within said sanitary district, or who is holding court or
ation'
chambers therein, upon the written application of said Board or
its president, to be made by or through its attorney or counsel,
-i
�17
may issue bis order by him subscribed, for the examination with
out unreasonable delayby or before such justice, of any person
or persons, and the production of books and papers, or the inspec
tion and taking of copifilof tha>hol<|A part^Miereof, at a time
and place within <said district, and in said order to be named ;
and it shall be the dutHif^Hh justiceto take or superintend such
examination, which shall be under oath, and shall be signed by
the party or partieSeHnined and be certified by said judge, and
with any copies of books or papers be delivered toBaid Board or
its secretary, for the use of said Board. And such examination,
and any proceeding^Hnecwd tlBiwvM or under said order,
may wholly or in part be had, con^^Bd or conMucd bj^r be How conducted.
fore any other of said judges, as will as .that one Biereofwho
made said order; and in and about the same, every such judge
shall have as full power and authority to pu®® for ccMempt,
and enforce obedience to hi^miB or other order or directions res
pecting the matter aforesaid (o^^^HfHny other judge,) as any And enforced.
such judge or the Supreme Court may now have or shall possess
to enforce obedie^Har puconin any case or matter
whatever. Such application shall name or describe the person or
persons whoseBx^Biation is sought (and so far as possible the What applica
tion to contain
books or papers desired to be inspected.) and the mattew or
points affecting life or health in said district as to HfflHifeaid
board requests the same to take place, and the judge shall, on the
proceedings, decide what questions are pertinent and allowable
in respect tlBrcto, and shall require the same to be
swered ; but no answer ofBiny person so examined shall »tised
How
in any criminal proceeding. Service of .any order of any such orderjudge's
served
judge may be made, and the same proved
manner as
the service of either an inj unHon or of a subpoena may now be
made or proved. And it shall b®g duty olHjHid jWRs to
facilitate the early determination of the aforesaid pg>ceedinjg|
§ 15. It shall be the duty of said Board to give alMfiHRation Board to give
and receive
that may be reasonablyBequ^»d concerning any threatened dan formation . in
ger to the public health, to the Health Officer of the port of New
York, and to the Commissioners of Quarantine of said poi^frwho
shall give the like information to said Board; and said Board
and said OfficerlandBaid QuHntine CommissioneiHhall^o far
as legal and practilLblS co-operaB together to prevent the
spread of disease, and for th^^sr "ection of lifiHamBfor the pro
motion of health, within the sphere of their respective duties;
3
�18
and the authority and power of said Health Officer and Quaran
tine Commissioners is not by this act affected, save as last afore
said, anything herein elsewhere to the contrary notwithstanding..
Board to ascer
§ 1G. And said Board shall use all reasonable means for ascer
tain and prevent
disease.
taining the existence and cause of disease or peril to life or
health, and for averting the same throughout said district; and
To inform and
be informed by shall promptly cause all proper information, in possession of said
such boards.
Board to be sent to the local health authorities of any city, vil
lage or town in this State which may request the same, and shall
add thereto such useful suggestions as the experience of said
Board may supply. And it is hereby made the duty of said
health authorities to supply the like information and suggestions
to said Metropolitan Board of Health. And said Board may
Vaccination and
take measures, and supply agents, and afford inducements and
medical relief.
facilities for general and gratuitous vaccination and disinfection,
and may afford medical relief to and among the poor of said dis
trict, as in its opinion the protection of the public health may re
quire, and may remove or cause to be removed to a proper place
within said district, to be by them designated, any peison sick
with small pox or other contagious disease. And in the presence
*
When pesti
of greatBind imminent peril to the public health in said district,
lence impend
ing to take ex by reason of wq^nding pestilence, it shall be the duty of said
traordinary
measures.
Board to take such measures and to do and order, and cause to
be done, such ac^Band make HiclBexpenditures (beyond those
duly estimated for or provided) for the preservation of the public
health (though not herein elsewhere or otherwise authorized) as
it may in good faith declare the public safety and health to de
mand, aHthe Governor of the State shall also in writing approve.
Six members to But the exercise of this extraordinary power shall also, so far as
concur.
it involves such excessive expenditures, require the written as
sent of at least six members of the Board. And such peril shall
not be deemed to exist except when, and for such period of time,
as the Governor of the State, together with said Board, shall de
clare by proclamation the same to exist or continue.
§ 17. It shall be the duty of said Metropolitan Police Board
Police to report
danger to
(and of its officers and men, as the last named Board shall direct)
health.
to promptly advise said Metropolitan Board of Health of all
threatened danger to human life or health, and of all matters
thought t<> demand its attention, and to regularly report to said
And violations
of ordinances. Board of Health all violations of its rules and of said ordinances
and of the health laws, and all useful sanitary information.! And
Powers of
Health Officer
and Quarantine
commissioners
reserved.
*Am ended, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 3.
+ Amended, Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 2.
�19
said last named Boards shall, so far as practicable and appropri
ate, co-operate for the promotion of the public health and the safe
tv of human life in said district. And it shall be the duty of said roiice to exeMetropolitan Police Board, by and through its proper officers,
r'
agents and men, tomdhfnlly and at the proper tj^®e®d-ce and
execute the sanitary rules and regulafflons, and the orders of said
Board of Health (made pursuant to the power of said Board of
Health,) upon the same being received inH’itingffid duW au
thenticated, as said Board of Health may direct. And said Po- Police tocmlice Board is authorized to employ and use the Appropriate per- £'cOy persons>
sons and means, and to make the necessary and appropriate expen
ditures foiyihc execution and enforcement of said rules, orders
and regulations, and such expenditures so far as the samamay
not be refunded or compensated by the means heremelsewhere
provided, shall be paid as the other expenseaof said Board of
Health are paid. And in and about the execution of any order
of the Board of Heaffih or of the Board of Police made pursuant Authority as
under special
thereto, police officers and policemen shall have as ample power warrant,
and authority as when obeying any order of or law applicable to
the PoliceJBoard, or as if acting under a special warrant of a
justice or judge, duly issued, but for their conduct they shall be
responsible to the Board of Police and not to the Board of
Health.
8 18. It shall be the duty of said Board, so far as it ma be
able without serious expense, to gather and preserve such infor- deaths, &c.
mation and facts relating to deaths, disease and health, from oth
er parts of this State, but especially in said district, as may be
useful in the discharge of its duties, and contribute to the promotion of the health or the security of life in the State of New York.
And it shall be the duty of all health-officers and boards of health
in the State to communicate to said Metropolitan Board ofHealth portstobecom.
„ , .
,
i ,
,
.,
. P
municatedto
copies of their reports, and also such sanitary information as may Board,
be useful in said district. And said Board shall keep records of
its acts and proceedings as a Board, and of the execution of its Eecords keptorders, so far as reasonably practicable.
§ 19. It shall be the duty of said Board, on or before the first
Monday of December in each year, to make a report in writing MUa rep°r
to the Governor of this State, upon the sanitary condition and
prospects of said district ; and such reports shall set forth gene
rally the statistics of births, deaths and marriages, the action of
said Board and of its officers and agents, and the names thereof what to con
fer the past year, and may contain other useful information, and tain‘
�20
May print re
port .
By-Laws, <fce.
Publish ByLaws .
Code of health.
Penalty.
shall suggest any further legislative action or precautions deemed
proper for the better protection of life and health, as well in other
parts of the State as especially in said district. Such annual re
port may contain the sanitary rules and by-laws adopted by the
Board hereby created. And the annual report of said Board
shall also contain ^detdMjstd^ment, under the oath of the
treasurer, of all money received and paid out by said Board, or
its treasurer, and a detailed statement of the manner of its expendi
ture during the year last past, and of the funds on hand. Said
Board may annually have, not exceeding one thousand copies of
said repin an economical form, at the expense of said
Board, and may distribute the same as shall be best adapted to
promote the purposes
H cop® of said report shall
be sent to each duly organized Board of H(SJh in the State of
New Torequested such copy, and shall have
f urnished^yt^^^^^wi^ copy of its own annffiK report.
§ 20. Said Board may enact such by-laws, rules and regula
*
tions as it may deem advisable, in harmony with the provisions
and purposes of this act, and not inconsistent with the constitu
tion or laws of this State, for the regulation of the action of said
Board, its officers and agents, in the discharge of its and their
duties^fiffiM the protection of life and public health; and from
time to time may alter, annul or amend the same. And said
Board shj^g^^ manner,
and ordinances take
effect,
more fully carrying into effect the intents and pur
poses of this act, annually, on or before the tenth day of May in
any year, make
week for three suc
cessive weeks next thereafter, in two daily newspapers published
in the city of New York, and in one daily newspaper published
in th^T city of Brooklyn, a “ code of health ordinances” for the
protection of the public health in said district, to take effect on
and after tBq
tSiiSm- fi™>wing, and to
remain in fullj^frtue,
and effect within said district for the
term of one year, unless annulled ;f and all courts and tribunals,
or any judfml^nitW^^BeQfKKl take cognizance of and give
effect to said ordinances and the several parts thereof, and may
enforce such
not exceeding fifty dollars
for each offeiiollteo vy
oi3 district court,
with costs; but nMhiB^in this section jOnained shall be con
strued as in any manner limiting an^powers herein elsewhere
contained. J
* Amended, Laws of 1866, Chapter 6S6, Section 1.
+ Amended, Laws of 1866, Chapter 6S7, Section 1; Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 10.
J Amended, Laws of 1866, Chapter 6S6, Section 1; Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 10,
�21
§ 21. Said Board shall cause to he kept a general complaint
book, or several such books, in which may be entered by any
person, in good faith, any complaints of a sanitary nature which
such person thinks may be useful, with the name and residence
of the complainant, and may give the name of tlie person or per
sons complained of, and the date of the entry of the complaint,
and such suggestions of any remedy as may in good faith be
thought appropriate, and said books shall be open to all reason
able public examination as the Board may authorize ; and the
Board shall
complaints to be in
vestigated, and the appropriate remedy to be applied.
§ 22. Said Board may, from time to time, engage a suitable
person or persons to
ito
make or supervise practical and scientific sanitary investigations
and e x a min
n^B^yrinl^S^lW»^^aill. and
to prepare pl a
v
made the duty of all boards, officers and agents having the con
trol, charge or custody of any public structure, work, ground or
erection, or of ^^^Wanis
thereof, or relating thereto, made, kept or controlled under any
public authority, to permit and facilitate the examination and in
spection, and the making of copies of the same by any officer or
person therCa^^MlMMraM-d1 authorized; and the members of
said Board,
;r
any of the aforesaid sanitary inspectors, and such other officer or
person as may at any time be by said Board authorized, may,
without fet or hindrance, enter, examine and survey all grounds,
erections, vehicles, structures, apartments, buil dings and place s
in said
1
1
waters, and all cellars, sewers, passages and excavations of every
sort, and iMj^^
ES niake
plans, drawings and descriptions thereof, according to the order
o r regulat
nay make and pub
lish a report
i
.Em 1g result of the in
spection of any place, matter or thing in said district so inspect
ed, or otherwiaEEIaiMSial^EMl^^Mnjjit£ElaM^M^^Rh< >oard,
such publication may be useful, And said Board may provide a
badge of metal, with a suitable inscription thereon, and direct
and require it to be worn, in a position to be designated, by any
person or officer under the authority of said Board, at such times
and under such circumstances as the rules or by-laws of said
Board shall direct. It shall be a misdemeanor, punishable by
Complaint
book.
Complaint to bo
investigated.
Engineering
service.
Inspection of
charts. Ac., to be
permitted.
Right to enter
and inspect.
Make sanitary
condition
public.
Badge.
�22
False represen
tation or perso
nation .
Regular and
special meet
ings.
Meetings and
orders presum
ed authorized.
Board to enforce
Health Laws.
What included.
Boards may re
quire repoi ts
from institu
tions, asylums,
&c. ‘
imprisonment in the county jail, or, in the city and county of
New York, in the penitentiary, for not less than one year nor
exceeding two years, or by a fine of not less than two hundred
and fifty dollars, for any person, not an officer under this act, to
falsely represent himself as such, with a fraudulent design upon
persons or property, or to have, use, wear or display, without
authority, any shield, or other insignia or emblem such as is worn
by such officers But no more than five thousand dollars in any
one year shall be expended for sanitary engineering service.
§ 23. Said Board shall hold regular and special meetings as
frequentlyfes tne proper and efficient discharge of its duties shall
require | the same to be held (unless it shall be impracticable so
to do, or shall be, for good reasons, otherwise ordered,) at the
regular office of said Board in the city of New York; and the
rules or by-laws shall provide for the giving of proper notice of
all such meetings to the members of the Board. And all meet
ings shall in every suit and proceeding be taken to have been
duly called and regularly held, and all orders and proceedings
to have been duly authorized, unless the contrary be proved.
§ 24. It shall be the duty of said Board of Health to aid in the
enforcement of, and so far as practicable to enforce all law’s of
this State, applicable in said district, to the preservation of hu
man life, or to the care, promotion, or protection of health; and
said Board may exercise the authority given by said laws to en
able it to discharge the duty hereby imposed; and this section is
intended to include all laws relative to cleanliness, and to the use
*
or sale of poisonous, unwholesome, deleterious or adulterated
drugs, medicine or food. And said Board is authorized to re
quire reports and information (at such times and of such facts,
and generally of such nature and extent, relating to the safety of
life and promotion of health as its by-laws or rules may pro
vide), from all public dispensaries, hospitals, asylums, infirma
ries, prisons and schools, and from the managers, principals and
officers thereof; and from all other public institutions, their offi
cers and managers, and from the proprietors, managers, lessees,
and occupants of all theatres and other places of public resort or
amusements in said district; but such reports and information
shall only be required concerning matters or particulars in re
spect of w’hich it may, in its opinion, need information, for the
better discharge of its duties in said district. And it is hereby
made the duty of the officers, institutions and persons so called
on, or referred to, to promptly give such information and make
�■
23
such reports, verbally, or in writing, as may be required by said
boards. And it is hereby further made the duty of all persons, Board to be
officers and boards to make to said Board of Health the reports
and returns, and to give the informatioiSancl afford to said Board
the aid and facilitiesRhich by law or ordinance tngU any of
them were required to make, afford or give to any person, offi
cer or board, when any powers herebHonft^red on said Board
of Health were exercised by any other officer or board.
8 25. Such Board shall not be requireMto nflHanS return or Beturns not rec
quired of Board.
report, or give any information or advice, or do any act which,
under the former admHstration of the health ^Hs in Rid dis
trict, was made neces^® or Bppropwt^M^Ron of g^mrious
officers, boards or agents by or through which said laws were
executed or administered, or the powers hereby conferred were
exercised; and said Board may establish reasonable reguHions Re gulations as
as to the publicity of its records and proceedings ; and may pub- toreCurdslish such information as may, in its opinion, be useful, concern- May publish
ing births, deaths, Hrriages, sicknH and the general sanitary inlormatloncondition of said district, on any matter, place or thing therein.
§ 26. The department knoH as the ‘gK|lREctc« Depart- City inspector’s
ment,” and every bureau thereof, and so much of the^^^Ry-sgg ffitheoffi-nd
enth section of the four hundred and forty-sixth chapter of the ces abollshedlaws of eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, as relate thereto, and
each and every office in the said d^Hict i^Bg|o public health,
or the duties of which are confemed on said Board, except the
Health Officer of the port of New York and the Board of Quar
antine Commissioners Hid its officers, are hereby abolished.
And no salary or coMen«iongHllB)e due oMpaid by any offi- galarles of
cer or board whatever, to any officer or agent or board in said ^J.^®^8
district for seSfes to be rendered after this act goes into effect,
under any law or ordinance cowerning life or public health, ex
cept under this act and as Mhorized by the board hereby creat
ed. And all other bo ards and officers now existing in said dis- ■
' trict under or by virtue of any law or ordinance relating to
public health, are hereby also abolishes; and no compens»ion
shall be paid to or in respect of the same for any service rendered
after this law shall go into effect, save as gN Board of Health
shall authorize.
§ 27. All the sums of money provided or raised for meeting Funds of Board,
the expenses, compensations and payments provided by this act,
or that may be authorized
said Board (except penalties or
other sums received and amounts collected by suit as herein pro-
�24
vided,) shall be paid into the treasury of the State, and shall
constitute a fund, to be so far as needed, used by said Board
in the performance of its duties-and discharge of its obligations ;
and may and shall be paid therefrom, on the order of the treas
urer of said Board, as |®id Board may direct, and shall be ap
plied and paid by thqjgpii^pr |Sf $aiic^ Board only as this act
payable?'hen and the reguUtfens of said Board may authorize. And unless
this Board shall otherwise specially provide, all salaries and com
pensation
.shaljp, so fir as practicable, be
paid quartering And any member or officer of ®aid Board may,
if a judge sMEo order, be summarily examined upon an order
may be’exam” (to
made on application and Avritten affidavit oa the oath of
ined.
three freeholders of said district) requiring such examination,
and signed by any justice of the supreme court of the first judi
cial district, and directing such examination to be publicly made,
at the chambers of said justice, aE day and hour to be named,
not less
personal service of said orHow examina,
.
...
x
tiun conducted, cler, and
be confined to an inquiry int0
any alleged wrongful diversion or misapplication of any of said
moneys
delinguepEEMKcl W said affida- vit, touchi^SWrEffio^fe
or neglect of duty of
which A hs
for
that such
memb" of said Board or said officer HMgmSjfcdg® or informa
tion.
I pertinent
questions
diiftf, and the ex
amination may be continued from time to time as such judge
may order^^wpictwSydE^^^H p
ch mEH shall not be
used against him on any criminal proceeding. The proceedings
may be pontB®d before any other judge in said^district, and
other witnesses, as well as the parties fSlSrBkmh application,
may, in the discretion of such judge, be compelled to attend and
be examined touching such alleged delinquency; and such judge
may punishany refusal to- Jw^^fgich exSjtfwation or to answer
any questiommfrsuafflA io his order as for and being a contempt
of court. And such examination, affidavit and orders shall be
filedin the toffiet |of the IBoh^^jCterMfa^ the county of New
York. And in regard to this last es^hinBioiJI and matters
therewith connected, any such jwage"shall have all the powers
and authority ponferiW, in M?bpecti| to th.® examination or pro
ceedings mentioned in the fogyc^entl^ section hereof, as if herein
repeated.
Board of Esti§ 28- The Mayor and Comptroller of the city of New York,
mateand the Mayor and Comptroller of the city of Brooklyn, togeth-
�26
er with the members of said Board, created by this act, shall, oh
■.•easonable notice from said Board, convene at the office of When to meet,
said Board of Health, as jauBoard of Estimate, a majority of
whom shall form a quoruinFraAjg|Ml annually, on or before the
first day of August, make up a financial estimate and statement,
including all sums and expenses in arrear, and also any sum bor
rowed, as herein elsewhere provided for, of the sums required
for the year, commencing on the first day of January ensuing,
annually (above any sums on h|BII| for the expenses and proper
support, and for the discharge of the duties of Bggig^^Bncltid
ing the proper expenses and disbursements of said Board, and of
the members or officers thereof in the discharge of their official
duties, and for such other general or incidental expenses as may
from time to time, in the judgment of such Board of Estimat e ,b e c ora ©■ we
e
Sums raised foflfeft ^SfS^^of
Limitation of
H
1
J ;
amount,
hundred thousafldolla^^^^^HnS|W|g»WM|| of such sums
as may have been expended in the presence of great and immi
nent peril to the public health in said district by reason of im
pending pestilence, and independently of the sums herein else
where provided, to be paid by or recovered back from any per
son or corporawon. Ai^lK® expenses for the remainder of the
*
current year after the passage of this act, to be reckoned at the
said rate of one hundred thousand dollars a year, independently
of said extraordinary expenses, and of said sums to be paid or
recovered back, shall be estimated and apportioned to the seve
ral cities, counties and towns in said district as hereinafter pro
vided, and collcSed in the next annual tax levies. Such estimate
shall be accompanied by a written apportionment, made by said
Board of Estimate, of the proportions of expenses applicable to
and to be paid by each county, city and towm in said
And in apportioning the salaries of the members of the Board, Mo(le of appor.
its officers, agents and employees, the following rules shall |]|e tionment.
observed:
1. The salaries and compensation of all members of the board
appointed to this board, cSBftli^MhM^5mMofficS, from any
county, and of all officers, agents and employees thereof, whose
principal sphere of duty shall be in any county, shall be appor
tioned against and p
2. The salary of the Health Offim^Hd ^[11 general, office,
* Amended Laws of 1S67, Chapter 95(, Section 15.
4
�26
Committee of
revision.
If committee of
revision object.
contingent and other expenses of the board, not included in the
first class aforesaid, shall be apportioned against and paid by the
respective counties and towns (or counties to which they belong)
in the ratio of the taxable property, real and personal, of each,
in said district, according to the assessment under which the last
preceding taxes therein were respectively levied.
3. But no apportioning^ against any county (or town therein),
other than the counti^^Bkew Yorkfend Kings, shall be made
under the two foregoing clauses, unless as follows, that is to say :
Each other ccgnty (and each of said towns) shall have appor
tioned agairBro ancBshall pay all disbursements and expenses
arising, caused or ordered therein, to or by said Board, or for
salaries, and services,Bo" portions thereof, earned or rendered
therein, as the regulations of said Board may provide ; but such
salaries and servicMwillpiot include any portion of the salaries
of the members M^O^oard or of its .general officers.
4. It is further prOKecK in respect of each of said counties,
that all the expenses caused by any act or any order of said
board, W the execution thereof in or for any particular county or
part thereof, shall ^^HiorBoned to and be paid by said county
or part thereof; and any sums collected in either shall be cred
ited to such county or
unless the same was on ac
count of expenses incurred in some other county, city or town,
and in that event it shall be credited thereto. The said estimate
and statement shall, at least ten days before the first day of
Septenib(M|^»sMefi|g su^Ktecl to the committee of revis
ion, compose<ffloSth^HEdM:s of the boards of supervisors of
the counties
Kings, Westchester and Richmond,
and of the presidents of the b|M of1 aidermen of the city of
Brooklyn, and of the supfipsors of the respective towns of
Newtown, FlBshiMaSl Jamaica, in the county of Queens, who
may meet, by a majority thereof, and consider and act upon the
said estimate and enumeration on or before the first Monday of
September in each year. If the said committee of revision, on
or before the second Monday of said September, shall object in
writing to such estimate or apportionment, or any portion there
of, and so in writing, by said date, mgjfify, or cause to be noti
fied, the said board of estimate, it shall be the duty of the latter
to immediately and carefully revise the same, and considei the
said objections. If such committee shall fail to meet, or if said
board of estimate shall adhere to their original action and esti-
�27
mate, or if they shall modify the same, but they shall not in If fail to meet
crease the same, then their final determination, apportionment or adhere to be
conclusive.
and action shall be binding and conclusive upon all concerned.
to be
And the board of supe»jsors of the counties of New York, Moneyin re
raised
spective coun
Kings, Richmond and Queens (the expenses in the last-named ties and towns.
county to be charged and collected in,Kd in ®espe®t of the
property of the towns of Newtown, Flushing and Jamaica), re
*
spectively, are empowered a»|direBedEm»:iMvMto order and
cause to be raised and collected, by tax upon the estates, real
and personal, subject to taxation according to law, within the
said respective counties and towns, their respective proportions
of the sums of money as aforesaid, annually estimated and as ap
portioned and finally determined upon, as said total expenses
and estimate aforeffiiid. The sums of money so respectively Disposition of
money.
raised, as provided for in this act, shall be, by the rar<B|r offi
cers, immediatelyrand^Hhoft deduction, paid into the Treasury
of the State,,:Bd shall corgg® the separate ft®l|Wi«n else
where mentioned and pr^HedHid be used only for the purpo
ses of said Board, and shall be paid from the State Treasury, un
der such appropria® regulations as shall bSagreed upon between
the Comptroller of the State, the State Tre^H-erKd the Treas
urer of said Board.
§ 29. The said Board magborro^^Rthe credit of this
and Board may
borrow.
of the fundsHo be raised Emeremid^Msuch amouiffl (the borrow
ing of the same respectively to be first BpMrowd^^^Sting by
the Governor of the State) as may, in the opinion of said Board,
be reasonably necessary mid proper to enable it to discharge its
duties and defray its e?®enses hereby authorized, up to the time
when the Requisite funds can be realized for said Board and pur
poses fromMhe^^Etion and soureffl herein provided for and
authorized ; ffldBuch moneys so borrowed, with legal interest,
shall be a charge upon and shall be repaid by th^Sid counties and
cities and towns in the proportion hereinbefore prowled,and the
amounts-thereof shall, in addition to the requisite annual ex
pense to secure a future annual fund, be included or allowed in
the next or fi^M annual estimate of the sums required and expen
ses as aforesaid, and shall, with interest, be included, and the
amount, with intere^Jcollected in and with the tax in this act
provided for, and the same shall go into the said fund, and shall
from thence, by the Treasuffl of the Board, be paid to or in fa Certificates for
money borrow
vor of the parties entitled. And said Board may issue its certifi ed.
cates to those of whom it borrows money, as herein authorized,
* Westchester added, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 4.
�28
under its seal, and signed by its President and Secretary, and
bearing interest at the rate of not more than seven per cent., and
payable at a time not more than eighteen months from the date
at which any sum may have been borrowed.
*
Penalty for vio
§ 3O.f Whoever^hall violate any provisions of this act, or any
lations, &c.
order of said Board, mad® finder the authority of the same, or
of any by-law or ordinance therein referred to, or shall obstruct
or interfere with any per-soa. in the execution of any order of said
Board, or any order of the Board of Police, in pursuance or ex
ecution of the order of the Board of Health, or wilfully omit to
obey any such order, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and be
liable to be indicted Mid punished. for such offence : and in cases
Misdemeanor.
where it was made a misdemeanor to do or omit any act or
thing, when any powif- orlauthority hereby conferred upon this
Board were exercised by airy othm^bpard or officer or officers,
the omission. or doing of suclmor a corresponding act or thing,
which this act requires, or contemplate® to b© done or forbids,
shall in like manner be a misdemeanor, .and the offender shall be
liable to indictment ancl^ 'punishment for the ®ne. A wilful
Wilful violation omission or refusal of any individwd, wrporation or body to con
form t© any sanitary regulation ©f said Board duly made for the
protection of life, or the care, promotion of preservation of health,
pursuant to its power or authority, shall be a misdemeanor, and
the person « officers guilty thereof shall be liable to indictment
and punishment a® for a misdemeanor. And all prosecutions
Before whom
and proceeding® against any person forTr misdemeanor under
trials had.
this act may be had or tried before any judge or tribunal having
jurisdiction of any misdemeanor within said district, or within
the town, city oijjvillage within which any such misdemeanor
under this act was committed. Hind any person, corporation or
Pecuniary lia
bility of delin body which may have- wilfully done of omitted any act or thing
quent.
which is in this act, of any law or ordinance therein referred to,
declared to be, or to subject tihe party guilty thereof to punish
ment for a misdemeanor, shall, iafeddition thereto, be subject to
a penalty of two hundred!, and fifty dollars,, to be sued for and re
covered bysaAft Board in any civil hribunal in said district, ex
cept that in the n®,rine, or justice, or county courts, no greater
amount can be ref^Vered tha^jthe extent of the jurisdiction in
*
other civil suits. And any luch -Suits may be against one or
more, or each or all of those who participate hi the act, refusals
or omissions complained of, and the recovery may be against one
* Amended, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 10.
+ Amended, Laws of 1866, Chapter 686, Section 2.
�29
or more of those joined in the action, as the justice or court shall
■direct. And the provisions of this section as to jurisdiction of
tribunals and costs shall apply to all suits by said Board or its
assignees, or the assigiWg of thd®jMp»i'$ tinder this act.
*
§ 31. Copies of the records of th^m-oc^^m^krof »id Board, Records as eviof its rules, regulations, by-laws and books and papers constitut- dence’
ing part of its arct^H, when authenticated by its secretary or
secretary pro tew.,f shall be presumptive evidence, and the au
thentication be tak««IMWesi^m>tM|mMorrMMmM any court of
justice or judicial proceeding, when they may be relevant to the
point or matter in controversy, of the facts, statements and recitals therein contain^Mand the action, proceedings, authority Action of Board
and orders of said Board shall at all times be regarded as in their dicuun^ie^ai
nature judicial, and be treated asjust and legal.
§32. It shaltafefl®Muty of all prosecuting officers of criminal prosecutions to
courts and police justices to act promptly upon all compMt,s be prompt,
and in all suits or proceedings for any violation of this act, and
in all proceedings; approved or |romold by said BotMBMfrl to
bring the same to a speedy hearing or termination, and to ren
der judgment apjflldir
§ 33. This act, so far as its relates to the appointment of the when
Sanitary Commissioners provided for therein, shall take effect effectimmediately, an®
other respects, go fully into effect on
the first day of March, eighteen hundred and sixty-six.
* See Laws of 1866, Chap^fr 6S6, Action956.^^ffljnsfo W8 17
+ Chief Clerk added, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 1.
to take
I
�30
CHAPTER 686.
By-Laws and
rules.
Code of Health
Ordinances.
Ordinances of
1866.
Penalty for vio
lation.
AN ACT to amend an Act entitled “ An Act to create a Metro
politan Sanitary District and Board of Health therein, for the
Preservation of Life and Health, and to prevent the spread of
disease therefrom,” passed February 26, 1866. Passed April
19, 1866, three-fifths being present.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. Section twenty of an act entitled “An act to create
a Metropolitan Sanitary District and Board of Health therein,
for the preservation of Life and Health, and to prevent the
spread of Disease therefrom,” passed February twenty-six, eigh
teen hundred and sixty-six, is hereby amended so as to read as
follows:
§ 20. Said Board may ei^3 such by-laws, rules, and regula
tions as it may deem advisable, in harmony with the provisions
and purposes of this act, and not inconsistent with the constitu
tion or laws of this State, for the regulation of the action of said
Board, its officersfcand agents, in the discharge of its and their
duties, and from time to time, may alter, annul or amend the
same ; and said Board shall, in like manner, for more fully car
rying into effect the intents and purposes of this act, annually, on
or before the fifth day of May in any year, make and publish
twice a week, for three successive weeks next thereafter, in two
daily newspapers published in the City of New York, and in one
daily newspaper published in the City of Brooklyn, “ a code of
health ordinances” for the protection of the public health in said
district, to take effect on and after the first day of June next
thereafter following, and to remain in full virtue, force and ef
fect within said district,, until altered, amended, or annulled
and may at any time alter, amend or annul the same, or any
part thereof, upon publishing the same as altered and amended,
or such portion as is so altered and amended, and for a like time
as said original ordinances: but during the year eighteen hun
dred and sixty-six such code of health ordinances shall take ef
fect at any time after it shall have been published as aforesaid for
two weeks; and every person, body or corporation that shall vio
late or not conform to any ordinance, rule, sanitary regulation or
* Amended, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 10.
�31
special or general order of said Board, duly made, shall he liable
to pay a penalty not exceeding fifty dollars for each offence,
which may be sued for and recovered by and in the name of said
Board, with costs, before any justice or tribunal in said district
having jurisdiction of civil actions ; and all such justices and
*
tribunals shall take jurisdiction of such actions. And upon the plaint°n com‘
complaint of any citizen of said distt^;tE,g~ains^Sv person for a
violation of any rule, sanitary regulation, ordinanMcM order,
made to any police justice or magistrate having jurisdiction in
criminal cases, such justice or magistrate shall order the arrest of
any person against whom such complaint is made, as in any
other case of a criminal offence«nd, by his HirrantBmay re
quire any policeman or constable to make such arrestland may,
after such arrest, proceed summarily to try such person for such
alleged offence; but no such trial shall be had on any arrest Notice oftrial.
made in the City of New York without sufficient notice thereof
being first gives to said Board,pSits President. And upon an ap- g ®™i^1g>
plication in behalf of said Bo^d, made before the trial is com
menced, the trial of such person, togeth^^Hh the papers, shall
be remitted to the Court ofj^>ectel Sessions, upon which Court
jurisdiction to try feu cig person^ is hereby conferred; but the
right of any person
elect to be tried before a jury as it may
now exist, is not affected! by anything herein contained. If such
person shall, upon such trial, be found guilty, he or she may be Amount of fine,
fined in any amount not exceeding twenty-five dollars ;f and the
payment thereof may be enforced in the same manner as ^Bisual
in other cases where fines are imposed. Such fines, when col
lected, shall be at once paid over to the Treasurer of said Board,
to the credit of said Board. Reports of all such trials, and of
fines imposed for violations of this
or of the code of health J"®ttices to reordinances hereby authorized, shall be made moimhly to said
Board by the justice before whonmsuch trial is had. But noth
ing in this section coiwained shall be construed as in any manner
limiting any powers, penalty and punishment in this|H else
where conferred.
& 2. Section thirty of said act is hereby amended so as to read
as follows :
§ 30. Whoever shall Biolate any provisions of this act, or any Penalty for
order of said Board, made undei the authority of the same, or latl0Ils’ &eany by-law or ordinance therein referred to, or shall obstruct or
interfere with any person in the execution, of any order of said
* See Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 2.
t See Laws of 1S67, Chapter 956, Section 2.
vio-
�82
Misdemean or.
Wilful violation
Places of trial.
Penalty of $250.
Parties to ac
tion .
Board may
bring suits.
Board, or any order of the Board of Police, in pursuance or exe3
*
cution of the order of the Board of Health, or wilfully omit to
obey any such order, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and be
liable to be indicted and punished for such offence, and in cases
where it was made a misdemeanor to do or omit any act or thing,
when any power or authority hereby conferred upon this Board
were exercised bvLtoy other board or officer or officers, the omis
sion or doing of such, TOffl i corresponding act or thing, which
this act require®, Or contemplates to be done or forbids, shall in
like manner be a misdemeanor, h>nd the offender shall be liable to
indictment and punishment Jfor the same. A wilful omission or
refusal of any individual, corporation or body to conform to any
regulation of said Board duly made for the protection of life, or
the care, promotion, or preservation of health, or the carryingout the purposes of this act pursuant to its power or authority,
shall be a misdemeanor, to® the person or officers guilty thereof
shall be liable t<| indictment and punishment as for a misdemean
*
or. And all ptostoWtions and proceedings against any person
for a mfadefstfStoor under thi® act may be had or tried before any
judge or tribunal having jurisdiction of any misdemeanor within
said district,' or within thef town, city or village within which
any such misdemeanor under this act was committed. And any
person, corpCtfatiM ^Mbody which may have wilfully done or
omitted any tot or tMnj^tvhich is in this act, or any law or ordi
nance therein referred to, declared to be, or to subject the party
guilty thereofto punishment for a misdemeanor, shall, in addi
tion thereto, be [wbject to a penalty of two hundred and fifty
dollars, to fee sued for and recovered by said Board in any civil
tribunal in said district, except that in the marine, or justice, or
county »artdl^>iffireater amount can be recovered than the ex
tent of the ilMgmtiofoin other civil suits. And any such suits
may be against one or more, or each or all of those who partici
pate in the act, refusals or omissions complained of, and the re
covery may be against one or more of those joined in the action,
as the justice of the court shall direct. And the provisions of this
section as to the jurisdiction of tribunals, parties, and costs, shall
apply to all suits by said Board or its assignees or the assignees
of the Police Board under this act. And said Board of Health
may institute and maintain in its own name all such suits and
proceedings as shall be reasonable, necessary, and proper for re
covering any moneys expended, enforcing the payment of any
fine, the punishment for any offence, or in other respects carrying
* See Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 17.
�33
out the objects of this act. All processes ancl papers usual or
*
•
i
.
By whom
necessary m the commencement and prosecution of actions, or process served,
for the collection of money, in suits or proceedings under this
act on execution, may be served by any policeman, and in and
K»out such matters, the policeman so engaged shall have all the
Rowers of marshals, and no fees shall be charged by any court,
magistrate, or clerk for the issue of any paper or process, or the
(performance of any duty in suits under this act. Any civil ac- uonmay bT ac'
'tion brought under or by authority of this act, shall be in the bronshtname or by the authority of said Board, and may be brought in
»ny court in said district having jurisdiction in any civil action, Costs
to an amount as large as is demanded in such action, and if judg
ment be rendered for the plaintiff in any amount, costs of the
court in which such action is brought shall also be recovered
without reference to the amount of the recovery, provided pay
inent was demanded before suit brought, and the defendant or
defendants in the action against whom the recovery is had, did
not, as the code of procedure authorizes, offer to pay an amount
equal to the recovery against him or them, except that in cases
where the recovery shall be less than fifty dollars, the amount of
posts shall be ten dollars, and in case no recovery is had, the
plaintiff shall not pay costs, unless the judge or justice at the
(conclusion of the trial shall certify in writing that there was not
reasonable cause for bringing the action, and in such case the
costs shall not exceed ten dollars, unless the amount claimed ex
ceeded fifty dollars. No action shall abate or right of action al- Aotlons not t0
ready accrued be abolished by reason of the expiration, repeal, abateor amendment of any ordinance, code of health ordinances, or
regulation of said Board; nor shall any court lose jurisdiction
iof any action by reason of a plea that title to real estate is in
volved, provided the defendant is sought by the pleadings, to be
charged in said action on any of the grounds mentioned in this
act, other than by virtue of ownership of such real estate. In
respect to all proofs and proceedings by said Board, or its agents Papersfiied
•
deemed entered
br officers, under this act, papers filed shall be deemed entered
upon or in the minutes of the Board.
§ 3. Section twelve of said act is hereby amended so as to read
as follows :
§12. The authority, duty and powers, whether given by any powers^f’iocai
law, or by any ordinance made thereunder heretofore (for the
and °f'
* See Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 8.
5
♦
�34
Cities to pay
salaries.
Powers given
New York by
certain ordin::
ces. conferred,
upon board.
purpose of preserving or protecting life or health, or preventing
disease) conferred upon or now belonging to, or being exercised
by the board of health, or the board of public health of or ill
the city of New York, or of or in the city of Brooklyn, or else J
where in said district, the mayor and common council of either
of said cities, the mayor of the city of New York, by and with
the advice and consent of the board of aidermen, the president
of the board of aidermen, the president of the board of assist
ant aidermen (or councilmen), the resident physician, the
health commissioner, the mayor and the commissioners, the
commissioners of health, the city inspector, (or the city inspector’s department), of either of said cities ; or conferred upon
or now belonging to any two or more of the said bodies or offi
cers, or last named boards or departments, or to any board of
health or health officer or agent in said district, or exercised
by any officer or person appointed by or deriving authority
from any one or more of the bodies, officers, departments, last
named boards, (so far as said powers and authority can be exer
cised and such duty performed by the Board hereby created,
without interference with the proper discharge of the duties, otlj^
er than sanitary duties, heretofore imposed upon the board metro
politan police), are hereby exclusively conferred upon, and shall
hereafter be exclusively exercised by the aforesaid “ The Metro
politan Board of Health the members and officers thereof, as
herein provided ; and the same are to be exercised as herein set
forth (and to such an extent, and in such place and manner as
said Board may provide), for the greater protection and security
of health and life in said district, and the appropriate parts there
*
of; and after this act goes into effect, no salary or compensation
shall be paid to, or fees demanded by or expense ordered to be
incurred by any officer, board or agent, or in respect to any ser
vice, expenditure or employment under the authority of any
health law, ordinance, regulation or appointment of or in said
cities, or any part of said district, unless such salary, expendi
ture, employment, fees or expense shall be authorized by the
Board hereby created and contemplated by the provisions of this
act. And the aforesaid power, duty and authority hereby trans
ferred to and conferred upon said Board shall be held to include
all the power, duty and authority given, or conferred, or pur
porting to be given or to be conferred to or upon any person,
officer or board, in or by any ordinance contained or purporting
to be contained in the first ten chapters of ordinances, being
* See Laws of 1S6T, Chapter 956, Section 10.
�35
numbered from one to ten inclusive in a compilation of “ Laws
ancl Ordinances relative to the Preservation of the Public Health
in the City of New York,” and purporting to be published under
the authority and by the direction of the Mayor and CommisEBmers of Health of said city, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and sixty, and by any existing amendments and addigatms thereto. But no fees of any kind shall be charged for the Ko fees.
performance of any duties imposed by said ordinances. And said
Board shall also possess (and may exercise by its own agents, or
Jbf order to be executed by said Board of Police), throughout Local powers
extended over
said district, all the power and authority for the protection of district.
life or health, or the care or preservation of health, or persons
diseased or threatened therewith, conferred by any law or ordi
nance relating to any part of said district, and especially by the Health powers
act of the seventeenth of April, eighteen hundred and fifty-four, of Brooklyn
charter confer
(being the three hundred and eighty-fourth chapter of the Laws red on board.
eighteen hundred and fifty-four), upon the mayor, common
pouncil, board of health, or the health officers, (or upon any
two or more of them, or other officers), in said act mentioned.
But the powers and authority in this section given shall not be
Certain boards
held to interfere with the powers and duties of the Croton A.c- not interfered
with.
feueduct Board, Street Commissioner, Superintendent of Unsafe
Buildings, Comptroller of New York City, or the Board author
ized to contract for street cleaning (under the law of eighteen
hundred and sixty-five) ; nor shall anything in the aforesaid laws
or ordinances contained be construed as a limitation of any power in this bill elsewhere given to the said Board or to limit the
^penalties and expenses it may enforce or collect; and all the Municipal au
thorities
Jpower recited or given by said laws or ordinances shall belong interfere.not to
wholly to said Board, who may exercise the same without the
advice, assent, or co-operation of any municipal board or officer,
and in any manner not inconsistent with the other sections of
this law, without being limited to the means or by the procedure in said ordinances stated. And no municipal body or other
■authority in said district shall hereafter create or employ any of Nor incur ex
pense.
ficer or agent, or incur any expense, under any of said (or other)
health laws or ordinances, or in respect of any matter concerning
Vihich said Board is by this act given control or jurisdiction.
All the aforesaid powers are to be possessed and exercised as
tfully as if herein repeated and separately conferred upon said
Board. And the powers of said Board shall be construed to in- Additional pow
ers.
clude the ordering and enforcing, in the same manner as other
�36
orders are provided to be enforced, the repairs of building®
houses, and other structures; the regulation and control of all
Markets.
public markets (so far as relates to the cleanliness, ventilation and
drainage thereof, and to the prevention of the sale or offering
Instructions in for sale of improper articles therein;) the removal of any obstmcthe street.
tion? matter or thing in or upon the public streets, sidewalks or
*
places, which shall be in their opinion liable to lead to results
detrimental to the public, or dangerous to life or health : the reg
ulation and licensing of scavengers ; the prevention of accidents
Scavengers.
life Or health may be endangered; and, generally, the
^Accidents.
abating of all nuisances.
§ 4. Section five of said act is hereby amended so as to read as
follows:
§ 5. Immediately after the four appointed sanitary commis
sioners shall have taken the oath of office as above provided,
Organize.
they shall meet with the commissioners of the metropolitan po
lice, and the commissioners of metropolitan police with them,
and the health officer of the port of New York, and orga
nize as a board of health by electing one of said board to be
President, and one of said board to be Treasurer thereof, and by
President.
Treasurer.
appointing a proper person to be Secretary of said Board. And
Secretary.
the successive Presidents of said Board of Health shall be annu
ally elected by the said board from the members thereof, and
the successive Treasurers shall be members of said Board; but
the Secretary shall not be a member of the Board. The Treas
Term of office
of Treasurer and urer and Secretary shall respectively continue in office as such
Secretary.
until removed by the election of a successor or otherwise. The
Salaries.
said Sanitary Commissioners shall each receive a salary of two
thousand five hundred dollars a year ; and each Police
Commissioner who may be a member of. said Board of
Health, and the Health Officer, shall as such receive a salary
of five hundred dollars a year ;f and the member of said
Board of Health, who acts as Treasurer, shall receive an addi
Salary of Treas
tional compensation of five hundred dollars a year for his servi
urer.
ces as Treasurer. All salaries allowed under this law shall
be payable as the Board shall provide. But for every regular or
special meeting of said Board which any Sanitary Commissioner
or the Secretary shall fail to attend, there shall be deducted
failure to’attend, from the salary of the person so failing the sum of ten dollars ;
and for every failure of a Police Commissioner or of said Health
Repair of build-
* See Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 6.
+ Amended, Laws of 1867, Chapter 956, Section 16.
�“Officer to- attend any such meeting, there shall be deducted from
ms said salary the sum oftwo dollars; but these provisions shall not Not to apply to
adjourned meet
apply to any adjourned meeting, and it shall be the duty of the ing.
Treasurer to see that all such deductions are made before pay- Corresponding
Secretary.
■nents of said salaries. The Board may appoint a Corresponding
Secretary at an annual salary not exceeding one thousand dol
lars.
§ 5. Section fourteen, sub-division second, is hereby amended Amendment of
§14.
by striking out the words “from the time of filing as aforesaid,”
where the same immediately follow the words “ and also” in said
sub-division.
§ 6. Said Board may, by resolution, confer upon the President Power may be
confered on
power to exercise, in the absence of the Board, the authority President.
given in the fourteenth section, to temporarily suspend oi’ modi
fy any order or its execution. And said Board may change or
Power to modi
modify any order made under the first clause of the fourteenth fy order.
section, except that in cases where no hearing is asked for by the
party affected, the order shall not be so altered as to render its ef
fect more stringent than the original order.
*
§ 7. This act shall take effect immediately.
* Amended, Laws of 18G7, Chapter 956, Section 10.
�LAWS OF 1867.
CHAPTER, 956.
AN ACT relating to the Metropolitan Board of Health, and to
the duties and powers of the commissioners of said board, and
the salaries of their subordinates. Passed May 25, 1867 •
three-fifths being present.
7be People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
President and
Secretary pro
tem.
Chief Clerk to
certify papers.
Courts to take
judicial notice.
Duty of Police.
Minimum of
penalty.
Section 1. The Metropolitan Board of Health shall hereafter
have the power of electing persons to perform, pro tempore, the
duties of secretary or president respectively, during any time
when either of said officers may be absent, or be unable or may
refuse to perform their respective, duties; and the board may
designate one of the clerks in the secretary’s office of said board
as “ chief clerk,” who may perform such duties of the secretary
as shall be assigned him ; and papers certified by said chief clerk
shall be of the same effect, as evidence and otherwise, as if certi
fied by the secretary; and all courts shall take judicial notice of
the seal of said board and of the signature of its secretary and
chief clerk.
§ 2. It shall be the duty of the officers and men of the Metro
politan police force to enforce all of the ordinances and regula
tions of said board of health, and to report all violations of the
same; where, in any case the minimum penalty for a refusal to
obey, or for a violation of any order, regulation or ordinance of
said board of health, or any law is not fixed, the amount recov
ered in such case shall not be less than twenty dollars; and the
judge or justice who presided at a trial where such penalty is
claimed, shall, on said trial, in writing, fix the amount (not con
trary to said provisions) of said penalty to be recovered, and
shall direct such amount so fixed to be and it shall be included in
the judgment.
�39
8 3. Saicl board shall have the same powers in respect of per- Persons sick J
0
„
. „ .
,.
.
with pestilent™
sons afflicted with pestilential or infectious diseases, as are given or infectious
by the sixteenth section of the seventy-fourth chapter of the laws
of eighteen hundred and sixty-six, or otherwise, in respect of persons afflicted with contagious disease, and shall have power to
provide and pay for the use of proper places to which to remove places to be
such persons, as well as to designate such places; and said expenses paid.
board may cause proper care and attendance for such persons so
Eick or removed, when it shall appear to said board that any
such person is so poor as to be unable to procure for himself such
mare and attendance.
| § 4. That portion of the fourth subdivision of the twenty- Supervisor8 of
eighth section of the seventy-fourth chapter of the laws of Westchester to
eighteen hundred and sixty-six, which reads as follows, viz.:
“And the board of supervisors of the counties of New York,
LKings, Richmond and Queens (the expenses of the last named
■Bounty to be charged and collected in, and in respect of the
Property of the towns of Newtown, Flushing and Jamaica), re
spectively, are empowered and directed annually,” is hereby
Emended by inserting the word “Westchester,” between the
qvords Kings and Richmond aforesaid, in said act.
§ 5. Service of any order of said board of health shall be
rleemed sufficient, if made upon a principal person interested in |®^ieeofor’
(or upon a principal officer charged with duty in respect of) the
business, property, matter or thing, or the nuisance or abuse to
[which said order relates; or upon a person, officer or board, or
[one of the board who may be most interested in or affected by
its execution. And if said order relate to any building (or the On agents of
.
.„
.
,
£. tenement and ■
drainage, sewerage, cleaning, purification or ventilation thereof, lodging houses, i
Rr of any lot or ground on or in which such building stands) in
the cities of New York or Brooklyn, used for or intended to be
rented as the residence or lodging-place of several persons, or as
a tenement house or lodging-house, service of such order on the
agent of any person or persons for the renting of such building,
lot or ground, or for the collecting of the rent thereof (or of the
[parts thereof to which said order may relate), shall be of the
same effect and validity as due service made upon the principal
of such agent, and upon the owners, lessees, tenants and occupants of such buildings, or parts thereof, or of the subject matter
feto which such order relates.
§ 6. The word nuisance, as used in this act, shall be held to Nuisance de
embrace public nuisance as known at common law, or in equity fined-
�jurisprudence; and it is further enacted that whatever is danger-]
ous to human life or detrimental to health; whatever building!
or erection, or part, or cellar thereof, is overcrowded with occu
pants, or is not provided with adequate ingress and egress to and
from the same, or the apartments thereof, or is not sufficiently
supported, ventilated, sewered, drained, cleaned or lighted, in
reference to their or its intended or actual use; and whatever ren
ders the air, or human food or drink, unwholesome, are also,
severally in contemplation of this act, nuisances; and all such
Liability for ex nuisances are hereby declared illegal; and each and all persons
pense of abating.
and corporations who created or contributed thereto, or who may
support, continue or maintain or retain them, or any of them,
shall be jointly and severally liable for or toward the expense of
the abatement and remedying of the same; but, as between
themselves, any such persons and corporations may enforce con
tribution or collect expenses, according to any legal or equitable
relations existing between them; but nothing herein contained
Common law
liability reserv shall annul or defeat any common law liability or responsibility
ed.
in respect of nuisances. Provided, however, that nothing con
tained in this act or in the act entitled “An Act to create a Me
Stalls around
tropolitan Sanitary District and Board of Health therein for the
Fulton and
Washington
preservation of life and health, and to prevent the spread of dis
markets not to
ease,” passed February twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred and
be removed.
sixty-six; nor in the act amending said last-mentioned act,
passed April nineteen, eighteen hundred and sixty-six,
shall be construed to confer or as conferring upon the said Board
or its officers or agents the power or authority to order the re
moval, tearing down, or injury of any of the stalls or stands
around Fulton or Washington Markets, in the city of New York,
which were erected or enlarged to their present size prior to the
first day of May, 1866, at any time before the first day of July,
1869; and if, at such date, the erection of a new market or mar
kets, in the place of said markets, shall have been authorized by
law, such power shall not be exercised at any time prior to the
first day of May, 1870. But it is hereby expressly declared that
Powers as to
ventilation,
the said board shall have and possess full and complete power
drainage and
cleanliness re with reference to the ventilation, drainage and cleanliness of
served.
said stands or stalls, and shall have power to order the removal
Stalls erected or
of all stands or stalls which have been erected or enlarged upon
enlarged since
May 1, 186(5,
may be remov any street or sidewalk in said city since said first day of May,
ed.
1866, or shall hereafter be so erected; and that the power given
Power over ob
to said board over obstructions in the streets or on the sidewalks j
structions in
the street af
by existing laws is hereby expressly reaffirmed, except as herein
firmed .
�41
Plans for
modified; and the said Board are hereby directed to propose market tonew
bo
and submit to the next Legislature plans and recommendations submitted.
for the building of one or two new markets, whichever they shall
deem necessary, to replace the Fulton, Washington and West
WVashington Markets in said city.
1. Said Board of Health may institute and maintain, in any
fB|Ft in the Metropolitan Sanitary District (having jurisdiction Board may in
stitute suits to
in suits where the amount claimed exceeds one thousand dollars), abate nuisances
a suit or suits for the abatement or remedying of any of the
Bights of board
aforesaid nuisances, either completely or as fully as may be without suit.
thought necessary by the court. And said board shall also have,
fin said district, all common law rights to abate any nuisance
Disposition of
without suit, which can or does in this State, belong to any per costs.
son whatever. And all costs collected in any such action or proBBeding shall be paid over to the Treasurer of the board arid ac
counted for by him.
2. To all such suits the provisions of chapters seventy-four and
Chapters 74 and
six hundred and eighty-six of the laws of eighteen hundred and 686, laws of 1866
to apply.
Lsixty-six, relative to jurisdiction, costs and parties, shall be aprpllCable ; and the courts shall allow the plaintiff, at any proper
stage of the case, to amend, by joining other parties defendant; Eight to amend
and no suit shall be dismissed or defeated by reason of there be
ing other persons interested therein or concerned in causing, Suit not defeat
ed for defect of
creating or maintaining the nuisance complained of in such suit parties.
where such person is not a necessary party to the suit.
3. Such suit shall be tried as an issue of law, and without a How issue to be
j
unless some defendant shall, in his answer, or by notice in tried.
writing to be served on the plaintiff’s attorney within five days How jury de
after service of said answer, demand a trial by jury on some manded or
waived.
question of fact, to be in said answer or notice distinctly stated,
and in respect of which a right of trial by jury exists ; and if
lany such demand be so made and served, the case shall, as to all
■the defendants, be placed on the calendar of jury trial cases; and
to be
when reached for trial, if issues of fact for the jury have not be- Issues in writJ
stated
ing.
fore been settled, the presiding judge may state in writing the
issues of fact to be submitted to the jury, or the trial shall proceed upon the material issues of fact made by the pleadings
without such written statement of issues ; and the judge who
presided at the trial (or some judge of the same court, if said
Judgment to be.
judge he unable) shall, on receiving the verdict, or as soon there- settled.
6
�42
TVliat judgment
to contain.
How expense
to be borne.
To state on
what property
it is a lien.
IIow lien may
be removed.
Judge may or
der discharge
when expenses
paid.
oa
d given.
Or on consent.
Papers to be
filed.
after, and at the same term, if possible, settle and cause to be
entered the proper judgment in said suit.
4. If the judgment be that any nuisance may be abated or reme
l
*
died, in whole or in part, said judgment shall contain sufficient]
directions for its proper execution, and the judge shall, from the |
pleadings and from the evidence given at the trial, find and state!
what proportion of the expense of such execution shall be paid
or be borne by each or all of the defendants, jointly or severally;
and if, in the opinion of the court, any part of or all the expense
of such execution should be borne by said Board of Health, or
the execution of such judgment should be made by said board,
or under its direction, said judgment shall contain the appro
priate directions in respect to such last-named payment or exe-l
cution. And the court may also adjudge the board to pay or
advance such proportion of the expenses of exccuting’such judg
*
ment, as the judgment shall not direct to be paid by some one
or all of the defendants. Said judgment, if against any defend
ant, shall, on its face, state that it will be a lien on the real prop
erty, corporeal hereditaments of such defendant or defendants
respectively, to which the said nuisance shall have related, till
his oi’ their proportion of such expenses of execution are satis
fied, or the lien thereof shall be otherwise discharged according
to law.
5. Any person prejudicially affected by the lien of any such
judgment may, on eight days’ notice to said board, make a mo
tion before any judge of the court in which said judgment was
rendered, for an order that the lien of such judgment be dis
charged as to all or any specific property set forth ; and if it
shall appear to such judge, on the hearing of such motion, that
such eight days’ notice of such motion has been given to the
Board of Health, and that such judgment has been executed and
the expenses paid, which the lien sought to be discharged was
designed to secure ; or if a proper or sufficient undertaking or
bond, with sureties, shall be given for the payment of such ex
penses ; or if said Board of Health, through its attorney or coun
sel, shall in writing consent to the discharge of the last named
lien, as to any or all property referred to, or as to one or more
defendants, then said judge may order said lien discharged of re
cord by the proper officer, to the extent and as to the person or
persons that the order shall specify; and it shall be so dis
charged ; and such order and the moving papers shall be filed
with the proper clerk, as the judge shall direct.
�43
6. No appeal.by any party defendant shall stay the execution Appeal not to
stay proceed
of miy judgment aforesaid, except to the extent, in reference to ings, except by
special order.
the persons, and on the conditions the judge who tried the case
(if he can be conveniently applied to, or, if not, some other judge
of the same court), shall, on the settling of the judgment, or on rnotion, and on four days’ notice to said Board of Health, and with due
reference to the public interests involved, specially order ; and if
no such order shall be made, the judgment shall be executed, not■withstanding any appeal, undertaking or security, and without If no stay judg
any liability on the part of any person (other than as herein else- ment to be
executed.
where provided, in respect of said board), by reason of any damages or consequences growing out of the execution of such
■ mdgment, whether the same be reverffid or not. All appeals by
the defendant from any judgment in the said abatement suits Time within
which appeals
■shall be taken within ten days after notice in writing to the de- to be taken.
fendant or his attorney, of the entry of the judgment therein, Temporary stay
and the judge who tries the case may, in his discretion, and may be allowed.
■(without security, but only for the period of the said ten days,
order a stay as to the execution of the judgment; and within
said period of ten days an undertaking or security on appeal (to
Undertaking to
stay execution of the judgment, as herein provided) must be be filed.
*
filed, the same to be otherwise of the form and obligation as is
required in ordinary appeals from judgments, but which shall alWhat to con
so be conditioned for the payment of the appellants’ adjudged tain.
share of the expenses of executing such judgment as the court
may have estimated and said judgment may have stated, or (if
not estimated in said judgment), as the judge, on application and
three days’ notice to said board, shall estimate the same, in conformity with the judgment, for the purpose of such security on
^Rppeal. But, pursuant to any order, or otherwise, the execution No stay longer
than ten days.
■of any judgment against the defendants shall not be delayed beyond said ten days, if within that period the proper undertaking
or security on appeal, approved by the judge, has not been filed,
and the appeal perfected, as herein provided ; and the judgment
■may state the estimated expense that will have to be paid by
any party towards executing said judgment. But said board Board may ap
peal without
<
■nay appeal in any such case, or any case to which it is a par security.
ty, within ten days after the entry of any judgment, and withEffect of appeal.
out giving any security ; such appeal shall be effectual, and shalloperate as a stay on the judgment, or upon the part thereof in
* respect to which said board appeals.
%
�44
■Blnini for penalty may be
joined in same
action,
Motion for new
.trial.
What judgment
at general term
to contain.
[Appeals to
court of appeals.
When change in
code of proced
ure to apply.
Statement of
expense of exe
cuting to be
verified and
filed.
Notice of filing
to be given.
7. In any such abatement suit said board may join a cause
of action for any penalty oi' penalties that may have been in
*
curred by either of the defendants, by reason of, or in connection
with, the nuisance complained of, or by reason of any omissioq
\
or refusal of any defendant to obey or comply with any order of
the Board of Health touching such alleged nuisance, and have the
proper provision in any judgment therefor against one or more
of the defendants. No motion for a new trial on a case made
shall be entertained in any such abatement suit, except as a part
of and as arising upon the. papers upon a regular appeal to a gen
eral term of the court, and to be heard therewith.
8. The judgment of the general term, if it shall to any extent
direct any change in the judgment appealed from (but shall di
rect, or allow or fail to forbid the judgment in part to be exe- J
cuted), shall also contain the requisite specific provisions, so that
the judgment as modified may be executed, and the due propor
tion of the expenses of such execution may be assessed on the
defendants respectively, or on said board, as the general term |
may adjudge. Upon any appeal from the general term to the
court of appeals, in such abatement suit, the provisions hereof as
to appeals from the judgment to the general term, and as to se« »
curity on appeal, shall, in all particulars, including the length of
time given in which to take an appeal, apply; and no change in
the code of procedure, or otherwise, hereafter to be made, though
in subject matter applicable to said abatement suits, shall be
construed to modify the aforesaid or other provisions of the J|
health laws, as to any suits thereunder, unless such act shall spe- I
cifically declare such modification to be intended.
9. Upon the execution in whole or in part of any such judg
ment (if said board shall, as it is hereby authorized to do, decide
the public interest to demand only execution in part thereof,) a
statement of the expenses of such execution shall be made, and ■
such expenses shall be therein apportioned not contrary to any
provisions of said judgment; and upon the same being verified
by the oath of some person who by due authority, took part in
or had charge of the execution of such judgment, or by some
officer of said board, such statement, entitled in the case, may be
filed or given to the proper clerk to be filed, with such judg
ment ; and notice of such filing or delivery, and a copy of such
statement, shall be given to the attorneys of the defendant in the
suit, or to the defendants themselves, or to some one of the joint
defendants; and unless within ten days aftei- any such notice,
�45
such defendants shall give due notice in writing, to said Board When statemenl|
to become final.
or to the person who, as assignee or by order, executed such
judgment or is entitled to payment of such expense (in case it
was not executed by said board), of a motion, and serve there
with copies of affidavits to correct such statement in particulars
to be mentioned, and separately and clearly stated in such affida
vit, such statement aforesaid shall be, in all suits and proceed
ings and tribunals, and at all times, deemed and taken to be
final, conclusive, and correct; and no formal defect in such state
ment shall in any wise vitiate the same. And on any hearing of Proceedings on
hearing of
such motion, any party in interest, or said board, may read affi- motion to cor
rect statement.
Idavits in support of such original statement; and the finding of
Iwiy judge on the hearing of such motion, as to the said state Judges finding
ment of such expenses and other matters in such motion involved final.
or statement contained shall be final and conclusive, and not sub Effect of modi
ject to appeal; and such finding or statement as modified by fied finding.
such finding, when filed, shall be of the same effect as such orig
inal statement would have been, had no motion in regard there
to been made ; and for the purpose of an execution for such ex- Finding to bo
fpense, and creating a lien under any judgment;, such statements part of j udgment.
and finding or modified statement shall be regarded as a part of
said judgment, and the lien thereof shall extend to any amounts
(stated in such final statement and finding.
When
10. For the proportion and amounts, as authorized by such tion toexecnbe
issued and top
(judgment, and contained in such finding or in such statement or what.
modified statement, when either of the same shall have become
filial as aforesaid, said board or any assignee of such board, or
any other person who has executed such-judgment, or has otheiwise a right to receive the expense of so doing (or the portion
thereof that may be due from any defendant), shall have execu
tion, on such execution being allowed ex parte, by a judge oi
the court in which any judgment was recovered (and such exe
cution shall, in due form, be allowed by any such judge) ; such Against whom’
execution 10 be.
Execution to be against any one or more defendants or joint defeedants for the recovery of any amount due from such de
fendant or defendants, which the party claiufeg such execution
is entitled to receive ; and such execution, except as herein especially provided, shall be of the same effect and form as any exe
cution duly issued pursuant to any judgment. But no execution No execution
for less than
shall be issued against any defendant for less than the whole amount due.
sum due from such defendant, or for less than he shall be liable
execu
to pay in such suit; but any sum adjudged against any defend Separatecosts,
tion for
penalty, &c.
ants or defendant, in any such abatement suit for penalties,'costs,
�46
or for other cause than the expense of the abatement or remedy
ing of such nuisance, may be collected by separate or other exe
cutions (than those authorized tor collecting- such expense), to be
issued in due course of law.
'When prelimi
nary injunction
may be granted.
11. In any abatement suit aforesaid, the court, or a judge
thereof, may issue and enforce an appropriate preliminary in
junction, whenever it shall be asked for pursuant to an order of
said Board of Health, by affidavit, and there shall appear to such
judge to be reasonable cause therefor; and such injunction may
also be granted whenever it shall be made to appear to the court
On what
grounds.
or a judge thereof, by affidavit, that such injunction is needed to
prevent any illegal act, conduct, or business aforesaid, or its con
tinuance, or to prevent serious danger to human life or serious
detriment to health, or great public inconvenience touching any
matter or thing to which this act or the health laws aforesaid re
late. And in any such injunction order the court may require
[What injunc[tion order to
any building, erection or grounds to be put in a condition that
contain.
will not be dangerous to the life or detrimental to the health of
any occupant, before the same shall be leased, or rented or occu
pied, or before any rent or compensation shall be collected for
the rent or use of the whole or any portion of the same. In
any such injunction order, and also in any judgment in any abate
ment suit, the judge or court may require the tenants, lessees
Court may or and occupants (or either or any of them) of any such building,
der rents to be .
paid to Board. erection or grounds, to pay the rent thereof (or compensation there
for) due or to grow due, to said board, and said board to collect and
IIow money to
receive the same, and to apply said rent to pay the expenses of
be applied.
putting any said building, erection or ground in a condition that
will not be dangerous to the life or detrimental to the health of'
any present or future tenant, .lessee or occupant, or of any other
persons; all such collections and payments to be made in such man
ner, to such extent and oil such conditions as any such order or
judgment may provide; and every such payment to said board,
Treasurer's re and the receipt of its treasurer for such rent or compensation,
ceipt to be a
discharge.
shall be as effectual to protect any person who has made the
same, and every such tenant, lessee and occupant, and all his
and their rights under any lease or occupation, as if such pay
ment had been made to and such receipt had been given by any
lessor or owner, or any proper claimant of any such rent or com
pensation, who had, but for such order or judgment, the right
and authority to receive the same. (But no undertaking or se
No undertaking
on injunction. curity shall be required or necessary, on the part of said board,
�47
as a condition of granting such injunction, or the same being
effectual; and in any final judgment in such suit there may be injunction on
enjoined whatever, if about to happen or threatened, would be flnal->lldsmeutthe proper subject matter of a preliminary injunction.) And
when the public interest seems to the court to require a speedy Trial may bo
trial or hearing of any such suit or appeal therein, it shall be the exPedltedHuty of any judge of any court aforesaid, or of the court to
(whom application by said board may be properly made, to cause
such suit or appeal to be brought to a speedy trial (and before
it would otherwise be reached for trial or argument in due course
on the calendar,) as the judge or court may by special order
Kirect.
12. In so far as any judgment may be directed to be executed Ast0 expenses
at the expense of said board of health, or by any party defend- bnoa^red by tbe
ant at his own expense, and shall by such party defendant be so
Executed, the expense of such execution shalMiot be stated or
Embraced in the aforesaid statement or finding of expenses ; but
if any part of the execution aforesaid, which any party should
have borne or paid, shall (by reason of the delay, refusal or
defective act or execution of such party or any other cause,) be
paid, borne or incurred by said board of health, in and about the
Execution of such judgment, then the said latter expenses of said
board may be embraced in said statement and finding, 'and col
lected by execution as aforesaid.
13. Whatever expenses said board of health may lawfully and Expenses m.
1
e
e
.
properly incur in the execution of any iudgment aforesaid, or in enrred by board
r 1
.J
.
.
.
.
J J
°
.
in ,s°°ci faith to
executing, or in connection with its own orders, made in good be paid from its
?
.
.
.
. °
funds.
faith, or in and about th® discharge, in good faith, of its sup
posed duties, or-in satisfying any liability or judgment it may
have in good faith incurred or suffered by reason of its acts done
in good faith as aforesaid, or in satisfying any claim against its
officers or subordinates, arising from their acts in the discharge
fin good faith of their supposed respective duties, shall, so far as
established, be paid out of its fund or other moneys, and shall be
apportioned, assessed, collected and paid as is provided in the
health laws aforesaid in respect to the expenses of said board
and such sums paid or recovered under this act, shall not be Such expenscs
included in or considered as a part of that class of the expendi- pW ta™olned
tures of the board in respect to which there is or may be a specific limitation as to amount.
§ 7. No member, officer or agent of said board of health, and Membersand
no person (but only the board itself,) shall be sued or held to noVpersonaHy'1
liability for any act done or omitted by either person aforesaid liable-
�48
Board liable to
action.
Must be brought
within six
months.
What may be
recovered where
no undertaking
given.
Name of Board.
Service of pa
pers on board.
Name of Board
of Excise.
No injunction
against board
except by Su
preme Court on
notice.
(in good faith and with ordinary discretion,) on behalf dr oH
under said board, or pursuant to its regulations, ordinances or
said health laws. And any person whose property may have]
been unjustly or illegally destroyed or injured, pursuant to any
order, regulation or ordinance, or action of said-board of health!
or its officers, for which no personal liability may exist as afore!
said, may maintain a proper action against said jboard for the
recovery of the proper compensation or damage to be paid by
and from the funds of said board of health. Every such suit]
must be brought within six months after the cause of action
arose, and the recovery shall be limited to the damages suffered
And there shall be the same right to sue and recover against said
board (the amount to be paid from its funds,) when no security’
or undertaking is given by the board on appeal, or the granting
of an injunction, that would have existed (pursuant to the fore’
going provisions,) to sue and recover of any party to such under-]
taking, had the same been duly executed by any such party and'
board, and duly approved and filed, according to the practice in
analogous cases.
§ 8. Said board of health may sue or be sued in and by its
proper name, as “ The Metropolitan Board of Health,” and not
in or by the name of the members of said board or any of
them ; and service of all process in suits and proceedings against
or affecting said board, and other papers, may be‘ made upon the
president of said board, or upon its secretary, and not otherwise;
except that, according to usual practice in other suits, papers in
suits to which said board of health is a party, may be served on
its attorney. But when a party plaintiff or defendant to a suit
(or otherwise designated in any manner, in its capacity as a
board of excise,) said board of health shall be designated in said
capacity, and said board of excise shall hereafter be known and
described as “ The Metropolitan Board of Excise,” and only by
such last name shall it or its members sue or be sued.
§ 9. No preliminary injunction shall be granted against the
Metropolitan board of health, or of police, or its or their officers,
or against the commissioners of said boards in their capacity as
a board of excise, or against the last named board, except by the
supreme court, at a special or general term thereof, after service
of at least eight days’ notice of a motion for such injunction^
together with copies of the papers on which the motion for suehj
injunction is to be made.
�49
| 10. The sixth section of the six hundred and eighty-sixth § G, Chap. 686,
Laws ot 1866
chapter of the laws of eighteen hundred and sixty-six, is hereby amended.
amended by substituting the word “ burthensome” in place of
the word “ stringent,” therein contained. The “ code of health
Code of
ordinances,” mentioned in said six hundred and eighty-sixth nances. ordi
‘chapter, shall hereafter be designated as the “ code of sanitary
ordinances,” and the same may embrace all matters and subjects
What
to which, and so far, as the power and authority of said board of brace . to em
health extends; nor shall anything in said acts be construed as
limiting their application to the subject of health only; and said
ordinances may respectively be designated as, or incircle, rules
and regulations. Hereafter said code shall be published once
only in any week, and for two weeks only in the aggregate, in
any one year, and it shall not be necessary to publish any por When to be
published.
tion of said code which has remained unaltered since its last pre
vious publication. The twenty-ninth section of the seventy
fourth chapter of the laws of eighteen hundred and sixty-six shall
be deemed applicable to any case hereafter to arise, when said To what § 29 of
Chap. 76, Laws
board may find it necessary and proper to borrow money to dis of 1866 appli
cable .
charge its duties and defray its expenses, as in said section more
particularly mentioned;. but no more than twenty-five thousand Amount which
dollars shall be borrowed by virtue hereof, or under said section, may be borrow
ed.
in any one year. The right given in the seventy-fourth and six Right to sue for
certain
hundred and eighty-sixth chapters of the laws of eighteen hun ties. penal
dred and sixty-six, to said board of health, to sue for and re
cover, in its own name, any penalties, shall embrace any and all
penalties that might, before the acts aforesaid, have been sued
for or collected by the mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the
city of New York, the city of Brooklyn, or any person (or body
in either of said acts referred to,) under or in respect of any law
or ordinance, the power or authority given or conferred, or pur
porting to be exercised by which is now possessed by said board
of health.
§ 11. If any person shall knowingly make to said board of
health or any officer thereof any false return, statement or report False return of
births, &c.
relative to any birth, death or marriage, or other matter con
cerning which a report or return may be legally required of or
should be made by such person: or if any member, inspector or False report.
officer, or .agent of said board of health shall knowingly make to
said board of health any false or deceptive report or statement,
(in connection with his duties,) or shall accept or receive, or au7
�50
Bribe.
Punishment.
thorize or encourage, or knowingly allow any other person to
accept or receive any bribe or other compensation as a condition
of or an inducement for not faithfully discovering and fully
reporting or otherwise acting according to his duty in any
respect: then any and every such person shall be deemed guilty
of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to be for such crime in
dicted, tried and punished according to law, and shall, in addi
tion, forfeit all compensation due or to grow due from said
board.
§ 121 ^TP011 the application of any party in interest in any
pending examination before said board of health, bv affii
? J
davit stating the grounds of such application to any judge of a
court of record, and asking that any person or persons therein
named shall appear before said board of health, or any person
taking or about to take such examination, at some time or times
and place, to be stated in said affidavit, it shall be the duty of
such judge, if he discovers reasonable cause so to do, to issue his
order requiring such person or persons named to appear and sub
mit to such examination as and to the extent such order may
state, at the times and places to be in said order named; and
such order, to be signed by such judge, may be served, and shall
in all respects be obeyed as a subpoena duly issued; and a refu
sal to submit to the proper examination may be punished by
such judge, or by any judge of such court, as a contempt of
court, upon the facts as to such refusal being brought before any
such judge by affidavit.
eeimns orders'
§ 13> ^ie
board, its assignee, or any person acting under
to be a lien.
p-g authority, in executing any order of said board, shall have a
lien for the expenses necessarily incurred in the execution of
said order, and said expenses shall be a lien upon the land and
buildings upon or in respect of which, or either of which, the
Priority of ii»n wo1’^ required by said order has been done, or expenses incurred,
which lien shall have priority over all other liens and incum
brances, except taxes and assessments. But no such lien shall
where notice to be valid for any purpose till the said board or person shall have
caused to be filed in the office, or -with the officer where notices of
mechanics’ liens are now or maybe hereafter required to be filed,
a notice containing the same particulars required to be stated
what to conwith reference to mechanics’ liens, with the further statement
tall‘'
that the expense has been incurred in pursuance of an order of
said board, and giving its date. Upon such filing the said offi
cer shall make the same entry on the book or index in which
mechanics’ liens are entered as he is required to enter in cases of
Rmpei™7
to attend before matter
board.
i
�51
mechanics’ lien, together with a reference to said order by date;
and thereafterffhe same shall, except as herein elsewhere pro
vided, have the same effect in all respects as a mechanics’ lien;
land all proceedings with reference to said lien, its enforcement
/and discharge, shall be had and carried on in the same manner
Bis similar proceedings with reference to mechanics’ liens are
how or may be hereafter by law had or carried on. The filing
of such statement shall, as to all persons, have the same effect as
filing of notice of mechanics’ lien ; and unless within two months
When notice to
after actual notice of such filing, proceedings are taken by the b- come coneluparty against whom or whose said property the lien is claimed siveto discharge such lien, the filing shall, as to all persons having
such actual notice, become conclusive evidence that the amount
claimed in such statement, with interest/is due, and is a just lien
’upon said land and building. Such lien shall continue to be a Hotv long to
Alien for the space of four years from the time of filing such state continues lien.
ment, unless proceedings are in the meantime taken to enforce
or discharge the same, which may be done at any time during
its continuance. In case proceedings are so taken, it shall remain a lien until the final termination of such proceedings; and
if such proceedings shall result in a judgment for the amount
claimed in such statement, or any portion thereof, such judg
ment shall, to such extent, be a lien in the same manner, and
grom the same time, as said statement.
§ 14. The said Board of Health may from time to time fix and Powers of board
over coroners
define the time of making, and the form of returns and reports in New York
to be made to said board by the coroners of the counties of New and Kings.
York and Kings, in all cases of post mortem inquests, or view
ing of dead bodies held by them or any of them ; and the said
coroners are hereby required to conform to the directions of Coroners to
said board in the premises, and it shall be the duty of every obey directions,
loroner at once, and before holding any inquest, upon being
Duty of coro
failed upon to hold an inquest as aforesaid, or notified thereof, ner:- to notify
boa’d of call for
to immediately transmit and cause to be delivered to the secre inquest.
tary of said board of health, written notice of the fact of such
call for holding inquest, in which shall be stated every particu
lar then known to said coroner as to said call, the body, the
place where it is, and the reported cause of death. If at any Board may or
der burial ot
time said board, or the sanitary, or assistant sanitary superin body in certain
tendent, shall deem the protection of the public health to de- cases.
U|and, it may (so soon as the coroner’s jury shall have viewed
the dead body, and an autopsy thereof shall have been made,
�52
provided the coroner deems the same necessary,) order the im
mediate burial of any dead body, or if he or it deems that the
public health demands an immediate removal of said body from
the place of death to another place for inquest, may likewise at
any time order said immediate removal, and shall have, power to
cause said orders to be obeyed and executed.
Limit of expen
§ 15. The seventy-fourth chapter of the laws of 1866, is
diture.
amended, by substituting in the place of the words “ one hun
dred thousand dollars,” where the same occurs in the twenty
eighth section thereof, the following words, viz : “ one hundred
Salaries of Su and fifty thousand dollars.” The salary of the sanitary superin
perintendent,
tendent shall be five thousand dollars per annum; of the assis
asst, superin
tendent. Inspec
tant sanitary superintendent thirty-five hundred dollars, and of
tors, may be
classified.
the sanitary inspectors not less than eighteen hundred dollars,
nor more than twenty-five hundred dollars; and said board may
Asst, inspec
divide said inspectors into classes, and fix the salaries of each
tors .
class within said limits. Said board may appoint such num
Expense of ex
ber of assistant sanitary inspectors as they shall deem necessary,
ecuting orders
not covered by
and fix their salaries at an amount not exceeding twelve hun
limit.
dred dollars each. And all sums that may be expended in exe
cuting any order, resolution or regulation of said board of health,
or in executing any judgment that may be recovered by the
board, or in paying any sums that may be recovered against the
board of health, shall be deemed sums provided to be paid by
and to be recovered back from some person or corporation,
within the meaning of the said last named twenty-eighth sec
tion,.
§ 16. By reason of the additional duties to be performed by
Salary of com
missioners as a the several commissioners of said board of health, in their ca
board of excise.
pacity as commissioners of excise, the salary of each thereof,
except the health officer of the port of New York, is increased
by the sum of fifteen hundred dollars, and a reasonable compen
May increase
sation or salary in addition to what has been heretofore author
salaries of offi
cers .
ized may be paid by said board to any of its officers or employees
whose labors are for that reason increased ; the said increase of
salary to date from the first day of December, one thousand
Increase to date
from December eight hundred and sixty-six, and the same shall be paid from the
1,1866.
moneys received for licenses. The provisions of the seventy
Quorum, mode fourth chapter, of the laws of 1866, so far as the same relate to
of calling meet
ings, seal, &c., the calling and holding of meetings, or a quorum thereat, the
of board of
duties of the secretary, the dismissal and control of officers and
exciseagents, the designation and use of a seal, the authentication and
Or its removal.
�53
presumptive effect and legality of the records, papers and acts of
the board, shall be held to apply to said board and the commis
sioners named in said act and to their doings, in their capacity
as a board of excise. Said board of excise shall make a like an- lo report,
nual report as is required of said board of health. ■
§17. Any wilful omission or refusal to obey or conform to Neglect or retu.
.
.
sa1 to obey a
any part of this act, or any willful resistance of or refusal to misdemeanor.,
obey any order, regulation or ordinance made in pursuance of
this act, shall be subject to the same punishment, penalty and
liabilities, both civil and criminal, as if such omission, refusal or re
sistance was in respect of either of the acts mentioned in the tenth
Section hereof, or in respect of an order, regulation or ordinance
made in pursuance of either of the last named acts.
§ 18. When any order of said board of health has been exe- statement. <>r
°
J
.
.
expense, of excuted, or so far executed as said board may require, the expen- editing orders
ses of such execution, giving in general terms the items of such
expense and the date of execution, shall be stated in an affidavit,
and the same shall be filed among the records of said board,
with the order so executed; and said board shall take care, by
or through some proper officer, or otherwise, that the expenses
of such execution be so stated with fairness and accuracy ; and
when it shall appear that such execution, or the expenses there
of, related to several lots or buildings belonging to different per- Espcnse to bc
sons, said affidavit shall state what belongs to or arose in respect apportioned
to each lot of said several lots or buildings, as said board or its
authorized officer may direct; and the correctness of such ap
pointment or expenses, as stated in any such affidavit, shall not
statement
be called in question or reviewed elsewhere than before said corrected,
board; but said board may revise and correct the same, as said
board shall think truth and justice may require.
Claim for pen
Whenever the expenses attending the execution of any order alty and for ex
pense joined in
of said board of health (and all such expenses are to be a lien one action
and charge as said original act specifies as to certain expenses,)
may be made the subject of a suit by said board, or its assignee,
(or the person having a right to recover such expenses,) there
maybe joined in the same suit a claim or claims for any penalty
or penalties for violations of either of said chapters, or of this
act, or for the violation or omission to perform or obey said
order, (or any prior order of said board,) or for the not doing of
that or any portion of that, for the doing of which said expenses
i arose or were incurred; and said board may make an assignment ciaim for pen, .
alty may he asof the claim for any such penalty or penalties, to enable the claim sagged.
�54
Joint or several
judgment.
Expenses and
judgment a lien
upon rent.
Also upon com
pensation refer
red to in § 16,
Chap. 76, Laws
of1866.
How lien ren
dered effectual.
Copy of order
with statement
of expense or
transcript of
judgment to be
served.
Upon whom
served.
Demand of rent
may be served.
for the same and the claim for said expenses to be joined in the
same suit; and the proper joint or several judgment may be had
against one or more of the defendants in the suit, as they or
either of them may be liable in respect of both said claims, or
either or any of them.
And said expenses of executing said order, and the expenses
of executing any judgment in any abatement suit herein pro
vided for, and the several judgments that may be recovered
hereunder, or otherwise, for any such penalty or expenses, (or
both such penalty and expenses together,) until the same are
paid or discharged, shall be (a lien as other judgments, and also)
a lien and charge upon rent and compensation due or then ma
turing from any tenant or occupant of the building, lots and
premises, or the parts thereof to which any such order or judg
ment relates, or'in respect of which any such expenses were in
curred.
And such expenses and judgments shall respectively be liens
on the several compensations mentioned, and under the circum
stances stated (as to certain expenses being such lien) in the
fourteenth section of the seventy-fourth chapter of the laws of
eighteen hundred and sixty-six, as if the provisions there contained
were here repeated. For the purpose of rendering such lien and
charge more effectual to secure payment of any such expenses or
judgment, from any rent or compensation aforesaid, the follow
ing proceedings may be taken:
1. The board of health, or any person owning any such judgment,
or the claim for any such expenses, or having a right to receive
payment therefor, may serve a copy of the order under or by
reason of which such expenses were authorized or incurred (with
a copy of any affidavit, stating the expenses of the execution of
such order,) or, if the claim be a judgment, may serve a tran
script of such judgment (and any affidavit showing the expense
of its execution, if there be any) upon any person or corporation
owing, or who is about to owe, any compensation (in respect of
any matter or thing in said fourteenth section mentioned,) or
owing or about to owe any rent or compensation for the use or
occupation of any grounds, premises or building, or any part
thereof, to which said order or judgment relates, and in respect
of which such expenses or the expenses embraced in said judg
ment related or were incurred; and may, at any time of such
service, demand in writing that such rent, or any such compensa
tion (to the extent of said claims for said expenses, or of any such
�55
Efflgtnent or expense in executing the same,) shall, when such
rent or compensation becomes clue and payable, be paid to the
Uwsurer of said board of health.
2. After the service of the papers aforesaid and such demand,
do6'a
any tenant, lessee, occupant or other person owing or about to ?a’d t0 treas"
Owe, any such rent or any such compensation, shall, when such
rent or any such compensation shall mature or become payable,
pay the same, and from time to time any other amount thereof,
as the same may become due and payable, (or so much thereof
as is sufficient to satisfy any such judgment or claim for expen
ses or both, so served,) to the treasurer of said board of health ;
and such treasurer shall give his receipt as treasurer therefor, Treasurer to
stating on account of what order or judgment and expenses the an^deposiUn
'same has been paid to him and received; and the amount so re
ceived shall be deposited in some bank in the city of New York,
where other funds of the board are kept, to the special account
of such treasurer.
3. Any person or corporation refusing or omitting, as herein di- Persons refusi
i
,
r.
.
o in.?to pay liable
rected, to make such payment to said treasurer, after service of for amount,
the paper and demand aforesaid, as herein required, shall be per
sonally liable to said board of health, or to the party owning
any such claim for expenses or judgment (if not belonging to
said .board,) for the amount that should have been paid to said
treasurer, according to the provisions hereof, and may by such
barty (or board, if the owner aforesaid) be sued therefor; and thereforSUed
Buch persons shall not in such suit dispute or call in question the whatnot to be
authority of said board of health to incur or order such expense,
uted in suoh
Or the validity or correctness of such expenses or judgment in
any particular, or the right of the party making said demand, or
his assignee, to have the same paid from such rent or compensa
tion. But the receipt of such treasurer ,for any sum 1
paid him as receipt efiectTreasurer’s
1
J
aforesaid, shall, in all suits and proceedings, and for every pur- ualpose, be as effectual in favor of any person holding the same as
actual payment of the amount thereof to the proper landlord,
lessor, owner, or other person or persons who would, but for the
provisions of this statute, or said service and demand, have been
entitled to receive the sum so paid to such treasurer, could or
would have been. And it is further expressly declared, that no
tenant or occupant of any lot, building or premises, or his or dispossessed be
their assignee or lessee, shall be dispossessed or disturbed, nor u treasurerDt
shall any lease or contract, or rights, be forfeited or impaired,
nor any forfeiture or liability be incurred by reason of any omist
�o6
sion to pay to any landlord, owner, lessor, contractor, party of
other person, the sum so paid to said treasurer, or any part
thereof.
Treasurer to re
4 . The treasurer of said board of health shall retain said money
tain moneys till
twelve clays af so paid him until twelve days after it s^iall be made to appear to
ter notice.
said board of health, or some proper officer thereof, by satisfac
tory affidavit, that the party or parties, or his or their agent for
the collection of any such rent or compensation, who (but for ■
the provisions hereof would have been entitled to receive the
same,) has had written notice of such payment being made, to
said treasurer, and a copy of his receipt therefor; and if at the
If suit to recov end of said twelve days, the party or parties aforesaid, so noti
er not brought fied, have not instituted suit to recover said money, as herein
within twelve
days amount
to be applied on after provided, then the same shall, by said treasurer, be paid to
claim.
any person who may own or have the right to recover the
amount of the judgment or the claim for expenses so served as
aforesaid (or so much thereof as the party may be entitled to,)
or on account of which the money was paid to said treasurer;
and after such payment by the treasurer, the party or parties
When money
may be claimed aforesaid (who failed to sue) shall have no right to demand or
back of treas
urer after
receive any such money unless they shall, within six calendar
twelve days.
months from the expiration of said twelve days, in a suit allege
that they had no notice of such payment to said treasurer, and
What to prove shall, on the trial of such suit, prove said allegation, and also
on trial.
that they were not liable to pay the said claim for expenses or
the said penalty or judgment, and that the said board had not
jurisdiction to order the expenses aforesaid, on account of which
the money was so paid to said' treasurer, or on which any such
judgment was obtained; and in case of a recovery in such suit it
Who to be made shall be only to the extent such parties were not so liable; and
parlies.
in such suit any person or persons who may have received said
money from said treasurer or board shall, by the plaintiff, be
made a party defendant; and if the plaintiff shall recover such
Board may have
judgment
money, or any part thereof, said board of health shall be enti
against co-defendant.
tled to any equitable judgment in such suit which the court may
see lit to direct for recovering said money back, or any part
thereof, from such co-defendant, which had been paid to him by
said treasurer.
5. In case any suit shall be brought under the last subdivision ot
if suit brought
within twelve
this section, or before the expiration of the said twelve days,
days, who may
be parties.
said board of health (but not said treasurer) shall be joined as a
party defendant; and any person or persons, other than said
�57
^oardjBlwning the right to receive said money on account of
said order, expenses or judgment, or who has received the same,
shall also hy the plaintiff be made parties defendant; and no
answer need be made by said board, (except at its option, or if What answer of
it be not a claimant as having paid or incurred said expenses, or board to con
tain .
as being the owner of said judgment,) further than the allega
tion that it holds said money so paid, and is ready to pay it over,
as the result of the suit may render it proper, or to pay an equal
amount to the plaintiff, if adjudged to do so; and said money shall Money to be
be held by said board pending said suit, (if not paid over before held pending
suit.
suit brought as aforesaid,) and provided said suit be diligently
prosecuted to judgment; and on its conclusion the board of
health shall cause the money, if still with its treasurer, or the
proper amount from its funds, to be paid as the determination of
No costs
the suit may render proper; and no costs in any suit in this sec board. against
tion mentioned shall be recovered against said board of health.
But to entitle a plaintiff to recover in any such last named suit, What plaintiff
to prove.
he must make the same proof and establish the same facts as is
required to enable him to recover in any aforesaid suit in this
section mentioned, except as to his not having had notice of such
payment to such treasurer. The treasurer shall obey the direc Treasurer to
obey board.
tions of said board, and shall not be personally liable (unless for
Ilfs own fraudulent acts) for or in respect of any such money or Not personally
facts aforesaid to any one, but said board of health shall pay liable.
such sum as may be finally adjudged against it in any suit.
§ 19.. Said board of health is hereby authorized and directed Board to codify
laws.
to employ such competent person or persons to reduce to the
form of a code all the laws applicable to said board or such parts
Of them as are deemed appropriate to be enforced, and to add
thereto such provisions as said board may deem needful; and To prepare code
also to prepare a complete code of ordinances appropriate to be of ordinances,.
enacted and put in force in said district; and also such general
regulations, and blank forms, as in the opinion of said board
are requisite in the discharge of its duties ; the same to be re
ported to the legislature as early as they can be prepared and To be reported
perfected, and not later than the opening of the session in eight to legislature.
een hundred and sixty-nine ; and said board may incur the ne
cessary expense for the purposes aforesaid, and said board may
have such report printed.
, § 20. No law heretofore enacted or hereafter to be enacted This or prior >:
Shall be construed to repeal or modify any portion of this act or acts not repeal-!
ed by implica
of any law relating to said board of health, or to the members tion.
8
�58
Board of police
may build
telegraphs.
Board of health
may use
telegraph.
Board of police
to detail patrol
men as sur
geons.
Police surgeons
may be detailed
to assist board
of health.
Of said board, their duties or powers as such or as a Board of Ex
cise, unless and except in so far as said law shall expressly thereto refer, and repeal or modify the said laws.
§ 21. The Board of Metropolitan Police shall have power to
erect, operate, supply and maintain, under the general laws of
the State relating to telegraphs, all such lines of telegraph to
and between such places in the district as for the purposes and
business of the police the board shall deem necessary. Said
board may procure and shall own and control all instruments,
fixtures, property and materials procured for the pnrpose above
mentioned, but the cost thereof shall be chargeable to general
expenses of Metropolitan police. The board of police is hereby
permitted to use the said telegraph lines to aid them in facili
tating the operations of the board of health, and when so used
the expense thereof shall be charged to the said board of health,The board of Metropolitan police may detail from the force
members thereof, not exceeding five in number, to perform sur
geon’s duties in any part of the district, and may remand them
to post duty, and while they are so detailed to surgeon’s duties
their pay shall be the same as other surgeons. The pay of sur
geons shall be chargeable to the respective counties in which
they served as surgeons; and any surgeon may be dismissed by
resolution of the board, but the unanimous vote of the board, all
the commissioners being present, taken by ayes and noes, and
recorded, shall be required to adopt such resolution. The board
of police may, if requested by the board of health, employ their
surgeons to aid the sanitary inspectors in the discharge of
their duties, under such regulations and order as the board
of police may make and issue.
§ 22. This act shall take effect immediately.
�59
CHAPTER 908.
AN ACT for the regulation of tenement ancl lodging houses in
the cities of New York and Brooklyn. Passed May 14, 1867.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. From and after the first day of July, eighteen
j
i ■ .
■.
When to take
hundred and sixcy-seven, no house, building, or portion thereof, effect,
in the cities of New York or Brooklyn, shall be used, occupied,
leased or rented for a tenement or lodging house unless the same
conforms in its construction and appurtenances to the require
ments of this act.
§ 2. Every house, building or portion thereof, in the cities of Vg t_
New York and Brooklyn, designed to be used, occupied, leased windows,
dt rented, or which is used, occupied, leased or rented for a ten
ement or lodging house, shall have in every room which is occu
pied as a sleeping room, and which does not communicate
directly with the external air, a ventilating or transom window,
having an-opening or area of three square feet, over the door
leading into and connected with the adjoining room, if such ad
joining room communicates with the external air, and also a
ventilating or transom window of the same opening or area,
communicating with the entry or hall of the house, or where
this is, from the relative situation of the rooms impracticable,
such last- mentioned ventilating or transom window shall com
municate with an adjoining room that itself communicates with
the entry or hall. Every such house or building shall have in
th© roof, at the top of the hall, an adequate and proper ventilax., x .
tor, ot a form approved m New York by the inspector of public hal1buildings, and in Brooklyn by the assistant sanitary superintendent of the metropolitan board of health.
§ 3. Every such house shall be provided with a proper fire Pire esc
escape, or means of escape in case of fire, to be approved in New
York by the inspector of public buildings, and in Brooklyn by
assistant sanitary superintendent of the Metropolitan board
of health.
1
§ 4 The roof of every such house shall be kept in good re- Eool in repair.
*
pair, and so as not to leak, and all rain water shall be so drained
�60
or conveyed therefrom as to prevent its dripping on to the ground^
or causing dampness in the walls, yard or area. All stairs shall
be provided with proper bannisters or railings, and shall be kept
in good repair.
Water closets
§ 5. Every such buildingshall be provided with good and suffi
or privies.
cient water closets or privies, of a construction approved by the
Metropolitan board of health, and shall have proper doors,
traps, soil pans, and other suitable works and arrangements, so
far as may be necessary to ensure the efficient operation thereof.
Such water closets or privies shall not be less in number than
One to every
twenty occu
one to every twenty occupants of said house; but water closets
pants.
and privies may be used in common by the occupants of any two
or more houses, provided the access is convenient and direct,
and provided the number of occupants in the houses for which
they are provided shall not exceed the proportion above required
To be connected for every privy or water closet. Every such house situated
with sewer.
upon a lot on a street in which there is a sewer, shall have the
water closets or privies furnished with a proper connection with
the sewer, which connection shall be in all its parts adequate
for the purpose, so as to permit entirely and freely to pass what
ever enters the same. Such connection with the sewer shall be
of a form approved in New York by the Croton Aqueduct
To have traps
Board, and in Brooklyn by the Board of Water Commissioners.
and water.
All such water closets and vaults shall be provided with the
proper traps, and connected with the house sew’er by a proper
tight pipe, and shall be provided with sufficient water and other
proper means of flushing the same; and every owner, lessee and
Owners and
others to pre
occupant shall take adequate measures to prevent improper sub
vent obstruc
tions, exhala
stances from entering such water closets or privies or their con
tions, &c.
nections, and to secure the prompt removal of any improper
substances that may enter them, so that no accumulation shall
take place, and so as to prevent any exhalations therefrom, offen
sive, dangerous or prejudicial to life or health, and so as to pre
Cesspools only vent the same from being or becoming obstructed. No cesspool
.when unavoida
ble.
shall be allowed in or under or connected with any such house,
except when it is unavoidable, and in such case it shall be con
structed in such situation and in such manner as the Metropoli
How construct tan Board of Health may direct. It shall in all cases be water
ed.
tight, and arched or securely covered over, and no offensive
smell or gases shall be allowed to escape therefrom, or from any
Yard or area to privy or privy vault. In all cases where a sewer exists in the.
be connected
street upon which the house or building stands, the yard or areal
with sewer.
shall be so connected with the same that all water, from the roof
Stairs.
�61
or otherwise, and all liquid filth shall pass freely into it. Where °jtterh street
no sewer exists in the street, the yard or area shall be so graded
that all water, from the roof or otherwise, and all filth shall flow
freely from it and all parts of it into the street gutter, by a pas
sage beneath the sidewalk, which shall be covered by a perma
nent cover, but so arranged as to permit access to remove ob
structions or impurities.
§ 6. From and after the first day of July, eighteen hundred ^dansotoc*
and sixty-seven, it shall not be lawful, without a permit from the
Metropolitan Board of Health, to let or occupy, or suffer to be require permits,
occupied separately as a dwelling, any vault, cellar, or under
ground room built or rebuilt after said date, or which shall not
have been so let or occupied before said date. And from and cgl]ar to he
after July first, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, it shall not be used
lawful without such permit to let or continue to be let, or to
occupy or suffer to be occupied separately as a dwelling any ments.
vault, cellar or underground room whatsoever, unless the same
be in every part thereof at least seven feet in height, measured
from the floor to the ceiling thereof, nor unless the same be for
at least one foot of its height above the surface of the street or
ground adjoining or nearest to the same, nor unless there be
outside of and adjoining the said vault, cellar or room, and ex
tending along the entire frontage thereof, and upwards from six
inches below the level of the flooi’ thereof up to the surface of
the said street or ground an open space of at least two feet and
six inches wide in every part, nor unless the same be well and
effectually drained by means of a drain, the uppermost part ot
which is one foot at least below the level of the floor of such
vault, cellar or room, nor unless there is a clear space of not less
than one foot below the level of the floor, except where the same
is cemented, nor unless there be appurtenant to such vault, cellar
or room the use of a water-closet or privy kept and provided as “have^
in this act required, nor unless the same have an external win- windows, &c.
dow opening of at least nine superficial feet clear of the sash
frame, in which window opening there shall be fitted a frame
filled in with glazed sashes, at least four and a half superficial
feet of which shall be made so as to open for the purpose of
ventilation. Provided, however, that in case of an inner or back
vault, cellar or room let or occupied along with a front vault,
cellar or room, as part of the same letting or occupation, it shall
be a sufficient compliance with the provisions of this act if the cellar may be
front room is provided with a window as herein before pro- front one.
vided, and if the said back vault, cellar or room is connected
�62
with the front vault, cellar or room by a dooi' and also by a prop
er ventilating or transom -window, and where practicable
also, connected by a proper ventilating or transom window,
or by some hall or passage, or with the external air.
Provided always that in any area adjoining a vault, cellar
May have steps
to area.
or underground room there may be steps necessary for access to
such vault, cellar or room, if the same be so placed as not to be
over, across or opposite to the said external window, and so as
to allow between every part of such steps and the external wall
of such vault, cellar or room, a clear space of six inches at least,
and if the rise of said steps is open ; and provided further that
over or across any such area there may be steps necessary for
Also over area.
access to any building above the vault, cellar or room to which
such area adjoins, if the same be so placed as not to be over,
across or opposite to any such external window.
§ 7. From and after the first day of July, eighteen hundred
After July 1,
■868, every
and sixty-eight, no vault, cellar or underground room shall be
cellar requires
permit.
occupied as a place of lodging or sleeping, except the same shall
be approved, in writing, and a permit given therefor, by the
Metropolitan Board of Health.
§ 8. Every tenement or lodging house shall have the proper
garbage boxes.
and suitable conveniences or receptacles for receiving garbage
fcombustibles or and other refuse matters.
No tenement or lodging house, nor
unhealthy
articles not to
any portion thereof, shall be used as a place of storage for any
be stored, or
animals kept.
combustible article, or any article dangerous to life or detrimen
tal to health; nor shall any horse, cow, calf, swine, pig, sheep
oi’ goat be kept in said house.
§ 9. Every tenement or lodging-house, and every part there
To be kept clean
of, shall be kept clean and free from any accumulation of dirt,
filth, garbage or other matter in or on the same or in the yard,
court, passage, area or alley connected with or belonging to the
To cleanse to
same. The owner or keeper of any lodging-house, and the
satisfaction of
Board of Health. owner or lessee of any tenement house or part thereof, shall
thoroughly cleanse all the rooms, passages, stairs, floors, win
dows, doors, walls, ceilings, privies, cesspools and drains thereof
of the house or part of the house of which he is the owner or
lessee, to the satisfaction of the Metropolitan Board of Health,
so often as shall be required by or in accordance with any regu
lation or ordinance of said board, and shall, well and sufficiently,
To whitewash
to the satisfaction of said board, whitewash the walls and ceil
twice a year.
ings thereof twice at least in every year, and in the months of
April and October, unless the said board shall otherwise direct.
�63
Owners and
Every tenement or lodging-house shall have legibly posted or agents names
painted on the wall or door in the entry, or some public accessi posted.
ble place, the name and address of the owner or owners, and of
me agent or agents, of any one, having charge of the renting
and collecting of the rents for the same ; and service of any pa
Service of pa
pers required by this act, or by any proceedings to enforce any pers .
of its provisions, or of the acts relating to the Metropolitan
Board of Health, or the Department for the Survey and Inspec
tion of buildings, shall be sufficient if made upon the person or
persons so designated as owner or owners, agent or agents.
§ 10. The keeper of any lodging-house, and the owner, agent Officers of'
Board of Health
of the owner, lessee and occupant of any tenement house, and to have access.
every other person having the care or management thereof,
shall, at all times, when required by any officer of the Metro
politan Board of Health, or by any officer upon whom any duty
or authority is conferred by this act, give him free access to such
Sick persons
house and to every part thereof. The owner or keeper of any be reported. to
lodging-house, and the owner, agent of the owner, and the lessee
of any tenement house, or part thereof, shall, whenever any per
son in such house is sick of fever, or of any infectious, pestilen
tial or contagious disease, and such sickness is known to such
owner, keeper, agent or lessee, give immediate notice thereof to
the Metropolitan Board of Health, or to some officer of the
same, and, thereupon, said board shall cause the same to be in House may be
disinfected,
spected, and may, if found necessary, cause the same to be im clothing, furni
ture, &c.
mediately cleansed or disinfected at the expense of the owner,
in such manner as they may deem necessary and effectual; and
they may also cause the blankets, bedding and bed clothes used
by any such sick person, to be thoroughly cleansed, scoured and
fumigated, or, in extreme cases, to be destroyed.
§ 11. Whenever it shall be certified to the Metropolitan Board Buildings infec
ted or out of
of Health by the Sanitary Superintendent, that any building or repair may be
ordered vacated.
part thereof is unfit for human habitation, by reason of its being
so infected with disease as to be likely to cause sickness among
the occupants, or by reason of its want of repair has become
Notice to be
dangerous to life, said board may issue an order and cause the posted and
same to be affixed conspicuously on the building or part thereof, served.
and to be personally served upon the owner, agent or lessee, if
the same can be found in this State, requiring all persons therein
to vacate such building for the reasons to be stated therein as
aforesaid. Such building or part thereof shall, within ten days
thereafter, be vacated; or within such shorter time, not less than
�64
twenty-four hours, as in said notice may be specified; but said
board, if it shall become satisfied that the danger from said
house, or part thereof, has ceased to exist, may revoke said or
der, and it shall thenceforward become inoperative.
§ 12. No house hereafter erected shall be used as a tenement
Houses here
after erected or house or lodging house, and no house heretofore erected and not
converted to
comply with
now used for such purpose, shall be converted into, used or
additional
requirements. leased for a tenement or lodging house, unless in addition to the
requirements hereinbefore contained, it conforms to the require
ments contained in the following sections:
§ 13. It shall not be lawful hereafter to erect for or convert to
Distances be
tween buildings the purposes of a tenement or lodging house a building on the
on front and
rear of lot.
front of any lot where there is another building on the rear of
the same lot, unless there is a clear open space exclusively be
longing thereto, and extending upwards from the ground of at
least ten feet between said buildings, if they are one story high
above the level of the ground ; if they are two stories high, the
distance between them shall not be less than fifteen feet; if they
are three stories high, the distance between them shall be twenty
feet; and if they are more than three stories high, the distance
Buildings on
between them shall be twenty-five feet. At the rear of every
rear of lot.
building hereafter erected for or converted to the purposes of a
tenement or lodging house on the back part of any lot, there
shall be a clear open space of ten feet between it and any other
Distances may building. But when thorough ventilation of such open spaces
be modified.
can be otherwise secured, said distances may be lessened or
modified, in special cases, by a permit from the Metropolitan
Board of Health.
§ 14. In every such house hereafter erected or converted, every
Height of rooms. habitable room, except rooms in the attic, shall be in every part
not less than eight feet in height from the floor to the ceiling ;
and every habitable room in the attic of any such building, shall
be at least eight feet in height from the floor to the ceiling,
throughout not less than one-half the area of such room. Every
Windows.
such room shall have, at least, one window, connecting with the^
external air, or over the door a ventilator oi perfect construction,
connecting it with a room or hall which has a connection with
the external air, and so arranged as to produce a cross current of
Sizo of windows. air. The total area of window or windows in every room commnnicating with the external air, shall be at least one-tenth qf
the superficial area of every such room; and the top of one, ah
least, of such windows, shall not be less than seven feet and six
Order may be
revoked.
�65
inches above the floor, and the upper half, at least, shall be made
so as to open the full width. Every habitable room of a less small rooni to
area than one hundred superficial feet, if it does not communi- ventilation,
cate directly with the external air, and is without an open fire
place, shall be provided with special means of ventilation by a
separate air shaft extending to the roof, or otherwise, as the
'Board of Health may prescribe.
§ 15. Every such house hereafter erected or converted shall have chimneys,
adequate chimneys running through every floor, with an open
fire-place or grate, or place for a stove, properly connected with
one of said chimneys, for every family and set of apartments.
It shall have proper conveniences and receptacles for ashes and ^bbTshnd
rubbish. It shall have Croton, Ridgewood, or other water fur
nished at one or more places in such house, or in the yard there- Waterof, so that the same may be adequate and reasonably convenient
for the use of the occupants thereof. It shall have the floor of Cellar floor
the cellar properly cemented, so as to be water tight. The halls
dt
on each floor shall open directly to the external air, with suita- ends,
ble windows, and shall have no room or other obstruction at the
end, unless sufficient light or ventilation is otherwise provided
for said halls, in a manner approved by the Metropolitan Board
of Health.
8 16 Everv owner or other person, violating any provision of Punishment for
O
J
a
n i
-1
• violation.
this act, after thesame shall take effect, shall be guilty of a mis
demeanor, punishable by a fine of not less than ten dollars, nor
more than one hundred dollars, or by imprisonment.for not more
than ten days for each and every day that such violation shall
continue, or by both such fine and imprisonment in the discreLtion of the court. He shall also be liable to pay a penalty of jtow recovered
ten dollars for each and every day that such offence shall con
tinue. Such penalty may be sued for and recovered by the Me
tropolitan Board of Health, and when recovered shall be paid
over to the treasurer of said board. In every proceeding for a
/‘ violation of this act, and in every such action for a penalty, it
shall be the duty of the owner of the house to prove the date
of its erection or conversion to its existing use, if tnat fact shall
become material, and the owner shall be prima facie the peison
liable to pay such penalty, and after him the person who is the
lessee of the whole house, in preference to the tenant or lessee
of a part thereof. In any such action the owner, lessee and oc- owner, lessees
t cupant, or anv two of them, may be made defendants, ancl jucig- may be deiend-
�66
ment may be given against the one or more shown to be liable,
as if he or they were sole defendant or defendants.
Definition of
§ 17. A tenement house within the meaning of this act, shall
[tenement house.
be taken to mean and include every house, building, or portion
thereof which is rented, leased, let or hired out to be occupied,
or is occupied as the house or residence of more than three fam
ilies living independently of another, and doing their cooking
upon the premises, or by more than two families upon a floor, so
living and cooking, but having a common right in the halls,
■Definition of
stairways, yards, water closets or privies, or some of them.- A
dodging house.
lodging house shall be taken to mean and include any house or
building, or portion thereof, in which persons are harbored or
received, or lodged for hire for a single night, or for less than a
week at one time, or any part of which is let for any person to
sleep in for any term less than a week. A cellar shall be taken
to mean and include every basement or lower story of any build
Definition of
[cellar. #
ing or house of which one-half or more of the height from the
floor to the ceiling is below the level of the street adjoining.
§ 18. The Metropolitan Board of Health shall have authority
Board of Health
may modify.
to make other regulations as to cellars and as to ventilation,
consistent with the foregoing, where it shall be satisfied that
such regulations will secure equally well the health of the occu
pants.
§ 19. This act, except when it is otherwise expressly pro
When to take
effect.
vided, shall take effect in May first, eighteen hundred and sixty
seven.
CIOFTEI8. 700.
Board of Health
to regulate driv
ing of cattle. &c.,
in New York
arid Brooklyn.
AN ACT with reference to the powers of the Metropolitan
Board of Health in the regulation of cattle driving and other
matters. Passed April 24, 1867.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate
and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. From and after the passage of this act it shall not
be lawful to drive any cattle, sheep, swine, pigs, or calves,
through the streets or avenues of New York or Brooklyn, or
any of them, except at such times and in such manner as the
Metropolitan Board of Health may by ordinance or resolution
prescribe. But so long as said board shall permit the business
�67
©f "augHt-ering animals for food to be carried on, in that portion
of the city of New York south of Fortieth Street, it shall be
lawful to drive through such streets and avenues in the city of So long as
New York as may be designated by said board, and under such hous^permitrestriction as to numbers as said board may prescribe, cattle bed<wven tiif
from eight o’clock in the evening till two hours after sunrise in sunrise?andfter
the morning, and sheep until twelve o’clock at noon. But in sheep tlU B0011,
designating the streets and avenues the said board shall have
regard as well to the convenience of persons driving the same ^nate sti-ee^8"
as to the character, condition and ordinary use of the said streets Xmbers°rib6
and avenues.
§ 2. No person in charge of any cattle, sheep, pigs, swine or cattie, &c., no«
calves, shall, if able to prevent it, permit any such cattle, sheep, acrosFside-1"
pigs, swine or calves, to pass upon or across any sidewalk in walk‘
said cities, and any per.-on violating any provision of this act
shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction be Penalty forvio.
punished by a fine of not less than ten or more than fifty dol- latinslawlars, or by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not more than
thirty days, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
§ 3. In all cases to which said Board of Health is a party,
either when acting as such or as a Board of Excise, preference fn°d excisehtolth
shall be given to the same by all courts and judges on all motions, trials, and appeals, in the same manner as to cases to which
the people of the State are directly parties plaintiff, and when
ever said board shall seek any provisional remedy,1 or shall 1
pros- give undertakBoards need not
J
ecute any appeal, it shall not be necessary before obtaining or
on appea^B
prosecuting the same to give any undertaking, but such board
shall be liable in the same manner as if an undertaking had
been given in the ordinary manner.
§ 4. This act shall take effect immediately.
,
CHAPTER 6S7.
AN ACT to authorize the abatement and prevention of certain
nuisances deemed dangerous to the public health in the city
of Brooklyn. Passed April 23, 1867, three-fifths being pres
ent.
The People of the State of Yew York, represented in Senate
and Assembly, do enact as follows :
| Section 1. Whenever it shall appear to the Metropolitan ZSePpSond«M
Board of Health, that any surface water has been, or shall be of health
liable % be ponded at any place in the city of Brooklyn, and commissioners.
�68
remain stagnant, so as to be or become a nuisance dangerous
to the public health in the vicinity thereof, they shall cause a
notice in writing to be served upon the Board of Sewerage Com
missioners of said city, specifying the location of such place.
Sewerage com
§ 2. Said Board of Sewerage Commissioners, upon receiving
missioners to
ascertain cause. such notice, shall examine and ascertain whether such ponding |
of water has been or is liable to be caused by the erection of
any building, fence, wall or other obstruction, so as to prevent
the natural or usual flow or passage of surface water, and
May enter upon
lands.
for that purpose, and for the purpose of draining such water
from such pond, the said Sewerage Commissioners, their agents
and workmen, shall be and hereby are authorized to enter into
and upon any lands and premises in the vicinity of the place
May cause
Brain to be
designated in said notice, and cause a suitable drain to be madeJ
made.
or a suitable pipe to be laid across any land above or below the
surface thereof, as they may deem best, so as to drain such water
from such pond or place, and cause it to flow and be discharged
into some public street or sewer.
'Sewerage com
§ 3. Said Sewerage Commissioners shall estimate the damages
missioners to
estimate damwhich may be sustained by the owner or owners of the lands
ages.
upon which such drain shall be made, or pipes laid, after giving
Ten days’ notice to such owner or owners ten days previous notice in writing, of
to be given
[owners.
the time and place of making such estimate, which notice shall
be served upon such owner or owners personally, or leaving the
same at his or their usual place of residence, or upon the premi
ses where such drain or pipe shall be made or laid, with some
person of suitable age to receive the same.
Bi deemed prop
§ 4. If said Sewerage Commissioners shall, under all the cir
er, may pay ex
penses from
cumstances deem it proper that such damages and the cost and
general sewer
age fund.
expenses incurred in making such drain, or laying such pipe,
should be borne by the public, as being necessary to prevent or
abate a nuisance dangerous to the public health, they shall pay
the same out of the general fund raised for sewerage purposes ;
but if they shall not deem it proper that such damages, costs
Or may assess
Bpon lands ben
and expenses should be so paid, then they shall make a just and
efited.
equitable assessment thereof, upon all the lands upon which th®
buildings, fences, walls or other obstruction, which has caused
such water to pond, shall have been or shall be made, and upon
such other land adjacent thereto, if any, the owners of which,
in the opinion and judgment of said commissioners, ought in jus
Assessments to tice to bear and pay any part thereof, and the assessment so
to be liens.
made shall be liens upon the lands assessed, and shall be collect-
�69
edln the same manner as other assessments made for the costs
and ^xpenses of constructing sewers in said city are collected.
§ 5. If any person shall wilfully destroy or injure any such
drMn, pipe, or obstruct or prevent the passage of water through
the Same, he or she shall be guilty of misdemeanor.
§ 6. This act shall take effect immediately.
Misdemeanor to
impair or ob
struct drain.
CHAPTER
AN ACT to incorporate the Soldiers’ Business Messenger and
Dispatch Company. Passed April 15, 1867.
The People of the State of Phew York, represented in Senate
and Assembly, do enact as follows:
* * * Section 6. Said corporation is hereby authorized
and shall have power to erect and maintain covered stands or
fcooths on the streets of the cities apd villages in said district,
except Broadway in the city of New York. Provided, that no
booth or stand shall be placed upon the sidewalk, without pre
vious consent of the owner or lessee of the property adjoining
or against said booth or stand; and the number, size and loca
tion of said booths or stands shall be determined by the Metro
politan Board of Health, or a majority of said board, who shall
determine and locate the same upon application by the president
of this corporation.
* * Section 9. This act shall take effect immediately.
Corporation
may place
,
stands in street
if approved by
board of health
*
�70
CHAPTES
Permits to visit
vessels at quar
antine .
AN ACT to enable the Board of Supervisors of the County of
New York to raise money by tax for certain county purposes^
to extend the powers of the Metropolitan Police, and to pro
vide for the auditing and payment of unsettled claims against1
said county. .Passed April 25th, 1867, three-fifths being pres
ent.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
* * * Section 26. Nothing in this act shall be deemed to
conflict in any manner with the Quarantine laws, or with the
rules and regulations of the Health Officer of the Port of New
York; nor shall any permit or licenses issued under the act
hereby amended, authorize any person to visit any ship or ves-J
sei under quarantine, without the authority of the Health Offi-’
cer of the Port of New York, or the Metropolitan Board of
Health.
CHAPTER 586.
t
AN ACT to enable the Board of Supervisors of the County or
New York to raise money by tax for the use of the corporaJ
tion of the city of New York, and in relation to the expendi
ture thereof; and. to provide for the auditing and payment of
unsettled claims against said city, and in relation to actions
at law against said corporation. Passed April 23, 1867 ; threefifths being present.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
Moneys appro
priated to Board
to clean streets
not provided
for by contract.
Moneys appro
priated to clean
streets oftencr
than required
by contract.
(EXTRACT.)
“For the Metropolitan Board of Health to pay the expense of
cleaning such streets, alleys, squares and public places in the
city of New York, as are not provided to be cleaned by any ex-l
isting contract, the sum of five thousand dollars, or so much,
thereof as may be necessary for that purpose. If at any time
the said board shall be of the opinion that the public health re-
�71
quires that any street or streets, avenue or avenues, public place
o'i'i places, should be cleaned more frequently than is required by
the existing contract for cleaning the streets, they may order
the same to be cleaned as much oftener as in their opinion the
public health requires, and the comptroller shall pay to the per
bon doing the work, on the certificate of the president of said
board, the amount that may be agreed upon therefor, not ex
ceeding in the aggregate the sum of twenty thousand dollars,
which sum is hereby appropriated thereWr. But. nothing here
in contained shall be construed as exempting th[e contractor
for cleaning the streets from any existing liability.”
Existing con
tracts not affect
ed.
�CHAPTER 57S.
Board of Health
Eonstitute Board
of Excise.
Extent of disBh'ict.
Inspectoi- of ex
cise.
Salary.
License requir
ed.
Board to grant
licenses.
LAWS OF 1866.
AN ACT to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors within the
Metropolitan Police District of the State of New York, passed
April 14,1866; three-fifths being present.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section- 1. The persons who are and from time to time shall]
be Commissioners of the Metropolitan Board of Health, are hereJ
by constituted and created a Board of Excise, in and for the Me
tropolitan District of the State of New York, excepting and
excluding the County of Westchester, and from and after the
passage of this act, they alone shall possess the powers and per
form the duties of Commissioners of Excise within said Metro-!
politan Police District, excepting said County of WestchesterJ
They shall receive no compensation for their services as such
Board of Excise.
*
§ 2. There shall, in the said Metropolitan Police District, be an
officer called and known by the title of “Inspector of Excise,”
who, under the Board of Excise, shall be charged with the per-a
formance of such of the duties herein imposed upon them as they
can and shall delegate to him. The Board of Excise shall havepower to appoint and remove such officer, and to pay him out of
the moneys to be received by them, as hereinafter provided, such
salary as they shall deem proper, not exceeding two thousand
dollars a year.
§ 3. From and after the first day of May, 1866, no person or per
sons shall, within the said Metropolitan Police District, exclusive
of the County of Westchester, publicly keep, or sell, give away
or dispose of any strong or spirituous liquors, wines, ale or beef]
in quantities less than five gallons at a time, unless as he or they
may be licensed, pursuant to the provisions of this act, and may
be permitted by it.
§ 4. The said Board of Excise shall, subject to the further
provisions hereof, have power to grant licenses to any person or
persons of good moral character, and who shall be approved by
them, permitting him and them for one year from the tune the
same shall be granted to sell and dispose of, at any one named
place within said Metropolitan Police District, exclusive of the
* Amended, Laws ofl86T, Chapter 956, Section 16.
�County raWestOKfester, strong and spirituous liquors, wine, ale Rate of license
and beM in quantities less than five gallons at a time upon re- fee.
ceiving a license fee, to be fixed in their discretion, and which
khall feiot be less than thirty nor more than two hundred and
fifty dollars.
§ 5. Such licenses shall be in the form of a written or print- Form of licensed
Mfcertificate, stating the name of the person or persons, and the
place licensed; shall be signed as the said Board of Excise shall
provide and direct; shall be kept posted by the person or
*
persons licensed, in a conspicuous position in the room or License to b
posted and ex
place where his or their sales are made, and shall be exhibited hibited.
at all times by the person or persons so licensed, and by all persons acting under such licenses, on demand to every sheriff, con
stable or officer or member of police: any omission so to display
Result of
and exhibit such certificate shall be presumptive evidence that omission.
any person or persons so omitting to display and exhibit the
same has and have no licenses.
§ 6. Such licenses shall only be granted on written applica- Form of ap
plication .
tion to the said Board, signed by the applicant or applicants,
Hecifying the place for which license is asked, and the name
*
or names of the applicant or applicants, and of every person inter
Bld or to be interested in the business to authorize which the
license shall be used.
§7. Personsnot licensed may, within the said Metropolitan Unlicensed perd
sons may sell
Police District, exclusive of the County of Westchester, keep, more than five
gallons.
and in quantities not less than five gallons at a time, sell and dispose of strong and spirituous liquors, wines, ale and beer, provided that no part thereof shall be drunk or used in the building, But not to bo
On any building, yard, garden or inclosure communicating drank on prem
ises.
with, or in any public street or place contiguous to the building
in which the same shall be kept, sold or disposed of.
§ 8. Licenses granted as above shall not authorize any person Not sell on SUBday
or persons to, nor shall any person or persons publicly keep, sell, day. or election
give away or dispose of any strong or spirituous liquors, wines,
ale or beer on Sunday, or on any day upon which a general or
special election or town meeting shall be held within one-quarter
mile from the place where the same shall be held.
§ 9. The said Board of Excise shall keep a complete record Record of licenk>f die names of all persons licensed as herein above provided, ses to be kept.
‘with a statement of the place licensed and license fee imposed
and paid in each case, which record they shall at all times per
�74
mit to be seen in a convenient place at their principal headquar
ters in the City of New York.
Licensed per
§ 10. Persons licensed as herein provided shall prevent, so
sons to preserve
order.
far as is in their power, and shall at all events give immediate!
notice to the nearest sheriff, constable, officer or member of po
lice, of all and every disturbance, disorder, or breach of the
peace in any place which shall be so licensed, and shall forthwith
Shall close if
cause all persons to be removed therefrom, and the place to be
necessary.
closed, and kept closed until quiet is restored.
§ 11. No person shall sell, give or dispose of any strong or spiritu
No sales to mi
nors or appren ous liquors, wines, ale or beer to any apprentice or person under
tices without
consent.
eighteen years of age, knowing or having reason to believe him
to be such, without the consent, in the case of an apprentice, of
his master or mistress, and in the case of a person under eighteen
years of age, of his father, mother or guardian.
§ 12. No person shall sell, give, or dispose of, and no person
No sales to
drunkards or
licensed as herein provided, shall suffer any person for, under, or
intoxicated per
sons.
employed by him, to sell, give or dispose of any strong or spiri
tuous liquors, wines, ale or beer to an habitual drunkard, or to
any intoxicated person or persons then being under the influence
of liquor.
§ 13. No person licensed as herein provided shall, against the
request of any wife, husband, parent or child, sell, give or dis-l
Sales to wives,
&c.
pose of any strong or spirituous liquors, wines, ale or beer to
the husband of any such wife, wife of any such husband, parent
of any such child, or child of any such parent.
§ 14. All persons licensed as herein provided shall keep the
Places closed
Sundays and
places at which they are so licensed to keep, sell, give and dis
from midnight
till sunrise.
pose of strong and spirituous liquors, wines, ale and beer, ordei’l
ly and quiet, and between the hours of twelve o’clock at night
and sunrise, and on Sundays, completely and effectually closed.
Nothing herein contained shall be construed to prevent hotels,
Hotels on Sun
days.
from receiving and otherwise entertaining the travelling public]
upon Sundays, subject to the restrictions contained in this sec
tion.
§ 15. No person or persons except those licensed as herein
Unlicensed per
sons not to pro provided, and those permitted to sell in quantities more than five
fess to sell.
gallons at a time, shall give out or profess to sell, or to have for
sale, strong or spirituous liquors, wines, ale or beer, or shall have,
permit, or continue in or about his or their premises any sign,
notice or token that such liquors, wines, ale or beer are there
Signs,
�kept for sale, or give notice or advertise thart he or they have Advertisements
such liqllors, wines, ale or beer for sale.
Punishment
§ 16. Every person who shall violate any of the foregoing violation. for
provisions of this act, shall for each offence be guilty of a misde
meanor, and on conviction thereof, shall be punished with a fine
of not less than thirty dollars, nor more than one hundred dollars,
or with imprisonment for not less than ten days, nor more Fine and im
prisonment.
than thirty days, or by both such fine and imprisonment. In ad
dition thereto, every person who shall violate any of the forego
ing provisions hereof shall be liable to a penalty of fifty dollars Penalty.
jfor each offence, recoverable in a civil action in the name of said
Board of Excise, provided that any person or persons may com
plain to the President of such Board of Excise of any such of
fence; and, on the recovery by said Board of the penalty
therefor, the said Board shall pay to the person or persons so
first complaining, if not members of the Police Department, the
one-half of the penalty so recovered ; and said Board shall have Attorney.
authority to employ and pay attorney or attorneys to prosecute
actions for the recovery of such penalties.
§ 17. No person who shall trust any person for any strong or No payment for
'spirituous liquors, wines, ale or beer, on a sale thereof in quanti sales on credit.
fies less than five gallons, to be, or which shall be drunk, or used
in the building, or in any building, yard, garden or enclosure
communicating with, or in any public street, or place contigu
ous to the building in which the same shall be sold, can recover
or compel payment therefor.
§18. Any conviction for violation of any of the foregoing Conviction
provisions hereof, by any person or persons licensed, or at any forfeits license.
place licensed, as herein provided, shall forfeit and annul such
license.
^ § 19. It shall be the duty of every sheriff, constable, police Police to en
man and officer of police to compel the observance, and to pre force law.
vent the violation of the foregoing provisions hereof; if necessa May close
ry, by summarily closing and keeping closed any places in which places.
shall be violated any of such provisions.
I § SO. Every sheriff, constable, officer or member of police shall Arrest without
forthwith arrest all persons who shall violate any of the provis warrant.
ions of this act, and carry such persons before any magistrate of
the city or town in which the offence shall be committed, to be
dealt with according to the provisions of this act. And it shall Duty of magis
be the duty of every magistrate to entertain complaints for a trates .
�76
violation of any of the provisions of this act made by any person
under oath.
Intoxicated perg 21. It shalla be the duty of every sheriff, constable, officer IH
sons to be ar°
J
d
.
.
tested.
member of police to arrest any person who shall be intoxicated
in the street, any public place or places where strong and spin®
tuous liquors, wines, ale or beer are sold, publicly kept or dis
posed of, and to take him before any magistrate of the same city
or town; and if such magistrate shall, after due examination,
deem him too much intoxicated to be examined, or to answer onf
Magistrates to
oath correctly, the magistrate shall cause him to be confined unoat™ine Undei til he shall become sober, and then to be brought before the]
magistrate, who shall examine him on oath or affirmation as to
the cause of such intoxication, and ascertain from him from
whom he obtained the liquor he shall have drunk; but such ex
*
amination shall not be used as evidence against such intoxi
cated person in any prosecution, civil or criminal, such intoxicain'toxlcation1/01" tion being hereby declared to be an offence, punishable upon j
conviction by a fine of ten dollars and costs, and imprisonment
until the same shall be paid, not exceeding ten days.
§ 22. The said Board of Excise may at any time, and, upon
i vokeliTeTs™" the complaint of any resident of the said Metropolitan Police!
District, except in the County of Westchester, shall summon be
fore them any person or persons licensed as aforesaid; and if
they shall become satisfied that any such person or persons has
or have violated any of the provisions of this act, they shall re
voke, cancel and annul the licenses of such person or persons]
which they are hereby empowered to do. Upon any inquiry
tendan^Lfwu- the saicI Board, or the party complained of, may summon, and
nesscs.
said Board may compel, the attendance of witnesses before them
and examine them under oath.
Disposition of
§ 23. All license fees and penalties herein provided for shall
andVenaities^ be received by, and all fines herein provided for shall be paid,
over to the said Board, and shall be by them, after deducting
therefrom the necessary Expenses of collection, appropriated to,
and to diminish the expenses of the Police Department of the said
Metropolitan Police District, exclusive of the County ofWestchesJ
ter; provided that nothing herein contained shall divert from
state inebriate Bie State Inebriate Asylum such proportion of license fees as is
now set apart for said institution by existing laws. The said
i Board to report. Board shall annually report all sums so received by them,, and
�77
Magistrates
all magistrates and courts shall monthly report and pay over to and courts to
pay over.
said Board all fines imposed and received hy them.
*
Grand jurors
I § 24. All courts having jurisdiction to try offences against the to be charged.
visions of this act shall instruct and charge grand jurors to
inquire into all such offences and to indict all offenders.
§ 25. Any person who shall sell any strong or spirituous Persons selling
liquors or wines to any of the individuals to whom it is declared in violation of
the law liable
by this act to be unlawful to make such sale, shall be liable for for damages.
all damages which may be sustained in consequence of such sale,
and the parties so offending may be sued in any court in this
State by any individual sustaining such injuries, or by said Board
of Health, and the sums recovered shall be for the benefit of the
party injured.
§ 26. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent with the provis Repealing
ions hereof are hereby repealed, so far as the same Aall apply to clause.
the said Metropolitan Police District, except the County of
Westchester.
§ 27. This act shall take effect immediately.
* Amended, Laws of 1867, Chaptei- 470, Chapter 80G, Section 6, Chapter 843, Section 4,
jlphapter 8S9, Chapter 926, Chapter 956, Section 16. Bee post.
�78
CHAPTER, 77.
Quorum.
’Ma’ority of
board to concur
AN ACT to fix the number necessary to form a quorum of the
board of excise, in and for the Metropolitan police district of
the State of New York, excepting and excluding the county
of Westchester. Passed March 11, 1867.
The People of the Slate of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. A majority of the board of excise in and for the
Metropolitan Police District of the State of New York, except
ing and excluding Westchester county, is hereby declared to be
a quorum thereof,with power to do any and all business entrust
ed to said board. But no action or order shall be had or taken
by the said board, unless at a meeting thereof, regularly called,
there shall have been a vote thereon had and taken in which
vote a majority of said board shall have concurred.
§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
CHAPTER 470.
Commissioners
of charities and
correction to re
ceive twelve per
cent, of excise
moneys.
AN ACT to amend an Act entitled “An Act to establish an
Asylum for Inebriates in the City of New York, and provide
for the government thereof,” passed April 8th, eighteen hun
dred and sixty-four. Passed April 20, 1867, three-fifths being
present.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section i. * * * Said Commissioners [of Charities and
Correction] are hereby authorized to receive from the Board of
Excise, from time to time, twelve per cent, of the aggregate
amount of moneys received in each and every year by said
Board of Excise, from and after April first, eighteen hundred
and sixty-seven, for license fees received for licenses granted in
the city and county of New York, and said board on application
of the said commissioners, are hereby authorized and directed to
pay over from time to time to said commissioners such per centage, which moneys shall be strictly applied by said commission.
�79
HRIx> the building, maintenance and support of said asylum,
and duly accounted for in their annual report. But nothing in
this act contained shall be construed to divert from the State
lhebriate Asylum, or interfere with the proportion of said license
'fees set apart for said institution by existing laws. The said Also fines for
commissioners are authorized to demand and receive all fines ^0XK‘atl0n»
imposed for intoxication or disorderly conduct in the city of
New York, which fines, without any deduction, shall be paid
over monthly by the magistrate, clerk, or other person who re
ceives the same, to the said commissioners, and shall be by them
applied and accounted for as other moneys received by virtue of
this act.
CHAPTER. §06.
IAN ACT to enable the Board of Supervisors of the County of
New York to raise money by tax for certain county purpo
ses ; to extend the powers of the Metropolitan Police, and to
provide for the auditing and payment of unsettled claims
against said county. Passed April 25th, 1867, three-fifths
being present.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
* * * Section 6. The Metropolitan Board of Health, ere- Excise money
ated by the act chapter seventy-four of the laws of eighteen "e paid wmimishundred and sixty-six, acting as the Board of Excise, as author- fn°g™'ndofsin,s1
ized by the act chapter five hundred and seventy-eight of the
laws of eighteen hundred and sixty-six, is hereby authorized and
directed, from and after the passage of this act, through the per
son acting as treasurer of the said Board of Excise, to pay over
monthly to the Chamberlain of the City of New York, for the
use of the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund of said city, and How applied,
to be applied by said commissioners, as provided by law, for the
redemption of the city debt, all license fees and fines which may
be collected by the said Board of Excise in the county of New
York, in pursuance of the act chapter five hundred and seventy
eight, before mentioned, after deducting therefrom twelve per
cent. of all such moneys received since the first day of April,
^eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, which are now provided by
law to be paid annually to the Commissioners of Charities and
�80
State Inebriate
Asylum t<> be
state"yt< °
Enectbm de-
feucted.
gaiary oftreas-
Correction, and also deducting ten per cent, of all such moiieyl
received prior to April first, eighteen hundred and sixty-ei^M,
which ten per cent, shall be paid to the New York State Inebrl
ate Asylum, at Binghamton, which said ten per cent, shall be
. ,
,
...
?
T , .
1
paid to the said, Hie agw lore State Inebriate Asylum, as now
required by law; provided that the trustees of the said asylum
shall, within sixty days after the passage of this act, make and
execute a conveyance to the State of New York, by deed, dulyl
acknowledged and recorded, of all the real estate, with the
buildings and improvements thereon, and appurtenances thereto,
owned by said asylum in the County of Broome, in said State]
which conveyance the said trustees are hereby empowered to
ma^e; and also deducting the necessary expenses and salaries
incurred in collecting said fees, as authorized by law; and no
portion of license fees and fines, except as above provided, shall
be paid over to any commission or corporation. The treasurer
of the Board of Excise shall receive for his compensation in col
lecting such license fees and fines the sum of one thousand five
hundred dollars per year.
CHAPTER §43.
AN ACT to incorporate the Inebriates’ Home for Kings
County. Passed May 9th, 1867.
The People of the State of Phew York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
lent.1 of excise
Kin^fcounty
inebriates’10
Home.
aiso fines.
* * * § 4- The Treasurer of the Board of Excise in and
^or ^ie Metropolitan Police District of the State of New York,
shall pay to the Treasurer of the said Inebriates’ Home of Kings
County, or his order, twelve per cent, of all the moneys hereaf|
ter received by said Board of Excise for licenses granted under
said excise law to persons residing in the county of Kings, after
all legal deductions therefrom, and deducting therefrom the
proper proportion of the expenses of said board, and such sums
as now or may hereafter be appropriated by law to other purposes. And all fines hereafter received by said board for viola!
tions of said excise law committed in said county of Kings,
shall in like manner be paid to the treasurer of said Inebriates’
Home of Kings county. The money herein directed to be paici
to the treasurer of said Inebriates’ Home, shall be so paid ha
�81
the treasurer of said Excise Board within thirty days after the
receipt thereof by such board; which money shall be applied to
the founding and maintenance of such Inebriates’ Home, and
for no other purpose.
CHAPTER 889.
AN ACT providing for the application of moneys hereafter
collected in the Metropolitan Excise District for certain fines
and from licenses for the sale of liquors. Passed May 10th,
1867, three-fifths being present.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Aseembly, do enact as follows:
Section- 1. From and after the first day of May, one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-seven, the Treasurer of the Metropoli
tan Board of Excise shall pay over all sums received by him for ^’“nen
licenses and fines, as follows :
ln BrooklynAll such sums as are received for licenses granted in the city
of Brooklyn, and for fines imposed for offences in said city, to
the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund of the city of Brooklyn, In Plichmond
to be applied by them without deduction to the extinction of countythe debt of said city; all such sums as may be received from
the towns in the county of Richmond to the Commissioner of
Common Schools in said county, to be by him apportioned
among the several school districts in said county, rateably in Jn country
proportion to the number of scholars attending school in each, towns of
and applied for the maintenance of the schools, and the erection
and improvement of school buildings therein respectively; in
the towns of Kings county, except the city of Brooklyn, to the
Commissioner of Schools, the money received from each town
to be apportioned by him among the several school districts in in Queens
such town, in proportion to the number of scholars attending countyschool in each district, and applied for school purposes ; and in
th© towns of Queens county to the highest officer having the
general charge of schools in said county, to be by him distrib- Dedustions,
uted in like proportion among the towns from which it is re
ll
�82
ceived, and to be applied for like purposes. But before payingover such sums the said treasurer shall deduct the proper pro
portion of the expenses of said board, and the ten per cent, now
provided by law to be paid to the State Inebriate Asylum. He
shall also deduct from the sums received from Brooklyn any
sum now provided by law to be paid to the Inebriates’ Home.
§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
CHAPTER 926.
License fees
and tines in
New Utrecht to
go to schools.
AN ACT appropriating the excise fees and fines collected in
the town of New Utrecht, to the use of Common Schools in
that town. Passed May 16, 1867.
The People of the State of New York, represented in- Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. All license fees provided for by the act to regu
late the sale of intoxicating liquors within the Metropolitan Po
lice Department, of the State of New York, passed April sixteen,
eighteen hundred and sixty-six, and all fines therein provided
for which shall hereafter be received by the board of excise of
the said Metropolitan police district, from the town of New
Utrecht, in the County of Kings, shall, after deducting the ne
cessary expenses of collection and the amounts otherwise provid
ed by law, be paid over to the supervisor of the town, and shall
be applied by him to the payment of the wages of the teachers
of the different districts in proportion to the amount of scholars
in each district in the said town.
§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
�index
Page.
Abatement suits may be instituted
41
Abatement suits how tried...........
41
Abatement suits, claim for penalty
may be joined with.... .......
44
Abatement suits, motion for new
trial in,....................................
44
Abating nuisances, liability for ex
penses of.................................
40
Absence, deductions lrom sala
ries for......................................
5, 37
Access to be permitted.................
63
Accidents, prevention of..............
36
Act, when to take effect.............. 29, 37, 5S,
59, 66, 69
77
Action for damages, Board liable to
48
Action for damages, when to be
brought....................................
4S
Action for damages, what recov
ered in......................................
4S
Actions not to abate......................
33
Adjourned meetings, no deduc
tions for absence from............
37
Advertising by unlicensed persons
75
Affidavit of expense of executing
orders...............
53
Agents, name of, to be posted....
63
Agents, service on........................
39, 63
Agents of Board not personally
liable........................................
47
Air-shafts in small rooms............
65
Aidermen, powers of President oi,
conferred on new Board.........
9, 34
Alley, removal of articles from,
may be ordered.......................
13
Amendment to be allowed..........
41
Amount to be expended annually
25, 52
Amount to be borrowed................
49
Amusements, places of, may be re
quired to report... . ................
22
Animals not to be kept in tene
ment houses............................
62
Answer in suit for rent...............
57
Appeal, action for liability on....
48
Appeal, when to stay e.vecution..
43
Appeal, when to be taken............
43
Appeal without security..............
43
Appeal, undertaking not needed on
67
Appeal to court ot appeals..........
44
Application for license, contents
ot...............................................
73
Appointment. Secretary ol State to
give certificates of...................
4
Apportionment of expenses of
Board....................................
25
Apportionment of expenses of ex
ecuting orders........................
53
Apprentices, sales to...................
74
Arrests. Board may order ..........
16
Arrests, effect of order of..............
16
Arrests, justices and magistrates
th Order....................................
31
Arrests, policemen and constables
k to make....................................
31
Arrests,undertaking not needed on
Arrests without warrant..............
Arrested, who may be...................
Arrested persons, how treated....
Ashes, receptacles for...................
Assignee may institute suits.......
Assistant aldermen,powers of pres
ident of, conferred on new
Board.....................................
Assistant Sanitary Superinten
dents, two may be appointed.
Assislant Sanitary Superintend
ents, one in Brooklyn............
Assistant Sanitary Superintend
ents, duties of.........................
Assistant Sanitary Superintend
ent, salary of.’..........................
Assistant Sanitary Superintend
ents, may administer oatfhs.. .
Asylums may be required to report
Attendance of witnesses compelled
Attorneys, Board to employ.........
Authenticate papers, Ac., Secre1 ary to......................................
Authority of Board presumed....
Page.
67
75
16
16
65
15, 55
9,34
8
8
8
8, 52
16
22
50, 76
9, 75
6
16
Badge may be provided...............
21
Badge, wrongfully wearing, a mis
demeanor .................................
21
Bedding may be cleaned or des
troyed ......................................
63
Births, powers as to.......................
11
Births, acts as to, extended
throughout district.
11
Births, false returns of.
49
Births, publish information as to
23
Births, penalty for omission to
keep registry of, and to repoit
12
Births, statistics of, to be reported
19
Births, whom to be reported by..
12
Births, what report of to contain.
12
“Board” or “said Board,” mean
ing of........................................
3
Board, authority of, presumed...
16
Board, first meeting of.................
5
Board, funds of......................................
23
Board, health officers and quaran
tine commissioners to co-op
erate..........................................
17
Board, how constituted.................
3
Board, how papers served on.......
48
Board, how sued............................
48
Board, injunction against............
48
Board liable to action....................
48
Board may borrow........................
27, 49
Board may order what done.........
12
Board may procure offices............
9
Board may make proper expendi
tures.........................................
9
Board may modify order..............
13, 37
Board may modify tenement act..
66
Board may confer power on presi
dent to suspend or modify
order .......................................
37
�84
Page.
Boai d may execute orders............
14
Board may order arrest................
16
Board, members of may adminis
ter oaths. ................................
16
Board, members of, not personally
liable........................................
47
Board not to make returns...........
23
Board, powers ot............................ 7. 8, 9,10,
11, 12, 13
30, 33, 36
37, 41, 51
Board, powers of existing officers
conferred on............................
9
Board, powers of City In.pector
given to...................................
11
Board, powers of. to borrow.........
27, 49
Board, authority of, presumed ..
16
Board, removal of members of....
7
Board, rent ordered paid to..........
46
Board, right of members of, to en
terbuildings............................
21
Board, salaries of............................
5
Board to employ clerks and ser
vants ........................................
9
Board to employ attorneys...........
9, 75
Board to gi\ e information............
17, 18
Board to keep record of acts.........
19
Board to keep record of execution
of orders...................................
19
Board to pay (torn funds expenses
incurred in good faith............
47
Board to report to Governor an
nually ......................................
19
Board to regulate booths on walks
40, 69
‘•Board of police,” meaning of...
4
Board of police to execute orders
14,19
Board of police may employ per
sons and incur expenses.........
14, 19
Board of police, authority of, in ex
ecuting orders........................
14,19
Board of police may let rooms to
Board of health........................
9
Board of police, powers of, as to
sanitary matters given to new
Board................. 7....................
14
Board of health, existing powers
of, conferred on new Board....
9, 34
Board, croton aqueduct, not interferredwith................
10,35
Board of estimate, how constituted
24
Board of excise, authentication of
records of..................
53
Board of excise, compensation of.
52
Board of excise, dismissal of offi
cers of.. . ..................................
52
Board of excise, duties of Secre
tary of......................................
52
Board of excise, meetings of.......
52
Board of excise, powers of............
72, 76
Board of excise, quorum of.........
52, 78
Board of excise, report of..............
53
Board of excise, seal of.................
52
Board of excise, suits against.......
48
Boards of supervisors to raise and
collect money..........................
26
Body, burial or removal of, may be
ordered......................................
52
Bond to discharge lien..................
42
Books, Secretary to keep..............
6
Books, Treasurer to keep..............
6
Books, production of, compelled..
7, 17
Books, &c., City Inspector to sur
render......................................
11
Booths on walks.............................
40, 69
Borrow, power of board to............
27, 49
Bribe, penalty for receiving.........
50
Brook.yn, excise moneys tn.........
80, SI
Brooklyn, one assistant sanitary
superintendent in...................
8
Brooklyn, one of sanitary com
missioners must reside in...,
3
PafM
Brooklyn, penalties given to au
thorities of, enforced by board
Brooklyn Sewerage Commission
ers, power of, over sunken lots
Buildings, infected or out of re
pair, ordered vacated..............
Buildings, when a nuisance..........
Buildings on same lot, distances
between....................................
Buildings, expense of executing
orders a lien on......................
Buildings, public, may be inspect
ed /. ..........................................
Buildings, public, plans of to be
exhibited.................................
Buildings, removal of articles from
may be ordered.....................
Buildings, repair of, may be or
dered ........................................
Buildings, when may be declared
nuisance...................................
Buildings, when may be declared
dangerous or detrimental.......
“Burthensome” substituted for
stringent...................................
By Laws to be enacted.................
By-Laws may be altered..............
49
67.68
63
39
64
50
21
21
13
36
]2
13
49
20, 30
20, 80
Cattle not to pass over sidewalk..
67
Cattle drivin.. regulation of.........
66, 67
Cellar, definition of.......................
66
Cellar, drainage of ........................
61
Cellar, floor of, to be kept tight....
65
Cellar, how constructed...............
61
Cellar, rules as to, may be modi
fied ...........................................
66
Cellar, ventilation of.....................
61
Cellar, when permit required ror..
61, 62
Cellar, when a nuisance................
40
Certificates may be issued for
27
loans. ..•.................................
27
Cesspools, how constructed..........
60
Cesspools, when allowed...............
60
Charities and Corrections, Com
missioners of............................
78
Chief Clerk.....................................
38
Chimneys to every floor................
65
City Inspector’s department abol
ished.........................................
23
City Inspector, powers of, given to
Board........................................
9,11
City Inspector, powers of, in street
cleaning commission given to
president..................................
5
City Inspector to surrender books,
&c ...........................................
11
Clean, every one’s duty to...........
15
Cleaned, what may be ordered....
13
Cleaning streets, appropriation for
70
Cleaning streets, expense a lien
on compensation for..............
15
Cleanliness of markets, powers
over...........................................
36, 40
Clerks, Board to employ................
9
Clerk, Chief...................................
38
Clerks of courts, fees not to he
charged by...............................
33
Code of health ordinances to be
published................................. 30, 30, 4$
Code of health ordinances, when
to take effect...........................
20, 30
Code of health ordinances, penal
ties for not complying with..
31
Code of health ordinances, how
designated.............................
49
Code of health ordinances, what to
embrace....................................
49
Code of ordinances to be prepared.
57
Code of procedure, change in, not
to affect abatement suits.......
44
Collections, how credited..............
26
�85
Page 1
Commissioners may administer
' oaths.............................................
Commissioners, removal of...........
Commissioners, right to enter buil
dings ............................................
Commissioners, where less than
flve..........?...................................
Commissioners, sanitary, who are.
Commissioners, sanitary, how ap
pointed ........................................
Commissioners, sanitary, one must
reside in Brooklyn.................
Commissioners, sanitary, succes
sors of. how appointed.............
Commissioners, sanitary, three
must be physiciins.................
Commission's, sanitary, salaries
of...................................................
Commissioners, sanitary, terms of
office .. ........................................
Commissioners, sanitary, draw
lots for term..............................
Commissioners, sanitary, take and
file oath........................................
Commissioners, sanitary, hold no
other office.................................
Commissioners, sai.itary, not de
clining nomination, vacate of
fice ................................................
Commissioners, health, powers of,
conferred on new board............
Commissioners of excise, salaries
of...................................................
Commissioners of police, members
of Board......................................
Commissioners of police, salaries
as members of Board...............
Commissioners of quarantine, in
formation to be given to..........
Commissioners of quarantine to
give information........................
Commissioner, street, not inter
fered with....................................
Common Council, powers of, con
ferred on new Board.................
Common law liability reserved..
Compensation, how forfeited.. ...
Compensation not to be paid to
health officers............................
Compensation, expense a lien on„
Compensation, suit to recover back
Complaint, arrests to be made on.
Compla!nts to be investigated ...
Complaint book to be kept............
Comptroller not to be interfered
with..............................................
Comptroller of State to approve
Treasurer's bonds.....................
Constables to make arrests..........
Contagious disease, persons sick
with, may be removed..........
Contract for street cleaning not
affected........................................
Contribution, liability to..............
Conviction forfeits license...........
Coroners, powers over.................... Corresponding Secretary may be
appointed....................................
Corresponding Secretary, salary of
Costs, when recovered.....................
Costs, amount of................................
Costs against Board in suits for
rent...............................................
Costs in abatement suits account
ed for............................................
Costs, separate executions for ...
Costs, when to be paid... . ..............
Court in which suits may be bro't.
Court may grant injunction.........
Court may order rent paid to Board
Court may order speedy trial.......
Court, preference in.......................
Courts to act promptly...................
16 Court, fees not to be charged by..
7 Couits not to lose jurisdiction by
plea of real estate......................
21 County to bear expenses incurred
I
for.................................................
Croton aqueduct board notinter3, *
fered with...................................
3 I Damages. Board liable to action for
Damages, limit of recovery —.....
3 Dangerous or detrimental to life or
j
health, what may be.................
4 j Date of erections, owner to prove..
Deaths, duty to gather and preserve
3|
factsasto......................................
i Dead body ordered removed or
5|
buried............................................
Death, false report of.........................
4 Deaths, next of kin to report...........
i Deaths, penalty for omission to
4
keep registry of.........................
Deaths, publish information as to
4 Deaths, powers as to.........................
j Deaths, acts as to, extended
7j
throughout district..................
s Deaths, statistics of. to be reported
! Deaths, whom to be reported by..
7 Defect of parties, suits not dis5
missed for...................................
9.34 Defendants, who to be, in actions
under the tenement acts_____
52 . Demand of rent gives lien..............
i Disease, duty to gather and pre3I
serve facts as to.........................
| Disease, persons sick with, be re5]
moved....................... ..... .............
’ Disinfected, what may be ordered..
17 > Disinfection, gratuitous, may be
i
provided.......................................
17 Dispensaries may be required to re1
port.................................................
10, 35 ' Dispossession forbidden when rent
|
jiaid to treasurer.........................
9, 34 I “ District” or ‘"said District,” mean’ 40 '
ing of............................................
50 District, sanitary superintendent
must reside in_
______ _______
23 District, sanitary, what it embraces
15, 54 Drainage, duly to provide for..........
56 ' Drainage of marke ts, powers ov« r..
31 | Drugs, deleterious, adulterated or
211
poisonous, powers as lo .........
21 i Duties of officers of institutions, ic.
Page.
29
33
33
26
0,35
48
48
13
65
19
51.52
49
12
12
23
11
11
19
12
41
65
54
19
18,39
13
IS •
09
55
3
3
16.40
36.40
22
22
11,35 I Elect’on day, no sales on.................
73
21
I Engineer, sanitary.................... —
6 i Engineering, amounts to be expend31 [
cd for ?.......................................
22
I Erection or conversion, owner to
65
IS I
prove date of...............................
24
I Estimate, Board of, how corstitute.1
24.26
6 [ Estimate, Board of, duties of...........
25
151 Estimate, what to contain.... ...........
29
75 I Evidence, records as.........................
51I Examination, what application for
17
I
to contain..................................
17,18
Examination, how enforced.............
16
Examination, judge may order........
17
Examinations, how taken.................
24
Examinations, power of judge as to
17
Examination, service of order for..
48
Excise Board. designation of..........
Excise Board, expenses of............... 6, SO, SI
72
41 Excise Board, how constituted____
48
45 Excise Board, injunction against,...
52
33 Excise Board, meetings of..............
52
Excise Board, officers of.................
41
74,76
46 Excise Board, powers o£........ ..........
52,78
46 Excise Board, quorum of____ . -__
53
47 Excise Board, records of..................
53
67 Excise Board, report by........... ........
�86
Excise Board, salary of Treasurer..
Excise Board, seal of.....................
Excise Board, Secretary of.............
Excise, Inspector of...................
Excise moneys appropriation of....
Excise moneys in New York..........
Excise moneys in Brooklyn,..........
Excise moneys in Kings county ...
Excise moneys in New Utrecht......
Excise moneys in Queens county...
Excise moneys in Richmond county
Excise moneys, salaries to be paid
from..........................................
Execution, againstwhom..............
Execution, by whomissued..........
Execution, when and for what is
sued ..........................................
Execution of orders, statement of
expense of...............................
Execution ot judgment, when
statement of expense of.......
Execution of judgment., when
statement of, final...................
Executive officer, chief, must be
physician...............................
Executive officer, must reside in
district .......
Expenditures, proper, Board may
make.........................................
Expenditures,extraordinary, when
Expense of abating nuisance, lia
bility for..........................................
Expense of abating nuisance ap
portioned in judgment...........
Expense of abating nuisance,state
ment of to bo tiled...................
Expense of abating nuisance re
covered when advanced.........
Expense of abating nuisance, what
not stated in finding.......... ....
Expense of executing orders, ag’st
whom a charge........ ................ _
Expense of executing orders, alien 15,
Expense of executing orders to be
apportioned..............................
Expense of execut ing orders, state
ment to be filed.......................
Expenses for 1866..........................
Expenses to be reported................
Expenses, how apportioned.........
Expenses incurred in good faith to
be paid lrom funds of Board..
Expenses, what not included in
limitation of............................
Expenses, amount of, which may
be incurred.............................
Expenses of Board of Excise....... 76,
Page.
80
52
52
72
76
7S,79
81
80,81
82
81
81
52
45
45
45
53
44
44
7
7
?
18
42
44
47
47
_ 15
50, 54
53
53
25
20
25
47
47
25, 52
80, 81
Facts and proofs may be presented
13
False report, penalty for................
49
Fees for licenses, disposition of.... 76, 78, 79
80, 81, 82
Fees not to be taken........................ 10, 12, 35
Fees not to be charged by courts,
magistrates or clerks ...........
33
Filed, papers to be. on discharging
lien......................................................... 42
Filed, statement of expense of ex
ecuting judgment to be........ .
*14
Fines may be imposed for neglect
of duty.....................................
Fines on conviction......................
Fines, payment of, howenforced.
Fines paid over to treasurer.........
Fines, reports of, to be made........
Fire escape............................... ...
Floors of cellars to be tight..........
Food, powers as to........................
Front and rear buildings, distance
between...................................
80, 81, S3
9
31
31
31
31
59
65
22
64
Funds paid into State Treasury....
Funds, bow drawn and paid............
Falcon market stalls not removed..
Garbage, receptacle for, to be pro
vided.................................
Goats in tenement houses..............
Governor, approval of, necessary to
borrowing.................................
Governor has power to remove ...
Governor to approve exercise of ex
traordinary powers..................
Governor to appoint Sanitary Com
mission ....................................
Grounds, removal of articles from,
may be ordered.......................
Ground, duty of those who have un
dertaken to clean.....................
Ground, when maybe declared dan
gerous or detrimental...............
Page,
23
23
40
62
63
27
7
18
3,4
13
15
13
Halls, ventilation in.......................
59
Halls, open at ends........ .................
65
Health Board, designation of..........
48
Health Board, injunction against...
48
Health, Board of, how constituted..
3
Health, Board of, may institute
suits.................................. 15. 31, 32,41, 65
Health, duty to enforce laws relat
ing to.......................................
Health,duty to gather and preserve
19
40 facts as to..................................
57
Health laws to be codified..............
Health, what is dangerous to, to be
12
declared a nuisance...................
Health, what may be declared dan
13
gerous or detrimental to.........
Health ordinances, code of, to be
20, 30
published.................................
Health ordinances, code of, when
to take effect............................ 20, 30,47
Health ordinances, code of, i-en31
alty for not complying with. .
Health, powers of existing Boards
9, 34
conferred on new Board..........
Health Commissioner, powers of,
9,34
conferred on new Board..........
Health Officer of Port of New Yoik,
3
a member of Board................. .
Health Officer, authority of not af
18
fected ......................................
49
Health ordinances, code, of............
Health ordinances, code of, what to
49
embrace....................................
Health Officer, salary of, as member
5
of Board...................................
Health Officer, information to be
IT
gi ven to.............................. ■ ■ •
17
Health Officer to give information.
17
Health Officer to co-operate............
Health Officer, power of, conferred
9, 34
on new- Board...........................
Health Officers to communicate re
19
ports ........................................
Health Officers to communicate in
19
formation....................... ..........
Health Officers not to be created or
employed by municipal authori
11
ties ...........................................
Hearing, parties applying for, to
13
have...,......................• -•••••
Hearing, speedy, to be given in
47
courts.......................................
61
Height of rooms............................
62
Horse in tenement bouse.................
22
Hospitals may be required to report
74
Hotels on Sundays..........................
36
Houses, repair of, may be ordered..
impending pestilence............... .
13, IS
Inebriate Asylum,State, license fees
to............................................... 76,79, SO,82
�87
Page.
18
Inebriate Asylum in New York....
50
Inebriates’ Home, in King s County
89
Infectious diseases, poweis as to...
Infirmaries may be required to re
22
port...........................................
75
Informer under excise law.............
40, 47
injunction in abatement suits.........
injunction in abatement suits with
46
out undertaking ......................
Injunction in abatement suits, action
48
for damages on..........................
48
Injunction ag’stBoard.lioW granted
51
Inquests, duties of coroners as to...
Inspections, result of, may be pub
21
lished ........................................
8
Inspectors, Sanitary, bow many...
8
Inspectors, Sanitary, duties of......
8, 52
Inspectors, Sanitary, salaries oi....
• 49
Inspectors, Sanitary, false report by
S
Inspectors, ten to be physicians....
Inspectors; those not physicians to
8
be selected for qualifications....
21
Inspectors, right to enter...............
52
Snspectois, Assistant Sanitary.......
inspector, City, powers of, given
Board........................................ 9,11, 34
Inspector, C,ty, to surrender books,
11
etc........................................... •
institutions, reports may be requir
22
ed irom ....................................
76
Intoxicated persons, when arrested
72
Intoxicating liquors, act to regulate
76
Intoxication, punishment for.......
Intoxication, disposition of fines for 77, 79, 80
81, 82
Issues, how settled, and tried in
41
abatement suits.......................
Page.
Lessees, expense of executing or
ders, a charge against................
15
Lessee, duty of. to place and keep in
safe condition............................
15
Lessees may be ordered to pay rent
to Board....................................
46
Lessees to pay rent to treasurer....
55
Lessees, duty of. under tenement act 60, 62, 63
Lessees, when liable to penally.......
65
Lessees to be made defendants........
65
Liability incurred in good faith to
be paid......................................
47
License to scavengers......................
36
License io sell liquors.....................
72
License, to whom granted.. ..........
72
License, what allowed by................
72
License, how long to run.................
72
License, rate of................................
73
License, form of...............................
73
License, to be posted......................
73
License, application for.................
73
License fees, disposition of............. 76, 78, 79
80, 81,82
Licenses, record of, to be kept........
73
Licenses, forfeited by conviction...
75
Licenses, when revoked..................
76
Licensed persons to preserve order.
74
Lien, expense of e^eijuting orders..
50
Lien, effect of filing notice of..........
51
Lien, how enforced...........................
51
Lien, how long to continue............
5L
Lien, notice of, to be filed................
50
Lien, priority of..............................
50
Lien, when valid............
50
Lien in abatement suits.................
42
Lien on rent....................................
54
Lien on compensation for cleaning.
54
Lien on rent, how made effectual....
54
Life, what is dangerous to, is a
nuisance...................................
12, 39
Life, what may be declared danger
ous or detrimental to................
13
Light, want of, is a nuisance...........
_ 40
Limit of expenses..........................
25,52
Limit of expenses, what not to be
included in................................
47
Limit of time to sue for rent...........
56
Liquors, intoxicating, act to regu
late.............................................
72
Loans, ceitificates.may be issued for
27
“ Lodging-house,” definition of.......
66
Lodging-house, orders may be
served on agent of................
39,63
Judge may order production of
17
books........................................
18
Judge may order examination........
46
■Judge, may grant injunction..........
46
Judge may order rent paid to Board
42
Judge, when may discharge lien....
43
•Judge, when may order stay..........
judge, ruling of, as to statement
45
final............................... ...........
Judgment, in abatement suit, how
41
settled.....................................
Judgment in abatement suits, what
to contain................... _.............. 42, 44, 46
Judgment in abatement suits,execu
tion of................... •••■•;..........
Judgment, in abatement, suits, to
42 Magistrates, duty of, under excise
state on what it is a lien.........
law...........................................
■Judgment, when statement of ex
44 Magistrates to order arrest..............
pense to be final.....................
Magistrates, fees not to be charged
Judgment, statement of expenses of
44
"by...................................... .......
executing to be filed.... ...........
47 Mail, service of orders through.......
Judgment, injunction in................
47 Maps may be copied........................
■Judgment against Board to be paid
51 Markets, regulation and control of,
■Judgment in lien cases...................
given to Board...................
54
^Judgment in actions for penalty...
31 Markets, new, plans for to be pre
Jurisdiction of actions to be taken .
pared.........................................
31
■Justice to order arrest....................
Markets, Fulton and Washington..
Justices to take jurisdictions of ac
31 Marriage, false return of................
tions..........................................
Marriages, power as to...................
Keeper of lodging-house, duty of.. 62, 63, 65 Marriages, acts as to, extended
throughout district...................
80, 81
King's County, excise money in....
Marriages^statistics of, to be reported
Marshals, police have power of.....
Land expense of executing orders,
50 " Matter,” meaning of......................
* lien on ..................................
57 Mayor of New York, powers of, con
Laws to be codified..........................
ferred on new Board.................
Kjtaws and Ordinances relative to
Mayor of New York, powers as to
Preservation of Public Health,”
weights and measures, given to
authority conferred by, given to
9,35 Mayor and Common Council, pow
Board........................................
ers of, conferred on new Board.,
Laws relating to health, duty to en
22 Mayor and Commission’rs of Health,
force .........................................
powers of, conferred on new
20
Legislation to be suggested...........
Board........................................
14
Lessees, orders may be served on..
75, 76
81
33
14
21
36,40
41
40
49
11
11
19
83
4
9, 34
11
9, 34
9, 84
�88
Meaning of terms...........................
Measures and weights, powers as
to, given to Mayor ofNew York
Medical relief to poor may be pro
vided.........................................
Medicines, power as to..................
Meetings, regular and special, when
held .. .. ....................................
Meetings, notice of........................
Meetings, taken to be regular in all
proceedings...............................
Members of Boa'd, salaries of........
Membeis of Board, removal of. ....
Members of Board, right to enter..
Membeis of Board may administer
oaths.........................................
Members not personally liable. ...
Members summarily examined......
“ Metropolitan Board of Health,” the
name of the health board.........
“Metropolitan Board of Excise,” the
name of the excise board.........
Midnight, liquor shops closed at....
Minors, sales of liquor to............
Minutes, papers filed deemed enter
ed in...........................................
Misapplicationolfundsinquired into
Misdemeanor, parties arrested to be
treated as for.............................
Misdemeanor under health act, what
is.......................... '.................... 2S,
Misdemeanor under excise law
Misdemeanor under tenement act...
Money borrowed a charge..............
Motion for new trial in abatement
suits..........................................
Municipal authorities not to inter
fere ..........................................
Municipal authoiiiies not create or
employ health officers or incur
expenses...........................
Page.
3,4
11
18,39
22
22
22, 52
22
5,52
7
21
16
47
24
48
48
74
74
33
24
16
32, 50
75
65
27
44
11
11
Pagel
Occupants, duty of, under tenement
act.............................................
fit), 65
Officers, not personally liable.........
47
Officers, false reports by.................
49
Officers, dismissal of......................
6, 52
Officers, names of, to be reported...
19
Officers, pretending to be, a misde
meanor ......................................
21
Officers, Board may procure...........
9
Omission, ■willful, to obey order, a
misdemeanor............................. 28. 82, 53
Order may be reaffirmed, modified,
or rescinded.............................
13, 37
Order, special or general, penalty for
not complying with.................
82, 53
Order, power may be conferred on
President to suspend or modify
37
Order not to be modified so as to be
more stringent..........................
37
Orders, mode of serving.................
13, 14
39, 68
Orders, against whom expense of,
is a charge.................................
1§
Orders, obstructing execution of, a
misdemeanor............................ 28 82, 53
Ordets, violating, a misdemeanor.. 28. 32, 53
Orders, suspension or modification
of, on application......................
18,37
Orders presumed to be authorized...
22
Orders, expense of executing, a lien
50, 54
Orders, apportionment of expense of
executing..................................
53
Orders, statement of expensed exe
cuting ......................................
53
Orders, authority of Board in execu
ting...........................................
19
Ordinances, amended, to be publish
ed ..............................................
30, 49
Ordinance s, duty of police to en
force .........................................
19. 88
Ordinances, code of, to be published 20, 30, 49
Ordinances, code of, when to take
effect......................................... 20,30,49
Ordinances, penalty lor not comply
ing with... ................................ 20, 2S, 31
32, 53
Ordinances, sanitary......................
49
Ordinances a codification to be sub
mitted to the Legislature.......
57
Owner, duty of, to place and keep in
safe condition................. .......
15
Owners, orders served on............... 13,14, 63
Owners.expense of executing orders,
a charge against........................
15
Owners, duty' of, under tenement
act............................................. 60, 62, 63
Owners, names of to be posted.......
68
Owners to prove date of erection..
65
Owner, prim a facie liable.............
65
65
Owners to be made defendants........
Name of Board...............................
4S
Name of owner or agent of tene
ment house to be post 'd..........
63
Name of officers and agents to be re
ported .......................................
19
New York, trial not to be had in,
without notice..........................
31
New York, excise moneys in........
78, 79
New York, penalties given to local
authorities in.,..........................
49
New Utrecht, excise moneys in...
82
New trial, when motion for enter
tained........................................
44
Nextofkin toreportbirihs and deaths
12
Notice of lien, where filed..............
50
Notice of lien, effect of........ .......... 50, 51,54
Notice of payment of rent to treas
urer ..........................................
56
Nuisance defined.............................
39
Papers filed deemed entered on
Nuisance, liability for expense of
83
minutes....................................
abating......................................
40
33
Nuisance, suits to abate..................
41 Papers, how served........................
12
Parents to report births.................
Nuisance, common law right as to
Parties to suits .............................. 15. 2S, 32
reserved..........................................
41
56
Nuisances, abating..........................
36 Parties to suits for recovery of rent
65
Nuisances, Board may declare.......
13 Parties to suits under tenement act
Part owner, duty of, to place and
keep in safe condition..............
15
Oath, Sanitary Commissioners to
take and file.............................
4 Penalty for violations...................... 20, 28, 31
32
Oaths, who may administer...........
16
Penalty for not complying with reg
Obstructing execution of orders a
ulations, Ac.............................
20, 32
misdemeanor............................
28, 32
Penalty, minimum, under health
Obstructions on streets and walks,
law............................................
38
removal of.................................
36, 40
Penalty, judge to fix.......................
Occupant,duty of, to place, and keep
38
in safe condition.......................
15 Penalty, claim for, joined in abate
44
ment suit ................................
Occupants, orders may be served on
14
45
Penalty, separate execution for ...
Occupants, expense of executing or
ders a charge against................
15 Penalty, claim for, joined in suit for
53
expenses...................................
Occupants to pay rent to Board....
46, 55
�89
Page
Penalty, claim for, may be assigned
53
Penally, judgment in action for....
54
Penalty, when recovered back by
landlord....................................
56
Penalty under tenement act...........
65
Penalty under excise act..................
75
Penalties, certain, to be sued for...
49
Peril, in case of, no limit as to ex
pense.........................................
25
Peril of pestilence, powers given in
13, 18
Perjury, wiiatis. .............................
16
Persons interested, duty of. to place
and keep in safe condition.......
15
Persons interested, orders served on
39
Personating an officer, a misde
meanor......................................
21
Pestilence, impending....................
18
Pestilence, when peril of, exists,ad
ditional power given.................
13.18
Pestilential diseases, powers as to..
39
Physician, chief executive officer,
must be....................................
7
Physicians, ten of inspectors, must
be...............................................
S
Physicians, three of Sanita’y Com
missioners, must be.......... ...
3
Physician, resident, powers of, con
ferred on new Board................
9, 34
Pigs in tenement houses.............
62
Pigs, driving....................................
66
Pipe,when may be declared danger
ous or detrimental...................
13
*• Place,” meaning of......................
4
Place of business, service of orders,
by copy left at..........................
14
Places of resort may be required to
report........................................
22
Plans may be copied.......................
21
“Police Commissioners,” meaning
<>f............................................. 4
| Police.” meaning of......................
Police Commissioners, members of
4
Board......................
3
Police Commissioners, salariesof.
5,52
Police Board to report danger to
health........................................
IS
Police Board may let rooms to
Board of Health........................
9
Police Board and Board of Health
to co operate.............................
IS
Police Board to execute orders.......
19
Police Board may employ persons
and incur expenses...................
19
Police Board, injunction against....
48
Police Board to build telegraphs...
58
Police Board to detail surgeons....
58
Police Board to dismiss surgeons..
58
Police to report violations..............
IS, 3S
Police to enforce excise law............
75
B’olice to arrest without warrant...
75
Police may close liquor shops.........
75
Policemen may serve process and
papers.......................................
33
Policemen to make arrests............
31
Police justice to order arrest .........
31
Poor, medical relief for, may be
provided...................................
IS, 39
Port of New York, health officer of,
a member of Board...................
3
Power of Board, what included in.. 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13
36, 39, 40
11, Ml
Powers of Board, how exercised...
Mower given by any law relative to
health to be exercised...............
Powers of City Inspector given to
Board........................................
Preference in courts........................
Resident to be elected annually.. .
President faAe a member of Board.
President, duties of.........................
9
10.34
11
67
5
5
5
Page.
President may’ appoint Secretary’
pro tern.....................................
President pro tein. may be elected.
President, power may be conferred
on, to suspend or modify' ■ rder
President has powers of City In
spector on street cleaning com
mission .....................................
President, process may be served on
President of the Bo .rd of Alccrmen, powers of, conferred on
new Board...............................
Premises, when may be declared a
nuisance....................................
Premises, when may be declared
dangerous or detrimental.........
Prevention of accidents...................
Privies required............
Privies, how fitted................... ...
Privies,number of..........................
Privies connected with sewer........
Persons may be required to report
Proceedings presumed to be au
thorized....................................
Proceedings to be regarded as ju
dicial and legal........................
Process, how served,.....................
Proclamation of peril.....................
Production of books, judge may’ or
der.............................................
Proofs, how taken..........................
Prosecuting officers to act promptly
Prosecutions, before whom....... 28. . 31,
Purified, what may be ordered....
Pursuits, when may be declared a
nuisance, &c............................
Quarantine, Commissioners of,
to give and receive informa
tion ...........................................
Quarantine, Commissioners of, to
co-operate.................................
Quarantine, permits to visit ves
sels at.......................................
Queens county, excise moneys in.
Quorum of Board of Excise..........
Quorum of Board of Health..........
6
6, 38
37
5
4S
9, 34
12
13
36
61)
60
60
60
22
22
29
33,48
18
17
16
29
32. 76
14
12
17
17 ■
70
81
52,78
3
Rain water to be conducted from
roof,..........................................
59
Receipts and expenses to be repor?
ted..............................
.........
20
Records, Secretary to keep..........
6
Records, regulations as to............
23
Record of acts and execution of or
ders to be kept........................
19, 53
Record of licenses.........................
73
Records as evidence.......................
29,53
Records, facts stated in, presumed
true.. . . . . . . . . ...........................
29
Registry’ of births and deaths, pen
alty' for omission to keep.'....
12
Regulations to be enacted............ 20,22,30,49
Regulations may be altered.......... 20,22,30,49
Regulations as to records and proceedings...................................
23
Regulations, penalty for not com
20, 28
plying with................. .
31, 32, 53
Regulations, duty of police to en
19.38
force ................ 1........................
Regulations may be included in
49
code................... . ....................
59
Regulations to be prepared...........
Removal < f Commissioners, pro
7
ceedings for.............................
6. 52
Removal of officers, how effected..
18.39
Removal of sick authorized..........
Removal of obstructions on streets
36.40
and walks.................................
Removed, what may be. ordered... 14,36,40
46
Rent ordered paid to Board..........
�90
Page.
Kent paid to Board, how applied..
46
Kent, expenses a lien on..............
54
Kent, judgment a lien on..............
15, 54
Kent, how lien on. made effectual.
54
Kent, 1 ability fir, after demand..
55
Kent, suit for.................................
55
Kent, suit to recover back............
56
Kent, notice of payment of,to treas
urer........ . .................................
56
Repair of buildings may be orderi d
36
Repair, roof to be kept in..............
59
Repar, buildings out of, vacated.
63
Repeal, none by implication.........
57
Report to be made annually.........
19
Report may I e printed..................
20
Report of Board of Excise..............
53,76
Report, lalse, by inspector...............
49
Reports, to whom, to he sent..........
20
Report of birth and death, penalty
for omission to make...............
12
Reports from all persons.................
22
Reports may be required from insti
tutions, Ac.................................
22
Reports of trials to bo made to
Board........................................
31
Resisting order subjects to arrest..
16
Residence, service of orders by copy
left at....................................'.
14
Return, false, punishment for.........
49
Resident | liysician. powers of, con
ferred on new Board................
9,34
Revision, committee of, when to
meet................................
26
Revision, committee of, what to do
26
Revocation of licenses...........
76
Richmond County, excise money in
SI
Roof not to leak....................
59
Room, when declared dangerous or
detiimental....................
13
Rooms, height of...................
64
Rooms, ventilation of............
59,65
Rubbish, receptacles for........
62
Rule, penalty for nut complying
with..........................................
20 30
Rule may be altered........................ 20. 80, 49
Rules to be enacted........................ 20,30,49
Salary of Assistant Sanitary Super
intendents.................................
Salary of Assistant Sanitary In
spectors.....................................
Salary of Inspectors........................
Salary of Sanitary superintendent..
Salaiy of Secretary..........................
Salary of Treasurer........................
Salary not to be paid to health offi
cers............................................
Salaries, how paid............................
Salaries of members of Board;. __
Salaries, deductions from, for ab
sence....................... .................
Salaries not to be paid certain offi
cers...........................................
Sale of improper articles in markets
Sales of'iquor on credit..................
Sales to apprentices........................
Sales to drunkards..........................
Sales to wives. Ac............................
Sales without license......................
Sanitary Commissioners, who are..
Sanitary Commission! rs, how ap
pointed......................................
Sanitarv Commissioners, three must
be physicians............................
Sanitary Commissioners, one must
ie.-ide in Brooklyn...................
Sanitary Commis-ioners, term of
office..........................................
Sanitary Commissioners to draw
lots for term..............................
Sanitary Commissioners, take and
file oath....................................
S, 52
52
52
8,52
6
5, SO
10.84
5, 24
5,52
5,37
10,34
36
75
74
74
74
72
3,4
3,4
3
3
3,4
4
4
Sanitary Commissioners to be con
firmed by Senate......................
Sanitary Commissioners, salaries of
Sanitary Commissioners to hold no
other office...............................
Sanitary Commissioners not declin
ing nomination to office vacate
place..........................................
Sanitary condition, publish informa
tion as to...................................
Sanitary Jtistiict, what it embraces
Saniiaiy Engineer...........................
Sanitary engineering, amount to'bo
expended fo-............................
Sanitary Inspectors, 11jw many ...
Sanitary Inspectors, duties of...
.
*
Sanitary Inspectois, salaries of.......
Sanitary Inspectors, ten to be phy
sicians.......................................
Sanitary Inspectors, those not phy
sicians to be Selected for quali
fications....................................
Sanitary lnsp< clots to report.........
Sanitary Inspectors Assistant........
Sanitary Inspectors may be classi-
3,4
5152
7
7
21,23
3
21
S
52
Sanitary Ordinances, what code of,
49
to contain.................................
Sanitary regulations, penalty for not
complying with . .29, 28. 80. 31, 32, 38^53
7.8
Sanitaiy Superint udent, duties of.
8,52
Sanitary Superintendent, salary of.
8
Sanitary Superintendent, reports by
Sanitary Supiru teiident may ad
16
minister oaths..........................
Sanitary Superintendent, right to
21
ent r.........................................
Sanitary Superintendents, Assistant,
S
two may be appointed..........
Sanitary Superintendents, Assistant,
8
one in Brooklyn......................
Sanitary Superintendent, Assistant,
8
duli< s of....................................
Sanitaiy Superintendent, Assistant,
8
salary of....................................
36
Scavengers, licensing of.................
36
Scavengers, regulation of...............
22
Schools may be require d to report.
81,82
Schools, excise moneys to support ut’
6,52
Seal..................................................
’88
Seal, courts to take I oliee of..........
5
'Secretary to beappointed................ _
Secretary not to be a member of
5
Board..................... ................
5
Secretary hold office till removed..
6, 52
Secretary, duties of........................
Secretary to keep records, books,
6
and papers.... ........................
Secretary to conduct coirespond6
ence..........................................
Secretary to authenticate papers,
6
etc.............................................
. 6
Secretary, salary of..........................
6
Secretary, how removed................
16
Secretary may administer oaths....
5,6,38
Secretary
tern...........................
481
Secretary precess may be served on
5
Secretary. Corresponding, salary ot.
Secretary of State to give certificate
4
of appointment.........................
Security on appeal, Ac., board not
43,67
to give................................... •
Senate to confirm sanitary commis
sioners......................................
Servants, Board to employ.........
Servants. Board to fix salaries of...
Service of oiders...................... ...13,
Service of orders for examil atiotis.
Sirviceof process on Board............
Sewers, water closets to be connect
60
ed with..................................
60
Sewers, yards to be connected with
�91
Page.
Sew'i-rS, ■whffl may be declared dan
gerous or deliimentlll...............
31
getvi-rag--, when may be declared a
‘ nuisance.......................................
12
Sewerage, duly to provide for.........
la
Sewerage Commissioners, poweisas
to ponded walers........................
67,68
Sheep in t« neim-nt house.................
62
She-p. when driven...........................
67
Sheep not to pass on sidewalk........
67
Sick, removal of authorized............
18,39
Sick persons to be r< ported.............
63
Sickness, infoi mation as to, may be
publi bed.....................................
23
Sidewalks, removal of obstructions
on „................... ........................
36, 40
Sidewalks, cattle. &c.. on.................
67
Signs foi bidden to unlicensed per
sons...............................................
74
Sleeping moms, how ventilated....
59, 64
Small pox.persons s ck with remov
ed ..................................................
18
Soldiers’ Messenger Corps, stalls of.
69
Special Sessions, trial may be icmoved Io......................................
31
Stat sties of births, deaths and mar
riage . lobe report! d.................
19
Stairs to have bannisters.................
60
Stalls, market, not removed.............
40
Sta Is on sidewalks.............................
40.69
State luebriite Asylum..................76,79,80,82
Statement of expense to be filed ....
44
Statement of expense, not ce of fil
ling ..........................................
Stateim nt of exp-use. when final.
Stateim lit of exp. use. modifi- <1....
Statement of expense, part oi judg
ment..............................................
Statement of expei seof executing
orders............................................
Storage in ten- incut houses.............
Streets, appropriation for cleaning.
St:eels through which cattie driven
Streets,duty <>t those who have und< rtaken to clean.......................
Streets, removal of articles from,
may be ordered...........................
Street , r. moval of obstructions on
Street clean.ng, contract for, nut af
fected ............................................
Strei t cleaning, expt use a lien on
compensation for........................
Strei t cleaning, commission f.r, not
44
45
45
45
53
'62
70
67
15
15. 36
36, 40
6, 71
intern red with..............................
15
11
Street cleaning c •mmis-ion. p overs
cf City Inspector in given to
President......................................
5
Stre-1 coinmissim er. m t inlerlered
with..............................................
10,35
Structures, repair <■!, may be order
ed .................................................
36
Suits, Bo-rd may institute 31, 32. 33,41, 65,75
Sui’stoab te nuisances...................
41
Suits lor damages, when brought...
48
Suits fi r rent when may be brnu-ht
Suit to recover back rent.................
Suits, parties to............. 15, 16, 28, 32 44, 56,
Sums raised to be paid to Treasuier
of State.........................................
Snnken lots in Brooklyn.................
Sunday, no saiesof liquor on............
Suin'ay, liquor stores clos- d on....
Sunrise, liquor stores open at.........
Sup rintendeiit. sa- itary, is chief
executive i.fficer..........................
Superi nt- ndent, sanitary, must be
physician................ .'...................
Superintendent, sanitary, duties of
Superintendi-nt. sanitary, salary of.
Superintendent, assistant, may ad
minister oaths............................
55
56
65
27
67
73
74
74
7
7
8
8
16
Superintendent, right to enter........
Superintendent, assistant, right to
enter ............................................
Superintendent., two assistants may
be ap] ointed................................
Superintend nt, assistant sanitary,
one in Brooklyn.........................
Superintendent of unsafe buildings
not interfered with.....................
Snpervis -rs. B .-arils of, to raise and
col lpet money..............................
Supreme C- art, power of judge of,
on proc- edings to remove com
missioners.......................
Supreme Court, injunction by, only
Surface water ponded tn Brooklyn
Surgeons! police to detail.................
Surgeons, police may disini.~s..........
Surgeons of police to assist Board..
Surveys, right to make.....................
Telegraph, police may build............
Tenant to pay rent to Board............
Teiiat t, when made defendant........
Tenant, duty of to place and keep on
safe condition..............................
Tenants, oiaters may be served on..
Tenants, expense of executing orders, a charge against..................
Tenants liable under tenement act.
Tenement house, orders may be
set ved on agents of...................
Tenement house to be kept clean..
Tenement house may be cleansed or
Gismiected ..................................
Tenement bouse hereafter elected
requirements for.........................
‘■Tenement house,” definition of...
The .ti cs may be ja quired to report
‘•Thing,” m aningof... .................
Time within which orders are to bo
complied with......... ..................
Treasurer to be elected.....................
Treasurer to be a member of Board
Tr. asttrer. hold office till removed..
Treasurer, fines to be paid over to..
Treasurer,costs to be paid to...........
Treasurer, receipt of, a discharge..
Treasurer, rent to be paid to..........
Treasurer to deposit rent.................
Treasurer when liable to repay
rent................................................
Treasurer to obey board..................
Treasurer not personally liable....
Treasurer, salary of...........................
Tiea-urer, duties of...........................
Treasurer to deposit funds in bank
Treasurer to give bonds...................
Treasurer's bonds, moneys collected
on...................................................
Treasuier of State, sums raised to
be paid to....................................
Treasurer of State, regulations as to
payments by................................
Trial not to be had in New York
without notice...........................
Trials, reports of, to be made to
Boar J ...........................................
Trial may lie removed to Special
Sessions........................................
Trial, speedy, to be given..............
Tr.bunals to take j urisdiction of ac
tions..............................................
Undertaking in abatement suits...
Undertaking by board not required
Unlicensed persons, what may sell
Unlicensed person not to adv-rtise
Unsafe buildings, superintendent
not interfered with....................
Page.
21
21
8
8
11,35
26,39
7
47
67
58
58
58
21
58
46, 55
65
15
14
15
65
39,63
62
63
64
66
22
4
14
5
5
5
31
41
46,55
55
55
•
56
57
57
5,80
6
6
6
6
27
27
31
31
31
47
81,32
43
46,67
73
74
11,35
�Page.
Vacancies, bow filled.......................
4
Vacancies, appointees to, how long
to bool .....................................
4
Vacated, building may be ordered..
G3
Vaccination, gratuitous,may be pro
vided................................................
Ventilation of markets, powers
over .........................................
36, 40
Ventilation, duty to provide tor.. 15, 59, 64, 65
Ventilation, wanrto', a nuisance....
40
Ventilation < f sleeping rooms.......
59, 64
Ventilation in small rooms...........
65
Ventilation <>t cellar........................
61
Ventilation in hall..........................
59
VentilatOn, rules as to, may be
modified...................................
66
Vessels at quarantine, permits to
board.........................................
70
Vessels, when may be declared dan
gerous or detrimental..............
13
Violations, penalty for............ 20, 28, 31, 82
38, 53, 65, 75
Page,
Walks, removal of obstructions on.
36, 40
Walks, cattle, <te.. on.....................
67
Wa rant, a’rest without.................
75
Washington market, stalls around..
40
Water, ponded in Brooklyn ..........
67 I
18
Water in every teneiii'-iit house....
65
W at r closets required.................. ■.
60
Water closets, how fitted...............
60
Water closers connected with sewer
60
Water closets, numb r of................
60
Weights aid measures, poweis as to
given Mayor of New York....
11
Westchester county, money to be
raisedin..................................... #
39
Whitewashed, tenement houses
twire a year.............................
62
Windows, number and size of.......
64
W itnesses, attendance of, compelled 7, 50, 76
Yard to be connected with sewer..
Yar i to be graded...........................
Yard to be kept clean.....................
60
61
62
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Laws of the state of New York, relating to the Metropolitan Board of Health and to the Metropolitan Board of Excise, passed in 1866 & 1867
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
New York (State)
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Place of publication: New York, N.Y.
Collation: 92 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: Includes index. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Bergen & Tripp, printers
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1867
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G5380
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Health
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Laws of the state of New York, relating to the Metropolitan Board of Health and to the Metropolitan Board of Excise, passed in 1866 & 1867), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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Conway Tracts
Health
Legislation
New York
Taxation
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Text
<23'2 >(=>
THE
RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF HEALTH.
A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL,
LONDON,
NOVEMBER 20th, 1881,
Dr. ANDREW WILSON,
OF EDINBURGH.
LONDON :
11,
SOUTH
PRICE
PLACE FINSBURY.
TWOPENCE.
�FREDERICK G. HICKSON & Co.,
257, High Holbokn,
Rondon, W.C.
�THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF HEALTH.
T T would be hard to find a truer allegory than the
“ Vision of Mirza,” in which Addison, under a
poetic guise, sought to teach the nature and incidents of
the journey of life. The long series of arches, threescore-years-and-ten entire, and several broken, in the
bridge of life ; the hidden trap-doors that were plentiful
at the entrance of life’s journey, and that again increased
towards life’s close ; the busy multitudes thronging life’s
highway ; the thinning of their ranks as their pilgrimage
progressed ; and the disappearance of unit after unit into
the dark river below as the journey’s stages lengthened,
are features of the allegory which form part of childhood’s
more serious tales. But beneath the clouds of allegory
and metaphor, lie the serious facts of human existence.
Wrap up these facts as you will, disguise them under
what 'simile you choose, their stern realities will still
face us, as we turn from the ideal to survey the fields of
human culture that are spread out everywhere around us.
There are few of these fields more impressive in the pic
ture they present to view than the special aspects which
meet the eye of the physician, the sanitaiy lefoimei, the
scientific man, the statistician himself. Of all the couises
�( 4 )
and phases of human life, none possess for us all such an
interest as those which deal with the chances of life, or
with the possibilities and probabilities of death. It is a
study, this, of the course life has to run, of the best course
which can be run, of the highest goal physical develop
ment can attain. It is a topic, this of health, which presents
for the nation an interest not exceeded by questions of the
deepest political importance. You may applaud the
statesman who introduces amid, it may be, violent oppo
sition, some measure of political reform. You may
admire and reverence the reformer in religion and theo
logy who, with the ardour of a Paul and the eloquence of
a Chrysostom, enunciates a new creed, and, having the
courage of his opinions, seeks to make that creed a life.
You may pause breathless over the work of a general or
commander who has redeemed the fortune of a war which
seemed hopeless before he brought well-nigh superhuman
bravery and promptitude into the field of action. All
these varied aims and excellencies are the stepping-stones
of humanity’s march to better things. But I make bold
to say, your interest will be deeper still, when you listen
to the recital which deals with the labours of science to
prolong life; which recounts the dangers that surround
nations, communities and individuals alike; and which
endeavours to show how, in the newer lights
research is throwing on human existence, there is .to be
found a crown’of years and a length of days. Humanity,
at least, in its thinking and cultured side, is now contented
�(
5
)
and willing to be instructed in the things that constitute
our physical salvation. What science has to say concern
ing the prolongation of human life and of human opportu
nities through attention to the laws of health, is listened
to with increased attention as the years roll on. But there
is yet need that the high morality of the subject be recog
nized. There exists the need that the religious aspects of
the health question should be driven home anew to our
minds in the light of the freer and fuller atmosphere into
which we have passed. There is, above all, an urgent neces
sity that we should assist those who have not yet attained
to a high level of thought, who still linger in theological
Egypts with a Canaan before them wherein is safety and
peace, to realize how closely, nay, how inseparably bound
up with a man’s religion and creed, is his doctrine of
health and its attainment. It is in order to lay before you
this morning a few plain thoughts on its religious aspects,
that I have chosen such a subject as “ health.”
And it may tend in some measure to assist us in the
■work of bodily care and in the enjoyment of life, if we can
realize how closely and inseparably health and its concerns
merge into any rational creed of life and conduct that man
may construct.
It may not be out of place, if, by way of an introduction
to our thoughts, you briefly glance with me at a few facts
typical of the need that exists for health-knowledge.
Begin with the early stages of human life—with the
period of the dim awakening of the child to consciousness
�(
6
)
of a life and of a world external to itself. Statistics on thetruth of which you may rely, prove the verity of that
part of the vision of Mirza, wherein the early arches ofthebridge were studded with pitfalls innumerable. For,
out of every 1,000 children{born, no fewer than 149 die ere
the first year of life is attained. Before the fifth year of
life, 263 will have disappeared from the 1,000, like the
fleeting shadows of cloud-land. Let 25 years of age beattained, and no fewer than 366 of the 1,000 units will havedisappeared. At 45 years of age, exactly 500 remain ;
ten years later only 421 are to the fore. But 309 reach
65 years of age : and 75 years sees a remnant of 161.
About 38 of the 1,000 may see 85 years of age; only 2:
survive till 95 years ; and only 1 in every 1,000 born, lives
through an entire century. But few foofalls re-echo over
the later arches of the bridge of life ; and the longest
livers have but a solitary journey as life wanes to its.
close.
There is much food for reflection in such an exact
account of the fashion in which human units appear on,
and disappear from, the stage of time. How can we
estimate the value of the lives that are cut short, often
through unforeseen circumstances, but as often through,
human ignorance and through human inattention to the
laws of health. Who 'shall conceive the possibilities of
good, of work, of faith in humanity’s highest aims, to
which the lost units might have attained ? Who shall
say anything of the extinction of genius and mind which
�we owe every hour to the fate that is as often as not of
our own making ? What potential Raphaels, or Shakqspeares, or Newtons, have disappeared, and are
disappearing hour by hour from the world’s light through
the trap doors in life’s bridge that lead to Lethe’s dark
silent stream below ? Even viewed as a simple fact of
life, the death of the units as revealed by science causes a
strong sense of rebellious melancholy to arise in the mind.
For science warns us that a very large proportion of the
losses which humanity sustains are preventive losses. They
are the bad debts for which human life has literally nothing
to show. They are the dead losses which weight the profits,
of life so heavily for the survivors, and which leave behind
it may be, the sorrow and poverty, and the desolation and
misery, that know no alleviation while life lasts for the
survivors. If that be true which sanitarians tell us, thaf
120,000 lives are annually sacrificed in our midst by preventible diseases ; that these thousands are sent to an early
grave by the pestilence that stalks abroad at noonday,
when care and attention should have long ago imprisoned
and executed it, the morality of the health-question is no
longer a debatable theme. But, last and best of all, when
we come to know the great and saving truth, worth in its
way, the concentrated culture of centuries, that man literally
holds in his own hands, the power to work weal to his
physical self, it seems high time that our religious teacheis
should have something to say on the morals of health.
I think I make a perfectly just remark when I say that
�(
8
)
to convential theology, with its absurd and inane theories
of the nature and origin of disease, we owe a vast amount
of the stolid indifference and ignorance that prevail in
matters relating to health. If I am able to show that a
foolish and fossilized theology naturally tends to encourage
the spread of disease through its ideas of the causation of
illness, I may claim to thereby furnish the surest ground
for the converse view, namely, that a rational theology
should be the first step towards health-reform. Consider,
for a single moment, the prevalent conceptions of disease
and its origin. The mysticism of the middle ages still
invests the minds of the people, by giving to disease a
purely supernatural and occult origin. The epileptic fit
is the gift of God, equally with the typhoid fever. “ The
Lord chastens whom he loves,” and the fall of a bank which
lands you in beggary, and the scarlet fever that strips your
hearth of its child-tenants and hushes for ever the prattle
that made music in your ear, are equally the means
according to theology, whereby you are to be purified
through trials. No matter that common-sense may
whisper that God’s procedure is hard—unjustifiably,
cruelly hard on the innocent victims, and that a milder
discipline would have been more likely to have won your
heart to righteousness. You are not permitted to inquire at
all into the “ways of Providence;” you are simply to fold the
hands, when every sinew and fibre in your frame feels fit to
start out and to hew down the impious lie that you deserved
the blow which ew your heart’s blood through the death
�( 9
)
of the wife or child you loved so well. You are to say,
“ Thy will be done,” when you know the phrase is, under
the circumstances, but a devil’s shibboleth after all. You
are to go on knowing nothing, seeking no light; only
believing that somehow or other things will right them
selves, when, in your heart, you know that hope is crushed
out of you, and that your life henceforth is but a vain
dream. And so many'a weary soul whose dead is buried,
but whose sorrows are just born, awakens to find life for
a time—it may be till its end—a dismal blank; and the
pulses of humanity, which should throb with hope, but the
muffled drums that herald a march to the grave.
I say then, that the popular theology is a dread enemy
of health-reform. It is plainly so, because it recognises
but one source of disease, and that the capricious fiat of an
anthropomorphic deity, who afflicts the children of men
to-day in as erratic and varied a fashion as when, with the
varied nosology of a celestial college of physicians at com
mand, he rained plagues on Egypt, or afflicted Job in the
manner familiar to all interested in patriarchal troubles
and perplexities. If you reply that even popular theo
logy recognises the newer dispensation, I will answer
“ No thanks to the theologians.” If the pulpit now adopts
less of the tone which bids the pews simply to suffer and
recognise the theoretical hand of the avengei, that is be
cause rationalism is beginning to touch the people s heai t
and head, through the people’s health, and through the
plain lessons of disease. Even those advanced theologians,
�(
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)
the “ peculiar people,” who found their medical practice
on the learned dictum of the Apostle Tames, do not trust
to prayer entirely, but utilize oil inunction—itself a form
of respectable medical treatment—in the cure of disease.
But even James is far ahead of the popular theology, which
in its spirit and in its practice likewise, bids you cultivate
the resignation of fatalism. “ The Lord gave, and the Lord
taketh away ” is the cant phrase that to honest ears sounds
like the cry of a savage to his fetish. When you reflect
that the typhoid fever that has cost you a life you ill
could spare to be snatched away from you, had its origin in
the bad drainage that could so readily be avoided or cured
—when you know that this epidemic might have been
avoided, or that disease arrested by early care—when you
begin to learn that the proper regulation of life means
life’s prolongation, and that we largely hold our lives in
our own hands—then, and only then, can you realise how
hollow the mockery, how utterly base and irreligious the
words that bid you regard as a gift and sign from heaven,
the disease that is of the earth earthy, and that you might
through the exercise of knowledge have avoided, or per
chance have cured. The stumble that ends in a broken
limb, is, not as a rule, regarded even by theology as having
originated in the clouds. The material cause of your
accident is, of course, as plain to demonstration, as is the
origin of the railway disaster that arises from the careless
ness of a pointsman or the defect of a signal. And the
same reasoning applies to the fever. To glorify the Deity
�li
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that afflicts you with typhus fever, and to condemn the
pointsman that kills you, or the coachman who maims you
by careless driving, are two examples of prevalent incon
sistencies, which are as much the product of a primitive
theology as is the cant expression of the coroner’s jury
concerning “ the will of God.” There is an undercurrent
of strong common sense in the lines of Dryden which
found their contention on the natural nature of disease
and its cure : —
“ Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught;
The wise for cure on exercise depend,
God never made his work for man to mend.”
If the dicta and ideas of theology may be credited with
having tinctured the minds of men with the belief that in
the presence of disease they were literally at the mercy
of a capricious Deity, we may now profitably turn to the
consideration of those newer and higher opinions concern
ing health which the advance of culture—and of religious
culture especially—have evolved.
The growth of national opinions in the matter of health
has been perhaps slow, but the advance has been made with
the slowness of surety. When we reflect that the laws against
witchcraft were exercised little more than a hundred years
ago, it will not surprise us to learn that, as recently as
1853, the Presbytery of Edinburgh sustained a severe
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)
mental shock by the reply of Lord Palmerston (the then
Home Secretary) in answer to a request that he would
appoint a day of national humiliation and prayer as a means
of averting a threatened visitation of cholera. The Pres
bytery of the Scottish metropolis possessed at that time
but one idea of the nature of disease, and that was
evidently the idea of its being sent from heaven. The
lelations of cholera to the Deity were clear enough to the
minds of Lord Palmerston’s petitioners, if that relationship
might be scarcely apparent to other people. The know
ledge that cholera—which, as I speak, is killing off
Mahommedan pilgrims at the rate of five hundred a day
at Mecca—is the offspring of bad drainage and an infected
water-supply, was an old story in 1853 to sanitary
reformers, but it appeared to be knowledge unattainable
by the theological mind. The facts that, firstly, cholera,
like every other epidemic, depends for diffusion on certain
insanitary conditions, and that, secondly, by improving
these conditions we may stamp out the disease, did not
seem to lie within the knowledge of the Edinburgh
theologians in 1853, as, unfortunately, it seems to be
unknown information to multitudes around us to-day.
Steeped in sanitary and scientific ignorance, can we wonder
then, that theology should collectively ask the Home
Secretary to appoint a day for the express and practical
purpose of asking the Deity to perform a veritable miracle.
By prayer and “humiliation”—I confess, even as a Scotch
man, to be entirely ignorant of the presence or working
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)
of this latter tendency on “ fast days ” or at any other
periods—the Deity was to be asked to suspend the laws
which regulate the production of the fever-poison and
spread of the cholera-virus. For the sake of “ much
speaking/’ and in the face of filth, bad drainage, and
other conditions then rampant over the face of the
land, the angel of death was actually expected, as in
another Egypt, to spare the chosen from the scourge.
But the sound common-sense of Lord Palmerston gave the
death-blow to the impiety of the wish. “It did not
appear,” said his lordship, “ that a national fast would be
suitable to the circumstances of the present moment.”
And then, in a few scathing sentences, the Presbytery of
Edinburgh was “hoist with its own petard.” “The Maker
of the Universe,” said Lord Palmerston’s letter, “has
established certain laws of nature for the planet in which
we live, and the weal or woe of mankind depends upon
the observance or neglect of these laws. One of those
laws connects health with the absence of those gaseous
exhalations which proceed from overcrowded human
beings, or from decomposing substances, whether animal
or vegetable ; and those same laws render sickness the
almost inevitable consequence of exposure to those noxious
influences. But it has, at the same time, pleased Providence
to place it within the power of man to make such arrange
ments as will prevent or will disperse such exhalations as
to render them harmless, and it is the duty of man to
attend to those laws of nature, and to exert the facilities
�which Providence has thus given to man for his own
welfare.”
In words like these which deserve to be “writ large”
in every school, Lord Palmerston rebuked the folly of his
petitioners. He further told them that the cholera visita
tion for which the Presbytery proposed the remedy of
prayer, was simply “ an awful warning given to the people of
this realm that they had too much neglected their duty in
this respect, and that those persons with whom it rested to
purify towns and cities, and to prevent or remove the
causes of disease, had not been sufficiently active in regard
to such matters.” He added that if the causes of con
tagion were “ allowed to remain,” they would “ infallibly
breed pestilence and be fruitful in death, in spite of all the
prayers and fastings of a united but inactive nation.”
It is indeed cheering for rational minds to read words
like these, not merely because they breathe the spirit of
the soundest scientific policy of health, but because they
are impregnated with what I take’ to be the spirit of true
religion, which ever enforces the precept that man is the
minister of his own salvation, and which render more true
the poet's words—
“ There’s life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving.”
The standpoint of the rational mind in regard to
health is simply this—that its preservation is the
�(
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)
highest duty of mankind. This much and nothing less,
will satisfy the mind that contemplates the phases
of modern life and that longs for a better world
through the improvement of the environments of
human life in the present one. Look abroad for a moment
on the seething tides of humanity that ebb and flow with
ceaseless activity in your great city. Contemplate, as
casually as you will, the course of life to the men and
women we know, and from them extend your thoughts to
the toilers and moilers whose health is, at once, their only
possession and their best stock-in-trade. Observe how,
on every hand, you see the results of wasted 'existences
and broken lives. There, it is the ruin of a home which
might* have resounded with the laughter of children, or
have been blest with the love of wife or husband, bereft
of its sunshine, through, it may be, the gross carelessness
of the builder, or the combined ignorance and dishonesty
of the artisan who fabricated its drainage-works. Tell
the mind, however orthodox, that all is well with it, when
it has just been taught the bitter lesson that the deadly
poison that crept into its home and blighted a life, was,
like the escaped felon, an intruder which demanded con
tinual confinement through ordinary precautions, and do
not wonder if such a mind throws back your consolation
in your teeth, as but the vainest mockery that ever sprung
om a lie. There, again, is an individual constitution
which, born into the world weakly and undermined,
carries to an early grave the legacy of disease it
�(
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)
inherited from parents who should never have been
allowed to bear that holy name. Here, it is another,
who, starting life in the full flush of vigour, under
mines health by excess. Knowing no laws of conduct
save those which made the enjoyment of the hour the
raison d'etre of life, the powers of that life have been sapped
and undermined by the vicious and insensible folly of halfa-dozen years. Or, again, you witness women and men
bowing before the Moloch of Fashion, and prostrating
themselves beneath the wheels of a fate that will crush
them as surely as the car of Juggernaut demolishes the
votaries who willingly bestrew its path. Is there any
need to emphasize from this pulpit what every pulpit
should denounce, namely, the wholesale bartering of
health for fashion ; the seeking of living bread amongst
the stones and the dust; the expecting to gather the pure
fruit of a healthy life from the foul weeds and thistles that
fringe the waysides of modern life ? Is there any require
ment that I should tell you what you know as well as I
do, that for vanity of figure, the human race will distort its
spine and flatten its chest; will convert the glorious
symmetry of the human body into a living museum of
pathological specimens ; and will cramp its feet until the
extremes of Chinese barbarity and western civilization
meet in amicable proximity ? There is no need to con
tinue the list of social and personal enormities which as a
nation we daily perpetrate. There might be added to the
indictment, crimes against health in the shape of luxurious
�(
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)
living that is certain to bring a not over-hardy reward in
a shortened life ; and I could emphasize, if need be, the
still greater crime of sins of wilful neglect and omission
in that we have failed to know the great laws of health,
and knowing these laws, to follow and obey them. But
the facts of ill-health are every day facts : they meet us in
our homes; they teach us often in the persons of our
dearest and nearest ones, the baneful effects of carelessness,
and the often irreparable result of a wanton trifling with
health. Nay, still worse, the facts of unsound bodies and
of careless living, face you, and face me as to-day we meet
here to renew the forces of our mental and religious life.
The wasted opportunity of discharging life’s duty ; the
failure of our duty to our neighbour, to our kinsman,
and to ourselves ; the taxation of others for our
helplessness ; the falling short of every ideal, the hopes of
attaining which made life’s start so bright—in a word the
moral and religious wreck of thousands of lives, is a matter
at first of simple health, and indeed may be throughout all,
the consequence of the first shipwreck on the quicksands
of easily avoided disease. My friends, if there be a personal
Deity, who, with a pitying mind, or with some emotion akin
to that which forces the tear of sympathy to the human
eye, looks down from His mercy seat on the wrecked lives
of His children, there can be no pain, no emotion, no
feeling, half so strong in all the range of the divine com
passion, as that which the sight of the human misery, of
ill-health must invoke. Fighting here, and struggling there,
�(
i8 )
with the conditions of disease, how ghastly must the con
test seem. How true and how applicable to such a phase
of life as related to a knowledge of health laws, are the
words of the Nazarene, “ If ye know these things, happy
are ye if ye do them."
The duties of the rational mind and of true religion in the
matter of health may be summed up in the one great con
tention that a knowledge of the laws of the universe
should be in the possession of every man or woman with a
life to live, and who boasts of the heaven-born desire to
live that life well. This is not the first time that from this
pulpit I have urged the duty of acquainting ourselves with
at least as much scientific knowledge as will enable us to
understand the constitution of things under which we live,
and of which we ourselves are part. The duty moral, and
the duty religious, exactly parallel in this case the duty
political. ■ You esteem it a bounden duty that for the
furtherance of individual and national interests you should
take a side in politics. And you adopt a side ; but you do
not choose it without weighing the pros and cons of the
matter; without comparing one policy with another ;
without taking a historical review of how or why things
political have come to exhibit their existing phases. Now
what you do in politics as a duty to yourselves, to your
children, and to the State, I imagine becomes a far more
�(
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important matter when the subject is one of health.
The mistakes of a political leader are, as a rule, remedi
able. The genius of his opponent may make that a suc
cess, which otherwise would have proved a disaster. But
you cannot so remedy the mistakes, which, as a nation or
as individuals, we may commit in our health-science. The
grave, like the sea, holds its dead ; there is no erasing
from the statute-book of health the ghastly records of this
crime of indolence that brought the cholera, or of that
crime of ignorance that sent typhoid fever broadcast.
One duty, and one duty alone, lie before us. To it we
are called by the clarion-voice of truth itself, and that
duty is the task of learning the laws of health ; of know
ing that truth which, when we follow it, so surely shall
make us, in'the veriest sense, free.
How powerfully does Mr. Spencer put the case in those
admirable words of his on “ Education.” Listen to his
scathing denunciation of the fashionable know-nothing
ness that everywhere abounds. “ Seriously,” asks Mr.
Spencer, “ is it not an astonishing fact that though on the
treatment of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and
their moral welfare or ruin, yet not one word of instruc
tion on the treatment of offspring is ever given to those
who will bye-and-bye be parents ? Is it not monstrous,” he
adds, <( that the fate of a new generation should be left to
the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy, joined
with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the preju
diced counsel of grandmothers?” Again, Mr. Spencer
�(
20 )
says most forcibly : “ When sons and daughters grow up
sickly and feeble, parents commonly regard the event as a
misfortune ; as a visitation of Providence. Thinking after
the prevalent chaotic fashion, they assume that these evils
come without causes, or that the causes are supernatural.
Nothing of the kind. In some cases the causes are doubt
less inherited, but in most cases foolish regulations are
the causes. Very generally parents themselves are
responsible for all this pain, this debility, this depression,
this misery.” And when comparing the inestimable value
of a knowledge of the laws of health over all other know
ledge, his words tell most truly : “ When a mother is
mourning over a first-born that has sunk under the
sequelae of scarlet fever (when perhaps, a candid
medical man has confirmed her suspicion that her
child would have recovered had not its system been
enfeebled by over study), when she is prostrate under
the pangs of combined grief and remorse ; it is but small
consolation that she can read Dante in the original.” Is
there a mother’s heart which does not appeal to her head
on hearing these words ? or is it needful to attempt to add
to their suggestive force ? The duty of each one of us,
then, seems clear enough as this first head, namely, that if
the conservation of life, the perfect discharge of life’s
duties, the happiness of ourselves, of those we love, and
of our neighbours, be aims which make " life worth living,”
then, you cannot, -with this admission, escape from the
inevitable conclusion that it is a crime against the best
�(
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)
morality and the purest religion, to remain ignorant of the
laws of health, and of physical salvation.
But let me add, that the duty of knowing and doing
these things, is above all,an individual duty. It is the part
of the individual, which gives to the work of health
reform its character and its strength. Without individual
intelligence and appreciation of health-laws and of health’s
value, there can be no true health-reform at all. Nay,
more, the sacred duty we owe to our neighbour, in virtue
of which duty we expect and demand the mutual con
sideration that makes life pleasant'and society a possibility,
is perhaps better illustrated by the question of health
science than by any other phase of social existence.
Suppose that I live up to every law and rule of health
-which science lays down for the guidance of the race ;
grant that in my dwelling I observe, along with my
household, every requirement of sanitation ; imagine that
I and mine live the truly healthy life, of what avail, let me
ask, will all this care be, if my neighbour is a sloven in
health matters ? Of what advantage is my care; when his
carelessness floods me with sewer-gas, when his fever
spreads, through his ignorance of health-laws, to me ?
It is clear that in the complex warf and woop of
civilization, I must, perforce, even were I less willing
than morality makes me, consider my neighbours
interests as my own.
I must, if I am to
live safely, see
that
other individuals acquire
a like culture to mine. Every health-reformer, then,
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)
in addition to acquiring knowledge of the laws of
health, must see that his neighbour acquires know
ledge of a similar character. In the matter of health,
society must stand or fall as a whole. There can be no
education of one set of its units, leaving another set in
the ignorance which may, through its dire results, kill
educated and uneducated alike. Thus a second aspect of
our religious and moral duty in reference to health
becomes clear. It is the question of the lawyer put to
the Nazarene, “ Who is my neighbour ? ” only put with
infinite force in the light;of nineteenth century life and
exigency. And the parable of the Samaritan with his
kindly aid can never be better illustrated to-day, than when
we ourselves, having found the true way of life, guide the
footsteps of others into the paths that lead to where the
shadows linger lovingly and long at the close of life’s short
day.
To accomplish all this reformation requires time, requires
strength, requires industry and energy, and, above all, a
strong belief in the holiness of the work. But these things
are added unto them who believe in the physical salvation,
as the means come to the earnest worker in the direction of
moral culture or of a truly religious life of any kind. Once
let us believe in the righteousness of living well, and we
shall live well; let us but convince ourselves that as we
live now, we too often live wrongly and badly, and we
shall soon strive after the ideal that science is prepared to
set before them, who look to the possibilities of human
�life becoming a happier thing for all than it is now, even
for the best amongst us. Is there, let us ask, any higher
aim which you who worship here, or which those whose
spirits are attuned to yours can set before their waiting
eyes than the bettering of the race through the work of
health-reform ? Here is a something to live for and to
hope for—a perfectly possible Utopia to dream of lovingly,
and to assist practically by every means in our power.
For us, to whom the concerns of life are destitute of the
mawkish sentimentalism that environs a well-nigh obsolete
theology, there seems something solid, something attainable
in their idea of a well-nigh perfect state. To-day, Euthanasia
is only purchaseable by death; only the “dim beyond” is the
abode of painless existence, extinction, or what you will.
But think of a living, moving world, with a minimum of pain
and wretchedness, and theri turn to the prospects which
health-science and its successful pursuit hold out of
realising your dream. Do not imagine I am simply
indulging in a romance. I do not mean you to infer that
I regard the health-future of the race as a thing easily
attainable. Human nature is proverbially weak; it is
actually lazy ; it is difficult to rouse to energy, let alone
enthusiasm ; it likes to fold the hands to rest and to still
the eyes to sleep, provided to-day is undisturbed, even if
to-morrow’s prospect be stormy. But humanity, heie
and there, has its ideals and the strength of will
to work towards them. And I can discern in
the signs of the times the evidences that the
�(
24
)
health-ideal is assuming a well-defined shape ; that its
■outlines are not so misty as many suppose; and that
earnest minds are already shaping the course of their
thoughts to the attainable end of a long, a healthy, and a
happy hfe. Look around you and see what may be done,
what has been accomplished within your own experienced
We have left the valley of the grim shadow and are
already on the mountain-slope, when we have for ever
discarded the notion that disease is sent ^bv a Deity to
afflict and to chasten. We are already half-way up the
mountain, and we are coming to the blue azure itself,
when we learn that disease is, as often as not, the off—
spring of an ignorance of the conditions that make it
and produce it. Everywhere around you science
is up and doing. There are active minds hard at
work wresting the secrets of infection from the silent
tissues, or poring over the microscope to watch
how the disease-germ buds forth into full vigour, and
where, when, and how that germ may be seized and
destioyed, or at least purged of its noxious properties
and powers. Already the out-look is cheering; byand-by, with fuller knowledge we shall attain a stan
dard compared with which the possibilities of to
day seem but a vain show. Think of one solid
fact alone in the saving of human life, which comes to
you from a great northern city, but which finds a paral
lel elsewhere.
“When Glasgow,” says Professor
Corfield, “ was supplied with impure water from the river
�■L
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25
)
Clyde, the number of deaths in cholera years varied from
S over 2,800 in 1832, to nearly 3,900 in 1854. After a supply
I of pure water had been obtained for the city from Loch
I Katrine, the number of cholera deaths in 1S66, the next
I cholera year, was only 68.” If ever the old declaration
1 that the people perish, and that human happiness is blotted
B out for lack of knowledge, received a practical application,
1 it surely finds such application in
such a statement as that
1 first made. If even the adage that “ knowledge is power”
| requires an illustration, you may find such illustration
I best and clearest in the saving of human life by the culture
| of the laws of health.
j
Take a mental retrospect of health-matters, and you will
not been speeding “ down the
ringing groves of change ” for nought during the last two
hundred years or so. If, as orthodox theology tells us,
this orb of ours has an existence and development, simply
as a prelude to a symphony of flames and torrents, that pre
lude and the development of human culture have together
produced a choice subject for the holocaust. Two hundred
years ago ague was rife, bred and fostered by the damp and
malaria which were developed in the swamps that environed London itself, and that were broadcast over the
land. Jail fever more recently decimated the miserable
populations of our prisons, until the benevolence of a
Howard struck the keynote of reform. Disease and death,
I discern that the world has
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�being esteemed supernatural things were regarded beyond
man’s reach in the way of bettering or avoidance. The
life of the past periods was coarse; the morality was
universally low ; and we wonder to-day that the purer
spirits which even the worst of epochs behold, found
any circumstances which at all favoured the develop
ment of the higher life. To-day how changed the
piospect ! Ague has vanished; fevers are known to
be preventive ; men are being taught wisdom over the
graves of their grandparents ; morality is at least to-day
something more than a name ; and the fears of the night
of grim terrorism of the supernatural are fast vanishing
beneath the increasing radiance of the sun of truth.
What future awaits us, who can tell ? But one thing
is clear, that there are possibilities looming before us,
which even the careless cannot afford to neglect. The
religion of the future will very largely, I think, be a
religion of health. It will be a religion wherein the
causes of pauperism and crime will be known and dis
cussed, and alleviated or banished. Its higher develop
ment will have
“--------------- lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.”
It will aim at making rational minds through wellnourished and healthy bodies. It will leave the “ sanc
tity of dirt ” as a watchword for those who think more of
their souls than their bodies, and it will elevate the race
through the development of heal th with a power comparabe
�to that of an Archimedean lever, that literally can move
a world. Best of all, this religion, which founds itself on
an appreciation of the physical wants and requirements of
man’s nature, will serve as the most efficient corrective to
the false ideals upon which men to-day lavish the service
of a life. It will teach mankind that this earth is their
best and purest heaven ; that in healthy frames, in pure
affections, and in the enjoyment of a rational existence,
there are pleasures beyond those dreamt of by ancient
seer or religious devotee. It will make this earth the
happy home of a contented race, a fit heaven for
the life that ought to be all happiness and health.
It will make the world a scene which, at the close of a wellspent life, man may leave without a pang of remorse,
surrendering his days to the unknown and unknowable,
in the fearless knowledge of a wisely used existence
without so much as the shadow of a teai.
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The religious aspects of health: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, London, November 20th 1881
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Place of publication: London
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Notes: Printed by Frederick G. Hickson & Co., 257 High Holborn, London. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2.
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Health-Religious Aspects
Morris Tracts
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COMPULSORY
VACCINATIO
ITS WICKEDNESS TO THE POOR.
J. J. GARTH WILKINSON]
LONDON ■
F. PITMAN, 20, PATERNOSTER ROW.
PRICE ONE SHILLING.
��PREFACE.
It has been thought desirable to reprint the following
pages, in the present stage of the national movement
against Compulsory Vaccination.
The Times newspaper gives recent statistics of the
Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Deaths for London.
Thus:—
December, 1872, and January!
' 1873.
Vaccinated.
December 4 th, 1872
. I 3
December 12th, 1872
.
.4
December 20th, 1872
.
.1
December 25th, 1872
.
.0
January 1st, 1873
.
. 2
January 9th, 1873
.
1 1
January 16th, 1873
January 23rd, 1873
January 30th, 1873
.
.
.
.2
.1
.2
16
Abstract of Deaths from
Small-pox, Times newspaper,
December, 1872, and January,
isEH
UnvaScinated.
December 4th, 1872
December 12th, 1872
December 20th, 1872 .
. 3
December 25th, 1872 I
. 4
January 1st, 1873
R
. 2
January 9th, 1873
R
. 0
January 16 th, 1873
.
. 2
January 23rd, 1873
R
.1
January 30th, 1873
.
. 1
to to
Abstract of Deaths from
Small-pox, Times newspaper,
17
Showing that about 6 per cent, of small-pox cases are
saved by Vaccination in London.
The Blue Book for 1870, pp. 124, 5, records twenty
deaths from erysipelas after Vaccination.
Since my pamphlet was written, the history of recent
1—2
�4
PREFACE.
Vaccination, and of the late epidemic of Small-pox, has
confirmed and magnified its positions.
It has come out that the Compulsory Laws were
enacted, because the evil consequences of Vaccination
to health and infant life were widely spread among,
and well known to, the poorer classes, whose resistance
to medical destruction required fire and prison to check
it. Public events now demonstrate that, if Compulsion
were removed, the mass of the rejoicing working men
and women would spurn Vaccinators and Vaccination
from their doors.
The evil diseases caused by Vaccination have come
more manifestly to the front in the last year. It is
admitted by established Medicine that Syphilis—called
in The Lancet vaccine-syphilis—has been sown broad
cast ; and I never make inquiry of a poor man or woman
without eliciting accounts of cases of injury from Vacci
nation to their own or their neighbours’ families. Vac
cination is more terrible than it used to be. This
depends upon two causes: 1. When Small-pox is
rife, as during these years, Vaccination meets the
leaven everywhere, and its own venom is intensified.
Recent cases prove, beyond a doubt, that it is then a
predisposing cause of Small-pox. A writer in The
Lancet says that it has also the power of evoking*
latent syphilis. 2. The transmission of the Vaccine
poison through system after system gathers up the
taints of the bodies it comes from, until a sheaf of im
purity is in the arms of the medical harvesters, very
different from the disease of the cow from which, per
haps, the first poison originated. The modern Commu
nists of evil do a deadlier work than Jenner could effect
in his day. For the personal pollution of three more
generations is on the points of their lancets.
�PREFACE.
5
It may be added that the legal necessity to vaccinate
all the poor involves, perforce, that they be driven, like
sheep, into the Vaccination-pens, and blood-poisoned
higglety-pigglety, with no power of question or appeal.
They cannot, as Her Majesty did, have a select baby for
their babies, but are all imbrued in each other’s taints,
and carry them into their miserable homes to be deve
loped to the utmost. Vaccination amuses and abuses
the rich; it is palpable obscene murder to the poor.
In the meantime the magistracy and the medical
profession are doing their very worst. Imprisonment
for non-compliance is greatly the order of the day.
Where one child has been killed, ojlmaimed, the case
to the Authorities becomes the more urgent for com
pelling the Vaccination of other children in the same
families. The indignant rebellion of the bereaved
parents must be stamped out. The climax of shame
less evil is reached. Church doors are hung with boards
of command proclaiming the law about this devil’s sacra
ment, Vaccination. And the power of the medical
dragon seems complete in its offences and defences.
Turning to the medical men, they are more than evei'
convinced of the paramount good of Vaccination. As
a rule—Mr. Hutchinson to the contrary—the eminent
ones have never seen or heard of a case of injury from
it. They never can see or hear of Buch a easel Mag
nificent blindness, deafness, and unfeelingness !
The Press of the country, with few exceptions, is in
their power. It is gagged in favour of Vaccination. It
is an engine for suppressing truth and propagating
falsehood oh the subject. Its "temerity betokens its
fears.
The lower classes, however, are less beset by panic of
small-pox than the higher ; therefore are less amenable
�6
PREFACE.
to .voluntary submission to the medical Lie; partly,
perhaps, because they see from continual observation of
them own injured babes that the certain evils of Vacci
nation which they get, far outweigh the merely possible
evil of small-pox, which they have not. A viper on the
hand is worse than two vipers in the bush. But, what
ever the cause, the resistance of the unenfrachisecL
masses, under their leaders, is becoming more compact.
This, with the progress of events in God’s providence,
will abolish Compulsory Vaccination.
While the following pages were passing through the
press, it was asserted that Vaccination had “ stamped,
out small-pox in Ireland and Scotland.” Since then a
malignant and most destructive epidemic of the disease
has raged over Ireland and Scotland, and caused a
frightful death-rate in Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, and
many other towns. The Vaccination was admitted to
be complete at the commencement of 1872. What has.
been the cause of the enormous death ? The Vac
cination ? In Berlin, a well-vaccinated city, the pro
portional death-rate among Germans has been four
times that of London.
These details give no light to the Medical Profession.
Endowment and Establishment have put it into its.
coffin: as they always put everything else into itscoffin.
Two things are sure. The coffin, though the body in
it is alive with Vaccination fees, must not rule the throne
and the people. 2. Woman, to whose love and insight
all babies first belong by God, must come into all vot
ing power, to be a heart of flesh over the stony heart of
Parliament.
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION;
ITS WICKEDNESS TO THE POOR.
Vaccination is no protection against Small-pox; 80
per cent, of the patients admitted with Small-pox into
the London Small-pox Hospital, and 95 per cent, of
the patients admitted with Small-pox into the Paris
hospitals, are reported vaccinated. Of 227 persons dead
of Small-pox last week, 86 are returned as vaccinated;
and 20 doubtful. “ The Registrar-General tells us that
on an average of four years, only 65 per cent! of the
English people were vaccinated; that is, less than twothirds. The vaccinated two-thirds furnish four-fifths of
the Small-pox cases, whilst the unvaccinated one-third
furnish only one-fifth. That is, the vaccinated are twice
as liable to Small-pox as the unvaccinated.”*
It is mere assumption that re-vaccination protects
against Small-pox; the re-vaccinated take Small-pox,
and you cannot assert of a Se-vaccinated person who
has been free from Small-pox, that he would have had
it but for re-vaccination. You know nothing about
* A similar result is presented in France. See Report by the Im
perial Academy of Medicine respecting Vaccinations in France in 1867.
Translated and abridged with the Arithmetical Proportions of the
Statistics calculated and arranged by George S. Gibbs. Longmans,
1870. Wherever Vaccination was most common, Small-pox was most
rife.
�8
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
that. In all ages the vast majority of mankind have
not taken Small-pox ; in this age an increasing majority
does not take it.
The contagiousness of Small-pox is one thing; the
mortality of it is another. If Vaccination cannot be
asserted to lessen the contagiousness, and if re-vaccina
tion cannot, at least, so the statistics inform us, Vacci
nation and re-vaccination diminish the death-rate of
Small-pox from 42 per cent, to 1 per cent. ; and make
all cases of Small-pox comparatively mild.
Who are the unvaccinated ? and the un-revaccinated ? At present! as a rule, they are the poorest,
most wretched, or sottish, of the population, to whom
all zymotic diseases are more fatal than to other classes ;
enormously and fearfully more fatal. Let the statis
ticians settle how the forces of severity and mortality
are to be apportioned. Non-vaccination has, as com
peting causes of its 42 per cent, of death,—-drink,
poverty, crowding, all final foulness, deep slums only
heard of because Small-pox is there. How much of the
42 per cent, is due Ito non-vaccination ? And how
much to abyssal slumslincluding moral slums ?
There were many mild cases of Small-pox in the
world before Vaccination was heard of. Has the death
rate of unvaccinated persons increased under the present
treatment? Forty-two per cent, of bad cases lost, as a
constant quantity, is an awkward comment on any
mode of treatment. It were well for medical con
sciences to be dissatisfied with it. 'Are the doctors
continually on the move to try means after means, and
to trample orthodoxy after orthodoxy, to abate the
pestilence of that statistic ? It is a disgrace to them.
If the statistic is crazy because it overlooks all
raging causes of disease existing in the slums of the
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
9
people, and alleges all their destructiveness to the fault
of little non-vaccination, it may well be al so suspected
from the historical character and antecedents of the sta
tisticians. When cholera was in London, a HomoeopathicCholera Hospital was opened in Golden Square,
for treating cholera patients. The House of Qommons
moved the College of Physicians to procure statistics of
all the treatment of cholera in all London hospitals.
The statistics were sent in, and respecting those of the
Homoeopathic Hospital, Dr. Macloughlan, the Govern
ment inspector, certified that the Homoeopathic treat
ment was the most successful of all in what he certified
were real cases of severe cholera; and he added that
though not a Homoeopath! he, were he a sufferer
from cholera, would be constrained by the Homoeo
pathic success to become a Homoeopathic patient for
that disease. The Blue Book of all the statistics was
ordered to be printed under the directions of the Col
lege of Physicians. That Blue Book appeared! But
the Homoeopathic !eturn of cases was not in it. The
College of Physicians had vitiated their result, and
voided the good of the book, by turning the one healing
virtue out of their pages. Dr. Paris, then President of
the Boyal College of Physicians, was asked why he
had done this. He said,—Because Homoeopathy is »
quackery. The question was not what Dr. Paris and
the College thought quackery, but what fact proved to
be the best treatment of cholera. That question the
College was clearly not answering in the Blue Book.
It was fighting for medical supremacy with another
body at the bedside of the dying. [The House of Com
mons printed the statistic separately.] This is of a
piece with the historical action of these chartered bodies
wherever medical dissent crosses them? In all such
�10
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
cases, their statistics are vitiated by the love of supre
macy which is the only unvarying fact in their career.
Add then the impurity and want of single eye in
the medical corporations to the abyss of the slums of
London as another factor of the 42 per cent, of deaths
alleged by these corporations to belong entirely to nonvaccination.
Reader, take in the passion with which those statis
tics are engendered^ the clique force which lives in
every figure: they look cold enough in columns and
lines ; but every cypher is white hot if you attempt to
handle it. It has been gathered with tones unmis
takable from the least reliable, poorest creatures in the
town -: beings whose memories from their dire circum
stances drop piecemeal from month to month; and of
whom, in manycases, family ties can hardly be alleged;
whose oath as to whether they, or theirs, have been
vaccinated, is idle wind | and if leading questions are
put, signifies mere falsity; it has been gathered by
powerful medical cliques which for their very life now,
have a case to make out; and which have for a longstream of history shown similar passion, and have for
ages been chased by fact from fortress to fortress of
their own delusions ; and from everything but their
love of supremacy. Reader, take all these factors in, and
deduct them from the figures of death ascribed to nonvaccination, and you will scout the figures ; and be little
liable to be deceived in the future, when you find that
statistical tables of disease and of treatment may be
mere masks of medical passion. As they were in the
cholera tables drawn up by the Royal College df
Physicians.
For the most part in the said 42 per cent, of fatal
cases, the fact of non- vaccination cannot be verified.
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
11
In the majority of such cases, the person is so concealed
hy the disease that it is difficult to tell whether he isold or young; and hence the fact of his Vaccination
rests upon a hear-say gathered by a voice and an ear
determined for only one answer to the question.
The 42 per centlstatistic of deaths alleged to non
vaccination, may therefore be relegated to the limbo of
assertion gathered from the fields of a foregone purpose,
and not from the good grounds of fact. The statistic
itself comes of those thoughts which Lord Bacon charac
terises as “ steeped in the affections,”—in this case, in
the affection or lust of medical rule.
Where are we, then ? Owing to this passion, now
embodied in laws, colleges, in a great profession, and a
corresponding police, and closing in fines and in jails
for the poor, and in threats for all malcontents and dis
senters ; owing to this passion, we do not know, and we
cannot know, whether Vaccination is any protection
against the severity and mortality of Small-pox or not.
Personally, I have no founded conception on the subject,
because no trustworthy data. The buttresses of Vac
cination argument are as flimsy as the castle of Vacci
nation statistics is illusory. They are the weakest
outworks of the medical passion in its war on the health
of the people.
The nurses in Small-pox hospitals are all vaccinated,
and they never take the disease. Some of them, they
tell me, are pitted with Small-pox previous to becoming
nurses ; and the most are of “ a certain age” little liable
to Small-pox. But do not my medical brothers know
that nurses and doctors enjoy a large immunity from the
contagious and infectious diseases which they attend.
Fearlessness in their functions at the beginning, and
afterwards custom with the diseases, protect them ; or
�12
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
■otherwise both, the nursing and medical professions
would be down with the various diseases of London,
continually. Deduct this fact from the immunity of
nurses, and how much of it remains due to Vaccination ?
In Ireland the Small-pox has been stamped out by
Vaccination. The ground here is a little sacred from
the tradition of a similar instance; the toads and ser
pents were stamped out by St. Patrick. The case is
precisely similar® in both cases the stamping was suc
cessful because the stamped object was not there. When
he comes, the stamping mania of Vaccination will wear
out the feet of Old Physic without making any impres
sion upon Irish Small-poM What amount of credulity
can believe that our dear Paddy, with his habits and his
cabins, is a perfectlyl^accinated creature ; that his in
imitable power of non-society, of secret organization, of
resistandb to general orders, is contradicted here; and
that the wolf of generM Irish Ktwlessness is a lamb in
the single fold of Vaccination ?
In the few days since this was written Small-pox
is announced to be making steady ravages in Ireland ;
and the doctors, who accounted for the absence of the
disease by the universal stamping of Vaccination, now
account for its prevalence, and weekly increase, by the
statement that Ireland is “only half vaccinated.”
What ground to go upon is there in such assertions and
statistics ?
The same fact was alleged of Sweden in 1842; of
Sweden, “ the best vaccinated country in Europe only
two deaths occurred from Small-pox; and Old Physic
then said ■“ Lo ! triumph! Vaccination has stamped
out Small-pox !” But again, Lo ! In the next four or
five years the figures rose steadily to an annual death
rate of between 2000 and 3000 in well-vaccinated
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
13
Sweden. Small-pox was easily stamped out when it
was not there; but so soon as it came, its heavy feet
made a football of colleges.
Dr. Lyon Playfair, M.P., in a clever speech traced
the statistics of the decline of Small-pox coincidently
with the terrific frowns of the House of Commons, em
bodied against the monster in the various vaccinatory
laws culminating in the last Act of Universal Compul
sory Vaccination. He made out most beautifully that
every fresh turn of the Parliamentary screw wrung the
withers of the disease 9 and that complete compulsion
would banish it from the earth. Unhappily for the
beauty of his statistics, they were pitted with a few
afterthoughts. In the first place, the diminished death
rate was so immediate on Act after Act of Parliament,
that the effect was clean against time if Vaccination
were supposed to enter into it. The Small-pox might
have been frightened by the Laws, but could not have
been hurt. In the second place, the Acts were at first
coincident with outbursts of Small-pox, after which, decline of the disease is the way of nature : proving that
the coincidence is by a Natural Law. In the third place,
which seams the face of the Doctor’s speech from vertex
to chin, and puts out its eyes,—after the Law of General
Compulsory Vaccination has had time to work, and has
worked, a worse outbreak of Small-pox than before,
occurs ; and has to be accounted for by the statistician
on some grounds quite different to the power of Parlia
ment through Vaccinatory Laws ovei9Small-pox.
Doctor, what are those grounds ? I ask you with
pained interest, as being myself a member of a Special
Commission of the poor men and women of England who
won’t have their children’s blood violated and poisoned
by Acts of Parliament; and who, if even they are as
�14
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
cended from gorillas, refuse to have their natures mixed
again with the disease of beasts. What are those grounds?
You will answer at once,—The Anti-Compulsory Vacci
nation League. But men will know everywhere that
this “ small body of fanatics” has no influence to account
for the fact. You will say secondly, the absence of uni
versal re-vaccination. But neither vaccination, nor re
vaccination is known to check the spread of Small-pox,
however mild the form induced; and when once the
disease is among us, it can spread from the mansion, in
which it does comparatively little death, to the slum in
which it does all death. That, you know, is perfectly
natural. Why, the tenants of our slums are in such a
state physically, that to scratch them each and all with
a pin at fever-time and disease-time, would cause a con
siderable mortality in London.1 And when Small-pox,
ever so mild elsewhere, creeps upon the slum, men and
women and children, they, the proper food of death, die
in shoals. Vaccination, if you; could do it, and watch
the results, would kill shoals of them at once. No
theory of the case is needed. When Small-pox is not
here, it has no death-rate. When it is here, its death
rate has little to do with Vaccination, and almost every
thing to do with bad habits, depressed minds, and filthy
slums. Almost everything to do with the apathy and
somnolence of Parliament.
As soon as this outbreak is done, if you will pass a
tremendous Compulsory Law, and use the military to
enforce it, you will find that the decline of Small-pox,
and the existence and working of the Law, will go side
by side for a time. Simply because, as I told you be
fore, Small-pox always mitigates its ravages after a great
attack has been consummated. After a great scourge,
of cholera, if you will smoke a pipe every day for ten years,
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
15
you will also find that the absence of cholera, and the
smoking of your pipe, are contemporaneous pieces of
history.
But the slums, Doctor,—they are the causes of Small
pox ; and the taking of patients out of the slums through
the various neighbourhoods, the medical taking: that is a
chapter of wide infection. When the Small-pox exists,
move and touch the person as little as you can : let him
or her be, and clear the neighbourhood from about him.
Don’t infect Hampstead* and Haverstock Hill out of
St. Giles, as you are now doing! But how can you clear
out the slums ? Very easily, if you will make war upon
them ; but not if you enter into a treaty of peace with
them, while you make war upon all healthy persons and
places.
At present Parliament is much bent upon Compul
sion : in the present case, the compulsion of Papa Me
dicine upon the thirty-three millions of patients whose
health, failing to come from heaven, comes only through
the channel of papa, who alone knows what is good for
his little ones. But Parliament will discover that this
compulsion has not obvious honesty enough about it, or
results of health, to be borne by the patients, who are
more important to Parliament than Mr. Simon and Papa
Physic. And so Parliament will have to gratify its love
of compulsion by allowing to the people their own pri
vate doctoring, or no doctoring; and by attending to
* Four hundred Small-pox patients gathered in Hampstead !
Patients taken up in open ambulances on the side-walks! Mothers
and nurses, and children, have to run for it to avoid them ! An antwalk of patients going, convalescents returning, and I suppose, coffins
carried somewhere. The very shaking up of London in the Govern
ment bottle of Small-pox 1 And ridiculous Vaccination, Parliament’s
gift per contra. Strain at gnats and swallow camels.
�16
k
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
its own proper business, of national, municipal, and
rural general well-being. Nothing to do whatever with
poisoning people’s arms or opening their bowels. Every
thing to do with the forcible abolition of all buildings
and styles of building that make disease and epidemic
inevitable to the community. Here is room enough for
general officers, field-marshals against disease, working
through surveyors and engineers. But medicine, a
purely private art! has nothing to say or do in the
case.
Take the fact of Westminsteil Out of its square
miles of squalor blossoms a colossal marquis : his sur
veyors and engineers are re-building on a Paris scale
aristocwtic lliondon, because it was not fine enough for
the rich before 9 the palaces were not sufficiently
palatial. Now why not compel here ? Why not enact
that the money crops of Westminster shall be put into
filthy and not into already splendid Westminster ; that
every questionable tenement in it shall be re-built;
that Peabody houses universal, or something better,
shall rise, and be We^minster 9 houses for the poor
with good greensward between them ; and that this
shall be done of compulsion by the landlords of Westminster from one age to another ; they being forced to
improve their estates in this matter ; and to administer
their royal wealth in this manner ? Why not ?
To this compulsion it must come at last. And the
peddling compulsions of vaccinating people whose very
homes and bodies are deathbeds, and of taking them
through healthy neighbourhoods to centres of infection,
must be abandoned. State medicine, that despotic lie,
must be abandoned, State-health, the good of the
people, must be thought of.
A heavy argument is thought to rest in the decline
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
17
of Small-pox since Vaccination was introduced; and
in the few persons one now meets who are pitted
with Small-pox. Since then, however, inoculation has
been forbidden by law, on purpose to limit the propa
gation of the disease ! moreover, the treatment is dif
ferent. In former times, everyone who had Small-pox
was put into the slum-condition at once ! fresh air and
water were sedulously excluded! and crowding and
stifling with bed-things andreurtains was carried out.
That alone accounts for a vast difference in death and
disfigurement. Does it not? But again, cholera has
sensibly declined since it first appeared in India ; has
declined in every country in the world. Why, we do
not know ; but it is certainly not owing to any medical
procedure. Plague has declined!the sweating sickness
has disappeared ; syphilis is constantly on the decline;
the leprosy of the middle ages, with its ten thousand
hospitals, has died away ;but medical prowess is not to
thank for it. Why should it be assumed if Small-pox
declines like all these diseases, that it alone would have
been a fixture but for Vaccination ? You perceive,
reader, that the agency alleged of Wccination in this
result, is a baseless assumption! and that the cases of
numerous other great diseases proclaim loudly that
the assumption is not necessary to account for the
facts.
On the other hand you know again that slums and
hundreds of square miles of landlorded human putre
faction are no assumption as causes of small-pox, scar
latina, diphtheria, typhus, typhoid, and nearly every
disease; and therefore I compel you to face this fact,
divine in its truth, and devilish in its matter, and to
draft your compulsion away from the blood of little
children, and direct it by more than German requisi2
�18
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
tional enactment upon those who can be made to grasp
and purify their own Augean slums, out of which their
brazen palaces now rise into our air.
Let every landlord be compelled to sleep for a week
half yearly in the worst room in his dominions ; the
house to be selected by Dr. Farr according to the
death-rate. Let him be vaccinated before he goes
in if he likes. If he decline, let it be recorded as his
testimony about Vaccination. From the cell-germ of
that one room, sweetened by the great fortune,
New London will arise, fair as loving justice, and swift
as an exhalation.
Legislating medical treatment ingeniously takes the
mind away from the true and great problem of fiscal
Sanitary legislation. It opposes some small and most
dubious medical dogma to the common sense of national
and municipal and ■rural cleanliness, air and light uni
versal. But I ask Parliament, do the antecedents of
medicine make the adoption of medical dogma into law,
feasible ? Inoculation, current for some fifty years, has
been forbidden by law. The thoughts and practices of
Old Physic vary with the moons. There is only one
way of fixing any of Bshem; and that is by endowing
and establishing them; and by this method Parliament
has given the fixity of cash and vested interest to
Vaccination. Parliament has made a church out of
cowpox, the smallest and nastiest of churches. This,
and that other foul jakes, the Contagious Diseases Act,
—an edifice in which a Boyal Commission is now asitting,—are, I predict, the two last prescriptions which
Parliament will force upon Great Britain at the bidding
of the medical profession. Before it has done with
Vaccination, and the money power which is its coat of
mail, it will have learnt to rue the day when it went
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
19
out of its own. general path to embody a poisonous
puncture in a law.
Let us hope that in its awakening it will not only
clear the Privy Council of a medical department, but
also discharter all medical bodies ; and disconnect them
from the State.
So far for one side of the case; the side against
Vaccination and Ke-vaccination as preventive of Small
pox, its deaths and its disfigurements. We have seen
that Vaccination does not prevent Small-pox land that
there is no proof that Ke-vaccination prevents it. We
have seen that the diminished death-rate alleged in
vaccinated cases, has in it several other causes more
obviously important than Vaccination, and which pro
bably reduce Vaccination to mimis nil. We have seen
that the decline of Small-pox takes place after out
breaks, just as the decline of all other un-vaccinated
diseases takes place. We have seen Small-pox leap up
again in spite of legislation. We have seen the steady
decline of the disease for one or two centuries, as we
have seen the steady decline of plague and other un
vaccinated pestilences in the same time. We have
seen the common sense hygienic conditions of patients,
their well-being, followed everywhere by an abatement
of the malignity of the symptoms and legacies of Small
pox. We have seen that misery and want are the beds
of Small-pox; and that Vaccination is inevitably also
one of its beds, because every disease—the Vaccine
disease—increases the weakness of the body, and
diminishes its resisting power. And so we have proved
the negative indictment against Vaccination. We have
found that there is no good thing in its bones.
Yet the medical pack hunts on its scent with almost
unanimous voice; it has an endowed and established
2—2
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COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
smell which pleases them. To me, as a Homoeopath,
their unanimity counts for nothing : I know how unani
mous they are in shutting their eyes, and closing their
ears, to a way more excellent than their own. I know
what they have rejected in the great truth of Homoeo
pathy. And until they are more open-minded and
open-hearted, I cannot value their unanimity as con
taining in it one element of strength, or of love. It
is but the crnelty of routine incarnate in its vul
garity.
The positive indictment against Vaccination is a dif
ferent chapter, and cannot be fully written yet; but the
informations which will instruct it are being prepared
in several journals read chiefly by poor men and women
who are almost out of the ken of the medical profession.
They will form bulky documentary evidence ; and pro
bably will be made the basis of claims for compensation
by the poor in some future and better Parliament, when
the Medical as well as National citadels are all in the
hands of the people. For money payments on a scale
are, I see, to be in the indemnity of all social wrong-doing.
What sum of money will the rich owe the poor for the
deaths and destructions caused by compulsory Vaccina
tion I
The allegation of the best informed is, that Vaccination
widely spreads disease among the people; that erysipelas
immediately, and consumption, syphilis, scarlet-fever,
decline, are sown broadcast by Vaccination. New, cer
tainly, by Vaccination, physic adds one more disease to
human beings. Certainly ■ is a beast’s disease. Cer
tainly there are sensitive people, Specially the mothers
of infants, so framed as to loathe the thought of it, and
to wonder at a large profession not being in the main
sick at the filthy little fancy of it. If this be a prejudice
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
21
it is not an astonishing one. But others allege more
tangible proofs against Vaccination.
There are two parties here to put into the witnessbox. Let the medical profession enter the box first
with the lictors before it, and the State Lancet (only to
think of the State having that abomination of desola
tion, a Zancei) in its hand. The medical profession deposes
that it almost never heard of any ill effects to the health
of children or persons arising from Vaccination. {Mem.
The great lords of the past might depose that they know
no particular evils arising from seduction 1 they see no
more, and want to see no more, of the victims when the
deed is done. They want very particularly
to see
them.) I believe the profession almost. But then, abate
this from their word of truth. They have a dogma that
everything ill that follows Vaccination is not a conse
quence of Vaccination! the converse negative to the
wrong use of post hoc ergo propter 7mc. If a child has
a bad skin disease running from the date of ripe vaccine,
that is said to be a time when children usually have
skin diseases, and consequently the malady in question
is not due to Vaccination! I deny that it rasuch a time.
Does not the public see that with this article of the
Church of Cow-pox regnant in him, a doctor can have
no chance of knowing whether Vaccination causes dis
ease or not. He is out of knowledge, and is well-fenced,
well-feed stupidity. As far as gathering the facts here
are concerned, he is an oaf in livery, and does not know
a hawk from a handsaw, being clique-insane. {Mem.
These are the men whose opinions Parliament makes
into compulsory statutes.) Besides this dogma, that
whatever disease comes after Vaccination cannot be
caused by it, the doctors extend their fortress by pro
claiming that fathers and mother! being not medical,
�22
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
can have no just opinion on any particular case which
arises in their children. The doctor’s word overrides the
mother’s observation coming sharp out of the mother’s
love. He will hear no evidence but that of his own
dogma, which puts its penny-pieces over his own heart
dead eyes.
Here are indeed two incommunicating parties.
What is the relation between them ? The Vaccinator
in many cases, among the pool in the most of cases, per
forms his operation, sees the child a week after, and knows
nothing more of mother or child thenceforth—until she
is brought to him againwvith a second child, to tell him
how ill the first fared after his deed, and to receive
from him a grand pooh-pooh at the end of her mother’s
tale of her child’s sickness, or death. The child is taken
to another surgeon, who also pooh-poohs, and gives a little
medicine, and the longer the case lasts the less it has to
do with direct ruin by Vaccination. She finds the medi
cal men sealed against her piteous story all round. As
a man at Plymouth, whose horrid dominion is over 2000
women a fortnight, said of the poor wretches violated by
the Contagious Diseases Acts, “ We listen to no com
plaints.”
Is Parliament going to proceed on this ex-parte evi
dence? Does Parliament not know that the opinions of
professional experts are not safe unless common experi
ence is added to them from the largest field of good sense
and ordinary attestation ?
What then is to be done ? I say, let a Parliamentary
Commission sit in any great borough of London, and
summon the Vaccinated poor, and take their depositions
with regard to the effect of Vaccination on their children.
Let there be a house to house visitation, such as Mr.
Gilpin s canvass of Northampton proved to be, when he
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
23
said it was pitiful to go from one to another, and to have
to listen to the long story of disease and death which
parents forced upon him as the sequel of the Vaccination
laws. I maintain that parents do know much, and all,
about these consequences. They see their immediacy
upon Vaccination. The Vaccinators do not. They watch
every point of the Vaccination diseases. The Vaccinators
do not. In reality they have a scientific knowledge
which the Vaccinators have-not, if science is founded
upon experience, and ever-widening experience, and
comparisons of experience. And then they have quick
affections which gather the terrible knowledge, where
the Vaccinators have now but the love of power, and
for eyes, dogmas, which are not to see.
I have taken the trouble to inquire of parents whether
they had ever known evil consequences to arise in their
homes from Vaccination. And the results are curious..
Knowing that I am a medical man, at first they were
silent on the subject. But when they found that I was not
one who “listens to no complaints,” they have in many
cases opened to me a breast of suffering. From my in
quiries I state, under full responsibility of the statement,
that I could without difficulty gather tens of thousands
of cases of serious and irreparable evilland a large rate
of death, if I were able to make anything like a wide
inquiry. A figure so great, that after all eliminations
and honest deductions, it would appal the people,
and make them cry aloud for guarantee and indem
nity. .
This morning, February 27th, in my Dispensary prac
tice, a poor woman, Mrs. T. (thanks to Parliament, I
dare not mention her name) brought in her baby. Her
words: “ Vaccinated last September. A fat, strong boy
till he was done. Never well since. Wasting away.
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COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
Arm never has got well.” I examined and saw. “ A
similar place on forehead and throat.” I saw them.
“There could not be a stronger child than this was
before. Three days afterwards he came out with some
thing which the doctor said had nothing to do with
Vaccination.
7s wzt? being summoned to have a
second baby done /” Out! child of hell by Parliament I
Out! damned Law’!
If this happened to Mr. and
Gladstone, and they
had had the utter conviction whicll these poor parents
have, they would, or could, have paid fines, and kept
their next child unvaccinated; but this blacksmith can
not pay the fines, and must go to prison, and let his
wife go to beggary, or offer up another babe to what
they regard as State murder. That blacksmith is cer
tainly nou equal to Mr. Gladstone in the face of British
law.
Another case. Mygoachman’s child was vaccinated,
and took with it erysipelas, which overspread the body.
The mother who wl nursing it took the erysipelas,
and both nearly died of it, I assert that this result, of
two long and all but fatal illnesses, was, in a poor man’s
house, due to Vaccination, and consequently due to
Parliament.
3.—Miss Edith Hutchinson, of Kensington, was
vaccinated by the late eminent Dr. Joseph Laurie.
The arm dwelled enormously, and ms hard like wood.
After a month it subsided, and then a putrid thrush
occurred, which disappeared after some weeks. The
disease was next transferred to the abdomen, and its
lymphatic system, and she died of great purulent
collections in its cellular tissues, the matter, putres
cent, voided by the bowels. I attended the later
stages of the case with Dr. L. Vaccination, careful
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
25
-conscientious vaccination, did it as plainly as fire
burns.
I give this case again in Mrs. H.’s own words.
“ 2, HorntoJ Villas, Kensington,
“6th March, 1871.
“My Dear Dr. Wilkinson,
“ The dear child was in perfect health in
May, 1863 ; but as Small-pox was prevalent, and our
household being vaccinated, she was subjected to the
process,—though the operation had been performed
upon her, and had c taken,’ when she was four months
old. Within a few days of the Vaccination in May,
1863, she—(being then nearly six years old)—was
attacked with inflammation of the lymphatic glands of
the arms to so severe an extent that her arms were
immensely swollen, and so heavy and hard that each
arm had to be supported in a sling; her sufferings for
ten days were very great, at the end of which time her
arms gradually resumed their natural appearance. But
within a few weeks the poor child was prostrated by an
attack of apthous ulceration of the mouth, which was
of a most distressing character from the peculiarly
offensive odour emitted from the gums, &c.
“The dear child was more or less delicate ever
after, and, in the' following June, enlargement of the
abdominal glands, and mesenteric disease set in, her
life being terminated by a . succession of abscesses in the
bowels in July, 1864; the doctor who attended her
telling me that the glandular disease had been coming
on for some months.
“ I felt then, and still do feel convinced that her
system was poisoned by the introduction of the vaccine
matter, for she had never had a spot or swelling of any
�26
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
kind before, nor had there been a previous case of
mesenteric disease in our family,
11 Ever, my dear Dr. Wilkinson, believe me,
“ Yours most sincerely,
“ S. Hutchinson.’7
The three stages in this case are a linked chain of
consequences uncoiling from the Vaccination. 1.—The
Vaccination itself, poisonous lymph, producing poisonous
lymph. 2.—The enormous swelling of the cellular
tissues, and consequently of all the tissues of the arm;
the cellular tissues being the great plane at the end of
the whole lymphatic system I the universal lymph
plane. All the lymphatic vessels and lymphatic glands
of the body stand in the relation of centres to the
cellular tissue as their great circumference. Effects in
the cellular tissue are reflected in intimate effects in
the vital lymphatics. It is a great arena of transfer
ence! of fluids I and if you disease it, of transference of
diseases. It Suns into the depth! of every organ in the
body]) and a spark of poison in its skin may soon be a
devouring fire of poison in its mesentery. 3.—The
next stage! the malignant thrush, was no doubt the
indexl of commencing destruction in the lymphatic
system of the abdomen. 4.-—The centre of the Vaccination was reached; the abscesses in the abdomen were
the end of the Vaccinatory deed. Verdict—Death by
FaccwaftW
This was a compaMtively acute case, and only
lasted about one terrible year. But you can easily
infer from it the certainty, in many cases, of more
subtle and chronic destructions. Keep your minds
open where they have before been willingly closed, and
you will see.
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
27
4.—Lady Campbell, the wife of a British Ambas
sador, (not known to me, but well known to Mrs.
Hutchinson, of the last case,) was vaccinated by a Dr.
L. The vaccinated arm swelled to enormous propor
tions.
A strong fine woman before, she died in a
twelvemonth from the direct effect of Vaccination;
which the doctor did not deny. All the particulars of
this case are extant, and can be verified if required.
5-—The Bev. Dr. L/s daughter had Small-pox last
autumn, for which I attended her. Mrs. L. asked me
to vaccinate the family. I declined, and gave my
reasons. Dr. L. expressed surprise 1 but Mrs. L. said
she was rejoiced to hear me speak thus; and added,
“ Do you not recollect that our eldest son has a scrofu
lous swelling of the arm from Vaccination, and has
never been well since?” He then remembered ; and I
examined the son, and verified the fact of the disease.
6.—A well-known literary gentleman, a name
known to everyone in Parliament, consulted me last
autumn, for an affection of the leg, attended with a
skin eruption, which much crippled him. He said,
“ Four years ago I was overpersuaded by a lady to be
vaccinated ; and I have had this affection ever since.
I showed it to Mr. ------------ > ; he pronounced it to be
gout, and did not admit its connection with Vaccina
tion.” (Gout may be caused by Vaccination, see p. 38.)
This case wonderfully illustrates the post hoc ergo non
propter hoc pleaded against big linked facts, written
out in two tangible and similar diseases, while the post
hoc ergo
hoc is held by the same surgeon in
favour of the invisible, intangible, untraceable con
nexion supposed to exist between Vaccination and non
Small-pox ; or between something and nothing. To
such a logic, endowment and establishment have
�28
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
brought the heads of the profession. The logic of fees
simple.
But if doctors are so subtly able to trace the absence
of Small-pox when it is absent, to the fact of Vaccina
tion, than which no greater mental ingenuity is con
ceivable, how can they refuse the common public the
right to put tens of thousands of like antecedents and
consequences of the broadest kind into the same rela
tions of cause and effect,—the right to attribute visible
immediate consequences to visible immediate deeds and
causes ?
I could multiply my cases from my own note-books,
but have not space! and I will content myself with re
peating that every neighbourhood is full of such cases,
which are only concealed in their ghastly multitude by
the Egyptian darkness, that is, the scientific darkness
of the established Medical Profession! If the reader
wants more information Met him consult the Anti-Vaccinator and
Health Journal, edited by Coun
cillor Pickering, Cookridge Street, Leeds. I have
touched the matter merely to give the pointing of my
own personal enquiries and observations.
All this experience, the whole other half of the
question, is ungathered, and Parliament has legislated
Compulsory Vaccination without it. Now I maintain
that it is the men and women of England, especially
the poor,!vho are the depositors of all the real scientific
information on the subject. The doctors know the micro
scopy of pustules and pock-marks! the poor know the
serpent whose trail is death in their homes. Why has
Parhament cast out the science of the poor ? Why has
it only listened to the venal science of the experts ?
There is a class intermediate between the poor and
the doctor, which can supply a fink, and that is the
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
29
Chemists and Druggists. To them the wounds and woes
of the vaccinated are freely taken; they are not esta
blished into stupidity; and they listen to the tale. If
they will honestly speak out, they can tell the tale. A
Parliamentary Commission ought to call their evidence
in preference to that of the professional experts. But
the substantial evidence will always be that of thevaccinated poor themselves, who have the real science.
Why the poor ? Because their circumstances cause
the Vaccine Disease, like other diseases, to create greater
ravages among them than among the other classes : and
hence it is a more heinous wrong to vaccinate White
chapel compulsorily than so to vaccinate Belgravia.
Add now to these facts, that in the medical darkness,
the Egyptian darkness that can be felt, and that is
cruelly felt by the poor, Parliament has enacted that
thirty-four millions of people shall, generation after gene
ration, be vaccinated to lower the death-rate (not the
disease-rate) of a few thousands of cases of Small-pox.
Is it less than certain that the death from such a vast
field of Vaccination towers over any immunity ever pre
tended to be secured by Vaccination ? If the doctors
dispute this, in which they are themselves arraigned, let
them come down from the bench, and go into the dock,
and let Parliament order a personal minute to be taken of
the experience of the poor ; then, and not till then,
Parliament can set death against death, and strike a
just balance as between compulsory Vaccination and
natural Small-Pox.
Parliament, if it will meddle with particular kinds of
physic, ought also to enquire into the practice in its
Small-pox hospitals. Do the men there, who lose 42 per
cent, of bad cases, stick to their routine and violent
drugging ? or do they try all the available means and
�30
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
new discoveries for treating Small-pox ? At Hampstead
and Highgate do they try the Homoeopathic way, with
tartar emetic in infinitesimal doses ? Do they try the
Hydropathic way, which is, I believe, excellent; and
always a good adjunct ? Do they try Mr. Rose’s plan,
with cream of tartar, the great success of which is
alleged ? Do they use the Hydrastis and veratrum viride
method ? If they do not try all these ways, they are
playing with Small-pox, and the death-rate is greatly
due to their own perverse incapacity! Parliament, if it
meddle at all, ought assuredly not to stop meddling
until it searches out these things, which must affect
even the half-statistics on which it makes its laws.
But is not a clear case made out for abolishing com
pulsion ? It has been shewn that the statistics in favour
of Vaccination—founded as they all are on
hoc ergo
propter hoc for their own side, and post hoc ergo non
propter hoc for the other side—are subtle and unreliable;
it has been also shewn that the statistics against Vacci
nation, gross as sick-beds and coffins, come up in num
bers, so that the whole foot of Old Medicine cannot
stamp them down! b^^hey have been refused to be
heard in the case. In the face of the flimsiness of the
one part, and the horrible doubt of the other, what has
a wise ParliamentKo do but to repeal these compulsory
laws ? Let them compel epidemics to relax their hold
on the throat of the cowitry, by compelling municipalities
to compel property-holders to set towns right, and
estates to set cottages right; but let them beware of
all compulsion that! rests on grounds more subtle and
metaphysical than these.
If compulsory Vaccination is right, compulsory Re
vaccination is right, and moreover necessary. But no
parliament dare enforce it. Were it attempted by fines,
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
31
it would break down ; were it carried out by violence
personally, the lancet would be jostled by the pistol, the
poker, and the knife. And laudable homicide, and godly
homicide, and if ordered or done in court, good and just
magistraticide, would become common verdicts in the
land.
Even the present law, if unrepealed, will lead to civil
war of its own kind. Against the mother who has one
child destroyed, or badly poisoned, by Vaccination, and is
compelled to bring up another and another to the same
ruin, it is civil war; and she, and her kind, will elude it
not by the laws of peace, but by the ways of war. If she
has strong convictions, who can say what is not lawful for
her to do ? She may conceal her births ; and to do so,
call into existence a new and clandestine class of mid
wives who will turn the doctors out of the neighbour
hoods of the poor. She may invent substitutes for
Vaccination, such as tartar emetic injected under the
skin, and forged certificates on a large scale. She wTill
assuredly do everything to barricade her room and her
neighbourhood against the compulsory Vaccinator. In
the process, a complete alienation must occur between
the poor and the medical profession. And a new, an
unrecognized, and probably secret medical service must
•supply the traitor’s place among the poor. How far
this will be serviceable to sanitary progress it is for
Parliament to think.
It may strike Sunday schools, and all education of
the poor, heavily; for the poor will become secretive
under fear for their children’s lives; and if the Hymn
Book means the poisoner’s lancet, woe then to the Hymn
Book.
But if it will create war between the poor and the
doctors, these laws, if persisted in, will speedily destroy
�32
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
the humanity of the profession. The doctor used to be
a familiar friend in the cabin, and the poor abode ; but
now he is the herald of the policeman, the bringer of
fine or imprisonment, the stern derider of the mother’s
eye, and the mocker of her complaints, the minister to
her children, as she believes of disease and of death.
He is not the single-eyed man of charity, but the tool,
the protected tool of the State, as the State is itself,
by base sufferance, the tool of the medical head-centres.
What is his comfort to the lying-in bed, if his know
ledge of birth which he thus gains, is treacherously
turned into a slmmons against father, or widowed
mother to render her fchild to Vaccination in three
months’ time ? He can only be detested while he
serves. His Eawheart .Bind Bpacitv, must be seriously
affected by the State making him into a spy, and an
informer, and his studies and his skill cannot but be
wasted by the sense of official poweSagainst the people,
where he ought to be a minister and interpreter of
nature only, and a private friend of the poor man’s,
needs®
Panic is the direct out-come of the present laws ;
and panic is a potent feeder of Small-pox. House to
house Vaccination puts all persons in dread; and the
vast fee field which is thereby created corrupts the
senses of the medical profession. The bigger the panic
the greateJ the profits. In the meantime, the death
rate ® scarcely affected by the disease, which only robs,
scarlatina of its usual victims ; for when the one disease
rises the other falls, so that nothing is gained to present
life. In the last weeklwhen 227 died of Small-pox,
the whole death-rate was six under the average of the
ten years. But the doctors stupefy themselves and
terrify the public, by proclaiming “the terrible scourge”
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
33
of Small-pox, when scarlatina, a scourge far more dreadis unnoticed in their public action altogether. This
moral deadness is a direct consequence of the endow
ment and establishment of the treatment of one parti
cular disease by Parliamentary acts.
The laws indeed confound the mind by their stu
pidity of conception. Within three weeks, I, as a
medical adviser, have urgently recommended between
twenty and thirty families not to be vaccinated. I
have done so on all the grounds I know, with all my
light, and all my conscience. As a medical man I am
entitled to an opinion, and am a free agent. But what
is my relation to the law ? It is undoubtedly, without
intending offence, a seditious relation. If I could be
heard, I would prevent all London from being vaccinated ; at any cost I would prevent it. If dragoons
were in the streets to do it, I should still stand only in
a medical right and say to the people, “ At all hazards
do not be vaccinated.’' Again I ask,—Is my little light
and skill forbidden by the laws ? And am I a traitor
to my country because, as a medical man, I do what I
know to be right for the people ?
Perhaps you will say, I ought to succumb to the pro
fession. I answer, that all the gain of man by time
comes out of minorities of one, and that we, the Anti
Vaccinators, cannot yield. I know the profession too
well, its fashions, its fluxions, its prejudiceslits passions,
its hopes, and its fears, to be able to cede an inch of
insight to its decisions, embodied in, and further vitiated
by, Acts of Parliament. Upon this particular question
I know that the profession, in spite of its routine, is a
hot mass of uncertainty and unhappiness.
There is nothing for us to do but to resist. And
those who resist here will have on their side the working
3
�34
■COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
people of England, and in time the majority ot the
House of Commons.
The agitation against the Compulsory Vaccination
laws cannot die, but is growing every hour. The at
tempted coercion of the people by medical despotism
cannot die, but is growing every hour. And the Glad
stone Ministry determined upon one permanence, its
own dynasty, cares nothing about small questions that
kill and maim hundreds of thousands, because these
questions do not seem to imperil the Gladstone empire,
the Cabinet life! The people, the masses, often invaded,
always invaded by these party lusts, the frontiers of
their rights constantly infringed, and their homes wasted
by empire-loving Gladstones, who are determined to
secure to the bullet boys of party their thrones, the
people are not yet drilled I but there is a nucleus of
militant resistance springing up in the Anti-Compul
sory Vaccination League, and the National AntiContagious Diseases Acts Association. The’only
thing you can do, my brothers and sisters of the British
Islands, who have bodies to be defended, and babes to
be defended, is to pass into the ranks of these little
armies, by your allegiance, and by your money, where
you will be silently drilled and informed for the coming
hour. Medical despotism, the despotism of science,
Egyptian darkness and Egyptian despotism, that which
brings down upon your houses the curse of the death
of the first-born, the worst despotism of all is going,
when you are fully ready, but after hard fields, to die
the death. As against the medical Gladstone Govern
ment, to-day is your Jena ; if you join ranks obediently
and heartily, another not distant day will be your Paris.
You must insist on new frontiers to your homes,
frontiers of fortified right over your persons, which me
�35
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
dical science and medical men cannot overstep without
your sovereign pass, and then always as private citizens.
You must insist on the demolition of all the fortresses
from which they have sallied against your lives ; on the
dischartering of all medical and scientific corporations.
You must have Science itself coynpletelg dismantled, and
reduced to its own exact but utterly individual authority,
or you will never be safe for science, erected beyond
its place into any power not its own, is the worst tyrant
of all; red democracy is nothing to it |land while go
vernmental fortresses of it stand, you are a constantly
invaded people. You know now, by experience, that
the rule of science by divine right is the most enslaving
of superstitions ; that an uninspired schoolmaster on
the throne, or above the throne, ferruling overgrown
men and women, is a very devil incarnatel Besides
this, during the civil war now waging, you must keep
account of your destructions,—careful books of harm to
persons and to industry, and life, wrought by these
Government Acts,—first least volumes of the new Dooms
day Book of God and the People,—and when the day
of treaty comes, you must demand from the common
stock your war indemnity. The first Parliament of the
people will levy it for you. And if Mr. Gladstone be
then Prime Minister, as we trust he will be, he is
greatly capable of assessing from the poor man’s point
of view, under the poor man’s thumb and pressure, to
secure his dynasty, the Weregild to be paid; the value
of babies to the mother, and of sons and daughters to
the country.
March 4, 1871.
3—2
�NOTES.
The profits accruing to medical men from a diligent
cultivation of the Fee-Field of Panic during these last
weeks, are in the aggregate enormous. One practi
tioner, they tell me,J in a neighbourhood not remote
from my own, has been making sixty guineas a week
by Vaccination. Statesmen, who can measure interest
as a factor in the instincts of cliques and corporations ;
as a creator of class-doctrines; as a power in shutting
the eyes, or opening the eyes, to facts; as a new lease
giver to abuses,—of course regard heavy fees as a
powerful though unconscious operant cause why the
medical profession has a great love for Vaccination. It
may be a legitimate love, but, were it not so, the fees
would give it artificial permanence. Of that, no states
man can doubt. Gain swerves the mind very danger
ously from the rails of fact, and is a general conjuror
with statistics^ Large profits, then, must be regarded
as at least a possible element in the building of the
present collegiate tables, which, while undestroyed, are
professional gold mines.
Bad cases are said to be due to unhealthy lymph,
and the first object is to get “ healthy lymph.” Clean
dirt, and healthy cow-disease! But passing this by,
we know what they mean,—that only the disease of the
beast should be actual in the matter. But what a sur
prising want of subtlety of mind, what pint-pot mate
rialism, as though men and women were vessels filled
with blood and juices from the tap of the “ King’s
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
37
Arms,” reigns in the medical profession, if they can
dream that matter transmitted through the offspring of
men and women for ten or twenty years, does not con
tain all kinds of abominations. If a drop of seed will
make a man, because it is a man’s, a drop of lymph will
make a gout, or a consumption, or a syphilis, because it
has been trailed through systems impressed with those
diseases. Even if it were all mere dirty cow, cows may
differ so far as to be full of hereditary taints, and our
babes may take the analogues of human diseases very
well from the domestic animals. There is no way out
of it. ’Tis all pollution together, though the vaccinator’s
cauldron may have more or less complexity, or simplicity
of disease and decay in it.
Thoughtful dentists suggest Vaccination as a pro
bable cause of the early decay of the teeth in this age.
The surmise gains countenance from the consideration,
that the germs of the second or permanent teeth are
appearing at the time selected by Government physic
for performing Vaccination. Lay this down as sure—
wherever nature is busy upon any conceptive operation
in the body, any’sudden unnatural shock to the system
is likely to impress the embryonic structure ; and hence
it is feasible to suppose that if Vaccination and the be
ginning of the second teeth are contemporaneous, de
formity of the teeth may be the birth-mark on them
inflicted by Vaccination, and premature decay of the
teeth, consumption of the teeth, the inheritance. Small
pox at the time would not have the same power of ill,
for it is taken because the system is predisposed' to it;
but in Vaccination a disease is given by violence against
pre-disposition not to receive nt.
�38
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
Vaccination is sometimes claimed as in principle a
part of Homoeopathy. Falsely, so far as Homoeopathy
in its whole scope is concerned. Homoeopathy, by an
incomparable drug-science, cancels the symptoms of
disease. But there is no case in which it aims to give
a diseased Vaccination is unsuccessful unless it gives a
disease. It also violates the body in a way that no
disease, not plague, or scarlatina, or typhus does, by
an actual wound into the blood; a poisoned wound.
Neither pestilence, nor physic, has any analogy with •
this procedure.
The clerks in the War Office have lately been vacci
nated. A large number of bad arms has been the con
sequence! Vaccination during epidemic Small-pox is
more likely to produce acute bad results than at other
times; because the town is already charged with a
poisonous miasma. In the War Office, axillary abscess,
and crops of boils on the body, have, I hear, followed it,
and ^rheumaj^c affections have freen reproduced. One
reason of the latter is, that depressing diseases bring
out all the weak points. See p. 28.
There is also goodl’eason to suppose that a process
like Vaccination, which in its theory of prevention,
affects the whole organism, is potent, and harmful, in
an increasing ratio from age to age. We have work for
brain and nerves which make morbid disturbances in our
bodies less tolerable than they were in those of our an
cestors. We cannot do that work, and live grossly as
our ancestors did. Finer causes count for us, and
against us. I submit that on this ground the special
empoisonment of Vaccination is more against us now
than it was in Jenner’s day. See if the effects of the
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
39
present re-vaccinations do not bear out this remark.
And also add to the subject the cumulative effects of
successive Vaccinations.
The baby T., mentioned p. 25, died of convulsions
in the night of March 10. The Vaccinating Doctor’s
certificate ran—Died of Congestion of H Drain during
Teething. Mylcertificate would have been—Died of
Convulsions, the product of inanition ccnd nervotis ex
haustion, caused by
disease d^ect^gpaused
by Vaccination. See what a different statistic will be
gathered from the two different views.
Last Sunday (May 1M1872) I lost a little patient,
Edith Clare Patterson, aged six monthslof whoopingcough. She was twice v®cinated — successfully at
three months old. Always weakly, she seemed no
worse, but her parents said, father better, after the
vaccination. The whooping-cough was of the adynamic
kind : convulsion throughout the frame rather the
character of the disease than cough. She was so blue
during the “inward fits,” as almost to suggest blue
heart-diseasel This weak child had a delicate mother.
What had vaccination to do with the case ? In the
first six months of its life vaccination gave it, by shock,
a disease it need not have had. The disease could not
but take away some of its life. And (1st) predispose
it to any current infantile maladieslsuch as whoopingcough—viz., by weakening its powers of resistance g
and (2nd) weaken it for surviving the whooping-cough
when it came. These positions seem to be incontestable
deductions from vital economics. The case is valuable
to me as illustrating the causes of the present great
death-rate from whooping-cough? The parents, I may
add, are distinctly averse to vaccination, but coerced.
�POINTS SUBMITTED
BY J. jIgABTH WILKINSON
to the Vaccinatio^Committee of the House of Commons.
I.—He is prepared to offer evidence giving actual
observation of evil effects arising from Vaccination.
II. —To allege that such evil consequences are wide
spreadgand very serious to the community.
III. —To show reasons why they are to a great extent
hidden from the medical profession. And why, so long
as Vaccination is endowed and established, they will be
so hidden.
IV. —To show that the statistics on this side of the
question are unknown, and that it is not policy to
legislate without them.
V. —To dispute the statistics which allege fatality
of Small-pox to Non-Vaccination, by showing that
other obvious factors are the causes of the fatality, and
Non-Vaccination only the coincidence of it.
VI. —To dispute the fact that Vaccination, or that
the stringency of Compulsory Laws, has anything to do<
with the abatement of the disease in modern times, or
with the immunity of faces in our day from pockmarks.
VII. —To show that the medical profession is incon
sistent in rigidly applying the rule, Post hoc ergo prop
ter hoc, to all who after Vaccination do not take Small
pox, and at the same time in rigorously insisting on
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
41
Post hoc ergo non propter hoc against all domestic evi
dences of grievous complaints following Vaccination.
VIII. —That fathers and mothers, from the necessity
of the case, have a greatly larger scientific basis of know
ledge of the real consequences of Vaccination than the
doctors can obtain. That Acts of Parliament have
brought this state of things about, so far as medicine
is concerned. They have paralysed medicine.
IX. —That Small-pox is a bugbear, because the
medical profession will not look at the various new
means now known of treating it.
X. —That its hospitals, in carrying the people from
Whitechapel to the tops of Hampstead and Highgate,
propagate the disease ; and by the severe act of carrying,
as well as otherwise, increase the death-rate. That
medical men carry it also, and are wide infectors. That
both these infectors can be easily done without.
XI. —That the medical profession will be socially
ruined if it has compulsory laws to carry out its pre
scriptions ; if it is associated with the police; and
the accoucheur of to-day becomes the informer after
wards ; and is either a party to violent Vaccination for
the child; or a means of fine, or gaol with ruin, to the
husband, or widow.
XII. —That the humanity of the medical profession
is seriously compromised by such acts, and its skill
against suffering diminished.
XIII. —That the poorer classes will become aleague
of secrecy against such acts I and concealment of births,
or false Vaccinations, and forging of Vaccination certifi
cates, will be means of public safety.
XIV. —That resistance to the mother’s knowledge,
erroneous or not, that one child has been poisoned, or
killed, by Vaccination, and forcing her to have the next
�42
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
child Vaccinated, is a procedure which, if insisted on
by Parliament, will cause virtual, and chronic, though
it may be covered, civil war. The Acts that do it are
regarded as declarations of war against, and as invasion
of, poor men’s homes. They may seem to triumph, but
resistance will be perpetual.
XV. —That Law Courts could not carry out punish
ments against poor men and poor women if they oppose
violent resistance to violent Vaccination. The moral
sense and sympathy of the constituencies will be en
tirely with the poorer combatants.
XVI. —That the primary wrong of Vaccination lay
in the Parliamentary grant of £30,000 to Dr. Jenner,
which gave Vaccination, then a slight experiment, an
artificial
all over the world, and made^ it so
difficult to reconsider the question, that compulsory
laws easily followed upon the hasty status thus given
to Vaccination^ The assumption that Vaccination can
do no wrong is the first outcome of these laws. The
next consequence is that all enquiry into the evils
inflicted by Vaccination is regarded as out of date.
And, third, all compensation for the mischiefs and mur
ders, is barred by Act of Parliament.
XVII. —The endowment and establishment of Physic
by the State, and its presence and influence in the
Privy Council, is a.n anomaly, and the like of it exists
with no other private calling 9 and it has been disas
trous, as being, among other things, the main cause of
the compulsory Vaccination laws, founded as they are
not upon facts, but upon presumptions, and in disre
gard of wide facts of the evils of Vaccination, known to
the poorer classes especially.
XVIII.—These futile and oppressive laws divert
the mind of Parliament, and of the Municipal bodies of
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
43
the kingdom, from the true social way of stamping out
Small-pox; viz. : the rebuilding and systematic purifi
cation of poor men’s homes in town and country.
FURTHER REMARKS®
When I was under examination, DrlBrewer asked
me : “ Do you not approve of isolation of Small-pox
cases?” I said I “With oil?” He said I “ No, in
hospitals.”
There are two ways of isolation. 1. Keeping every
case of Small-pox in the room where the patient is, and
sending in a nurse. 2. Using a drug which will sheathe
and destroy each poison particle as it comes off the
skin.
The present way—DrlBrewer’s way—is the way
of the general diffusion of Small-poxl That all London
does not take it, shows how few persons are susceptible
of the disease.
1. The patient is taken from a single Boom, where
no one need be in danger, through perhaps six
miles of streets, dropping contagion as he goes, into
the ready furrow of panicl which the ambulance
makes as it passes.
2. He is removed even with death upon him, and
the act kills him, and his aggravated death increases
the ripeness of the field of contagion.
3. He is taken into hospital, where contagion is
concentrated and focussed, and whence it pours
forth in compound waves over Dr. Brewer’s city of
London.
�44
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
4. Doctors steeped in it visit as usual, and sow it
on their own account.
5. When the patients are convalescing, they may
be seen walking in the purlieus of the hospitals, and
if wind and poison-dust exist, they must be sending
showers of seed of Small-pox. (see Tyndall on Dust)
on the wings of the wind over their locality.
6. When the patients are half well, they are
turned out, and communicate the disease to their
own people and neighbourhood after all, I know
this by experience. Why were they taken away at
first ?
Is this isolation] I say it is Diffusion of Small
pox by Medical Act of Parhament, Concentration of
Small-pox in Barns and Granaries of Small-pox, and
systematic sowing of Small-pox, and continual harvest
ing of Small-pox. The wit of man could not have
devised any respectable means of making Small-pox
more universal than Dr. Brewer’s Small-pox hospitals,
and the process of filling them, and emptying them.
Crown ah with the fact, that Dr. Marson, the virtual
Buler of Treatment in the Small-pox Hospital, avows
to the Select Committee that he has no new lights in
the Treatment of Small-pox, which stands for his
mind where it did twenty or thirty years ago : that
his Art of Medicine can do nothingRoo combat Zymotic
Diseases.
So Parliament endows and establishes Small-pox,
and not to be unfair to its little sister, endows and
establishes Vaccination also.
�LETTERS TO A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
ON VACCINAL SYPHILIS
Feb. 12, 1873.
Dear Sir,—
Owing to your multifarious duties, it is pro
bable that you have not seen The Medical Times and
Gazette of Feb. 1, containing a Lecture by Dr. Jonathan
Hutchinson, Senior Surgeon to the London Hospital—
“A Second Report on the Communication of Syphilis in
the Practice of Vaccination” —and a leading article in
the same journal—“ Vaccinal Syphilis.” In this article
the editor says : “ It is plain that our Compulsory Vac
cination laws cannot be maintained unmodified. * *
The number of instances yet before us is small, but we
also well know the manifold inducements to keep these
secret. * * If a full EB| investigation were made * *
we doubt not but that many more facts might be ac
quired. * * What we do know suffices to warn us of
the possibility of the dreadful contamination. * * * It
is not fair to subject peoples’ children to risks such as
those Vaccination-Syphilis implies, with no alternative
save to go to prison.”
Will you not move at once in this matter ? The
Compulsory legisBtion extends virtually to all subjects
of the British Crown. Considering what the human
race is, it is strongly probable that Vaccination syphi-
�46
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
lizes more people—and these little children—than all
debauchery put together; and, whatever the number,
the two Houses of Parliament have the responsibility
of it. Every month of delay, those two Houses are
syphilizing the Young Hope of the British nation.
The facts now at last admitted by the medical
profession render it also certain that whatever other
diseases blood can carry are imparted into the com
pulsorily-vaccinated by the power of your Honourable
Houses.
I say nothing in detail of my own recent experiences,
but I have lately seen many and sad cases of the irre
mediable evils caused by Vaccination.
Will you not, then, afteik brief consideration, move
for a return of all fines and imprisonments under the
last of the Vaccination laws, and beseech your Honour
able House for an immediate delivery from fine and
gaol of all who are suffering in the holy cause of pro
tecting their infants from “ Vaccinal Syphilis” and
other law-made diseases ?
I cannot but hope that your love to the Lord will be
shown in your prompt action here for the little children
of your country.
Yours truly.
Feb. 13, 1873.
My dear Sir,—
What you tell me of the communication of
Syphilis in Vaccination is very distressing; but the
ravages of Small-pox appear to me more alarming, and
much more extensive ; and I could not make up my
mind, even under your high authority, to take a part in
�COMPULSORY VACCINATION-.
47
•withdrawing protection from helpless infants against
that scourge.
Could not something effective be done to prevent
such clumsy practice in. Vaccination ?
Ever truly yours.
; Feb. 14, 1873.
Dear Sir,—
The ravages of Small-pox are not now alarm
ing, while the death-rate of whooping-cough, pro
bably caused by the weakness induced on infants by
Vaccination, is very great, though taken no account of
by the Legislature or the Profession. I had thought
that the recent epidemic of Small-pox had demonstrated
in large characters the futility of Vaccinawon as a pre
ventive of Small-pox. In well-vaccinated and re-vacci
nated Berlin, the death-gate proportionally is four times
greater than in London. And all the statistics about
the deaths in. the Prussian and French armies, cited
from St. Petersburg, have been shown by German
officials to be fiction.
On the other hand, the curtain is now being lifted
by the unwilling hands of the medical profession itself
from the child-victims of Vaccination. A thick curtain
it is, of prejudice, and greed of money and power; but
under it the profession is forced at last to see the in
fant destruction lying, and to suspect the |arger woe
and destruction which is still for the most part covered.
The poor men and women of the country knew all
this long ago: Parhament and the Profession are the
last to know it. The judgment of Solomon proves
who are the rightful fathers and mothers, and that your
�48
COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
Honourable Houses are neither paternal nor maternal.
The eyes of the heart are the most precious of even
scientific eyes, and your Houses have them not here.
After what has transpired, the longer maintenance of
Compulsory Vaccination amounts to the National En
dowment and Establishment of Syphilis by the Govern
ment. This is inconsistent with the avowed purpose of
the Contagious Diseases Acts. Their aim is to stamp
out Female Syphilis in the interest of the army, and of
respectable youths who are one day to be virtuous hus
bands. But at the other end you are establishing a
Syphilis Factory, Applicable to all infants. In short,
the law you have made is putting in Syphilis with its
hands, and stamping out Syphilis with its feet. The
babies of the country are in its hands, and the women
under its heels.
This does not depend on clumsy, or careful, Vaccina
tion. No Vaccinator can be sure that he is not syphi
lizing the babe on whom he operates. Will you still
send fathers to gaol for their horror at the dreadful
chance ?
Yours truly.
THE END.
BILLING, PRINTER, GUILDFORD, SURREY.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Compulsory vaccination, its wickedness to the poor
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Wilkinson, James John Garth
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 48 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contains letters written by the author to a Member of Parliament for Vaccinal Syphilis and points submitted to the Vaccination Committee of the House of Commons. Tentative date of publication from KVK. Printed by Billing, Guildford, Surrey.
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[1873?]
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Vaccination
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Conway Tracts
Health
Medicine
Poverty
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Text
THE HERALD OF HEALTH
Vol. 8, No. 4.]
NEW YORK, OCTOBER, 18661
[New Sebies.
PUBLISHED BY MCO., 13 & 15 LAIGHT ST.
Antral ^rtitlts.
[For The Herald of Health.]
My Creed.
BY THEODORE TILTON.
As other men have creeds, so I have mine;
I keep the holy faith in GodBiS man,
And in the angels ministrant between.
I hold to one true church ofMttjtruej^m^^H
Whose churchly seal is neither bread nor wine,
Nor laying on of hands, nor holy oil,
But only the anointing of
I hate all kings, and caste, and rank of birth;
For all the sons of man are sons
Nor limps a beggar but is nobly born
Nor wears a slave a yoke, nor czar a crown,
That makes him less or mor^^^B just a man.
I love my country, and her righteous cause ;
So dare I not keep silent of her sin:
And after Freedom may her bells ring Peace!
I love one woman with a holy fire,
Whom I revere as priestess of my house;
I stand with wondering awe before my babes,
Till they rebuke me to a nobler life.
•
I keep a faithful friendship with my friend,
Whom loyally I serve before myself;
I lock my lips too close to speak a lie;
I wash my hands too white to touch a bribe;
I owe no man a debt I can not pay,
'
Save only of the love men ought to owe.
Withal, each day, before the blessed Heaven ,
I open wide the chambers of my soul,
And pray the Holy Ghost to enter in.
Thus reads the fair confession of my faith ;;
So crossed with contradictions of my life
That now may God forgive the written lie!
KSO^HMby help of Him who helpeth men,
l|nBe two worlds and fear not life or death.
f^KtB^nead me by thy hand 1 Amen.
[Written for The Herald of Health.]
Concerning a Muscular Christian!
BY MOSES COIT TYLER.
“The views which Dr. Arnold considered invaluable
BnaamSaMMeverv case be held by those whom he trained!
to hold ideas on conviction only; points which he insisted'
on as indispensable may appear otherwise to his pupilsin their maturity; but they owe to him the power and the
conscience to think for themselves, and the earnest habit
of mind which makes their conviction a part of their
life.”—Harriet Jfartineaw.
“The sun never hides his face when the Queen,
shows hers to her people.” This legend, which
expresses the devout belief of the humbler
classes of England, and implies that the clerk
of the weather, with all his faults, is at least a
very shrewd courtier as well as a right loyal
Briton, was certainly justified by the fact,,
when, last February, on a charming day sand
wiched between two epochs of dreary wet and
cold, the Queen came forth in state to meet her
faithful Barons and Commons in Parliament
assembled. For hours before that which had
been set for Her Majesty’s arrival at Westmin
ster Palace, the streets and courts of the neigh
borhood, the highways and byways, the win!
dows, roofs and balconies, were filled with a
[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by Millee, ‘Wood & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of
the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.]
�,146
HERALD 01” HEALTH.
multitude of all lands and tongues to witness
the splendors of the regal procession, and more
-especially to see again the face which sorrow
and the dark veil of widowhood had so long
concealed. I remember that I had a fine out
door position by one of the windows of West
minster Hall, and had been watching the car
riages of the nobility and foreign ambassadors
passing to the door of the Peers’ Entrance,
when my attention was suddenly arrested by
the sight of a gentleman on foot, in plain black
clothes, advancing rather nervously along the
sidewalk, which was being guarded by the po
lice from the encroachments of the multitude.
He was walking toward the Peers’ Entrance,
and yet he half-seemed to have lost his bearings,
and not to know precisely whether he was going
the way he wanted to. He appeared to be
rather under the middle age; of medium height,
neither slender nor stout; with a ruddy, genial,
earnest face; with lip and chin shaved, but whis
kers of sandy hue at the side; and altogether
having a look of ample health, vigor, elasticity,
kindliness, intelligence and success. Who could
it be ? Evidently he was not a nobody; else
the discriminating gentlemen in sham helmets,
whose creed seems to be that a nobody is worse
than a knave, would have pushed the audacious
intruder back among the rabble. But he can
hardly be a very great somebody: ^S^^he had
been, he would have emulated the other great
somebodies by coming in his carriage. Who
can he be ? On he goes along the sidewalk be
neath us toward the Peers’ Entrance, with a
quick step, and now a little conscious that many
eyes are upon him, and a little anxious to hurry
away out of sight. Perhaps it is one of the
new members of Parliament, and not being yet
thoroughly broken -to the intricate courses of
statesmanship, it may be thatitBahas already
lost his way and is going in by the wrong door.
But, hark! Listen to those voices of the crowd
across the street and of the crowd on this cor
ner of New Palace Yard. Wha^lMhey say ?
All this time, while you have been letting the
man go by in the fog of your own speculations
concerning him, you might have used your ears,
:and you would have instantly found without
further trouble who he was. Your last chance!
Listen sharply! As the cheer dies away, do you
not catch the words of that fellow shouting
with delighted enthusiasm, “Ji’s Tom Hughes,
■the member for Lambeth!”
Yes, glorious Tom Hughes; the new member
for Lambeth, the trusted favorite of the work
ingmen ; because, though their friend not their
attererof almost boundless popularity with
them; because, while helping them he can
frankly tell them their faults! Tom Hughes,
the pupil of Dr. Arnold, tie graduate of Ox
ford, the barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, the author
of “Tom Brown’s School-days,” the friend of
Maurice and Ruskin and Kingsley, and the
Prince of the Muscular Christians!
According to the promise of my letter a
month ago, I now proceed to give you a brief
sketch of the eminent man whom I have thus
introduced to you hastening along the sidewalk
near Westminster Hall on that fine February
afternoon.
Thomas Hughes is one whose name England
will not willingly let die ; or, if she were so
disposed, America would come to the rescue,
and carry it off from the gates of Forgetfulness. There are some men the very sight of
whom gives us a better opinion of human na
ture, rekinding our hopes, rebuildling the fabric^
of our fortitude and our faith. Thomas Hughes
is one of these men. It was said of Swedenborgj so sensitive was his organization to moral
influences, that the approach of a hypocrite
used to give him the toothache. We may be
grateful that we do not possess such a delicate
spiritual barometer; for who would like to be
continually clapping his hand to his jaw ? Yet
wha^in Swedenborg was an abnormal develop
ment, ^Mn the rest of us only the common en
dowment of Nature—a faculty of responding
IKher with pleasure or with trouble to the moral
Eo®®ions of those who approach us. Hence,
an honest man is a joy for ever! Thomas
Hughes is not a great scholar, nor a deep philosopher, nor an acute reasoner, nor an orator
at all; but he is and he has more than all that
—he bears about with him the nameless aroma
of moral reality, of downright manly virtue,
o^^fe-bright trutKi the frankness, the direct
ness, the ^fflplicit" of a child, with the courage
of an athlete and the charity of a Christian.
In a classification of mankind he would go into
the same compartment with Abraham Lincoln.
He has the same homely, quaint honesty; the
same incapacity for evasion and finesse ; the same
humor; the same uncommon gift of common
sense; the same genius for what is right and
true. Thomas Hughes presents another exam
ple of a man attaining great success in life—
fame, position, abounding usefulness—by the
sheer force of moral worth. His career is no
encouragement to that sort of ambition which
aspires to be great while forgetting to be good.
I am not going very minutely into biograph-l
ical details for several notable reasons; chiefly
for the notable reason that I have not the bio
�HEEALD OFHEALTH.
graphical details to go into. But, adopting the
good old orthodox plan of beginning with a
man’s life where Nature does—with his birth—I
may state that Thomas Hughes was born near
Kewberry, Berkshire, October 23, 1823. All
the world knows that he was educated at Rugby
under Dr. Arnold, and at Oxford University.
He was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in
1848; he gave to the world “ Tom Brown’s
School-days” in 1856, “ The Scouring of the
White Horse” in 1858, “Tom Brown at Ox
ford” in 1861. These, so far as I can learn, are
the only books he has yet published; but he
seems to have been an industrious writer for re
views and newspapers, especially for “ Macmil
lan’s Magazineand he has edited “Whitemore’s Poems” and “The Biglow Papers.”
The publication of his first book, at the age of
thirty-three, made him famous throughout the
vast domain of the English-speaking race ; and
since then, beside being an author who could
write nothing which the public could refuse to
read, he has been a man of mark in sanitary
and educational reforms, in social science, in
the volunteer movement and in politics.
Last year the time seemet^^fflv^S-ived for
his noble and useful career to meet with a fit
ting political recognition. At the General
Election, 1865, he was induced to stand as can
didate for that populous and important district
of London known as Lambeth; and the result
of his candidature may be given in two lines of
an obscure poem which contained this allusion
to him :
“ What wonder Lambeth, such a MAN to see,
Gave him her heart and made him her M. P.”
Here, then, we have a famous author, a law
yer, a member of Parliament and a^^ing states
man; one of whose special claims upon our ad
miration is his. distinguished advocacy ofiffigfl
generous and wholesome creed of physiological
piety, “Muscular Christianity.” Mr. Hughes
has both preached and practiced this noble
faith. As the child is father to the man, there
can be no doubt that the boy Tom Hughes was
as fine a specimen of an intrepid, pugnacious
and magnanimous little Muscular Christian as
ever came out of Berkshire, or handled the
gloves, or cricketed on Rugby play-ground, or
sent a boat skipping along the top of the Isis.
No man could have portrayed the boy “ Tom
Brown” as he has done, without having been
such a boy as “ Tom Brown” was. Indeed, the
heartiness and muscularity of his juvenile .days
cling to him still, and often crop out in very
amusing forms in his speeches. A few weeks
Ago, in addressing his constituents on the de
147
feat of the Ministry, and charging upon the
Tories that they had not waged a fair fight, he
excited great mirth by this bit of school-boy rem
iniscence: “I know what a fair fight is. I
was taught at school to fight fair, to fall light;
if I got a licking to take it like a man, and hold
my tongue when I got my belly full.” The
celebrity of Thomas Hughes as a Muscular
Christian is certainly owing to the celebrity of
the books in which he has so magnificently ex
pounded and illustrated Muscular Christianity;
bu®|Wleed& in private, though less calculated
to swell the trump of'Eame, have been no less
earnest and useful,
connection with a fine
group of old University friends, clergymen,
barristers, authors and artists, he established
several years ago
Workingmen’s College in
Great Ormond Street, an institution on which
every year lays the garland of new triumphs
and new hopes. In this college Mr. Hughes
has been, of course, the inspirer of the gymnastic department, and with the greatest advantage
to the pupils. Once every year the members of
the college make an excursion to some pleasant
rural spot in the neighborhood of London, and
on these occasions they have an opportunity of
BMMaying their progress in muscular development. Only last week the excursion took place
for the present year. The party, which numbered two hundred, and consisted of the students, their wives, children, sisters and friends,
went to Petersham Park, near Richmond, as
sweet a spot for its rich woodland beauty as can
be found in England. They had songs and
dances and merry games, and finally sat down
to tea beneath the spreading roof of a superb
cluster of ancient lime trees. But that which
it is of immediate interest to us to know, is that
in this jubilant festival of liberated Londoners
a very important portion of the afternoon was
dSvoM^^rathlS^ sports, Mr. Hughes acting
as general director and referee. They had a
mile flat race, a two hundred yard flat race, a
mile walking race, jumping, hopping, cricket,
rounders, and a boat race on the Thames. This
list of their gymnastic contests will indicate the
nature of the muscular discipline which they
receive at the college. It will be~perceived that
it is almost entirely competitive. Mr. Hughes
seems to have little respect for any gymnastics
but those which involve that principle, and he
likes none so well as the rough old athletic
games of England. I remember a passage in
one of his books which vigorously sets forth his
views upon the subject:
“ Don’t let reformers of any sort think that
they are going really to lay hold of the work
�B8
HERALD OF HEALTH.
ing boys and young men of England by any
educational grapnel whatever which hasn’t some
bona fide equivalent for the games of the Old
Country ‘ veast’ in it; something to put in the
place of the backswording and wrestling and
racing; something to try the muscles of men’s
bodies and the endurance of their hearts, and
to make them rejoice in this strength. In all
the new-fangled, comprehensive plans which I
see this is all left out.”
Mr. Hughes is said to be an ardent admirer
of the gloves ; and that his admiration reposes
on a solid basis of knowledge will be evident
from the following amusing story that is told of
him: One evening Mr. Hughes being at the
college looked in upon the gymnastic class and
found them engaged in sparring. It appears
that a veteran was on the floor, and, instead of
treating the tyros with consideration, was knock-l
ing them about in a very ostentatious style, un
til at last they all declined to practice with
him. Mr. Hughes had been looking on in si
lence, but now stepped forward and said, in his
usual quiet way,
should like to have a 4um
with you, if you don’t mind.” “ Very happy,”
said the bully; “ have you ever had the gloves
on before ?” “ Oh, yes, two or three times,”
said Mr. Hughes. They soon stood face to face,l
and in half a second the bully lay sprawling
upon the floor. He got up angry, but Mr.
Hughes kept cool and punished him to his
heart’s content, and then told him that the
next time he had to spar with beginners he
should remember that evening and be decent,
if not generous!
When the cholera smote the metropolis a
few years ago, Mr. Hughes, declining to flee
from the breath of the pestilence, selected an
exposed district of London and personally vis
ited from house to house, to soothe the alarmed,I
to minister to the sick, and to provide sanitary
corrections to the neighborhood. If there be
in the world such a thing as chivalry, does not
this look like it ? No wonder Mr. Hughes is
the idol of the workingmen! And to show how
his character as a sanitary laborer is appreci
ated, I shall introduce a paragraph which ap
peared last year in The South London Chron
icle. I give it exactly as it stood, lest any
should suspect that my own words may be the
result of an individual enthusiasm for Mr.
Hughes:
11 The fear that cholera may come and carry
away its thousands of victims before any active
steps shall have been taken to cheok its fatal
career, gives considerable anxiety to some of the
best and most practical men in the country. In
the first rank of unselfish workers in previous
visitations was found the member for Lambeth,
Mr. Thomas Hughes, B. A., who, with Mr. J.
M. Ludlow, M. A., and Dr. Fraser, manfully
stood to his duty, as himself interpreted it, and
visited from house to house the population of
Golden Square and vicinity. We rejoice in the
possession of a Member of Parliament who,
while not a resident in the borough for which
he has been returned, accepts his position as in
volving the responsibilities of kinship with the
mass of the people; and we have good grounds
for the statement that Mr. Hughes is prepared
to do this in any thing connected with the
health as fully as in any thing affecting the pol
itics of his constituency. Very little has come
to our knowledge relative to any measures for
preventing cholera incursions contemplated in
either Lambeth or Southwark, but Mr. Hughes’
wishes are known to the leading members of
his election committees and to others beside.”
For any American it would be ungrateful,
and for me, knowing what I do of Mr. Hughes,
it would be impossible to conclude such a sketch
as this without some reference to the literary
and political sympathies of Thomas Hughes
with our own country.
In 1859 Mr. Hughes edited for English read
ers the “Biglow Papers.” I shall cull a few
choice sentences from the admirable Preface
with which he enriched that immortal book:
“ Greece had her Aristophanes; Rome her ‘Juvenal BFrance her Rabelais, her Moliere, her
Voltaire; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine;
England her Swift, her Thackeray; and Amer
ica has her Lowell. By the side of all these
great masters of satire, the author of the 1 Big
low Papers’ holds his own place, distinct from
each and all. The man who reads the book for
the first time, and is capable of understanding
it, has received a new sensation. In Lowell, the
American mind has for the first time flowered
out into thoroughly original genius. For real
unmistakable genius, for that glorious fullness
of power which knocks a man down at a blow
for sheer admiration, and then makes him rush
into the arms of the knocker-down and swear
eternal friendship with him for sheer delight,
the ‘ Biglow Papers’ stand alone. . . It is
satisfactory, indeed, to think that Mr. Lowell’s
shafts have already, in a great measure, ceased
to be required, or would have to be aimed notf
at other bull’s eyes. The servility of the North
ern States to the South, which twelve years ago
so raised his indignation, has well nigh ceased
to be. The vital importance of the slavery
question is now thoroughly recognized by the
great Republican party, which I trust is year
by year advancing toward an assured victory.”
No American need to be told that the Eng
lishman who wrote these intelligent words
twelve months before the nomination of Abra
ham Lincoln, knew enough of our political con
dition not to take the wrong side in the mighty
strife which was eyen then rushing on to its
settlement in blood and in battle-fury. Who
is not aware that one of the first voices raised
in England to cheer us was the voice of Thomas
Hughes, and that on the platform, in the lec
�■herattd ot ”ealtk>
ture-desk, in the drawing-room, and through
the columns of the magazines, he has steadily,
bravely and powerfully sustained our cause?
And now that from the overwhelming turmoil;
now that.from the slaughter and desolation of
war, to save an empire from the death-stabs of
treason; we have been led to the task, equally
urgent, of saving a whole race from starvation
and plunder, the voice of Thomas Hughes is
still to be heard in England appealing to his
countrymen, and entreating them to seize the
“ greatest opportunity that will ever be given to
them of making stronger the bands which tie
them to the American people.”
I have already said that Mr. Hughes is no
orator, and I was about to add that he is too
honest to be one. His style is quiet, simple,
colloquial, full of market-words, not a word put
in for show. He often hesitates, stumbles, gets
into a maze and comes out backward. Yet,
speaking only because he has something to say,
or if he has nothing to say saying that, he is a
man whom the people always welcome upon
their platforms and listen to with attention.
I remember hearing him last April, at a meet
ing convened at the Westminster Palace Hotel
under the auspices of the Duke of Argyle, for
the purpose of promoting the Freedmen’s Aid
Society. John Bright was there, and Sir Thomas
Fowell Buxton, and other celebrities, and among
them I saw the bald head of Thomas Hughes,
which, like that of Thackeray’s Dr. Firman,
“glistened like a billiard-ball.” He was one
of the last speakers, and his speech was one of
the best. I shall never forget the sincere emo
tion with which he gave utterance to these no
ble words:
“ But there is another reason why we should
come forward on this occasion heartily and
warmly, and that is the extraordinary impor.tance of a cordial alliance between the two
branches of the Anglo-Saxon race to the future
of mankind. It does seem to me that two
great nations, possessing and glorying in the
same traditions and the same history, struggling
at this minute with the same trials both politi
cal and social, and animated, I trust, by the
same hopes—I say it does seem to me that two
such peoples as these, enjoying too, as they do
the freest institutions that ever have obtained in
great nations upon the face of the earth, should
go forward, not with jealousy, not with distrust
of any kind, but with a cordial and rational
wish to advance civilization and Christianity
over the whole of this earth, and, as far as
peaceful efforts can do it, to impart to all down
trodden people, and to all people who are in
need of them, the glorious ideas of freedom,
and the glorious hopes, which we who speak
the English tongue in all climates of the world
possess and enjoy—I do think that we ought to
be stirred up to great exertions in this matter.
149
I do think that when we look at the grand, the
magnificent way in which the Americans have
met their own great trial, English men’s and
women’s hearts ought to be warmed toward
them, and that we should show, as emphatically!
as we possibly can, our deep respect and rever
ence for the work which they have done, and
the way in which they have done it.”
Yes, for the sake of such glorious English
men as Thomas Hughes, let us try to forget the
words and deeds of those Englishmen who are
not like him.
May the tribe of the Muscular Christians increase^H
London, September 3, 1866.
A Natubal Appetite eob Liquob.—An
article recently appeared in the editorial columns
of The New York Times, from which we quote
the following:
“There is no doubt a universal appetite in
mankind for alcoholic excitement; against this
no wise reformer or legislator should struggle,
as aft absolute evil. His great effort should be
to lessen the inducements to an over-indulgence
of this propensity.”
What new discoveries have recently been
made in the natural history of man, by which it
has been shown that alcohol has the same relation to the humaD organism that bread, potatoes, water, and air and clothing sustain, we
are not informed. The only relation which a
true interpretation of nature shows alcohol to
have to the stomach is that of poison, and no
amount of falsification of nature can make this
relation any different. It is natural for man to
eat, to drink, to breathe, to sleep, to exercise,
and he dies if these universal instincts are not
gratified. Surely, if there was the same univer
sal appetite in mankind for alcoholic drinks, the
race could no more live without them than they
can without air. But human experience shows
coSSgisivS^I that the less it is used the better
we are off; and those who do not use it at all
not only have no craving for it—as they do for
air, food, water, sleep and exercise—but an ab
solute digust and loathing of it. ’ The unwise
editor who penned the quotation, should study
■nature from a physiological and not a perverted
pathological stand-point.—Ed. H. of H.
Boston Public Baths.—Statistics show
294,836 persons have availed themselves of the
sanitary influences of the Public Baths of the
city of Boston within the last two months.
When we record our angry feelings,
let it be on the snow, that the first beam of sun
shine may obliterate them for ever.
�150
KffEALD OF HEALTH!
[Written for The Herald of Health.]
Some of Our Faults.
It is bad enough to have faults—too bad to
have them so glaring as to attract the attention
of foreigners and give us the odor of a bad
name abroad. The other day I met an intelli
gent and observing Englishmen, who did not
scruple to speak plainly of our faults. Said he:
“ How curiously you dress in this country I
Almost every man wears black clothes, and the
thronged streets seem as though the entire pop
ulation was going to a funeral. Now and then
I see a suit of gray; some wear coats and pants
of a copper color, and I have seen a few men
dressed in white—but these are exceptions; the
funeral color is the rule; black is the fashion.
No wonder one of our authors said you looked
like a nation of undertakers.”
I said as coolly as possible, that blacVwas a
becoming color, suited to all complexions and
seasons, and that this was a free country; I also
added something about bare feet when shoes are
scarce.
He was one of those lights (gas-lights) who
would not be snuffed out with my cool extin
guisher; so he continued:
“ And now look for a moment at your fashions.
They are as odious as your taste in colors is repul
sive. Look at the short jackets which barely
reach to the hips, and are constantly tempting
a man who hates the display to lift his foot and
kick the wearer. Such coats do well enough
for boys who have just reached their teens, but
they make full grown men appear very ridicu
lous. Those who wear such garments should
never say a word about the short dresses of the
ladies. As for the American ladies, they over
dress. I have noticed red, hard hands, that
must work for a living, hooped with cheap jewelry; and servant-girls often dress as well as
their mistresses, and more gorgeously, showing
plainly that they exhaust their income to please
their vanity. Now, our English ladies dress
richly but plainly. The higher classes seldom
show much jewelry ; indeed, it is considered
vulgar for ladies in polite circles to^ make a
grand exhibition of trinkets, as though their
husbands and fathers were all in the jewelry
trade. Lady Napier, one of the highest born
of the aristocracy, never wears any gold about
her person save her wedding-ring.”
I could only reply by saying, that our
coats were not so short as we desired the
visits of fault-finding strangers to be; as for
our ladies, they had exquisite taste, and whether
their dresses were long or short, masculine or
feminine, they were lovely in our eyes; and
servant-girls, who worked hard for their money,
had a perfect right to spend it as they pleased',
so long as they did no harm to others. In this
country we acknowledged no aristocracy, save
that of moral and intellectual excellence; that
here every man was a king and every woman a
queen, whether she played on the piano or the
wash-tub, folded newspapers or “flirted” a fan
at Saratoga.
“ You have no aristocracy, that is evident,”
said he; “ but you would like to have even that
distinction. When a live lord makes his ap
pearance on your shores the people turn out en
masse to see him, and, if he be young and un
married, scores of families in which there are
marriageable young women covet his company
and invite him to accept their hospitality. He
is sure to turn the heads and hearts of all the
silly girls who dance with him. See what fools
you made of yourselves when that coffee-colored
chap from Japan came here. He received a
peck of letters a day. What did the simple
darlings care about his habits of eating rat
soup and dog cutlet ? He had a title ; he was
almost a ‘ Black Prince,’ and that was enough
for them. Then, look at the list of your titled
men. Why, you have mere men with handles
Ito their names than we have, ten times over.
Look at the armies of captains, colonels, gen
erals, squires and majors. Why, if a man
crossed the Hudson in a scow he would get the
title of captain for life, and his child would be
known as the captain’s son. I’ll wager the
price of a new hat that every tenth man you
meet on Broadway has a title to his name.”
I gave him a piece of my mind, and told him
square to his face that our officers were the true
nobility, and had won their honors with their
swords; that when we honored his master, the
Prince of Wales, it was not because the boy had
royal blood in his veins, but because he was the
son of a good mother. We are a gallant peo
ple, and never lose an opportunity to show our
respect for woman. Queen Victoria was one of
our favorites, not because she sat upon a throne,
but because she was a good, true woman.
Now, if he had been a Frenchman, the com
pliment paid to his sovereign would have soft
ened his criticism, and he would have found
some kind word to have said of us ; but he was a
plain John Bull, and proceeded in the same
strain, but with a more provoking personality.
He continued:
“ Your habits at the table are not always re
fined. I often see men and women shovel their
peas into their mouths with their knives. I
�ilerald op health.
TO
I said, with considerable emphasis, that the
have seen them pick their teeth with the prongs
of their forks. At a Wbstern hotel I saw a man United States was the birthplace of the Temper
take a quid of tobacco from his mouth and put ance Reform; that we had four or five millions of
it on the table-cloth alongside of his plate until signatures to the total abstinence pledge, and that
he had finished his dinner. By-the-by, your our Temperance literature was scattered like
g. w. b.
habits of chewing and smoking tobacco are snow-flakes over the land.
shameful. Old and young, rich and poor, the
Sugar Candy.—One of the evil results
educated and the illiterate, chew and smoke to
bacco.
Cigar-stumps and tobacco-stains are of perverted tastes is seen in the great demand
seen everywhere. The appetite for the nasty for sugar candy. We have often pointed"out
weed seems to have grown into a passion; even the evils resulting from feeding it to children,
well-dressed men, who claim to be cleanly in but it will be a hundred years or more before
their habits, will roll the quid like a sweet mor all parents will learn that candies are poisonous,
sel under their tongues, making their breath and should not be allowed to the dear little ones
fetid, discoloring their teeth and soiling their they love and wish to bring up with fine health
linen. Why, I can smell a tobacco-chewer at and perfect physical systems. To such parents
the distance of a rod, and his odor never fails as feed their children on confectionery, the folto bring a sickening sensation. How delicate I lowing, by a well posted writer, will be found
and sensitive young ladies can endure the pres instructive:
ence of a tobacco-chewer—how they can receive
“The adulteration of sugars, candies and
trade largely and regularly carried on
his caresses without utter loathing and dis
gust, is something unaccountable to me. Then injK’HESI Instead of plaster, which till lately
entered so largely into the manufacture of conmen who pretend to be gentlemen will iBBhes- fectionery, in place of sugars, a new article has
itate to smoke all about the house. Having been discovered called terra alba, or white earth.
smoked their own faces to the color of smoked It comes from Ireland, and costs by the barrel
ham, they convert every room to which they aboSTtwo and .a half cents a pound, while loaf
sugar costs seventeen cents. The body of can
have access into a smoke-house. To the credit dies, the coating of almonds and lozenges are
of railroad companion be it spoken, they have made from this earthy material. It is whiter
than plaster, and is much used in the adulterprovided special cars where these human
motives can puff out twenty miles of smoke an , ation of flour sold in this market. A glue, paint
and oil manufacturer of New York has sent
hour; now they should provide disinfectants, round his annual circular, which I have seen, to
so that the smoking and smoked passengers can the principal confectioners, calling attention to
not sicken tidy men and women who do nSSm- a fresh arrival of this white earth. I have seen
. dulge in such disgusting habits. I was looking an ounce of lozenges dissolved in water, in which
two-thirds of an ounce was of terra alba, and
out of a car window the other day, when the not a particle of sugar in the lot. The common
wind blew into my face the spray of tobacco method of flavoring candies, almonds, sugar
juice from the lips of a fellow-passenger who plums, etc., is with deleterious substances. The
sat in front of me. My first impulse was to pineSpffl flaws the banana and the peach are
made from fusil oils, which are very poisonous.
take him by the collar and pitch him out of the Bitter almond flavor is made from prussic acid
window, but he disarmed me with an apology, BfnadnglSjSed. Pineapple flavor is also obtained
while the tobacco-tears trickled down from the from rotten cheese — very rotten — and nitric
corners of his mouth and formed a liquid brooch acid. Gum arabic for pure gum drops is costly.
An article has been invented of the most beau
upon his shirt-bosom. I merely said, Never tiful appearance,is used instead of the gum.
mind, I will spit on you some time when I have THpa very cheap and very poisonous. In pure
I
dvlShineal is used to color red and saffron
something disagreeable in my mouth.”
But in the common
poison
I replied that, although I did not use tobacco for yellow. is put, the same that candies to color
ous coloring
is used
myself, I had great respect for many persons wines and liquors. One of the most common is
who did; yet the respect was not for the habit, calledBcarlot,’ into which arsenic largely en
ters. A few grains of the substance will color
but in spite of it.
wine.
for
“ Hold!” he said, before I could crowd an a cask of of poor Liquorice dropsglue the ‘trade’
are made
brown sugar,
and lampother word into the conversation; “we drink black, flavored with liquorice. And. for the
beer, so do you; but our beer is made of Western trade much of this vile stuff is packed
malt and hops, while yours is a poisonous in barrels, and sent West to be put up in boxes
compound not fit for swine to drink; besides, to suit the market, of which from seventy-five
to ninety per cent, is terra alba. This material
you drink whisky and gin and rum and also enters largely into the common chocolates
brandy, and stuff made of logwood and whisky, and spices. Much of the cream of tartar used
for bread is made of terra alba and tartaric acid.”
and other d’ye-stuffs, and call it wine.”
�152
HERALD OF HEAL TtM
[Written for The Herald of Health.]
The short skirts, although in importance to
health the least vital of these three changes, is
nevertheless very important. The skirt should
BY DIO LEWIS, M. D.
fall a little below the knee. The pants should
This subject is vitally important. Beside it, be the large Turkish pants, which, made long
diet, exercise and baths sink into insignificance. enough to fall to the ankle, and fastened at the
My pale-faced countrywomen are dying for lack bottom by being drawn close about the ankle
of room, freedom; they are being stifled.
•with a slight elastic cord, should then be drawn
Dress Reformers proclaim short skirts as the up to the place usually occupied by the garter,
remedy. This is well. The short skirt is an and pulled down to the middle, or a little below
improvement—a movement upward, but of no the middle of the calf of the leg. When going
consequence compared with the readjustment out into the cold air the exposed part of the
of the dress about the middle of the bodJa leg should be covered with a patent-leather ank
That part contains the vital organs. Is a man let, and during the cold season of the year that
strong ? it is because the middle of his body is part of the leg should be covered with two
strong. Is a woman vigorous ? it is because the thicknesses of woolen. While all this peculiar
middle of her body is developed and active.
arrangement is, in point of convenience and
The changes needed in woman’s dress are the protection, less satisfactory than the straight
following, and I believe their importance is in pants, such as gentlemen wear, I nevertheless
the order named:
advise it, because it is very easy to introduce
1. The dress about the waist is Mbe very lEB short dress with these pants, and very diffiloose, without whalebones o^jother stiffening, I cult to introduce what is known as the Bloomer
and the skirts carried with suspenders over the costume. For example : In my school at Lexshoulders.
ington, Mass., I had more than a hundred fash
2. The arms and legs are to be so warmly ionable young ladies last winter, all of whom
dressed as to maintain a healthy circulation.
wore constantly during the school year the short
3. The skirts to fall to the knee,
K|gg3, the gymnastic costume, while all the fashI have said that the importance of these sev ionable ladies of the village outside of the ineral changes is in the order named. The lungs, stitution adopted the same dress. Indeed, it is
heart, liver and stomach, which together make almost rare to see in Lexington a lady with a
up the fountain of life, must have ro’om, or the long dress. An attempt to introduce the
vital forces must halt. With the corset and Bloomer costume, I am sure, would have proved
tight-lacing, these organs are reduced one-third a failure, not in our own house, perhaps, but in
in size and two-thirds in motion.
its influence outside. All through our part of
Health and equilibrium of circulation are in the country, when we go out to ride, we see laterchangeable terms. Whoever, whatever liv dies in the short dress. Indeed, some of the
ing thing, either animal or vegetable, has a per clergymen, who observed that our young ladies
fect circulation has perfect health. Whoever, changed for the long dress on going to church,
whatever living thing has defective circulation came to me to say that they hoped E would alhas defective health. Flannels, cotton padding, lowKWm to come in their short dresses, for they
thick shawls, cloaks and furs piled upon the liked very much to see them. A single lady
chest, while the legs are covered with a single appearing in the streets of Boston in the regu
thickness of cotton cloth surrounded by a bal lar Bloomer costume attracts a crowd of boys,
loon in the shape of a hoop, steams the chest while twenty of our young ladies can go into
and freezes the legs. The legs and arms, sepa Boston without remark or notice. The fact is,
rated so far from the center of the body, sur we men and boys are very jealous of our
rounded by the cold air, need, to say thlr least, breeches, but the gymnastic costume does not
as much clothing as the body, and ought to involve that garment, and so we lords of cre
have one or, in cold weather in this climate, two ation give our consent to its adoption by our
thicknesses of knit woolen. Wbmen complain sisters.
to me of headache, tell me their blood is all in
their head and chest, while their feet are as cold
Modesty depends upon good manners;
as ice. With the fashionable dress how can it happiness on security; good society on good ed- '
be otherwise ? Let them cover the limbs with ucation; wisdom on experience; and, for the
one or two thicknesses of warm flannel, and the safety or protection of a country, a tried man is
feet with a warm dress, and the head and chest often much more valuable than a renowned
will be immediately relieved.
warrior.
Female Dress.
�herald
of healmJ
{Written for The Herald of Health.!
[■Written for The Herald of Health.]
October Woods and Flowers.
153
Patient Waiting^
BY GEORGE W. BUNGAY.
BY REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER.
DEDICATED TO MBS.
MABY TBBAT.
Beneath my feet the grass looks up
To greet the cloud. Long had it prayed
For rain, till heaven held out the cup
To every parched and fainting blade.
The thistle, with its head upraised,
Like genius bearing noble deeds,
Though coarsely clad and seldom praised,
Sends on white wings afar its seeds.
The modest daisy, in its bloom,
Here gaily wore its satin frill;
A lonely mourner at its tomb,
The gentian, bows upon the hill.
Sad thoughts flit through my restless mind,
And die unspoken and unsung,
As leaves, touched by the autumn wind,
Fall from the twigs to which they clung.
The wood-birds nest upon the bough
Is like my stricken heart, which grieves ;
’T was full of music once, but now
Deserted hangs and filled with leaves.
But why should I, alas ! he sad,
Amid the light of such a scene—
Up to the hills the clouds are clad
In gayest hues of gold and green.
Here, like the patriarch in his dream,
I see the ladder angels trod;
These mountains to my vision seem
To lift earth’s sacrifice to God.
Alas! I’m seeking for the flowers
Which sleep beneath the leaves that fell |
They’ re kindred to the friends of ours
Who rest in peace where all is well.
The tint upon the maple tree,
So soft, is like the crimson hue
Upon my darling’s cheek. I see
In her soft eyes the heavenly blue,
On her pure face Hope’s blossomings.
The sky stoops near the earth to-day,
- And we can hear the sweep of wings
Of angels on their upward way.
Voltaire related to Mr. Sherlock an
anecdote of Swift. Lady Carteret, wife of the
Lord-Lieutenant, said to Swift: “ The air of
Ireland is very excellent and healthy.” “ For
God’s sake, madam,” said Swift, “don’t say so
in England, for if you do they will certainly
tax it.”
The love of exertion is a sign bf health and
manliness. Languor, the love of ease, the va
rious forms of indolence, mark a kind of physi
cal degeneration—a want of circulation; a want
of nerve; lowness of organization; imperfection of sensibility. It is sometimes the prelim
inary stage of disintegration and precedes utter
waste.
Wo®Hindicates a preparation for working.
The love of work indicates a high state of
health. This love of work arises partly from
the pleasure inherent in the healthful exercise
of our powers ; partly it arises from the excitemeffl whic^H)ring up during the plannings and
excitements of enterprise; and it arises partly
from a natural and proper pride and satisfaction
in the results wM we secure by intelligent activity. We can scarcely conceive of happiness
in one whoKH not generously active. We can
hardly imagine unhappiness when one has congenial occupation, vigorous health and daily activity. For, appropriate work which we love
covers up sensibility, takes away temptation,
withdraws the mind from morbid cares and
fears, and gives it wholesome employment. It
is a good thing to work because you love to. If
you do not love to woj|M8| is a good thing to
work because you
to.
While people are young, or strong, or pros
perous, ^^SthinkBEHfe of that great army with
muffled banners that is silently walking amid
troubles and disappointments day by day, un
able to do or achieve.
There is peculiar grace required to' maintain
patience and Contentment where one is placed
socially in such a position that all the stronger
an||mM natural actsSties are kept useless, as
is the case not unfrequently; for men are not
always, by any means, matched to their appro
priate work nor joined to their appropriate
place in socie^S There is neither principle, nor
law, nor experience, by which we can always
sort our children and connect them with the
thing for which they are best adapted in their
outward nature. Beside all that, however well
a man may be placed, and however well adapted
his education and faculties may be to his posi
tion, there are these upheavings, these ruptures .
of society, and these sweepings of Providence,
that dislocate men, and scatter them up and
down in the community, so that there are in so
ciety at large thousands and thousands of per
�154
HERALD OF HEALTH.
sons who are admirably adapted to some things,
but unable to reach them. They are not well
adapted to other things, but they are put to do
ing them.
Thus, a man may be eloquent in the French
language; but if by stress of weather he is
thrown upon our shores, what does all his elo
quence in his mother tongue avail him here,
where he is obliged to gain his livelihood from
day to day by stammering bad English ? A
man may have potency in his mother tongue ;
but let him travel in Europe, where he passes
from the English to the French, from the French
to the Spanish, and from the Spanish to the
German, and see how his power of language is
shut up in his mouth. If a man feels proud at
home, I would advise him to go abroad a month
or two and learn how insignificant he is. A
man traveling in a land of whose language he
is ignorant, is like a man swimming in the At
lantic. He is shorn of those ten thousand com
prehensive ways which at home made him vital,
sympathetic and useful, but which, being taken
from him, leave him almost as a dead man.
These are strong Instances projected out of
the ordinary course of things; but our houses,
our streets, our villages, our cities, are filled
with persons who are dislocated and out of
place'in society. As there are multitudes of
men that are attempting poorly to discharge
functions a great deal higher than their powers
fit them for, in every branch of public service;
so in lower departments there are many persons
who are competent to discharge higher trusts,
but can not get up to them. We can not see
how one and another person got there, but so
ciety is full of persons who are below their ap
propriate level. Where this occurs in youth it
is right, because young persons can press their
way up. They are like young and vigorous
plants that draw an abundant supply of food
for growth through the roots below; but when
men pass the climax of life, and with discour
aged spirit are thrown down below their level,
it is not so easy for them to obtain nourishment,
since the root itself is impaired; and when they
are transplanted they can scarcely get hold
again to grow. And they are obliged to wait,
holding their best faculties inactive, doing work
which requires but little thought, and to which
they are not adapted, and remitting intellectual
labors for which they are conscious of being
well qualified.
This is more the case with women, I think,
than with men, for the simple reason that, for
the largest part, woman’s happiness in life is
made to depend upon her social connections and
family estate. Largely, women do not enter
into the social state; but when they are once in
it, it is built of glass, and some side-long blow
may shiver it in a moment. And such is the
uncivilized condition of society that there are
but few alternatives for a woman. Women
that are broken off from their relations to the
domestic circle, find but few channels in which
they can employ thought, and taste, and fidel
ity, and affection, and stand independently in
the community. So that you see on every
hand among women instances the most marked
of persons who are fitted for higher places than
they occupy. And there are not a few of these
instances in which patient waiting for a better
day is rendered more beautiful than in almost,
any others.
Are there not multitudes of persons whose
minds are stored with valuable information,
who have fineness of taste that indicates much
of the artist nature, and who have been trained
to nice moral distinctions—are there not multi
Hudes of such persons that ply the needle; that
teach in the lowest schools; that spend their
energies, in the meaner walks of life? Are
there not multitudes of such persons that are
conscious that the greatest part of their inward
nature is buried and has no function ? Are
there not multitudes of such persons who, al
though there are a few things on which they
can bring the power of their mind to bear in its
higher ranges, are conscious that they are carrying the great orb of their being in obscuration, veiled and darkling ?
Out of this, which in some sense is unnatural,
and which springs largely from the infelicities
of society, but somewhat, also, from peculiarities of individual history and disposition, there
may and there do break forth morbid tenden
cies. Much of vice and crime springs from
morbidity, which springs from minds not prop
erly joined to their functions. And among the
mischiefs of want of liberty to use that which
is strong in us is this : that it disorganizes many
and [many n nature. There are nurses and
teachers of little children who are capable of
rising to higher positions than they occupy.
Not that teaching little children is to be de
spised ; not that it is not itself a noble work;
but there are many doing this work under re
strictions and circumstances which keep them
far below that for which they are fitted by their
capacity. Many persons, by change of fortune,
have fallen from position in society. They are
not adorning the circles that they might. I
think some of the noblest natures walk mostly
in disguise. In a society like ours, where there"
�Wraw of health)
is so much enterprise, where there is such rapid
growth, and where the tides of speculation so
frequently rise and fall, in the course of ten
years there are hundreds and thousands that
are overtaken by such a change of fortune, and
such a change of position in consequence, that
they are quite out of their place, and are obliged
to say that they find little use for that part of
themselves which is most to them. And so we
find men strangely situated. .We find men, for
instance, in factories, that are competent to
plead at the bar.
I remember that I once found breaking stone
near Cincinnati a University man from Ger
many, who had held one of the very highest
positions under the Governments the manage
ment of schools. He came to this country by
emigration, and, finding little to do, accS&teM
whatever it was. Being able to get his bread
and beer by breaking stone, he was willing to
engage in that humble calling, though the
strongest part of him was his head, and not his
hands.
When the Hungarians came here they scorned
charity, and as a means of maintaining them
selves resorted to various physical occupations.
One that I knew learned the carpenter’s trade.
Another that I knew learned saddle-and-harness making. And another that I knew turned
to making soap and candles, as Garibaldi did in
this land.. Others went to farming. And men
of the highest culture and refinement, men of
the best intellectual education, men
leaders of the people in their own country, when
in the providence of God they were thrown on
these shores, and they found, that they could
not use that which they possessed of talent, ac
cepted lower positions than many which they
were qualified to fill. And one could not iH|
feel that the most that was in those men had to
wait. They ought to have labored as they did;
it was noble in them; but, after all, they had no
sphere for their stores of knowledge. The
power that they had in their own country was
gone from them, and they were buried alive
while they lived, in some respects.
God deliver me from being an exile—from
being a stranger in a strange land, out of the
reach of my mother tongue. Send me to prison;
give me quicker dismission by the halter; let
the bullet do its work on me ; but of all that
God could send me of misfortune and trouble,
that would be the worst which should place me
iamong a strange people, speaking a strange
tongue, to walk up and down without a position,
a function, a home, a country, or friends.
The condition of thousands who have been
155
disrupted and broken down, brings their case
within the sphere of waiting of which I have
spoken. There are multitudes to-day that see
the world going by them conscious that they
have powers equal to any that are in exercise.
There are many who are deriving their pit
tance of bread from men whom they greatly
surpass. I remember that once, on going into
my father’s kitchen, in Ohio, to speak to
Charles, our hostler and gardener, I found him
reading a book in which I thought I perceived
mathelafflftal diagrams. On examining it, I
found it to bo a scientific treatise on geography,
in which all the astronomical problems were
wrought out; and as I had seen him from night
to night with his tallow candle poring over this
book as though it were the last newDovel in the
hand of beauty (though he was not beautiful),
I asked him Mihe understood what he read.
“ Certainly,” said he, “ most certainly.” I saw
that there was some Latin in the book, and I
asked him if he could read that. Oh, yes, he could
read Latin, and he talked it. It put my col
lege‘h»ors somewhat in peril, and I feared that
he migl®|^®lking to me in Latin ! “ Do you
understand Greek ?” I said. “ Oh, no ; I can
only read it—I can not speak it.”
There was that man deriving his small
monthly wages from my hand, and he was my
master, probably, in every walk of science and
literature. I was rising and prospering. He
was faithfully and humbly occupying the- posiE|Sn of hBHer^Sd gardener. And do you not
suppose he had thoughts about me as well as I
aboT®fi|ii®| Do you not suppose there are men
that have in some strange way been thrown out
o« counting-offic^the bank, the professor’s
chair, places of honor and trust, who cannot
get back, and who are walking day by day
where they are denied the opportunity of en
gaging in affairs that they see carried on by
men that are far less competent than themselves ?
Do you not suppose there are such men that are
obliged to stand down low and see men that are
pigmies compared with them getting upward
and onward? It may be very easy, if you are
prosperous, to say that such men ought to wait;
that they ought to clothe themselves with pa
tience ; that they ought to substitute large-mind
edness for a narrow, complaining disposition;
but did you ever walk where they are called to
walk ? Will you change places with them, and
see how easy their lot is to bear ?
Nevertheless, your advice is good. I, too,
think that men who are thrown into circum-j
stances where they are obliged to derive their
very life, not from outw ard success, not from
�156
HERALD OF HEALTH.
attritions and collisions with, their fellow-men,
not from the remunerations of pride, hut from
deeper sources—from faith, and hope, and trust
in God, and the resplendent horizon of the fu
ture life, which shall never he marred by cir
cumstances—I, too, think that they should
have royalty of disposition, and should wait
patiently. But it is not easy to give them ad
vice, nor to blame them when our advice is not
readily taken by them.
There is also a sphere of waiting by reason
of sickness, weakness, age, and the remission of
labor in consequence. Where idleness is of a
transient nature, we look hopefully forward to
being restored again to vigor; but where weak
ness becomes our daily attendant, our hope dies
away. Moreover, long-continued sickness ceases
to excite sympathy, because it has not alarm in
it. For we sympathize with our friends in pro
portion as we think they are in danger. Our
sympathy for a man that has the tooth®Se is
nil. If a man has the cholera, or a fever, or
any disease that imperils his life, then we sym
pathize with him. We sympathize [with men,
not according to the measure of their sufferin^l
but according to the measure of their danger j
and yet a man may suffer more, a thousswKMJ
every day, than it takes to kill scores of other
men.
Where men have sickness in the form of
weariness; where men do not suffer from vio
lent pains, but where theyMsaL'so fragile that
they break down under almost every stress, and
find it impossible to
at any rate, to
achieve in life; where men are obliged, day by
day, to ask leave of their brain to think, and to
ask leave of their foot to walk; where men are
prisoners, and every member of their body is a
jailor, and they feel that this condition is to
continue, not for a week, or a day, or a month,
or a year, but as long as they live, and that
their life is to be shortened by it; where men
are obliged to carry th® body of death with
all its infirmities, and to walk in obscurity, and
to be for ever pensioners upon the doctor—under
such circumstances it is„not easy for them to
patiently wait. And yet here is a sphere of
waiting—that kind of moral waiting in which
a man measures his condition, and then clothes
himself with a manly grace which enables him
to accept the lot to which in the providence of
God he is appointed, and lift up his head in
wardly, if not outwardly.
There are many men that we turn rudely
from our door with censure whom God does not
blame. There are many men that we call shift
less who are like a bag that stands up when it
is full and collapses when it is empty. There
are many men that, as long as you are helping
them, get along very well, but that the momenta
you leave them to themselves do not get along
at all, and we get tired of them and say that
they are lazy. But, in many cases, the trouble
is not that they are lazy, but that they are
physically incapacitated. It is not that their
will is not good, but that they lack strength of
bone and muscle. Do you sleep well ? There
is many a man that dozes more hours than he
rests. Have you a good appetite and thorough
digestion? There is many a man that has
slender digestion, and can not eat enough to
keep his body in "repair and health. Are you
vigorous ? There is many a man that is almost
entirely wanting in vigor. Many a man inherits'a good constitution, and comes out in life
with a broad prospect [in himself; while many
others inherit such feebleness that they are liable, under almost any pressure, to break down.
And these last ought not to [be blamed. They
were made feeble; and let us hope that there is
a better chance awaiting them in the other
world.
It might, perhaps,, not do any of us harm if
we were to suffer>some from sickness. I think
we grow more humane, more compassionate,
more considerate for others, when they are
brought into a felSMition of suffering like that
which we are in, or have been in. And let us
ngjlforget to have forbearance with those who
are obliged to [walk through life in perpetual
sickness, that impairs courage and cripples every exertion. FoWt requires“rare grace to endure and piously wait on God under such oircumstanc®.
This may be applied to mothers who are rear
ing families. It ESoften the case that those
who»a«T up amiable, sweet and obliging
women, wheffiflEFare brought into family reIsWSMa^MH sickness, by necessary suffering
in child-bearing, and by their household cafes,
gr^My taxed and tasked in their nervous sys
tem, ®o that they become acutely sensitive and
mw^lR^as well as more feeble and less hope
ful® So great is the strain upon them, that they
e^ehTfose self-respect, in some cases. And fre
quently they are blamed by their parents, won
dered at by their friends, and harshly dealt with
by their husbands and their children. And
much consideration is to be accorded to mothers
whose sharpness and impatience are often in the
ratio of that which they have suffered for oth
ers.
We are to remember, too, that upon the
woman comes the greatest weight of sorrow in
�HER ALB 0 F H E A LTH.
all afflictions. It is rare that a man suffers as
much as a woman from death in the household,
g^on her comes the duty of patient waiting
with the sick. She it is that has hand-to-hand
conflicts with Death. And at last, in the charge
by which the feeble structure is overthrown,
she is found confronting the dread enemy face
to face. And after the struggle is over, in which
Death has been victorious, she is the greatest
mourner. At the Cross last, and at the Sepul
chre first, were the women; and by them more
tears were shed and more sufferings were felt
than by all the other disciples. And that is
typical of woman’s lot in the household the
world over. And women need, perhaps, more
than any others, the love of patient Christian
waiting.
At the same time, there are many men who
are obliged to fight a battle through life, /or
life, and who need this love. Indeed, it is that
which we aft need in some of our earthly rela
tions and experiences, and which we shall all do
well diligently to seek and cultivate.
What they Eat at Xenia.—The “Fat
Contributor” gives the following experience of
endeavoring to get'dinner at Xenia on the Little
Miami Railroad:
“ Twenty minutes for dinner,” shouted the
brakesman as we approached Xenia.
Arrived there, I entered the dining-room' and
inquired of a waiter,
“ What do you have for dinner ?”
“ Twenty minutes,” was the hurried reply.
I told him I would try half a dozen minutes,
raw, on the half-shell, just to see how they went.
Told him to make a minute of it on his books.
He scratched his head trying to comprehend the
order, but finally gave it up and waited upon
some one else.
I approached a man who stood near the door
with a roll of money in his hand.
“What do you have for dinner?”
“ Half a dollar,” says he.
I told him that I would take half a dollar well
done. I asked him if he couldn’t send me, in
addition, a boiled pocket-book stuffed with
greenbacks, and some seven-thirties, garnished
with postage stamps and ten cent script. Also,
a Confederate bond, done brown, with lettuce
alone (let us alone). I would like to wash my
dinner down with National Bank Notes, on
J*draft. ”
1
He said they were out of every thing but the
bank notes, and he then ordered a waiter to go
to the bank and “draw” some.—Ak.
®57
["Written for The Herald of Health.]
Overwork and Underwork.
BY A. L. WOOD, M. D.
It is a law of Nature that all living things
possess within themselves the power of mo
tion, upon the exercise of which their exist
ence, as living entities, depends. Their life com
mences with action, action constitutes their
life, and when action ceases their life has de
parted for ever. Everywhere we find that
action is life and inaction death. In thus
speaking of action I do not mean mechanical
action or chemical action, but vital action-—
that which is inherent in all organized, living
things.
Look at that blade of grass, that flower,
that tree. The elements of which they are
composed are drawn from air, earth and water,
and transformed, by a power existing within
themselves, into the substance of their own
beings. When this force ceases to act death
ensues. As it is in the vegetable world so it
is in the animal kingdom, in man—only to a
far greater extent in the latter. As we pro
gress upward in the scale of life the operation
of this power becomes more extended and di
versified. In the plant its action is limited to
formation and growth. The plant has no
power of moving itself from place to place.
In the animal it not only produces develop
ment growth and constant change, but gives
the power of external, voluntary motion,
which is indispensable to the proper perform
ance of the vital functions of animal life.
A large proportion of the solids of the body
are composed of simple tubes, as the arteries,
veins, capillaries, lymphatics, etc., which are
filled with fluids of various kinds, through
the agency of which all the vital processes are
performed. These fluids constitute, by weight,
more than four-fifths of the body, and they,
as well as the solids, require to be undergoing
constant change. This change can only be ef
fected by having them kept in constant motion.
This motion can only be fully secured by ex
ercise or voluntary action of the entire muscu
lar system. The muscles constitute more
than one-half of the bulk of the body, and
upon their healthful condition the health of the
whole system depends.
It is a law of our nature that if any organ
or faculty is kept from the exercise of its
�158
•HERALD OFHEALTHl
proper function, that organ or faculty becomes
weak, withers away and dies. Each and every part of the body requires to be used in its
proper and legitimate manner in order to main
tain its integrity. The natural action of the
muscular system is to contract. By this con
traction motion is produced. Proper muscular
contraction directly secures the health and de
velopment of the entire muscular system, and
indirectly aids in securing the normal and
healthful action of every organ of the body!
It greatly promotes the circulation of the
blood, thus facilitating the vital processes of
digestion, absorption, assimilation, secretion
and depuration, and increasing the health and
strength of the organs engaged in the perform
ance of these functions. It largely promotes
respiration, causing full and deep inspirations
of air and a vigorous action of the lungs, thus
strengthening these important organs and im
parting vigor and activity to all the others. It
gives strength, endurance, agility, elasticity
■and grace to the body, and energy and activity
to the mind. In short, it develops every or
gan, strengthens every function, and aids in
securing the healthful and harmonious devel
opment of the entire man.
While a certain amount of exercise is neces
sary to maintain the health and secure a proper
development of the different organs of the body
and faculties of the mind, an excessive amount
as surely produces weakness, disease and un
due vital exhaustion. The following remarks
of Dr. Tyler of Boston, in his Report of the
McLean Insane Asylum, presents the subSB
in its true light:
“With the opportunities of observation
which my position gives me, I shall scarcely
be faithful to duty without briefly referring to
one ‘ error of the times,’ which is shortening
many a life, and bringing many to our hospi
tals in a state of incurable bSgi disease. I
refer to the intense and unceasing activity, dis
played chiefly in business, but extending to
almost every other pursuit. Every hour of
every day is given up to an unflinching and
persistent devotion to whatever interests the
individual. Nights and Sundays can scarcely
be spared from labor, and are compressed into
such small periods as shall just suffice to ap
pease a weary frame and a very moderate con
science. No time is taken for recreation and
little for meals, and that little in a very irreg
ular way. Every moment not spent in the
keen drive of business is looked upon as lost.
Every nerve is strained to accomplish just as
much as is possible to unremitting exertion.
Every thing is done rapidly, or, in the lan
guage of the day, ‘ with a rush.’ Every man
has a given amount of vital force to live with
and work with. His capacity for any kind of
labor, whatever it may be and however it may
compare with that of another, has its limit.
It never can be over-drawn upon without se
rious damage. So much of this force as he
wastes, or so much as he turns in any one di
rection, so much less has he for any other. If
he overworks his brain, his body will suffer.
If he overworks his body, his brain will suffer.
He may overwork one set of organs, or invig
orate them, as he says, at the expense of another set. An illustration of this is evident in
those who give their chief attention to the development of muscle, as boxers and members
of boat-clubs do. Their regimen and diet tend
to keep the digestive organs in good order and
develop the muscular system. This is fre
quent carried to an excess, and when it is,
the individual for a time can show an athletic
figure, great strength, and an external appear
ance of high health; but in a little while it is
plain that he has diverted his vital force from
other organs—say the lungs—which have been
insufficiently nourished : they fail him and he
dies of con»mption. To keep one in the
best working order, this vital force, must be
properly distributed to every organ, and to the
digestive and respiratory organs in full share,
to keep them active, else its supply will be di
minished. What is lost by use and waste
must be regained by regular bodily nourishment and refreshment, that is, by food and re
po®. Its use must be regular, must never be
excessive, and mu^alternate with rest. Each
person will accomplish the greatest amount
that is possible for
by working regularly
for a given number of hours, and by taking
time at regularly returning periods sufficient
for food, rest and recreation. The consequences of overwork may not appear at once,
but they are inevitable and destructive. Over
work® deceive themselves by the belief that
they can bear more than others, or that they
can bear what they are doing because they
have so long borne it without breaking down.”
The
[stock-grower, who is accus
tomed to raising horses, knows very well that
if he puts a young colt at long-continued hard
work it will not attain the strength and size
which it would acquire were it left to gambol
in the pastures at its own free will. He
knows that if the vitality of the animal is ex
pended in bard labor it can not be used to form
nerve and bone and muscle, and that the colt
can never become the perfect horse which it
otherwise might, but will always be small,
weak and inferior.
—
The stock-grower knows all this and lets |
his colts roam the pasture free, or only re
�HERETO
OF HEALTH.
159
But a new era in education is dawning upon
quires of them the lightest labors, while his
growing sons he sends into the field at early the land, and there are a few that have learned
morn, and through all the day requires them the lesson that children have bodies as well as
to perform the hardest labor their strength minds; that the one requires care and culture
will allow. The effects are the same with the as much as the other, and that forced culture
boy as with the colt, only in a more marked of either produces weakness and injury to
degree, for the higher in the scale of life and both.
While overwork is a great evil from which
the more refined the violater of Nature’s laws
one class of society suffers, another class suf
the greater the suffering.
The stock-grower perceives the operation of fers still more from underwork or idleness.
this law upon his colts but not upon his sons, Better wear out than rust out, if it is done in
and the result is that he raises beautiful, sym a good cause ; for then some good will be acmetrical and finely-developed horses, and complished, and humanity will be “ the better
small, deformed, weak and unhealthy men. forlfflSja But the true course is to avoid both
When men learn to bestow as much care and extremes and pursue the even tenor of a happy
attention upon the raising of fine and healthy medium. By so doing a far greater amount
specimens of their own species as they do to of labor can be accomplished, at less expense
raising fine horses and cattle, humanity will of health, strength and vitality.
An idle man 1 What is he ? Of what use
have taken a long stride forward upon the
is he to himself or to the world ? He is an
road of progression.
The same law that applies to overwork of imperfect, undeveloped being, a drone, a bur
the young body applies with still greater force den to himself and a disgrace to humanity.
to overwork of the young brain, for the brain Shakspeare says:
“What is a man,
is higher and more refined than the body.
Knowing this, what can we expect from the If m®Hgigood and market of his time
Be but to Seep and feed ?—a beast, no more !”
present forced, hot-bed system of mental ed
The great poet wrongs the beast by degrad
ucation for the young and growing brain ?
The child of three or four summers is sent to ing KH^tne level of a lazy man. The animal
school, and then commences the process of was created lower than man, it is true, but it
cramming, of urging the weak and immature acSmMHies Bthe object of its existence.
brain to perform tasks beyond its strength to What more can be expected of it ? How is it
accomplish, without the expenditure of vital with the idle man ? He has higher powers and
ity which should be used in strengthening and more exalted faculties, but what do they avail
developing it, together with its servant, the him ? He makes no use of them except, it
body. This process is continued through may be, to plot mischief and practice vices
the growing period of youth, and, unless the which the most degraded animal on earth
young student rebels, fails to perform the tasks would never be guilty of. It is said, and
idle man’s brain is the Devil’s
assigned him, and obeys the instincts of his na
ture and plays and frolics with his companions workshop.” The old philosopher, Burton,
under the greenwood tree or by the running says
stream, the chances are that, if he survives the
“ Idleness is the badge of gentry; the bane
ordeal, he will graduate with due academic QMMgygnd mind ; the nurse of naughtiness ;
chief author of all mischief; one of the
honors; a small, weakly body; loose, flabby
seven deadly sins ; the cushion upon which
muscles ; a dyspeptic stomach; feeble lungs ; a the Devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not
small stock of vitality ; and a contracted, ner only of melancholy, but of many other dis
vously active and excitable mind, which can eases.”
plod along very well for a time in the wellworn ruts of custom, but which is utterly in
“ The last, best fruit which comes to
capable of bold, vigorous and manly thought late perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is
upon any great, new and important subject. tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward
Such are the results of the present system of the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward
education of the young, which constantly over- the cold, philanthropy toward the misan
^jv.orks the brain and neglects the body.
thropic.”
�HEEA1D op healthI
160
[“Written for The Herald of Health.]
A True Life.
BY
HORACE
GREELEY.
There is, even on this side of the grave, a
haven where the storms of life break not, or are
but in gentle undulations of the unrippled and
mirroring waters—an oasis, not in the desert,
but beyond it; a rest, profound and blissful as
that of the soldier returned for ever from the
hardships, the dangers and the turmoils of war,
to the bosom of that dear domestic circle whose
blessings he never prized at half their worth
until he lost them.
This haven, this rest, this oasis, is a serene
old age. The tired traveler has abandoned the
dusty, crowded and jostling highway of life for
one of its shadiest and least-noted by-lanes.
The din of traffic and of worldly strife has no
longer magic for his ear; the myriad foot-fall
on the city’s stony walk is but noise or nothing
to him now. He has rim his race of toil, or
trade, or ambition. His day’s work is accom
plished, and he has come "home to enjoy, tran
quil and unharassed, the splendor of the sunset,
the milder glories of late evening. Ask not
whether he has or has not been successful, ac
cording to the vulgar standard of success.
What matters it now whether the multitude has
dragged his chariot, rending the air with idol
izing acclamations, or howled like wolves upon
his track, as he fled by night from the fury of
those he had wasted his vigor to serve ? What
avails it that broad lands have rewarded his
toil, or that all has at the last moment been
stricken from his grasp ? Ask not whether he
brings into retirement the wealth of the Indies
or the poverty of the bankrupt; whether his
couch be of down or of rushes; his dwelling a
hut or a mansion. He has lived to little pur
pose, indeed, if he has not long since realized
that wealth and renown are the true ends of ex
ertion, nor their absence the conclusive proof of
ill fortune. Whoever seeks to know if his
career has been prosperous and brightening
from its outset to its close, if the evening of his
days shall be genial and blissful, should ask not
for broad acres, nor towering edifices, nor laden
coffers. Perverted old age may grasp these
with the unyielding clutch of insanity, but they
add to his cares and anxieties, not to his enjoy
ments. Ask rather : Has he mastered and har
monized his erring passions ? Has he lived a
true life ?
A true life! Of how many lives dees each
hour knell the conclusion, and how few of them
are true ones. The poor child of sin and shame
and crime, who terminates her clouded being in
the early morning of her scarce budded yet
blighted existence; the desperate felon, whose
blood is shed by the community as the dread
penalty of its violated laws; the miserable de
bauchee, who totters down to his loathsome
grave in the spring-time of his years, but the
fullness of his feasting iniquities—these the
world valiantly affirms have not lived true
lives! Fearless and righteous world, how pro
found and how .discriminating are thy judg
ments ! But the base idolater of self, who de
votes all his moments, his energies, his thoughts,
to schemes which begin and end in personal ad
vantage »the grasper of gold and lands and
tenements; the devotee of pleasure; the man of
ignoble and sinister ambition; the woman of
frivolity, extravagance and fashion; the idler;
the gambler; the voluptuary—on all these and
their myriad compeers, while borne on the crest
of the advancing billow, how gentle is the re
proof, how charitable the judgment of the
world! Nay, does it not pick its way daintily,
cautiously and inoffensively through the midst of
drunkard-making and national faith-breaking ?
A true life must be simple in all its elements.
Animated by one grand and ennobling impulse,
all lesser aspirations find their proper places in
harmonious subservience; simplicity in taste, in
appetite, in habits of life, with a corresponding
indifference to worldly honors and aggrandize
ment, is the natural result of the predominence
of a divine and unselfish idea. Under the guid
ance of such a sentiment, virtue is not an ef
fort but a law of Nature, like gravitation. It
is vice alone that seems unaccountable, mon
strous, almost miraculous. Purity is felt to be
as necessary to the mind as health to the body,
and its absence alike the inevitable source of
pain. A true life must be calm. We wear out
our energies in strife for gold or fame, and then
wonder alike at the cost and the worthlessness
of the meed. How sloth is jostled by gluttony,
and pride wrestled by avarice, and ostentation
bearded by meanness! The soul which is not
large enough for the indwelling of one virtue,
affords lodgment and scope and arena for a
hundred vices; but their warfare can not be in
dulged with impunity. Agitation and wretch
edness are the inevitable consequences, in the
midst of which the flame of life burns flaringly
and swiftly to its close.
A true life must be genial and joyous. Tell
me not, pale anchorite, of your ceaseless vigils,
your fastings, your scourgings. The man who
is not happy in the path he has chosen, has
chosen amiss.
�HERAjTd ^t)F HEALTH.
[■Written for The Herald of Health.]
161
The former receive and propel the venous
The Study of Physiology—No, III. blood to the lungs, and the latter receive and
BY RUFUS KING BROWNE, M. D.,
(FORMERLY) PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY
AND MICROSCOPIC ANATOMY AT THE NEW YORK MED
ICAL COLLEGE,
HEART—CIRCULATION—LUNGS—RESPIRATION.
We have already seen that the blood is the
source from which all the materials which sus
tain the tissues and replenish the waste is de
rived.
We have next to understand that upon the
regularity of the circulation of this fluid depends
all the phenomena of a systemic character in
our bodies, so that all these phenomena j?re-suppose the existence of both this fluid and an ap
paratus by means of which it is incessantly
kept in motion from the center to the periphery
of the body.
This apparatus, called the circulatory appa
ratus or the “ vascular system,” consists of three
sets of continuous muscular and fibrous tubes,
and a central organ of impulsion, the heart.
Now, although this latter does not constitute
the sole means of propelling the blood through
the vascular system or blood channels, it is by
far the most important of all; for, although the
circulation in limited points of the system may
be arrested, if the heart suspends its incessant
action for a single moment the anima.! organism
can never again be »®-animated.
The heart is nothing more than a hollow,
muscular organ, the hollows of which are con
tinuous with those of the arteries, capillaries
and veins. Its motions are the pulsations, and
it differs from the other organs of the circula
tory apparatus in being provided with valves to
regulate the flow of blood, and to giv^t the
proper direction. It has been aptly likened to
a double forcing pump, situated between the
veins, on the one hand, and the arteries on the
other, these valves being so arranged as to open
in a forward and shut in a backward direction.
The capillaries are the minute tubes which
extend from the arteries to the veins, and it is
they from which the blood issues whenever the
surface of the flesh anywhere is pierced or
broken.
In the mammalia the heart is divided into
four cavities, which are continuous on the one
side with the veins and on the other with the ar
teries.
It consists, therefore, of the two cavities con
stituting the right side—namely, the right au
ricle and ventricle, and on the left side, the left
auricle and ventricle.
transmit the arterial blood from the lungs.
The lungs are therefore the compound or
double organ, in which the blood, being trans
mitted through their capillaries, is converted,
during the passage, from venous into arterial.
They, therefore, have a distinct circulatory ap
paratus, different from that which is common to
the whole of the other parts of the circulation ;
because, while passing through by a short route
to and from the heart, the blood, which is dark
or venous on reaching them, becomes arterialized on its return to the heart.
The auricles are that part of the heart which
is uppermost, and are the receiving cavities,
while the ventricles are the lower part of the
organ and are the discharging cavities.
Now, it has been only recently understood
what the exact character of the phenomena in
volved in the passage of the blood through
these cavities is.
Both the smaller muscular chambers of the
heart, the auricles, are receptacles—the one right
and the other left.
These are, therefore, first occupied by the
blood coming from the veins. The blood then
passes on the right side from the'auricle into the.
ventricle in a downward direction, but on reach
ing the bottom of the right ventricle it changes
its course. It makes a turn upon itself, and in
stead of passing from above downward, contin
ues to pass from below upward, but from right
to left.
This is the change in the course of the venous
blood. This is the character of the passage,
through the right side of the heart, of the dark
or venous blood.
On the other hand and simultaneously, theblood as it comes from the lungs passes into the
left auricle downward into the left ventricle.
Arriving at the bottom of the ventricle this
stream changes its course, and passes from be
low upward, and from left to right.
This
course is the reverse of the change of direction
on the left side of the heart.
This, then, is the course of the arterial
blood.
There is accordingly, simultaneously and at
given moments during life, in the heart, two,
streams of blood, both of them making their
way, in the right and left sets of cavities, first
from above downward and next from below up
ward.
Between these cavities and the streams occu
pying them we must remember there is a thick,
muscular wall,
�562
HERALD OF HEALTH!
The latter force the blood in a different di
These two streams, the one red or arterial and
the other dark or venous, separated hy a thick rection, through the orifices leading to the lungs
wall of muscular tissue, which partitions the and the general system, and past the valves at
heart into right and left halves, take a crossed those orifices, which immediately contract upon
direction in the cavities, and emerge from it at the just emptied ventricles.
As the contraction of the two first valves is
different orifices and in different directions.
The valves are those fleshy curtains situated simultaneous, so that of the two last is simulta
at the line of junction of the right auricle and neous, but they are successive to each other’s con
ventricle on one side, and left auricle and ven traction.
Let us now direct our attention to the im
tricle on the other side.
They interrupt from moment to moment the portant changes which take place in the blood
continued current of the hlood from the one to during its passage through the lungs, from one
the other,' when the latter has become filled and side of the heart back to the other.
The right auricle contains the blood just ar
is about contracting to discharge.
Both these, then, alternately relax and con riving from the general system by the veins,
tract, but while the auricles of either side con which terminate in it. This is venous blood.
tract simultaneously, the ventricles contract in If the auricle be looked at it plainly shows the
stantly afterward, and it is precisely at the mo dark color of the venous blood. On the oppo
ment between the two contractions that the site side of the heart, in a corresponding situvalves previously dependent as festoons, raise ation, is the left auricle, which contains the
and form a momentary partition in the auricSE- blood arriving from the lungs.
The color of this blood, as seen through the
ventricular cavity.
Then comes the contraction of the ventricles, walls of the auricle, is of a brilliant scarlet,
which react instantly from their relaxile state strongly contrasting with that on the opposite
after the contraction of the auricle. This clo side.
We see, then, the change of color which
sure of the valve prevents the blood from re
turning into the auricle, when the ventricle con characterizes the arterial and venous bloods,
tracts upon its contents and forces it in a side and at the same time we are enabled to distin
guish the exact point in the circulatory system
direction.
Now, as the two auricles contract simultane where this change takes place.
The blood before its entrance into the lungs
ously, so the two ventricles at one contraction
i-nRt.ant.1y follow (contract simultaneously™ and is bluish. Immediately after leaving them it is
the volume of blood which occupies the latter red, and this change is incessantly continued as
is thrown out at separate orifices, each of which fresh portions of the blood arrive at the right
auricle and ventricle, pass through the pulmo
is provided with valves.
And as the blood passes the first set of valves, nary ^^Hilation, and return to the left cavities
which are relaxed and open until the ventricles of the heart.
We see, therefore, that the blood in different
are filled, so the blood from the latter passes out
through these two orifices, when the latter set parts of the system, although a continuous vol
of valves also contract and close them, to pre ume, is not preSSgm the same hlood.
Let us now consider the course of the blood
vent the blood returning into the cavities of the
as it leaves the heart and is distributed to other
heart.
"We have thus briefly but plainly described parts of the body.
It enters the arteries, whose pulsations are
the circulation of the heart, but, to repeat, the
but an extension of the pulsatile movements of
.course of the phenomena is as follows:
The blood flows from the veins into the au the heart.
It
transmitted in an unbroken stream
ricles and into the wide-open orifice between
that and the ventricles (these two, on either through these into the capillaries, and through
side, being only apartments of the heart, each those into the veins. In the first, the blood is
two chambers, having a continuous hollow); im red from the lungs and the stream is rapid. In
mediately the auricle contracts completes the the last, it is again dark and the stream slug
filling of the corresponding ventricle, and at the gish.
In the arteries it is carried forward by their
same instant the valves close and thus shut the
propulsive movements, but in the veins it moves
blood into their ventricles.
Then comes the contraction of the ventricles, slowly, and is pushed forward by the current
which instantly follows the shutting of the from behind.
Between these are the minute tubes called the
waives.
�HERALD OF HEALTH.
capillaries. These have extremely attenuate
walls, and it is through them that certain ele
ment^ of the blood transude to replenish the
constantly occurring waste of the tissues they
penetrate.
These capillaries are found in every district
of the human system, and they are the chan
nels through which all the waste of the hody is
supplied.
They contain the blood in its proper state of
distribution for nutrition.
They supply the material by which all the
products of the various organs of secretion are
elaborated.
From their contents is formed all the various
substances which take part in the phenomena of
digestion and digestive absorption.
Forming in their ramifications by far the
greater part of the substance of every organ,
and containing in their hollows by far the most
active elements taking part in the function of
every organ, they are really the nutrifying
organs, supplying the pabulum which sustains
the |body and from which its products are
evolved. From their contents are replenished
all the fluids and the solids.
If the pancreas is to produce its characteristic
secretion, it is the capillaries of the organ which
supply the needed material for the work of elab
oration.
If the bile is to be produced, it is the capilla
ries of its structure which furnish the substance
which the liver transforms into bile.
If the gastric juice is needed for the digestion
of the food in the stomach, it is the capillaries
which transude the materials composing it.
But, further than this, the capillaries not only
furnish these materials to be elaborated, but
they perform the equally important service of
reabsorbing the materials they had already sup
plied, together with those parts of the food that
have been changed by the gastric juice and are
fitted for assimilation.
Thus the capillaries furnish the materials
which have transformed the food, and again
possess themselves of the resulting combination
of the food and their own previous substances.
They are not, therefore, the mere channels of
the nutrient substances, but ai^also the seat of
the great changes which occur in the blood it
self.
The study of the capillaries) and what occurs
within and immediately without them, is in
fact the study of nutrition in its several phases.
Without these delicate,, blood-holding tubes
permeating everywhere the tissue of the lungs,
no possibility would exist of supplying the
163
blood with oxygen, nor of ridding the system
.of the products of physiological combustion in
the form of carbonic acid and animal vapor.
We have now taken a sufficiently lengthy
survey of the great field or realm of phenomena,
the study of which we remarked awhile ago was
of truly surpassing interest to the welfare of
man.
The experience of history teaches us that the
relatively most important studies which have
engaged the attention of the human mind are
always the latest in the order of development
to be pursued.
Thus the study of physiology, from being so
comparatively difficult, and because its results
did not immediately reward us with any direct
addition to our material wealth, as the various
other branches which are now so assiduously
cultivated, will eventually become the most im
portant of all these.
Nor is the time far distant when institutions
of learning will be constrained to devote to it
quite as much attention as any of the other
branches of learning.
The |g|of knowledge it confers has afar
more direct and fruitful bearing upon man’s in
terests, both present and eventual, both tempo
ral and eternal, than all the others, which but
strive at present to satisfy and stimulate our cu
pidity or our natural pride.
And at length it will be found that all these
have preceded it and reached their fullest de
velopment in order that they may furnish an
indispensable basis for this study of studies.
Welcome.—“Papa will soon be here,”
said mamma to her two-year old boy. “ What
can Gregory do to welcome him ?” And the
mother glanced at the child’s playthings, which
lay scattered in wild confusionjm^the'carpet.
“Make the room neat.B replied^the bright
little one, understanding the look and at once
beginning to gather his toys into a basket.
“ What more can we do to welcome papa ?”
asked mamma, when nothing wasj wanting to
the neatness of the room.
happy to him when he comes!” cried the
dear little fellow, jumping up and down with
eagerness, as he watched at the window for bis
father’s coming.
Now, as all the dictionary-makers will testify,
it is very hard to give good definitions; but
did not little Gregory give the substance of a
welcome ? “ Be happy to him when he comes. ”
Fashionable young lady, detaching
her hair before retiring: “What dreams may
come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil.”
�164
HERALD OF HEALTH?
[Written for The Herald, of Health.]
Botany for Invalids—No. IV.
BY MBS. MARY TREAT.
Nearly all invalids love flowers. What a
quick flush, of joy overspreads the patient’s face
at the sight of a beautiful bouquet arranged by
some loving hand! Those who scarcely ever
notice flowers while strong and well, pre-occu
pied, as they think, with, weightier matters, yet,
if stricken down with disease, show this instinct
ive love as if it were a part of their very being.
Yes, we all have love for the beautiful inter
woven in our natures, although it may seem to
lie dormant in some rude specimens of Human
ity. Young children especially show this love,
but differing greatly in degree and intensity
according to temperament and organization.
A frequent visitor of our flower-garden is a
neighbor’s delicate little son, only in his third
summer. I first noticed this child’s passionate
devotion to flowers when our Tulips were in
bloom. Looking from the window I saw him
on his knees before these bright flowers, his face
radiant, his little hands partly clasping but not
touching, the flowers—a perfect picture of love
and devotion. And what a picture it was for an
artist! Many times a day these Tulips are vis
ited, and as they began to wither and fade he
seemed to look sad; but other bright flowers
soon attracted his attention, and now the Phlox
Prummondii, with its many brilliant colors,!
seems to be his special favorite. Never touch
ing the flowers himself, he seems to think the
bees and butterflies have no business to be rob
bing them of their sweets, his hands waving
gently over the flowers to frighten these insects
away. No doubt this child was born a bota
nist, but his future training may warp these fine
sensibilities; he maybe sent to school too young,
and thus, coming in contact with minds cast in a
rougher mold, will naturally influence his after
career. “ Like begets like.” The companion-!
ship of the great and good has a direct influ
ence upon the forming mind. ’Tis true, now
and then a brilliant light emerges from darkness
and obscurity, dazzling both continents, but
these are exceptions ; it is the surroundings,
the culture while young, that gives us these
master minds. Never was I more struck with
the force of the truth of this than in reading a
sketch by Mrs. Fletcher in The Atlantic
Monthly, where she relates the following inci
dent as occurring in Geneva, Switzerland, illus
trative of my position:
“We do not remember who said that £iD
Geneva every child is born an artist,’ but the
statement would bear investigation. Talent as
well as taste for drawing and painting is almost
universal, and belongs as well to the poor as to
the rich. It may not be well known that De
Candolle, the celebrated and untiring Genevese
botanist, made use, in a course of lectures, of a
valuable collection of tropical American plants,
intrusted to his care by a Spanish botanist.
Unfortunately, the herbarium was needed by
its owner sooner than expected, and Professor
De Candolle was requested to send it back.
This he stated to his audience, with many a re
gret for so irreparable a loss. But some of the
ladies present at once offered to copy the whole
collection in one week. This was done. The
drawings, filling thirteen folio volumes, and
amounting in number to eight hundred and
sixty, were accurately executed by one hundred
and fourteen women artists in the time speci
fied. In most cases the principal parts of the
plants alone were colored, the rest was only
pencilled with great accuracy. Where is there
another city of the same size in which such a
number of lady artists could be found ? One
of these very drawings, having been accidently
dropped in the street, was picked up by a little
girl ten years old, and returned to De Candolle,
copied by the child, and it is no blemish to the
collectior^^B
It is well known that Geneva has been the
home of literature and the fine arts for centu
ries, so we do not so much wonder at the num
ber of lady artists found there.
But the civilization or culture of the human
family, or of the animal kingdom in general,
has no more marked effect than the change man
has made in plants. Our fruits, grains and veg
etables have all sprung from plants that would
hardly be recognized as the same species. The
almost innumerable varieties of the apple have
all originated from a hard, sour, unpalatable
forest fruit. The same may be said of all our
fruits, though the change is not so great as in the
apple. Some of our wild small fruits are deli
cious. The flavor of the strawberry in its natu
ral state is superior to the monsters produced in
cultivation. Horticulturists may think me
semi-barbarous in taste when I say I have eaten
wild grapes at the West that I preferred to any
cultivated variety ever tasted; and may-be my
roving life in those Westem wilds did affect my
taste, for I have eaten wild plums there that I
pronounced equal to the horticulturist s best.
They were 1 arg^ juicy and firm-meated, and if
a little bitter in taste next the skin, it could be
easily obviated by paring, which I invariably
did, when nothing could be more delicious. Of
course, these fruits could be improved as regards
size, but it is doubtful if a finer flavor could be
imparted. And this is the fruit for invalids—
the tree of life—if they will hunt and pluck for
themselves.
�HERALD OF HEALTH.
A wealthy gentleman, of New England, given
up by his physicians to die with consumption,
as a last resort started for the West. On ar
riving at the prairies—Nature’s great flowergardens—he shunned doctors and men, camping
out and living on wild fruits and simple bread.
The result was that in three years’ time he was
a healthy, robust man, and could not be induced
to give up his roving lifB ; but he hunted and
trapped, and would endure all kinds of expo
sure, never taking cold nor scarcely knowing
fatigue. ’Tis true, good health is the first and
greatest blessing we can enjoy, and second to
this is congenial society—society of man. We
have no sympathy with one who isolates him
self from his fellows out of disregard for their
fellowship. However much we may admire
Thoreau, yet we have a secret feeling of chagrin
that he should prefer the society of woodchucks
to man. The remarks of the critic in The
North American Review were to the point,
when, in reviewing Thoreau, he said: “ The
natural man, like the singing birds, comes out
of the forest as inevitably as the natural bear
and wild-cat stick there.”
Cultivation, too, has given us many varieties
of grain. Almost innumerable varieties of
maize or Indian corn have been produced since
the landing of Columbus on these shores. We
have early six weeks’/com, and later varieties
that take a long summer to perfect, originally
from the same species. These early varieties
were brought about by taking corn as far north
as it would grow, where in the course of time it
learned to ripen in the short summers, and is
sent back to us for early garden varieties. It
is a very easy matter to hybridize corn, as every
farmer knows, for the staminate or male flowers
are at the summit of the stalk, and the pollen,
at the mercy of the winds, may be carried to a
distant cornfield, where, falling upon the silk or
pistillate flowers, it produces a mixture often
differing in color from either parent.
So the change in our vegetables is no less
marked. The potato in its native wilds has
scarcely a tuber upon its roots, but cultivation
has produced untold varieties. The parsnip in
its native state has a slender, poisonous root,
but is made wholesome and nutritious by the
abundance of saccharine matter deposited after
years of care and cultivation. But this plant,
almost more than any other, has a tendency to
go back to its original or former worthlessness.
If left to itself for only two or three years,
about the garden fence or some other out-of-theway place, the root dwindles in size, becomes
hard, acrid and poisonous. Frequent cases of
T65
poisoning have occurred in families unacquainted
with this fact. The cabbage is another illustra
tion, which has no appearance of a head in its
natural state.
But perhaps there is no more marked change
in plants cultivated for use than in those for or
nament. By cultivation the internal organs
of flowers—stamens and pistils—are gradually
made to pass into petals and thus become double.
This is frequently carried to such an extent that
all traces of sexual organs disappear—they have
all become petals, and of course no seed can be
produced. If civilization and high culture can
thus affect plants, may it not affect the human
family in the same way ? May this not be the
reason why so few children, comparatively
speaking, are born among highly intellectual
and cultivated people, while in the cabins and
log huts of the poor we see swarms of children,
the same as we do seeds among uncultivated
plants ?
The great natural order or family Composites,
to whHSwe are indebted for most of our au
tumnal flowers, is by far the most extensive of
all the natural orders, embracing about nine
thousand species, and always known by its
heads of flowers and united anthers. They are
distributed over all parts of the globe, but very
unequally. According to Humboldt, in some of
the countries of Europe and Asia they consti
tute but a very small proportion, while in trop
ical America and in some of the tropical islands
they are full one-half of all the flowering plants,
and on the Island of Sicily, according to some
botanists, they are one-half. They give us but
very few useful species, unless we call the horrid
bitter herbs with which we were dosed in child
hood useful, and which we never see without a
sort of dread and nauseating sensation—as, for
instance, thoroughwort, tansey, wormwood,
camomile, and many others, whose medicinal
virtues were formerly supposed to be very great.
Latterly, most of these supposed medicinal plants
are very much out of favor, and we do not see
the great bundles of dried herbs in every wellregulated household as formerly. But some of
our most brilliant and highly ornamental plants
are found in this order. Our autumnal gardens
would look dreary enough did not this family
give us the splendid Dahlias, Crysanthemums,
Asters, Zinias, Helianthus, and many others too
numerous to mention.
The fields and waste places are no less in
debted to this order for their autumnal decora
tions than our gardens. Especially the graceful
Goldenrod, whose beauty and gracefulness has
been the theme of poets in all ages. Over thirty
�166
HERALD OF HEALTH.
species of Goldenrod decorate our roadsides and
fields. The most pleasant species is. Solidago
odora or Sweet-scented Goldenrod. The crushed
leaves of this species have a fine fragrance, sim
ilar to anise, and are frequently distilled for the
fragrant volatile oil which they yield in abun
dance, and they have been used as a substitute
for tea, and even been exported to China. As
every body is supposed to know the Goldenrod,
it is hardly necessary to speak of the flowers,
for the divisions of calyx and corolla, stamens,
pistils, fruit and seeds, are what we depend upon
to determine the family and genus, but as we
all know this belongs to the Composite family,
and genus Solidago, we have only to look carefuHy that we do not mistake the species, which
is determined by the leaves. The stem is from
two to three feet high, the leaves linear-lanceo
late, smooth and entire, with a strong, yellow
ish mid-vein, veinlets scarcely perceptible; but,
above all, the fragrance of this species is so dis
tinct from the others it can hardly be mistaken.
It takes its generic name from the Latin solido,
to make whole, in allusion to its then supposed
medicinal properties« its specific name, odora\
from its sweet-scented leaves.
But soon the frost will crisp and blacken
these flowers, and we can only turn to our books
and dried collections, of which I hope we have
all secured a good supply, to study during our
leisure in the long winter months.
tWritten for The Herald of Health.]
A Homily for Ministers and Chris
tians.
BY REV. DR. JOHN MARSH.
There is, it is believed, no portion of the
Christian world in which religion has a higher
and purer type than America. England, our
fatherland, has, we know, ever been identified
with extreme formalism, amid much true devo
tion. Scottish piety has been in another ex
treme—piety of the head more than the heart.
America has placed her religion more in the af
fections—is more decidedly spiritual, seeks an
abstraction from all that is visible and tangible.
But is there not danger of an extreme, even
here ? May not we Americans become, even in
our piety, so wholly spiritual as almost entirely
to neglect the animal constitution, and bring
injury upon ourselves and disgrace the very re
ligion in which we glory ? By what law is that
minister of the Gospel or that professing Chris
tian governed whose conversation is daily and
literally in heaven, but whose mouth is filled
with tobacco ? who indulges two or three times
a day in his cigar ? or who, without any regard
to the admonitions of those who understand
their poisonous qualities, will be seen using in
social and friendly circles alcoholic beverages ?
Paul tells us: “ The body is for the Lord,” and
therefore it is as much a part of true religion to
take care of the body as it is to take care of the
soul—a strange doctrine; however, it is believed
by not a few professing Christians. Temper
ance sermons were at one time viewed as an
outrage in Christian pulpits. And the clergy
man who should now deliver a discourse upon
the Laws of Health, severely remarking upon a
daily violation of those laws in Christian fami
lies—in their food, their dress, their labors, their
parties and pleasures—would be considered in
most congregations as forfeiting his ministerial
standing.
In caring for the body there is, even among
many good people, little or no conscience. They
do not feel that they are responsible for what
they eat or drink, or for what dress they wear
or what pleasures they engage in; if the heart
be right, if they have saving faith and make a
good profession before many witnesses and give
liberally of their substance, that is enough.
BuiAj^Egiot so. We are to be temperate in all
things and keep in subjection our appetites and
passions. The body is for the Lord, and our
bodies are to become temples of the Holy Ghost;
and until ministers and Christians understand
this better than they do, and care more for health
and less for appetite, in vain shall we look for
the suppression of intemperance and the refor
mation of inebriates; in vain shall we look for
the disuse of tobacco and narcotics among our
young men; in vain shall we expect a convert
ing and sanctifying power in the pulpit and the
Church, and in vain look for the coming of the
glorious millennium. Let all, then, remember,
“ The body is for the Lordis to be subject to
His law and trained for His glory. In neglect
of this not a few good men live out not half
their days. In our attention to it there is an
increase of days, an increase of animal and spir
itual enjoyment, a vastly increased usefulness,
and an honor put on Him who has formed us,
placed us in this beautiful world and fitted us
for His glory.
Garments of beauty may cover, but
they can never impart worth to abandoned char
acter.
Why is the assessor of taxes the best
man in the world? Because he never underrates
any body.
�HERALD OF* HEALTH.
167
those of males, while at birth they are larger,
and ought to be, for sufficient reasons. If the
Health of G-irls-No. V.
chest is thus contracted, adequate room for the
lungs, etc., is utterly impossible. If the lungs
BY DR. J. H. HANAFORD.
are in any respect compressed, the minute airThe compression of the chest is still another cells and passages—estimated by millions—be
cause of disease and debility. The chest con come closed and adhere for ever, rendering, a full
tains the heart and lungs, two organs demand inflation of the lungs, and a consequent full
ing special space for exercise. Indeed, by na supply of air, utterly impossible. To under
ture there is just room enough for all of the in stand the extent of the evils of such compres
ternal organs and none to spare. If any are sion, it should be remembered that one object of
crowded, their usefulness, so to speak, is im 'breathing is to purify the blood by a contact
paired, and none more than the lungs and with the air—or its oxygen—in the lungs, one
heart. These, in the form given to the chest, of the most important means of purifying the
are amply protected, bounded by firm bones, blood. Indeed, this method is much more effi
the ribs, breast-bone, spinal column, etc.—at cacious than the use of all of the sarsaparilla
least firm when fully matured. This chest, at “ blood-purifiers” that ignorant quacks have ever
birth, is large, ample to accommodate and pro cursed society with, since this is Nature’s own
tect its contents, the shape being adapted to its purifier, leaving no “ dregs of impurity” intro
design. But that shape is wonderfully and duced in the very process of purification.
sadly changed from its original conical form, (Young lady, if you would purify your blood,
with the larger portion down, inverting Nature’s use less salt, less “ grease,” less pork—the most
plan. Those who doubt this will please observe abominable of all grease; less diseased animal
the chest of the infant at birth, notice the am food, etc.; it is difficult to use too little of such
ple expanse of the ribs, particularly at the base, articles—and breathe as much as possible of
relatively larger in the female than in the male, pure, cool air, day and night, exercising suffi
for reasons that need not be specified. But, ciently to throw off the waste of the body, and
between the ages of ten and fifteen years, you will not only find an economical but also
though some have supposed that the days of an effectual method.
Again, this compression of the lungs is among
corsets, etc., have passed away, mark the wasp
like forms, so beautiful, and notice that this the many causes of pulmonary consumption, so
change occurs very soon after the miss begins alarmingly prevalent at the present day partic
to have some idea of “ taste,’■diminishing in ularly among females—a disease that is consign
size, particularly at the base, at a very rapid ing thousands of the fair buds of mortality,
rate just when the dawn of womanhood appears,^ frail young ladies, to a premature grave annu
when the chest naturally enlarges. Facts just ally, even in our own favored country. It is
ify the assertion that the chest is relatively the not necessary to state the physiological reasons
smallest where it should be the largest, dimin for this result; yet, it is a fact that such pressure,
ishing from birth. Now, this is not without a closing the air-cells, etc., resulting in facilitating
cause. A part of this is referable, it may be, to unhealthful deposits or preventing their escape,
the tight bandages of infancy, worn sufficiently preventing the ordinary supply of air, etc. etc.,
tight to cause discomfort, if not pain, and at a is making sad inroads into the health of the fu
time when the bones—-if such they may be ture mothers, those now in the bloom of life.
called—are very yielding. At this time a slight Indeed, this is a disease comparatively unknown
pressure is sufficient to materially diminish the in savage society—a kind of crowning glory (?)
size of the chest; still, all of the mischief is not’ of civilization? It may be remarked in this
done at this time. A system of “ tight lacing” connection that we are breathing an insufficient
is commenced in girlhood and continued system amount of pure air, even under the most fa
atically, though the pressure may be slight, so vorable circumstances. We have too little fresh
slight as to be regarded as of no importance. air at night in our sleeping-rooms, often almost
Yet such pressure, commenced when the bones hermetically sealed as a means of excluding the
are yielding and continued for a few years, supposed “poisonous night air.” Still others
is sufficient to produce the result—a sad re are breathing only about half the necessary
quantity at each inspiration, partly from habit
sult.
But the causes are of less importance than the and partly from a compression of the chest that
results. Observation teaches us that the chests admits of only a limited supply. Nature has
and waists of females are relatively smaller than provided for and demands full, deep and copious
[Written for The Herald of Health.]
�168
HERALD OF
inspirations of this grand invigorator and puri
fier—life-imparting, pure air, inviting full meas
ure, “pressed down,” enough to expand the
cells, enabling them to eject irritating and pois
onous deposits.
It has not escaped the notice of observers that
there is a close connection between a large and
well-developed chest and lungs and physical
power and endurance. If about to exert our
strength to the best advantage we instinctively
inhale a generous supply of air as one of the
necessary means of preparation. The fleet ani
mals, the most hardy, those enduring the most
fatigue, etc., are those well developed in the
chest, possessing ample lung-power. Human
beings having such lungs are seldom the victims
of diseases of this character, unless the result
of accidental causes, such as breathing poison
ous air and the fumes generated in some chemi
cal works, or causes of a similar nature.
To be safe in this matter, to be sure that the
lungs are in no danger of being too much com
pressed, it is absolutely necessary that clothing
should be so loose that no inconvenience shall
be felt by taking a free inspiration, full and
deep. But very few, if any, fashionable young
ladies can be found who are thus free to breathe
HEALTH-
Many, far too many seek, by a daily compres
sion of the chest and waist, to imitate the forms
of the “fashion plates,” which generally are
mere caricatures of the human form as it came
from the Great Architect.
Still another evil resulting from this insuffi
cient supply of air—the food of the lungs—is
connected with the heat of the body, or what is
generally termed animal heat. A process is
constantly going on in the system, an action
connected with the relations of the air and waste
parts of the body, by which warmth is evolved.
Now, if there is an insufficient supply of air—
and only large lungs can receive the necessary
supply—if the blood is only partially purified,
it is utterly impossible to develop a sufficient
amount of heat to meet the wants of the sys
tem. Hence the “ chills” of so many delicate
young ladies, the purple cheeks, the bloodless
lips, the shrivelled appearance, etc., are all indic
ative of an insufficient supply of natural heat.
Hence the necessity of artificial warmth, the ex
tra clothing, the hot soap-stones, etc., while the
extremities are cold and pale, like lifeless remains, the blood having retired to the internal
organs—almost congesting them—and the head,
but from the same cause.
The remedy for such difficulties consists prin
cipally in removing the cause, enlarging the
lungs by systematic full-breathing, throwing the
shoulders back, standing erect, allowing full
motion to the muscles of the chest, with such
gymnastic exercises as are calculated to bring
these muscles into action, enlarging the chest;
or, still better, by useful labors, such as one of
ordinary capacity may suggest, constantly bear
ing in mind that the object is to expand the
chest and lungs, strengthening the muscles con
nected with them by appropriate exercise, breath
ing as much pure air as possible. Such a course
would diminish doctor’s bills and those of a sim
ilar character, benefiting young ladies more than
those whose success depends upon the misfor
tunes and sickness of society.
Reproduction.—A single grain of barley
was planted by an agriculturist in the Isle of Man
in 1862, and the same year produced 300 grains.
These were sown, and the second year’s produce
was about half a pint. These were again sown,
and the third year’s produce was 14 pounds,
AN UNNATURAL WAIST.
which being again sown, have realized this year
the air of heaven without restraint. Most are about seven bushels, covering a space of one
so deformed, have chests so compressed, that hundred yards by five. Thus there have been
the lungs contain only about one-half of the produced in four years seven bushels of barley
air necessary to meet the wants of the system. from a single grain.
�IIE KALI) OF HEALTH!
NEWYOEK, OCTOBER^1866J
WATER.
“To the days of the aged it addeth length;
To the might of the strong it addeth strength;
It . freshens the heart, it brightens the sight;
’Tis like quaffing a goblet of morning light.”
6K^*The Publishers do not hold themselves as indors
ing every article which may appear in The Herald.
They will allow the largest liberty of expression, believing
that by so doing this magazine will prove to be more useful
and acceptable to its patrons.
Exchanges are at liberty to copy from this magazine
by giving due credit to’The Herald 'of Health and
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CULTURE.
TOPICS OF THE MONTH.
BY M. L. HOLBROOK, M. B.
DEATH OF REV, JOHN PIERPONT.
Our friend and contributor, Rev. John Pier
pont, died at his home’ in Medford, August 26,
1866, at the ripe age of 81 years. Unlike most
who live so long, he retained his health, vigor
and usefulness up to the very day of his death.
He was found dead in his bed on Monday morn
ing, August 27, although he attended church the
day before, and retired at nighf in usual health
and strength.
Mr. Pierpont was born in Litchfield, Conn.,
April 6, 1785. He graduated at Yale College
at the age of 19. Of his life, it may be said, it
was’a most useful one. He had that rare com
bination of talents which, while it made him
reformatory, precluded the possibility of his be
ing a “ man of one idea.” • His tastes led him
to occupy himself at different times with law,
trade, teaching, mechanics, poetry, medicine,
politics and divinity. His mind was “ hospitable
to new ideas hence, whatever in any branch
of human life appeared to claim a candid hear
ing was sure to find in him a reasonable and
ready listener. While pastor of the Hollis
Street Church, in Boston, he made himself quite
noted as a fearless advocate of the then unpopu
lar Temperance cause. The following account
of the feeling at the time is from the pen of one
who is familiar with the facts:
“It chanced that several of the wealthiest and
169
weightiest people in his church were distillers
and spirit-dealers. To these persons the zeal
and activity of Mr. Pierpont in the Temperance
Reform, from its very commencement, were
highly distasteful, and they led a party strong
enough to prevent, for a long series of years,
the payment of his salary, after they had vainly
tried other means of getting rid of him. A ma
jority of the pew-owners took this position, and
held it, though a decided majority of the con
gregation were in favor of the pastor and his
ideas. Since among these earnest friends were
some who were able to advance him money, so
that want of the means of subsistence should
not oblige him to quit the field, Mr. Pierpont
remained and carried on the war with vigor.
Reduced to extremity, the rumsellers of Hollis
Street made public complaint of their minister
as neglecting his pastoral duties, and brought in
evidence certain ingenious mechanical inventions
devised and patented by him and publicly sold
in connection with his name. The time and
thought bestowed upon the invention of these
articles, they averred, was so much unjustifiably
withdrawn from their service, in violation of his
contract as their minister; while the advertise
ment and sale of these articles, publicly connect
ing the name of a reverend clergyman with me
chanical and commercial transactions, was. a
grievous derogation from his professional dig
nity!
The published reply of Mr. Pierpont to the
published charge above described, was one of
the keenest specimens of sarcastic wit I ever
saw. In regard ?Qthe charge of fraudulent
withdrawal of time from the services of the
parish, he said that it came with a very ill grace
from those particular persons, who were very
slack in their attendance on his preaching, and
still more so in reducing to practice the truths
he taught. But in fact there had been no neglect on his part, either of public duties or pasto
ral attendance. He had never failed them in
either particular. But he had chosen to employ
those hours and weeks of recreation which are
admitted by all to be essential to bodily and
mental health, in employments that combined
use with recreation. He did not understand
true dignity, either that of a man or that of a
minister, to be infringed by any sort of useful
activity. And he had the pleasure to find, by
the commercial demand for those articles in use
for daily household comfort which his care and
skill had improved, that he had enlarged the
sum of human happiness, and aided the mate
rial as well as the spiritual welfare of his gen
eration. He then wittily described each of the
articles in question, enumerated the advantages
which his improvement had added to it, and
mentioned the place where the improved article
was for sale, assuring his critics that a fair trial
of these things could not fail to convince them.
His wit, and the soundness of his argument,
turned the laugh of the whole city upon his as
sailants, who could revenge themselves only by
withholding his salary for a time. The law ul
timately compelled them to pay up the whole of
it.”
Mr. Pierpont’s’patriotism will long be remem
bered by all. At the age of 75, when the war
for the destruction of the Union began, he im
�170
HERALD OF HEALTH.
mediately offered his services to Gov. Andrew
as chaplain of one of the Massachusetts regi
ments, was accepted, and marched with the
Twenty-second Regiment to the seat of war.
The exposures of camp life, however, proved too
severe a tax upon his powers, and he resigned.
He was subsequently appointed to a clerkship
in the Treasury Department at Washington,
which post he held at the time of his death.
The following anecdote illustrates Mr. Pier
pont’s honesty—it is almost unexampled:
“ The Rev. Mr. Stetson, in his address on the
death of the Rev. John Pierpont, narrated the
circumstances connected with Mr. Pierpont’s
business failure in 1861. Not daring to make
use of money to which he had not a perfect
right, he left his well-furnished and well-pro
vided house in Baltimore, and, with his wife and
children, rented a single apartment in an ob
scure portion of the city. His partner found
him with much difficulty, and reminded him
that there were funds in the possession of the
firm which the creditors would expect them to
live upon until the affairs of the firm could be
settled. Mr. Pierpont promptly replied : ‘ No,
not a dollar will I touch.’ For three days he
was almost without food, and during this time
he wrote his famous ‘ Airs of Palestine,’ which
he carried to a publisher, who purchased it for
the sum of five hundred dollars. This poem
had great popularity, two editions being soon
called for. Mr. Stetson stated that Mr. Pierpont
was induced to use his inventive powers and to
compile school-books to obtain extra funds for
the payment of his business obligations. From
these he was legally exempt; but the honorable
and high-minded man regarded himself as mor
ally bound to discharge them.”
In his will, Mr. Pierpont gives a valuable
lesson to professional men in regard to the habit
of regular exercise as a means of relaxation and
to preserve and educate the body. His turning
lathe, with all its fittings and equipments, chis
els, files, etc., together with his tool-chest, he
bequeathed to his step-son, Mr. Fowler, in con
sideration of the fact that he is skilled in the
use of mechanical tools, trusting that they will
be to him, as they have been to the testator, “ a
means of educating the physical organs and
powers, of relaxation from mental labors, of
general bodily health, and of amusement, both
innocent and salutary.”
As a poet Mr. Pierpont will ever be held in
grateful remembrance by his countrymen.
Many of his poems are familiar to every school?
boy and school-girl, as they have been largely
copied into the school-books of the age. They
were always full of pathos and imagination, and
rarely failed to convey a very important lesson
of life. Several of these have been published in
The Herald of Health, among the most re
cent of which is the one entitled “ Nothing but
Water to Drink.” There is something in his
verses that always touches the popular heart,
and they are constantly being republished in the
newspapers of the day.
The following religious poem from his pen
was written to be sung at the dedication of the
Congregational Church in Plymouth, which was
built on the ground occupied by the first Con
gregational church erected in America, and gives
a good example of his style:
“ The winds and waves were roaring,
The Pilgrims met for prayer;
And here, their God adoring,
They stood in open air.
When breaking day they greeted,
And when its close was calm,
The leafless woods repeated
The music of their psalm.
“ Not thus, 0 God, to praise thee,
Do we, their children, throng ;
The temple’s arch we raise thee
Gives back our choral song.
Yet, on the winds that bore thee
Their worship and their prayers,
May ours come up before thee
From hearts as true as theirs !
“What have we, Lord, to bind us,
To this, the Pilgrims’ shore !
Their hill of graves behind us,
Their watery way before,
The wintry surge, that dashes
Against the rocks they trod,
Their memory and their ashes—
Be thou their guard, 0 God!,
MWe would not, Holy Father,
Forsake this hallowed spot,
Till on that shore we gather
Where graves and griefs are not;
The shore where true devotion
Shall rear no pillared shrine,
And see no other ocean
Than that of love divine.”
Probably the last writing he did for the press
was the letter written for and published in The
Herald of Health for August concerning his
personal habits.
While his memory-will gladden the hearts of
thousands, who only knew him to love, his
bright spirit has gone to the summer land to be
for ever at rest.
Exhausted Coad Fields.—The Eng
lish people fear the destruction of their nation
by an exhaustion of her coal fields. They had
better fear its destruction by physical vices such
as knowledge would remedy. If coal gives out,
they will find abundance of it in America for
generations to come; but if their habits of dissi
pation should ever become so bad as to ruin the
race, there will be no remedy.
�HEEAffD OF HEALTH.
The Cholera.—The cholera has now
nearly disappeared from New York; indeed, it
has not raged here with great violence during
the past season. The number of deaths has
been considerably less than one thousand.
There is much to learn from its visitation, which,
if people were wise, they would put in practice.
There is no more necessity of these occasional
visits of cholera to our shores, than there is of
the regular visits of alligators and the fierce
serpents of the torrid climes. They only come
because we have such depraved ways of living;
so many foul basements and tenement-houses;
eat so much constipating and obstructing food;
breathe so much foul air, drink so much liquor,
and bathe so infrequently. The very habits of
life which render one liable to this disease, are
those which, when cholera-poison is not pres
ent, produce other diseases, or such debility and
weakness as render life very imperfect and un
certain, The lesson people can never learn is
that these visitations come in consequence of vi
olated organic law; and that it is infinitely bet
ter so to eat, drink, sleep and exercise, and to so
construct our houses and clean and drain our
cities, that they shall be proof against pesti
lence.
Sordid people think money is made by grinding
down the poor and giving them little chance to
live cleanly, comfortable lives; but there is no
surer way to depreciate property in any part of
a city than to debase its inhabitants by poverty
or sickness; nor any surer way to increase $®in
value than to improve the health and home sur
roundings of the population.
We owe much to the Board of Health for
their earnest efforts to put the city in a better
sanitary condition. They seem to have taken
hold of the tail end of the Hygienic system of
treatment, so far as preventive measures are
concerned. For this let them have due credit.
As regards treatment, they have little to boast
of. Under the regular treatment about sixty per
cent, have died. This is not a very creditable
record to maintain by the physicians of that
medical school which boasts of its origin and
its antiquity, its respectability, its facilities for
medical culture, and that, too, in New York,
where the talent of the profession reside. Homoeopathists, on the other hand, whom the reg
ular profession will not allow to control even
one ward of a cholera hospital, get, perhaps, their
proportion of cases to treat, and, if we may trust
the reports, they lose less than the regular pro
fession. Indeed, a leading New York weekly de
clares that nearly all patients treated Homoeo-
171
pathically recover. It can hardly be said that the
Hygienic physicians treat many cases, but they
do some, and the results have been more favor
able than by any other practice; and so it ever
will be. Cholera is a disease pre-eminently of
filth and unbalanced circulation and action.
And the Hygienic system has for its chief end
and aim cleanliness, a regulation of irregular
and unbalanced action, and good nursing. The
day has not quite come for the full realization
of the benefits of this system to the people;
but just as soon as the car of progress advances
and people become educated, and understand
the relation which drug-poisons have to the hu
man system, just so sure will they cease to take
them or employ physicians who give them.
The signs of the times plainly show that this
day is coming more rapidly than we are aware.
Let those who are interested in human growth
and progress, and particularly in medical re
form, which lies close to all other reforms,
do all they can to help on this golden day.
Grapes.—Horace Greeley, in writing
from Vermont about the destruction of the ap
ple-trees by insects, multiplied because of the
destruction of birds by cold winds, and aug
mented by the destruction of forests, says :
“ Wb must try to change this; but, for the
present, I ask attention to the multiplication
and diffusion of choice vines. The grape, under
skillful culture, is a surer crop to-day than al
most any other delicate fruit, the strawberry
only excepted. Experienced growers say that
grapes may be grown, wherever they thrive at
all, for the price of wheat, pound for pound;
yet, while wheat scarcely averages four cents
per pound to growers, grapes can almost always
be sold at double that price. _ We can start the
vine and enjoy its fruit within three years;
whereas at least thrice that time is required to
hring an orchard from infancy to maturity.
Our farmers and mechanics, their wives and
children, but especially our farm-laborers and
day-laborers generally, ought to eat far more
good fruit and far less salt meat—and they can
not until fruit becomes far cheaper and more
abundant.”
Influence of Medical Prescriptions
Plant-life.—“Competing for a prize in Ex
perimental Physiolog}’-, a French observer has
recently ascertained that plants are far more
sensitive than animals to poisons. Even citric
and tartaric acids, in very dilute solution, kill
the plants that absorb them. So do many sub
stances, as very dilute mixtures of alcohol and
ether. Quinine and anchomine will stop the
growth of a plant and often kill it.” .
Probably plants have not got so used to being
poisoned as men. Let poisoning be practiced
on plants for a few generations, and perhaps
they could endure it better.
on
�172
HERALD OF HEALTH]
Fever and Agee.—During the au
tumn, in malarious districts, this disease is al
ways prevalent in a greater or less degree.
Whether the recent discoveries hy the micro
scope have disclosed the true cause of it has not
yet been decided with certainty; suffice it to
say, its cause is in some way connected with
those changes in vegetable matter which are
produced in low, wet regions, near marshy
swamps and ponds, where vegetation is vigor
ous and its decay rapid under a hot sun. It is
not our purpose now to go into a minute history
of the disease, or the various remedies which
have been vainly tried to prevent and cure it.
Its history is written indelibly in the shattered
fraines of ten thousand pioneers and their fam
ilies, who too early emigrated to the Far West,
and placed too much dependence upon drugs for
a cure. It has never been considered a danger
ous disease, as it rarely terminates in death S
but if it does not kill outright, it is a disease
which produces very great suffering, more so
than many others of a fatal character. It has
been described as a monster seizing his victim>
chilling and shaking him with a cold no fire can
warm, burning him with heat to the other ex
treme, and finally melting and sweating him
into a temporary relief, lasting for one, two or
four days. Really, the disease is not a monster
at all, but a peculiar kind of remedial effort on
the part of the system to rid itself of the poison
that has been introduced into the body, either
through the lungs or by means of the water and
food taken into the stomach.
In speaking of this disease we shall discuss,
firstly, its prevention, and, secondly, its cure.
PREVENTION OF FEVER AND AGUE.
As it is caused by a poison which, taken into
the body, is acted on by the vital energies, the
question is, How can we avoid it ? We cannot
prepare for it as we do for visible danger, but,
if people would be more careful in selecting
their homes, and to avoid such as are known to
be malarious, they would succeed quite effect
ually in preventing the disease. We are never
so careful as we should be in choosing our
homes that they may be healthful. There is
great recklessness of life and future happiness
manifested by nearly everybody in choosing the
place where all their joys and happiness should
culminate, where their children are to be born
and reared. Many of our largest cities are located on low, wet ground, which can never be
healthful. So serious is this matter becoming,
that the eminent Dr. Bowditch of Boston says’
in an essay read before the Massachusetts Medi
cal Society, “ Now, the track of a railway, or
the wit or reckless energy of the owner of some
swamp may be the sole reason for erecting a
station-house, and thereby promoting the erec
tion of dwelling-houses near by, in localities to
tally unfit for human habitation.” He thinks
the Government should not allow the health of
its inhabitants to be tampered with in this way,
but should prevent it by suitable legislation.
There is much force in his argument. A home
should be_chosen with even more care than in
buying a horse or building a railroad. Above all
things, it should be sunny, dry, airy, away from
swamps, and furnish pure water. Another way
to prevent ague is to keep the standard of health
high. Whenever men gormandize on constipat
ing food, pork, grease and all the abominations
which are generally found on our tables, they
are, if exposed to miasma, more likely to con
tract ague than where proper care is taken to
have'only healthful,'food to eat and pure water
to drink. Many a case of ague is cured by
proper attention to diet and bathing. If the
bowels do not become torpid, the liver obstructed,
and the skin inactive and feeble, there is less
danger from exposure to ague-miasma than
where all these conditions are combined. A
system obstructed by imperfect depuration seems
to furnish a very suitable place for planting the
seeds of fever and ague, while a clean, healthy
system, on the other hand, is rarely liable to an
attack. This is certainly a very strong argu
ment in favor of cleanliness, internal as well as
external.
There is one point regarding our habits that,
in regions where miasma abounds, we ought to
guard against—it is night-exposure. Then, more
than at any other time, are the atmospheric
causes of this disease present. There should be no
needless exposure to night air in fever and ague
localities. We by no means mean by this that
persons should sleep with closed windows, but
that they should keep from places where the poi
son exists. It is much better to sleep on the
side of a house where the sun shines, and an
upper "room will be more free than a lower one
from bad air. The practice of sleeping in rooms
on the ground floor, in either city or country, is
bad; the higher up the room the better the air.
It is also a most excellent plan to have an open
fire in our sleeping-rooms in malarious districts,
not so much for heat as for dryness. With fire,
ventilation can be made more perfect. If It be
true that malaria is only microscopic fungi, as
has lately been argued by scientific men, it will
be very plainly seen that a fire in a room may
entirely or' partially destroy the germs, or pre
�jWrabId
OF WALTH.
173
vent their development so as to render them that a wise Hygienic treatment of ague will
more perfectly cure the disease than drugs, and
harmless.
THE CURE OF AGUE.
without danger to any person’s future health.
Of course, it is very desirable in treating this
“Look to thy Mouth.”—A friend
disease to get the patient away from its imme
diate cause to where the air is pure and the sends us the following poem, which is slightly
water v wholesome. The special treatment is altered from one written by that good and Chris
quite simple and generally very efficacious— tian philosopher, George Herbert, who was co
balance the circulation and counteract the lead temporary with Lord Bacon. It was our good
ing symptoms. The chill should be treated by fortune to be presented with Herbert’s Foems
warm applications, and the fever by cooling by the first patient we ever treated. They are
ones. Hot foot-baths, fomentations to the ab full of rich sayings, some of which we shall,
domen, bottles of hot water to the sides, arm-pits perhaps, some time give to our readers. The
and down the limbs, will be found excellent. idea inculcated in the following poem is that
When it is possible to put the patient, at the sociality at the table is a preventive, in part, of
beginning of the chill, into a hot bath—as hot over-eating; also, that men, like the planets,
as he can comfortably bear, and have active ought to live by rule, and that it is necessary to
friction applied to the entire surface until the keep a guard on our passions. The style is
skin is red and in a glow—the chill will gener quaint, but none the worse for that:
ally be very much lighter, and probably not b?' %
LOOK TO THY MOUTH.
felt at all.
Look to thy mouth, diseases enter there ;
The hot stage should be treated by tepid ab
Thou hast two sconces: if thy stomach call,
lution, the wet-sheet pack, or, if the patient is Carve or discourse; do not a famine fear.
strong, the cold effusion. Give only such cool
Who carves, is kind to two ; who talks, to all.
ing drinks as water, lemonade, the juice of fresh Look on food, think it dirt, then eat a bit;
oranges or ripe grapes.
Then say withal, “ Earth to earth I commit.”
The intermission of the paroxysm should be
Slight those who say amid their sickly healths,
treated with quiet, rest and good nursing.
“ Thou livest by rule.” Who does not so but
The diet should be rather abstemious and
man ?
principally of mild acid fruits. Fresh, ripe
grapes will themselves, if used in moderation, Houses are built by rule, and commonwealths.
Entice the trusty sun, if that you can,
often without other treatment, cure ague. It
From his elliptic line; beckon the sky;
is possible that other fruits might prove equally
beneficial. All greasy food, or that which is Who lives by rule, then, keeps good company.
hard to digest, or constipating to the bowels, or Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack,
obstructing to the liver, should be scrupulously
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw.
avoided.
Man is a shop of rules ; a well-trussed pack,
We might in this connection speak of the use
Whose every parcel underwrites a law.
of the Turkish Bath as a means of curing ague, Love not thyself nor give thy humors sway,
if it was more commonly adopted in our houses. God gave them to thee under lock and key.
It will probably be found, when tested on a
large scale, as it has already been proved in a
Goiter in America.—Dr. J. Green,
number of cases, to be the most complete and referring to our note on Goiter in the July Her
perfect bath for this disease. This bath might ald, mentions several cases that came under
be constructed in every house in the country, his observation which he thinks were caused by
at small expense, for family use; and, when bad water. He says:
rightly appreciated, we have no doubt it will be
“ I then ascribed the complaint to the use of
as necessary to every well-regulated house as a water extensively saturated with lime, as snow
water was not drank there. It was frequently
pantry or kitchen.
In regard to the drug treatment of the ague, melted for washing purposes, as the water in the
brooks was so saturated with lime that it could
we only need say it is producing thousands of not be used to advantage. Or did any other
chronic invalids'all over the West; the children cause exist that I could discover to produce that
of whom, as we have hundreds of times had oc diseased action, as in Switzerland and Savoy,
casion to observe, are feeble in constitution, where the absence of light may engender idiots,
mind being dependent on light r I then consid
dwarfed in stature, and likely to prove much ered it peculiar to that section of the country,
less perfect men and women than they other and not at all prevalent in any other part of the
wise would be. We are thoroughly satisfied country.”
�T74
HERAL5R OEl HEALTH?!
Muscular Christianity.—Nature, hav
ing furnished every human being with two
hands and one mouth, plainly teaches the lesson
that we should work twice as much as we eat—
that it is our bounden duty to earn our dinner
before we eat it. No man is so rich that he can
afford to be idle, because indolence is a violation
of the physical laws, and one which is sure to
be followed by severe punishment. The circu
lation of the blood will not be changed to suit
the convenience of the millionaire, and there is
not wealth enough in all the world to purchase
a new digestive apparatus for the diseased
stomach. Sickness indicates a transgression of
the laws of health, “and a foul stomach, as
well as a wicked heart, is an abomination to the
Lord.” We believe in the gospel of health.
We have faith in muscular Christianity. We
do not hesitate to ask our parish of readers to
row, ride, jsail, walk, run, leap, swim, climb/
shout, sing, box, and perform feats of ground
and lofty tumbling; even if by doing so they
can banish the blues, aid digestion, sharpen ap
petites, and promote health and longevity.
Pull an oar on the river; take a turn in the
gymnasium; leap into the saddle and shake up
the juices of the body; spread a sail to the
wind, and let the air fan you with its invisible
wings. When you knock down the nine-pins
they must remind you of the ills that flesh is
heir to; the ball is a mere pill, which you take
outwardly for the removal of disease. There is
not a shadow of truth in the old notion that a
pale face is the sign of piety, or that a long one
is a guarantee of a good heart. It is no sin to
be muscular, to have a broad chest, to wear a
healthy countenance, to have a good appetite
and good digestion, and to be able to sleep
soundly. The slave who prayed with his feet
found freedom, for which he returned thanks
upon his knees. There is physical salvation in
air and light and sunshine and exercise. There
is religion in labor, and the devils wiH be cast
out of the stomach and the blood of the inva
lid if he follows the example of Christ, who
went about doing good. A clear head, weH poised
over a clean stomach; a warm heart, with a vig
orous circulation; a stout arm, with a strong
fist at the end of it, are certificates of obedience
to law. Away with the idea that white lips, and
weak eyes, and narrow chests, and feeble lungs,
and aching backs, and dizzy brains and attenu
ated limbs are favorable to the growth of piety.
We are to love God with all our heart and soul
and strength, and the more heart and soul and
trength we have the more we can love God.
When a man carries in his face a certificate of
gluttony or drunkenness or lechery we read his
character without an interpreter, and know that
he tramples upon the laws of Nature. Let us
beware—there are other methods of breaking
the laws of our being. It is a sin to sleep in an
unventilated room, when you have strength
enough in your fist to break a pane of glass or
knock a hole through the wall. The atmos
phere is forty miles deep, and he who shuts it
out from his lungs need not envy the donkey
its redundancy of ear. It is a sin to cram the
stomach with indigestible food, make it a nest
for breeding sickness and disease. Instinct,
which is the reason of brutes, teaches the cattle
to do better than those human beings do who
make their systems the receptacles of whatever
can be pulverized or melted or torn to pieces,
risking digestion, as a client does a bad case, in
rhe court of chancery.
Letter from Gerrit Smith.—We re
cently asked Gerrit Smith to write us an ar
ticle on the effects of bad habits, such as smok
ing, chewing, drinking, night-sessions of Con
gress and dissipation upon legislation. We
did not get the article we desired, but we received
the following epistle, which we share with our
readers:
“ Peterboro’, August 29, 1866.
“Miller, Wood & Co.—Dear Sirs: I thank
you for the July and August numbers of your
very useful periodical, and for the honor you
have done me in inviting me to write for it.
I regret that I can not accept your invitation.
My excuse for not accepting it is, that I am an
old man (in my 70th year) and am hurried with
labor.
“ But you do not lack writers. Some of our
very ablest writers are at your service. How
sad that the pen of dear John Pierpont has
fallen from his hand! I read with great pleas
ure his article on Personal Habits 1
“ Please continue to send me your periodical.
Inclosed are two dollars to pay for a year’s sub
scription.
“ Respectfully yours,
“GERRIT SMITH.”
Scientific Nonsense.—The scientific
column of an exchange contains the following
bit of scientific nonsense:
“ Production of Quinine in the Body.—It
has recently been ascertained beyond a doubt
that there exists in the bodies of man and ani
mals a fluorescent substance nearly precisely
identical with vegetable quinine. This newly
discovered substance of the animal body is called
animal quinoidine. The discover suggests that
the injurious effects which sometimes follow the
taking of a dose of quinine may arise from its
doubling the quantity already in the system.”
�HERALD OLIIIEALW
Woman’s Dress.—The New York Tri
bune, which is not afraid to speak favorably on
any subject it thinks right, has the following on
Woman’s Dress:
“ The Quaker who wears a broad-brimmed
hat, the Sister of Charity, with her white hood,
have conscientious rights which fashionable men
and women are bound to respect. The man who
works in his shirt-sleeves on a warm day is to
be excused on account of the weather. There
is a cool plea for all the fashions of Saratoga
and the breeziest watering-places; but the woman
who intended to protect her modesty by wearing
a dress not quite in fashion, shocked the fine
nerves of a Metropolitan policeman, and would
have done a very wrong thing had not Commis
sioner Acton decided in fact that a woman has
a right to dress as modestly as she can. No one
doubts that the garb worn by Dr. Mary Walker
is more modest and comfortable than the one in
vogue, though not, perhaps, so handsome. But,
if ladies, can not go to the sea-shore, can not
fully enjoy a country ramble in vaction time, or
ride on horseback, or go up into high places
without suffering exposure and entanglement
from a dress which can be worn safely only in
the. house or on promenade, who should com
plain if women rebel against the dressmaker,
just as Nature itself protests against the dress ?
‘ Norah Creina’s gown’ might have been very
poetical; but, as we infer from the] poet’s lan
guage, it was a very bad one for mountain
breezes. It is almost idle to talk of hygiene,
and dumb-bells, and gymnasia for girls, when
woman herself has so little liberty for out-door
exercise, enjoyment and travel.
“In short, we respect the present Woman’s
Dress Reform as a protest from the modest. So
long as the prevailing fashion is condemned by
every lady physician who has worn it, what
shall men say ? We observe, too, that the
strong-minded are not the greatest sufferers by
it—it is the signal and shroud of the weakness
of the weakest. How does it suit the daily task
and slender purse of a woman who must work
like a man for less wages, and pass through
crowds of man loungers on her way home ?
Why should not these things be said and dis
cussed ? It seems to us that the future is not
far off, when, if the plea of toiling and sorrow
ing woman be heard, new opportunities must
be given her ; and, accordingly, she must dress
herself for more earnest tasks, and, for her own
sake and man’s, bear him more constant com
pany.”
175
scrape the skin off and then roast them. Tn se
lecting potatoes, remember the smaller the eye
the better the potato. By' cutting a piece' from
the thickest end, you can tell whether they are
sound. They must be either white or pink,
according to the kind. Always select beans
without spots. Mushrooms should be selected
with great care. It is better and safer never to
use them when they are old; this can be told
by the blackness of the comb underneath, before
picking; when young it is of a pink color.”
In regard to the use of vegetables he has the
following, together with a savage hit at Vegeta
rianism :
“ Although I am strongly in favor of much
vegetable food in th.6 spring and summer, I am
by no means an apostle of the Vegetarian creed
—Graham bread and like eccentricities. I pity
persons of that persuasion, but have no wish to
imitate them in spite of the proverb:
“ ‘ First learn to pity, then embrace.’
“ The mind has its diseases as well as the body,
and I think Vegetarianism is one of them.”
We presume Vegetarians will not object to
allow Prof. Blot to have his fling at them, al
though it is founded in ignorance. There are
many arguments in favor of an almost or quite
exclusive vegetable diet as the best food for man,
which it is more easy to get over by such asser
tions than by argument.
Letter erom an Old Man.—We have
in out drawer several letters from men nearly
one hundred years old waiting for publication.
We give in this number the following from Aus
tin Johnson of Rupert, Vt.:
“ Publishers of the Herald oe Health—
You, in your last, speak of my communicating
what I might have that was interesting. In
this, there perhaps was reference to my bodily
state and habits. As to that, I have only to say
I have been a good deal infirm through life ;
yet it has providentially been so ordered that I
have taken but little drug medicine to poison
the system. I never used alcoholic beverages
habitually, and have long since discontinued
their use entirely. Tobacco I have had no fel
lowship with. Hot drinks were never much of
an object, and for years have been rejected.
Flesh food is but little used—pork never. But
ter has been set aside. My bread is made of un
bolted grain—the object is to subsist by means
Cooking Vegetables.—Professor Blot of plain, wholesome food. Thus living, my
speaks, in one of his articles on the art of dining, stay on earth is proti acted (I am now in my
80th year), and I think dieting has a connec
on cooking vegetables as follows:
“Dry vegetables, like beans, peas, etc., should tion with longevity.
“ Yours truly,
AUSTIN JOHNSON.”
be put over the fire in cold, soft water, after
having been soaked in lukewarm water—beans
Skin Diseases.—Skin diseases have
for twenty-four hours. Potatoes should be
steamed but never boiled. Steam with the skin often enough been attributed to parasites. A
on. Bear in mind that a potato must never be medical authority, however, more rationally de
peeled; the part immediately under the skin clares they are caused by filth and bad habits,
contains the most nutriment. Cut out the germs
or eyes, if any; if young and tender the skin the parasites taking up their abode in the filthy
can be taken off with a scrubbing-brush; if old, person as soon as the egg has been deposited.
�176
HERALD OF HEALTH!
“The observations by means of the mi
croscope of Mr. Hogg afford proof that veg
etable parasites do not, as hitherto supposed,
produce disease of the skin, but that when cer
[Written for The Herald of Health.]
tain diseases already exist, germs of those float
The “ Mild Hunger Cure” for
ing about in the atmosphere, finding it a suitable
soil, greatly aggravate or even change the type
Cancer.
of disease. These diseases have long been be
lieved to be associated with neglect of person
BY REV. H. N. STRONG.
and bad air; but Mr. Erasmus Wilson, who has
It was in the latter part of August, 1864,
written several books upon skin diseases, states
that in an unhealthy state of the body the re when Mrs. Strong and myself were making a
newed epidermis is unhealthy. Therefore, the short excursion into Crawford County, that I
cutaneous diseases are never caused by parasites.”
noticed an uneasy sensation near my left ear
and in close proximity to the point of the jaw.
Effects of Alcohol.—If the effects of There seemed to be a slight swelling and a litalcohol could be confined solely to the person tle pimple. It increased in size as rapidly as a
who uses it, its use might be tolerated ; but as boil, but soon had an appearance reminding one
it is not, we can not wage too fierce a war against of an acorn, having a rim around it on the out
it and tobacco, its elder brother. Both, when side,KhenBa depression, and a rising again in
used, are enemies to the race, and their effects the middle. I kept on it most of the time a
are visited too often upon the children of those salve prepared by Mrs. L*****, who is known
who use them. Dr. Jolly rightly pictures it:
to be a woman of medical skill and experience.
“ In every country the statistics of the amount As far as any external application effected any
of alcohol imbibed preciselScorrespond with the thing toward a cure, let that have the credit.
number of judicial sentences recorded in law re I changed twice to other external applications,
ports of the year, as well as with the number
of poor, of beggars, of vagabonds, of divorced but can not say that I perceived any difference
husbands and wives, of idiot children, of sui in the effect, but the application first spoken of
cides, murders, and of epileptics and lunatics was most convenient, and I thought it bad a
inscribed on State registers.”
softening effect. It was also necessary to keep
JtMc.overed. as it soon had an offensive smell
Salt.—Our friend and Subscriber, S. when uncovered, and discharged matter, appa
Howe, writes that he is 70 years old, and that rently, from different points in the ulcer. It
he abandoned the use of salt thirty-five years was also necessary to keep a handkerchief or
ago; that he enjoys life now as well as in his othe^ bandage un'der my chin and over my
younger days; that there are few boys who can head, as the dischar ging matter would other
go through more vigorous gymnastic exercises wise loosen the patch that was on the cheek.
or dances than he. He concludes his letter with As the autumn months passed away it was nothe foHowing:
ticed by several persons, and was spoken of as
“ I am fully convinced that had I continued a cancer. Cancer doctors were recommended
using stimulants and condiments with my diet, by some. I was told of some that effected a
I should have been in my grave years ago.”
sure cure for fifty dollars. I once showed it to
Dr. Hyde of Lancaster, who is known to be an
A Promise we Hope will be Keptajeducated and skillful surgeon and physician.
“ Hancock School, Boston, Mass., )
He exclaimed, “That is a bad thing!” I re“ September
1866. J
“ Dear Sir—On my return from a pleasant va plied : “ I suppose so, but not the worst thing
cation among the mountains and valleys of New in the world.” He answered, “ I don’t know.”
Hampshire on Saturday, I found among my
A little after I was in Hazel Green, at the
letters yours of August 11. You allude to. my
notions on school punishment. I am a radical, house of Mr. York. Mr. York’s physician then
and conduct a large school (having nearly twelve saw it and gave the same decision. Mr. York,
hundred pupils) without the ferule or its equiv a druggist, furnished me with a vial of iodide of
alent, or the common scold or its spirit in any
form. In October or November I may find time potassa, which I was to take as an alterative
to place my views on paper. If they would be preparatory to eradicating it, either by the knife
of any service, I know of no better organ for or a caustic application. This was by Dr.
their dissemination than your valuable journal.
As Editor of The Massachusetts Teacher for Jenekes’s prescription.
On my way home I called with Mr. John
years, I have read The Hehald of Health,
and think it one of the most sensible and useful Jenkyn, who read to me in the “Hydropathic
magazines in the United States. You are doing Encyclopedia” (I think) concerning cancer.
good, and may God bless you.
What most arrested my attention was “The
“ Very sincerely,
W. E. SHELDON.”
HJisrtllanms.
�HERALD OF HEALTH.
Hunger Cure.” A work of Dr. Lamb on “ pure
jMffigand vegetable diet” in case of cancer was
referred to. I read two other medical works on
cancers. I took the alterative—I abstained from
meat and butter, and tea and coffee. I sent for
Dr. Lamb’s work and read it attentively, but
must say the additions by the American Editor
were the most satisfactory to me.
In December I took the charge of a small
school a few miles from home. In January the
appearance of the cancer was worse than ever
before. The lancinating pains were more se
vere. I was advised to make no more delay.
One says: “You had better sell your little
property, if it is necessary, to raise the money.
What,” says he, “ is fifty or sixty dollars in .the
case of such a thing as a cancer.” But it was
fixed in my mind that a cancer do^K* was, to
say the least, about as much to be dreaded as a
cancer itself. Now I thought I had a right to
be my own doctor, and I reasoned thus: This
ulcer is an enemy; Nature is a friend that is
fighting the enemy. How shall I best aid Na
ture in the contest ? The answer seemed plain:
Only cut off the supplies which the enemy
gets and notice the result. But, I am told,
Nature calls for nourishing food, and enough of
it; yet, in that case, the enemy appropriates so
much as to gain strength and give increased
trouble. I have taken the alterative; I have
been abstemious, but the enemy gains strength.
I wash it twice a day and keep on a salve, yet the
prospect is gloomy as ever. One man in this
place had died with a cancer near his ear. I
now resolved I would adopt the “ hunger cure.”
Accordingly, I had my wife bakercorn-bread for
me; at first it was about one-fifth flour and fourfifths corn-meal. This was my food and cold
water was my drink. I took rations for five
days when I left home for my school, which
was sometimes on Sunday evening and some
times on Monday morning. As to the bread, it
was once made entirely of corn-meal, but gen
erally a small amount of flour was mixed with
it. It was baked so as to make as much crust
as convenient. I warmed it on the stove at the
house where I stayed or at the school-house, as
might happen, and so it was harder and harder as
it became older. Fortunately, I have twenty
eight pretty good teeth given me by Nature.
The first week Nature seemed to say : I can ap
propriate all of this, and the enemy can not get
any. Every night and morning I washed the
sore carefully with soft water and castile soap. I
could not see it, but I had a feeling of encouragement, and when I reached home on Friday
night one of my daughters soon came to wash
177
and dress it. She made an exclamation of sur
prise and joy at its altered appearance, which
was so much for the better. In short, by thus
withholding supplies from the enemy, and taking
no more than Nature could appropriate, possibly
not near so much, and persevering about seven
weeks, the cancer was all removed and a perfect
cure effected. I used to go as often as I could
to visit a friend who always furnished me mushand-milk for supper. At first I took less than
half a pint of milk and but little mush. This
I did not more than three or four times in the
seven weeks. My wife also put up, two or three
times, a little dried beef and two or three crack
ers. This was not my choice, but I took what
was provided. But the cora crust relished bet
ter than any thing else. If I had been sup
plied with good Graham crackers I should have
been satisfied »|uMi knew that crackers or
bread made of fine flour would not answer.
My stomach and bowels appeared to be in good
order; I was hungry all the time, and evidently
became weaker. My school was not very labo
rious, and I did new lose a day. “But,” says
one, E why call it the ‘Mild Hunger Cure?’”
Because I took so much good food and drank
just as much Sold water as I wanted. Had I
not been engaged as I was, and had determined
on the “Strong Hunger Cure,” I might have
taken two or three crackers, three times a day,
and drank nothing for some hours after eating.
As it was, I suppose I averaged about as much
as four large crackers three times a day, and
drank water from the spring whenever I felt
like it, I am sure that in my case the “ Mild
Hunger Cure” proved to be effective.
It seems to me that I ought not to close
this communication without mentioning the cost
of cure, though there are those who would
prefer one that cost a hundred dollars to a cure
that required hunger and saved the money.
The man with whom I lodged and boarded till
I determined on the corn-bread rations, in con
sequence of my course, threw off ten dollars
from his bill. But, to be particular, I can not
say that ten dollars was saved, for what I took
from home cost something. It need not be es
timated at more than five cents a day. Twentyfive cents a week for seven weeks would be one
dollar and seventy-five cents.
The book (Dr. Lamb’s, above referred to)
cost me
.................... , $1 50
'Cost of the seven weeks,....................
1 75
Total amount,................................. $3 25
Which, deducted from the ten dollars thrown
off from my board-bill, leaves six dollars and
�HERALD OF HEALTH..
178
seventy-five cents actually gained by the “ Mild
Hunger Cure,” not to speak of the fifty dollars’
fee to a cancer doctor saved by being my own
physician, I was at the time in my sixtieth
year.
Lancaster, Wis., July 25, 1866.
["Written for The Herald of Health.]
A Prevailing Malady.
BY F. G.
meet pale faces and sunken eyes con
stantly. This shows an error. The error is in
the abuse of the common diet of life ; not al
ways, but generally. Too much food is the
great evil of the day, because it is so very com
mon and has its allurements—we gratify and
eat too much. This is the main cause of the
pale faces and haggard countenances we meet.
The remedy is simple: Eat less. And yet who
does it ? Few, because it requires moral cour
age, just the thing which is affected, which is
part of the pale face and sunken eye. The dys
peptic is diseased mentally, morally and physcally. Of all beings the most miserable is the
confirmed dyspeptic. His mind is disturbed,
his moral feeling is blunted and disordered, and
his body suffers. For what is he fit? He is fit
for nothing, not even for “ stratagem and spoils.’ ’
He drones his time away—years, a score some
times—and his whole life is a blank. If that
were all, it would not be so bad ; but it is a most
wretched, miserable blank, full of vapors, gloom
and forebodings. The mind is the torment of
the man, making appear real what is unreal,
and exaggerating evil. The little good that
the.man gets is also exaggerated, and this puts
him all around in a false position. His judg4
ment is not reliable, though once so correct;
his imagination plays tricks with him, deceiving
him constantly by magnifying its doings. In
a word, the man is morbid—mentally, morally
and physically. It took him long to get into
this state. He got into it by degrees, almost
ere he was aware. Ah, the insinuating habit of
alluring the system, which God had made right,
but which man is wronging constantly ! This
great evil is all brought about by littles—a lit
tle excess which breaks the back of the camel.
Here is the danger. And here is the remedy :
Avoid the littles—the little excesses ; they seem
to be always at the end of our meals. Then
cut off that end—that cup of tea or coffee, that
dessert or other dainty. This course would
generally succeed.
We must guard against the excesses; nobody
calls them such. At the time they may give
We
rise only to a little uneasiness, a little headache
or sluggishness of feeling. The brain acts less,
as it always does when oppressed, overstrained;
as it does through the sympathetic channels.
After awhile these symptoms will cease, and the
eyesight seems to be clouded momentarily; the
man will soon be prepared to re-enact the same
thing. By-and-by, in the course of his persist
ence, there will be more uneasiness after his
meal, greater headache and dullness. There
will be other symptoms gradually stealing upon
him. There will be slight pains here and there;
beginning, perhaps, in his chest; felt between
his shoulders and in his left side. He will
gradually become nervous, lose flesh—though
not always at first—his hearing is affected, there
is a ringing and other unusual sounds, which
sometimes greatly frighten him. Sometimes he
even will get dizzy and almost fall. He is apt
now to have bad sleep and worse dreams, so.
that night becomes a dreaded time to him. So
ciety begins to be distasteful to him; sometimes
he seeks it as if to get rid of the evil that fol
lows him. But he can not shake it off. It fol
lows him because it is himself. These unpleas
ant accompaniments increase; they increase
both in intensity and in number. New symp
toms are constantly evolved, new evils attack,
until the individual is a walking load of evils.
At last he becomes confirmed. And now it is
as difficult to remove these evils as it was easy
to get them, and it takes as long often to dp it.
Why does it take so long ? It seems to be in
the nature of the case, perfecting the work by
slow process. But it is the long weakening,
the constant sapping, that at last undermines,
and establishes, as it were, a second nature.
The difficulty in removing this evil is in the
moral courage of the man; he has it not.
Though he may resolve a thousand times, a
thousand times he breaks his resolve, or rather
it breaks itself. It is so difficult to resist, when
you have nothing to resist with, no courage or
a momentary thing, only seeming strong at the
time (when the resolve takes place), but impo
tent when the trial comes. So the drunkard,
he has no strength of will left, and the dyspep
tic is but a drunkard in another sense.
What, then, is to be done ? for this is a great
evil and must be met, if possible. The remedy
is, put a watch and tie upon the man; he him
self is not capable of doing it. Or you must
leave him to himself, to the risk of becoming
worse, and perhaps of dying, or, if he has self
regard left, to be forced into reformation. He
may prefer mending his ways to a worse evil—
to dissolution, for death has sometimes horrible
�HERALD OF HEALTH.
jpctures for the stomach-ridden invalid. Medicines, the world has long since decided, are of
no good in dyspepsia. They may aid in some
respects, as time aids, but always at the expense
of original power. Time and medicine will kill
any man prematurely. The poor afflicted pa
tient must, first of all, remove the cause. He
may have been doctoring for years, piling evil
upon evil, while the cause, “ like a worm i* the
bud,” remained. This is a double abuse of poor
nature. Throw aside this incubus, the whole of
it; stop aggravating the wound it has made;
lessen your food, which a false appetite urges
you on to partake, and flatters you that all is
right—it is the false “syren song” that accom
panies all dyspeptics.
Break off, then, what should never have been
indulged in—the little excesses of the table. If
you are a laboring man, more food will be re
quired ; less if a man of sedentary habits, and
especially of literary habits, which weaken the
stomach additionally through sympathy. This
is the absolute, indispensable condition of all
cures. Without it, aggravation can only make
the matter worse, and the patient continue as
he has—a wretched, suffering man, the “ iron in
his heart” wherever he goes. Resolutely, then,
stop this excess. And this is enough. If any
nature is left, any strength, it will develop; it
will grow up as a plant long kept down—never
so thrifty thereafter, but still having life and
being—and infinitely better than the smothered,
strangled thing with the weight upon it.
We have spoken of dyspepsia as it is gener
ally brought on, through the stomach and the
food. “ Strong drink” will sometimes do this,
excesses in venery, excesses of many kinds, if
not of all, all tending to affect the stomach, the
organ of tenderness. But whatever the excess
which produced the evil, it must be stopped—
the stomach must be favored. There are other
things that aid, but the great thing is to remove
the cause and keep it removed. This is the allimportant point, and it is sufficient. With it a
cure can be effected; without it, it can not.
Cheerfulness of society, it is said, is a good ad
dition ; so is traveling in strange lands; so is
exercise. But always make a clean bottom by
removing the exciting cause. To do this, self
must not be gratified, but mortified; it must be
done, however unpalatable. Yet, how little it
is done, as the million of sufferers testify. It
is so hard to do, because there is a lack of power;
not that the evil is so strong—it is we that are
weak, we dyspeptics. Had the man the usual
strength which he had in health he would easily
floor his adversary. But this he lacks, andjffiis
179
is the evil;Jh.e can hardly cure himself. He
does it, however; it is being done daily. Were
it not, what would become of us as a nation ?
of the world ? The evil frequently cures itself;
it is perhaps hard to say in how many cases.
This is fortunate, that it bears its own correc
tion. But it is also unfortunate that it must be
strained to such an extent—till the machine is
almost ruined. Better begin in time, and save
the wreck while its timbers are yet sound.
The friends of these sufferers have a respon
sibility. It becomes them to see that they are
aided, forced, if need be—and it generally needs
to be. Aid them, then; be a will to them in
place of theirs, which is impotent. It will not
do to leave a man unaided in his “ vapors he
is not himself; he must be taken care of; he
suffers more than you are aware of. Leave him
not rudderless at the mercy of the winds.[Written for The Herald of Health.]
How to Bathe.
BY E. P. MILLER, M. ».
Who does not know the great luxury of a
good, a refreshing, inspiriting bath ? How light
and joyous it makes one feel! I bless God every
day for water, for the pure, soft, sparkling wa
ter ! I love it everywhere! I love to see it fall
ing from the clouds, dripping from the eaves, or
showering from the green leaves; or, I love it
as it comes bubbling from the crystal spring or
rippling in the rivulet, dashing down the moun
tain brook or rushing in the rapid river, foaming
and gushing in the cataract, spreading out clear
and glassy in the silver lake, or raising and fall
ing in the majesty of the boundless and illimit
able sea.
It is an emblem of beauty, purity and virtue.
It is abundant everywhere; more than threequarters of our entire, being is water. Life can
be longer sustained without food than without
water. It is necessary to our life, health and
enjoyment now, and to our future and eternal
happiness. “ Except ye be born of water and of
the spirit, ye can not enter heaven.” Bathing
may mean something more than simple sprink
ling or pouring or immersion./ It may have been
but a type of the grand use of water for the fu
ture physical, mental and moral regeneration of
the race. “ I say unto you the kingdom of
heaven is within you.” Many of our sins have
a physical origin, which a right application of
water helps to wash away. “ Cleanliness is next
to godliness.” Those persons who bathe and
keep themselves cleanly in all their habits, are
apt to be moral and virtuous. Thieves, liars,
�180
HERALD OF HEALTHi
pickpockets, drunkards and gluttons, seldom
bathe. Health, cleanliness, temperance, good
ness and virtue are associates. Disease, filth,
gluttony, vice and crime seek the same haunts.
That man is not a very good Christian who never
takes a bath, and he who takes a daily bath is
not a very great sinner.
Being born of water is necessary to regenera
tion, and regeneration necessary to salvation
from sin. Bathing ought to constitute a pait of
every Church creed in Christendom. Water is
a great cleanser and purifier. It will remove
the dirt and filth when applied externally, and
carry away impurities when taken internally.
The seven millions of little pores and the
twenty-eight miles of little sewers that are con
stantly carrying off the waste and useless mate
rial of the body, will perform their tasks much
more easily if plenty of water passes through
them to wash away their accumulations.
There are a great variety of ways of taking
baths. There is a right way and a wrong way.
A certain bath may be taken so as to do good, or
it may be so taken as to do harm. The effect
produced by any bath depends very much upon
how the bath is administered. There is much
harm done by injudicious bathing. Some per
sons are soaking themselves in water all the time.
They get an idea that bathing is good, and that
the more they bathe the better.
No person should take a bath without secur
ing a comfortable reaction after it. If they feal
cold, have chilly sensations or unpleasent feel
ings, the probabilities are they have not derived
much benefit from the bath. It may be neces
sary for sick and feeble persons to be covered
warm in bed, in order to produce the desired
effect. There are very few people so feeble but
that a bath of some form will be beneficial, if
administered judiciously. All things considered,
one of the mildest and best home baths is the
SPONGE OR TOWEL BATH.
This is a universal bath, and is within the
reach of all. It can be given to those who are
too feeble to take any other form of bath. A
pint of water and a couple of towels or a sponge
and one towel, will answer to give it, although
it is better to use a gallon or more of water
when it is convenient to do so. It is an excel
lent bath for any one to take in the absence of
other more thorough baths. It will cleanse the
skin quite thoroughly and will equalize the cir
culation, relieve local congestion, subdue fever
and give a general feeling of freshness and com
fort. It can be taken in the sleeping-room, in
the parlor, library, or even in a closet, if no
larger accommodations are to be had. For per
sons who are able to stand and take their own
baths, and like to use water quite freely, it is
well to spread a rubber or oil cloth a yard square
or more upon the floor, set your bucket of cool
or cold water in the center, dip the sponge or
towel in the water, and, when in readiness,
squeeze the water from the towel or sponge, so
that it will not drip too much, and begin by
washing the face, head, neck and arms first, rub
bing vigorously till the skin looks red; then
wipe them dry with a dry towel; the chest, ab
domen and back can be washed and wiped in the
same manner; lastly, the lower extremities. If
you rub vigorously with the wet towel or sponge
and the same with the dry one, you will secure
a fine reaction and will feel warm and refreshed.
It should be given quickly and vigorously, and
the clothing should be put on at once; then go
out for a good sprightly walk or for some light
gymnastic exercise.
This bath can be given to very feeble persons
while in bed by using a soft towel or sponge just
moistened in tepid water, washing, drying, and
covering each part of the body as you progress.
In all forms of fevep, or in any disease where
there is difficulty in moving the patient or in ad
ministering more vigorous baths, this is the saf
est and fflS bath to use. In a fever where there
is much heat of skin, it may be given every hour
or two, and if properly applied will always be
beneficial.
Thoughts fob Young Men.—Costly ap-,
paratus and splendid cabinets have no magical
power to make scholars. In all circumstances,
as man is under God, the master of his own for
tune, so he is the former of his own mind. The
Creator has so constituted the human intellect,
that it can grow only by its own action, and by
its own action it roost certainly and necessarily
grows. Every man must, therefore, in an im
portant sense, educate himself. His books and
teachers are but helps; the work is his., A man
is not educated until he has the ability to sum
mon, in case of emergency, all his mental power
in vigorous exercise to effect his proposed object.
It is not the man who has seen the most, or has
read most, who can do this ; such a one is in dan
ger of being borne down, like a beast of burden,
by an over-loaded mass of other men’s thoughts.
Nor is it the man that can boast merely of
native vigor and capacity. The greatest of all
the wariors that went to the siege of Troy, had
not the pre-eminence because nature had given
him strength and he carried the largest bow, but
because self-discipline taught him how to bend it. I
�HERALD OF HEALTH;
Mute ®reahntiif uf Jisrase.
BY E. P. MILLER, M. D.
KF" Tn this department we shall give, from, month to
month, plain, practical directions for the home-treatment
of various diseases.
Bilious Colic.—This disease prevails most
in malarious districts in the summer and autumn
months. It is generally preceded by loss of ap
petite, by bad taste in the mouth, by furred
tongue, by nausea, by constipation of the bow
els, and by other evidences of derangement of
the digestive organs. There is often tenderness
in the region of the liver; and, after the dis
ease is well established, there will be a yellow
ish color of the skin and of the white of the
eye. It sometimes commences with a chill, and
is attended with more or less fever. The par
oxysms of pain are referable to the epigastric
region,- are very severe, and are usually accom
panied by vomiting—first of the contents of the
stomach, then of mucus and bile. The bow
els, though generally constipated, sometimes
discharge their contents freely, accompanied
with a liberal admixture of bilious matter.
The jaundice, associated with pain in the region
of the liver, and nausea and vomiting, are the
characteristic symptoms of this disorder. De
rangement of the digestive functions and ob
struction to the action of the liver are the causes
of this variety of bilious colic.
There is one form of bilious colic that is due
to the passage of the gall-stones through the
cystic or common duct, along which the gall
passes on its course from the gall-bladder to the
intestines. The passage of gall-stones (or bil
iary calculi, as they are sometimes called) of
large size, occasions the most aggravating cases
of bilious colic. The severity of the attack de
pends upon the size and irregularity of shape of
the gall-stones. These gall-stones are usually
formed in the gall-bladder, though sometimes,
they originate in the hepatic duct, or even in the
cells of the body of the liver They are formed
from cholestrine, a substance which enters into
the composition of the bile, and which, in a
healthy condition of that excreta, is in a state
of solution. ' In certain morbid conditions of the
bile this substance is released from its solvent
state, and readily crystalizes into masses of va
rious sizes which soon become as hard as stone.
These calculi vary in size, from a millet seed to
that of a large walnut', and are generally quite
irregular in shape. The duct through which
they pass from the gall-bladder to the intestines
181
is not larger than a goose-quill; the reader may
well imagine the pain and agony a person has
to endure when calculi of large size and of ir
regular shape are forced through so small a tube.
I think I have seen as intense suffering from the
passage of large calculi as from almost any
other cause.
They are often found in large numbers. Dr.
Watson of Edinburgh reports one case in
which thirteen hundred gall-stones were taken
from the gall-bladder of a man after death had
occurred. I have in my possession five, which I
obtained from a post-mortem examination, which
are the size of large cherries, flattened to a threesided figure, and which completely filled the
gall-bladder from which they were taken.
Persons who have once passed gall-stones are
quite liable to repeat the process. In some cases
several will pass in the same day; in other cases
weeks, months or even years will intervene be
tween the attacks. When one of large size has
passed, it is liable to so dilate the duct that, if
there are others remaining behind, they follow
in the wake of the first one till they are all out.
If the patient passes a single round, smooth
stone, it is an indication that there are no more
left behind; but if mey are flattened and irregulJBt is an evidence that they were made so
by being in contact with others. These gall
stones, when they are forced through the duct,
go into the intestines and are passed out with
the feces, where they can be found by a careful
examination.
Sometimes a calculus of large size becomes im
pacted in the duct, and remains there till in
flammation is set up, ulceration takes place, and
a fistulous, artificial passage is formed for its
exodus. This fistulous passage may be formed
through,‘into the intestines, or into the cavity of
the abdomen, or out through the abdominal
walls, discharging them externally through the
abdomen. After the false passage has formed
and the gall stones worked out through them,
either into the intestines or externally through
the walls of the abdomen, the inflammation may
subside, the parts heal and the patient get well;
but if it works through into the cavity of the
abdomen it causes a peritonitis that generally
proves fatal. Happily, such cases are seldom
seen, for in the great majority of cases they
pass through the natural course of the duct and
pass out of the intestines.
The paroxysms of pain in this disease gener
ally commence suddenly, and end as suddenly,
as it began. It may last only for a few min
utes, or it may continue for several hours.
There is usually some tenderness on pressure
�182?
HERALD OF HEALTH.
over the seat of pain, but generally firm pres resort to opiates or something that will produce
sure affords some relief, and the patient often entire insensibility to pain, and even these often
places the palm of the hand over the place, or fail to relieve till they are given in quantities
leans the body against some hard substance to that endanger life. The pain can be greatly
find ease. There is no fever; the pulse is not mitigated, however, by the full hot bath, say
quickened, but is irritable ? the skin is cold and one hundred and five or one hundred and ten
generally tinged with yellow; there will be degrees, prolonged for several minutes, or by the
nausea and vomiting,- with obstinate constipa hot hip-bath or by fomentations. These appli
tion, together with a dark-colored urine which cations not only mitigate the pain, but they re
contains bile.
lax the tissues, so that the calculi pass more
The passage of these gall-stones through the readily through the duct. In all cases of this
duct is mainly due to the pressure of bile, which kind the bowels should be relieved of their con
accumulates behind them in the gall-bladder, tents by injections, and, if there is much nausea,
forcing them along. When considerable time is an emetic of warm water given. After the pain
required for the passage the bile can not pass out, is relieved the tepid compress should be kept
and is retained in the blood and carried the applied to the part for several days, and a daily
rounds of the circulation, giving a jaundiced pack given in the forenoon, with a hip-bath at
hue to the skin and eyes.
eighty degrees for ten or fifteen minutes in the
Treatment.—In a case of bilious colic un evening.
connected with gall-stones, we should first try
After being cured the patient should try to
to move the bowels by copious enemas, and if live in such a manner as to avoid the formation
there is nausea give a warm-water emetic to of gall-stor^M I have had several patients Who
free the stomach of its contents also; then ap were subject to repeated spasms from gall-stones,
ply hot fomentations to the liver and stomach who subsequently escaped for years by adopting
for an hour or more to relieve the pain. Fol the Hygienic style of living.
low this by a full tepid bath or rubbing-sheet.
Injurious Effects of Sugar.—Mr.
A hip-bath at one hundred and five or one hun
dred and ten degrees, with a foot-bath of the Tanner, Professor of Rural Economy in Queen’s
same temperature, for twenty or thirty minutes, College, is inclined to believe that by the use of
accompanied with vigorous friction of the hips, sugar as food any animal can be rendered incom
back and abdomen, will do good, and answer in petent to propagate its species. He observes that
place of the fomentations when the bath is not stock which had been fattened upon molasses
convenient. The fomentations and hot hip mixed with dry food were rendered barren, and
baths will generally relieve the pain very soon. that heifers fed in that way escaped the periodi
In some cases, however, the cold compress or cal excitement of the breeding season; and it
cool hip-bath may be used to advantage instead was doubtful whether the power of reproduction
of hot appliances. The tepid compress should was ever regained. The effect of eating sugar,
be applied for some time after the fomentations in females, was a fatty augmentation of the
and baths have been used. After the pain is ovaries, from which recovery might be rather
relieved the vapor bath, the Turkish bath or the difficult.
wet-sheet pack should be given daily (if the pa
Cause of the Blue Colob of the Sky.
tient be not too feeble) for several days, till the
secretions become healthy and the bile is re Tyndall has shown, by a remarkable series of
moved from the blood. These applications experiments, not only that aqueous vapor ab
should be followed by either a thorough towel sorbs the obscure heat rays of solar radiation,
bath, a rubbing wet-sheet, or, what is perhaps but that the oxygen and nitrogen gases which
better, a pail-douche or full bath. The feet constitute the great mass of our atmosphere ex
must be kept warm by foot-baths or hot bottles ert but little or no action on them. Cooke, after
applied to them.
a long continued examination of the solar spec
No food should be given till the paroxysms trum, concludes that a very large number of
of pain subside, and after that only the blandest the fainter dark lines of the spectrum, hitherto
kind of food should be given for a few days. known as air-lines, are due solely to the aque-'
The treatment should be followed up assidu ous vapors of our air. The distribution of these
ously till the pain is relieved.
aqueous lines, and the variation in them, marked
During the passage of gall-stones it is gener by a remarkable increase, with the increase of
ally impossible to entirely relieve the pain till aqueous vapor in the atmosphere, point to the
the stone has passed out of the duct, unless we cause of the blue color of the sky.
�HERALlFOF HEALTH.
to (fomspmiimifs.
BY A. 1. WOOD, M. D.
MfSF" The readers of The Herald are invited to ask such
questions as will be of general interest for this depart
ment, where they will be briefly but comprehensively an
swered.
How we Escaped a Pestilence.—
“ It was generally thought, last spring, that, on
account of the filthy condition of the city, New
York would suffer from cholera during the
summer as it never had suffered before ; but
still it has escaped with a comparatively slight
visitation. By what means has it thus escaped
9, pestilence ?”
Cholera is a disease which is pre-eminently the
offspring of filth. It feeds, so to speak, upon it,
and when deprived of its aliment it disappears.
When the Metropolitan Board of Health com
menced its labors the city was ripe for pestilence.
The streets were in a most filthy condition,
the inmates of the crowded tenement houses and
underground habitations were wallowing in their
own filth, and breathing the fetid emanations
from their own excretions, and the slaughter
houses, fat-boiling establishments, and other nui
sances were sending forth streams of disease
engendering gasses to poison the surrounding
atmosphere. In the face of every obstacle that
could be thrown in its way, the Board has la
bored energetically and faithfully to cleanse and
disinfect the city, and to remove all nuisances.
It has only partially succeeded, it is true, but
its partial success has prevented the cholera
from becoming a pestilence and destroying
thousands instead of hundreds.
The success which has attended the efforts of
the Board in preventing the further spread of the
cholera shows the effects of hygienic conditions
in preventing disease. The labors of the Board
have but just commenced. Cholera is not the
only nor, indeed, the most fatal disease which the
Board of Health possesses the power to “stamp
out” by the enforcement of hygienic regulations.
During the months of July and August there
were 871 deaths from cholera, and 2303 deaths
from other diarrheal diseases alone, to say noth
ing of the large number of deaths from fevers,
and other easily preventible diseases. People
are beginning to learn that disease is not a
“merciful dispensation of Providence,” but a
penalty inflicted for the violation of the laws of
health.
Flatulence.—Flatulence is merely a symp
tom of indigestion. To effect a cure, the
digestive organs most be strengthened and the
digestive powers perfected.
183
Cold. Feet.—“What do cold feet indi
cate? what is the cause, and what the remedy ?
What is the best method of warming them upon
retiring at night ?”
Cold feet indicate an unbalanced state of the
circulation and more or less congestion of the
head or some of the internal organs. Coldness
of the extremities may be caused by any thing
that tends to depress the powers of life, or derang e
the circulation. The remedy is to remove the
cause, whatever it may be, and restore the health.
The feet should always be made warm, in some
way, before retiring to rest. If the person is able
to do so, the best way to warm them is by exercise.
I will mention a few of the best exercises for this
purpose which can be practiced singly or in
succession until the feet glow with warmth.
Walking in various ways, as with the toes turned
in as far as possible; walking with them turned
far out; walking on the tips of the toes; hopping
on one foot and then on the other, then alter
nately, and then on both together; hopping and
crossing the feet; stamping the feet; standing
on one foot and kicking forcibly downward and
forward with the other; swinging the legs for
ward and backward and in a circle; sit in a
chair or on a sofa, and slowly but forcibly bend
the ankle, drawing the toes far up and then
slowly extending them downward as far as pos
sible; twist the feet alternately outward and
inward in the same manner; rotate the feet,
making a large circle with the toes. There are
but few who will be unable to thoroughly warm
their feet in from five to fifteen minutes by prac
ticing the above exercises.
The continued
practice of such exercises will do much toward
permanently equalizing the circulation and re
storing health. For the few who are not strong
enough to warm their feet by exercise, the best
thing is to soak the feet in hot water until they
are red, then turn a little cold water over them
or dip them in cold water, after which wipe dry
and rub briskly with the hands or a dry, coarse
towel.
j
Breathing through the Mouth.—
“ In the culture of the lungs, should we n,ot
breathe through the mouth, making the aper
ture very small ? I admit that generally we
should breathe through the nose, but the nasal
chambers are so large, that we can not fill the
lungs perfectly through the nose. I think that
in a complete inflation of the lungs we should
breathe through the mouth, as we can breathe
so much slower. ”
Any person, with a little practice, can breathe
as slow through the nose as through the mouth,
but no one should occupy more than from five
to ten seconds in inhaling. They can expand
�184
heralit OF HEALTH.
£he lungs to as great an extent in that time as
they can if they are from one to two min
utes in doing it, and if a person only breathes
once in two or three minutes, as some do not
while practicing, the lungs can not receive a sufc ient quantity of air to purify the blood, and the
individual must suffer. In striving to cultivate
the lungs by breathing exercises, endeavor to
fill them to their utmost capacity, but do not try
to see how long you can be in doing it,or how long
you can hold your breath. Remember that you
must breathe while cultivating the lungs, as well
as at other times.
Dyspepsia and Cook Books.—A
subscriber, while ordering “The New Hygienic
Cook Book,” states that he is troubled with
dyspepsia, and wishes to know if there is any
other cook book wherein he can find a good rec
ipe for his case. There are plenty of cook
books in which “ subscriber” can find recipes
for dyspepsia, as, for instance, the following rec
ipe for “ Imperial Cake,” which is but a fair
sample:
“ Two pounds flour, two pounds sugar, two
pounds butter, two pounds raisins, stoned and
chopped, one pound blanched almonds, one half
pound citron, sixteen eggs, four wine-glasses
wine, mace.”
If the eating of food prepared from such rec
ipes as the above will not give a man the
dyspepsia, he might as well give up all hopes
of ever having it. A fashionable cook book is
just the place to find recipes for producing dys
pepsia but not for curing it.
Difficult Breathing arid Gaping.—
“I am troubled about breathing, and have a
strong desire to gape, but can not always make
out. What is the cause and cure ? ”
Gaping is an instinctive effort to secure the
introduction of a greater amount of air to the
lungs. It is generally caused by a want of
sufficient physical exercise.
The curative
measures consist of occupation, fresh air and ex
ercise. For information about breathing, see
article in September Herald of Health, enti
tled “ Culture of the Lungs.”
Man’s Best Drink.—“What constitutes
man’s best and most natural drink under all
circumstances and conditions, and what rules
should be observed in regard to its use ?”
Water, pure and unmixed, is beyond all ques
tion, the bsst and only natural drink of man, as
it is the only drink of every other living being.
It should be drank only when nature calls for it
by the feeling of thirst, and then, slowly and
temperately, until the thrist is quenched. Fol
low the example of the animal creation, and do
not stop eating to wash the food down with
water. If man would live entirely upon fruits,
which make the purest and best food, he would
feel no thirst, and need no drink. The juices of
the fruits would supply a sufficient quantity of
water in its purest possible form.
Morning Walks.—“Is a walk in the
morning before breakfast good for persons in
moderate health, or is some other time better ?
What distance should they walk?”
»
About the middle of the forenoon is the best
time for walking or exercise of any kind. The
system is then in its best condition. A short
walk or other moderate exercise before break
fast is beneficial, but it is not the best time for
severe exertion... The distance which persons in
moderate health should walk depends upon their
strength, endurance and other bodily con
ditions. It should never be continued so as to
produce pain, soreness of the muscles, or fatigue
from which the system can not fully recover by
an hour’s rest.
Nervous Headache.—“What is the
oim®Sjv(#fc headache, and the remedy.”
One of the principal causes, is the use of
tea, coffee, spirituous liquors and tobacco.
Undue mental exertion, loss of sleep, constipa
tion of the bowels, torpidity of the liver, skin,
etc., are also prominent among the causes of this
disease. The remedy consists in removing the
cause, whatever it may be. If habituated to the
use of tea, coffee, alcohol or tobacco, quit them
at once. Avoid much mental exertion, take an
abundance of out-door exercise, bathe frequently
but not in very cold water, eat temperately
of plain, healthful food, avoiding spices, condi
ments, rich cake, pastry, etc., and obey all the
laws of health.
Weak Dungs.—“What is the best work
on the lungs ?”
If by this question is meant the best work on
the care, culture and treatment of weak or dis
eased lungs, I should unhesitatingly recom
mend “ Weak Lungs, and How to Make them
Strong,” by Dr. Dio Lewis. Price, $2 00. It
may be ordered from the office of The Herald
of Health.
Private Queries.—A number of com- ■
munications containing questions of a private
character and of no interest except to the in
quirer have been received. Only questions of
general interest to the readers of The Herald will
be answered in this department. Prescriptions
for the home treatment of special cases of dis
ease, etc., will be sent by letter on receipt of,
$5 00.
�HERALD OF HEALTH.
anir (Mbhntitfs.
THE ONLY ADMISSIBLE HYGIENIC SEASONINGS.
The loudest wail on record—Jonah’s.
‘ Sabbath breakers—The waves at New
port.
■ What perfume is most injurious to
female beauty ? The essence of thyme (time).
. A bachelor discovering his clothes full
of holes, exclaimed, “ Mend I can’t.”
They say that coal oil cures fevers.
We think that it has been creating fevers.
Board or Health—A farmer’s cup
board.
Why is the early grass like a pen
knife ? Because the spring brings out the blades.
Eating ground glass is sure death. It
gives one a permanent pane in the stomach.
Adam and Eve, after finding the apple,,
discovered they were a pair.
A Toast.—Woman: she requires no
eulogy—she speaks for herself.
What ailments are policemen most
afflicted with ? With felons on their hands.
The gayest smilers are often the sadest weepers.
Affectionate times—When every thing
is about as dear as it can be.
When is a blow from a lady welcome ?
When she strikes you agreeably.
A bin has as much head as a great
many authors, and a great deal more point.
11 This is the last rose of summer I” ex
claimed a wag as he rose from his bed on the
31st of August.
Why is the milkman like the whale
that swallowed Jonah ? Because he took the
“ profit” out of the water.
‘‘Ugh ! Him great man I Big Brave !
Take many scalps!” said an Indian, seeing a
window full of wigs.
It has been asked, when^rain falls,
does it ever get up again ? Of course it does—
in dew time.
“We see,” said Swift in one of his
most sarcastic moods, “what God thinks of
riches by the people whom he gives them to.”
Mankind should learn temperance from
the moon—the fuller she gets the smaller her
horns become.
The age of a young lady is now expressed according to the present style of skirts,
by saying, “eighteen springs have passed over
hpr head.”
185
What is the difference between a spider
and a duck. One has its feet perpetually on a
web, and the other a web perpetually on its feet.
A young lady, whose father is improv
ing the family mansion, insists upon having a
beau window put in for her benefit.
A celebrated wit was asked why he
did not marry a young lady to whom he was
much attached. “I know not,” he replied, ex
cept the great regard we have for each other.”
What is the difference between ac
cepted and rejected lovers ? The accepted
kisses the misses, and the rejected misses the
kisses.
“How do you like Shakspeare ?” said a blue
stocking young lady to an old river captain.
“Don’t like her at all madam; she burns too
much wood and carries too little freight.
Prentice, in a wicked lunge at the
very underpinning of society, says, u tilting
hoops, enable the common people, to see a great
deal more of good society than they ever saw
before.”
An honest Hibernian, trundling along
a handcart cWaR1 all his valuables, was ac
costed-Ous : “Well Patrick, you are moving
again I see.” “Faith. I am,” he replied, “for
the times are so hK&ymfe a dale cheaper hiring
handcarts, than paying rints.”
A fellow out West being asked whe
ther the liquor he was drinking was a good
article, replied: “Waal, I don’t know; I guess
so. There EgMonly one queer thing about it:
whenever I wipe my mouth, I burn a hole in
my shirt.”
A boy down East is accustomed to go
out on a railroad track, and imitate the steam
whistle so perfectly, as to decive the officer at
the station. His last attempt proved eminently
successful; the depot master came out and
“switched him off.”
An artist invited a gentleman to criti
cise on a portrait he had painted of Mr. Smith,
who was given to drink. Putting his hand
toward it, the artist exclaimed, “Don’t touch it,
it is not dry.” “Then,” said he, “it can not be
like my friend Smith.”
Drunk vs. Medical Profession.—A
good story is in circulation of a certain doctor,
who sometimes drank a good deal at dinner.
He was summoned one evening to see a lady
patient when he was more than “half seas over,’
and conscious that he w as so. On feeling her
pulse, and finding himself unable to count its
beats, he muttered, “ Drunk, by Jove.” Next
morning, recollecting the circumstance, he was
greatly vexed, and just as he was thinking what
explanation he should offer to the lady, a letter
was put into his hand. “She too well knew,”
said the letter, “that he had discovered the un
fortunate condition in which she was when be
had visited her; and she entreated him to
keep the matter a secret, in consideration of the
inclosed”—a $100 bill.
�186
HERALD OF HEALTH.
There is an old proverb which declares
that none can tell where the shoe pinches eave
he who wears it. The maxim has a thousand
applications. A husband who appears to have
found his wife a good deal less an angel than he
had imagined in the days of his courtship, lets
out some domestic secrets, in the following
graphic manner:
“ I own that she has charming locks
That on her shoulders fall;
What would you say to see the box
In which she keeps them all ?
“ Her taper fingers, it is true,
Are difficult to match ;
I wish, my friend, you only knew,
How terribly they scratch.”
There is no sin we can be tempted to
commit but we shall find a greater satisfaction
in resisting than in committing.—Mason.
New York Medical College for Women.
—We earnestly believe in a medical education for women.
The day is soon coming when all women will be required
to have a thorough education in this direction, not so
much, perhaps, with the view of curing the sick as to keep
well themselves, keep their families well without dosing
and drugging, and that they may rear their children in
health and beauty. There is to-day no college that comes
up to the needed requirements in this respect. The one
mentioned above is one of the best, where much can be
learned. We think_it is doing good, and though we do not
* indorse its mode of practice, we commend it as worthy of
patronage.
Olivet College.—We have received a pam
phlet containing the history of Olivet College, Michigan.
It is from the pen of its President, Rev. N. J. Morrison,
and gives a graphic account of the rise and progress of the
College. Olivet is a town in which there is not a grog
shop nor a gambling-den, and the moral, intellectual and
social influences are such as parents and guardians desire
for the youth under their care. Mr. Philo Parsons of De
troit, a banker and a hearty friend of education, recently
contributed $5000 to support this excellent institution of
learning.
penetrate society and spread through all its varied phases,
as the sun fills the atmosphere with light. We ask the
countenance and aid of all who have faith in the holy
laws of life and the gospel of health. The sick and the
infirm must be cured, and their lives be prolonged ; chil
dren must be taught to observe the rules of physical
health, so that they shall not build up a tottering and
miserable existence’ on the foundation of dyspepsia and
consumption. Darkness which may be felt must be dis
placed by the light and beauty of truth. Physically
speaking, society is badly in need of reconstruction. The
constitution and the laws of health are trampled under
foot. We shun the bath and goblet brimming with water
as though we were afflicted with hydrophobia; we pour
nostrums down our throats and aggravate the ills that
flesh is heir to. Now, we have given you and yours the
opinions of the most scholarly and scientific men in the
world of-Hygiene in relation to these matters. In addi
tion to the views of eminent surgeons and physicians, we
have given the opinions of our best thinkers in the world
of letters and reform.
Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley, Theodore Til
ton, Prof. Rufus King Browne, William H. Burleigh, E.
B. Perkins, Rev. O. B. Erothingham, Alfred B. Street,
Moses Coit Tyler, P. T. Barnum, G. W. Bungay, Dts.
Miller, Wood, Holbrook, Webster and others. We have
still richer treats in reserve, and most cordially invite all
who have faith in the laws of life and the gospel of good
health to enjoy with us the refreshing viands spread for
the entertainment of our friends, and to bring the hun
dreds of their friends with them for another year. A
great work is before us in the redemption of our race from
sickness and premature death. Let us work earnestly in
it while we can, and so hasten the day of perfect human
health and happiness.
Important and Liberal Oder.—
The Publishers of The Herald of Health, with a view
to extend the usefulness of their magazine, and at the
same time give their patrons the opportunity to introduce
it, at a comparatively low sum, to a large circle of read
ers, have concluded to offer it, in Clubs of 50 or more, at
One Dollar per year, provided the list is made up previous
to the first of February, 1867. We wish it distinctly un
derstood, however, that we will not for a smaller Club
deviate from our regular rates. The names and money
must be sent all at one time. Persons who request us to
send The Herald for one dollar to smaller clubs will not
be accommodated. This is a special offer, and those who
do not meet its requirements will be credited according to
regular rates. The Herald is richly worth two dollars a
year to any family, but as there are thousands of families
who are not acquainted with it, we make this offer as an
inducement to those interested in the Health Movement
to do a great deal of good at a very small expense of time
and money. Det those who wish to profit by it make a
move at once.
Our Past and Future.—During the
This Number.—This number will speak
last four months we have exerted our utmost endeavors to
increase the usefulness of The Herald of Health. We
have added to the number of its pages, and filled them
with original contributions from the pens of writers of
national reputation. There is not another magazine on
this continent that can show such a list of illustrious
writers on matters pertaining to Physical Culture and the
science of Health. We have the indorsement of many of
the best scholars and thinkers in America, and we are
grateful to them for their efforts to extend our circula
tion. A great work is before us, and we strip to the task
with faith in God and hope in man that the truth will
for itself. The article by Mr. Tyler, giving a sketch of
the life of Thomas Hughes, is in the author’s happy vein,
and will be found exceedingly interesting. “Overwork
and Underwork” discusses a subject of great interest, and
can not fail to be read 'with profit. “ The Study of Phys
iology,” by Dr. Browne; “A True Life,” by Horace
^recley; Beecher on “Patient Waiting;” Bungay on
“ Some of Our Faults ;” “ A Homily for Ministers and
Christians,” by Rev. Dr. John Marsh; Notes for the
Month ; Poetry, Miscellany, Answers to Correspondents,
Home Treatment of Disease, etc., are all very interesting!
Mr. Tilton’s poem, entitled “ My Creed,” which appears
�kWrald
of
on the first page, and Mr. Bungay’s “ October "Woods and
^Flowers,” can not fail to please. "We are giving our sub
scribers more and better matter than we promised, and
we thank them for the numerous commendations con
stantly received. We ask their special attention to the
subject of adding largely to our subscription list for the
year 1867. By the circulation of no magazine can so
much good be done in building up a nation of strong
bodied and pure-minded men and women.
Lectures and Lecturers.—The fol
lowing gentlemen are familiar with the great question of
Physical Culture, and we suggest to our friends in the
Country that they form clubs and raise funds to secure, if
possible, their lecture service: Horace Greeley, George
"W. Bungay, Dr. M. L. Holbrook, Dr. A. L. Wood, Dr. E.
P. Miller, F. B. Perkins, Dr. Snodgrass, Dr. Dio Lewis,
Moses Coit Tyler, S. R. "Wells, Nelson Sizer.
Applications for the services of these gentlemen may be
sent to us (stamp inclosed for the payment of postage) and
we will endeavor to secure an engagement from them.
Persons applying will please name two, three or more of
the gentlemen whom they would prefer, so that, if the
first person of their choice cannot be obtained, the second
or third may. Address Miller, Wood & Co., 15 LaightS
Street, New York. Any lyceum or school near New York
city, and convenient of access, which will give us a club
of fifty subscribers for The Herald of Health, shall
have a gratuitous lecture from some one of our lecturers.
health.
187
Job Printing.—We are prepared to exe
cute in neat, substantial styles, various kinds of Job
Printing : such as Pamphlets, Circulars, Envelopes, Bill
heads, Letter-heads, Cards, Labels, Small Handbills, etc.,
at the same rates as in all first-class New York printing
establishments. Stereotype work done to order.
Our friends in the country who wish neat and ac
curate printing, can rely on first-class work, by sending
plainly written and well-prepared manuscripts. For terms,
send sample or copy of work, state quality of printing
material to be used, and the number of copies wanted, in
closing a prepaid envelope for a reply.
[gtr* Advertisements of an appropriate character will
be inserted at the following rates : Short advertisements,
25 cents per line ; thirteen lines, for three or more inser
tions without change, 20 per cent, discount; one-half
column, $12 ; one column, $22 ; one page, $40. All adver
tisements must be received at this office by the 10th of
the month preceding that on which they are to appear.
Sexual Physiology.—Our new work on
Sexual Physiology is already meeting with a rapid sale.
Agents wishing to canvass for it should address us for par
ticulars. The price of a single copy by mail is $2, which,
considering the style of binding and the large number of
engravings which illustrate the work, is very cheap. We
are very sure that no person ordering a copy will ever find
reason to regret it.
Special Request.—Our
friends will
oblige us, and benefit others, by sending us the names and
post-office address of all invalids with whom they are ac
quainted ; also, all friends of Temperance, Health Reform
and Physical Culture. Any one who will send us a list of
425 bona fide, names of such persons shall receive free by
mail a copy of Prof. Wilson’s work of 75 pages on the
“Turkish Bath.”
Circulars.—Those of our subscribers who
wish to aid us in extending the circulation of The Herald,
should obtain our circular to exhibit to their friends. Ev
ery invalid who will send a stamped envelope shall receive
in it one of each of our circulars for The Herald, Books
and Baths.
Agents Wanted.—We want agents, local
and traveling, to canvass for The Herald of Health and
Sexual Physiology. Our agents are meeting with excellent
success, and there is plenty of room for more. We want
them everywhere througnout city and country. For spe
cial terms to Agents address the Publishers.
Herald for 1863, 1864 and 1865.—
We have a few bound volumes of The Herald of Health
for 1863, 1864 and 1865 on hand, which will be sent free by
mail on reoeipt of $2 25.
Epidemic Cholera.—See notice of
the book on Epidemic Cholera, just published, in our ad
vertising columns. Agents wanted in every city.
Canada Subscribers will please send
12 cents extra to prepay postage. Quite a number of new
subscribers have forgotten to do so.
A Pleasant Resort.
Persons visiting New York who desire to avoid the bus
tle of hotels will find ample accommodations, with firstclass rooms and good Hygienic table, at No. 63 Columbia
Street, Brooklyn Heights, New York, three minutes’ walk
from Fulton Ferry, being nearer to the business center of
New York than most of the best hotels in that city.
Connected with this establishment is the
TURKISH BATH,
One of the greatest physical luxuries, nor is there any
agent so powerful to renovate and restore the enfeebled
or diseased system.
For terms, etc., address
oc-lt
CHAS. H. SHEPARD, M. D.
Wanted--At the Willow Park
"WATER CURE, a good, healthy, intelligent girl to at
tend to patients, with a view of becoming a physician, and
eventually taking charge of the Female Medical Depart
ment. Address Dr. J. H. HERO, Westboro’, Mass.
Wanted-A Good Practical
HOUSEKEEPER in a small family. Must be a good
Cook and able to do general Housework. Address, with
reference, terms, etc., Box 653, Pittsville, Schuylkill Co.,
Pa.
oc-tf
Wanted-At the Willow Park
WATER CURE, A GOOD COOK, to whom a permanent
situation will be given. Address Dr. J. H. TTF.RO, West
boro’, Mass.
oc-tf
Notices
to
Lyceums.
Mr. George W. Bungay, the Author, Editor and Lec
turer, has a new lecture entitled “ WORK AND PLAY.”
His address is 15 Laight Street, New York.
sep-tf
�188
HEffiALD OF HEALTH^
A NEW, ENTERTAINING, ARTISTIC AND SPLENDIDLY ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY
MAGAZINE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.
The Teacher’s Monitor and Parent’s Oracle, furnishing a Museum' of Instruction in Philosophy, Art, Science and
Literature, to include Stories, Poems, History, Biography, Geography, Astronomy, Chemistry, Music, Games, PuzzIps,
etc. etc., suited to the capacities of very Young America, without frivolity or exaggeration. Its contents, from the
pens of the best authors, will be found to sparkle with interest, its illustrations to charm with beauty, and the whole to
inspire with virtue and intelligence, and prove a “ well-spring of pleasure” in every household. Single copies, 15 cents;
yearly, $1 50 ; each additional copy, $1, or five copies for $5. Young America and Demorest’s Monthly together, $4..
Address W. JENNINGS DEMOREST, 473 Broadway. A large and beautiful colored Steel Engraving given free with
the first number, and both mailed free on receipt of the price. First number ready in September. Each single sub
scriber at $1 50 will be entitled to a Microscope of highly magnifying powers, with glass cylinder, sent by mail, postage
six cents. Or a package of Magic Photographs, postage two cents.
KzTEditors copying the above and sending a marked copy will be entitled to Young America for one year.
oc-tf
Demorest’s Monthly Magazine.
The Eadies’ Literary Conservator of Art, Novelty and Beauty, furnishing the Best Stories by the Best Authors, Best
Poems, Best Engravings, Best Fashions, Best Miscellany, Best Paper, Best Printing, and the best in every thing calcu
lated to make a Magazine entertaining, useful and beautiful; or as The New York Independent says, “Universally ac
knowledged the model parlor Magazine of America.” Yearly, $3, with a valuable premium to each subscriber. Lib
eral ter i s and splendid premiums for clubs. Single copies, 30 cents, post free. Address W. JENNINGS DEMOREST,
No. 473 Broadway, New York. Specimen copies sent free on receipt of 10 cents.
.
oc-tf
The Working Farmer
FOR 1866-67—VOLUME NINETEENTH.
This agricultural periodical, originally edited by Prof.
James J. Mapes, deceased, has attained, in the hands of
its present publishers, a circulation and influence second
to no similar publication in the country. Through the
liberal public patronage extended to, it, the publishers
are enabled to keep down the price to
ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM IN ADVANCE,
And will also send to new subscribers, who send in their
names during the.months of October and November, the
remaining Nos. of 1866 without extra charge. And to
every subscriber who sends Two Dollars for two subscrip
tions one year, or one subscription two years, A CONCORD
OR ROGERS HYBRID GRAPE VINE, raised on the
grounds of the Editor, and sold at retail for seventy-five
cen's, will be sent as a premium.
We also club with the principal magazines and papers
at very low rates, and offer the best and highest premiums
to club agents. Send for circulars and specimen numbers
containing full Premium List, etc.
Terms—One Dollar a year, in advance; 80 cents in
clubs of ten or more ; single Nos., 12 cents. Specimen
copies sent on application. Clubs may come from differ
ent post-offices.
Subscribers in Canada and British North America must
remit 12 cents extra to prepay American postage.
Address
WM. L. ALLISON & CO.,
oc-tf______________ 58 Oortlandt Street, New York.
New
Hygienic
Establishment.
Having purchased a quiet corner house near Madison
Square, in the immediate vicinity of the up-town hotels,
will open it for the reception of invalids who desire to re
gain their health, and for well persons who desire to keep
well by rational measures. Believing implicitly in all the
resources of Hygiene, I intend to make this establishment,
in the fullest sense, a complete sanitarium. Applications
for board, rooms and treatment should be addressed to
oc-tf
E. c. ANGELL, M. D.,
51 Lexington Avenue, corner of 25th St., New York.
The Willow Park Water Cure
AND HYGIENIC INSTITUTE is at WESTBORO, Mass.
Address (inclosing stamp), for new circular,
OC-tf
Dr. J. H. HERO.
SEND FOR IT!
The Celebrated Craig Micro
scope combines instruction with amusement and lasts
for ever. Best, simplest, cheapest and most powerful mi
croscope in the world. Magnifies 10,000 times, or equal
to other microscopes costing $20. Made on an entire new
plan, requiring no focal adjustment, therefore it can bo
readily used by every one—even by children, A beautiful
gift to old or young. Adapted to the famfly circle as well
as scientific use. Shows the adulterations m food, thou
sands of animals in a single drop of water or vinegar,
globules in milk, blood and other fluids, tubular, structure^
of hair, claws on .a fly’s foot, also the celebrated “trichina
spiralis,” or pork worm, which is causing so many deaths
among pork eaters, and in fact the objects which may be
examined in this wonderful microscope are without num
ber. All are invited to call and see its great magnifying
power. Discount by the dozen to agents, schools and
dealers. Priee $2.50. Packed in a neat box and sent pre
paid to any address on receipt of $2.75. Money can be
sent by mail at our risk. Address
oc-tf
GEORGE MEADE, Thompsonville, Wis.
The Proprietor of Willow
PARK WATER CURE would like to sell his Furniture
to suitable parties, and arrange with them to board all his
patients and attendants. This opens a good opportunity
for a couple who would like to engage in the business of
keeping a Hygienic Boarding-House. Will pay a fair
price for board and pay monthly. We wish to be so situ
ated as to devote our whole energies to the Medical De
partment. Address
oc-tf
Dr. J. H. HERO, Westboro’, Mass. __
Binghamton Water Cure
and
HYGIENIC INSTITUTE, BINGHAMTON, BROOME
COUNTY, NEW YORK. This establishment holds out
rare inducements to patients who contemplate spending
the autumn and winter at a Water cure. Send for cir
cular, or address O. V. THAYER, M. D.
oc-tf
Granville Water Cure,
Now in its fourteenth year. For particulars, send for cir
cular to SOLOMON FREASE, M. D., Granville, Licking
County, O.
- -----tf
�HERALD OF HEALTH.
189'
Granite State Health Institute,
HILL, N. H.
The “ Granite State” has now become widely and fa
vorably known as one of the best Hygienic establishments
in the land.
Through its great success in treating disease for the last
fourteen years, the perfect homelike atmosphere that has
ever pervaded the institution, the moderate terms upon
which patients have been received, the care that has been
taken to in sure their recovery, and to return to them the
largest equivalent for the money they have expended, this
institution has been built up into a large and flourishing
establishment. It is not too much for us to say that pa
tients from all parts of the country, from our large cities
and from interior towns, have been enthusiastic in their
praise and in recommending our institution to their friends.
The following points have attracted attention :
1. Our accessibility: the cars stop within a Jew rods of
our door.
2. Our location, amid pleasant and romantic surround
ings.
3. The purity of the air and the excellence of the
water.
4. The dietary: the variety, the exceeding simplicity of
preparation, and yet the palatableness of the food.
5. The careful attention bestowed on patients and the
specific directions given to insure their recovery.
6. The fact that almost all patients, with whatever dis
ease they may be afflicted, who visit this establishment
and are advised by the Physician to remain, are either en
tirely cured or very greatly benefited.
Vast numbers have been cured here in the past, and,
the good providence of God permitting, we shall restore
thousands more in the future. We believe that we have
been especially ordained to and qualified for this work.
lQJt is a labor we earnestly love ; and now, after an expe
rience of fourteen years in the practical management of
all kinds of sick persons, we feel ourselves qualified as
never before to cheer up, encourage and comfort the in
valid, and guide him onward in the same pathway of re
covery.
The Granite State has recently been fitted up and placed
in the most perfect working order. It will be found a
pleasant home for all invalids who are earnestly seeking
restoration from dis.ease as their great primary purpose,
and who wish to place themselves in the most perfect
health conditions, and be subjected to the most health
imparting discipline.
We wish it distinctly understood that this institution is
not a fashionable resort, but a home, and cure, for the in
valid.
We have had a large and very successful experience in
treating the special diseases peculiar to the sexes, and pa
tients of this class may be assured that they will receive
the most skillful treatment.
The fall and winter months are aS favorable for treat
ment as the spring and summer, and many invalids will
make more rapid progress in cold weather than in warm;
nor is the treatment, when scientifically administered in
comfortably heated apartments, any less agreeable in cold
weather than in warm.
We take Ministers of the Gospel, dependent on their
salaries for support, at a reduced rate.
The reader is referred to the April number of this Jour
nal, where he may see what our patients say of us.
GSF- No drug poisons are ever given in this establish
ment.
#*# The Hot-Air Bath, a modification of tljp Turkish,
is used in some cases.
We shall be glad to send circulars giving particular
information concerning our establishment to all inquiring
friends who will inclose stamp for postage.
oc-tf
W. T. VAIL, M. D., Hill, N. H.
AN IMPORTANT HYGIENIC WORK!
EPIDEMIC CHOLERA.
We have just published an important work on Epidemic
Cholera, embracing Hr. Webster’s Lectures on the His
tory, Causes and Treatment of Cholera. It is the best
work that has yet appeared on the subject from a Hygienic
stand-point. PRICE, 25 CENTS. All who want to know
the way to avoid this disease, or treat it by means of Hy
gienic Treatment, should have a copy at once.
Address
MILLER, WOOD & CO.,
15 Laight Street, New York.
Dentistry.
A FULL SET OF TEETH INSERTED FOR $8, $10 TO
$15. Extracting without pain with pure Nitrous Oxide
Gas, at 138 East Thirteenth Street, between Third and
Fourth Avenues, New York.
sep-3t
DR. JEROME KIDDER’S
GENUINE SIX-CURRENT
Electro-Medical Apparatus
Is proving highly efficacious in a large variety of Dyspep
tic, Nervous and Chronic Disorders.
Caution in regard to Tricks in Electricity.
The so-called Nine-pound Magnetic Current Machine
has a wire underneath the helix stand leading to the bat
tery, and the current does not go through the helix, but
gives, of course, the same magnetic power as is given by
any simple battery-cup—that is, the cup with the metals
and solution. The so-called direct and to-and-fro current
machine is simply the trick of giving a new name to the
old-fashioned shocking machine having two coils; all the
old machines have these two coils. Some use the inner
coil, taking the poles each side of the break of the spring
and point; others do not. There has been put forward a
trick of a'torpedo, spurious six-current machine, with one
current taken over and over from the different metallic
parts. There is but one genuine six-current machine.
For further information in these matters address
DR. JEROME KIDDER,
480 Broadway, New. York.
Drs. Miller, Wood & Co., take pleasure in filling or
ders for Dr. Kidder’s Machines.
KF" These are not the crank machines.
oc-tf
Turkish Baths.
■ One of the Publishers of The Herald of Health, Dr.
A. L. WOOD, who for the past two years has built and
superintended Turkish Baths in Providence and New York,
has been traveling in Europe during the past summer, for
the purpose of examining the construction, modes of heat
ing, and management of the numerous and extensive baths
which are there becoming national institutions, and being
convinced that the general introduction of Turkish Baths,
as now modified and improved, will do more to improve the
health of the American people, and lead them away from
all forms of Intemperance and Druggery to a reliance upon
the natural hygienic agencies than any other means now
employed, we shall do all in our power to introduce them
throughout the land. In accordance with this determina
tion, Dr. Wood will respond to calls to lecture upon the
subject, or to superintend the construction of the Bath
after the most improved plans, in private houses, Hy
dropathic establishments, Hospitals and public institu
tions, or for the public in cities and towns in any part
of the country.
dec-tf
Woman’s Dress ;
Its Moral
AND PHYSICAL RELATIONS. By Mrs. Mattie M.
Jones, M. D.—This is the most interesting and instructive
essay that has yet appeared. It gives plain and definite
rules for making a physiological dress of exceed ing beauty,
a chapter on the Gymnastic costume and how to make it,
and a great variety of interesting matter. The whole is
illustrated with numerous cuts done in the finest style, of
different patterns of dress, with patterns for the instruc
tion of those who wish a guide to work out the best re
sults. It is printed in the best style, and sent by mail for
30 cents. Address MILLER, WOOD & Co., No 15 Laight
Street, New York.
RE-OPENED AND RE-FURNISHED.
The Graefenberg Hygienic In
stitute, near Utica, N. Y., is re-opened for Boarders
and Patients by its original Founder and Proprietor. For
particulars address R. HOLLAND, M. D., Graefenberg,
N. Y.
jy-tf
Highland Water Cure.
H. P. BURDICK," M. D., and
) Physicians
Mrs. MARY BRYANT BURDICK, M.D., f iHTSlcIANS.
Send for Circular. Address—Alfred, Alleghany Co., N.Y.
aug-tf
�190
HERALD OF HEALTH
The Hygeian Home.
A. SMITH, M. D., Proprietor.
R. T. Trall, M. D., Consulting Physician,
DR. JEROME KIDDER’S
GENUINE SIX-CUERENT
Electro-Medical Apparatus
Has nearly double the magnetic power of any called
magnetic. Patented in the United States, England and
Erance. The best testimonials from Professors Mott, Silliman, Vonder, Weyde, and other scientific men. D. D
Smith, M. D., Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Wo
men and Children, in the New York Homoeopathic Medi
cal College, speaks of my apparatus as follows :
“ I am satisfied you have reached a point and developed
combinations that far exceed in a therapeutic aspect the
discoveries and combinations of every other experi
menter.”
In regard to Bath Apparatus, Office Apparatus, Family
Apparatus, and Pocket Apparatus for using remedial Elec
tricity,
KF* Address Dr. JEROME KIDDER, 480 Broadway,
New York.______________ ;_________
sept-tf
A. J. GARDNER,
Merchant
Tailor,
4=1*7 CANAL STREET,
CORNER OF SULLIVAN
aug-8t
STREET,
NEW YORK.
Pathology of the Reproductive
ORGANS. BY R. T. TRADE, M. D.
The Introduction treats of Hygienic appliances; Bath
ing, Food, Exercise, Light, Clothing, Sleep, Beds and Bed
ding, Bodily Positions, Night Watching, Friction, Electricity, Galvanism, Magnetism, and cleanliness. Part
Pirst treats of Venereal Diseases proper, their history,
the venereal virus, modes of propagation, inoculation,
syphilization, mercurialization, gonorrhoea, its seat, symp
toms and treatment; Syphilis; location, stages, varieties,
and diagnosis of chancres, treatment of syphilis, preven
tion of venereal diseases, &c. Part Two, of Spermatorrhoe,
or Seminal Weaknesses, its causes, symptoms, treatment,
complications, and sequences ; drug-treatment, and cau
terization. Part Third, of Female Diseases; mis-mm.
struation, retained menstruations, suppressed menstrua
tion, painful menstruation, chlorosis, leucorrhcea, inflam
mations, and ulcerations, etc. etc. Part Four, of miscel
laneous affections, including displacement, anteversion,
retroversion, inversion and prolapsus ■ of the uterus;
uterine tumors, cancers, dropsy, etc. etc.
This is by far the best work that has appeared on the
Lauses and Treatment of all forms of Sexual Diseases.
Lt is printed on fine white paper with clear type, and con
tains an excellent steel engraving of the author. Sent
post paid by mail. Price, $2.00. Address,
MILLER, WOOD ■& CO.,
_
_________ ___________ No. 15 Laight Street, New York.
Hot Bottles.
■R,YE^anew1bta?lel aJery C0Ilvenient and useful form of
Rubber Bottles lor holding hot water for warming the feet
or applying a local fomentation to any part of the body.
They are small, may be carried in a satchel, knapsack, or
even tn the pocket. For feeble persons and those ravel
ing from place to place they are invaluable. Price <R2
MILLER, WOOD & CO.,
No. 15 Laight Street, New York.
The Hygeian Home is pleasantly situated on the Eastern
slope of Cushion Mountain, one and a half miles from the
Wernersville Station, on the Lebanon Valley Railroad,
and is easy of access by railroad from all parts of the
United States. The climate is mild and pleasant. The
scenery is truly grand. Dr. Weeder says it surpasses any
thing I have ever seen in Europe or America. Hon.
Judge Jones says that language can not describe its gran
deur. Hon. Judge Strong says the air and scenery are as
fine as any in America. Hon. Judge Woodward* says, I
cannot conceive of any thing more beautiful in scenery
than that from your door. The walks are dry and clean.
The mountain air is pure and bracing. The bathing facili
ties can not be surpassed. The water is not onlv soft but
absolutely pure, and the physicians, Dr. A. Smith, Mrs.
Dr. C. Smith and Miss Dr. P. Draper, have had great ex
perience and success in healing the sick. They pay especial
attention to giving the Swedish Movements and Light
Gymnastics. With all these natural advantages, the
Hygeian Home stands pre-eminently superior as a Health
Institution to any other similar establishment in America.
Thus all who place themselves under our c re, may feel
assured of all that professional skill and p'- onal kindnss
can accomplish to aid them in the recovery of health.
Terms moderate. Send for our Circular. Address all
letters to
A. SMITH, M. D.,
je-tf
Wernersville, Berks County, Pa.
Dr. S. B. SMITH’S
Electro-Magnetic Machines.
The only ones where a true unmixed, Direct Current,
with strong intensity and strong magnetic power, is de
veloped. Send for a Circular, wherein is shown that there
is but one current in electricity, and but one important
modification in that current. On the Direct Current
poles I raise a nine-pound weight; other so-called Direct
' Currents raise but a “ ten-penny nailI”
Price, with single cup battery, $18; double cup, $20.
Address
Dr. S. B. SMITH,
309 Broadway, New York.
Orders also received for said Machines by Miller, Wood
& Co., 15 Laight Street.
jy-tf
Philadelphia Hygienic Institute.
Dr. Wilson’s establishment is now located at 1109 Gi
rard Street, above Chestnut. This institution is very fa
vorably located. The situation is central, pleasant and
• healthy; the rooms spacious, elegant, and attractively
furnished. Patients receive the personal attention of the
doctor and his wife, and may rely on skillful, careful and
attentive treatment. We use no drugs. Our table is lib
erally supplied with a variety of well-cooked food. Per
sons visiting the city on business or pleasure can be accom
modated with rooms and board.
Address
R. WILSON, M. D.,
aug-tf
1109 Girard Street, Philadelphia.
Ladies’ Suspenders.
We are nowprepared to fill orders for Ladies’ Suspenders.
Their objeat is to support the skirts over the shoulders, in
stead of on the hips as heretofore, much to the detriment of
women’s health. We are sure there are thousands ot women
in America who will welcome them as an invention giving
them great relief, and doing much to secure to them a
healthy condition of the internal organs. Woman’s curse
in America is weakness in the sides, back and chest. Se
cure to her strength here, and you secure to her one of the
greatest blessings she can enjoy. We recommend these
skirt-supporters to the intelligent and cultivated women
of this country as one of the most important inventions
regarding woman’s dress of the present age. Price, $2
per pair, $18 per dozen.
MILLER, WOOD & CO.,
_________________ No. 15 Laight Street, New York.
Worcester Water and Move
ment CURE, WORCESTER, Mass. Please send for
Circular.
aug-lt__________ ________ ISAAC TABOR, M. D.
Manual
of
Light Gymnastics,
Designed for Clubs, Evening Classes and private use.
By W. L. Rathe. Price, prepaid by mail, 38 cents. Ad
dress
MILLER, W00D & Co., No. 15 Laight Street,
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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The Herald of Health and Journal of Physical Culture. Vol. 8, no. 4. October, 1866
Description
An account of the resource
New series
Place of publication: New York
Collation: [145]-190 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Pencilled inscription on front page: M.D Conway, Warren Farm, Wimbledon. Printed in double columns.
Publisher
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Miller, Wood & Co.
Date
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1866
Identifier
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G5389
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Health
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[Unknown]
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The Herald of Health and Journal of Physical Culture. Vol. 8, no. 4. October, 1866), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Health
Hygiene
Physical Education
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NATIONAL SECL’LAT.COCZnT
N)63O
HOSPITALS & DISPENSARIES
NOT OF
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN.
8T
J.
S Y M E S.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY.
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
PRICE ONE
PENNY.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
28, stonecutter street, e.c.
�HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES
NOT OF
CHRISTIAN
ORIGIN.
A very frequent question put to Secularists is, What
hospitals have you built or endowed? And an equally
frequent assertion is made to the effect that the world owes
all those institutions for the care and cure of the sick to
Christianity. A greater mistake was never made, as I shall
try to show.
In the first place, I make bold to assert that mercy, compas
sion, humanity, and benevolence did not, and could not, spring
from religion. All the Gods, or nearly all, were origi
nally cold, callous, and cruel. They inflicted upon man
(if fables may be trusted) all the horrors he endured, and
then quietly and stolidly looked on while he writhed in
his agony No Gods sinned more in this respect than those
of the Jews, in proof of which I refer to the story of the
Flood, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the Israelitish march
through the desert, of the conquest of Palestine, and other
tales of the Old Testament. It was only when man became
civilised that the Gods forsook their barbarism, and the very
mercy man learnt in civilised life was by-and-by ascribed to
the Gods. Every kindly feeling man has must have been learnt
in society—must have been produced there, for Nature
knows nothing of kindness, mercy, or compassion. Nature
and the Gods have not only inflicted flood, pestilence,
famine, and fire, upon man and beast, but they never
interfered to relieve the poor wretches of their suffering.
Wherever man, therefore, learnt his humanity and pity,
most certainly no God or religion ever taught him.
Secondly, as most religions have enjoined the belief in
miracles and miraculous cures of disease, their very spirit
has been antagonistic to the founding of hospitals, in
firmaries, and dispensaries. No religion has done moie
�4
HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES
harm in this respect than Christianity. Look through the
New Testament, and you will not find a single commenda
tion of medicine, surgery, or any other healing art. All
diseases are there to be cured by miracles ; the physician is
dispensed with, and physic is entirely thrown to the dogs,,
and the priest and the elder are exalted as the miraculous,
healers of both body and soul. Had the spirit of Christianity
been carried out successfully there would not have been a
hospital or anything of the sort now in the world. If this
religion had spread first among barbarians, instead of the
civilised nations of the Roman empire, and if her converts
had been docile instead of independent, we should have
seen, long ere now, what a curse she was to man. But
Christianity inherited all the learning, the arts and sciences,
the laws and social institutions of Greece and Rome. All
these (with few exceptions) she did her best to destroy, and
when that proved impossible, she coolly adopted and claimed
them as her own productions.
What has been said above will tend to show that we owe
none of our best sentiments to religion; but I will now
proceed to exhibit a few facts which will set the matter at
rest, and demonstrate that hospitals and kindred institutions
are not the product of Christianity. In doing this I shall
quote from, and refer to, an article in the current number
(Oct. 1877) of the Westminster Review, on “ Pre-Christian
Dispensaries and Hospitals.” The writer says :—“ It is in
the medical officers, appointed and paid by the State,
that we find the earliest germ and first idea of the
v?s.t. network of hospitals which has spread over the
civilised countries of the world. These medical officers
were an institution in Egypt from a remote antiquity, for in
the eleventh century b.c. there was a College of Physicians
in receipt of public pay, and regulated as to the nature and
extent of their practice. At Athens, in the fifth century
b.c., there were physicians elected and paid by the citizens;
there were also dispensaries in which they received their
patients, and we find mention made of one hospital.”
Turn we next to India. “In the fourth century b.c. an
edict was promulgated in India, by King Asoka, command
ing the establishment of hospitals throughout his dominions;
and we have direct proof that these hospitals were flourish
ing in the fifth and in the seventh centuries a.d.”—they
flourished then for a thousand years. “Among the Romans
under the empire physicians were elected in every city in
�NOT OF CHRISTIAN ORIGIN.
5
proportion to the number of inhabitants, and they received
a salary from the public treasury.”
Leaving the Westminster Review for a moment, I will
quote an extract from Tacitus. Referring to the fall of an
amphitheatre at Fidenae, in the ruins of which 50,000
people were killed or otherwise maimed, he says: “Now
during the fresh pangs of this calamity, the doors of the
grandees were thrown open, medicines were everywhere
supplied and administered by proper hands; and at that
juncture the city, though of sorrowful aspect, seemed to
have recalled the public spirit of the ancient Romans, who,
after great battles, constantly relieved the wounded, sustained
them by liberality, and restored them with care.”—“Annals,”
iv. 65. This extract shows not merely what the Romans
did at this date, about 27 a.d., but points back to periods
long past, when their forefathers regularly relieved and healed
the wounded soldiers. Such a nation, though still dread
fully barbarous in some respects, did not require the aid of
Christianity to set it on the path of humanity and mercy ;
the germs of those virtues had been there for ages, and only
required time to develop. Those who wish to see what
the best Romans, in the first century before our era, thought of
benevolence may consult Cicero “ De Officiis,” Bk. I., 14, 15.
Turning again to the Westminster Review, we read that
even the “ancient Mexicans had hospitals in their principal
cities ‘ for the cure of the sick, and the permanent refuge of
disabled soldiers.’” The Mexicans, by the way, and the
Peruvians as well, were working out a splendid civilization
for themselves at the time the barbarians from Spain dis
covered and ruined them. The more we know of those
ancient civilisations the more we must admire them; and it
cannot be denied that Spain herself was, at the time of the
conquest, more superstitious and less civilised than Mexico
or Peru; the eruption of those Christian savages into
Central America threw back the civilization of the continent
for four or five hundred years. I have nothing to say in
palliation of either Mexican or Peruvian religion; but I
must say that the Spaniards, in destroying those ancient
creeds, put nothing better in their place.
It is remarkable, viewed from the Christian standpoint,
that the Mohammedans were the first people known to
have had asylums for lunatics. As Mr. Lecky says, “ Most
commonly the theological notions about witchcraft either
produced madness or determined its form, and through the
�6
HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES
influence of the clergy of the different sections of the
Christian Church, many thousands of unhappy women, who
from their age, their loneliness, and their infirmity, were
most deserving of pity, were devoted to the hatred of
mankind, and, having been tortured with horrible and
ingenious cruelty, were at last burnt alive.”—“ Hist.
European Morals,” ii., 93. While this barbarity, the
genuine and legitimate fruit of Christ’s own action towards
the “possessed,” was practised wholesale among Chris
tians, the Mohammedans were, as early as the seventh
century, housing and nurturing the insane in asylums
at Fez, and they founded another at Cairo, probably about
a.d. 1304. The first Christian asylum for insane persons
was erected at Valencia in Spain, in a.d. 1409, or 700
years later than those first built by Mohammedans. Thus,
it was in the very country which the Mohammedans had
conquered, ruled, and partially civilised, that the first
Christian lunatic asylum was founded, and it is not difficult
to recognise their influence in this humane act. It should
also be remembered that the kind-hearted monk who
founded the asylum in Valencia, did it to shelter the poor
lunatics from the insults, jeers, and other persecutions of
their Christian neighbours, who never allowed them to pass
through the streets in peace.—(See “Europ. Morals,” ii.,94-5.
See also ii., 92).
To quote again the Westminster Review—li The most
remarkable instance of a military hospital was one in Ire
land. The palace of Emania was founded about 300 b.c.,
by the Princess Macha of the golden hair, and continued to
be the chief royal residence of Ulster until 332 a.d., when
it was destroyed. To this palace were attached two houses,
one, the house in which the Red Branch Knights hung up
their arms and trophies, the other in which the sick were cared
for and the wounded healed; this latter was called by the
expressive name Broin Bearg, the House of Sorrow.”
What has been put forward above will be sufficient to
show that we owe neither medicine nor hospitals to Chris
tianity ; indeed, I am not aware that any one ever ascribed
the former to this religion, though it would be just as
rational as to ascribe the latter to it. Neither Judaism (as
found in the Old Testament) nor Christianity (as found in
the New) shows any favour to medicine. The spirit of the
Old Testament may be found in the following passage :—
“ And Asa, in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was
�NOT OF CHRISTIAN ORIGIN.
7
diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great;
yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the
physicians.” (2 Chron. xvi., 12.) The context tells us he
died; the inference is plain—he lost his life because he pre
ferred medical attendance to miraculous power. The Jews
could not more strongly have condemned medicine than
they have done in this passage, for not only did the patient
die, but the physicians are set in direct rivalry with Jehovah.
And here I may ask how it was that the Jews, who were so
favoured of God, had to learn all their medical knowledge
from other nations ? Their God revealed to them all those
senseless ceremonies found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy, but never told them how to heal one
single disease ! Four books, filled for the most part with a
burdensome ritual or instructions in the art of worship,
were vouchsafed by their divinity, but not a word about
healing ! Large portions of those books, too, are occupied
in directions for finding leprosy, but not a word about the
cure of the disease (See Levit. xiii., 44-46). The whole
dress of the priest was prescribed, colour, shape, texture, and
everything—these were of supreme importance, and involved,
of course, the weal or woe of the world—so momentous
were they that their chief divinity went out of his way to
reveal them ; but human suffering was of no concern at all,
and their divinity forgot to reveal the art of healing. Indeed,
he himself claimed the sole right to kill and make alive, to
inflict or to heal disease. All this was fatal to the study of
medicine.
The same remarks, slightly modified, will apply to the
New Testament, where miraculous agency is the only
recognised mode of healing. This may be due to the fact
that the Jews went into captivity in Babylon, rather than in
Greece or Rome, for “ the Babylonians and Assyrians alone,
among the great nations of antiquity, had no physicians.
The sick man was laid on a couch in the public square, and
the passers-by were required to ask him the nature of his
disease, so that if they or any of their acquaintance had
been similarly afflicted they might advise him as to the
remedies he should adopt.” (West. Review, ibid.') How
much this resembles the Gospel story of the pool of Bethesda,
leaving out the angelic descent 1 (John v., 2.) The Baby
lonians were also fond of charms, for they mistook diseases
for devils, as Jesus did. Mr. H. F. Talbot, in his “Assyrian
Talismans and Exorcisms,” quotes a tablet as follows :—•
�HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES.
“ God shall stand by his bedside ; those seven evil spirits
He shall root out and expel from his body; those seven
shall never return to the sick man.” This superstition re
appears in the Gospels :—“ Then goeth he, and taketh with
himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and
they enter in and dwell there, and the last state of that man
is worse than the first.” (Matt, xii., 45.) Jesus actually
cast this number of devils out of Mary Magdalene. (See
Mark xvi., 9.) In face of this most debasing superstition,
people still worship Jesus as an almighty and omniscient
God ! And though he, beyond all men, taught the mira
culous causes and cures of disease, his professed followers
claim for him and his religion all the credit of originating
the scientific treatment of human ills. For certain, science
never met a more determined foe than Christianity; but
science no sooner gains a victory than Christianity turns
round and claims all the merit of inventing the very thing
she did her utmost to destroy.
That people bearing the name of Christ have, in modern
times, built and founded hospitals, I cheerfully acknowledge;
it matters not to me what names men bear so long as they
do good. But this I fearlessly affirm, that every hospital
ever erected has been built on or by principles which Christ
condemned, so that if he was right, the founders of
hospitals must have been wrong. Not only did Jesus teach
that diseases were to be healed by miracles (Mark xvi., 17,
18), but he strictly forbade the laying up of treasure : as
pointedly as he forbade murder or adultery, he also forbade
the accumulation of wealth. Without the wealth, hospitals
could not have been built, nay, all must have been paupers.
Religion and religious teaching, had they been obeyed,
would have made the world bankrupt; but in Secular
principles lies the salvation of man. Religion points to
another world, to reach which we must renounce this;
Secularism teaches to make the best possible—in money,
intelligence, humanity, and morality—of this world, and to
leave the next—a mere dream, most likely—to look out for
itself. I admit there are good things in the Bible ; but all
the good it contains would have been outweighed a thousand
times by a simple and effectual remedy for only one disease.
Why did divine mercy omit such a remedy ? Let Christians
explain.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Hospitals & dispensaries not of Christian origin
Creator
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Symes, Joseph [1841-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Date of publication from British Library record. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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[1879]
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N630
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Health
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Hospitals & dispensaries not of Christian origin), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
Language
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English
Health
Health Services
Hospitals
NSS
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/fce935b68e07f1aabf19773c99a45f0f.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=VfSDR9ptfBVVMQgU5k-xTfQ-dPu919tjPfXzkOAQJhEUCX%7Ea-oBikxIrdTgDPabAkoAjMHbDy2xYy%7E%7Exrm%7Ed01lbQSA82bFMRkXOB7LKLiWi2gCXwuxWs1JU2QWjWjYDLqBsbTQ6lpgq8ZMa8xK-BEaZUOD1yccY0OtV-gcrJckPI%7E9aE6rmBahNvDwho7je3AfDSCKoTX6IzrfT4dH6ICvdDPQ%7E5I3qxi07pdOWfFgWbzV-MCxFE4cqOT2Gq0fXPJEpRbqdT-Yk%7EUwTGM18SjeEg9iiMQVAOAeygSC6CGWSEpmSZhJf%7EgUgwJfmnosw-m4y2bhiuH1TZkl6tfb-Og__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
e79b754c401ffb1ab1f8e765c337b563
PDF Text
Text
ON THE CURE, ARREST, AND ISOLATION
OF
SMALL
POX.
�“Above all Theory in the Art of Warfare, one practical
fact reigns triumphant—‘Defeat the enemy ’—a truth that
will always triumph over all theories.”—Garibaldi.
�TO THOMAS L. HARRIS,
Now OE Wassaic,
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE IN ALL AFFECTION
INSCRIBED,
IN THE HOPE THAT HE MAY FIND THEM WORTHY
OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE,
AND AS A TRIBUTE AND A TESTIMONY
OF
A FREE
BROTHERHOOD
IN HEART AND SPIRIT.
�CONTENTS
Preface..................................................................................... .......
I. Small Pox...................................................................... 1
II. Erysipelas..................................................................... 14
III. Inflammation of the Spine, with Rheumatism . 20
IV. Inflammation of the Womb following Pregnancy 21
V. Chronic Inflammation of the Right Ovary .
. 22
VI. Earache with Impending Meningitis
.
.
.25
VII. Inflammation of the Parotid G-land .
.
.28
VIII. Acute Tonsillitis............................................................ 28
IX. Hcemorrhoids following Confinement
.
. 29
X. Inflammation about the Cjecum .
.
.
.31
XI. Enlarged and Irritable Breasts .
.
.
.33
XII. Chronic Abscesses ....... 34
XIII. Bunions.............................................................................. 34
XIV. Case of Threatened Mesenteric Disease Ar
rested ..................................................................... 35
XV. Cases of External Injury.......................................... 40
XVI. Ditto............................................................................. 41
XVII. Shingles Treated by Cantharides Lotions .
. 42
XVIII. Cellulitis..................................................................... 43
XIX. General and Local Cellulitis
.
.
.
.50
XX. Eruptive Fever........................................................... 62
Medical Freedom..........................................................67
Appendix.............................................................................. 87
�PREFACE.
Talking one day with a friend I made the remark, that I
never ceased to wonder that the enormous cost involved
in the railways, is justified by the public convenience,
and requited by the public money; and that I could
not but draw from this an inference that every good
thing, however onerous, is worth while doing. “ Ah!” he
said, “that reminds me of a woodcut in one of Bewick’s
books, in which a husbandman is ploughing the field,
and underneath him is written—‘ Justissima Tellus.1 ”
For nature is so munificently constructed as to yield back
in crops whatever seed of good we put into her; to repay
with living inheritances of power whatever trouble we
bestow upon her; to bank for us with compound in
terest of her own intentions; to enhance all faculty and
all freedom; to be diligent to the diligent, niggard to
the niggard, loyal to the loyal; to be in the long-run
supreme poetical justice; and in short to grow forth our
natural wants and wishes, world-sized, into entire ac
complishments.
Medical nature is a part of this mighty motherhood,—
this predestined conception of our human wants; this
bearing of them in the womb of time, and bringing them
forth in forms which partake of the creative current
which flows through both the parents, that is, through
man and the world, from the throne of The Supreme.
But only according to the seed of want, and according
to the husbandry, is the yield which Justissima TeUus,
�viii
PREFACE.
our most account-keeping, stock-taking, and income-ap
portioning ground, bestows upon us.
If we ask little
and insist little, nature, which loves our littleness because
it is our freedom, is charged to maintain us uninfringed,
by giving us little.
And now to come lower down,
medicine has asked but little of nature; and has only
got what she asked.
I have written the following pages to embolden us to
ask for more; because more can be had, on just, if not
on easy terms.
The treatment of diseases has too much ended itself
in the prescription pure and simple; and the prescription
has too much confined itself to something to be put into
our primce vice,—our mouths. It is the most obvious
way, and the least trouble. But it has led to a waiting
upon disease, in place of grappling with it. Nay, as
Prescription is not always obeyed by Disease, it has led
to the Nightingale theory that disease is a reparative
process, and destruction, of course on the great scale,
very complete repair; and this led in earlier times to
treating disease, as a conqueror can hardly fail to be
treated, with royal honours; welcoming it with open
gates, strewing flowers of compliments before its path,
coaching it softly in express medical carriages, welcoming
it home in the palaces of health ; and making its bed,
for rest and for begetting, of the softest down of medi
cal acquiescence.
This was exemplified in the treatment of small-pox;
in which even so late a writer, and so really great a
physician as Elliotson, declares that there is very little
to be done, except upon general principles; the bed
where the monster is preying upon the man being care
fully watched, and only the monster’s rudenesses patted
into rhyme with physicianal propriety.
Thus our Elliotson says : “ There is nothing peculiar
*
* Principles and Practice of Medicine, 1839, pp. 412-3.
�IX
PREFACE.
in the treatment of this disease. It is only the treat
ment of an ordinary fever. . . . Any inflammation
that may occur . . . requires to be attended to.
You must constantly be on the look out for these affec
tions ; but the treatment is certainly to be conducted
altogether on general principles. You have only to
remember that you are treating, not merely an inflam
matory, but a specific disease.”
It would have seemed that though the inflammatory
complication wanted general principles, the specific
disorder required specific remedies. However, in thus
extracting from Dr. Elliotson, let it be known that I
impugn a system, and not that eminent man, to whose
skilful general treatment indeed, under Providence, I
owe my life; and the wedge of whose persistent courage
and powerful natural faculty has opened the medical
age to a part of the new and true good things which it
now possesses.
But the old treatment of small-pox was more defer
ential to the good disease than even the treatment on
“general principles.” The late Mr. Carpue narrated to
me a case which illustrates this. A small-pox patient
grievously held, was imnvmed with his disease in the
deepest oubliette of bed, and blanket, and coverlet; and
curtained all round and all over in his four-poster;
and every door shut, and every window draped; and
every cry for air and water deafly disregarded; and the
mantle of all his stenche® wrapped round and round
him until he was the mummy of his own decays; and
as might be expected, he died. Then the effluvia were
so horrible that overnight he was laid in a summer-house
at the bottom of the garden, and when they went with
disgusted caution and curiosity to him next morning, he
had, by virtue of fresh air and general principles, come
to life again; and he ultimately recovered.
This, perhaps, may have been one of the last cases in
A
�X
PREFACE.
which the royal entertainment of small-pox, and the
petting and pampering of it, were practiced; and in
which Justissima Tellus was regarded as the proper
terminus of the triumphal procession of the disease
through the streets of the man, with the colleges of
physicians and surgeons swelling its train.
Since then, air and cleanliness, and water and diet
have shorn the small-pox of the richness of its de
structions, and some general principles of treatment, in
contradistinction to pampering, have had fair play.
But still the same system has been maintained, though
more cleanly, more respectably, and most scientifically.
It has been maintained under the belief or general prin
ciple that small-pox has a certain course to run, and
must not be checked in its career. The aim, therefore,
has been, in the orthodox body, to limit its excesses, as
Dr. Elliotson proposes; and among the Homoeopaths,
to find specifics for its whole career. My aim is, to dis
allow its career, and knock it on the head as soon as
possible. For I am acquainted with the results of both
practices; and I dislike those results. In Homoeopathy
I have seen cases which have been most carefully, and
if you like beautifully treated, on the theoretical grounds
of the allowance of the entire disease; also in which
diet has been limited, also on theoretical, and I believe
false, grounds; and the patients have been permanently
weakened by the disease and the dietetic system: and I
know that hi those cases the treatment has been ineffi
cient, and the specific remedies not grappling with the
vast bulk of the disease, have been at the best but so much
internal hygeine.
And therefore I also know that the
efficiently specific treatment of small-pox is still a desi
deratum, and that success in arresting the disease is the
only specificity worth having.
I dare to hope that I have attained to a part of that
success. This has been by local remedies; the Veratrwm
�PREFACE.
xi
Viride as general local treatment; the Hydrastis Cana
densis as specific local treatment.
The same remedies
internally as specific internal treatment. This local
treatment, not only for this but for almost all other
diseases, is the new labour and trouble which I believe
will be repaid with new health by Justissimum Corpus,
which, in its faculty of grateful return for work done and
trouble taken, is the very blossom and glory of Justissima
Tellus. The fairy wishing-cap of infinitesimal dynamic
doses does indeed set the eyes wistfully towards the dis
tant plains of health; but it requires hard Roman work,
and railway generations and ages, of local digging and
delving, to carry, not the eyes but the material body
itself, where the wishes can go in a moment. The road
for this, like all other roads, must be born into the world
with pains.
- The success of local treatment at present to be regis
tered is:—
I. The disease has been abridged in duration.
II. The inflammation and primary fever accom
panying it are certainly and speedily
abolished.
III. The secondary fever is annulled.
IV. The itching of the pustules is annulled, and
the patient has no motive to pick the face.
V. The stench of the old disease has no place.
VI. The suffering is reduced to a minimum.
VII. Owing to the perfect antiphlogistic action,
nourishment and stimulants can be borne
almost from the first.
VIII. There is no pitting, and, a fortiori, iio seam
ing ; only, of course, the complexion is
altered for a time.
IX. Any private person, male or female, medical
or lay, with care and courage, can treat
the disease successfully, owing to the sim-
�PREFACE.
plicity of the means: an invaluable result
where professional services are not at
hand. And multitudes of patients, for the
. ' . . . same reason, can easily be treated at
once.
The probable hope and scope of local treatment
embraces other heads still.
I.
The arrest of the disease at the outset, by early
recognising and promptness of application.
II. The extinction of the infection, by the entire
mass of the disease, its pieces, dust, and
effluvia becoming coated with and neutra
lised by the Hydrastis ; which appears,
therefore, to isolate the malady from the
very attendants, and hermetically to seal it.
.
Ill- Immunity for the healthy from the disease,
by the prophylactic powers of the Hydrastis
taken internally, and by sponging baths, with
a teaspoonful of Hydrastis Tincture in them,
night and morning, for infected families and
attendants on the sick.
These means can be easily employed by whole neigh
bourhoods. At Guildford, a few days ago,-1 saw the
Surrey militia encamped in the fields, and was told that
this was on account of the small pox, which was raging
in the town. What a valuable thing it ■will be to possess
a remedy which guards new comers against the existing
infection, and which taken in the spring of the year, when
they say the small-pox has a tendency to come from its
lair m that locality, also preserves the population, and
thus ultimately extinguishes the beds of the disease.
These, results and these hopes ought to commend my
method for instant trial to Boards of Guardians in neigh
bourhoods such as Birmingham, where the whole town is
in alarm on account of - the small-pox; where infection
spreads by the very act of massing the sick in hospitals;
�xiii
and where the parochial rates will be greatly increased
by the public expenses of the disease.
So much at present for small-pox. Am I not justified
in saying that the trouble taken in the local application
of the specific which I have discovered, to the entire sur
face and mass of the disease, is repaid, as no less positive,
material, persistent remedies 'have ever before been '
repaid, by alleviation, abridgement, and cure? For this
method, mark you, of local application of drugs to the
very part which is ailing, or else to the very skin of the
organ and part, is more positive and material than any of
the orthodox conceptions of general treatment, and yet
perfectly harmless; and unlike the case of gross medicines
given by the mouth, expends the greater part of its force
not upon the system, but upon the locality, and, we may
say, the essence of the disease. It is also inevitably
specific in the lowest, and, therefore, the strongest sense :
e.g., in localization.
And with regard to inflammations generally, I know of
none to which the local treatment is inapplicable; and if
I am not too sanguine, in most, cases of congestive inflam
mation the Veratrum Viride is as easy a specific as Arnica
is in bruises, and will introduce a simplicity into ordinary
cases of internal inflammation, now requiring a medical
man, of which as yet we have no idea. Truly, as the
method costs more trouble than the administration of
Homceopathic tinctures, it need not be used indiscrimi
nately ; but wherever bronchitis or any chest inflammation,
peritonitis, or any abdominal inflammation, or any cerebral,
or spinal, or other inflammation, does not at once yield to
Aconite and Belladonna, and ■ to Veratrum Viride and
Podopliylline, then I should with-no delay apply Veratrum
Viride lotions and baths, and maintain them perseveringly
till entire relief is experienced. Nor need the method be
limited to Veratrum Viride, for AcemA, Gelseminum
Virens, and- in short any and every drug has a local part
�xiv
PREFACE.
to play, and should be put close to its work as occasion
requires. The point to be borne in mind is, that the skin
is the face of all the organs, and of all their diseases, and
that they can severally be reached by rapid specifics
through the skin.
The horizon of my cases thus treated is continually
extending, and I shall hope to present further reports of
these new specifics and their methods, from time to
time.
I must not dismiss this subject without confessing how
much I owe to Dr. Grover Coe’s admirable book on Con
centrated Organic Medicines, a book distinguished for me
dical insight, and therapeutical genius as well as know
ledge, and in which I have found everything I have here
laid down inculcated, excepting the specificity of Hyd
rastis to small-pox, and of local applications to all organs
labouring under perilous diseases. Dr. Coe, indeed,
constantly mentions local applications, as of Baptisia to
Phagedenic Erysipelas, &c., &c. ; but the systematic
application of medicated lotions to the whole body, and
its several parts, I have not found in’him, and I suppose
the practice on a large scale is peculiar to myself.
To
Dr. Pattison also I owe much of my knowledge of the
American drugs, and I think I am right in stating that
we are not far apart in our method of local administra
tion.
To Mr. Skelton, sen., of Great Russell Street, I
am also indebted for an unstinted share of his varied
therapeutical experience, though he has been treated so
shabbily by the doctors that I wonder he should have let
me inside his door.
And here a word may be excused on Mr. Skelton’s
recent history, as he has imparted it to me. Mr. Skelton
is a medical eclectic in the American sense of the term;
that is to say, he employs all the vegetable products and
principles, so far as he knows them, in the treatment of
disease; he is also a thorough English herbalist. He
�preface.
XV
repudiates mineral medicines.
He is perhaps the most
fearless apostle of medical freedom in this country, and
longs to extend the blessings of health-education, and the
best and safest practice, to the working men and women
of England. In this respect he is just the sort of man that
Garibaldi would like to know.
Some four or five years
ago he wished to become a member of the Royal College
of Surgeons of England as by law established, and for
this purpose he qualified himself by an attendance upon
the lectures and hospital practice which the College pre
scribes before a man is entitled to be examined for his
diploma. And then he sent in his papers, and proposed
himself for examination. And now, dear public of these
reputed free islands, will you believe it? he was in
formed that he would not be admitted to examination
unless he recanted his eclectic and herbalist faith, and
publicly admitted the superiority of the orthodox practice
to his own.
This he could not do; and not being able
conveniently to go to law with the Royal College, he
remains plain John Skelton, sen., as he was.
By this act the College declares that it is not only a
body for granting degrees of competency ascertained by
examination, but also a tribunal for inquisition into the
faith of those who would be its members, and a corpora
tion of executioners for forcing their faith into the mould
and thumbscrew of its own.
Was this contemplated in
its Acts of Parliament ?
It is a complication in Mr. Skelton’s case that he was
the first to introduce prominently into this country the
Hydrastis, Podophylline, Veratrum Viride, Macrotin,
Caulophylline, Myricin, and in general those American
drugs which the ablest members of the Royal College of
Surgeons of England are now beginning far in his wake
to try to learn to employ, and the use of which he was
asked to recant as the condition of his claim to college
membership.
Is not this matter a providential fulcrum for a move
�xvi
PREFACE.
ment in favour of medical freedom? The College lig
atures its own neck for fear it should swallow the bread
of unorthodoxy: just as some European governments
which have very little food in their parts, tie Custom
Houses round their people’s throats to prevent English
victuals from going down them. We can only hope that
the hunger in both cases will grow, and express itself,
until the straitness of this false rule is terrified into
relaxation.
For my part, as the reader will see, I am no believer
in medical professions, or indeed in professions at all as
successful ways of cultivating any branch of the truths
and goods, the arts or sciences, of nature, of man, or of
heaven. Liberty and the spirit, using all our faculties,
and among the rest the faculty of association, are the
forces which I know are coming from God to supplant
the present state of things. Incarnations, not institu
tions, are the substantial bodies which will constitute
the new world, and open the mighty gates of the divinely-,
human arts and sciences. Gifts not berths will be the
desire and the prayer of those who are permitted to
enter on this new time. And the uses of the world will
be carried on by great and various societies, full of order
and liberty, full of love and of light, full of spiritual and
reasonable endurance, and each man’s character in them
a full and conscious recipient of the gifts and graces of
his art.
When will these things be ? I do not know why they
should be long in coming; for in public power and
respect the professions as by law established, are
dwindling: free trade, and all science, and all voluntary
associations, are examples of what can exist without
them: change has long since begun, and change in our
days is instinct with speeds, as the father of a nation is
instinct with ■ progeny. Courage, therefore, to all who
are in the new way! Half a dozen earnest men, led on
�PREFACE.
xvii
by Garibaldi Skelton, may commence an agitation which
year shall awaken the whole public, produce oneness
of feeling through the several dukedoms of physic, witness
the flight of its despotisms, and annex even the kingdom
of the two colleges to the commonwealth of our art
regenerated.
But now, after all liberation of medicine has been
accomplished, or rather coincidently with every im
provement which will give fair play to the genius of
healing, there remains, in ever new and increasing pro
portions, the exigency of sanitary art and science. This
is to medicine what material and social conditions and
necessities are to morals, their institutions, and their
grounds. This is prevention, while medicine is only
cure. This is the circumambient spirit of health, or
disease, and their widest seed-field.
And if it be taken
to embrace the questions of food and starvation, and of
habits of life, it may fairly be regarded as the most im
portant branch of health-culture.
At present, however, I have but few words to say
about it: and those few chiefly of practical import, as
they have been suggested by my own experience.
Diseases, especially epidemic diseases, have two parents,
a father and a mother; that is to say, an essence or germ
residing in the earth or the air; and a corporeal nidus
or clothing, or obscene vapour or miasma arising from
uncleanness of some kind. Therefore the devil is the
father of diseases, and the dirt of neglect is the mother.
Take away the mother, and the father will still be there,
but unable to breed in that degree. He may breed sin,
inward vileness, perhaps also apoplexies and palsies,
death, vital starvation, all decay from the mental and
spiritual side, suffocation of nobleness and the sense of
God, but probably without his mate, which is filthi
ness, he cannot breed corporeal pestilence. And as we
are bound to be clean first, and to get rid of evil from
�xviii
PREFACE.
the outside, so sanitary science, sewage, drainage, space
of dwellings, and the like, are enjoined upon us by all
our medical commission.
Many people wonder how houses take small-pox,
scarlatina, and the like infectious and contagious com
plaints, seeing that there has been no traceable contact
with those who are suffering from the same. But even
if this be the case, which is difficult to prove, we have
only to reflect that the continuous atmosphere is one
wide repertory of all the miasmas of the world, as well
as of all its better things. These are evidently - most
active, as well as spatially most gigantic; thin, if you
please, to our senses ; but monsters interlocked, and
probably as big as our firmament; and they only await
a womb, a matrix of uncleanness, to engender their
kind in human bodies, and produce all parasitic fevers.
Moreover, it is obvious from constant history, that ever
and anon a new accession arrives from the deep, a new
destroying angel, and a cholera or a new plague is born.
We can chronicle several such advents in our time ; and
the spread of their progeny shows how unclean we
were; how we embraced with our corresponding circum
stances each monster-shape, and how speedily and how
greatly pestilence and death were born. For our posi
tion in the present day is a very undefended one. There
is almost no individuality left; and yet individuality on
the divine side is the one fortress of our bodies, of our
minds, and of our souls. The reason why we, and not
somebody else, have been created, is, that we may be
ourselves, and nobody else. But now everybody wishes
to be according to somebody else; that is, to be some
body else as far as he can. The consequence of which
is, that the human sphere is invaded, pierced and lost.
Kind reader, let us dwell a little on this, perhaps to
you, novel consideration. First, there is such a thing
as the human sphere; that is to say, all our faculties,
�PREFACE.
xix
and all we are, corporeal, mental, spiritual, streams forth.
Each part streams forth in its own order. First, the
Soul streams forth, and being the highest and subtlest
of all, the furthest in its aims, it penetrates through all
the rest, attains its ends of construction, in them rests
most actively, ever on the sense for what infringes ; and
is the outermost covering as well as the innermost essence
of the man. This mighty universe of sphere surround
ing each of us, breathes with our breath and lives with
our life; but also is torn by our violence, and suffers in
our decay. Next, if you choose so to consider it,
though only for illustration, the mind streams forth; 'with
less penetration because it is grosser; to a lesser dis
tance ; and its periphery, far less closely grained, is more
capable of invasion, of rupture, and of decay; even faint
forces of ideas can permanently injure this human
fortress, which so many think is the stronghold of their
being. So, in like maimer as the mind, every instinct
streams forth. So, in like manner, every organ streams
forth: and where each ends, it constitutes a tender
spheral surface which has come through its own spaces,
and is set for ever in the invisible firmament which
guards the man so far as it is intact. Lastly, the bones
and the bodily senses stream forth, and are insphered in
their own creative life; but being the grossest of all,
they cannot penetrate far, but lie folded upon themselves,
like eggs in which all the other world is reflected; and
a very little abused, they are tendencies to denials of the
spheres, because they have so little of their own to
affirm. These facts, which sound at first like wild
assertions, are implied in the very nature of faculties,
which can only be limited by their own ends, and those
ends must be out of themselves; which granted, then
it follows, that tlie soul comes through all the rest, and
has a psychical end in the world, in other words a created
shape there; and if so, a full communication between
�Xx
PREFACE.
that outward shape and itself; in other words, a SoulSphere. And so of the other faculties, q. e. D‘
Now what has all this to do with sanitary science?
For you, good reader, nothing if you please; or, if you
will proceed from spiritual grounds, much. For this
subject of human spheres, and their invisibility, lies
near the root of those causes which pertain to the taking
of disease. In short, we may say, that if the soul
sphere is violated or broken, the man will take spiritual
diseases, mad atheisms, universal lusts, and the like: if
the mind sphere is ruptured, insane mental ambitions
and philosophies will invade, be absorbed, and produce
mental degradation and decay; and if the organic sphere
be broken, bodily miasms will intrude into the nervous
and vital expanses, and epidemic and other maladies will
be taken. Now, these apparently-remote asseverations
have something to do with house architecture.
For it is a rule that nobody ought to be influenced,
except according to his internal essence, by anything or
by anybody. And this rule should be reflected in a
man’s house. The first requisite of a house is, to be
exempted from the world; to have a roof to shut out
the sky, walls to shut out the winds, a door to shut out
mankind; and a floor, with cellars underneath it, and
then a floor again, to shut out the earth, and the earth
sphere. In this way the house reflects the sphere, and
completes the individuality, of the owner.
Now, mark the latter point, about the floor .and the
cellar underneath it. I have noticed in my practice,
that persons inhabiting rooms built directly on the
ground, -with no intervention of underground chamber,
are far more likely to have epidemics and influenzas than
those who tenant rooms separated from the earth. The
power of the earth-effluences is mighty ; and if the
organism is not very strong, is sure to invade it; and
then through the hole of invasion the omnipresent
�PREFACE.
XXI
miasmas, one or more, drive home their impregnation.
Therefore, it is an indispensable rule that so great a cause
of ferment and change as living on the surface of the
active ground, should be avoided.
This holds even where the ground is clean; for the
cleanest earth-sphere getting into a human body is a
calamity and a fall. But where foulness is superadded,
of course the terrible miasms are invited, and commence
their fatherhood.
But sanitary art has much to do after contagious
disease has been already engendered, in claiming power
from the State to limit its excursions. In dealing with
this subject I can only address myself to one crying evil
which has come under my notice. I mean, the practice
of re-letting lodgings after persons affected with con
tagious disorders have occupied them, without any com
plete purification of the apartments having taken place.
If in bad drainage and want of cleanliness are the roots
of these diseases, we may fairly also say, that on infected
walls, and floors, and carpets, and chairs, and beds, are
the seeds which they sow and shed upon the healthy.
I have known a case in which a death from scarlatina
has taken place in a set of apartments; and these after
wards have been let again to an unsuspecting family
with children, who in a couple of weeks have become
the victims of this terrible trap; and the same poisonous
walls have again silently and cruelly communicated their
charge of miasm to another sufferer still, who has barely
escaped- with life from the illness which she took. These
events are of everyday occurrence, especially in the
principal health-resorts, where town children are taken
to enjoy the country, or the seaside.
The only remedy I can think of is a compulsory infor
mation conveyed to the health officer of each district
whenever any infectious or contagious disease occurs in
a house, and power granted to such officer or Health
�xxii
PREFACE.
Surveyor, to see that the out-going infected tenants pro
vide the means necessary for papering, whitewashing, and
sufficiently purifying the tenement they have occupied
during the illness. Also an open registry of such houses
should be kept hi the Health Surveyor’s Office, in order
that persons seeking lodgings may easily know where
they can be safe, and see the length of time that has
elapsed since any house was diseased.
This, I believe,
would have a good effect upon landlords, who, hi their
own interest, would no longer build upon the ground
without a well-ventilated cellar-foundation; and, in short,
would then find that the root of rent is health and clean
liness. At present the reverse is the case; for the more
degraded the population, and the greater the filth, the
larger the numbers of wretched lodgers, whose pittances
in their multitude represent considerable sums for some
hard man who lives in dry decency himself.
It is remarkable that the law is administered for pub
lic sanitary effect in cases of small-pox, while we never
hear of its intervention in the cases of other serious infec
tious diseases. Thus I read in the Birmingham Daily
Post, May, 23,1864, that “ a public caution has been in
serted in the papers informing the public that the expo
sure of a child infected with small-pox in any public
street or highway, is a misdemeanor indictable at common
law, and that the parties committing the offence are lia
ble to fine and imprisonment.” And in the same paper
it is recorded that a poor woman charged with this
offence was brought before the Bench of Magistrates.
Now, assuredly, small-pox is not a worse scourge than
scarlet fever, nor can one imagine a reason why it should
be selected for the action of Parliament, excepting that
it is the worst-looking of diseases.
If there is to be an
action in its case, the powers of that action ought to be
extended to all infections and contagions. And if a pub
lic street or highway is not to be terrified with the sight
�PREFACE.
xxiii
of this repulsive malady, then the private room and the
secure-seeming bed ought to be guarded by the stern
figure and outstretched wings of the State from every
unseen pestilence that walks the noon-day, and every
arrow of destroying miasm that flies in the night.
Here, in short, would appear to be the true realm for
State protection and State interference; nay, even for
State espionage. These powers, despotic and suffocative
when applied to the regulation of arts and sciences, in
dustry and culture, professions, trades and services, are
not only justified and benignant, but indispensable in
their proper sphere; in the protection of the equal rights
of individuals; in the wielding of common powers such
as no individual possesses, for the public health; and in
making it the interest and policy and necessity of each
person to set his house in order, and, by so doing, to con
tribute to the physical welfare of his neighbour. Right
eousness thus completely sought by the State in the ma
terial degree, will educate the public to exact from
medical bodies of its own creation, diligence and skill,
clairvoyance, inspiration and world-wide knowledge, and
godly humility and boldness, which will effect what can
be done in the way of artificial healing, and prepare the
way for things better still.
76, Wimpole St., W.,
and 4, Finchley Road, N. W,
May 24, 1864.
��I.
Small Pox.
It has been my good fortune, thank God, to discover a
method of treating small-pox and erysipelas in their
severer forms, and I now proceed to lay some details of
my treatment before the public.
The Hydrastis Canadensis, a drug already renowned
m the alleviation of cancer, having been first employed,
I believe, for that purpose in this country by Dr. Patti
son, is the remedy which embraces something like a
specific treatment of small-pox within its marvellous
scope.
It is now about five years since I treated Mr. E., a
gentleman living in Acacia Road, St. John’s Wood, for
this disease. It was a pretty severe attack, though not
confluent. The itching and tingling of the face at the
time of maturation, were so distressing, that I was sent
for specially to know if I could recommend any local
application. Recollecting the power which the Hydrastis
exerts upon irritated mucous membranes, and upon
irritable wounds and surfaces generally, I ordered the
face to be dabbed with a cold infusion of the Hydrastis,
a small portion being warmed for each application. The
relief Mr. E. experienced was instantaneous as well as
complete and lasting. The swelling of the face also
subsided quickly; and the case proceeded with more
than ordinary rapidity to a happy issue.
No second
1
�2
A NEW METHOD
case occurred in the house: a point of importance, which
I request the reader to bear in mind.
The next case I will record occurred last summer,
when I was called back to town to attend a friend, who
was the subject of a formidable attack of confluent small
pox. When I first saw him, he had been under treat
ment for several days by a colleague, who visited some
of my patients during my customary autumn vacation.
Although the case was so severe, there was no decidedly
bad symptom. However, I had reason for apprehension,
because H. P., Esq., had experienced an attack of scarla
tina the year before, which had much weakened him, and
left his constitution exposed to mischief from so grave an
attack as the present.
When I entered his bed-room, I was shocked at his
appearance. His handsome chiselled features, capable of
a delicate and versatile play which has made him a
favourite with the public, were almost undiscernible in
the huge carneous head, bossed and buttoned all over
with the rising eruption of confluent small-pox. His
eyes were closed up in the general swelling. The erup
tion extended pretty evenly over the body; and in many
parts was confluent there also.
I saw him on the 7th of August, and found general
fever rumiing high; pulse quick; immense congestion
about the head; and all the appearances, were it not for
the varioloid boutons which were so thickly arising, of
intense erysipelas of the head.
I prescribed at once a mixed lotion of Veratrum Viride
and Hydrastis, and gave the same remedies internally
in rapid alternation. Slops and a watery diet were
enjoined.
On the 8th there was still great swelling of the head
and neck; the pulse however was lower, and the same
remedies were continued.
On the 9th, a marked subsidence had taken place; the
�3
OF TREATING SMALL-EOX.
eyes could be opened; the pulse was reduced to 80; the
pustules were changing colour; the face and neck though
encased, occasioned but little suffering. There was hi
fact none of the usual irritation accompanying this
disease.
On the 10th, the improvement was still more marked,
and the fever and local hiflammation had so completely
departed, that the Veratrum Viride was discontinued, the
Hydrastis' alone being applied, and administered inter
nally; and this was continued for some days.
The history of the case is now told: the combat
between the small-pox and the ( Veratrum Viride and)
Hydrastis was ended by the 14th, when weakness was
the only complaint left. I ought to have mentioned that
my friend had been suffering from constitutional debility
up to the period of the attack I am recording, and was
in a most unfavourable condition for either repelling or re
covering from small-pox. Under other treatment, I think
it reasonable to suppose he would have succumbed to it.
After the first subsidence of the fever, I allowed him
wine and beaf tea, grapes, bananas, peaches, &c. &c.,
only limiting the quantity so as not to add gastric irrita
tion to the presence of the existing disorder.
On the 15th, he complained of great weakness of the
eyes, for which he had Euphrasia and Sulphur.
On the 18th, when he ought to have been at home for
my visit, he was away in Kensington Gardens.
No one else in rather a populous house near the Strand
took the complaint, to my knowledge; his wife, whose
face is a familiar one all over England, waited upon him
with tender assiduity, and slept in a recess opening from
his room, and escaped the infection. A devoted friend
came and received his instructions, and spent whole days
with him, and was unscathed.
The chief points I noticed in the case were:—1. The
rapidity with which the erysipelatous swelling accom*
1
�4
A NEW METHOD
panyiiig the disease, and the fever, yielded to the Vera
trum Viride and Hydrastis. 2. The absence of the
customary irritation both on face and body (the lotion
was applied wherever there was swelling or pain). 3.
As a consequence of this, the absence of the usual in
centive to pick or scratch the face. 4. The absence of
the odour which is characteristic of this disease in such
violent cases, involving so large an amount of suppuration
and scab as there was in this instance. 5. The rapid
convalescence in so delicate a patient. 6. The apparent
arrest of the infectious properties of the disease. 7. The
pitting was less than I have seen after such an ordeal;
it rather amounts to a general graining and alteration
of the complexion: in short, there is hardly any pitting,
and not a trace of seaming. What alteration there is,
would, I believe, have been considerably reduced had I
had the opportunity of applying the Hydrastis from the
first, and of stopping the fever and inflammation at the
outset; which might have been done without fail by the
early application and administration of the Veratrum
Viride and Hydrastis.
Case 2.—On the morning of the 13th of November,
1863,1 was consulted by M. W., Esq., who was suffering
under indigestion and malaise, and under some alarm about
small-pox, which was prevalent in the neighbourhood of
Covent Garden, and had attacked one of the work-people
belonging to his own establishment. For some days I
gave him Antim. crud., Rhus, Belladonna, and Aconite,
according to the symptoms present; and the small-pox,
a severe case of the noil-confluent degree, manifested
itself on the 16th. The fever and sore throat ran very
high, and for these he had Rhus and Bell., and Carbonate
of Ammonia in sensible doses. I saw him again in the
evening, and found no dangerous condition, but the same
symptoms maintained.
�OF TREATING SMALL-FOX.
5
On the 17th he was going on favourably, the pustules
were steadily evolving themselves. This gentleman
labours under a polypus of the nose, and perhaps this
circumstance had determined the pustule-producing
irritation more severely than usual to the throat, the
soreness in which was excessive, and the appearance
alarming. Great groups of pustules covered the pala
tine arches, the tonsils, the uvula, and the pendent poly
pus ; and the appearance, to a superficial observer, might
have suggested severe diphtheria m its earlier stage.
The distress was great, and in the evening of the same
day, when prostration set in, I gave him Hydrastis and
Baptisia alternately.
On the 18th a great change for the better had taken
place; he had had a good night, the throat was relieved,
though the pustules were still maturating; those which
studded the tongue all over were comparatively painless,
and the collapse, which had amounted to fainting, had
passed entirely away. He was allowed the Hungarian
wine Carlovitz, beef tea, and fruit, all of which he now
enjoyed.
The irritation of the face, which was considerable,
was, as usual, extinguished by the application of Hy
drastis in lotion; and wherever the accompanying cel
lulitis was severe, the Veratrum Viride did its unfailing
work in a few half-hours. This patient, who is a man of
talent, was struck with surprise at the immediate effect
of the Hydrastis lotions, and never failed to laud the
beneficent drug, and the discovery of its application.
So impressed was he with the rapid relief he had ex
perienced, that he sent the remedy to a poor girl, one of
his factory people, who was suffering under small-pox;
though whether it was applied or not, I have not heard.
He fully admitted what great things had been done for
him.
Under the action of these remedies the case proceeded
�6
A NEW METHOD
most satisfactorily. Irritation and inflammation were
annulled, picking of the face was prevented, and pitting;
the effluvium of the disease was cancelled, and no second
case occurred in the family. On the 3rd of December,
when he had been long convalescent, I saw him for the
last time, previous to his going to the sea-side.
In this case I only regret that I did not use the
Hydrastis from the very first, but waited until secondary
irritation and cellulitis were developed. One lives and
learns; and really, when I treated this gentleman, the
full power and import of these new means had but im
perfectly dawned upon me.
However, it was in this house that it first struck me
that in Hydrastis we have perhaps a prophylactic against
small-pox; a medicinal counterpart to vaccination. Certain
it is that Hydrastis^ locally applied, produces vesicular
and pustular inflammations of the skin and sub-dermoid
cellular tissues, and thus is, to some extent, locally Homoeo
pathic ; as vaccination is surgically Homoeopathic to the
same complaint. Accordingly, I administered to the mem
bers of this family small doses of Hydrastis tincture; and
this practise I shall continue in other cases, secure that
no harm can come of it. Dor experience has taught me
its power over varioloid disease, and if a neighbourhood
is invaded by the poison which communicates small-pox
to susceptible individuals, the whole neighbourhood
doubtless suffers in health and cleanness, though not in
the manner of that specific disease; and the Hydrastis
may counterwork the poison, even as it extinguishes the
formed cases of the epidemic. It seems reasonable that
the best cure to the sufferer should, in appropriate doses,
be the best preservative and tonic to the non-sufferers.
And though the point is difficult to prove, it is well to
persevere in the practice.
But perhaps one reason of the difficulty of proving the
preservative virtue of Hydrastis against small-pox may
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
7
be, that Hydrastis lotions and baths, by saturating,
coating, and altering the scabs, pieces, and dust of the
infected surface, do actually kill the reproducing powers
of the said morbific parts and particles. This may be
proved by experiment, by trying inoculation with small
pox matter with and without a mixture of Hydrastis;
and I commend the demonstration to the small-pox
hospitals. In the same manner, it seems probable, that
any remedy which will extinguish a disease, will also
destroy the infectibility of its particles and effluvia,
which opens a wide field for the application of Hydrastis
Baths in small-pox, and in those who fear it; of Bella
donna Baths in scarlatina, &c. &c. &c.
Case III.—On November 25, 1863, I was visited by
Miss L. J., set. 23, who was suffering from a sudden
acute pain in the back, and a blotchy, almost continuous
red eruption, not unlike measles, on the legs and thighs,
accompanied by great prostration. I prescribed Rhus
and Capsicum.
On the 27th she visited me again; her symptoms
were unchanged, but the rash had extended and had
become scarlet. Continue Rhus and Capsicum.
I was called to see Miss L. J., at her own home,
69, St. John’s Wood Terrace, on the 29th of Novem
ber, and found her labouring under small-pox, un
interruptedly confluent on the face and arms; while
the legs, thighs, and lower body were covered with an
eruption of purple petechial spots like the worst form of
measles. The eruption on the face and arms was one
shining vesicular button-work, accompanied already with
much swelling. I prescribed Phosphorus and Veratrum
Viride and a lotion of Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis
.combined, to the skin externally.
December 2nd. The eruption proceeding; pulse 98.
She seems weaker. She left off the Veratrum Viride
�8
A NEW METHOD
and used Hydrastis alone and Hydrastis lotion. I saw
her again in ’ the evening; and only chronicled in my
note-book, “Fearful eruption. Hydrastis, wine and
brandy.” The patient is literally enveloped in a huge
bag of small-pox. Hydrastis lotions all over face and
body frequently.
December 3rd and 4th. Matters remained unchanged;
she still lived, and the eruption developed itself. On the
4th I learned that she had had her period ever since the
attack began. Continue Hydrastis in alternation with
Sabina.
December 5th. Already the eruption is peeling well
on the face. She has a most distressing cough, and her
voice is nearly lost; the period still continues. She is
to take Hydrastis, Bryonia, and Baptisia.
December 6th. The eyes and face are appearing; she
has no itching, and consequently no tendency to pick
herself. There is no pitting in the spaces where the skin
now begins to be visible. Immense development and
size of the pustular covering, for there are no distinct
pustules on the body and feet; petechial blackness, like
dark blood and water, over the whole of that part of the
eruption. No irritation; no secondary fever; no delirium
at night. Her cough and laryngeal symptoms continue
severe. Continue Hydrastis with Hepar Sulphuris, and
Hydrastis lotions to the whole body.
December 7th. Her throat symptoms are worse; pulse
96. Constant laryngeal cough. Her face continues to
peel; she still has no itching, and complains of nothing
but a heavy strap or saddle of scab on the nose and lips.
I administered Belladonna and Hepar, and occasionallv
also Baptisia and
Viride.
In the evening I paid her a second visit, and found
the cough much relieved; a result which she attributed
to the Veratrum Viride, which has a great expectorant
and resolvent power, Continue the Hydrastis ablutions.
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
9
December 8th. I could report her better; cough re
duced; no fever; no delirium; no itching; and what
struck her mother, who attended upon her, there was no
unpleasant odour from the skin, although the quantity of
sanious suppuration, modified only by the Hydrastis,
could not be exceeded on the same space of skin.
Dec. 9th and 10th.—Going on favourably. She is,
however, depressed about her future prospects. She is
a public singer, and has long been overworked and ex
hausted, and always of a delicate frame and health.
To-day her voice is low. The eruption peels apace. Con
tinue Hydrastis, and Veratrum Viride.
Her mother also has one spurious but decided pustule
on the arm, together with pain in the back, and general
malaise. She dabs her daughter all over with the lotion
many times a day, and doubtless has been inoculated
with the disease.
Dec. 11th.—Bryonia was given occasionally for the
cough; also Hydrastin for the conjoint purpose of specific
to the disease, and tonic to the stomach.
Dec. 17th.—Going on well; but weak. Hydrastis
and Xanthoxyllin.
Jan. 5.—Wonderfully well, and little pitted: there is
only one deep pit on the face, where I myself pulled off a
piece of the coating; the rest of the skin exhibits a fine
graining, which will be almost imperceptible in a twelve
month. I gave her Hydrastis, n. 30, in pilules, to go on
with, to keep up the general action of this benign drug
upon the system.
There are one or two points in this case which require
to be brought out into greater prominence. And 1st,
as to one which I have omitted till now—the diet.
Throughout the disease she had beef tea, port wine, and
brandy ad libitum, even at first, when the swelling and
inflammation were at the height. The case was erysipe
latous, typhoid, and putrescent, and happily responded
�10
A NEW METHOD
to free nutrition and stimulation. 2nd. The Hydrastis
lotions, the strongest that could be made, were most
assiduously applied, and always with a feeling of comfort
to the patient. The main treatment of the disease was,
I believe, local. At one period of the complaint, the
lotions to the legs, which were uncovered for the pur
pose, produced a chill that it was desirable to avoid; and
these lotions were therefore abandoned for a few days.
Doubtless, as a general rule, they ought to be applied
warm.
In the course of this case, another sister took scarlet
fever, for which I treated her. I mention this to show
the state of the house (69, St. John’s Wood Terrace),
in which L. J. was attacked by small-pox. A few
weeks previously a person had died of cerebral typhus
on the ground floor; also a child, which I did not at
tend, has since died of scarlatina on the second floor;
and two of L. J.’s sisters took scarlatina and recovered
from it. The drains of the house smelt abominably; and
all the circumstances conspired to produce the putrescent
type of small-pox which I have recorded. Nevertheless,
among L. J.’s numerous family, cooped up in one small
landing, no second case of small-pox occurred, excepting
the case of Mrs. J., by inoculation.
The marvellous power exerted by the Hydrastis over
the irritation and itching which constitute one of the
most troublesome features of this disease, extends also
to the similar symptoms in chicken pox; in which, how
ever, a weaker solution can be used, especially in the case
of children. The terrible itching of jaundice I have also
relieved at once by lotions, or still better by a medicated
bath, of Veratrum Viride.
Had one all the conveniences which exist in first-class
houses, or which are at hand in a small-pox hospital, my
treatment of small-pox in any bad case would be very
simple. As soon as the disease is recognized, and if pos-
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
11
sible before the eruption appears, I should give Veratrum
Viride and Hydrastis internally; and when the eruption
is declared I should continue them, with sufficient energy
to control the fever, and reduce the swelling of the parts;
and chicken broth, mutton broth, beef tea, wine and
brandy, as sedatives, and to keep the stomach alive and
active for the great demands made upon the vital powers.
Notwithstanding the apparent incongruity of the two
practices, I find them answer well in typhoid erysipelas
and carbuncle; and I know they will not disappoint us
here. Then I should give immersion baths, at 96 deg.
and upwards, of Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis in com
bination at first; a bath every six hours: sponging the
frame also with lotions of the same, at intervals accord
ing to the exigency of symptoms and circumstances. If
the baths cause faintness, supply strength by judicious
stimulants. The fever and swelling soon subsiding, I
should rely upon Hydrastis baths, and lotions, and upon
the internal exhibition also of Hydrastis ; supplementing
it where needful by other remedies. Of these, perhaps
the most valuable where stomatitis in its worst form
occurs, or where the typhoid and putrescent tendency
threatens more and more, is the Baptisia Tinctoria, a
God-sent addition to the armoury of medicine against
fevers. The baths, I have reason to believe from what
I have seen already, would cut short the disease, and
probably render the one-twentieth part of the eruption
which would be left, amply sufficient to satisfy Nature
in her presumed expulsion of materies morbi, so necessary
in theoretical medicine. For I apprehend that the ex
tension and maturation of the pustules may fairly be a
local development and infection; and thus that there is
no more harm in arresting the greater part of the erup
tion, than there is in curing itch or favus by local
administrations.
These new medicines I have used in the concentrated
�12
A NEW METHOD
tinctures, but in small doses. Knowing as I do the truth
of the Homoeopathic law, and the power that infinitesi
mal doses exert under that law, I shall not be surprised
to find that dilutions produce excellent results internally
in small-pox; yet I have thought it safest at first to
handle powers which are unmistakeable.
Thus it will be seen I would treat the case simply as a
form of erysipelas from the beginning, and no more
think of allowing it to run its course, than I would allow
erysipelas to pursue its destructive way.
Time will
show how far the disease can be extinguished after it has
declared itself; but I believe it can be extinguished in
any stage, though best, of course, nearest to its commence
ment. If it can be thus cut short, the Veratrum Viride
will be the prime agent in producing this effect. Other
wise, when pustulation has occurred, and when the ac
companying cellulitis has given way to Veratrum Viride,
the Hydrastis is the remedy to be relied on for neu
tralizing the developed materies morbi, and abolishing its
irritation; also for coating it, and preventing its diffusion
and re-absorption.
When one comes to think of it, the spread of zymotic
diseases in the body itself, by combined infection and
contagion, seems very probable. From my experience,
I infer that part after part of the organs and tissues
catches the small-pox; and that each pustule enlarges
by the same law. A little leaven, after the disease
becomes palpable, leavens the lump. If this be so, the
disease should be arrested in its centres of development;
which I have already proved to be possible hi several
stages.
For in the cases I have treated, the disease has been
struck dead (if I may use a strong expression) just at
the point where the Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis were
used decisively; and the removal of the destruction has
been the only work remaining to be accomplished.
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
13
The complications in the last case (L. J.’s) were suffi
ciently formidable. The most unhealthy circumstances,
a pestilential house, petechial eruption, menorrhagia,
intense laryngeal and bronchial irritation, confluent
small-pox; yet all these conditions yielded to the com
bined powers of Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis; and on
the 21st of March of this year I had the delight of
meeting L. J. at my door in blooming health; the cutis
unattacked, and only the surface of the complexion
grained and slightly reddened by the disease.
Since L. J.’s recovery she has resumed her public
singing, but her voice is quite altered from soprano to
contralto; what voice she has got is much stronger than
it was before. During the disease her eyebrows came
off, but they have now grown again. She told me at
our last interview that she never felt any pain all the
time she was ill.
The method of treatment with Veratrum Viride
baths, is, I feel convinced, equally applicable in scarlatina;
and from the huge diaphoretic power of the drug ad
ministered internally and externally, I should expect it
to produce resolution in the most serious anginose
affections of the throat. I speak especially of cases
where Belladonna is insufficient.
In the small-pox in sheep, a very destructive disease,
and one which it behoves us for sanitary reasons to re
gard very anxiously, the same remedies could easily be
applied to whole flocks. Any number of sheep might
be driven through Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis baths,
with a small cost of labour several times a-day, and the
disease be limited, cured and extinguished. I commend
the subject to Professor Simonds, the Royal Agricultural
Society of England, and the Veterinary College.
The Hydrastis ought to be an inexpensive drug; the
swamps of Canada, stimulated by the wants of this side
of the water, will speedily yield enough to treat the
�14
ERYSIPELAS.
whole small-pox cases of the world. The Veratrum
Viride in its concentrated tincture is a little more
costly; but I presume it can be supplied of uniform
strength to almost any amount from the laboratories of
Messrs. Keith, and of Messrs. Tilden, of New York.
But I strongly advise the public to demand the American
preparation, and not to be satisfied without an assurance
from the chemist that the concentrated tincture is not of
British manufacture. Of the English preparation I only
know that it has neither the appearance nor the qualities
of the American, and that time and even life may be
lost by using it.
II.
Erysipelas.
The triumph of Veratrum Viride locally applied to
pure erysipelas, is as complete as the art of medicine
can desire. Diversity of cases of course requires cor
responding diversity of treatment; yet, from no slight
experience, I can declare that the Veratrum Viride is a
cardinal remedy in the disease now in question.
The first case in which I employed it was that of a
girl, servant to Lewin, the chimney-sweeper, of St.
John’s Wood. She came "with a raised erysipelatous
swelling on the forehead, exquisitely painful, and rapidly
extending. I painted it over with a camel’s hair brush,
•with the concentrated tincture. She returned next
morning, and reported the almost instantaneous subsi
dence and disappearance of the complaint, which never
returned. Since then I have known no case of failure
with this drug locally applied in erysipelas.
When I remember my old days of treating this dis
order, and the terrible cases I have witnessed—cases
rendered terrible by the inefficiency of the means at
�ERYSIPELAS.
15
hand for their suppression, and in which the best treat
ment was the disfiguring method of painting over the
whole head of the patient, scalp and all, with lunar
caustic,—when I remember these days, I am thankful
that a means so simple as a lotion of Veratrum Viride.,
coupled with plenty of stimulants and concentrated
nutriments, should avail to arrest the complaint, and
extinguish it rapidly, without suppuration, with no
suffering, and at small cost to the vital powers.
Case I.—May 21, 1863, I visited Miss M., in the
village of H., near London. She had been labouring
under erysipelas for some days, and I found her in a
typhoid state, with the pulse weak, quick, and fluttering,
the manner hurried, the tongue fleshy red, and dry hi
the centre; and vesicular erysipelas, with painful bulging
swelling considerably developed on the face and the
forehead. She is evidently a person of very feeble con
stitution. I prescribed Belladonna and Rhus internally,
and lotions of Veratrum Viride to be kept constantly
applied to the swelled parts.
Beef tea, brandy, port
wine, and the Hungarian wine Carlovitz, were taken in
alternation, according to want and weakness. I visited
her again at night, and ordered her to continue the same
treatment.
May 22.—Miss M. is better; the swelling subsiding.
There has been no action on the bowels for several days.
Podophyllum and Rhus internally; Veratrum Viride.) ex
ternally. Soups and stimulants continued.
May 23.—The swelling abated, but the face of a dark
purple hue; Arsenicum and Rhus internally.
May 24.—Going on well; but during this and many
subsequent days flushes of erysipelas of the area of a
hen’s egg occur in various parts of the scalp, and are put
down and smoothed away by a cap of Veratrum Viride
lotion.
�16
ERYSIPELAS.
May 25.—The right ear is attacked, and the swelling
promptly taken down by the same means. The Arsenicum
and Rhus are continued the meanwhile.
May 26.—I paid her an early visit, and found her
labouring under great prostration. Hydrastis and Carlo
Vegetabilis were prescribed. Saw her twice that day.
So also on the 27th. She then had a painful cough and
laryngeal symptoms. I gave her Cocculus and Apis,
and an occasional dose of Bromine, which I find to be a
first-class remedy in laryngeal as well as in pulmonary
complications. There seems no doubt that the erysipelas
is flying from organ to organ, and from the skin to the
internal parts. She continues the local application of
the Veratrum Viride wherever the disease appears, and
always with speedy result.
May 28—30.—She improves; but there is still prostra
tion, and dry tongue, with considerable soreness of the
mouth; also drowsiness, and apathetic countenance. I
gave her Baptisia and Opium, and on the 31st found her
decidedly mending. On the 3rd of June she had Bap
tisia and Myricin in alternation for the sore mouth and
dry tongue. On the 5th the tongue was healthy, and
she continued the Myricin, but in combination with Nux
Vomica. I took leave of her on the 8th of June, when
she was fairly well, and in excellent spirits.
This case may be considered in a twofold aspect. First,
as a case of nervous gastric fever with a strong typhoid
tendency. Secondly, as a case of erysipelas of the face
and head. I have seldom seen a more threatening case hi
both regards than was Miss M.’s at the beginning. The
treatment was twofold; local and general. The general
treatment, to anticipate a question in the medical reader’s
mind, did not arrest the erysipelas, which reappeared
in part after part, travelling about over the face, neck,
and cranium. The Veratrum Viride in a few hours did
arrest it, and ultimately suppressed and extinguished it.
�ERYSIPELAS.
17
No suppuration occurred, and no subsequent delicacy or
soreness of the parts; no tendency either to return of
the disease. My patient also has been remarkably well
ever since.
T&e Baptisia was of evident service in arresting the
typhoid tendency which displayed itself throughout a
large portion of this case. It is an admirable remedy
where Rhus does not succeed, and is very valuable as a local
application to sores that threaten a gangrenous termination.
This case lasted eighteen days, from the beginning of
my treatment to the convalescence: an unusually short
period, considering the feeble constitution, the intensity
of the local disease, its obstinacy of re-appearance, and
the typhoid complication; considering also that I was
not called in until the disease was dangerously established.
Case II.—In January, 1863, a low type of fever attended
occasionally with erysipelas, prevailed in my neighbour
hood, and afforded me several opportunities of putting my
local treatment successfully in practice. Of these cases I
have no detailed notes: only a register from day to day.
The following are some particulars of them.
Jan. 14th.—Caroline Bray, get. 3, was seized with
fever, and swelling (erysipelatous) of the vulva, for which
I prescribed Aconite and Belladonna, and cold water on
rags to the part.
Jan. 15th.—The parts are better, but covered with
white blisters. Bell, and Rhus.
Jan 19th.—Erysipelas on the body. Bell, and Rhus.
10 drops of brandy in water frequently.
Jan. 22.—Drowsy and costive. Podophyll.
Jan. 23rd.—Low and comatose. Leg and foot much
swollen. The erysipelas moving upwards. Great suffer
ing. Bell, and Veratrum Viride.
Jan. 24th.—No better. Erysipelas extending up
wards. Cough. Aeon. and Bryonia.
2
�18
ERYSIPELAS.
Jan. 25th.—Relieved.
Jan. 26th.—Transfer of disease to windpipe. Seems
dying. Injections of wine and beef tea:—Bromine, Apis,
and Sulphate of Atropine.
Jan. 27th.—-Relieved. Continue.
Jan. 30th.—A large blister has appeared on the feet.
Bryonia and Rhus.
Feb. 1st.—Erysipelas on the head. Sleepy. Bell, and
Tart. Emet.
. Feb. 2nd.—Sloughing. Ulceration of the foot. Ery
sipelas going on. Continue.
Feb. 3rd.—Erysipelas all over the body. Veratrum
Viride lotions all over. Bell, and Phosph, internally.
•Feb. 5th.—Relieved. Mercurius Corrosivus lotion to
foot. Continue Veratrum Viride to the whole skin.
Feb. 11th.—Abscess in the neck. Continue.
Feb. 13th.—Abscesses. Calcar. Phosphorata. Con
tinue Veratrum Viride.
Feb. 23rd. Continue Calcar. Phosph, and Veratrum
Viride. In a few days after the little patient was pretty
well.
This case, of typhoid fever, with a complication of
erysipelas, which traversed the entire skin, and visited
some of the internal organs, was virtually cured from the
first application of the Veratrum Viride. I pursued
the travelling fire from part to part, and trod it • out un
failingly under the feet of this drug. None of the other
medicaments appeared to me to face the disease;—the
Veratrum Viride previously tried internally was not
effectual.
Let me add, that this patient lived in a
neighbourhood that might well be a nest of fever; and
had a very bad constitution to begin with. My first
experience with her had been to cure her of a scrofulous
swelling of the bone and periosteum of the thumb, at
tended with ulceration—and for which amputation was
proposed—by lotions of Mercurius Corrosivus. Brandy
�19
ERYSIPELAS.
and wine were given freely throughout the above case,
and nutrient injections persevered with. Had I to treat
the case again, the differences would be, that I should
employ the Veratrum Viride from the first; and that
instead of the Mercurius Corrosivus lotion, which how
ever did service, I should use a lotion made with
Cantharidis. The reason of this latter will appear in
the subsequent pages. I did not use the Veratrum
Viride earlier; because, up to this case, I had always been
accustomed to paint it on the surface in the concentrated
form, and the surface here was too extensive: this de
flected my mind from the Veratrum Viride. It was,
however, with this child that I made the discovery
that Veratrum Viride lotions are so effectual in even the
worst cases of typhoid erysipelas, provided stimulants
and nutrient broths are given persistently. The injec
tions of wine and beef tea kept the child alive till the
Veratrum Viride arrived on the scene.
It would also be well, whenever such cases occur, to
employ the warm bath every six hours, medicated with
Veratrum Viride.
Case III.—Jan. 16th, 1863.—I was summoned to
Mrs. D., my coachman’s wife, already under medical
treatment for erysipelas of the head, and rapidly getting
worse. Rhus, and Bell. Brandy and Burton ale. Her
baby at the breast also has the same disease.
Jan. 19th—Erysipelas better, but dry, baked tongue.
Arsen, and Rhus.—Baby: Bell, and Rhus.; and brandy,
ten drops every two hours. It is hardly necessary to
pursue the daily register of these cases. They were
treated with the usual remedies, but also the Veratrum
Viride lotions were persistently applied, and with the
best results. The disease had done some of its destroy
ing work before I saw the patients; and hence the con
valescence was prolonged, and the baby had large
*
9
�20
INFLAMMATION OF THE SPINE.
abscesses on the body, which, however, healed easily,
and have left no bad health behind them. The efficacy
of the remedy at a late stage of the malady, seems
comfortably established by these three latter instances.
I will now give a few cases illustrating the action of
Veratrum Viride as a local remedy in various inflam
matory complaints.
III.
Inflammation of the Spine with Rheumatism.
Master K. C., set. 6, has been ill since the 1st January,
1864, when he took a severe cold and had violent shiver
ing : from this he partially recovered, but on the 15th
relapsed, had pains in the limbs and lower part of the
stomach, swelling of the joints, and flat red spots on the
skin, with lossof power in the legs. Since January 22nd, he
has been attacked with rheumatic pains, and when I paid
him my first visit on January 27th, I found him sitting
half-up in bed, and was informed that he had passed a
night of great suffering. He was feverish, and pulse 120.
He could not stand without being quite held up, and
indeed had lost the use of his legs. This led me to
examine his spine, where I found the pain was concen
trated ; and in a portion of the lumbar spine I detected
extreme tenderness on pressure, and even on contact,
betokening acute inflammation. I at once ordered baths
of Veratrum Viride, the same remedy locally to the
pained part as a constant application; and Veratrum
Viride and Podophylline internally, at short intervals.
Jan. 28.—He was greatly relieved. All the pain in
the spine was gone. He had no tenderness on pressure.
His pulse was 84, and he was able to stand by himself.
Jan. 29th.—He was well except a remainder of
�INFLAMMATION OF THE WOMB.
21
rheumatic cold (for which I left him Bryonia and Ledum);
and a thick rash covering the loins. Here the case
terminated, I saw him no more; the rash gradually sub
sided after his taking considerable quantities of port
wine and nutriment; and his father has since informed
me that in a few weeks his usual health returned, and
he has been well ever since.
Had I not used the local remedy, the spinal inflam
mation and the consequent paralysis would have lasted
I know not how much longer; had I not used the Vera
trum Viride and Podophylline internally, these formidable
affections might have endured for weeks or months.
IV.
Inflammation of the Womb following Pregnancy.
Some days after her confinement, Mrs. P. sent for me
to relieve the inflammatory symptoms under which she
was suffering. I found high fever, very quick pulse,
and acute tenderness all over the abdomen, but especially
over the uterus; acute tenderness also in the vagina.
The perineum had been ruptured in the birth, and there
was great soreness of the external organs. I prescribed
the Ferafr’wz Viride and Podophylline internally, and in
three or four days all the threatening symptoms had
subsided.
This case occurred some years since, and at that time
I was not aware of the cardinal importance of Veratrum
Viride locally, and by immersion baths to the skin; or I
believe two days, perhaps one, would have done the
work of four. For the last six years I have treated
many cases of uterine and ovarian congestion and in
flammation with the same means, and always with one
result; indeed I can scarcely think that any case of
puerperal peritonitis, taken anywhere near its commence
�22
OVARIAN INFLAMMATION.
ment, would resist the sedative and resolvent powers of
the Veratrum Viride and Podophylline combined, with the
bath of the former medicine, or of both together, ac
cording to urgency.
V.
Chronic Inflammation of the Right Ovary.
Mrs. D., a lady residing in Yorkshire, consulted me
by letter on Feb. 28th, 1863. The account she gives is
that in autumn, 1861, she experienced slight pain only
on moving, and this pain has continued ever since, and
increases whenever she is weak. For the last two or
three months, and especially for the last few weeks, the
pain has been much worse. There has been marked
increase of pain since the 21st of February. On moving
the pain is like a sprain; but often when she is still there
is a shooting pain, which goes through the body with
throbbing, like twitches from proud flesh in a wound.
Sudden movement gives acute pain; stooping causes pain
from a little below the waist all along the right side,
with a feeling like giving way; lifting has the same effect.
Touch does not increase the pain, but pressure gives re
lief. Externally there is a swelled ridge on the lower
part of the right side of the abdomen, just beside the
thigh, it feels firm like a muscle or ligament. For a
week the pain has extended to the hip, and nearly to the
waist. On examination by her medical attendant last
evening, a pufly swelling was discovered a little above
the other, soft, and reaching to the hip. The pain is
worst the first thing in the morning; moving, dressing,
coughing, sneezing, aggravate it. She is now forty-six
years of age, and had no menses from thirty to forty-four.
For two years she has had slight catamenia, lasting two
days, and dark brown in colour. I ordered Veratrum
�OVARIAN INFLAMMATION.
23
Viride locally, to be kept constantly applied; and also
■Veratrum Viride and Podophylline internally.
March 17th. The report is that the pain and swelling
have been much reduced by the Veratrum, Viride. The
higher swelling about the right ovary is almost gone;
and the pain there has well-nigh subsided. The lower
swelling inside the thigh, and the pain there, continue.
There is weakness and pain in the rectum; and for
fourteen days there have been painful internal piles, and
profuse bleeding with the evacuations. She has been
subject to this for many years. Continue the Veratrum
Viride and Podophylline for another fortnight, with
Tannic Acid at mid-day.
April 7th.—The piles ceased rapidly under the Tannic
Acid. The ovarian pain is subdued. The side pain—
arthritic-uterine—is no better.
It seems fixed inside
the thigh and hip, and is always felt in walking. Some
times lately she has had similar pains in the right kneeI gave her Macrotin.
April 22nd.—She consulted me personally, and I found
the status quo described at the last report maintained.
The only phenomenon elicited on examination was con
siderable relaxation of the womb.
She suffered after this from some return of the con
gestive ovarian pain, occasioned, as I presume, by the
shaking of her long journey, but which was again relieved
by the means which were successful at first; and I took
my leave of her on the 11th of May, prescribing Podophyll. and Hamamelis internally, and Tannic Acid occa
sionally for piles, should they recur.
I cite this case, not that the uterine disorder was
cured, but to show how rapidly and readily the super
ficial ovarian symptoms were extinguished by the simple
means which I employed.
The following letter from Mrs. D., whom I had not
heard of for a year, brings the record of her case to the
�24
OVARIAN INFLAMMATION.
present time. At an interview May 3rd, 1864, I found
her still labouring under occasional piles and slight pro
lapsus; the womb somewhat flaccid, and a little low
down; the rectum and its tissues also swollen and
bulging forward. She reports that the piles are always
relieved by Tannic Acid. She looks far better than
when I saw her last, and admits to greatly improved health
in the past fifteen months. As a more radical measure
for the hemorrhoidal sufferings, she is to have Collins.
Canad. n. 12, a pilule at night: Juglandin in the morn
ing, and Leptandria at noon; and of course the Veratrum
Viride whenever the ovarian and uterine swelling
threatens.
“ In February, 1863,1 applied to Dr. W. for treatment
under an affection, which he pronounced to be ‘con
gestive swelling of the right ovarium and surrounding
tissues.’ I was also suffering in another way from what
he designated, ‘ uterine symptoms, of old duration, and
the basis of the rest.’ For the relief of both, he pre
scribed the use of the tincture of Veratrum Viride.
After using the lotion as just directed, with bandage, for
about two weeks, the swelling was dispersed, and the
accompanying extremely painful sensations quite relieved.
On every occasion of their return in any measure, (but they
have never been so severe again since first relieved), I
have re-applied the lotion, latterly in its midiluted form,
(z.e., the pure tincture,) and by painting the part. And I
have invariably found relief. At the end of the year and
three months my general health is much improved, and
though liable still to a recurrence of the old symptoms
after any extra exertion or excitement, I am relieved in
a most important degree from anxiety and sufferings by
having within reach this valuable remedy.”
In the accessions of inflammation which accompany
�MENINGITIS.
25
tuberculous deposits and ulcerations of the bowels, the
Veratrum Viride lotion, covered in with gutta-percha
tissue, will abate the inflammation, pain and swelling with
great rapidity, though it exert no influence upon the
foundations of the disease.
VI.
Earache with impending Meningitis.
Nov. 29th, 1863.—I saw Miss Jessie B., set. 12, and
found her labouring under acute earache, for which I
prescribed Belladonna and Podophylline. When I called
the next afternoon, she was suffering great agony,
and so impatient of delay, that the family sent to a
medical friend in the neighbourhood, pending my arrival.
He agreed with me that the brain symptoms were
serious, and suggested the continuance of Belladonna.
The pains were acute, lancinating and stabbing, on the
middle of the line of the longitudinal sinus; the irrita
bility was extreme, and there was complete intolerance
of light. I prescribed Veratrum Viride and Podophylline
alternately; and also constant lotions of Veratrum Viride
to, in, and around the ear, and also over the whole scalp,
especially over the seat of pain; the lotions to be covered
in with gutta-percha tissue.
Dec. 1st.—Early in the morning I found her much
better; the pains almost gone, and all the symptoms
abated. Continue Feratfmw Viride and Podophylline at
longer intervals: also Veratrum Viride lotions. At night
the pulse had sunk to 80, and she was going on most
favourably.
Dec. 2nd.—Improvement still continues. In the even
ing, however, the earache and headache returned a little,
and I gave her Belladonna and Pulsatilla in between the
other medicines. After this time she had no return of
�26
MENINGITIS.
her symptoms. As a precaution she continued the
Belladonna and Pulsatilla, and then Bell, and Sulphur,
and Bell, and Hepar till the 10th of December, when
she went down into the country.
The Veratrum Viride was the agent in this case which,
on its local application, rapidly cancelled all the alarming
symptoms. I cannot demonstrate this to the reader,
who was not present at the case; but it was clear to the
patient, the nurse, and myself. The other medicines, in
infinitesimal doses, appeared afterwards to exert their
usual beneficial effects. But without the Veratrum
Viride and Pod. premised, the issue of the case in so
congestive and inflammatory a subject, would, I believe,
have been doubtful; and, at least, the duration of the
illness would have been longer, and the consequences
less completely abolished.
I do not know any inflammatory complaint affecting
the body, especially of the more rapid sort, to which
this or similar local and general skin treatment ought
not to be applied. Take congestive inflammation of the
liver. A theoretical account of it is, that the hepatic
nervous centres, the governing powers of the organ, are
weakened by some cause—by exhaustion, morbid poison,
or some other. The nerve-weakness allows the blood to
collect in the non-resistent, or non-contractile blood
vessels; and a blood-swelling of the organ takes place,
congestion, the first step of, or to, inflammation. You
give medicines by the mouth to relieve this state of
things; you propagate a telegraphic, or what they call a
reflex-action from the mouth and mucous membrane of
the stomach and bowels to the nerves of the liver, and so
to the blood-vessels. But why not also, always, a reflex
action from the nerves of the skin over the part to the
liver itself, and so to the liver nerves? Nature in
stinctively prescribes this local treatment. The other
treatment is a mere roundabout compared to it. The
�MENINGITIS.
27
skin over a part is a universal telegraph to the part
under it, and to the nerves of the part. You can most
nearly touch the hepatic plexus by touching the hepatic
skin. The cold water physicians have been better than
the rest here; only that their waters have not been
medicated, and in some cases medication, as with Vera
trum Viride, is an indispensable condition of the more
rapid cure.
Case II.—Threatened Meningitis.—The following is a
more complex case: Master E. P., aged 7, was seized on
the 29th of December with fever, great gastric disturb
ance, and acute earache. Christmas fare blamed. In
the evening he was so much worse that Veratrum Viride
lotions were applied to the head persistently.
Dec. 30th.—No better; Bell, and Merc, and Veratrum
Viride continued.
Dec. 31st.—Agonizing night; great photophobia.
Jan. 1st, 1864.—No better; Rhus internally, and
Rhus externally.
Jan. 2nd.—Afternoon, agonies in ear and head;
threatened meningitis; pulse feeble and intermittent;
Sulphate of Quinine to be repeated at discretion when
the pains come on.
Jan. 3rd.—Three visits; some relief after the Quinine,
yet no solid abeyance of the disease.
Jan. 4th.—Worse; Mercurius: also blistering paper to
the neck and region of the ear. Evening, worse still;
Mercurius, Asclepin and Euphorbin prescribed. Later at
night, all the symptoms worse. To have Glonoine, Aeon.
and Bell., Quinine if sinking.
*
Jan. 5th.—No worse; has had the Quinine several
times. Continue the medicines.
Jan. 6th.—Better.
Jan. 7th.—Much better. Quinine and Castor Oil.
Jan. 12th.—Quite well. The Veratrum Viride did not
�28
PAROTITIS.
act completely here, because the vital force was so
heavily assailed that the supplementary remedy Quinine
was indicated.
Besides Quinine, the Euphorbin and
Glonoine appeared both to Dr. P. and myself to exert a
marked influence on his son’s case, which was indeed
one that threatened galloping decomposition.
VII.
Inflammation of the Parotid Gland.
Peb. 22.—Dr. P. has a swelling under the left ear,
some fever and great malaise, and has too much to do
to be able to be ill many days. Great pain in the in
flamed and tumefied “ Socia Parotidis.”
I ordered
Aconite and Rhus alternately.
Feb. 23rd.—No better. The swelling is large and
tense, and involves the adjacent fasciae and tissues to a
considerable extent. Asclepias and Podophylline pre
scribed, and a hot bath with an ounce of Veratrum
Viride in it.
Feb. 24th. — Greatly better.
Immense sweating
followed the bath. The doctor reports that Veratrum
Viride baths would go for much in training if their use
were known. Continue Asclepias, beef tea, and stimu
lants.
Feb. 26.—No pain left, and scarcely any swelling.
The complaint is cured, and the busy doctor satisfied.
So, also, is his “ Socia Parotidis.”
VIII.
Acute Tonsillitis.
This was my own case. I tried Belladonna and Aconite
for some time without marked effect. My wife looked
�HAEMORRHOIDS.
29
into the throat, and was alarmed by the great swelling,
the dusky purple colour, and the foetor of the breath,
and by the excessive fever. She gave me of her own
prompting ten drops of Con. Tine. Veratrum Viride, and
placed a Turpentine bandage round the throat. In five
minutes I was in a bath of perspiration which lasted the
night. Belladonna acted well on the residue of the
disease. I was well in a day or two. This is some
years since, and before I knew of Veratrum Viride baths
and lotions.
IX.
Idoemorrhoids following Confinement.
Mrs. B. is suffering from this complaint, attended with
considerable external swelling.
She took Nux and
Sulphur internally, and a lotion of Veratrum Viride and
Hamamelis was kept constantly to the part.
The
-swelling abated at once under the application of the
lotion.
In these external applications it is my custom to
combine the Veratrum Viride with any other drug that
is pathic to the case.
The Veratrum Viride does its
general work as skin-opener, de-constrictor, and con
gestion-disperser; the other, if correctly chosen, puts
forth its more specific power. Thus, in injuries to the
face and eyes, resulting in unsightly swelling, I have
found unusually good and quick results from a weak
lotion of Veratrum Viride and Arnica combined.
Perhaps I shock Homoeopathic prejudices by mention
ing the combination of drugs, even in a lotion. Yet
repeated success in healing will justify anything; and
success is the only science of the art of physic. And in
many cases I have found combinations succeed. True,
you do not know which drug did the work: but why
�30
COMBINED MEDICINES.
should you ? when, perhaps, it was the combination that
did it; and when the knowledge of the truths of com
bination may be worth having, and involve a chapter
which Homoeopathy has yet to open:—the practical power
of its drugs combined. If Aconite and Bryonia * are both
Homoeopathic to Pneumonia, why should not the mind,
by a subtle and rapid instinct, build out of the twain a
compound means which will grasp the disease with a
combined force far more than equal to the solitary forces
of these drugs ? There comes a point in which you quit
the science of the probabilities of drugs, the splendid
and enduring fabric of Hahnemann, for the science of
recorded success in cures, to which the former is per
fectly subordmate in human interest; and in this latter
field of knowledge, every means of every school, and the
statistical result of whole schools, comes forward, and
if it deserves so much, is venerated as a fact.
* Apropos of combination, I copy the following from Grover Coe:—
“ Bnt perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Myricin is its power,
in connection with Lobelia, of allaying false labor pains. The peculiar
therapeutic property here manifested is the result of the combination.
Neither will answer the purpose alone. As soon as the pains are ascer
tained to be spasmodic, place the patient in bed, and administer the
following:—
R
Myricin
....... grs. xv.
Wine Tine. Lobelia
.
.
.
.
ss.
Boiling Water .
.
.
.
.
. ? j.
Add the Myricin to the boiling water, and after a few minutes the
Tine. Lobelia. Exhibit at one dose, and repeat in two hours, if neces
sary. This will seldom or never disappoint the practitioner, and rarely
is a second dose necessary. It allays the pains, quiets the nervous
system, and postpones parturition to the proper period. Delivery will
frequently be delayed from one to four weeks, and the matured energies
of the system will then ensure a safe and easy accouchement.”
�ABDOMINAL INFLAMMATION.
31
X.
Inflammation about the Ccecum.
March 21st, 1864.—W. M., Esq., has diarrhoea, with
great swelling and tenderness in the right ileum; there
is also spasmodic pain, and he cannot stand upright, but
is drawn together to relax and favour the right side.
The pulse is quick and wiry. Podophyllum and Vera
trum Viride in alternation. Veratrum Viride constantly
to the part, and in a hip bath at night.
March 22.—He is relieved. He says he felt quite
differently immediately after coming out of the bath.
Continue all the means.
March 23.—Improving fast. A space as large as a
hen’s egg is still hard, and painful on pressure. The
diarrhoea has gone. To have Bryonia and Mercurius;
Veratrum Viride lotion and bath.
March 25.—The swelling has so far subsided that the
chronic basis comes under examination. It appears to
be a thickening of tissues about the coecum. The recent
attack is cancelled. The residual tumour is deep, but
well defined. He is to continue the lotion of Veratrum
Viride, and to go on with Podoph. and Sulphur in
ternally.
March 28.—The lump is now hard and quite deep.
The account he gives of his attacks is as follows:—
First comes a “sneezing cold,” which is apt to recur on
successive days. If it does so recur, sensations of pain,
and pinching, and rumbling of wind begin to be felt in
the bowels. There is evidently a telegraphic relation
between the sneezing cold and the part which has been
now acutely attacked. Probably at some former period
a year or two back, a cold has fixed upon the coecum,
set up inflammation, and produced a thickening there;
or some impaction may have taken place. The sympathy
�32
ABDOMINAL INFLAMMATION.
between the nose and mouth and this part is so great
that (March 25th) the drawing of the breath through
the water in cleaning the teeth produced a temporary
aggravation of pain. Occasionally the pain shoots from
the part quite through the penis. With regard to the'
“sneezing colds,” he says that “he seems to get a
natural secretion in a certain length of time, which it
requires the sneezing colds to remove.”
The recent inflammation being quite removed, he is now under treatment for the deep seated lump. He is
to have Juglandin at night, and Leptandria in the
morning; and to persevere with Veratrum Viride band
ages, to be worn every night.
April 8.—He reports that he was well up to the
evening of April 6th, when he had a new symptom of
pricking in the nose and left cheek bone; then spasmodic
sneezings from 8 to 11 at night, “to sneeze it off.” He
slept well; but on the morning of the 7th of April had
a blown feeling low down in the belly; in the afternoon
a dead pain in the middle of the same region; and in the
evening at half-past 7 sharp pain. At half-past 10-p.m.,
he put on a compress of Veratrum Viride, and a second
at half-past 7 next morning. He also took Veratrum
Viride internally, ten drops at three times. He had no
sleep from 12 to 3. The pains began to cease about
4 a.m. on the 8th, and have gradually gone; and in the
course of the morning he called upon me in Wimpolestreet, and says .that he feels well.
To-day the old lump cannot be any longer felt. “ The
sneezing cold ” has produced none of the usual results.
As a precaution he is to continue the Veratrum Viride
baths, and to mix Veratrum Viride ten drops in ten
teaspoons of water, taking a teaspoonful every four
hours. Moreover, if the sneezing cold returns he is to
bathe the nose and face directly with a lotion of Vera
trum Viride.
\
�IRRITABLE BREASTS.
33
May 5.—He reports that he has had a bad cold ever
since the last visit; a sneezing cold, which comes on for
an hour or two every morning, and to-day has lasted the
whole morning; but only now for the first time pro
duces any soreness of the abdomen, but none of the old
inflammation. He knows nothing of the lump which
troubled him so long. His general appearance is singu
larly improved; instead of the hollow cheeks and stoop
ing gait which betokened a fine man in distress, his face
is beginning to be as substantial as his intention, and his
gait is solid. But these “ sneezing colds,” which are the
door that opens into all his weakness, must be barred
away; and this will take time. He is to have Hydrastis,
2 drops 4 times a day: a Feru&’em Viride bath at
present, and afterwards a dry Fm^nrn Viride apron to
be worn on the abdomen next the skin continually.
XI.
Enlarged and Irritable Breasts.
Caroline G. has been under treatment for some years
for pain and swelling of the mamma?. These symptoms
have been much aggravated of late during her critical
period of life. The breasts are enormous. She tried
Phytolacca for her sufferings, with good effect for a
time. Nothing, however, has so much relieved her as
sponging all over the body with a weak lotion of Veratimm Viride. Had she the conveniences of a bath, I
believe the cure might be complete. As it is, the relief is
remarkable. Being very corpulent, this patient is under
Banting’s drill, and I hope to report of her another time.
�34
LUMBAR ABSCESS.---- BUNIONS.
XII.
Chronic Abscesses.
J. B., Esq., labouring under Angina Pectoris and
Heart complaint, has a large abscess about the left lumbar
region, and another inside the thigh. In both of these
fluctuation can be distinctly felt.
They are increasing in size and are very inconvenient in sitting and
walking. The surgeon in attendance declines to do any
thing, alleging that it will be dangerous, and that they
must be suffered to break. The discomfort, however, is
so great, that I am consulted. Pretty strong lotions of
T eratrum Viride and Quinine in combination abated
suffering, diminished the size of the lumbar swelling,
entirely took away the large femoral collection of matter,
and much facilitated movement and sitting. The gen
eral health at the same time improved considerably; so
that his surgeon complimented him upon his altered
appearance. Mr. B. was very grateful for the amount of
relief. He died suddenly several months afterwards of
his internal disease.
In this case, as I have often seen before, the Veratrum
Viride emulated Iodine in its power of promoting ab
sorption.
XIII.
Bunions.
Veratrum Viride painted on these is generally a rapid
and perfect relief. I have frequently verified this in my
experience. Ihe fact will suffice without citing the
cases. There is no agent comparable to Veratrum Viride
for bunions or inflamed corns.
�MESENTERIC DISEASE.
35
XIV.
Case of Threatened Mesenteric Disease arrested.
On the evening of the 5th of April, I was called to
see Master T. S., ten years old, and found him labour
ing under feverish symptoms, with cough and vomiting.
On listening to the chest, I found considerable inflam
matory congestion of the right lung. The bowels also
were costive.
Imprudence in diet, cherry tart and
dumplings, and a cold, were the probable occasion of
this state of things. I gave him first a dose of Podo
phylline., to relieve the constipation; and afterwards
Aconite and Bryonia.
April 6th.—About 3 p.m.: pulse 170. Acute pain
and tenderness on the whole right flank of the abdomen,
in all the tissues from the liver to the ctecum. The pains
like localized peritonitis: they also extended to the back
and the head, and he cried out with them. He had been
delirious in the night, and had perspiration with the pain.
One costive motion. He cannot stand for pain. The
cough better. Prescribed Podophylline and Veratrum
Viride. Veratrum Viride compresses to the pained parts,
and Veratrum Viride hip bath.
9 p.m., Pulse 78. Pain greatly reduced. Pose easy
and comfortable. Pie has stomach ache, probably from
the Podophylline ; a pain quite different from that just
recorded. Slight pain still from the liver to the caacum,
and all over the belly. He has had some nice sleep.
Continue the medicine at 3-hour intervals. Also the
compresses and bath.
April 7th.-—Pulse 95. Pain much better, but not
gone. The pain on the right side is worst about the
liver, and is less in its extension downwards to the iliac
fossa. He has no cough now, but when he is asked to
cough, the action hurts him. His facies is good. Very
slight pain on the left side of the abdomen. He ex
�36
MESENTERIC DISEASE.
periences great comfort from the Veratrum Viride baths. *
If the pain, which sometimes lancinates about, returns,
the bath takes it away. Continue all the means.
April Sth.—Pulse 100. Great pain from spasms and
gripes: Podophylline pains ? I now, however, learn for
the first time, that he has had spasms in the stomach for
several weeks. He has passed a restless night: his head
aches, and the bowels are constipated. To have Bella
donna and Nux Vomica alternately.
April 9th.—Pulse 100. He has no pain left, and can
bear pressure. Bowels still costive. Aconite 1 dose:
afterwards continue Bell, and AW. A dessert spoonful
of Castor Oil at night.
April 10th.—Pulse 120. A bad night. Dry skin.
Griping pain in the bowels, and distressing aching be
tween the shoulders. Has had Castor Oil twice, which
has brought away a very copious lumpy motion. Hardly
any pain on pressure: the peritoneal and tissue-symptoms
gone; but the intestinal irritation and griping keep up
the pulse. There is a catch in the breath as if there were
a drag somewhere. He is of an inflammatory, and in
regard to congestion and the rapidity of its consequences,
of an almost explosively inflammatory bodily tempera
ment. The face, however, is still good. Bryonia and
Mercurius alternately.
Chamomile fomentations with
Veratrum Viride tincture on the flannel, hot to the belly.
Hot bath with Veratrum Viride, if pain require it.
April 11th.—Hardly any pain or spasms. The ab
domen is still tympanitic in parts. Pulse quick. The
bowels have been relaxed in the night. An old asthma,
accompanied with extraordinary loud breathing, has
been reproduced. Skin hot, but greater tendency to
perspiration. Since I last saw him he has not required
the poultices or bath. Continue all the means as they
are needed.
April 12th.—Pulse 130. Marked delirium in the
�MESENTERIC DISEASE.
rt rj
oi
night. Cough and asthma. Strong pressure on the
abdomen produces no pain. The cloud is now hanging
over another part of the tissues, and falls upon the lung
nerves and the mind-nerves at night. He is to have
Wine Tincture of Lobelia alternately with Belladonna.
April 13th.—Pulse 120. He is in the drawing-room
on the sofa, but cannot get up on account of severe pain
in the back. On examination, there is a protuberance
backwards of one dorsal vertebra, and considerable
tenderness is felt there on pressure. He has been
wandering in the night. His skin is now moist, and he
says he feels much better. Veratrum Viride compresses
locally to the pained spine.
Continue Lobelia and
Belladonna.
April 14th.—Pulse 120. He is now sitting up, and
has no pain in the back. No asthma or delirium in the
night. His bowels have been once moved. Continue
Viride to spine. Let him have a small mutton
chop. His appetite is craving. (Up to this period for
several days he had been taking beef tea and farinacea.)
April 15th.—The mutton chop has done him no good.
Again there is intestinal pain on pressure. He has
passed a restless night, and had two -small motions.
Prescribed: a dose of Castor Oil. Lach, and Coloc. in
ternally : Veratrum Viride compress to the whole belly.
April 16th—Pain less. Pulse 108. Gentle perspira
tion. Continue the Veratrum Viride compresses ooccasionally. Continue also Loch, and Coloc.
April 17th.—My patient is not getting on.
The
abdomen is like a drum, more or less sensitive all over.
For some days past I have been apprehensive of deepseated mischief; more particularly as he has always been
unable to button his waistcoat from a “ swelled feeling ”
about the bowels; and his eldest sister died of mesenteric
disease after measles. It seems too probable that the
�38
MESENTERIC DISEASE.
inflammations which I have successively combated, are
but the outworks of the same disease, which is now
throwing up fresh symptoms, and in their intractability
is showing its own deep and obstinate centre. I am
obliged to communicate my apprehensions to the parents,
who have indeed for some time past shared them; and
have always, as they inform me, contemplated the
probability of mesenteric disease in their little son.
To-day there is back-ache superadded to abdominal
pain. Pulse 108. I ordered Juglandin, from its mild,
deobstruent influence upon Ever, stomach, and bowels;
and Cod Liver Oil.
April 18th.—Pulse 120. There is an increase of ab
dominal pain and swelling. The pain on the right side
of the abdomen is short and breath-hindering. He is
to have compresses of Veratrum Viride, and a bath of
it: and for internal medicines, Juglandin and Leptandria.
April 19th.—Pulse 96. The abdominal swelling and
the pain are both greatly reduced. He can now bear
pressure. His tongue is cleaning, and he has had one
small motion. After the Veratrum Viride bath, he slept
from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., soundly and sweetly. He looks for
ward to the bath. Continue the bath and the compresses;
the Leptandria and Juglandin, and the Cod Liver Oil.
April 20th.—Master Tommy is up and about. His
skin is cool and perspiring, and he has no pain. He
enjoys the bath. He slept last night from half-past 10
to 7. His appetite is good, but he is to have only slops.
Continue the means diligently.
April 22nd.—Pulse 90. He is convalescent from the
present invasion emanating from his constitutional weak
ness. The spiritus morbi is there, no doubt, but e.anrimt,
act, because the existing materies morbi is dispersed.
His stomach is still high. He sleeps well all night, and
has had one. good motion; and he is going into the
�MESENTERIC DISEASE.
39
country to-morrow. Continue all the means; especially
the Veratrum Viride baths every night.
April 28th.—He came in from the country to see me
in Wimpole Street. His father and mother express their
astonishment, and cannot understand his case; remem
bering as they do, the similar symptoms, but different
issue, of their eldest daughter’s illness. He has now no
pain, and the abdomen is greatly reduced in size; and
we may evidently hope, by carefully watching its
dimensions as a meter of health, to effect a permanent
constitutional cure. His appetite is too good, especially
for bread and butter, which is one of the worst things
he can take, because the dry quantity of it tends to keep
up prolonged exercise of the abdominal functions, and to
fill the tissues with fluid. The liver is not acting quite
well, which perhaps depends on his change to the
country: the motions are light-coloured and hard: one
or two in the day. His prescription is, Silicea 12 every
morning: Leptandria 12 every night: Cod Liver Oil;
Veratrum Viride baths every second night for a week:
afterwards every third night.
Here for the present ends a case which ten days before
appeared to be almost hopeless.
The four remedies
used at last, and which decided the fate of the day: I
mean the Veratrum Viride baths, the Leptandria, Ju
glandin, and Cod Liver Oil, were each called up to the
field as necessity dictated; and I am sure that the com
bination helped each member of it. The case gives
happy hope of the circumscription and final extinction of
mesenteric disease, and shows at least how indefinite
time may be gained for the action of deep constitutional
remedies. But Master T. S. is still under treatment.
�40
EXTERNAL INJURIES.
XV.
Cases of External Injury.
In some cases of external injury, where time is of
great importance, as for instance, where the patient is a
public man, or a professional lady, the Veratrum Viride
is a valuable supplement to Arnica. Locally applied, it
has an undeniable power of abolishing traumatic inflam
mation.
Ihis is a vast convenience for surgery; and
also for medicine; for example, in such cases as peri
tonitis following penetrating wounds of the abdomen;
where the primary inflammation which supervenes is
fatal; and no time is left for the reparative process. In
such cases as these we should combat the inflammation
with lotions of Veratrum Virile^ and support strength
the meanwhile.
It is true I have had no formidable cases of the kind
to treat, but I reason up from the successful manage
ment of lesser injuries. In one case of hurt to the face,
and black eye, the consequence of a fall on the curbstone,
the disfigurement was so far gone in twenty-four hours
that an important appearance in public was made, with
no apology to a brilliant audience, and with the usual
eclat.
XVI.
Dec. 3, 1862, Walter Daws, a?t. 2, had a blow on
the face a month ago, which has caused a circumscribed
swelling, tense and very tender to the touch, on the
cheek bone. It is the result of a bruise of the pe
riosteum, and from the size and appearance of the
swelling, it seems probable that the bone has been
seriously injured, and that exfoliation might take place.
Arnica internally: Veratrum Virile to be painted all
over the tumour.
�EXTERNAL INJURIES.
41
Dec. 5.—Lump a little less.
Continue Veratrum
Viride, washing it off occasionally with a lead lotion.
Dec. 9.—Going on satisfactorily but slowly. Veratrum
Viride alone.
Dec. 24.—'The lump diminished.
Veratrum. Viride
locally.
Jan. 15, 1863, the lump less.
Fhrafr’wm Viride
locally; Plumbum n. 30, internally
Feb. 3.—Improving. Continue Veratrum Viride;
Sepia n. 30, internally.
Feb. 17.-—Langour, and stringy motions. No men
tion of the tumour. Pulsatilla in the day: Mcem’fe at
night.
March 11.—Tumour less. Eruption on the skin from
the Veratrum Viride. To have Sulphur 30 at night:
Mercurius Corrosivus lotion locally. I have not heard of
this patient since; but at the last date the effects of the
injury had well nigh vanished. Had I to treat the case
again, I should probably combine the Mercurius Corro
sivus with
Viride from the beginning; for the
effect of the former remedy on diseases of the bone and
periosteum, even in scrofulous subjects, is very striking.
In one child, I cured great enlargement of this nature
on the finger, and which proceeded to serious ulceration,
with lotions of Mercurius Corrosivus, and Cod Liver Oil
internally; such a case in my youth would assuredly have
gone on to the destruction of the finger, and rendered
its amputation inevitable. For this practice with the
Mercurius Corrosivus I am indebted to Mr. Moore, the
Veterinary surgeon, of Upper Berkeley-street. See the
admirable synopsis of cases which he has published from
time to time.
�42
SHINGLES.
XVII.
Shingles treated by Cantharides Lotions.
As these pages are mainly devoted to local treatment
as superadded to general treatment, I will now briefly
cite four cases which fall under the above heading.
1. Miss R. has an attack of shingles on the back
which yield rapidly to a weak lotion of Ace^m Cantharidis in water. I have no notes of the case, but a few
days terminated it; and there was very little suffering,
and no return of the disease.
2. Dr. P. has shingles on the knee. Two or three
applications of Aceftzm Cantharidis cured it, and no
further crop appeared. The stinging and pain were
reduced to nil by the lotion.
3. Feb. 13, 1864, Miss H. has shingles under the
collar bone, the groups extending across the chest and
to the opposite armpit. The symptoms not urgent or
distressing. Rhus prescribed. The next day an amount
of inflammation and stinging almost maddening occurred.
Acetum Cantharidis lotion prescribed, which killed the
eruption, affording immediate relief. In a few days the
complaint was abolished. The words are decisive, but
they correspond to the facts.
4. Feb. 26, 1864, D. —, Esq., has an unmistakable
crop of shingles on the body. Cantharides lotion exter
nally. Cantharides and Hydrastin internally.
Feb. 27.—The eruption withered.
No suffering.
Continue Cantharides., &c.
March 1.—Well.
These are strikingly homoeopathic results; and the local
application is itself additionally homoeopathic. In the
cases thus treated, the cutting pains, which are often so
persistent and even torturing long after the disease has
disappeared, have no place.
�CELLULITIS.
43
XVIII.
Cellulitus, including Pelvic Cellulitis, its Specific and
General Treatment.
There is an excellent article by Dr. MacLimont, on
“Pelvic Cellulitis,” in The British Journal of Homoeopathy,
Vol. xx., pp. 288-302. In this article, Pelvic Cellulitis,
is defined as, Phlegmonous Inflammation of the Cellular
tissue within the folds of the peritoneum or broad ligaments
of the uterus. Adopting this definition, on which I would
only remark that such inflammation may attack other
parts of the cellular tissue in the pelvis, as for instance
the cellular lanugo which surrounds and embeds the
rectum and connects it to the vagina—but adopting this
definition,—then I would further define general Cellulitis
as inflammation of the cellular tissue in any part of the
body. I am about to cite a case in which Cellulitis was
present from an early period of life, in various parts, and
ultimately in the pelvis; and which appears to be a case
of hope for the treatment of this terrible disease.
Dr. MacLimont says: “Itis somewhat remarkable that
so very frequent and formidable an affection as inflam mation of the cellular tissue of the female pelvis should,
to so great an extent, have been almost completely over
looked by authors on diseases of women.
“It cannot be that this is a new disease, or one be
coming more frequent in all classes of society. Why is
it then, that it is only within the last few years that any
detailed and satisfactory information has appeared of so
distressing, and often fatal a disease, and one, too, of
almost daily occurrence?
“ The reason is, that up to a comparatively recent date,
accoucheurs, both English and Foreign, were wont to
regard the very striking group of symptoms constituting
pelvic cellulitis as so many indications of metritis, peri
�44
CELLULITIS.
tonitis, phlegmasia dolens, &c., whilst those not very
unfrequent cases occurring in the non-puerperal, or even
single state, were too generally referred to cystatis, fibrous
tumour of the uterus, abscess of the rectum, hip-joint dis
ease, mesenteric tuberculosis, ulceration of the cervix, &c.”
This is true; but the Dr. does not inform us why
accoucheurs were thu9 “ wont./’ Great overlookings
of facts generally have interesting reasons. One reason
of the blindness now in question is, that science, among
its many tendencies to disease, has also the tendency to
false definiteness, and to denial of circumambient facts.
Anatomical science begins and is constituted in the clear
ing away first of skin, and next of cellular tissue. And
yet cellular tissue is as universal a high road as the
nerves themselves; and, moreover, a universally con
tinuous expense. It is to the body what space is to the
world, the tension or firmament in which all the organs
are set. Nay, it is in all the organs, and constitutes
everything that they are. And yet science, intent upon
organs, overlooks the material of which they are made;
and by which they are connected, compacted, and asso
ciated in a material sense. As though Astronomy should
deny the stellar interspaces, their imponderable world, the
body of the ether, and the intercourse of the systems.
This is much the same disease in science that has mani
fested itself in history; a few heads and organs of govern
ments, and their lives and acts, have occupied all the
attention due to the life and progress of the peoples; so
in Pathological Science, a few organs have monopolized
the regard due to the universal movements, inspirations,
currents and relationships of the body; and the cellular
tissue which is their channel and their home.
Now among general diseases, of which I. am persuaded
there are troops unrecognized, is this very disease of
Cellulitis; of inflammation of the cellular tissue in the
body, and in any part of the body: a disease which is to
�CELLULITIS.
45
the cellular tissues somewhat as erysipelas is to the skin;
and which like erysipelas may be firmly localized; or
may be fugacious, and wander from part to part; often
leading to suppuration, perhaps in important organs.
When I look back from the teachings of recent expe
rience through a practice of thirty years, I remember
many cases which probably were examples of the disease
in question; but which were regarded as tuberculosis,
complications of pneumonia, bronchitis, pleurisy, and
the various internal inflammations and decays of parti
cular organs. I recollect a family of children who were
carried off by this disease. Of these cases I have no
notes; nor was there great encouragement at the time
to take notes. The chief features in these young persons,
who died from 12 to 16 or 17, was, cellular swellings
in the extremities—inflammation of the subcutaneous
tissues; general feebleness of health; and tendency to
inflammatory colds about the chest; defect of nutrition,
and of sleep; and constant general malaise; then after a
year or two inflammation in the chest-cavity, rapidly
flying from part to part: a kind of smouldering com
bustion which no sooner ceased than it began again in
the same or other parts; and was attended with all the
signs of suppuration; and sometimes with the expectora
tion of pus. The disease also wandered in the stomach
and bowels, and in the abdominal organs; but was less
local than the inflammation of organs, and less rapidly
destructive. . Treatment, from the old points of view,
seemed hopeless.
For at that time I was scarcely aware of the exist
ence of these general diseases in the interior of the
body; and therefore I only applied to the symp
toms specific treatment, and failed to cure, and often
failed to relieve.
Now, however, I know that one
practical fruit of the recognition of such general or cor
poreal diseases, in contradistinction to governmental or
�46
CELLULITIS
organ-diseases, is, the adoption of general measures of
relief, especially applied to the universal skin, which is
the proximate surface of the cellular tissue; the indicator
and regulator of the universal nervous system; and the
medium between the organic and the cellular man.
There are no doubt specifies too for this general disease;
but they will not readily cure without the adoption of
general applications through the instrumentality of the
skin.
In the family just alluded to, there was one singular
exception to the fatal result. The father had died of heart
disease; and one son inherited the same complaint. It
was valvular disease attended with loud regurgitation
sounds-. He had sleepless nights terrible with appre
hension. Once or twice a week he spat up from the
lungs a ball of pellucid tough matter about the size
of a small marble, almost like an uncooked fish’s eye.
His life declined, and sleep was postponed to a later
and later hour in the weary nights.
Pulse about
sixty. Anasarca beginning slowly in the legs gradually
mounted up until he could no longer go to bed, but sat
in his chair all night with his legs and abdomen like hard
boards. For dropsical swellings of the abdomen set in; and
hydrothorax supervened. Just at this time Dr. Rutherfurd Russell introduced the poison of the Cobra (Naja
Tripudians) as a remedy in heart complaints. E. W.,
my dying boy, had it. For the first few days no change,
except that he slept at 11 at night instead of 2 or 3.
Earliness of rest increased upon him. One by one every
symptom disappeared under the action of this single
medicament; and in a few months he was well; and ever
since he has been an upholsterer’s man, and has not
shirked the heavy porterage which belongs to that occu
pation. A remarkable result, when we remember that
his father died of heart disease; and that his brothers
and sisters perished of a decay which seemed to be
deeply present in the family constitution.
�CELLULITIS.
47
But was not his case also cellulitis in some central and
typical sting: not the coils of the serpent crushing the
body, but the unique fang emptied into the heart-valves ?
However this may be, had I to treat the case again, I
should early have used Veratrum Viride baths as a gen
eral antidote, without neglecting the specific Cobra which
stung the sting, and ultimately cured the disorder.
Before proceeding to more immediately practical re
sults, I would specially indicate that cellulitis, besides that
it may belong as a tendency to the universal cellular tissue,
may have a centre of localised mischief in any organ of
the body; and if it pursues its ravages, and travels with
its inflammation and swelling over the more superficial
*
regions, and can be detected through the skin, it also
tends, telegraphically and sympathetically, to invade the
interior of important organs, dwelling in their cellular
parenchyma.
In the case of J. B., Esq., recorded above (see page
34), disease of the heart and cellular abscesses on a large
scale; also cellular swellings in the inguinal and scrotal
regions, were connected with each other; no doubt by
continuity of tissue, and sympathy of structure. The
external swellings were the first symtoms that were
complained of in this case. And in angina pectoris, and
diseases of the coronary arteries, huge cellular indu
rations of the body take place: immense breadth of
shoulders, great board-like expanse of belly; limbs big
as anasarca; filled also with serum; but inflammatory
* Among travelling maladies we note that lesions also travel : as
though the contrecoup could display itself days and weeks after the
injury. I have seen a case of injury to the shoulder, and dislocation,
accompanied by black ecchymosis, travel in this manner: the black
and yellow expanse was some weeks in making its way over parts of
the arm as far as the elbow, which were perfectly normal in colour long
after the concussion. It was like an internal cellular purpura propa
gated from the spot originally injured.
�48
CELLULITIS.
serum in inflamed and hardened cellular tissue. At
whichever end the mischief takes place, there is reason to
suppose that a travelling cellulitis is in its origin and its
propagation: a disease always to be treated where it is
practicable by general measures through the skin.
I met with the remark in one of Mr. Skelton’s books,
*
that disease is only obstruction. Without making a rule
of it, what truth there is in his observation. Y et anatomy
and physiology have hitherto obscured, not illustrated,
the amount of truth. Looking at the channels and tubes
of the body, science has regarded life as a traveller on the
roads. Whereas life here is the roads as well as all the
passengers thereupon. And the roads are movements. So
life flows on in its microcosmal oceans, not through the
trees of nerves, arteries, veins, and ducts, which are but
its rivers, but over and above all through the expanses
of the man. Columns of pressure, and currents of fluids,
and volumes of influences, pass down, and through, and
across the body, not with anatomical, but with emotional
breadth: with the whole heart on the move, not merely
with the pulsatile artery. Life, too, can begin a column
of movement from any centre. But this is a rule:—
wherever any moving column is established, to obstruct
the lower part of it, is to paralyse for the time the whole
movement, and in sensitive subjects, to incapacitate the
man. Constipation in certain cases affords an evidence
of this: in sensitives to this complaint (of which one
every now and then meets with sad specirtiens), the mere
sense of stoppage mounts to the brain, and produces
sometimes acute suffering, and often general incom
petence. In asthma also, where the respiratory column
is impeded, the deep sense of stoppage causes windows
to be thrown open to make evidence of air. And it is
surprising how small a gratification of the sense and
* Family Aledical Adviser, by John Skelton, Sen., Lecturer and
Professor of Medicine, 105, Great Russell Street, 1861.
�49
CELLULITIS.
want of outflow will satisfy the requirements of nature,
and give ease to a patient.
A lady suffering from asthma asked me some time,
since, how it was that during a paroxysm a teaspoonful
of gin and water would occasionally produce a slight per
spiration, and with it an immediate relief to the distressing
symptoms. I answered, that the smallest symptom of
perspiration betokens an entire change in the deter
mination and direction of the fluids within the body.
For when the skin is locked up, the current of the
general life, which tends to surround every one of us
with his own effluences, is shut off at the surface, and
reversed within the body; and being reversed, it tends
back to its sources, and hinders and shocks their flow.
The re-instatement of the right direction—the conversion
of the fluids from the error of their ways—is, therefore,
all that is required in the first instance to the comfortable sense of life within the frame. And a mere indi
cation, a slight perspiration, will effect this marvellous
ciange; polarizing the whole of the given column of
fluids toward outward action, which is the very opposite
of inward obstruction.
These are not scientific, but they are healing truths,
attested in every-day practice, and tending to important
practical considerations: there are millions of such truths
within the same sphere of observation: they in no way
impugn physiological truths founded upon anatomy; but
they imbed them as the cellular tissue imbeds the
definite organs; and prepare them to be covered in by
the skin of the general observation and bodily conscious
ness of poor suffering humanity.
4
�50
CELLULITIS.
XIX.
Case of General and Local Cellulitis.
About Christmas, 1860,1 was called to see Miss E. S.,
and found her suffering from acute local and hysterical
disorder. There was evident inflammation in the pelvic
cavity, and great general excitement. I learned that
she had recently undergone an examination with the
speculum, and had been in torture ever since. The
hysterical symptoms often amounted to catalepsy. Her
voice was gone, and continued in abeyance for four
months.
I attended this lady almost daily for three years, and
I am thankful to say she is now well. Her case is so
remarkable that I will make an abstract of her own state
ment of it which she has drawn up for my use.
Her health since childhood has been poor. At 3
years old she had typhus, which left behind it a swelled
throat. At 12 she was thought to be in consumption;
for which she was bled, blistered, and leeched : fourteen
blisters for twenty-four hours each in one year. Sea air
removed the cough, and till 17 her health was better.
Then inflammation of the chest—bleeding, blistering,
and leeches. On returning home into Rutland she was
greatly afflicted with abscesses, which were treated by
leeches, poultices, the lancet. Her right arm was con
stantly in a sling. When that recovered she suffered
in the same manner from her throat, which was twice
cut: then the right side swelled very much, and the right
leg dragged in walking. At 21 severe scarlatina; and
after that no use in the right leg; its muscles were con
tracted ; she could not put it to the ground. One physi
cian pronounced her a cripple for life. Sir C. Clarke
considered the spine affected, and ordered her to keep
her couch.
After nearly ten years of lameness, and
�CELLULITIS.
51
entire confinement during the winter months to bed and
couch, and after having lost her voice for nine months,
she placed herself under the care of Dr. Jephson, of
Leamington, who salivated her. He succeeded in re
storing her voice, but it soon left again. During this
time she had inflammation of the bowels, for which he
applied forty leeches. “ After a year under his kind
care, she threw away her crutches, and was quite strong.”
He considered the complaint to be “ chronic inflammation
of the mucous membrane with nervous susceptibility and
irritation of the womb.” In 1849, she had a fall, which
bruised the hip and side, and shook her internally; and
taking a long journey soon afterwards, she became pros
trate, no food would digest, the effort to take it caused
fainting; her limbs were stiff and cold, and the right leg
so exquisitely tender that it had to be wrapped up in
cotton wool. She kept bed for two months. Blisters
and galvanism were tried: tonics restored her; and she
was able to resume her arduous duties as companion
to an epileptic lady who was mentally afflicted. In
1852, she was again prostrate, and under the care of
Dr. Marsden, at Malvern, for ulcers of the womb, which
he considered were occasioned by the fall. He applied
caustic, which caused great irritation and inflammation
of the spine, with spasms, and palpitations, and entire loss
of the use of the right leg. Dr. Russell was now consulted,
and wisely ordered mesmerism, which enabled her in a
few months to return to her duties at Leamington. Until
1860, she was able to be actively employed, but suffered
from a bad spasmodic cough in the winter.
On Sept. 7, 1860, she left home for Leamington with
a bad cough, and shortly afterwards passed a long tape
worm, and the cough was relieved; but she was unable
to move in consequence of the pain in the spine and leg.
She was attended and examined by Dr. S. and Mr. P.,
who found induration from piles and enlargement of one
*
4
�52
CELLULITIS.
ovary. Spasms and twitchings of the limbs were fre
quent, and continued till they caused exhaustion. She
came up to London, and the same mesmerism was
again tried, but now it only aggravated the spasmodic
jerking of the limbs. She was examined with the
speculum by Mr. L., which caused her great suffering,
and to use her own words six months ago, she has “ had
internal abscesses ever since. He made the discovery that
it was inflammation of the ovary.” After “intense
suffering, loss of voice for four months, and great pros
tration,” she called me in. I attended her at first in
conjunction with Dr. Pattison, and had the benefit of his
counsel from time to time, whenever local mischief was
urgent, or local irritation ran high.
And now the history of three years can be easily con
densed. The symptoms, which sometimes became in
tense, sometimes declined towards ease if not towards
health, were large and simple. In the first-place the
change of life was being transacted. There was evident
hysteria of a poignant character depending upon most
acute causes. The slightest jar produced an agony; a
little walk at the best of times was followed by an aggra
vation; the shaking of a carriage has more than once
consigned her to her couch for months. The nights
were alarmingly sleepless for these years; and, what
evidently produced the rest of the symptoms, there was
some travelling lesion appearing hi part after part of
the body, and leaving no part unvisited but the head
itself. This lesion was accompanied by evident swellings.
From time to time, there was great swelling over the
region of the womb and ovaries; great swelling about
the hips; swelling almost like lumbar abscess; swelling
of the upper part of the abdomen just under the stomach ;
great swelling of one breast, while the other remained
small; swelling as of anasarca of the limbs—sometimes
of one for weeks, and then of the other. In short, there
�CELLULITIS.
53
was a travelling tumefaction, which seemed to involve
some terrible mischief to one organ after another, as it
passed across their several orbits. Many times did it
appear as if the swelling must burst, internally or exter
nally; and often had the clothes to be adjusted to the
altered shape of the person. The pain, meanwhile, was
that of acute inflammation in its various stages; and,
from the constant element of spinal irritation inter
mingled, the burning was often not less than agonizing,
for long periods together; and, from the beginning of my
attendance, there were abscesses which burst in the
vagina, and, wherever they were situated, discharged
their contents by that passage. After severe attacks of
pelvic inflammation, fresh discharges took place—some
times of pus, sometimes of cores intermingled. These
attacks would last for weeks, and were accompanied by
great swellings, generally of all the accustomed parts on
the left side; e.y., the whole left leg, which once, as the
patient says, “became nearly the size of her body;” of
the whole left abdomen, internally; of the left breast, and
of the left arm. It was clear that there were volcanoes
of inflammation forming ever and anon in the universal
cellular tissue, and sometimes gaining an outlet for their
destructions by the vagina. The bowels were constantly
confined, though I never suffered them to remain so;
but if the homoeopathic deobstruents failed I used castor
oil, injections, or any other means that were necessary.
The state of the limbs was peculiar: for months the
right leg was drawn up, as in hip-disease; the heel could
not be brought to the ground, and any attempt to alter
the habitual position of the limb was agonizing, and led,
that night and the next days, to fresh cellular inflammations. These inflammations generally took place with
rapidity: a few hours sufficed to develop a swelling,
which it required weeks to disperse.
There was
never, however, any redness of the skin, though it
�54
CELLULITIS.
sometimes grew very thin under the increase of the
expansion.
The voice was generally lost when the suffering was
great; but I was almost always enabled to restore it by
breathing upon the larynx for one or two minutes.
There were frequent cataleptic attacks, one of them like
apparent death, during a severe exacerbation of the cellu
litis. The capacity for pain, owing to the spinal and
hysterical basis on which the inflammation was laid, was
extraordinary; but my patient has a mind of impertur
bable cheerfulness, great courage and faith, and a hope
which hopes in subordination, but not dictatorially.
Owing to her inward vitality, the psychical circumstances
were all in her favour.
As the case proceeded, our prospects did not improve.
Air and exercise would have done good, but they broke
the thin crust of health, and the smouldering cellulitis
was underneath: change of air, for the same reason, was
worse than useless, from the shaking of the journey.
About April, 1863, an event occurred which filled me
with apprehension, and from the consequences of which
I saw no escape. In the course of the abscesses, inflam
mation and sloughing occurred between the vagina
and the rectum, and portions of the fasces came with
every motion through the orifice, and passed out by the
vagina. Warm water injections, with Coxeter’s admi
rable syringe, were sedulously used, to render this state
of things tolerable. I communicated to the family that
a lesion had occurred, which might be expected to in
crease, and which might render life a burden, and almost
complete rest inevitable. At this time, the rectum was
the subject of intense distress; the cellulitis was no doubt
in it; and recent haemorrhoids, causing obstruction and
suffering, were superadded. For years previously, “the
action of the bowels had always caused great pain: ” now
the suffering was intense.
�CELLULITIS.
55
The last stroke of calamity which I have described—
this fistulous ulceration—was a fortunate thing for my
patient: it led to what I hope will prove a permanent
cure.
A few months previously, I had read Dr.
MacLimont’s extremely valuable article on Pelvic
Cellulitis, and had understood Miss S.’s case far
better for the reading of it. And now, in view of the
hemorrhoidal complication, and the great inflammatory
swamp surrounding and threatening the vagina and the
rectum and their continuations and cellular beds, I re
collected a passage in Dr. Grover Coe’s work on Concen
trated Organic Medicines, which was first brought to my
knowledge by my dear friend, Dr. Le Gay Brereton, of
Sydney, and which runs as follows :—
“ But the most remarkable influences of the Collinsonin
are observable in haemorrhoids and other diseases of the
rectum.
The most inveterate and chronic cases are
relieved, and frequently cured, by means of this remedy
alone. It should be given in large doses at first, say
five grains, and repeated every two hours, in severe
cases, until the system is brought under its influence
and the symptoms controlled, and then continued in
average doses, three or four times a day, until the dis
ease is eradicated. We have known it to act promptly
in suppressing hseniorrhage from the bowels, and in re
lieving those distressing pains characteristic of hemor
rhoidal affections. It is a valuable constitutional remedy
in many affections, and its persevering use seldom fails
to benefit the general health. It increases the appetite,
and promotes digestion and assimilation.”
And this acknowledgment of the great benefit I have
received from others, will lead appropriately to the
treatment which was adopted in this case.
Rest, as complete as possible, was a necessity for
nearly three years: the patient reclined upon an invalid
couch. As I said before, whenever rest was far infringed,
�56
CELLULITIS.
even by carriage exercise, fresh inflammations, swellings,
and sloughs, were the result in a few days or hours.
Miss S. did indeed usually sit up to her meals, but it
was at the cost of considerable suffering. Dr. Pattison
insisted upon entire repose ; and I prescribed a little
movement, that she might not lose the use of her limbs,
and the functional activity which the limbs excite: and
between us both she oscillated as well as she could.
From a very early period it was found that all shocks
of every description did mischief. Some stimulating
drops (Liq. Amm. Fortiss., tfc.) applied to the spine to
provoke counter-irritation, caused Tetanic spasms, and
prolonged alarming faintings; and loss of voice was
always left behind, besides generally increased stiffness
of some part of the body, or the limbs. The tissues
were evidently so sympathetic, so poorly innervated, and
so friable, that any tension sprained and broke them, and
left a rapid nervous inflammation to consume the injured
parts. We soon discovered that letting the patient alone
was indispensable to her safety.
It was easy to look back through the leechings, and
blisterings, and bleedings, and to know the woeful part
they had played in breaking the bruised reed. It was
also at last obvious to conclude, that the various doctors
had treated special organs, without recognizing the
general cellulitis, which, as a disease, and as a tendency,
lay at the basis of all the exacerbations of the case. It was
not, however, easy to devise anything more for this
hyper-sensitive patient than juclicious expectancy,—
leaving her alone, with occasional reserves of general
common sense. Opiates and hot fomentations when the
pain was unbearable; injections and Castor Oil when the
bowels needed it (and it was never expedient to allow
anything approaching to constipation); wine, and stimulants, and good living,—these were necessities which
enabled her to endure and to live. What more ?
�CELLULITIS.
57
When I saw her first she had tried Allopathy and
Homoeopathy, each for many years; and had traversed
several great belts of illness, and between them had
passed through periods of comparative health. We
might, therefore, hope, especially after the critical age
was past, that the disease would wear itself out again,
and a respite of years be given. I therefore did my best
to combat one distressing complication after another, as
it arose; and she also had courses of Sulphur, Calcarea,
Silicea, Hepar Sulphuris, and the other profound medi
cines which in so many cases work good by apply
ing themselves to the foundations of constitutional
disease. Aconite, Bryonia, Belladonna, Lachesis, Arseni
cum, Arnica, Granatum, Hydrastis, and numerous other
medicines in all dilutions low and high, were adminis
tered as they seemed to be called for. Veratrum Viride,
also, from an early period of my treatment, according
to Dr. Maclimont’s suggestion (but long before I read
his Essay), had been given internally, to combat the
successive inflammations; and all this, with more or less
good effect, but with no comprehensive curative result.
In short, after using all the means I knew, I had miti
gated my patient’s sufferings, and relieved her symptoms
one by one; but the attacks of the complaint were in
creasing, and the deep disease itself derided my efforts.
It was now that I found and tried the Collinsonia
Canadensis, a remedy to which I was led entirely by the
disease of the rectum, vagina, and the expanse of
tissues in which these organisms lie. For the erethism,
spasms, violent cough, and sleeplessness, which accom
panied the progress of destruction, I found Hyoscyamus
in narcotic doses very useful; I had frequently employed
it before under similar emergencies. Now, then, she
took these two remedies, the Hyoscyamus at night, and
the Collinsonia n. 3 at intervals during the twenty-four
hours. As soon as ever she began the Collinsonia, to
�58
CELLULITIS.
use her own phrase, it “ acted in a most marked manner
upon the skin and muscles. During all her previous
illnesses, she had never had any perspiration; but now
the drops were continually standing on her forehead.”
By June, 1863, her size was greatly diminished; the
bulging tracts of hip, and loin, and hypochondrium were
subsiding towards the natural level; and, marvellous to
say, the foeces occasionally made no passage through the
recto-vaginal ulceration.
Continuing the Collinsonia
daily, she was able to walk about without being injured
by exercise. Improvement continued till the 9th of
August, when a cab-drive shook her, and brought on
internal suffering; great swelling of the left side took
place, and the old tracts of cellular and other tissues
were charged with the contents of inflammation. There
was difficulty of passing water, and the urine was scant
and high-coloured. Her spirits were depressed.
August 28th.—I recommended her for the first time
hot slipper-baths, medicated with Veratrum, Viride; and
almost at once immense relief was experienced. To use
her own words, “ the muscles of the right leg were soon
set at liberty; and for the first time for three years she
could really put her heel to the ground, and in a little
time walk without a stick.” The swelling subsided. The
action of the bowels became regular and complete. The
ulceration between the bowel and the vagina closed of its own
accord; and has given no trouble since. This result has,
I confess, surprised me; and I must doubt whether there
are many more happy issues in the history of ordinary
medicine.
September 30th.—She could “walk a mile without
her stick, with great enjoyment.”
October 1st.—The general health is good, and the
step elastic; though she still suffers much at night.
She has entirely given up her couch in the day, and is
able to employ her time thoroughly. She still continues
�CELLULITIS.
59
the Veratrum Viride baths twice a week, and the
Collinsonia persistently.
It is not long since I received from her the following
letter, which continues her state, and shows her thank
fulness :—
“ March 20th, 1864.
“My dear Doctor,
“ I have had no return of internal ailments for the last
three months, only symptoms of what I have suffered in
the continual passing of what appears to be the cores of
the abscesses. Since the large swelling subsided in my
side and body from the use of your medicated bath, I
have had my throat, glands, and left elbow much
swollen, but I am thankful to say the Feratfrwm Viride
has dispersed the ailments. For some weeks during the
severe winter my knees have been very stiff and painful
from rheumatism. You have relieved them entirely by
Collinsonia; the effect of this is very peculiar, for
whilst I am taking it the pain goes from the affected
part; but gives a comfortable glowing sensation at the
roots of the hair, which gets quite crisp. I have at this
present time no aches, no pains. I walked nearly five
miles yesterday, and have been twice to church to-day;
and the joy and gratitude I feel I cannot describe. In
stead of sleepless painful nights, I enjoy calm refreshing
sleep, and rise in the morning ready for any work or
walk that comes before me—(‘Bless the Lord 0 my
soul, and forget not all His benefits.’) That our good
God may bless your skill and watchfulness to many
others, whose lives have been despaired of, is the prayer
of your ever grateful patient,
“E------ S--------.
“4, St. Leonard’s Terrace, Maida Hill, West.”
The last time I saw her medically was on March 30th,
when she was suffering from indigestion, and deficient
�60
CELLULITIS.
action of the liver. These symptoms were speedily re
lieved by Pulsatilla n. 12.
On that occasion she reported some circumstances
which were interesting, as connected with a drug so
little known as the Collinsonia Canadensis.
She re
ported that she had left off the Collinsonia for some
little time; and that since leaving it off, her “ hair felt
so limp as if she could do nothing with it.” She also
felt an achy coldness about the head, whereas before she
felt “ a comfortable glow enlivening at the roots of the
hair; the hair was also crisp, curly, and growing;” and
under the same medicinal influence the hair from grey
has been becoming black. While taking the Collinsonia
Canadensis she “ feels as if all the muscles have more
vigour; a lightness of body, as if she is fit for any
thing.”
After the Pulsatilla was finished, I prescribed the con
tinuation of Collinsonia, 30 and 12. Now, these high
dilutions of the medicine have a most penetrating effect,
extending their power over the whole organism. If any
one doubts it, let him doubt after a fair trial, and then I
will love his doubt.
This lady is now well: thank God. Three serious
questions occur:—1. Seeing that she has had intervals
of health before, will she now remain well ? Can she be
said to be cured ? I believe she will remain well, and
that she is cured, because the result, for the first time in
the history of her cases, is due to specific treatment,
which has been discovered for her particular case; and
also to general treatment answering to specific.
If
the complaint recurs, Veratrum Viride and Collinsonia
Canadensis may fairly be expected to extinguish it
at once. 2. How do I know that the Collinsonia
was the specific, and did the work ? Reader, did
you ever shoot a bird, and know at once you had shot
it, without having any ground for the knowledge
�CELLULITIS.
61
but its own intrinsic assurance ? The evidence was
irresistible, but can hardly be conveyed. The other
drugs I had tried struggled with the disease, and
succumbed to it: the disease crouched from the first
moment before this one, and melted into nothingness.
The whole life was altered: there was a consciousness of
health coming from afar, but surely coming—the advanced
pickets of it were already on the spot in the very first
dose of the Collinsonia.
But the Cellulitis returned after the cab-shaking of the
9th of August. Yes: and it may return again, in its begin
ning, under any imprudence, until the organism forgets the
habit of it. But there was one reason then, which there
will not be again: the tissues, infarcted and confarcted
for years, were loaded with effete materials, and the
Collinsonia, after having slain the present monster, found
before it an unliftable load of his former exuviae and
slough-skins. These could still be a seed of mischief,
and a multiform root of destructions.
The Veratrum
Viride was needed to disperse them, which it did by
aggrandizing sweats to the uttermost; by increasing the
power of the absorbents enormously; and by thus dimi
nishing the bulk and packing around old “cores,” it
allowed them to seek an outlet, and to drop from the
organization. It also destroyed the capacity for inflam
mation in the tissues, and rendered them incombustible
—as the whole course of these pages has shown that this
drug does. 3. Is the Collinsonia a specific for Cellulitis
in other cases? This question can only be answered
after an extended experience. I was led to it by its
patness to the attack on the rectum and to the haemor
rhoids ; and in cases similarly complicated, I should have
great confidence in its specific powers. But then, on
the other hand, these symptoms were of such late deve
lopment, that they seem to form no part of the ground
work of the disease; and therefore it may be, that the
�62
ERUPTIVE FEVER.
Collinsonia is really the remedy for many forms of
Cellulitis. The sceptical part of us will again suggest
that the Veratrum Viride was equally a specific in this
instance. I do not, however, see anything in its known
action, hitherto, to account for its cure of the recto
vaginal fissure, which was nearly obliterated before the
Veratrum Viride baths were employed.
XX.
Eruptive Fever, with threatened Paralysis of the Brain.
On the 1st of this May, I was called to see Miss R.,
a young lady from the Midland Counties, on a visit in
my neighbourhood, and found her with a flushed and
spotted face, and complaining of some pain in the back,
for which symptoms I prescribed Bryonia and Mer
curius.
May 2, at seven in the morning, an urgent message
summoned me to her at once. She had alarmed her
sister and the family by several fainting fits during the
night. When I arrived, she was labouring under strong
excitement, apparently hysterical. Her face was red
and swollen with a continuous eruption; and small
pimples, which created no great irritation, were thickly
dotted over the chest. The pain in the small of the
back was worse. I ordered her to continue the Bryonia
and Mercurius, and to have Ignatia occasionally if the
faintings returned.
At 30 p.m. I saw her again, and found her symptoms
*
aggravated. Her pulse was fluttering, and 110. Occa
sionally she lost her voice; at other times she could not
speak plain, so as to be understood. Her manner was
hurried and excitable, and I could not command her
silence. She complained of an electric feeling in the
limbs. The pain had left her back, and the face was less
�ERUPTIVE FEVER.
63
swelled; but the eruption extended now all over the
body, and was not unlike measles in appearance. She
had considerable cough. I prescribed Rhus and Phos
phorus, and Veratrum Viride lotions to the forehead.
For support—chicken-broth, mutton-broth, brandy, and
wine-and-water.
May 3rd, 11.10 a.m.—I was unable to see her last even
ing, having a call into the country. Now, when I paid
my visit, I found she had been alarmingly ill all night.
Pulse 100, very weak—nay, almost gone. The eruption
on the face was raised and scarlet. She had low, mutter
ing delirium. The prostration was utter, and her hands
and arms fell about as if completely paralysed. Cough
bad, and sore throat superadded. She had had no sleep.
Occasionally she could be roused to temporary conscious
ness, and then she said she was better. Her friend who was
with her was anxious to have Father A. in the house, to
administer the last sacraments, and I could not say that
such a measure might not be urgent, for, indeed, she seemed
to be dying. I prescribed Belladonna, Stramonium, and
ffisemewn, in alternation, at half-hour intervals; and
ordered a cap of Veratrum Viride lotion, covered in with
gutta percha tissue, and kept tightly on the head, to the
whole brain: the hair to be shortened sufficiently to
admit of its close application.
At 3^ p.m., I found her revived and sensible, though
she still spoke with morbid velocity, and would not hold
her tongue. The head, however, was decidedly relieved;
pulse 100. I found that the Veratrum Viride cloths had
not been applied, but the remaining hair had been wetted
with it, and gutta percha tissue superposed; now, however,
I had the cloths carefully applied. The extreme collapse
was lessened; she was sick and had some epigastric pain;
the tongue furred, but not fleshy. She had taken sherryand-water and beef-tea, frequently. To continue the
medicines at the same intervals. To the Veratrum Viride
�64
ERUPTIVE FEVER.
brain-lotions, I added some tincture of Keith’s Oil of
Capsicum—an invaluable local remedy, where stimulation
is required.
At 9 p.m. I found her more composed than she was by
the Report last night, but less so than she had been at my
last visit; pulse 102. Her answers were quite rational,but
the speech sometimes sharp and splintery. She had
passed no urine since 3 o’clock in the morning, but had
had one good motion. There was no prostration, but
constant sickness. The eyes were suffused, the skin hot,
but the palms moist. Continue the local and internal
medicines. Give Ipecacuanha occasionally, for sickness.
May 4th, 9^ a.m.—Pulse 96‘8. She is comparatively
calm and composed this morning, and the threatened
paralysis of the brain has passed. Her pose in bed is
good, and she can use her arms. The sickness left her
at half-past eleven last night. Her tongue is now clear
ing. The eruption is continuously red on the face, and
smooth there; but dotted, perseminated, and raised all over
the body, and even on the fingers. It is not, how
ever, very thick. The urine is now normal; and the
cough better; but the sputa are thick and suspiciouslooking, and sink in water. Her talkativeness is still
controlled with difficulty. She had small snatches of
sleep in the night, with talking in it; and two sleeps of
half-an-hour each. She feels the tingling of the Cap
sicum over her head and neck. Continue all the means;
the internal medicines, however, at longer intervals.
4 p.m.—Pulse 96. Copious tubercular-looking sputa.
Rale in right chest. Quite collected, and can sit up in
bed.
9.20 p.m.—Pulse 88. No hurry of manner. Continue
the medicines, but omit Veratrum Viride cap for a few
hours.
May 5th.—Pulse 72. Eruption lessening; calmer and
stronger. She had two hours’ good sleep in the night,
�ERUPTIVE FEVER.
65'
and many dreamy dozes. The expectoration is less.
Dulcamara and Calcarea Carbonica. To have some
under-done minced mutton-chop.
May 6th.—Pulse 80. The rash is still on the face;
sleep poor; cough and expectoration less; tongue, clean
ing. She felt better after her chop yestesday. She is
to take Cod Liver Oil, and continue the medicines, but
not the lotion.
May 7th.—A poor night, in consequence of swelled
face and abscess in the gums. Pulse 80. Continue.
May 8th.—Pulse 75. Seven hours’ sleep; occasional
hysterical laughing, which she does not remember after
wards. The suspicious expectoration gone, and replaced
by clear salivary spitting. She has a good appetite,
and was up for an hour last evening. This morning
she is writing notes, which I forbid; and has on her bed
Father Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sud, which she is
not to read. The eruption is still out on the face, but is
leaving the body; the tongue is healthily clean. Con
tinue Dulcamara and Calcarea Carbonica and Cod Liver
Oil.
May 9th.—The face peeling; pulse 72. A night’s
rest; functions regular; no cough or expectoration.
Continue.
May 11th.—Convalescent.
What part did Hysteria play in this case ? At first,
although there was an eruptive fever, I was inclined to
set down the nervous symptoms as purely hysterical. But
the attack on the brain, threatening paralysis, was too
alarming to be treated on that hypothesis alone. And
the anti-congestive Veratrum Viride., with the medicines,
produced instantaneous relief. Moreover, the subsequent
attack on the chest showed a travelling materies morbi of
a real bodily character. The fever was of that kind
which is sometimes called spurious scarlatina, and for
which Dulcamara is homoeopathic: during the progress
5
�66
of which, paralysis of the brain, or of the lungs, is some
times imminent.
And here I conclude these cases for the present, feeling
assured that the truly experimental reader will find in
them indications for a new and easy power of healing in
numerous diseases that have hitherto been fatal to kings
*
and poor people alike—from defect of the direct and
efficient ways and remedies which I now make known.
* Witness the deaths of the kings of Denmark and Wurtemberg,
from erysipelas, within these few months. I believe they might have
been alive now, and an iniquitous war have been postponed by a few
ounces of Veratrum Viride.
�Medical Freedom.
It is my intention from time to time to offer cases with
remarks, as an easy means of bringing new treatment
and occasional thoughts before the public.
The time is to come when general medical education
will surround my profession so closely, that its narrow
ness and exclusiveness, and its cliques, will give way
under the pressure of the public common sense; and no
authority will be left but the authority of facts. I
have a great hope in me to hasten that desirable time.
For it is evident that the simpler medical truth can
become—by medical truth understand truth in practice,
the only test of which is, success in practice—the more
enlightened public criticism must come upon the doctors,
and give them their degrees in every separate case. A
man’s or a woman’s repute will be his or her sole
authorization to practice. For instance, in the treat
ment of small-pox as I have now made it public, any
mother or grandmother may demand the remedies which
ensure the benefits recorded in the foregoing pages; and
if the doctor is not acquainted with them, and will not
employ them when pointed out, then such mother or
grandmother can take away his diploma in the case,
and either confer it upon herself, or provisionally upon
any other person whom she may appoint to conduct the
precious interests of the family health. There can be
no wise authority beyond her, or above her.
For competition will be the soul of success here, as it
*
5
�68
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
is in every other case. Given any field of nature or
experience to be explored, and all the faculties of man
are wanted for it; all the chances of birth are wanted
for it; all the gifts of God are wanted for it; all the
developments of time are wanted for it; all the freedom
of society is wanted for it; all absence of fear of man,
and fear for position, is wanted for it; all good genius
and good ambition is wanted for it; in short, numberless
men are wanted, each mind of them free, and original,
and inspired, as if there was nobody else in the world;
yet each instructed in his lower walks by the labours of
the rest; and all animated by a common faith in the
inevitable co-operation of good with good, and the ine
vitable consentaneousness of knowledge with knowledge,
though independence and freedom be the only law and
bond for each.
Free societies, free institutions will necessarily arise
out of this new medical humanity: order most punctilious
and most exacting will arise; but freedom will be the
king upon its throne.
But now we see the reverse of this, and health con
tracted and eclipsed in the prisons of medical establish
ment.
The maintenance of this present condition lies in the
Protection of Physic by the State. Continue this, and
an external and well-nigh irresistible aid is afforded to
the existing general condition of medical art and science,
as against anything which would considerably enlarge it;
still more, which would revolutionize it ever so benignly;
and, most of all, against anything which tends even
remotely to de-professionalize it, publicize it, and human
ize it. Continue this, and an art and science which depend
upon the natural truths of God, the capacities of nature,
and the genius of mankind, and which should be nourished
most intimately of all on the One Exemplar of Revelation,
and the fact of Redemption—that art and science are
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
69
commanded to eat the dry crusts of Parliament, instead
of the manna of Heaven, and the bread of the earth;
and lawyers and the magistracy stand with a ferule of
penalties to rap the knuckles and break the exploring
fingers of discoverers who dare to discover out of accord
with colleges, or who dare to discover at all if they are
not cloister-vowed, and cloister-bred. Out upon such
public insanity. Any other art, similarly narrowed,
would be similarly strangled. Engineering or chemistry,
in their existing condition in April, 1864, protected—or
what is the same thing—arrested by the State, would
stiffen into Chinese imitation, and their soul, which is
invention, would be lost; their worldly motive, which is
ambition, unbounded by other men’s power, would be
lost; and their huge sense of freedom, in which they
live and move and have their being, would be exchanged
for the degrading consciousness of the powdered head
and well-fitted livery of the State.
But medicine must be emancipated, and as the public,
directed by God, will have to do the work, I address my
medical life and thought to the public; and not specially
to the people in bonds.
Yet would I willingly calm the apprehensions of all
professional brethren.
1. Not a college, sect, or diploma will perish when
physic is free from State patronage and protection; that
is to say, unless public bodies choose to disband them
selves. The only power they will lose will be the power
of harming other bodies, or other people not of their way
of thinking. They will gain the power of emulating in
good works and open-mindedness all the useful people
whom they have called quacks, and imposters, and un
qualified practitioners, and who have been the moving
wheels of practice in all ages of the world. They will
gain the humanity of learning from the dog, when he
cures himself 'with grass, without practising the now
�70
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
ordinary ingratitude and inhumanity of kicking the dog
that is their teacher. They wiR sympathizingly learn
from the North American Indian, and the poor Hindoo,
the traditional healing virtues they have known since the
earliest ages; and their own old pharmacopeias will be
enriched, not then without acknowledgment, with the
sweet beginnings of simplicity, of nature, and of health.
Nay, the certainty is, that the existing colleges, owing
to the decrepitude of the public mind, always induced
by being protected, will be too enduring.
2. In the new time coming, when Parliament will no
longer prescribe a medical profession, and force the
British people to take the dose, the public will be more
apt than they are now to send for regular and collegesanctioned practitioners; provided the colleges give
themselves no airs, but compete fairly in the medical
race. For the colleges have the start, and can enter
the course with many chances of success; provided,
again, they can take to their hearts the new fact of
freedom, and love it as they ought.
At all events we may say it will be their own fault if
they are not the chief ministers at the public bedside.
This, however, will again depend upon the progress of
the art of healing; and institutionally upon other col
leges quite diverse from themselves coming upon the
scene, to enrich medicine, enflame competition and emu
lation, and extend the boundaries of that large kind
feeling which alone can melt away professional jealousy,
and which is the only climate in which all that is liberal
and humane can live.
But would I commit the lives of the community to the
possible intervention of uneducated men?
That, I
answer, is the very thing which has taken place at
present, and which I would invoke freedom to help me
to avoid. The education of the schools cannot fit men
for curing the diseases of their fellows; it is only one way
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of launching them towards professional, but not neces
sarily, healing life. A man of no Latin, no anatomy,
no physiology, is every now and then a good physician,
though he sit on the lowest forms of society. He is
educated for that use, though he cannot write his own
name. By freedom, bring him into rapport with the
light of learning, if you can ■ but at all events kill not
the Divine power which is in him of doing good, because
he is not educated up to your bench. Perhaps you are
confounding education, which is the accepted art of
making gentlemen, with that grander education, or leading
forth, which every man can have, and which consists in
giving him freedom and a career, that his original gifts
may be led forth by their own way, and his own way,
into each one’s promised land of a useful and associated
life. To confound these two educations were a mistake;
for the great physician, look you, may come in a beggar’s
guise. There are no uneducated men save the men that
cannot do their life-work. Their success in that gives
them their diploma of knowledge every day. And no
college can take it away from them. And none ought
to have the power of obscuring it, by insisting that it
shall be pasted over with an artificial document of State
paper.
Want of skill and want of care in medical practice
amount to so much unjustified death per annum; but
who supposes that state protection of physic can increase
the amount of skill in the medical community? The
State, it is true, can exact from everyone, that he or she
shall pass through a curriculum of preparatory studies
and hospital attendance, to fit him to enter upon practice.
But of the studies, many may be useless, except as ac
complishments. From the studies, many useful ones
may be left out, owing to the bigotry of the elders
The diploma may be sought as the shield of protection
to the doctor rather than as the shield of health to the
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
patient. Numerous men naturally qualified for medicine,
born doctors, may be, and are, shut out from their life
work, by the expense which confines the practice of
physic to the abler classes. All the State licentiates
leaning upon their diplomas, are apt from the very se
curity of their position to be mastered by a conceit in
which natural skill must languish. To be built up
against freedom, to be privileged, is to be built up
against nature; and gifts of God, which in this case are
given first in the heart, will be small where the receivers
of them deny the exercise of them to their fellows. To
be inhumane to your brother man, to be chartered
against him, is a bad preparation for ministering to the
sick, or the departing. The root and basis of medicine
is the love of healing in the universal heart and mind;
the stem of it is the instinctive perception and light
which is born to penetrate into health and disease; the
branches, and the twigs and the leaves of it are the
specialities of perceptions from the nature and the spirit
of mankind; which become special in the course of ex
perience ; the love of healing reigning and animating in
every one of them. Mere experience in its -widest
range is the soil the tree grows in, and the climate in
which it lives. You may garden, you may deepen, you
may purify and enrich this experience as you like; but
the tree grows through all the world, and sciences, and
societies, and states have nothing to do but first not to
define it, not to hinder it; and second, to help it if they
can. If it wants pruning, the force of public opinion
and public criticism, and the pressure of public safety,
are the only instruments that can lop its sacred life; and
all these will play an immeasurably greater part when
State patronage has passed away.
And now suppose you had broken your leg, and it was
badly managed by a regular doctor, a surgeon by Act of
Parliament; and that I had broken my leg, and it was
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
73
badly set by an unlicensed bonesetter; would not your
bad man, in an action at law, be far more Ekely to escape
from you scot free than my bad man? You know he
would; because he would be in the fortress of legafity in
the first place; and because he belongs to a powerful
clique which will gather round his incapacity, and stand
up and speak for him; and unless it be a very gross case,
say they could have done no better, and that his ante
cedents are perfect. The pressure of public safety towards
each individual is therefore greatly diminished by
officializing a medical profession; thus causing them all,
army-wise, to support each other, and giving them official
irresponsibility towards the suffering and the sick. And
if you could take away bonesetters and quacks altogether,
the medical profession would be utterly uncriticised and
unamenable. We may sum up this branch of the subject
with the axiom, that the more medicine is under the
protection of the State, the less can its practice be subject
to public opinion, or be under the correction of the law.
An impression has been sedulously cultivated, that
anatomy and physiology, pathology, and various other
branches of science, are the healing virtue in the world,
and that they, and written Practice of Medicine, con
stitute positive faculties in man; whereas they are mere
books, or at the best outlying experiences. Not one of
them has any direct relation, any rule of thumb, to a single
case that will hereafter occur. In every instance they
require to pass through a Eving medical perception to
be of any use. That perception, and aU that belongs
to it, is, as I have said before, a spiritual thing, and
must only be fed, but not substituted or overlaid, by
knowledge.
It is an appecite for doing good and
working cures, and experience and knowledge must
feed it; and this must take place upon true social con
ditions : that is to say, all the men who belong natu
rally to the caUing, must be encouraged, by the
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
absence of State interference, to take their places at the
Board of Healing.
_ •
For, mark you, all science and experience depend for
their cultivation upon numbers of the right men: so many
earnest men to the square miles of medical truth, and
you will have greater crops of knowledge than if only
half the number were employed. And if you take away
protection from this medical corn of humanity, you will
have more colleges to grow it; waste lands of many
minds never cultivated before, sown with it; more
sciences, more extensive anatomy, physiology, pathology,
pharmacy, rising up from the new interest and curiosity
of the enfranchised medical masses; a greater closeness
of these sciences to the matter in hand; and a quantity of
non-medical minds, who have been forced by mere birth,
parentage, and genteel education, against their grain, into
the cultivation of healing, will be unable to stand the
natural rivalry of born doctors of all classes, and will
betake themselves to other callings. In the meantime,
there will not be more medical men, unless society
requires them, but there will be a constant tendency ever
increasing, that there shall be none but truly medical
men associated with the medical wants of the people.
This flush and influx of spirit and nature into the call
ing, will greatly—nay, incalculably—alter the spirituality
and naturalness of the art and its ancillary sciences.
Much will then be able to be done by genius and instinct,
which is now only vainly attempted by the cruel senility
of an effete profession. For the matter stands thus:—
Nature and its sciences must be cultivated, according to
the present exigency and mission of the human mind,
for these are the natural and scientific ages. Medicine
must be extended, falsely or benignly, from the pressure
of the sick upon the sound. The world of work revolv
ing with giddy velocity, brain and heart, and man and
woman, call aloud for central power to enable us to stand
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
75
upright in the rapid revolutions. If the medical faculty
—I mean the cohort of healers out of all men—is only
one-tenth nature’s strength, and nine-tenths noodledom
from one class only, the one-tenth must cast about
savagely, and most artificially, for the missing ninetenths of their natural mind and their natural array.
Failing to combat disease on such unequal terms, they
must endeavour to generate power, which is another
name for inspiration, instinct, and genius, out of mere
sciences; and these very sciences perpetually disappoint
ing them they must necessarily cudgel until there is
nothing left but analysis and detail. Woe then to the
bedside when knowledge itself is dust and ashes; and
woe to nature and her feelings when the rack and the
thumbscrew are applied as the only known means of
eliciting her loving, and on any terms but love’s, impenetrable secrets.
All this has gone on in our time and for ages past, but
now to clear understanding. If the medical calling had
been true to nature, and to human nature, in which
freedom and the order that springs from freedom are
abiding facts, the monstrosity of vivisection, of cutting
up live animals, never could have been thought to be a
means to the healing art. The great gorilla of cruelty
could never have been regarded as an ally of the Great
Physician. Perception, instinct, genius, the inspiration
of Christianity, which by making men love each other is the
heart and soul of all human arts, would have had it given to
them to heal diseases without the need of any suggestion
from a torture in which the demons must rejoice. It would
have been seen at once that to lay one knife edge upon a
living creature was to cut the supreme nerve that carries
the emotion of humanity right out from religion into the
medical mind. It would have been known instinctively
that the power of healing, coming as it should do from
Christ direct, is from that moment paralytic; that the
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
steady will can no longer lift it, and that the good it still
does is in momentary spasms from the lower emotions of
the man. How different from the river of power, pro
ceeding down the Divine steeps, terrace by terrace, to
humanity at large, through faculties which are essentially
humane.
And this horrible vivisection is a type of the other
distorting arts and sciences which the false cramping of
medicine into a State-built profession is one active means
of producing. Chemic, static, and material reasoning
have as little to do with restoration of health as physio
logy founded upon the cutting up of living animals.
Observe, I do not deny that vivisection may, as other
analytic methods have done, contribute hints, in the ages
while man is still cruel to man, to practical medicine;
but I deny our right, even with chloroform to stupify
animals, to gain knowledge in this way. There are
robberies and murders in nature, and science has no
more right to live upon their spoils, than citizens have
right to retire into comfortable drawing-rooms for life
upon the proceeds of daggers and dark lanes. There are
better riches for man and science than these, and im
measurably better ways of acquiring them. Time was
when the cutting up of living criminals did contribute to
the progress of physiological knowledge. There is no
doubt of that; but even Dr. Brain-Skewerhard would
scarcely advocate the practice as legitimate at the present
day. And now the feelings of every one of his cats and
his crows is worth more than all the science which their
maltreatment has ever brought into his store.
Before quitting this branch of the subject, let us notice
that the State also lends a heavy pressure to discourage
the introduction of women as medical practitioners.
This it does by chartering irresponsible public bodies,
such as the colleges of physicians and surgeons, who deny
the right of examination to women, however gifted or
�MEDICAL FREEDOM,
77
accomplished they may be; and these brave women, few
at present in numbers, and with no public support, are
obliged to submit without appeal to this corporate
despotism which has grasped the keys of the door of
. medical practice. Surely here, as in all other human
things, the law is freedom and experiment. If woman
aspires to try her hand in healing the sick, what is the
justification of that power which would deny her the
trial ? You think she had better mind her own business,
and attend to her house and its concerns; but why then
do you not mind yours, and leave her to herself ? If she
has not tried the medical life, how is it possible to know
what will come of her trial? You cannot penetrate a
chemical, or a fact in anything, by thinking; you must
have experiment, which has made all the difference
between the dark ages of knowledge and the light ages.
Especially in human capacities you must have experi
ment ; and without freedom, which State patronage
inevitably destroys, you camiot have experiment. True,
woman may be altogether unfit for this work, but let her try,
which is the one only way to prove her unfitness. Do not
with your State sword of ungallantry cut her down in her
first exercises, because you think she ought not to succeed.
I do not know whether she will succeed or not, and that
is clearly no affair of mine; but I do know that if I deny
her the right to her experiment, besides being guilty of
the most cowardly meanness and unmanliness, I am
denying in the highest instance the divinely ordained and
only successful principle of all the arts and sciences—I am
crushing the very masterpiece of experiment.
In short, medical social science reposes on the ground
of medical social experiment, just as natural science re
poses upon the ground of natural experiment.
Instead then of cutting up living animals, favour by
freedom the putting together of living humanities;
favour in this way at once the highest synthesis and the
�78
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
highest experiment; and be assured that if no other good
comes from it, disburdened and leisure-gifted human
nature will become the vehicle of a spirit and a fire, of a
generosity and an insight, of a thankfulness and a pene
tration, of a love and of a life, before which Isis will let
drop her veil, and the artificial difficulties which have
barred and frozen out the long lost way to the positive
ages will be melted from before our advancing feet by
the smiles of nature herself.
But besides excluding without trial one half of the
human race, and perhaps the better half, from the
inspired pursuit of healing, State interference also con
fines the cultivation and practice of medicine virtually to
the middle classes. That is to say, it ordains that the
genius of the physician is only to be found in one rank
of society. It erects a property-qualification for exer
cising the gifts of God in the chief of the inspirational
arts supported by the chief of the sciences. Apply this
all round, and how absurd it grins upon us. Imagine
that Parliament should insist that no painter, sculptor,
poet, or musician should be born in the upper or the
lower ranks1 What a belief in caste, and Chinese arti
ficiality would this imply; and what an atheistic denial of
gifts, of genius, and of the mission of Nature’s noble
men, wherever they may be. And yet Parliament,
without intending it, virtually does all this for the
medical estate, by interfering to give privilege to colleges
of the middle class, which thenceforth inevitably pro
ceed by financial arrangements, and enforced studies, to
make a man first a gentleman in accomplishments, and
afterwards to let him be a medical man if his gifts lie
that way; and to dub him so in any case. This, too, is
against social experiment, and affronts nature in her
scientific regard.
It is the great source of quacks
among the poorer classes; the said quacks being evi
dently persons with some gift for medicine, but with no
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
79
means of an education. Emancipate medicine from
State-trammels, and poor men’s medical colleges would
arise, and compete not ignobly with the other colleges.
The poor could then be attended by educated people
of their own sort, at small expense, and the masses
generally would be raised by having their own un
scorned natural professions, and a new class of bluff
honest common senses and artisan ways of natural life
and thought would be added to these noble arts. The
medical instinct and inspiration of humanity shall stand
upon their feet in the masses.
Nor, then, would medical nature be cashiered, as she
now is, of the splendid culture and chivalric honour and
insight of the upper men and women. What Lord
Napier was to logarithms; what Lord Rosse is to astro
nomical experiments; what the Duke of Sutherland is to
rescue from fire; what Wellington was to war; and Prince
Albert to the republicanism of the arts and sciences,
that might other lords and ladies be to practical medicine,
and the inventions which it so much needs. But make
it essentially a middle class affair, and the lower classes
cannot bring their gifts into it, and the upper classes
will not. Yet it is against all reason to suppose that
the noblemen and gentlemen of Great Britain do not
include a per-centage of medically gifted men; and also
that the same is not true of the people. The fact that
as a rule they yield no recruits to the divine mission of
curing disease, is of itself sufficient to show that some
devouring artificiality is preying upon them; and that a
huge injustice is done to gifts for which we are heavily
responsible before God, and to our fellow men. The
protection of medicine by the State is that artificiality
and that injustice. Remove it, and with it you begin to
remove the baneful belief—now all but universal—
that medical men can be created by culture; that real
culture can come from without, and that the nature and
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
gifts of the men are of second-rate importance. Nay,
in the very act of removing it you reverse that creed,
and make the gifts primary, and set the culture in the
second place. Will you have less culture for that ?
Oh! no, infinitely more! The gifts will become then so
sacred, and the responsibility of them so exacting, that
the sharp and genial powers will raise colleges before
which the existing ones could pass no examination, but
■ great and corporate though they be, would inevitably be
plucked. Where there is a will there is a way. And
the great way is natural knowledge; but the will in its
purest manifestation is only another name for the de
termination of our gifts.
And now, to turn the tables, having shown the
blighting and vitiating influence of State patronage
upon medicine, there is another branch of despotism
quite of an internal kind, which deserves to be recorded
and protested against. There is the attempt to subject
medicine, not to State law, but to scientific law; the
aim, as the phrase goes, to make it into a positive
science.
The truth is, as I have stated before, that
medicine is not a science at all, although nourished and
fed perhaps out of all sciences; Medicine is an Art, and
an art reposes upon a gift of God, and according to the
intensity of that gift it is called genius, and according
to its native and willing openness to the power above it,
it becames inspiration.
And that art summons and
employs all the faculties for its furtherance; among
them, all the scientific faculties, and seeks instruction
and advancement from them all. But because it is an
unquestioning rush of instinctive life from the man into
his world and his calling, it cannot be dominated by
any rule or principle whatever less than the love of
medical good, and subordinately and as a means the love
of medical truth. The doctrine or rule must ever be
allowed to invade that centre, any more than the geo
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
81
graphy of the earth must be palmed upon the sun. If
you attempt to work it by rule, some one ambitious
principle will extinguish all the much needed others,
and you will have war first, and then inconceivable nar
rowness in your mind. You will fall into sects, and at
the entrance to each Mrs. Grundy will stand doorkeeper
in your soul. You will not venture to prescribe what
you know would do good, because it is not of your self
chosen rubric; and because your fellows will call you to
account for a breach of your bond. You will cease to
look all round for means, and will wear the blinkers of
so-called principle where the precipices of your own and
your neighbour’s danger demand the foot of the chamois,
and the eye of the eagle. Heaven help you, you will
be accoutred for blindman’s buff when you ought to be
king of the terrible Alps. And all for what ? that you
may pretend to an exactness which nature disowns; and
may enthrone the tiny frame of material science upon
the colossal ruins not only of art, but of faith.
It cannot be done; there are no positive sciences
but those of man’s own making—the houses which he
has built, and in which therefore he can be supreme—
the rest are all fluctuating, and so full of mystery before
and behind, so meant also for usefulness and not for
absoluteness, that careful and humble science may indeed
be a positive ship, made in excellent human docks, but
the great, and desiderated, and unattainable knowledge
is the sea itself, and God is in that sea. The bark rocks
and floats, and the further it voyages, and the more it
moves, the less likely is it to founder in the inscrutable
deep. Let it not want to become more positive than
speeding flight can make it; let it not attempt to drop
the anchor of conceit in the unfathomable places. Let
it not dare to say of any spot in the Divine ocean—This
is mine!
These matters may sound abstract, but they are of
6
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
immense practical significance, and play an important
part, for good or for ill, at the bedside. For if you find
a practitioner who has a doctrine which he considers
absolute, and who derives his art from that doctrine, two
bad consequences will follow. In the first place, he will
set an overweening value upon the science, pure and
simple, of the case he is treating: the exacting doctrine
in him will have an unnatural appetite to be fed out of
that science; and the regard of the cure as an end will be
perpetually confused by the regard of the science as an
end. I have felt this so strongly myself in practice,
that I have been obliged to put it down: and to tear up
in my mind all magisterial doctrines and principles, and
to rewrite them on neutral and subservient parts of myself
in a humble and ministerial capacity.
By this means,
however, I hope I am attaining to a wider as well as
exacter science in the end: a science which radiates from
the conscious intellect of cures. But in the second place
the doctrinaire practitioner will be bound, or greatly
biassed,—by his own mind; by the surveillance of his doc
trinaire patients, whom he has helped to make into
pedants; and by the medical clique to which he belongs,—
not to do anything which outlies the doctrine which is
his creator.
Suggestions apart from that doctrine will
tend to reduce him to a chaos. What treble fear all this
implies ! What a slender exploration of the means of
nature!
What a regard to a centre of the fancy, when
sad and bleeding facts lie calling for pity, and ought to
avail to take one quite out of oneself, and to make one
gather succour from all things. Instead of this, the first
care is to practice within the doctrine, and to use no
weapon but what the armoury of the doctrine contains.
It is true you may have the highest confidence in the
doctrine, and may believe it is a universal rule, but the
universality is only a belief, and not an established fact;
and no number of human lives can make it more than a
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
83
belief; that is to say, a probable, and in the ratio of its
probability, a growing and a useful science.
Neverthe
less, you have no right to limit your powers of doing
medical good to such a belief or such a science. Observe,
it is not the science but its mastership that I impugn.
And I do impugn it, because it limits you with no com
pensation ; and because in a vast number of serious cases
it does not succeed; and because where it does succeed,
you have ever a duty to demand a greater success, in
greater rapidity and perfectness of cure. But here again,
your masterful doctrine tells you that when you have
served it faithfully you have done enough.
It will easily be seen that all this applies with force to
Homoeopathy, a doctrine to which I owe so much; in
which, so far as it goes, I thoroughly believe; and which,
whenever the supreme end of cure and my means of
knowledge allow, I unreservedly practice. I regard
Homoeopathy as the grandest natural and material feeder
which has yet been laid down by the genius of a man
from the nature of things into the spiritual body of the
healing arts. Yet Homoeopathy is but a doctrine, a
science, and a rule, and I will not derive medicine from
a science, or confound it with a science; on the contrary,
the science of Homoeopathy itself is a beautiful child and
derivation of an advancing medical art.
Let it occupy
a central, a solar place in the science of therapeutics by
drugs. There it can subsist. But no man can do good
by ignoring any of the wide realms which lie around it
and beneath it, and which are the domain of the collec
tive medical mind.
In the very matter of which the body of this little
work treats, the gist of the above abstract remarks is very
well exemplified. For I have been allowed to discover
that certain formidable diseases, small-pox to wit, can be
treated tuto^ cito et jucunde^ with a safety, rapidity, and
absence of suffering hitherto unknown, by simple external
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
applications. In the first place, I had a powerful desire
to cure my patients well, and a dissatisfaction with the
present standard of well, in all schools.
This desire in
its measure is the natural heart of healing. Then, in the
next process, I knew that Hydrastis soothes irritated
mucous surfaces, and sometimes skin surfaces, and I
thought I would try it on the face of small-pox. The
only science here involved was an acquaintance with the
drug, and a little reasoning by analogy. I tried it, and
it succeeded marvellously.
And since then I have the
art of applying it correctly, increased by the experience
or knowledge of several cases. And I have faith and
confidence in its being a future blessing to the public; a
saving of innumerable healths, and faces, and lives.
But where is the positive science in all this ? A little
good knowledge suffices for a great deal of good practice.
It strikes me that I have been as little scientific as a
skilled blacksmith who makes a horse-shoe in a given
number of strokes. Of course he knows what he is
about with great accuracy; but that is all you can say
of his knowledge. The rest is educated instinct, and
excellent smithing. He may read about iron and heat,
and the biceps and triceps muscles of his arm, in over
hours ; and he will better his mind by it, and not hurt
his strong sinews ; but the science of his art must not
intrude itself book-wise into his forge, unless as fuel, or
he will soon be a bad professor and spoil horse’s hoofs.
Take the obverse, and suppose that I had enthroned
the Homoeopathic principle above my mind, and that I
had to grapple with dreadful small pox. The exigency
then becomes, to cure with a medicine which will produce
symptoms as nearly similar as possible to those of the
disease. I know no drug which will do this except
tartar emetic in one case which I have seen. I should
therefore have had to cast about through the whole of
Pharmacy for the drug in question; to reason by
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85
analogy from small symptoms to great ones, and per
haps I should have reasoned wrong; and after all I might
never have found what I wanted. And when I had
found it, I should have lacked precedent for applying it
externally. In the meantime, what patients unrelieved
and unsaved might be waiting at the doors of my posi
tive science before I could throw them open and invite
the sufferers into relief and into health! Perforce, I
must have hardened and narrowed and thus satisfied
my heart, to let such sad waiting go on. And at the
best, where would be the gain to science ? Science is
but the register of success ; and I should have had no
science of shortening the disease, no science of curing
the disease, no science of anything, but the worst sort
of expectancy ; the science of contentment with bad
things, and the science of waiting for science. In the
end, not Homoeopathy, but the small-pox would be my
king.
To obviate this I stood upright, as I have been
gradually for some years now endeavouring to do, and
regarded Homoeopathy, and all other means and pathies
whatever, as my appointed servants, and myself as the
servant of healing. And now I had no jealousies among
the servants, because I gave no privileges to any; and
I could pick and choose from all means, regardless of
the overweeningness of science, of the sectarianism of
patients, and of the despotism of medical cliques. In
short, I essayed to be free in my art; to wait upon
Heaven, and to use all ministers and faculties in their
degree of service. Feeling the blessed power of this
position, in contradistinction to the cramp and weakness
of my old one, I am in duty bound, even against the
charge of egotism, to impart it to my fellow men.
What then, it may be asked, becomes of Homoeopathy ?
I answer that it takes its place exactly according to its
proved services, and stands upon the irremoveable foun
�86
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
dation of its cures. It will be all that it ever was, the
most suggestive thing in the round of Pharmaceutical
science. Its dogmatism and its hugeness of minutise
will be cashiered, and Homoeopathy will be the stronger
for losing them. It will be girded afresh for a magni
ficent servitude to the ends of healing. Its martyrs will
still prove medicines on their own bodies, but with an
almost exclusive attention to cardinal results.
Its
registers of symptoms, curtailed by good sense, will be
mastered by those who court intimacy with drugs, and
studied continually afresh where the art of the physician
requires it. The only difference will be, that Homoeo
pathy will become enormously progressive, because it
will have no authority and no privilege, and will be
obliged to subsist upon cures. Reduced, so far as au
thority goes, to equality with other medical sciences, it
will become primarily ambitious of suggesting remedies,
and cease from provings which leave out the human
memory, and constitute a new matter and faculty of
absolute dust. But it will no more quarrel with other
means than the mariner’s compass quarrels with the
sextant, or the sails with the steam-engine of the ship.
Above all, mere instrument that it is, and mere instru
ment that all science is, it will never go mad again, and
believe that it is the captain of the medical crew; for
that captain is the Great Physician Himself, and all His
sons and daughters in the plenary freedom of His art.
�APPENDIX.
For some time past I have been in the habit of recommending
the Hungarian wines in the convalescence from fevers and
other diseases; and also in cases of vital debility, and its con
sequences. A large experience has now enabled me to endorse
afresh the commendation which I addressed to the importer,
Mr. Max Greger, *, Mincing Lane, and which is here ap
7
pended. The physician is often sorely tried to invent a new
nutrient-stimulant when the stomach is fastidious, and the
powers of life require recruiting, but are not to be reached by
ordinary bread, or ordinary wine. In such cases the novelty,
as well as the blood-invigorating qualities of the Hungarian
wines, render them rare friends at the bedside:—
June 27th, 1863.
Sir,—Since your wines were brought under my notice by
Colonel and Aiderman Wilson (Artillery Barracks, Finsbury),
I have had good opportunity of judging of their medical
qualities. My experience, especially of your Carlowitz wine,
is, that it agrees with persons who cannot take other wines;
that it has not the acidity which often renders the French and
Rhine wines inadmissible; that it is gratefully strong to weak
stomachs, and exerts a strengthening influence upon the blood.
Moreover, what is of great consequence medically, it is new to
the palate in flavour, and to the system in qualities. It is in
the best sense nutritious, and very valuable in that large class
of diseases and disorders which depend upon a feeble condition
and constitution of the blood. It is good in heemorrhages.
In an infant born with imperfectly closed heart, Carlowitz has
�88
APPENDIX.
sustained the strength admirably, while other means aiding
nature have been completing the organization.
Yours obediently,
Garth Wilkinson.
To Max Greger, Esq.
As a record and a protest I here reprint a Letter on Vivi
section, which I addressed to the Editor of the Morning Star,
and which appeared in that Paper on the 20th of August,
1863.
VIVISECTION.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ STAR.”
Sir,—From my heart, and also from my head, I thank, you
for your leading article on Vivisection in to-day’s paper.
Allow me, as a small response, to burden you with the office
of forwarding half-a-guinea as our annual subscription to the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I hope and
trust that through the subject of vivisection now publicly
opened, and the controversy going on, this society will become
affluent enough to have special correspondents and reporters
wherever vivisection is practised under medical sanction. If
the horror is to be, let us know it, and let us judge of it. If
science is to be born from the throes of animal life, lut us also
be duly horrified and agonised, and suffer with the sufferers.
I have long been of Sir Charles Bell’s opinion that vivi
section is a delusion as a means of scientific progress. Of
course its results, like any other set of facts, constitute a
science in themselves; so do the results of murder, and so do
the results of picking pockets; an exact science, if you like;
and the earlier parts of the science will of course be subject to
correction by the later : and thus vivisection may show, and
has shown, truths and errors in the special walk of vivisection.
The science of animal agonies, like all sciences, can be cor
�APPENDIX.
89
rected, eliminated, and completed by experiments of fresh and
ever-fresh agonies. Buf it has been a mistake to suppose that
we were in the path of the humane sciences —in natural phy
siology, natural symptomatology, or within millions of leagues
of medicine, when with rack and thumbscrew and all torture
we were the inquisitors of the secrets of animal life. Under
such circumstances nature is inevitably a liar, and an accom
plice of the Father of Lies. I know that her, and his, very
lies are a science; but then they are not the science we take
them for, nor the science we want. They are not mind-ex
panding, heart-softening, or health-conferring science.
Vivisectional anatomy has contributed to medicine—meaning
by medicine the healing of diseases—virtually nothing, but
“ false paths and wrong roads.” Morbid anatomy has con
tributed marvellously little. Anatomy has done far less than
is supposed, though it keeps the eyes of the physician’s
imagination open, and enables him to tally conditions and
symptoms somewhat with parts and organic structures. If
the internal parts of the human frame were a closed page to
morrow, so to remain for the next half-century, and if the
symptoms and results of disease, and what will mitigate and
cure them, were the only permissible field of experiment, the
art of healing would lose nothing by ceasing to hold intercourse
with the sciences of structure and function—at all events, for
a time.
For example, I assert that the whole science of tubercle is
trivial and valueless in its results upon the curing of con
sumption; and equally inefficient in showing the cause of
consumption; and that cod liver oil and general regime, which
have no logical or real connection with the morbid anatomy of
consumption, are the present important medical agencies for
the treatment of that condition. And I assert that the whole
science of the Yivisectional and morbid anatomy of diabetes ;
the artificial production of it by lesions of the nervous system ;
the conditions of it in the liver, the lungs, and the kidneys,
have nothing to do with its cure, and throw no light upon its
cause; and that the fact that in many instances it can be cured
by the Hydrastis Gamadensis, the Leptandria, and Myrica
cerifera, has never yet been pointed to by any scalpel; and is
likely to be resisted by the men of the scalpel later than by
many others. What has the grand experience that a certain
�90
APPENDIX.
herb or drug will cure a disease, to do with a knowledge of the
particular wreck that that disease has left in the organisation
after death ? Pathological anatomy, except in surgical cases,
never suggests cure.
Now then, sir, let us take stock in this great Assize of
Humanity and the Healing Art versus the Cutting up of Live
Animals. Let us have definite tabulated statements of the
discoveries and results of the gain to man which has accrued
from the introduction of vivisection.
The great facts, the
benign arts that have been drawn out of the intestine agonies
of animals can be easily stated in lines, and columns of lines,
if they exist. Let us have them. We have had vivisection
enough. Whole menageries have been kept here and in Paris,
and all over Europe, to have their brains sliced and their
bodies mangled. It has gone on for hours a day, and year
after year. What is the stock in hand of results to humanity,
to healing, or even to “ permissible ” science ?
For, good
doctors, there are sciences, and you will find it out, that are
not permissible. It would not be permissible to suspend a
man or a woman by a hook, to know ever so exactly how they
would writhe; no, not even if you were a painter.
And,
therefore, I use the word, “ permissible ” science. And I say,
that if you cannot show some mighty results, far greater than
the discovery of cod liver oil, and of the circulation of the
blood, your persistent vivisection leads only to abominable
sciences, and to the blackest of all the black arts—the in
dulging of the human heart; and the gutta serena of cruelty
after that will soon obliterate the intellectual eyesight of
medicine.—Your constant reader,
Garth Wilkinson.
August 19th.
P.S.—I am informed by Mr. Skelton, sen., since these pages
were written, that in 1863 he became a Licentiate of the
Apothecaries’ Company of London, and this year has taken his
degree in medicine both in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and is
“ registered ” accordingly.
�
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On the cure, arrest, and isolation of small pox of a new method: and on the local treatment of erysipelas, and all internal inflammations, with a special chapter on cellulitis and a postscript on medical freedom
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Leath and Ross
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1864
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Conway Tracts
Inflammations
Medical Ethics
Sacerdotalism
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Text
MICHAEL SERVETUS
?■’A;
WILLIAM OSLER,
i
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
1909
V
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'I
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Price One Shilling net
��national secular society
�Front.
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
BY
WILLIAM OSLER, M.D., F.R.S.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
�OXFORD : HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
�MICHAEL SERVETUS1
The year 1553 saw Europe full of tragedies, and to
the earnest student of the Bible it must have seemed
as if the days had come for the opening the second seal
spoken of in the Book of Revelation, when peace
should be taken from the earth and men should kill one
another. One of these tragedies has a mournful interest
this year, the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of
its chief actor; yet it was but one of thousands of similar
cases with which the history of the sixteenth century is
stained. On October 27, shortly after twelve o’clock,
a procession started from the town-hall of Geneva—the
chief magistrates of the city, the clergy in their robes,
the Lieutenant Criminel and other officers on horseback,
a guard of mounted archers, the citizens, with a motley
crowd of followers, and in their midst, with arms bound,
in shabby, dirty clothes, walked a man of middle age,
whose intellectual face bore the marks of long suffering.
Passing along the rue St. Antoine through the gate of
the same name, the cortege took its way towards the
Golgotha of the city. Once outside the walls, a superb
sight broke on their view : in the distance the blue
waters and enchanting shores of the Lake of Geneva,
to the west and north the immense amphitheatre of the
Jura, with its snow-capped mountains, and to the south
and west the lovely valley of the Rhone ; but we may
1 This address did double duty—at the Johns Hopkins Medical
School Historical Club, and as an Extension lecture in the
Summer School, Oxford.
�4
MICHAEL SERVETUS
well think that few eyes were turned away from the
central figure of that sad procession. By his side, in
earnest entreaty, walked the aged pastor, Farel, who
had devoted a long and useful life to the service of his
fellow citizens. Mounting the hill, the field of Champel
was reached, and here on a slight eminence was the
fateful stake, with the dangling chains and heaping
bundles of faggots. At this sight the poor victim
prostrated himself on the ground in prayer. In reply
to the exhortation of the clergyman for a specific con
fession of faith, there was the cry, ‘ Misericordia, misericordia! Jesu, thou Son of the eternal God, have com
passion upon me! ’ Bound to the stake by the iron chain,
with a chaplet of straw and green twigs covered with
sulphur on his head, with his long dark face, it is said
that he looked like the Christ in whose name he was
bound. Around his waist were tied a large bundle of
manuscript and a thick octavo printed book. The torch
was applied, and as the flames spread to the straw and
sulphur and flashed in his eyes, there was a piercing
cry that struck terror into the hearts of the bystanders.
The faggots were green, the burning was slow, and it
was long before in a last agony he cried again, 1 Jesu,
thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me!’
Thus died, in his forty-fourth year, Michael Servetus
Villanovanus, physician, physiologist, and heretic.
Strange, is it not, that could he have cried, 1 Jesu, thou
Eternal Son of God!’ even at this last moment, the
chains would have been unwound, the chaplet removed,
and the faggots scattered ; but he remained faithful unto
death to what he believed was the Truth as revealed in
the Bible.
The story of his life is the subject of my address.
Michael Servetus, known also as Michel Villeneuve,
or Michael Servetus Villanovanus, or, as he puts in one
�Fig. 2 : Altar Screen at Barcelona
t>. 4
��MICHAEL SERVETUS
5
of his books, alias Reves, was a Spaniard born at
Villanueva de Sigena, in the present province of Huesca.
When on trial at Vienna, he gave Tudela, Navarre, as
his birthplace, at Geneva, Villanueva of Aragon; and
at one place he gave as the date of his birth 1509, and
at the other 1511. The former is usually thought to be
the more correct. As at Villanueva de Sigena there
are records of his family, and as the family altar, made
by the father of Servetus, still exists, we may take it
that at any rate the place of his birth is settled. The
altar-screen is a fine piece of work, with ten paintings.
I am indebted to Signor Antonio Virgili, of Barcelona,
for the photograph of it here reproduced (fig. 2).
Servetus seems to have belonged to a good family in
easy circumstances, and at his trial he said he came of
an ancient race, living nobly.
From the convent school he probably went to the
neighbouring University of Saragossa. Possibly he
may have studied for the priesthood, but however that
may be, there is evidence that he was a precocious
youth, and well read in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the
last two very unusual accomplishments at that period.
We next hear of him at Toulouse, studying canon
and civil law. He could not have been twenty when
he entered the service of the Friar Quintana, confessor
to the Emperor Charles V, apparently as his private
secretary. In the suite of the Emperor he went to
Italy, and was present when Pope and Emperor entered
Bologna, and ‘ he saw the most powerful prince of the
age at the head of 20,000 veterans kneeling and kissing
the feet of the Pope.’ Here he had his first impression
of the worldliness and mercenary character of the
Papacy, hatred of which, very soon after, we find to
have become an obsession.
In the summer of 1530 the Emperor attended the
�6
MICHAEL SERVETUS
Diet of Augsburg, where the Princes succeeded in
getting Protestantism recognized politically. Such a
gathering must have had a profound influence on the
young student, already, we may suppose, infected with
the new doctrines. Possibly at Saragossa, or at
Toulouse, he may have become acquainted with the
writings of Luther. Such an expression of opinion as
the following, written before his twenty-first year, could
scarcely have been of a few months’ growth : ‘ For my
own part, I neither agree nor disagree in every particular
with either Catholic or Reformer. Both of them seem
to me to have something of truth and something of
error in their views; and whilst each sees the other’s
shortcomings, neither sees his own. God in his good
ness give us all to understand our errors, and incline
us to put them away. It would be easy enough, indeed,
to judge dispassionately of everything, were we but
suffered without molestation by the churches freely to
speak our minds.’ (Willis.)
How far he held any personal communication with the
German reformers is doubtful. It is quite possible, and
Tollin, his chief biographer, makes him visit Luther. We
do not know how long he held service with Quintana,
Tollin thinks a year and a half. It is not unlikely that
the good friar was glad to get rid of a young secretary
infected with heresy so shocking as that contained in
his first book, published in 1531; indeed, there is
a statement to the effect that a monk in the suite of
Quintana found the book in a shop at Ratisbon and
hastened to tell the confessor of its terrible contents.
Servetus had plunged headlong into studies of the most
dangerous character, and had even embooked them in
a small octavo volume, entitled De Trinitatis Erroribus,
which appeared without the printer’s name, but on the
title-page the author, Michael Serveto, alias Reves
�DE TRINI
TATIS ER R O RIB VS
L1BRI SEPTEM.
per Michaetem Scrtteto t alias
Reues ab Aragonia
Hifpanum.
Amo M. D. XXXL
Fig- 3
p, 6
��MICHAEL SERVETUS
7
ab Aragonia, Hispanum, and with the date mdxxxi.
In the innocency of his heart he thought the work would
be a good introduction to the more liberal of the Swiss
reformers, but they would have none of it, and were
inexpressibly shocked at its supposed blasphemies.
Nor did he fare better at Strassburg; and even the
kind-hearted Bucer said that the author of such a work
should be disembowelled and torn in pieces.
In thorny theological questions a layman naturally
seeks shelter, and I am glad to quote the recent opinion
of a distinguished student of the period, Professor
Emerton,1 on this youthful phase of the life of Servetus.
4 He would not admit that the eternal Son of God was
to appear as man, but only that a man was to come
who should be the Son of God. This is the earliest
intimation we have as to the speculations which were
occupying the mind of the young scholar. It is
highly significant that from the start he was impressed
with what we should now call the historical view of
theology. As he read the Old Testament, its writers
seemed to him to be referring to things that their
hearers would understand. Their gaze into the future
was limited by the fortunes of the people at the moment.
■To imagine them possessed of all the divine mysteries,
and to have in mind the person of the man Jesus as the
ultimate object of all their prophetic vision, was to
reflect back the knowledge of history into a past to
which such knowledge was impossible. So far as I can
understand him, this is the key to all Servetus’ later
thought. His manner of expressing himself is confusing
and intricate to the last degree, so much so that neither
in his own time nor since has any one dared to say that
he understood it. To his contemporaries he was a half
1 Harvard Theological Review, April, 1909.
�8
MICHAEL SERVETUS
mad fanatic; to those who have studied him, even
sympathetically, his thought remains to a great extent
enigmatical; but this one point is fairly clear: that he
grasped, as no one up to his time had grasped, this one
central notion, that, whatever the divine plan may have
been, it must be revealed by the long, slow movement
of history—that, to understand the record of the past, it
must be read, so far as that is possible, with the mind
of those to whom it was immediately addressed, and
must not be twisted into the meanings that may suit the
fancy of later generations.’
‘To have seized upon such an idea as this—an idea
which has begun to come to its rights only within our
memories—was an achievement which marks this youth
of twenty as at all events an extraordinary individual,
a disturbing element in his world, a man who was not
likely to let the authorities rest calmly in possession of
all the truth there was.’
In the following year, 1532, two dialogues appeared,
explanatory and conciliatory, a little book which only
aggravated the offence, and feeling the Protestant atmo
sphere too hot, Servetus went to Paris. Dropping this
name by which he has been known, and closing this
brief but stormy period, for the next twenty-one years we
now follow Michel Villeneuve, or Michael Villanovanus,
in a varied career as student, lecturer, practitioner,
author and editor, still nursing the unconquerable hope
that the world might be reformed could he but restore
the primitive doctrine of the Church.
II
We know very little of this his first stay in Paris.
Possibly he found employment as teacher, or as reader
to the press. At this period his path first crossed that of
Calvin, then a young student. Of about the same age,
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tralationc,fedadGrxca&pnftacxcmplana A ML
chaele Villanouana iam primum rccogniti.
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qtiibus exoleta urbium no;
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��MICHAEL SERVETUS
9
both ardent students, both on the high road of emanci
pation from the faith of their birth, they must have had
many discussions on theological questions. One may
conclude from the reproachful sentence of Calvin many
years later, ‘ Vous avez fuy le luite ’, that arrangements
had been made for a public debate.
After a short stay at Avignon and Orleans, we next
find Servetus at Lyons, in the employ of the Trechsels
brothers, the famous printers. Those were the days of
fine editions of the classics and other books, which
required the assistance of scholarly men to edit and
correct. He brought out a splendid folio of Ptolemy’s
Geography, 1535 (Fig. 4), with commentaries on the
different countries, which show a wide range of know
ledge in so young a man. It is marked also by many
examples of independent criticism, as, when speaking of
Palestine, he says that the ‘ Promised Land ’ was any
thing but a ‘ promising land ’, and instead of flowing
with milk and honey, and a land of corn, olives and
vineyards, it was inhospitable and barren, and the
stories about its fertility nothing but boasting and
untruth. He seems to have been brought to task for
this, as in the second edition, 1541, this section does not
exist. For this work he was paid by the Trechsels
500 crowns.
It is possible that Servetus and Rabelais may have
met at Lyons, as at this time the ‘ great Dissimulator ’
was physician to the Hotel-Dieu, but there is nothing in
the writings of either to indicate that their paths crossed.
The man who had the greatest influence upon him at
Lyons was Symphorien Champier, one of the most
interesting and distinguished of the medical humanists
of the early part of the sixteenth century. Servetus
helped him with his French Pharmacopoeia, and Pastor
Tollin will have it that Champier even made a home
B
�IO
MICHAEL SERVETUS
for the poor scholar. An ardent Galenist, an historian,
the founder of the hospital and of the medical school,
Champier had the usual predilection of the student of
those days for astrology. Probably from him Servetus
received his instructions in the subject. At any rate,
when the distinguished Professor of Medicine of
Tubingen, Fuchsius, attacked Champier on the ground
of his astrological vagaries, Servetus took up his pen
and replied in defence with a pamphlet entitled ‘ In
Leonhardum Fuchsium defensio apologetica pro Symphoriano Campeggio ’, an exceedingly rare item, the
only one indeed of the writings of Servetus that I have
not seen in the original.
Stimulated doubtless by the example and precept of
Champier, Servetus returned to Paris to study medicine.
Fairly rich in pocket with the proceeds of his literary
work, he attached himself first to the College of Calvi,
and afterwards to that of the Lombards, and it is said
that he took the degrees of M.A. and M.D., but of this
I am told that there is no documentary evidence.
Of his life in Paris we have very little direct evidence,
except in connexion with a single incident. We know
that he came into intimate contact with three men—
Guinther of Andernach, Jacobus Sylvius, and Vesalius.
Guinther and Sylvius must have been men after his
own heart, ripe scholars, ardent Galenists, and keen
anatomists. In the Institutiones Anatomicae (Basel, 1539),
Guinther speaks of Servetus in connexion with Vesalius,
who was at this time his fellow pro-sector. ‘ And after
him by Michael Villanovanus, distinguished by his
literary acquirements of every kind, and scarcely second
to any in his knowledge of Galenical doctrine.’ With
their help he states that he has examined the whole
body, and demonstrated to the students all of the
muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves. There was at this
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
ii
time a very keen revival in the study of anatomy in
Paris, and to have been associated with such a young
genius as Vesalius, already a brilliant dissector, must
have been in itself a liberal education in the subject.
It is easy to understand whence was derived the
anatomical knowledge upon which was based the farreaching generalization with which the name of Servetus
is associated in physiology.
But the Paris incident of which we know most is
connected with certain lectures on judicial astrology.
We have seen that at Lyons, Servetus had defended
his friend and patron Symphorien Champier, through
whom he had doubtless become familiar with its prac
tice. Though forbidden by the Church, judicial astrology
was still in favour in some universities, and was practised
largely by physicians occupying the most distinguished
positions. In those days few were strong minded
enough to defy augury, and in popular belief all were
‘servile to skiey influences’. It was contrary to the
regulations of the Paris Faculty to lecture on the
subject, though at this time the king had in his employ
a professional astrologist, Thibault.
Shortly after
reaching Paris Servetus began a course of lectures on
the subject, which very soon brought him into conflict
with the authorities.
The admirable practice for the Dean to write out
each year his report, has preserved for us the full
details of the procedure against Servetus. Duboulay,
in his History of the University of Paris, vol. vi, has
extracted the whole affair from the Dean’s Commentary,
as it is called, of the year. He says that a certain
student of medicine, a Spaniard, or as he says, from
Navarre, but with a Spanish father, had taught for
some days in Paris in 1537 judicial astrology or divina
tion. After having found out that this was condemned
�12
MICHAEL SERVETUS
by the Doctors of the Faculty, he caused to be printed
a certain apology in which he attacked the doctors, and
moreover declared that wars and pests and all the
affairs of men depended on the heavens and on the
stars, and he imposed on the public by confounding
true and judicial astrology. The Dean goes on to
state that, accompanied by two of his colleagues, he
tried to prevent Villanovanus from publishing the
apology, and met him leaving the school where he had
been making a dissection of the body with a surgeon,
and in the presence of several of the scholars, and of
two or three doctors, he not only refused to stop the
publication, but he threatened the Dean with bitter
words.
The Faculty appears to have had some difficulty in
getting the authorities to move in the matter. Possibly
we may see here the influence of the court astrologer,
Thibault. After many attempts, and after appealing to
the Theological Faculty and the Congregation of the
University, the question was taken up by Parliament.
The speeches of counsel for the Faculty, for the Uni
versity, for Villanovanus, and for the Parliament are
given in full. The Parliament decided that the printed
apology should be recalled, the booksellers were for
bidden to keep them, the lectures on astrology were
forbidden, and Villanovanus was urged to treat the
Faculty with respect. But on their part they were
asked to deal with the offender gently, and in a parental
fashion. It is a very interesting trial, and the Dean
evidently enjoyed his triumph. He says that he took
with him three theologians, two doctors in medicine,
the Dean of the Faculty of Canonical Law, and the
Procurator-General of the University. The affair was
discussed by Parliament with closed doors.
The Apologetica disceptatio pro astrologia, the rarest of
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
13
the Servetus items, the only copy known being in the
Bibliotheque Nationale, is an eight leaf pamphlet,
without title-page, pagination, or printer’s name. The
friends of the Faculty must have been very successful
in their confiscation of the work. Tollin, who dis
covered the original, has reprinted it (Berlin, 1880). It
was not hard for Servetus to cite powerful authorities
on his side, and he summons in his defence the great
quartette, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. A
practical star-gazer, he took his own observations, and
the pamphlet records an eclipse of Mars by the moon.
He must, too, have been a student of the weather, as
he speaks of giving in his lectures public predictions
which caused great astonishment. The influence of the
moon in determining the critical days of diseases, a
favourite doctrine of Galen, is fully discussed, and he
says that Galen’s opinion should be written in letters
of gold. He rests content with these great authorities,
referring very briefly to one or two minor lights. He
scoffs at the well-known bitter attack on divination by
Picus.
It took several generations to eradicate completely
from the profession a belief in astrology, which lingered
well into the seventeenth century. In his Vulgar
Errors, discussing the ‘Canicular’ or ‘Dog Days’, Sir
Thomas Browne expresses his opinion of astrology in
the most characteristic language. ‘Nor do we hereby
reject or condemn a sober and regulated Astrology; we
hold there is more truth therein than in Astrologers;
in some more than many allow, yet in none so much
as some pretend. We deny not the influence of the
Starres, but often suspect the due application thereof;
for though we should affirm that all things were in all
things; that heaven were but earth celestified, and
earth but heaven terrestrified, or that each part above
�i4
MICHAEL SERVETUS
had an influence upon its divided affinity below; yet
how to single out these relations, and duly to apply
their actions, is a work oft times to be effected by some
revelation, and Cabala from above, rather then any
Philosophy, or speculation here below.’
Among the auditors of Servetus was a young man,
Pierre Paumier, the Archbishop of Vienne, who appears
to have befriended him in Paris, and who a few years
later asked him to be his body physician. The astrology
trial was settled in March, 1537.
Servetus cannot have been very long a student of
medicine, but never lacking in assurance, he came
before the world as a medical author in the little treatise
on Syrups and their use (Fig. 5). Association with
Champier, whom he had helped in an edition of his
French Pharmacopoeia, had made him familiar with the
subject. The first three chapters are taken up with the
views on ‘ Concoctions ’ or ‘ Digestions ’, of which at that
time a series, from the first to the fourth, was recognized.
He pleads for a unity of the process, and, as Willis
remarks, he makes the very shrewd remark at that day,
‘ that diseases are only perversions of natural functions
and not new entities introduced into the body.’ The
greater part of the treatise is taken up with theoretical
discussions on the opinions of Galen, Hippocrates, and
Avicenna. The ‘Composition and use of the Syrups’
is deferred to the fifth and a concluding (sixth) chapter.
The little book appears to have been popular, and
was reprinted twice at Venice, 1545 and 1548, and
twice at Lyons, 1546 and 1547.
Ill
Whether the adverse decision of Parliament disgusted
him with Paris, or whether through some friend the
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15
opportunity to settle in practice had offered, we next
hear of Villeneuve at Charlieu, a small town about
twelve miles from Lyons, where he spent a year, or
part of the year 1538-9. Here his old Paris friend
Paumier sought him and induced him to settle at
Vienne, offering him apartments in the palace, and an
appointment as his body physician. After nearly ten
years of wandering, at last, in a peaceful home in the
fine old Roman city, with its good society, and under
the protection of the Primate of all France, Servetus
spent the next fourteen years as a practising physician.
Few details of his life are known. He retained his
association with the Trechsels, the printers, who had
set up a branch establishment in Vienne. In 1541 he
brought out a new edition of Ptolemy, with a dedication
to the Archbishop. From the preface we have a
glimpse of a genial group of companions, all interested
in the new studies. Several critical items in the
edition of 1535 disappear in the new one of 1541, e.g.
the scoffing remarks about Palestine; and in mentioning
the royal touch, instead of, ‘ I have myself seen the
King touching many with this disease (i.e. Scrofula),
but I have not seen that they were cured,’ he says,
‘ I have heard that many were cured.’ Perhaps he felt
it unbecoming in a member of an ecclesiastical circle,
and living under the patronage of the Archbishop, to
say anything likely to give offence.
In the following year he issued an edition of Pagnini’s
Bible in a fine folio (Fig. 6). Its chief interest to us is
the testimony that Servetus was still deep in theological
studies, for the commentaries in the work place him
among the earliest and boldest of the higher critics.
The prophetic psalms, and the numerous prophecies
in Isaiah and Daniel are interpreted in the light of
contemporary events, but as Willis remarks, ‘ These
�i6
MICHAEL SERVETUS
numerous excessively free and highly heterodox in
terpretations appear to have lost Villeneuve neither
countenance nor favour at Vienne.
For another Lyons publisher, Frelon, he edited a
number of educational works, and through him the
Vienne physician was put in correspondence with the
Geneva reformer.
A dreamer, an enthusiast, a mystic, Servetus was
possessed with the idea that could but the doctrines of
the Church be reformed the world could be won to
a primitive, simple Christianity. We have already seen
his attempt to bring the Swiss Reformers into what
he thought correct views upon the Trinity. He now
began a correspondence with Calvin on this subject,
and on the question of the Sacraments. The letters,
which are extant, in tone and contents shocked and
disgusted Calvin to such a degree that in a communica
tion to Farel, dated February, 1546, after stating that
Servetus had offered to come to Geneva, he adds,
‘ I will not pledge my faith to him; for did he come if
I have any authority here I should never suffer him to
go away alive.’
For years Servetus had in preparation the work
which he fondly hoped would restore primitive Christi
anity. Part of a MS. of this he had sent to Calvin.
Having tried in vain to get it published, he decided to
print it privately at Vienne. Arrangements were made
with a local printer, who set up a separate press in a
small house, and in a few months 1,000 copies were
printed. The title-page here reproduced (Fig. 7) has
the date 1553, and on the last page the initials of his
name, ‘M.S.V.’
He must have known that the work was likely to
cause great commotion in the Church, but he hoped
that the identity of the author would be as little sus-
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��MICHAEL SERVETUS
17
pected as that the Vienne physician, Michael Villeneuve,
was Michael Servetus of the heretical de Trinitatis
Erroribus.
Intended for distribution in Germany,
Switzerland, and Italy, the work was made up into
bales of 100 copies for distribution to the trade.
Probably from their mutual friend Frelon Calvin
received a couple of copies. The usual story is that
through one William Trie as a medium, Calvin de
nounced Villeneuve to the inquisition at Vienne. This
was the view of Servetus himself, and is supported
by Willis, Tollin, and others; but advocates of Calvin
continue to deny that there is sufficient evidence of his
active participation at this stage.
There was at this time at Lyons the well-known
inquisitor Orry, who ten years before had brought
Etienne Dolet to the stake. No sooner had he got
scent of the affair than he undertook the prosecution
with his customary zeal, and Servetus was arrested.
The preliminary trial at Vienne is chiefly of interest on
account of the autobiographical details which Servetus
gives. The evidence against him was so overwhelming
that he was committed to prison. Surrounded by his
friends, who must have been greatly shocked and dis
tressed to find their favourite physician in so terrible
a plight, abundantly supplied with money, with the
prison discipline very lax as the jailer was his friend,
it is not surprising that the day after his commitment
Servetus escaped, greatly no doubt to the relief of the
Archbishop and the authorities. The inquisitor had to
be content with burning an effigy of the heretic with
some 500 copies of his work.
From April 7 until the middle of July Servetus
disappears from view, and we next meet with him, of
all places in the world, at Geneva. Why he should
have run this risk has been much discussed, but the
�i8
MICHAEL SERVETUS
explanation given by Guizot is probably the correct
one. At that time the Liberals, or 1 Libertines as they
were called because of their hostility to Calvin, fully
expected to triumph. ‘ One of their leaders, Ami Perrin,
was first Syndic: a man of their party, Gueroult, who
had been banished from Geneva, had been corrector of
the press at the time when the Restoration of Christianity
was published, and thanks to the influence of his patrons,
the Libertines, he had returned to Geneva, and would
naturally be the medium between them and Servetus.
Taking a comprehensive view of the whole case and
the antecedents of all those concerned in it, I am con
vinced that Servetus, defeated at Vienne, went to
Geneva, relying on the support of the Libertines, whilst
they on their side expected to obtain efficacious help
from him against Calvin.’ He seems to have been
nearly a month in Geneva before his arrest on the
morning of August 14.
The full account of this famous heresy trial has lost
much of its interest so far as the doctrinal details are
concerned. At this distance, with our modern ideas,
the procedure seems very barbarous. Servetus was
cruelly treated in prison, and there is a letter from him
which speaks of his shocking condition, without proper
clothing, and a prey to vermin. Mademoiselle Roch
has well depicted this phase of the martyr’s career in
her fine statue which has been erected at Anamnese,
and which is here reproduced (Fig. 8). The full report
of the trial may be followed in the account given by
Willis, and the ' Proces-Verbal ’ was in existence at
Geneva in manuscript.
One thing seems clear, that while at first the accusa
tions were largely concerned with the heretical views
of Servetus, later the public prosecutor laid more stress
upon the political side of the case, accusing him of
�TOMB
��MICHAEL SERVETUS
J9
conspiracy with the Libertines. The trial divided
Geneva into hostile camps, and it sometimes looked as
though Calvin, quite as much as Servetus, was on trial.
To strengthen their hands the clerical party appealed
to the Swiss churches. The answer, strong enough in
condemning the heresy and blasphemy, refrained from
specifying the kind of punishment.
Accustomed in France to hear the Swiss Reformers
branded as the worst type of heretics, Servetus appears
never to have understood why he should not have been
received with open arms by the Protestants, whose
one desire was the same as his own, the restoration of
primitive faith and practice. He made a brave fight,
and brought strong countercharges against Calvin,
whom he accused specifically of causing his arrest at
Vienne. He offered to discuss the questions at issue
publicly, an offer which Calvin would have accepted
had the syndics allowed. The whole city was in a
ferment, and Sunday after Sunday Calvin and the other
pastors thundered from their pulpits against the
blasphemies of the Spaniard. After dragging its weary
length for nearly two months, the public feeling veered
strongly to the side of Calvin, and on October 27 the
Council, by a majority vote, resolved that in considera
tion of his great errors and blasphemies, the prisoner
should be burnt alive.
Servetus appears to have been a curious compound
of audacity and guilelessness. The announcement of
the condemnation appears to have completely stunned
him, as he seems never to have considered its possi
bility. He sent for Calvin and asked his pardon, but
there was bitterness in the heart of the great reformer
whose account of the interview is not very pleasant
reading.
On the morning of the 27th, the Tribunal assembled
�20
MICHAEL SERVETUS
before the porch of the Hotel de Ville to read to the
prisoner his formal condemnation, under ten separate
heads, the two most important of which relate to the
doctrine of the Trinity, and Infant Baptism. It is
curious that under one of the headings he should be
denounced as an arrogant innovator, and an inventor
of heresies against Popery! The entreaty of Servetus
for a more merciful ’mode of death (for which, to his
credit, be it said, Calvin also pleaded) was in vain. The
procession at once formed to the place of execution.
Nothing in his life, it may be said, became him like
the leaving of it. As Guizot remarks, ‘ The dignity of
the philosopher triumphed over the weakness of the
man, and Servetus died heroically and calmly at that
stake the very thought of which had at first filled him
with terror.’
There will be dedicated next year at Vienne a
monument commemorating the services of Servetus as
an independent spirit in theology, and as a pioneer in
physiology.
It has been said that Sappho survives because
we rsing her songs, and Aeschylus because we read
his plays, but it would be difficult to explain the
widespread interest in Servetus from any knowledge
men have of his writings. The pathos of his fate, which
scandalized Gibbon more profoundly than all the human
hecatombs of Spain or Portugal, accounts for it in part.
Then there is the limited circle of those who regard
him as a martyr to the Unitarian confession; while
scientific men have a very definite interest in him as
one of the first to make a substantial contribution to
our knowledge of the circulation of the blood. His
theological and physiological views call for brief
comments.
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
21
IV
Next to theology itself the study of medicine has
been a great heresy breeder. From the days of Arnold
of Villanova and Pierre of Abano, there have been
noted heretics in our ranks. Bossuet defines a heretic
as ‘One who has opinions’. Servetus seems to have
been charged with opinions like a Leyden jar. His
most notable ones concerned the Trinity and Infant
Baptism. Wracked almost to destruction in the third
and fourth centuries on the subject of the Trinity, the
final conquest of Arianism found its expression in that
magnificent human document the Athanasian Creed,
with which the Catholic Church has for ever settled the
question, in language which sends a cold shudder down
the backs of heretics. But there have always been
turbulent souls who could not rest satisfied, and who
would bring up unpleasant points from the Bible—men
who were not able to accept Dante’s wise advice :—
‘ Mad is he who hopes that our reason can traverse the
infinite way which one Substance as Three Persons
holds. Be content oh human race with the Quia’.
The doctrine has been a great breeding ground of
heretics, the smoke of whose burning has been a sweet
savour in the nostrils alike of Catholics and Protestants.
Even to-day, so deeply ingrained is the catholic creed,
that nearly everything in the way of doctrinal vagary is
forgiven save denial of the Trinity, which is thought to
put a man outside the pale of normal Christianity. If
this is the feeling to-day, imagine what it must have
been in the middle of the sixteenth century!
Servetus wrote two theological works—de Trinitatis
Erroribusy published in 1531, followed by a supplement
in 1532. To these I have already referred. Living a
double life at Vienne, to the inhabitants he was the
�22
MICHAEL SERVETUS
careful and kind practitioner of medicine, to whom they
had become devoted, but all the while, nourishing the
dream of his youth, he had in preparation a work which
he believed would win the world to Christ by purifying
the Church from grave errors in doctrine.
I have already spoken of the printing of the Christianismi Restitutio. Mainly concerned with most abstruse
questions concerning the Trinity and Infant Baptism,
it is a most difficult work to read, and, as theologians
confess, a still more difficult one to understand. Pro
fessor Emerton, in his article from which I have already
quoted, gives in a few paragraphs the essence of his
views. ‘ He finds the central fact of Christian specula
tion, not in the doctrine of the Trinity as formulated by
the schools, but in the fact of the divine incarnation in
the person of Jesus. He admits the divine birth, ex
plaining it as in harmony with a general law of divine
manifestation whereby the spiritual is revealed in the
material. He would not accept the idea of an eternal
sonship, except in this sense, that the divine Word, the
Logos, had always been active as the expression in
outward form of the divine activity. So, in the fullness
of time, this same Logos produced a being from a
human mother upon whom at the moment of his birth
the divine Spirit was breathed. Obviously this is not
the “eternal Son” of the creeds, and herein lay the
special theological crime of Servetus. In his criticism
of the church order, of the papal government, of the
sacramental system, he does not differ essentially from
the more radical of the reformers. On the essential
matters of baptism and the Eucharist he goes quite
beyond the established reforming churches. In both
cases he invokes the principle of plain reason. He
rejects Infant Baptism on the ground that the infant
can have no faith, and that the practice is therefore
�sssss
MICHAEL SERVETUS
23
mere incantation. He denies transubstantiation on
the rational basis that substances and accidents may not
be separated, and does not spare the reforming leaders
for what seemed to him their half-hearted attitude on
this point. His language throughout is harsh and
violent, except where, as at the close of his chapters, he
passes over into the forms of devotion and closes his
diatribes with prayers of great beauty and spirituality.’
The Christian Church early found out that there was
only one safe way of dealing with heresy. From the
end of the fourth century, when the habit began, to its
climax on St. Bartholomew’s Day, it was universally
recognized that only dead heretics ceased to be trouble
some. History affords ample evidence of the efficacy
of repressive measures, often carried out on a scale of
noble proportions. France is Catholic because of a
root and branch policy; England’s Protestantism is an
enduring testimony to the thoroughness with which
Henry VIII carried out his measures. As De Foe says
in his famous pamphlet, Shortest way with Dissenters,
if a man is obstinate and persists in having an opinion
of his own, contrary to that held by a majority of his
fellows, and if the opinion is pernicious and jeopardizes
his eternal salvation, it is much safer to burn him than
to allow his doctrines to spread! For 1,200 years this
policy kept heresy within narrow limits until the great
outbreak. The very best men of the day were con
senting to the death of heretics. The spirit of Pro
testantism was against it; Luther nobly so. Judged
by his age Servetus was a rank heretic, and as deserving
of death as any ever tied to a stake. We can scarcely
call him a martyr of the Church.—What Church would
own him? All the same, we honour his memory as
a martyr to the truth as he saw it.
Servetus was a student of medicine in Paris with
�24
MICHAEL SERVETUS
Sylvius and Guinther, two of the most ardent of the
revivers of the Galenic anatomy. More important still,
he was a fellow student and pro-sector with Vesalius.
He wrote one little medical book of no special merit.
The works which he edited, which brought him more
money than fame, indicate an independent and critical
spirit. Vienne was a small town, in which we cannot
think there was any scientific stimulus, though it was
in a region noted for its intellectual activity.
In possession of a fact in physiology of the very first
moment, Servetus described it with extraordinary clear
ness and accuracy. But so little did he think of the
discovery, of so trifling importance did it appear in
comparison with the great task in hand of restoring
Christianity, that he used it simply as an illustration
when discussing the nature of the Holy Spirit in his
work Christianismi Restitutio. The discovery was
nothing less than that of the passage of the blood from
the right side of the heart to the left through the lungs,
what is known as pulmonary, or lesser circulation.
In the year 1553 the views of Galen everywhere
prevailed. The great master had indeed effected a
revolution in the knowledge of the circulation almost
as great as that made by Harvey in the seventeenth
century. Briefly stated there were two bloods, the
natural and the vital, in two practically closed systems,
the veins and the arteries. The liver was the central
organ of the venous system, the 4 shop ’ as Burton calls
it, in which the chylus was converted into blood and
from which it was distributed by the veins to all parts
of the body for nourishment. The veins were rather
vessels containing the blood than tubes for its trans
mission—irrigating canals Galen called them. Galen
knew the structure of the heart, the arrangement of its
valves, and the direction in which the blood passed, but
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
25
its chief function was not, as we suppose, mechanical,
but in the left ventricle, the seat of life, the vital spirits
were generated, being a mixture of inspired air and
blood. By an alternate movement of dilatation and
collapse of the arteries the blood with the vital spirits
were kept in constant motion.1 Galen had demonstrated
that the arteries and the veins communicated with each
other at the periphery. A small quantity of the blood
went, he believed, from the right side of the heart to the
lungs, for their nourishment, and in this way passed to
the left side of the heart; but the chief communication
between the two systems was through pores in the
ventricular septum, the thick muscular wall separating
the two chief chambers of the heart.
The literature may be searched in vain for any other
than the Galenic view up to 1553- Even Vesalius, who
could not understand from its structure how even the
smallest quantity of blood could pass through the
septum dividing the ventricles, offered no other expla
nation. The more one knows of the Galenic physiology,
the less one is surprised that it had so captivated the
minds of men. The description of the new way which
Servetus describes is found in the fifth book of the
Christianismi Restitutio, in which he is discussing
the nature of the Holy Spirit. After mentioning the
threefold spirit of the body of man, natural, vital, and
animal, he goes on to discuss the vital spirit, and in
1 So firmly entrenched was the Galenic physiology that the new
views of Harvey made at first very slow progress. In Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy, which is a sort of epitome of medical
knowledge of the seventeenth century, is the following description:
‘ The left creek (i. e. ventricle) has the form of a cone, and is the
seat of life, which, as a torch doth oil, draws blood unto it be
getting of it spirits and fire, and as a fire in a torch so are spirits
in the blood; and by that great artery called aorta, it sends vital
spirits over the body, and takes air from the lungs.’
�26
MICHAEL SERVETUS
a few paragraphs describes the pulmonary circulation.
‘ Rightly to understand the question here, the first thing
to be considered is the substantial generation of the
vital spirit—a compound of the inspired air with the
most subtle portion of the blood. The vital spirit has,
therefore, its source in the left ventricle of the heart,
the lungs aiding most essentially in its production. It
is a fine attenuated spirit, elaborated by the power of
heat, of a crimson colour and fiery potency—the lucid
vapour as it were of the blood, substantially composed of
water, air, and fire; for it is engendered, as said, by the
mingling of the inspired air with the more subtle portion
of the blood which the right ventricle of the heart
communicates to the left. This communication, how
ever, does not take place through the septum, partition,
or midwall of the heart, as commonly believed, but by
another admirable contrivance, the blood being trans
mitted from the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary
vein, by a lengthened passage through the lungs, in the
course of which it is elaborated and becomes of a
crimson colour. Mingled with the inspired air in this
passage, and freed from fuliginous vapours by the act
of expiration, the mixture being now complete in every
respect, and the blood become fit dwelling-place of the
vital spirit, it is finally attracted by the diastole, and
reaches the left ventricle of the heart.
‘ Now that the communication and elaboration take
place in the lungs in the manner described, we are
assured by the conjunctions and communications of the
pulmonary artery with the pulmonary vein. The great
size of the pulmonary artery seems of itself to declare
how the matter stands; for this vessel would neither
have been of such a size as it is, nor would such a force
of the purest blood have been sent through it to the
lungs for their nutrition only; neither would the heart
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
27
have supplied the lungs in such fashion, seeing as we
do that the lungs in the foetus are nourished from
another source—those membranes or valves of the
heart not coming into play until the hour of birth, as
Galen teaches. The blood must consequently be
poured in such large measure at the moment of birth
from the heart to the lungs for another purpose than the
nourishment of those organs. Moreover, it is not
simply air, but air mingled with blood that is returned
from the lungs to the heart by the pulmonary veins.
1 It is in the lungs, consequently, that the mixture (of
the inspired air with the blood) takes place, and it is in
the lungs also, not in the heart, that the crimson colour
of the blood is acquired. There is not indeed capacity
of room enough in the left ventricle of the heart for so
great and important an elaboration, neither does it seem
competent to produce the crimson colour. To conclude,
the septum or middle portion of the heart, seeing that it
is without vessels and special properties, is not fitted to
permit and accomplish the communication and elabora
tion in question, although it may be that some
transudation takes place through it. It is by a mechanism
similar to that by which the transfusion from the vena
portae to the vena cava takes place in the liver, in
respect of the blood, that the transfusion from the
pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein takes place in
the lungs, in respect of the spirit ’ (Willis’s translation).
I here reproduce from the Vienna example the two
pages from which the greater part of this description
is taken (Figs. 9 and 10).
The important elements here are: First, the clear
statement of the function of the pulmonary artery;
secondly, the transmission of the impure or venous
blood through the lungs from the right side of the
heart to the left; thirdly, the recognition of an
�28
*7o
MICHAEL SERVETUS
DE T RIN IT ATE
ie,qua^nuncaudies. Hine dicituranima-effe in fanguirtCpd^
animaipfaeffefanguis,fiuefanguineus fpiricus-Non di>.
cicur anima principal)ter efle inparienbus cordis,aut inb
corpore ipfo cerebri,aucliepacis, fed in fanguine > vcdo'
tec ipfe Deusgenef.9.Leuit.t7.cc Dcuc. u. .
Adquam rem eft priusinrelligendafubftanciatis gene
ratioiplius vicahsfpinrus, quiexacre infpiraco <&-lubci
lifsimofanguinecdponicur,& nuentur. Vitalis fpiricusi
finiftro cordis vecriculofuaorigine habet,iuuacibus ma*
xime pulmonibusadipfiusgcneracioncm.Eftfpiricus ce
nuis, caloris vi elaboratus, flauo colore , ignea poten*
tia>vtfitquafiex puriori fanguine lucidus vapor, fubLand am in fe conunens aquae acus & ignis. Generatur
ex fafla in pulmonibus mixtioneinfpirati aeriscu elabo
rato fubtili fanguine,que dextervctriculus cordis finiftro
communicac.l’ic aurcmc6municatioha?c,non per parie
rem cordis mediu,vc vulgo credicur.Sed magno artificio
a dextro cordisventriculo,longo per pulmones du£u,a*
gicatur fanguis fubtilis:a pulmonibus praeparatur,flauus
€fficitur:&a vena arteriofa in arteria venofam transfun*
ditur • Deinde in ipfa arceria venofa infpiraco acri mifeetur, &T expiratione a fuhgine repurgatur, Atqueita tandem a finiftro cordis ventriculo corum mixeum
perdiaftolem attrahitur, apta fuppellex, vcfiatfpiricus
Vitalis.
Quod ica per pulmones Rat coicatio,& praeparatio,do
ceccoiundio varia,& c ciicatio, venae arccnofae cu arteria
venofa i pulmonibus.Cofirmat hoc magnitude infignis
venx arccrioiar,qua? nec calis,nec taca faefta efiec, nec tata
acordeipfo vim purifsimi fanguinis in pulmones emitte
ret,oblolu eoru nutrimcntum, nec cor pulmonibus hac
ratione feruirct:cu pradertim anteain embryone folerenc
pulmoncs ipfi aliunde nucrin,ob membranuias Ulas, feu.
value*
Fig. 9
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
V.
LIBER
29
<7«
valuulas cordis,vfcg ad horanatiuicaris noduaperras,vr
docetGalenus.Ergpadaliumvfum effunditurfanguis a
cordein pulmones hora ipfa natiuiratis,& tacopiofus.L*
t?,a pulmonibus ad cor non fimplex aer,(ed mixtus fanguine mittitur,per arteriam venofam:ergo inpulmonibus fit mixtio.Flauus illecolor a pulmonibusdatur fan
guini fpirituofo,non a’ corde.In finiltrocordis ventriculo
non eft loeus capax tantae & cam copiofae mixtionis, nec
ad Rauum elaborauo ilia fuftictes.Demum,paries ilk medius,cum fie vaforum & facultarum expers,non eft aptus
ad communicatione & elaborationcillam, licet aliquid re
fudare pofsic.Eodem artificio.quo in hepate fit transit!fio
2 vena porta ad venamcauam propter fanguinem , fit etiam in pulmone transfufio a vena arceriofa ad arteriam venofam propter fpsneum . Sii quishaecconferac
cum iqs quaefcribic Gaknuslib.6.& 7.de vfu partium,ve
ritatem penitusihcelhgec, abipfo Galeno non animaduerfam.
v
Ilk itaqjfpiricus vicalis a finiftro cordis ventriculo in
arterias tonus Corporis deinde transfunditur,ira vt qui ce
nuior eft, Tuperioraperat, vbi magisadhuc elaboratur,
praecipue in plexu retiformi,fub bafi cerebri fito,inquo
ex vitali fieri incipir animalis , ad propriam rationalis
animae fedem accedens . I re rum ille fortius mentis ignea
vi tenuatur,elaborarur,& perficiturjn tenuifsimis vafis,
feu capillaribus arterrjs , quae in plexibus choroidibus
fitaefunt,&' ipfifsimam mentem continent. Hi plexus
intima omnia cerebri penetrant ,
ipfos cerebri ventriculos interne fuccingunc , vafa ilia fecum compli cata,& contexca feruantes > vfque ad neruorum origines, Vciheos fenriendi A mouendi facultas inducatur.
Vafa ilia miraculo magno tenuifsimc contexts > ta
me t fl arttriae dicantur , funt tamen fines arteriarum ,
cendcn
Fig.
io
�3°
MICHAEL SERVETUS
elaboration or transformation in the lungs, so that with
the freeing the blood of ‘ fuliginous vapours there was
at the same time a change to the crimson colour of the
arterial blood; fourthly, the direct denial of a com
munication of the two bloods, by means of orifices in
the septum between the ventricles.
He had no idea of the general or systematic circula
tion, and so far as the left heart and the arteries were
concerned he believed them to be the seat of the vital
blood and spirits.
It is not hard to imagine how Servetus had become
emancipated from the old views. A student at Paris at
a most opportune period, when dissection had become
popular, he had had as pro-sector to Guinther excep
tional opportunities. But more important still, he had
as fellow worker the anatomical arch-heretic, Andreas
Vesalius, already imbued with the conviction that his
teachers were wrong in regarding Galen as inspired
and infallible. It was at this very period that Vesalius
had pointed out to his teacher Sylvius the error of
Galen about the aortic valves ; and when one considers
the extraordinary rapidity with which Vesalius reformed
human anatomy, before he had completed his twenty
eighth year, it is not surprising that his colleague and
co-worker should have discovered one of the great
truths of physiology.
The Christianismi Restitutio was never published,
and the discovery of Servetus remained unrecognized
until the attention of Wotton was called to it by Charles
Bernard, a St. Bartholomew’s Hospital surgeon.1 Mean
while it had been rediscovered, and among the many
vagaries with which the history of the circulation of the
blood is marked, not the least striking is the attempt to
1 William Wotton, Reflections upon ancient and modern learning,
1697, Page 229.
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
3i
rob Servetus of his credit. In 1559 there was published
a work by Realdus Colombo/ a student of Vesalius and
his successor at Padua, in which the circulation of the
blood from the right side of the heart to the left is
clearly described. It is impossible to say that he had
added anything to the account just given, and the far
fetched view has been maintained that Italian students
at Paris had acquainted Servetus with the views of
Colombo. It is claimed for Colombo also that he had a
better idea of the function of respiration in the purifi
cation of the blood, by its mingling with the air, but
Servetus distinctly states that the mixture takes place
in the lungs, not, as was usually understood at the time,
in the heart itself.
Caesalpinus (1569), for whom elaborate claims are
made, also knew of the pulmonary circulation, but he
thought part of the blood went through the median
septum. A more important claim is made for him of
the discovery of the general circulation, but it is
remarkable that any one knowing the history of the
subject could read into his physiology anything more
than the old Galenic views.
The history of the circulation bristles with controversy
and widely divergent opinions are held as to the merits
of the different observers. That Servetus first advanced
a step beyond Galen, that Colombo and Caesalpinus
reached the same conclusion independently—all three
recognizing the lesser circulation, is quite as certain as
that it remained for Harvey to open an entirely new
chapter in physiology, and to introduce modern experi
mental methods by which the complete circulation of
the blood was first clearly demonstrated.2
1 De re Anatomica: Venetiis.
2 John C. Dalton’s History of the Circulation, 1884, gives by far
the best and fullest account of the whole subject in English.
�32
MICHAEL SERVETUS
A word about the book Christianismi Restitutio, liber
inter rariores longe rarissimus. Only two complete
copies are known, one in the Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris, and the other in the Imperial Library, Vienna,
from which I was very kindly permitted to have the
photographs of the title-page and the pages describing
the circulation of the blood which are here reproduced.
A third copy, imperfect, with the first sixteen pages
in MS., is in the University Library, Edinburgh. The
Paris copy is of special interest, as it belonged to
Dr. Richard Mead, the distinguished physician and book
collector, by whom it was exchanged with M. de Boze
for a series of medals. In 1784 it was secured for the
Royal Library. It may now be seen in one of the
show cases of the Bibliotheque Nationale, of which it is
one of the rare treasures. An added interest is in the
fact that on the title-page occurs the name ‘ Germain
Colladon
the Geneva barrister, who prosecuted
Servetus ; and it is in the highest degree probable that
this was the identical copy used at the trial. In one
place the book is stained, some suppose by moisture;
others think it possible this was the very copy
bound upon the victim himself, and snatched from the
flames by some one who wished to preserve so interest
ing a record of the great heretic. The question has
been examined carefully by the late Professor Laboubene and M. Hahn, the distinguished librarian of the
Paris Faculty of Medicine, both of whom are in favour
of fire, not moisture, as the cause of the staining.
In 1791 the Vienna copy was reprinted at Nuremberg
in facsimile, page for page, but Dr. de Murr, who was
responsible for the reprint, very wisely put the date 1791
at the bottom of the last page. Copies of this edition
are not uncommon in the larger libraries. In 1723
Mead attempted to have a reprint made from his copy,
�MICHAEL SERVETUS
33
but when nearly completed the Bishop of London had
it suppressed, and (it is stated) the copies were burnt.
A few, however, escaped, and Willis says that he saw
one in the library of the London Medical Society.
I regret to say that the librarian informs me that this
no longer is to be found. A copy of the Mead partial
reprint is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and two copies
are in the British Museum.
A last word on the attitude of John Calvin towards
Servetus. Much scorn has been heaped upon the
great reformer, and one cannot but regret that a man
of such magnificent achievements should have been
dragged into a miserable heresy hunt like a common
inquisitor. Let us not estimate him by his century, as
his friends plead, but frankly by his life, and as a man
of like passions with ourselves. He had bitter provo
cation. Flouted for years by the persistent assaults of
Servetus, and shocked out of all compassion by his
blasphemies, is it to be wondered that the old Adam
got the better of his Christian charity? Not only is it
impossible to acquit Calvin of active complicity in this
unhappy affair, but there was mixed up with it a personal
hate, a vindictiveness unbecoming in so great a
character, and we may say foreign to it. But let the
long record of a self-denying life, devoted in an evil
generation to the highest and the best, wipe for all
reasonable men this one blot. Let us, if we may judge
him at all, do so as a man, not as a demi-god. We
cannot defend him, let us not condemn him ; let his one
grievous fault, even though we may fear he never
repented of it, be the shadow which throws into stronger
relief the splendid outlines of a noble life. In his
defence,1 the original edition of which I have here, and
1 Defensio Orthodoxae, &c.t 1554.
E
�34
MICHAEL SERVETUS
which is concerned largely with doctrinal questions,
not only are there no expressions of regret for the part
he played in the tragedy, but the work is filled with
insults to his dead enemy, couched in the most vindictive
language. On the spot where Servetus was burnt
there stands to-day an expiatory monument (Fig. n),
which expresses the spirit of modern Protestantism.
On one side is the record of his birth and death, on
the other an inscription, of which the following is
a translation : ‘ Duteous and grateful followers of Calvin
our great Reformer, yet condemning an error which was
that of his age, and strongly attached to liberty of
conscience according to the true principles of the
Reformation and the Gospel, we have erected this
expiatory monument. Oct. 27, 1903.’
The erection next year at Vienne of a quatercentenary monument will complete the recognition by
the modem world of the merits of one of the strangest
figures on the rich canvas of the sixteenth century.
The wandering Spanish scholar, the stormy disputant,
the anatomical pro-sector, the mystic dreamer of a
restored Christianity, the discoverer of one of the
fundamental facts of physiology, has come at last to his
own. There are those, I know, who feel that perhaps
more than justice has been done; but in a tragic age
Servetus played an unusually tragic part, and the pathos
of his fate appeals strongly to us.
These, too, are days of retribution, of the restoration
of all things, the days of the opening of the fifth seal,
when the souls under the altar see their blood avenged,
when we clothe in the white robes of charity those who
were slain for the testimony which they held, little
noting whether the martyr was Catholic or Protestant,
caring only to honour one of that great company which
no man can number, ‘whose heroic sufferings,’ as
�c
Fig.
ii
£
��MICHAEL SERVETUS
35
Carlyle says, ‘rise up melodiously together to heaven
out of all lands and out of all time, as a sacred Miserere,
their heroic actions also as a boundless everlasting
Psalm of Triumph.’
Note.—The Servetus bibliography is fully given to 1890 in
Professor A. V. D. Linde’s Michael Servetus, Groningen, 1891.
My personal interest dates many years back when Pastor Tollin’s
delightful sketches enlivened the numbers of Virchow’s Archives.
No one has ever had a more enthusiastic biographer, and to the
writings of the Madgeburg clergyman we owe the greater part of
our modern knowledge of Servetus. The best account in English
is by Willis—Servetus and Calvin, 1877. A German translation of
the Christianismi Restitutio by Dr. Bernhard Spiess appeared in
1895 (2nd edition, Wiesbaden, Chr. Limbarth). I am indebted to
Professor Harper of Princeton for an .historical drama, The
Reformer of Geneva, by Professor Shields (privately printed,
Princeton University Press, 1897), which gives an admirable
picture of Geneva at the time of the trial. From Chereau’s
Histoire dun Livre, 1879, I have ‘cribbed’ the idea of the intro
duction. The name of Mosheim must be mentioned, as his
writings were for years the common tap from which all Servetus
knowledge was derived. The Servetus portrait, of which Mosheim
speaks, has disappeared; I have reproduced the engraving from
AUworden’s Historia (1727), also the Roch statue at Anamnese.
����
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Michael Servetus
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Osler, William [Sir, 1849-1919]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 35 p. : ill. (ports.) ; 23 cm.
Notes: "This address did double duty--at the Johns Hopkins Medical School Historical Club, and as an extension lecture in the Summer School, Oxford."--Footnote, p.3. Includes bibliographical references. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Theology
Health
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Michael Servetus
NSS
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�SCIENCE LECTURES FOR THE PEOPLE.
THIRD
SERIES.—1871.
SCIENCE LECTURES,
DELIVERED IN THE
HULME TOWN
HALL,
MANCHESTER.
IN THE YEAR 1871.
By
Lecture I.
YEAST.
Professor HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.
Lecture II.
COAL COLOURS.
By Professor ROSCOE, F.R.S.
Lecture III.
THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE.
By Professor WILKINS, M.A.
Lecture IV.
THE FOOD OF PLANTS.
By Professor ODLING, F.R.S.
Lecture V.
THE UNCONSCIOUS ACTION OF THE BRAIN.
By Dr. CARPENTER, F.R.S.
Lecture VI.
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS.
By Dr. CARPENTER, F.R.S.
Lecture VII.
THE PROGRESS OF SANITARY SCIENCE.
By Professor ROSCOE, F.R.S.
MANCHESTER :
JOHN HEYWOOD, 141 and 143', DEANSGATE.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., Stationers’ Hall Court.
F. PITMAN. Paternoster Row.
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�INDEX
Page.
Yeast.......................................................
x
Coal Colours................................................ ...............................................
Origin
of the
English People.............................................................
Food of Plants..........................
...............................
Unconscious Action
of the
Epidemic Delusions..................
.......................... *.............................................
Progress
of
49
.Brain....................................................
95
Sanitary Science...................................................... J20
��ON
YEAST
A LECTURE
BY
PROFESSOR
HUXLEY,
LL.D.,
F.R.S.
Delivered in the Free Trade Hah,, Manchester, 3rd November, 1871.
I have selected to-night the particular subject of Yeast for two
reasons—or, rather, I should say for three. In the first place,
because it is one of the simplest and the most familiar objects with
which we are acquainted. In the second place, because the facts
and phenomena which I have to describe are so simple that it is
possible to put them before you without the help of any of those
pictures or diagrams which are needed when matters are more
complicated, and which, if I had to refer to them here, would
involve the necessity of my turning away from you now and then,
and thereby increasing very largely my difficulty (already sufficiently
great) in making myself heard. And thirdly, I have chosen this
subject because I know of no familiar substance forming part of
our every day knowledge and experience, the examination of
which, with a little care, tends to open up such very considerable
issues as does this substance—yeast.
In the first place, I should like to call your attention to a
fact with which the whole of you are, to begin with, perfectly
acquainted, I mean the fact that any liquid containing sugar, any
liquid which is formed by pressing out the succulent parts of the
fruits of plants, or a mixture of honey and water, if left of itself foj
a short time, begins to undergo a peculiar change. No matter how
clear it might be at starting, yet after a few hours, or at most a few
days, if the temperature is high, this liquid begins to be turbid,
�and by-and-by bubbles make their appearance in it, and a sort of
dirty-looking yellowish foam or scum collects at the surface ; while
at the same time, by degrees, a similar kind of matter, which we
call the “ lees,” sinks to the bottom.
The quantity of this dirty-looking stuff, that we call the scum
and the lees, goes on increasing until it reaches a certain amount,
and then it stops; and by the time it stops, you find the liquid in
which this matter has been formed has become altered in its quality.
To begin with it was a mere sweetish substance, having the flavour
of whatever might be the plant from which it was expressed, or
having merely the taste and the absence of smell of a solution of
sugar; but by the time that this change that I have been briefly
describing to you is accomplished the liquid has become com
pletely altered, it has acquired a peculiar smell, and, what is still
more remarkable, it has gained the property of intoxicating the
person who drinks it Nothing can be more innocent than a
solution of sugar; nothing can be less innocent, if taken in excess,
as you all know, than those fermented matters which are produced
from sugar. Well, again, if you notice that bubbling, or, as it
were, seething of the liquid, which has accompanied the whole of
this process, you will find that it is produced by the evolution of
little bubbles of air-like substance out of the liquid; and I dare
say you all know this air-like substance is not like common air; it
is not a substance which a man can breathe with impunity. You
often hear of accidents which take place in brewers’ vats when
men go in carelessly, and get suffocated there without knowing
that there was anything evil awaiting them. And if you tried the
experiment with this liquid I am telling of while it was fermenting,
you would find that any small animal let down into the vessel
would be similarly stifled; and you would discover that a light
lowered down into it would go out. Well, then, lastly, if after this
liquid has been thus altered you expose it to that process which
is called distillation; that is to say, if you put it into a still, and
collect the matters which are sent over, you obtain, when you
first heat it, a clear transparent liquid, which, however, is some
thing totally different from water; it is much lighter; it has a
strong smell, and it has an acrid taste ; and it possesses the same
intoxicating power as the original liquid, but in a much more
intense degree. If you put a light to it, it burns with a bright
flame, and it is that substance which we know as spirits of wine.
Now these facts which I have just put before you—all but the
last—have been known from extremely remote antiquity. It is, I
hope, one of the best evidences of the antiquity of the human
�race, that among the earliest records of all kinds of men, you find
a time recorded when they got drunk. We may hope that that
must have been a very late period in their history. Not only
have we the record of what happened to Noah, but if we turn to
the traditions of a different people, those forefathers of ours who
lived in the high lands of Northern India, we find that they were
not less addicted to intoxicating liquids ; and I have no doubt
that the knowledge of this process extends far beyond the limits
of historically recorded time. And it is a very curious thing to
observe that al) the names we have of this process, and all that
belongs to it, are names that have their roots not in our present
language, but in those older languages which go back to the times
at which this country was peopled. That word “fermentation” for
example, which is the title we apply to the whole process, is a
Latin term ; and a term which is evidently based upon the fact of
the effervescence of the liquid. Then the French, who are very
fond of calling themselves a Latin race, have a particular word for
ferment, which is leviire.' And, in the same way, we have the word
“ leaven,” those two words having reference to the heaving up, or
to the raising of the substance which is fermented. Now those are
words which we get from what I may call the Latin side of our
parentage ; but if we turn to the Saxon side, there are a number
of names connected with this process of fermentation. For
example, the Germans call fermentation—and the old Germans
did so—“giihren;" and they call anything which is used as a
ferment by such names, such as “gheist” and “geest” and finally
in low German, “yest ■” and that word you know is the word
our Saxon forefathers used, and is almost the same as the word
which is commonly employed in this country to denote the common
ferment of which I have been speaking. So theyhave another name,
the word “hefe" which is derived from their verb “heben” which
signifies to raise up ; and they have yet a third name, which is also
one common in this country (I do not know whether it is common
in Lancashire, but it is certainly very common in the Midland
counties), the word “barm” which is derived from a root which
signifies to raise or to bear up. Barm is a something borne up; and
thus there is much more real relation than is commonly supposed
by those who make puns, between the beer which a man takes
down his throat and the bier upon which that process, if carried
to excess, generally lands him, for they are both derived from the
root signifying bearing up; the one thing is borne upon men’s
shoulders, and the other is the fermented liquid which was borne
up bv the fermentation taking place in itself.
�4
Again, I spoke of the produce of fermentation as “spirit
of wine.” Now what a very curious phrase that is, if you
come to think of it. The old alchemists talked of the finest
essence of anything as if it had the same sort of relation to the
thing itself as a man’s spirit is supposed to have to his body; and
so they spoke of this fine essence of the fermented liquid as being
the spirit of the liquid.
Thus came about that extraordinary
ambiguity of language, in virtue of which you apply precisely the
same substantive name to the soul of man and to a glass of gin!
And then there is still yet one other most curious piece of nomen
clature connected with this matter, and that is the word “ alcohol ”
itself, which is now so familiar to everybody. Alcohol originally
meant a very fine powder. The women of the Arabs and other
Eastern people are in the habit of tinging their eyelashes
with a very fine black powder which is made of antimony,
and they call that “kohol;” and the “al” is simply the article put
in front of it, so as to say “ the kohol.”. And up to the 17th
century in this country the word alcohol was employed to signify
any very fine powder; you find in Robert Boyle’s works that he
uses “alcohol” for a very fine subtle powder. But then this
name of anything very fine and very subtle came to be specially
connected with the fine and subtle spirit obtained from the
fermentation of sugar; and I believe that the first person who
fairly fixed it as the proper name of what we now commonly call
spirits of wine, was the great French chemist Lavoisier, so com
paratively recent is the use of the word alcohol in this specialised
sense.
So much by way of general introduction to the subject on which
I have to speak to-night. What I have hitherto stated is simply
what we may call common knowledge, which everybody may
acquaint himself with. And you know that what we call scientific
knowledge is not any kind of conjuration, as people sometimes
suppose, but it is simply the application of the same principles of
common sense that we apply to common knowledge, carried out,
if I may so speak, to knowledge which is uncommon. And all
that we know now of this substance, yeast, and all the very strange
issues to which that knowledge has led us, have simply come out of
the inveterate habit, and a very fortunate habit for the human race
it is, which scientific men have of not being content until they
have routed out all the different chains and connections of
apparently simple phenomena, until they have taken them to
pieces and understood the conditions upon which they depend.
I will try to point out to you now what has happened in conse
�5
quence of endeavouring to apply this process of “analysis,” as we
call it, this teazing out of an apparently simple fact into all the
little facts of which it is made up, to the ascertained facts relating to
the barm or the yeast; secondly, what has come of the attempt to
ascertain distinctly what is the nature of the products which are
produced by fermentation; then what has come of the attempt
to understand the relation between the yeast and the products ;
and lastly, what very curious side issues—if I may so call them—
have branched out in the course of this inquiry, which has now
occupied somewhere about two centuries.
The first thing was to make out precisely and clearly what was
the nature of this substance, this apparently mere scum and mud
that we call yeast. And that was first commenced seriously l?y a
wonderful old Dutchman of the name of Leeuwenhoek, who lived
some two hundred years ago, and who was the first person to
invent thoroughly trustworthy microscopes of high powers. Now,
Leeuwenhoek went to work upon this yeast mud, and by applying
to it high powers of the microscope, he discovered that it was no
mere mud such as you might at first suppose, but that it was a
substance made up of an enormous multitude of minute grains,
each of which had just as definite a form as if it were a grain ol
corn, although it was vastly smaller, the largest of these not
being more than the two-thousandth of an inch in diameter ; while,
as you know, a grain of corn is a large thing, and the very smallest
of these particles were not more than the seven-thousandth of an
inch in diameter. Leeuwenhoek saw that this muddy stuff was in
reality a liquid, in which there were floating this immense numbei
of definitely shaped particles, all aggregated in heaps and lumps
and some of them separate. That discovery remained, so to speak,
dormant for fully a century, and then the question was taken up
by a French discoverer, who, paying great attention and having the
advantage of better instruments than Leeuwenhoek had, watched
these things and made the astounding discovery that they were
bodies which were constantly being reproduced and growing; that
when one of these rounded bodies was once formed and had grown
to its full size, it immediately began to give off a little bud from one
side, and then that bud grew out until it had attained the full size of
the first, and that, in this way, the yeast particle was undergoing a
processof multiplication by budding, justas effectual and just as com
plete as the process of multiplication of a plant by budding; and
thus this Frenchman, Cagniard de la Tour, arrived at the conclusion—
very creditable to his sagacity, and which has been confirmed by
every observation and reasoning since—that this apparently muddy
�6
refuse was neither more nor less than a mass of plants, of minute^
living plants, growing and multiplying in the sugary fluid in which
the yeast is formed. And from that time forth we have known this,
substance which forms the scum and the lees as the yeast plant;
and it has received a scientific name—which I may use without
thinking of it, and which I will therefore give you—namely,
“ Torula.” Well, this was a capital discovery. The next thing
to do was to make out how this torula was related to other
plants. I won’t weary you with the whole course of investi
gation, but I may sum up its results, and they are these—that
the torula is a particular kind of a fungus, a particular state
rather, of a fungus or mould. There are many moulds which
undqr certain conditions give rise to this torula condition, to a
substance which is not distinguishable from yeast, and which has
the same properties as yeast—that is to say, which is able to
decompose sugar in the curious way that we shall consider by-andby. So that the yeast plant is a plant belonging to a group of the
Fungi, multiplying and growing and living in this very remarkable
manner in the sugary fluid which is, so to speak, the nidus or home
of the yeast.
That, in a few words, is, as far as investigation—by the help of
one’s eye and by the help of the microscope—has taken us. But
now there is an observer whose methods of observation are more
refined than those of men who use their eye, even though it be
aided by the microscope; a man who sees indirectly further than
we can see directly—that is, the chemist; and the chemist took up
this question, and his discovery was not less remarkable than that
of the microscopist. The chemist discovered that the yeast plant
being composed of a sort of bag, like a bladder, inside which is a
peculiar soft, semifluid material—the chemist found that this outer
bladder has the same composition as the substance of wood, that
material which is called “cellulose,” and which consists of the
elements carbon and hydrogen and oxygen, without any nitrogen.
But then he also found (the first person to discover it was an
Italian chemist, named Fabroni, in the end of the last century)
that this inner matter which was contained in the bag, which
constitutes the yeast plant, was a substance containing the elements
carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen ; that it was what
Fabroni called a vegeto-animal substance, and that it had the
peculiarities of what are commonly called “ animal products.”
This again was an exceedingly remarkable discovery. It lay
neglected for a time, until it was subsequently taken up by the
creat chemists of modem times, and they, with their delicate
�7
methods of analysis, have finally decided that, in all essential
respects, the substance which forms the chief part of the contents
of the yeast plant is identical with the material which forms the
chief part of our own muscles, which forms the chief part of our
own blood, which forms the chief part of the white ox the egg;
that, in fact, although this little organism is a plant, and nothing
but a plant, yet that its active living contents contain a substance
which is called “ protein,” which is of the same nature as the
substance which forms the foundation of every animal organism
whatever.
Now we come next to the question of the analysis of the
products, of that which is produced during the process of fermen
tation. So far back as the beginning of the 16th century, in the
times of transition between the old alchemy and the modern
chemistry, there was a remarkable man, Von Helmont, a Dutchman,
who saw the difference between the air which comes out of a vat
where something is fermenting and common air. He was the
man who invented the term -‘gas,” and he called this kind
of gas “gas silvestre”—so to speak gas that is wild, and lives
in out of the way places—having in his mind the identity of this
particular kind of air with that which is found in some caves and
cellars. Then, the gradual process of investigation going on, it
was discovered that this substance, then called “ fixed air,” was
a poisonous gas, and it was finally identified with that’ kind of
gas which is obtained by burning charcoal in the air, which is
called “ carbonic acid.” Then the substance alcohol was subjected
to examination, and it was found to be a combination of carbon,
and hydrogen, and oxygen. Then the sugar which was contained
in the fermenting liquid was examined, and that was found to contain
the three elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. So that it was
clear there were in sugar the fundamental elements which are con
tained in the carbonic acid, and in the alcohol. And then came that
great chemist Lavoisier, and he examined into the subject carefully,
and possessed with that brilliant thought of his which happens to
be propounded exactly apropos to this matter of fermentation—•
that no matter is ever lost, but that matter only changes its
form and changes its combinations—he endeavoured to make
out what became of the sugar which was subjected to fermen
tation. He thought he discovered that the whole weight of
the sugar was represented by the weight of the alcohol pro
duced, added to the weight of the carbonic acid produced; that
in other words, supposing this tumbler to represent the sugar,
that the action of fermentation was as it were the splitting of it,
�8
the one half going away in the shape of carbonic acid, and the other
half going away in the shape of alcohol. Subsequent inquiry,
careful research with the refinements of modern chemistry, have
been applied to this problem, and they have shown that Lavoisier
was not quite correct; that what he says is quite true for about 95
per cent of the sugar, but that the other 5 per cent, or nearly so, is
converted into two other things; one of them, matter which is
called succinic acid, and the other matter which is called glycerine,
which you all know now as one of the commonest of household
matters. It may be that we have not got to the end of this refined
analysis yet, but 'at any rate, I suppose I may say—and I speak
with some little hesitation for fear my friend Professor Roscoe
here may pick me up for trespassing upon his province—but I
believe I may say that now we can account for 99 per cent at least
of the sugar, and that that 99 per cent is split up into these four
things, carbonic acid, alcohol, succinic acid, and glycerine. So
that it may be that none of the sugar whatever disappears, and
that only its parts, so to speak, are re-arranged, and if any of it
disappears, certainly it is a very small portion.
Now these are the facts of the case. There is the fact of the
growth of the yeast plant; and there is the fact of the splitting up
of the sugar. What relation have these two facts to one another ?
For a very long time that was a great matter of dispute. The
early French observers, to do them justice, discerned the real state
of the case, namely, that there was a very close connection
between the actual life of the yeast plant and this operation of the
splitting up of the sugar; and that one was in some way or other
connected with the other. All investigation subsequently has con
firmed this original idea. It has been shown that if you take any
measures by which other plants of like kind to the torula
would be killed, and by which the yeast plant is killed, then
the yeast loses its efficiency. But a capital experiment upon
this subject was made by a very distinguished man, Helmholz,
who performed an experiment of this kind. He had two
vessels—one of them we will suppose full of yeast, but over
the bottom of it, as this might be, was tied a thin film of bladder;
consequently, through that thin film of bladder all the liquid
parts of the yeast would go, but the solid parts would be
stopped behind ; the torula would be stopped, the liquid parts of
the yeast would go. And then he took another vessel containing
a fermentable solution of sugar, and he put one inside the other;
and in this way you see the fluid parts of the yeast were able to
pass through with the utmost ease into the sugar, but the solid
�1
9
parts could not get through at all. And he judged thus : if the
fluid parts are those which excite fermentation, then, inasmuch as
these are stopped, the sugar will not ferment; and the sugar did
not ferment, showing quite clearly that an immediate contact with
the solid, living torula was absolutely necessary to excite this
process of splitting up of the sugar. This experiment was quite
conclusive as to this particular point, and has had very great
fruits in other directions.
Well, then, the yea.st plant being essential to the production of
fermentation, where does the yeast plant come from ? Here,
again, was another great problem opened up, for, as I said at
starting, you have, under ordinary circumstances in warm weather,
merely to expose some fluid containing a solution of sugar, or
any form of syrup or vegetable juice to the air, in order, after a
comparatively short time, to see all these phenomena of fermen
tation. Of course the first obvious suggestion is, that the torula
has been generated within the fluid. In fact, it seems at first
quite absurd to entertain any other conviction; but that belief
would most assuredly be an erroneous one.
Towards the beginning of this century, in the vigorous times of
the old French wars, there was a Monsieur Appert, who had his
attention directed to the preservation of things that ordinarily
perish, such as meats and vegetables, and in fact he laid the
foundation of our modern method of preserving meats; and he
found that if he boiled any of these substances and then tied them so
as to exclude the air, that they would be preserved for any time.
He tried these experiments, particularly with the must of wine and
with the wort of beer; and he found that if the wort of beer had
been carefully boiled and was stopped in such a way that the air
could not get at it, it would never ferment. What was the
reason of this? That, again, became the subject of a long
string of experiments, with this ultimate result, that if you take
precautions to prevent any solid matters from getting into the
must of wine or the wort of beer, under these circumstances—that
is to say, if the fluid has been boiled and placed in a bottle, and
if you stuff the neck of the bottle full of cotton wool, which
allows the air to go through, and stops anything of a solid
character however fine, then you may let it be for ten years and it
will not ferment. But if you take that plug out and give the
air free access, then, sooner or later, fermentation will set up.
And there is no doubt whatever that fermentation is excited
only by the presence of some torula or other, and that
that torula proceeds, in our present experience, from pre-existing
�IO
torulae. These little bodies are excessively light. You can easily
imagine what must be the weight of little particles, but slightly
heavier than water, and not more than the two thousandth or
perhaps seven thousandth of an inch in diameter. They
are capable of floating about and dancing like motes in the
sunbeam ; they are carried about by all sorts of currents of air;
the great majority of them perish ; but one or two, which may
chance to enter into a sugary solution, immediately enter into
active life, find there the conditions of their nourishment, increase
and multiply, and may give rise to any quantity whatever of
this substance yeast. And, whatever may be true or not be true
about this “ spontaneous generation,” as it is called, in regard to
all other kinds of living things, it is perfectly certain, as regards
yeast, that it always owes its origin to this process of transporta
tion or inoculation, if you like so to call it, from some other , living
yeast organism ; and so far as yeast is concerned, the doctrine of
spontaneous generation is absolutely out of court. And not only
so, but the yeast must be alive in order to exert these peculiar
properties. If it be crushed, if it be heated so far that its life is
destroyed, that peculiar power of fermentation is not excited. Thus
we have come to this conclusion, as the result of our inquiry, that
the fermentation of sugar, the splitting of the sugar into alcohol and
carbonic acid, glycerine, and succinic acid, is the result of nothing
but the vital activity of this little fungus, the torula.
And now comes the further exceedingly difficult inquiry—how
is it that this plant, the torula, produces this singular operation ol
the splitting up of the sugar? Fabroni, to whom I referred some
time ago, imagined that the effervescence of fermentation was
produced in just the same way as the effervescence of a seidlitz
powder, that the yeast was a kind of acid, and that the sugar was
a combination of carbonic acid and some base to form the alcohol,
and that the yeast combined with this substance, and set free the
carbonic acid; just as when you add carbonate of soda to acid you
turn out the carbonic acid. But of course the discovery of
Lavoisier that the carbonic acid and the alcohol taken together
are very nearly equal in weight to the sugar, completely upset this
hypothesis. Another view was therefore taken by the French
chemist, Thenard, and it is still held by a very eminent chemist, .
M. Pasteur, and their view is this, that the yeast, so to speak, eats a
little of the sugar, turns a little cf it to its own purposes, and by
so doing gives such a shape to the sugar that the rest of it breaks
up into carbonic acid and alcohol.
Well, then, there is a third hypothesis, which is maintained by
�II
another very distinguished chemist, Liebig, which denies either
of the other two, and which declares that the .particles of
the sugar are, as it were, shaken asunder by the forces at work
in the yeast plant. Now I am not going to take you into these
refinements of chemical theory, I cannot for a moment pre
tend to do so, but I may put the case before you by an
analogy. Suppose you compare the sugar to a card house, and
suppose you compare the yeast to a child coming near the card
house, then Fabroni’s hypothesis was that the child took half the
cards away; TWnard’s and Pasteur’s hypothesis is that the
child pulls out the bottom card and thus makes it tumble to
pieces; and Liebig’s hypothesis is that the child comes by and
shakes the table and tumbles the house down. I appeal to my
friend here (Professor Roscoe) whether that is not a fair statement
of the case.
Having thus, as far as I can, discussed the general state of the
question, it remains only that I should speak of some of those
collateral results which have come in a very remarkable way out
of the investigation of yeast. I told you that it was very early
observed that the yeast plant consisted of a bag made up of the
same material as that which composes wood, and of an interior
semifluid mass which contains a substance, identical in its com
position, in a broad sense, with that which constitutes the flesh
of animals. Subsequently, after the structure of the yeast plant
had been carefully observed, it was discovered that all plants, high
and low, are made up of separate bags or “ cells,” as they are
called; these bags or cells having the composition of the pure
matter of wood; having the same composition, broadly speaking,
as the sac of the yeast plant, and having in their interior a
more or less fluid substance containing a matter of the same
nature as the protein substance of the yeast plant. And
therefore this remarkable result came out—that however much
a plant may differ from an animal, yet that the essential con
stituent of the contents of these various cells or sacs of which the
plant is made up, the nitrogenous protein matter, is the same
in the animal as in the plant. And not only was this gradually
discovered, but it was found that these semifluid contents of the
plant cell had, in many cases, a remarkable power of contractility
quite like that of the substance of animals. And about 24 or 25
years ago, namely, about the year 1846, to the best of my recol
lection, a very eminent German botanist, Hugo Von Mohl, con
ferred upon this substance which is found in the interior of the
plant cell, and which is identical with the matter round in the
�12
inside of the yeast cell, and whicn again contains an animal
substance similar to that of which we ourselves are made up—he
conferred upon this that title of “protoplasm,” which has brought
other people a great deal of trouble since 1 I beg particularly to
say that, because I find many people suppose that I was the
inventor of that term, whereas it has been in existence for at least
twenty-five years. And then other observers, taking the question
up, came to this astonishing conclusion (working from this basis of
the yeasty that the differences between animals and plants are not
so much in the fundamental substances which compose them, not
in the protoplasm, but in the manner in which the cells of which
their bodies are built up have become modified. There is a sense in
which it is true—and the analogy was pointed out very many years
ago by some French botanists and chemists—there is a sense in
which it is true that every plant is substantially an enormous
aggregation of bodies similar to yeast cells, each having to a
certain extent its own independent life. And there is a sense in
which it is also perfectly true—although it would be impossible for
me to give the statement to you with proper qualifications and
limitations on an occasion like this—but there is also a sense in
which it is true that every animal body is made up of an aggrega
tion of minute particles of protoplasm, comparable each of them
to the individual separate yeast plant. And those who are
acquainted with the history of the wonderful revolution which has
been worked in our whole conception of these matters in the last
thirty years, will bear me out in saying that the first germ of them,
to a very great extent, was made to grow and fructify by the study
of the yeast plant, which presents us with living matter in almost
its simplest condition.
Then there is yet one last and most important bearing of this
yeast question. There is one direction probably in which the
effects of the careful study of the nature of fermentation will
yield results more practically valuable to mankind than any other.
Let me recall to your minds the fact which I stated at the begin
ning of this lecture. Suppose that I had here a solution of pure
sugar with a little mineral matter in it; and suppose it were
possible for me to take upon the point of a needle one single,
solitary yeast cell, measuring no more perhaps than th£ three
thousandth of an inch in diameter—not bigger than one of those
little coloured specks of matter in my own blood at this moment,
the weight of which it would be difficult to express in the fraction
of a grain — and put it into this solution. From that single
one, if the solution were kept at a fair temperature in a
�13
warm summer’s day, there would be generated, in the course of a
week, enough torulae to form a scum at the top and to form lees
at the bottom, and to change the perfectly tasteless and entirely
harmless fluid, syrup, into a solution impregnated with the poi
sonous gas carbonic acid, impregnated with the poisonous substance
alcohol; and that, in virtue of the changes worked upon the sugar
by the vital activity of these infinitesimally small plants. Now
you see that this is a case of infection. And from the time that
the phenomenon of fermentation were first carefully studied, it has
constantly been suggested to the minds of thoughtful physicians
that there was a something astoundingly similar between this
phenomena of the propagation of fermentation by infection and
contagion, and the phenomena of the propagation of diseases by
infection and contagion. Out of this suggestion has grown that
remarkable theory of many diseases which has been called the
“ germ theory of disease,” the idea, in fact, that we owe a great
many diseases to particles having a certain life of their own,
and which are capable of being transmitted from one living
being to another, exactly as the yeast plant is capable of
being transmitted from one tumbler of saccharine substance to
another. And that is a perfectly tenable hypothesis, one which
in the present state of medicine ought to be absolutely exhausted
and shown not to be true, until we take to others which have less
analogy in their favour. And there are some diseases most
assuredly in which it turns out to be perfectly correct. There are
some forms of what are called malignant carbuncle which have
been shown to be actually effected by a sort of fermentation, if
I may use the phrase, by a sort of disturbance and destruction of
the fluids of the animal body, set up by minute organisms which
are the cause of this destruction and of this disturbance; and only
recently the study of the phenomena which accompany vaccination
has thrown an immense light in this direction, tending to show by
experiments of the same general character as that to which I
referred as performed by Helmholz, that there is a most astonishing
analogy between the contagion of that healing disease and the
contagion of destructive diseases. For it has been made out quite
clearly, by investigations carried on in France and in this country,
that the only part of the vaccine matter which is contagious, which
is capable of carrying on its influence in the organism of the child
wh,o is vaccinated, is the solid particles and not the fluid. By
experiments of the most ingenious kind, the solid parts have
been separated from the fluid parts, and it has then been
discovered that you may vaccinate a child as much as you
�14
like with the fluid parts, but no effect takes place, though an
excessively small portion of the solid particles, the most minute
that can be separated, is amply sufficient to give rise to all the
phenomena of the cow pock, by a process which we can compare
to nothing but the transmission of fermentation from one vessel
into another, by the transport to the one of the torula particles
which exist in the other. And it has been shown to be true of
some of the most destructive diseases which infect animals,
such diseases as the sheep pox, such diseases as that most terrible
and destructive disorder of horses, glanders, that in these, also,
the active power is the living solid particle, and that the inert part
is the fluid. However, do not suppose that I am pushing the
analogy too far. I do not mean to say that the active, solid parts
in these diseased matters are of the same nature as living yeast
plants; but, so far as it goes, there is a most surprising analogy
between the two; and the value of the analogy is this, that by
following it out we may some time or other come to understand
how these diseases are propagated, just as we understand, now,
about fermentation; and that, in this way, some of the greatest
scourges which afflict the human race may be, if not prevented, at
least largely alleviated.
This is the conclusion of the statements which I wished to
put before you. You see we have not been able to have any
accessories. If you will come in such numbers to hear a lecture
of this kind, all I can say is, that diagrams cannot be made big
enough for you, and that it is not possible to show any experi
ments illustrative of a lecture on such a subject as I have to deal
with. Of course my friends the chemists and physicists are very
much better off, because they can not only show you experiments,
but you can smell them and hear them ! But in my case such aids
are not attainable, and therefore I have taken a simple subject
and have dealt with it in such a way that I hope you all under
stand it, at least so far as I have been able to put it before you in
words; and having once apprehended such of the ideas and
simple facts of the case as it was possible to put before you,
you can see for yourselves the great and wonderful issues of such
an apparently homely subject.
�SCIENCE LECTURES
FOR
THE
PEOPLE.
THIRD SERIES-1871.
ON COAL COLOURS.
A
LECTURE,
By Professor
Roscoe,
F.R.S.,
Delivered in the Hulme Town Hall. November 10th, 1871.
The subject of coal has naturally attracted much of our attention
in these Science Lectures. In the first series, Professor Jevons,
than whom no one in the country is more able to speak upon the
economic aspects of the question, discoursed of the importance of
coal in manufactures and trades ; whilst in the last series Mr.
Boyd Dawkins and Mr. Green unfqjded some of the secrets which
lie hidden in a piece of coal. I propose to take up the subject
this evening from another point of view, and to endeavour to open
out to you still more wonderful, and, if possible, still more interest
ing fields than they did, inasmuch as I shall attempt to give you
an account of the composition of coal, and of one or two of the
very large number of derivatives which we can obtain from coal.
You are all aware that from coal we get the magnificent colours
which are so much admired, and which are used so much in silk,
woollen, and cotton dyeing. You know also, perhaps, that even
certain essences and sweet savours can be obtained from this
dirty-looking substance—a piece of coal.
To tell you all about the bodies which have been got from coal
would take me a very long time, I therefore only propose to give
you a short history of the mode in which these bodies are obtained,
choosing out one or two for our more special study.
In order to commence the study of our subject, I will, in the first
place, take here two tobacco pipes, in each of which I have placed
a. small quantity of coal. In the one I have placed a small quan
tity of the kind of coal which is found in South Wales, and which
is called anthracite coal; whilst in the other pipe we have placed
�i6
some coal which is found at Wigan, and is called cannel coat
The difference between the effect of heat upon these two kinds of
coal will very soon be visible to you. We shall be able to get
from the pipe in which we have placed the cannel coal a quantity
of brown vapour, which on bringing a light to it will take fire;
■whilst from the other pipe we shall not get any such brown vapour
at all. Now this shows us at once that coals differ very widely
in their properties.
Coal, as you have been told in the previous lectures, is a body
made up of several elementary constituents. It contains carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen; and the quantities of these
elements which the coals contain varies very much. In this
cannel coal there is a much larger quantity or proportion of
hydrogen and oxygen than there is in the anthracite coal. There
is much more of what we call volatile or bituminous matter; and
therefore this cannel coal will yield us a much larger quantity of
gas than can be got by the use of anthracite coal. Anthracite
coal is almost pure carbon.
[The experiment with the coal in the pipes and all the subse
quent experiments were very successful, and were much ap
plauded.]
The quantity of gas or volatile products which can be obtained
from different kinds of coal depends in the first place, then, upon
the composition of the coal. I have here a small model of a
gas making apparatus; in which the same process is going on
which occurs in an enormously larger scale in the gas works of the
Corporation of Manchester. And for this purpose I have used
cannel coal, because the anthracite coal does not yield us any
supply of gas. Let us now examine what takes place in the gas
works—what is going on when we make this coal gas. We may
divide the products of the gas works into four classes: —first, the
coke, which is left behind in the retort; secondly, the gas which
comes off; thirdly, the watery liquid which is formed; and
fourthly, the tarry matter which comes with the gas, but which,
together with the watery liquid, is not sent through the mains,
but is condensed before it leaves the gas works.
Let us now notice what is. the chemical composition, first of the
coal gas itself; secondly, of the watery portions, called the
ammonia water; and thirdly, of the gas tar. On the side of the
room I have suspended a large diagram of the various products
of coal, some of them having rather curious names (see Table on
page 5). I am afraid that it may frighten some of you if you think
that I am going to talk about all these substances. I do not intend
�i7
to do so; but I wish you to see what a very large number of chemi
cal substances exist as the products of the destructive distillation of
coal. Mark the words “ destructive distillation,” because I shall
have to speak of this again. In the destruction of the coal by
distillation, all these products can be got, and are found either in
the gas or in the coke, or in the ammonia liquor, or in the tar.
Here I have two pounds of cannel coal. I have here a large
white cube, each of whose sides is 26 inches in length, which
represents the quantity of gas which can be got from these two
pounds of cannel coal. I have in this bottle the exact quantity of
coke, namely, 19 ounces, which would be left behind in the retort
when this quantity of coal is heated. Here is three ounces of
watery ammonia liquor which would come away; and this is the
21 ounces of tar which would.be formed by the destructive distil
lation of two pounds of coal. You will see from the diagram
below that 100 tons of cannel coal distilled to yield 10,000
cubic feet of gas, having a specific gravity of o-6, gives the following
products : about 60 tons of coke, 9^ tons of ammonia water, 8^
of tar, and 22^ of gas, by weight. This expresses in numbers
what you there see illustrated by the model.
Destructive Distillation of Coal.
zoo tons of cannel and coal distilled to yield 10,000 cubic feet of gas of specific
gravity, o'6 gives the following products:—
GAS.
I
2
3
4
5
22’25
20’01
20’40
2r7O
I6-5O
TAR.
8-5
7-85
640
7’5°
10-70
AMMONIA
WATER.
9'5
714
5’4°
580
800
COKE.
SOURCE.
59’75
65-00
Average (Muspratt)
Manchester
67’84
6500
6500
Dukinfield
Macclesfield
First, then, with regard to the gas. Coal gas—that with which
we are supplied and lighted at the present time—is not one
definite chemical compound, but is a mixture of several component
chemical substances, and the composition of coal gas varies very
much. Here in the north of England we get a better gas than those
who live in the south, because here we have the command of a better
sort of cannel coal. In London the ordinary illuminating power of
the gas is about 12 J candles; whilst in Manchester the gas has an
illuminating power of about 20 candles ; that is, a jet of gas
burning at the rate of 5 cubic feet per hour gives a light equal to
�i8
that given by 20 standard candles. I mention this to show that gas
is not the same all the world over, but that it depends both upon
the quality of the coal employed, and upon the mode of its
manufacture.
Now the substances which coal gas contains may be divided
into three classes; first, those parts of the gas which give off light,
or the illuminating constituents; secondly, those parts of the gas
which burn, but which do not give off light, and which may be
termed heating constituents ; and thirdly, those portions of the
gas which neither give off light nor heat, that is to say, which do
not burn at all, and these may be termed the impurities contained
in the gas, which require to be removed, or ought to be removed
completely in the process of gas making, and before the gas is
distributed to the town. Here we have one of the luminous con
stituents of coal gas. This is termed ethylene or olefiant gas.
You see it burns with a very bright and brilliant light. This is the
chief illuminating constituent of coal gas. Here we have another
constituent of coal gas, termed carbonic oxide gas, which burns with
a very pale blue flame, as you will observe, but which scarcely gives
off any light. This is one of the heating constituents of the coal
gas or diluents, as they have been termed, because they dilute the
illuminating constituents. Here we have another constituent
which requires removal from the coal gas, namely, carbonic
acid gas; and this you see extinguishes the taper the moment
I place it in the gas. This, together with sulphuretted hydrogen
and the vapour of bisulphide of carbon, ought to be removed in
the process of gas making, and this is more or less completely
done by the scrubbers and the lime—or oxide of iron—purifiers.
In the following table you will see first the names of the
three illuminating constituents; the next four are the heating
constituents; and the next three are the impurities which have to
be removed.
We have here an arrangement for making gas : the fire is burn
ing and heating the cannel coal contained in this iron retort; here
is uhat is termed the tar well, for the first thing that is deposited
from the heated gas when it cools is the tar. These tubes are
termed atmospheric condensers, where the gas is cooled and
more of the tar deposited; and here we have the purifiers for
the purpose of ridding the gas of the three impurities to which I
have referred; and here we have the gas holder, into which the
gas is now passing, and from which we can now pass it through
our system of mains and light it, as you see here. [Gas made in
the room was then ignited.]
�Now, passing down the list, the next material we reach is
the ammonia water.
PRODUCTS FOUND IN THE DESTRUCTIVE DISTILLATION
OF COAL.
Coal Gas.
Terpenes.
Ethylene,
Tritylene,
Tetralene,
Illuminating
constituents.
Marsh gas,
Acetylene,
Carbonic oxide,
Hydrogen,
Diluents
or
heating
constituents.
Benzene Series.
Benzene.
Toluene.
Xylene.
Isoxylene.
Pseudo-cumene.
Mesitylene.
Carbonic acid,
I
Sulphuretted hydrogen, I Impurities.
Carbon dishulphide, )
Napthaline.
Ammonia Water.
Pyrene.
Tar-Pitch.
Anthracene.
Chrysene.
Phenols.
Coal-Tar.
Paraffines.
Amyl hydride.
Hexyl hydride.
Heptyl hydride.
Octyl hydride.
Nonyl hydride.
Decatyl hydride.
Olefines.
Amylene.
Hexylene.
Heptylene.
Octylene.
Nonylene.
Decatylene
Acetylene Series.
Phenol, or Carbolic Acid.
Cresol.
^Xylenol.
Bases.
Aniline.
Tolindine, &c.
Pyridin.
Picolin.
Lutidin.
Collidin.
Parvolin.
Coridin.
Rubidin.
Viridin.
Leucolin.
Iridolin.
Cryptidin.
This ammonia water is a very important part of the gas
products, because from this a number of very interesting sub
stances are obtained. Now what is the ammonia water?
The ammonia water is a liquid coming from the coal, for a
good deal of moisture, which the coal contains, comes over with
�20
the products, and this moisture condenses or absorbs the gas
called ammonia, forming what I dare say most of you know as
spirits of hartshorn. Now this gas-ammonia is a compound
body, and contains nitrogen and hydrogen. The nitrogenous
portion of the coal is converted in the process of distillation into
this ammoniacal gas, which is taken hold of by the water, and the
solution flows down as a brownish coloured, strongly smelling
liquid, known as “ gas water,” which is pumped off and sold for
purposes of manufacturing the ammoniacal salts and alum. We
have here specimens of sal-ammoniac and of carbonate of ammoniac
and also a large lump of alum, which I have to thank Mr. Spence
for sending. All these substances are made from the ammonia
liquor. N ow I wish to show you that this ammonia gas which is
given off will dissolve in water, and that is the reason why it does
not come off with the rest of the gas, but is kept back as a liquid ;
in order to show that I will make a simple experiment: we have
got here a large globe, filled with this gas ammonia, which as you
see is a colourless, invisible gas, but possesses a very pungent
smell, aud has the power of dissolving very rapidly in water.
Now in the lower vessel I have got some water, and I am going
to blow a little of this reddened water up into this upper globe,
filled with the ammoniacal gas, and you will see that the whole of
this water will rush up into the upper globe, because the ammonia
dissolves in the water, and the water therefore takes the place of
the gas, and we shall have a very beautiful fountain produced.
[Experiment very interesting and successful.] There now you see
that the ammonia has been absorbed by the water, and the effect
of the alkaline nature of this substance is seen, inasmuch as the
red liquid has turned blue.
Now we get to the next part of our subject—the coal-tar,
and the greater part of what I have to say will be with regard to
the tar contained in the products of the distillation of coal. In
the first place, with regard to the tar, let me say this, that we can
obtain from tar a great variety of very beautiful white colourless
substances. For instance, this white crystalline body here is
carbolic acid, so largely used for disinfecting purposes; this
beautiful white crystalline substance napthaline; this beautiful
clear, colourless liquid benzole, all come from that dirty sub
stance—coal tar—which you see, and which you rather avoid
when you do see it, going along the streets in those very black,
dirty-looking barrels. Nay, even from similar products of coal
tar this beautiful white body—paraffin—can be got. It was the
great chemist Liebig who some years ago said that the man who
�21
should be able to liquify coal gas, so that it could be carried about
readily from place to place, would be a great benefactor to his
species. This has now been done, mainly through the labours of
one man, Mr. James Young, who first began this conversion of
coal into oil. These products of the distillation of coal are not
obtained in gas making, it is true, but they are obtained by quite
a similar process—the destructive distillation of a coal-like sub
stance, at a lower temperature than that used for making coal-gas.
It seems, I dare say, hard for you to understand how such
a beautiful white body as this paraffin can be got from black
coal. But I will show you a few experiments which I think will
render this subject clearer to you. We have here a very wellknown substance—sugar. This white sugar I will now dissolve
in a little hot water, and I think in a few moments I can show
you that this white sugar contains carbon. I am now going
through the opposite process to that which is done by Mr. Young
in distilling his shale. I am going to convert a white substance
into carbon. The point I wish to illustrate is, that it is possible
to get a white substance like paraffin from a black one as
coal, inasmuch as the white substance contains carbon, only
in a different state of combination. I have only got now to
pour into this some strong sulphuric acid, when you will see that
this sugar will be converted into charcoal. (The conversion into
a seething, black, frothy substance was instantaneous.] Here you
see that the whole of this white substance has been converted
into charcoal. So much, then, for the fact that a white solid body
contains carbon. I have in this bottle another colourless sub
stance, liquid turpentine, and I wish to show you that turpentine
also contains carbon. I will pour a little of this turpentine on to
a bit of paper, and then plunge it into this cylinder of chlorine
gas, when I think you will see that the carbon of the turpentine
will become visible. (A cloud of black vapour is instantly pro
duced.] In the same way I have got here a colourless olefiant gas,
which also contains carbon, and when I mix this gas together with
chlorine gas, and bring a light to the mixture, I get a large quantity
of carbon set free, and thus we learn that white solids, colourless
liquids, and colourless gases all may contain black carbon; and it
must, therefore, not surprise you to find that from black coal we
can get these beautiful white bodies.
What I have as yet said has reference to the destructive
distillation of coal. I have had to destroy the coal in order to
get these various new and interesting products. Let us now
turn to another question, and let us ask ourselves, can we by
�22
any other process than this destructive action get4iold of new*
bodies ? The first era in chemical science has been what we term
the analytical era. By analysis we mean destruction, breaking up,
pulling asunder. The first object that the chemist had to achieve
was to find what he could get by destroying bodies. We have
destroyed the coal, and we have got this variety of substances
whose names you find on the list. The second era in chemical
science is what we term the synthetic or constructive era, the era
in which we begin to build up. We all know it is very much
more easy to destroy than it is to construct. And as it is in
every-day life, so it is with chemical compounds, as proved by the
history of chemical science. It is very much more easy to find out
what we can get by destroying the coal than it is to find out what
we can make by building up the various substances which are
obtained from coal. Hence it is, as you will easily understand,
that analytical chemistry or destructive chemistry came first in the
history of science, and then came synthetic chemistry.
Within the last forty years very great progress has been made in
this constructive chemistry. Before the year 1828, it was generally
supposed that any chemical substance which was found in animal
or vegetable bodies (which substances you will understand are very
numerous) was constructed in the body of the animal or.plant,
according to laws altogether different from the laws by which the
chemist was able to build up what are termed his inorganic com
pounds. He could bring together oxygen and hydrogen, and form
water; he could bring together sulphur and copper, and get a black
sulphide; but could he obtain such a substance as urea, which was
only found in the products of animal life ? This was the great
question. And this has, by dint of laborious experimental investi
gations, been answered most completely in the affirmative. He can
construct the substances which are found in the bodies of animals and
plants. He has not succeeded in constructing all these substances,
but he has succeeded in constructing a great number. I might
give you instances of hundreds of substances which were first
known as products solely found in animal or vegetable bodies,
but which have since been built up from their constituent
elements. Thus, for instance, that curious acid has been produced
which is found in the bodies of ants, and which we term formic
acid, and which is also found in the sting of the nettle, the sting
being due to the peculiar effect of this acrid liquid. This formic
acid was originally found only in these two sources, hut formic acid
can now be procured from its organic constituents, from carbon,
hydrogen, and oxygen. So too with alcohol, about which Professor
�23
Huxley discoursed in his lecture on yeast, last week. He showed
you that the process by which alcohol is ordinarily formed is a very
complicated one, and one which it is altogether beyond the power
of the chemist to follow. The chemist cannot tell you the exact
process by which theyeast particles decompose the sugar and liberate
the alcohol, carbonic acid, glycerine, succinic acid, and other pro
ducts. That is a process not perhaps so completely dark to us as the
processes which go on in the animal and vegetable bodies, but it is a
process about which chemists know very little, and is doubtless a
process analogous to those which go on in the living body. But this
alcohol can now be built up from its elements, or from mineral
constituents, from charcoal, hydrogen, and oxygen. And so I
might go on with illustrations of substances which were supposed
originally to be only the sole products of that action which-is
termed vital action, but which now we find can be formed in the
ordinary way of chemical synthesis. For instance, only the other
day the beautiful and singular substance known as essential essence
of the Tonka bean was prepared artificially! Those persons who
take snuff are very fond of carrying this bean in their snuff boxes,
because it imparts to the snuff a still more pungent and agreeable
odour. It is a white crystalline body, termed coumarine, and this
has been quite recently prepared artificially, and found to possess
all the properties of that contained in this peculiar bean. In
short, as far as regards the artificial construction of liquid or
crystalline products produced in vital processes, the chemist’s
power seems boundless, though, when we come to organised
bodies—such as the yeast globule or the starch grain, our domain
seems to end, for the chemist knows nothing about the artificial
formation of the simplest organised structure.
Well, then, let us see what we can learn with regard to con
structive chemistry as applied to the coal products. We shall
find that the substances which can be artificially built up from
the bodies contained in coal-tar possess most interesting properties ;
thus, for instance, they exhibit the most remarkable colouring
powers.
In the year 1825, our great English philosopher Faraday dis
covered benzole. This benzole was then a chemical rarity ; now
it is prepared by thousands of tons for the production of the
beautiful aniline colours which you know so well. From the
crude benzole contained in the tar we can build up, by a process of
addition, the details of which I have not time to describe to-night,
this heavy liquid aniline; and this has the power, after it has been
subjected to another additive process, of producing the most
�24
beautiful colours. I have in this jar a small quantity of aniline ;
I will add a drop or two to the water in this large glass globe; and
now I will add some of this colourless liquid, hypochlorite of sodium,
and after a while you will see that the colour of this water will be
changed, and that we shall have a splendidly violet-coloured liquid,
containing the well-known colour, mauve, which was discovered
by Mr. Perkin, in 1856, and this will give you an idea of the beauty
of the colours which are got from coal. By a modification of the
constructive processes to which the crude aniline is subjected a
great variety of differently-coloured substances can be got thus.
There we have the beautiful aniline blue colour. Here we have
got the celebrated aniline red, known as magenta, and a bloody
red it is. Here we have another coloured derivative—the aniline
violet. In these compounds which we can thus build up we have
not. only a mine of interest, but also a mine of wealth, for the
money value of these aniline colours is enormous. And how
interesting it is to think that this body, aniline, which a few years
ago was a curiosity, and only found in the laboratories of the
chemists, is now a substance which is manufactured by tons, and
thousands of tons, and which can be thus made to minister to our
gratification, and appeal to our sense of beauty !
Another interesting point I must not forget to mention, and
that is, that these beautiful colours are compounds of bodies
which are perfectly colourless! Through the kindness of my
friends, Messrs. Roberts, Dale, and Co., who are one of the
largest manufacturers of these beautiful colours in England, I
have here some of these bodies in their colourless state. Let me
show you how these colourless bodies can be made to become
brightly coloured. It is on combining these colourless bodies
with acids that their colouring power first becomes evident.
Here is a colourless liquid. I pour a little of it on to this piece
of white blotting paper, and on warming the paper over a lamp a
bright green colour becomes at once apparent. This is because
the base of the green-coloured compound does not possess any
colour whatever, and it is only when this base is by drying con
verted into a salt that the colour appears. Again, I take a colour
less solution—rosaniline, and I have only to heat it to convert it
into salt, and the beautiful bright red colour at once is seen. A
very small quantity of this, placed on a piece of white paper, will,
in a moment or two, when dried, turn the colourless paper into a
bright crimson. This, then, is a very interesting and singular
property of these colours. I may show it to you in another way.
I will write on this large sheet of white calico, stretched on a
»
�25
L
frame, the three words f<blue,” and “red,” and “green,” in large
letters, with the colourless solutions of the bases, and then if I
rub a little acid on the back of the paper you see that it instantly
brings out these three colours. This illustrates the fact that the
colour of a chemical substance, is not, as it were, an essential
or necessary characteristic of it, the colour in this case depends
upon an acid being present, for the pure bases of these colours
are colourless.
Now, I might, if I had time, tell you much more respecting these
splendid blue, red, and violet colours which are derived from the
aniline. I will, however, now describe to you another and perhaps
a still more interesting colouring matter, which has been more
recently obtained from coal tar. I suppose you all know what
madder roots are. Madder is the root of a plant termed the rubia
tinctorum. . It grows in Turkey, France, Russia, and various other
countries, and is imported into England in large quantities for the
sake of the beautiful and valuable dye which can be got from it.
Everybody in Manchester, I suppose, knows what madder pinks
and madder purples are. Now, what is it in the madder which
gives these peculiar and beautiful colours ? It is a red crystalline
substance which has been prepared from madder, and to which
the name of alizarine has been given ; but we knew nothing of the
mode of action of this colour until the year 1848, when Dr.
Schunck, of Manchester, showed that all the finest madder colours
contain this alizarine as their colouring principle. Dr. Schunck
and Mr. Higgin next showed that this alizarine was not contained
in the fresh madder root, but that the colour was only got when the
substance of the madder root had undergone a peculiar kind of
change—a sort of fermentation, in which a kind of maddersugar or glucoside yielded, amongst other products, alizarine.
And Dr. Schunck showed that it is to this alizarine that is to be
ascribed the power which madder possesses of producing these
distinct and beautiful tints which we know either as madder pinks
or madder purples, as well as the brighter colour which we all
know as Turkey red. Now the mode in which the colouring
matter of madder, this alizarine, is brought on to cotton goods, is
the point to which I wish to draw your attention. The colouring
matter itself will not fasten on the cotton ; it is not “ fastthat is
to say, it will wash out; and therefore it is necessary, in order that
we should get the colour fixed in the cloth, that it should be held
down by something in the cloth, in a similar way to that in which the
ammonia was held by the water. And this is done by what the
dyers and calicq printers term mordants. A mordant is a body
�26
which enables the colouring matter to be fixed upon the cloth, to
be laid hold of, as it were. And this is because the colouring
matter forms with the mordant a solid substance, which is thereby
fixed in the little pores and tubes of the cotton fibre. Thus the
colour does not escape when the goods are washed, because it is
held fast in the tubes as a coloured solid body, which is generally
termed a “lake.” These mordants are “printed” on the
cloth in various patterns; where a red or pink colour is required,
there the alumina mordant is impressed on the cloth ; where a
purple colour is needed there the iron mordant is printed, and this
explains the fact that by dyeing the cloth thus prepared, in one
dye beck with one colouring substance, madder, such different
tints are obtained.
But now to get to our point with regard to the other example
from the coal tar series of constructive chemistry. You will easily
understand how desirable it would be to get these madder colours
from the coal tar, for although not so beautiful and bright as the
aniline colours, yet they possess properties which render them still
more valuable; for we in this country prefer, as a rule, colours
which are not so bright or glaring as the aniline colours; and,
therefore, the reds and purples of madder will always be in
large demand in this country as well as elsewhere. If now we
could obtain from the coal oil this beautiful and valuable colour
which is found in madder, the advantage would be of course very
great. The truth of this will at once be evident when we learn
that the total growth of madder in the world is estimated at
47,500 tons per annum, worth about ^45 per ton, and having
therefore a value of ^2,150,000. Of this nearly one half is used
in this country, so that no less than ^1,000,000 is now paid each
year by us for madder grown in foreign countries. Now two young
German chemists, Messrs. Graebe & Liebermann, set to work to
endeavour to perform this chemical synthesis; they began in a very
workmanlike and a very scientific way; for instead of trying all
the various bodies which are found in the coal tar to see which of
them would yield this colouring matter, they began the other way
about, and first took some of the natural colouring matter itself and
tried to decompose it or split it up, in order that they might
see what sort of a body this colouring matter would yield
them ; and they found that in reality this body when it was
decomposed gave rise to a white substance, which, on analysis,
they found to be identical in composition with one of these
bodies which had been formerly found in coal tar, which
had been named anthracene, a specimen of which you see
�in that bottle. Here, then, was the first step; for they had
proved that anthracene could be got from the colouring matter of
the madder plant. Next, these two German chemists set them
selves the opposite problem, which now had become much easier,
inasmuch as they now knew the kind of skeleton, as it were, from
which they had got to work to build up their wished-for structure ;
they set to work, I say, to endeavour by bringing together other
compounds with this anthracene, to build up the colouring matter,
of which, remember, they knew the composition, from the coaltar product. And this they succeeded in doing. They actually
obtained this beautiful red crystalline body from coal tar; which
body possesses every property of that got from the madder
plant, that essential which gives to madder its peculiar and its
valuable qualities. Here, then, we have indeed a triumph of
synthesis, and another proof, if one were needed, of the value
of the results of constructive chemistry. This is the first
case of a colouring matter contained in a plant having been
artificially made. The beautiful colours derived from crude
aniline do not exist in nature; they are altogether new, and are
not found in any plant. But many other colours, besides
alizarine, which are used largely in dyeing, occur only in plants.
Thus indigo is another well-known colour, but indigo has not
yet been artificially prepared, though there is very little doubt that
before long we shall be able to do so. Indigo is as yet only
produced as the result of the life of a plant, and the artificial
production of this valuable dye is a problem which yet remains to
be solved.
Now this anthracene, although it is contained in compara
tively small quantities in coal tar (ioo tons of tar yielding
only about half a ton of anthracene, or one ton of anthracene
being got from the distillation of 2,000 tons of coal), yet still it
can be got in absolutely large quantities, because such an enormous
quantity of coal is distilled for gas making all the world over;
and therefore if the processes of building up the alizarine from
this anthracene be not too costly, there is little doubt that the
artificial colour will be made in quantity, and a part at least of the
money which we now send out of the country to buy madder roots
will go to benefit our own population, as we can now transform
our coal into this invaluable colouring matter.
Well, now, let me try to show you that the artificial alizarine
which is got from coal tar possesses similar, or rather identical,
colouring properties with the alizarine got from madder. It is
impossible for me to enter into the minutiae of the mode in which
�28
anthracene can be converted into alizarine, for I should have to
use formulae, which I am afraid many of you would not under
stand, and I must be content with referring those who wish for
information on this subject to the annexed diagram, or to treatises
on organic chemistry.
In the following Table we have a statement of the synthetic
production of alizarine from its constituent elements.
Synthesis
of
Alizarine.
1. Acetylene by direct union of Carbon and Hydrogen in Electric ArcC2 + H2 = Ca Ha
(Berthelot, 1862.)
2. Benzol (Tri-acetylene) from Acetylene by Heat.
3 C2 Ha = C6 He
(Berthelot, 1866.)
3. Anthracene from Benzol and Ethylene.
2C{H6 + Ca H< — C14 H10 + 3 II2
(Berthelot, 1866.)
4. Alizarine from Anthracene. (Process No. 1.)
(Graebe and Liebermann, 1869.)
(A) Oxyanthracene or Anthraquinone by Nitric Acid.
C14 H6 (O H)a
(Anderson, 1861.)
(B) Bibromanthraquinone by action of Bromine.
C14 Hg O2 + 2 Bra = C14 Hg Bra O2 + 2 Br H
(C) Alizarine by action of Caustic Potash.
Cu II6 Bra O2 + 4 K H O = Cu Hg (O K)a O2 + 2 K Br + 2 Ha O
Potassium alizarate.
5. Alizarine from Anthracene. (Process No. 2.)
(Graebe and Caro, Perkin, Schorlemmer and Dale.)
(A) Disulphoanthraquinonic Acid from Anthraquinone.
C14 He (O H)a + 2 Ha S O4 = C14 H6 O2 j s O3 H j + 2 Ha °
(B) Alizarine from the above by the action of Potash.
Ci* He Oa | § Os LI I +4&H O = C14 H6 O2
j +2K0S03 + 2HaO
Alizarine.
Contributions
1825.
1831.
1832.
1848.
1850.
1862.
1865.
1866.
1868.
1868.
i860.
to the
History
of
Alizarine.
Cu He O<
Faraday discovered Benzol in Coal-gas Oil. Ce Hg
Robiquet and Colin discovered Alizarine in Madder Root
Dumas and Laurent discovered Anthracene in Coal Oils
Schunck gave the Composition of Alizarine. Cu H10 O4
Sirecker
„
„
„
Ci0 Hg O8;
Anderson examined AnthraceneCompounds. Cu H10
Kekule explained the constitution of the Aromatic Compounds
Baeyer obtained Benzol from Phenol
Graebe investigated.the Quinones.
Graebe and Liebermann obtained Anthracene from Alizarine.
,,
,,
tf
Alizarine from Anthracene
�29
The point, however, which all of you can understand is that we
are now using this method of constructive chemistry for the purpose
' of building up substances which up to this time have only been
found in the bodies of plants or animals.
One of the most remarkable properties of the alizarine got from
madder is its power of forming an insoluble compound with a
mordant. I have here the alumina mordant, or red liquor, which
forms, with alizarine, a pink insoluble lake; and here I have th'e
iron liquor, or iron mordant, a solution of a salt of iron, which
forms, with alizarine a purple insoluble lake. I pour some of these
mordants into both these bottles of water; next I bring into one
some extract of madder root, some of the natural alizarine got from
the plant. You will observe we get here a bright red precipitate.
Next I take the artificial alizarine made from coal tar, and I pour
this into the other globe of water to which I added some alumina
mordant. You will see that I get exactly the same sort of red
. coloured precipitate. One is the natural, the other the artificial,
and both give exactly the same kind of colour. In the same way,
if I take and compare the effect of the iron mordant, I shall find
that both the natural and the artificial colour give exactly the same
purple precipitate.
Now in order to show you in another way the identity of these
two things, we have written here on this screen the words “natural
alizarine ” and “ artificial alizarine,” and when these are sponged
at the back with alkali you will see that we get the same colour
exactly produced by the two kinds of alizarine. By burning a
bit of magnesium wire the purple colour of the alkaline alizarine
will be better seen, and you will observe that we have got exactly
the same tint in both cases. I will show you the same thing by
dyeing some cloth with the artificial and with the natural alizarine.
Here we throw a very small quantity of the madder alizarine into
a basin-full of boiling water, and here do the same with the
artificial colouring matter, then I bring into each basin a little bit
of mordanted cloth. I won’t say that we can get a very fine
colour, but you will see that the colour we get is equal in the two
cases, that the artificial alizarine produces the same colour as the
natural. We will allow these cloths to remain a little while in the
boiling liquor, and now on taking them out you see that the
alumina pinks are in both cases equally bright and the iron
purples also exactly of the same shade and tint. Thus, then, we
see that the artificial alizarine is exactly identical in its dyeing and
colouring power with the colouring matter contained in and
derived from the madder root. How far the artificial alizarine
�3°
will in time displace the madder it is not for me to say; this is a
question which I will leave to the calico printers and dyers of this
great district; but certain it is, that the two are chemically the
same substance, and that this production of alizarine from coal tar
is one of the greatest triumphs of modern synthetical chemistry.
This new dyeing substance is now being largely used on all
hands, especially for what is called topical printing and for
Turkey red dyeing, and I am told that the colours which can be
obtained from the artificial alizarine are quite equal, if not
superior, to those which can be obtained from the natural madder.
And now if we are to draw a moral from all this, I think that
we shall have little difficulty in doing so. These facts show us the
truth of the old saying that great results come from small begin
nings ; they teach us that nothing in science is unimportant; that
no one can foresee the benefits which to-morrow may spring from
our apparently abstruse discoveries of to-day. Science is advancing,
and its progress, unlike that of so many human institutions, is
without the possibility of retrogression. Boldly, then, may the
least of its votaries step forward, in the firm conviction that the
degree, however insignificant, by which he may be able to advance
the boundaries of science is a certain progress, and one which
must add its share towards the enlightenment and benefit of
mankind.
�THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE.
A LECTURE
BY
PROFESSOR A. S. WILKINS, M.A.
Delivered in the Hulme Town Hall, Manchester, November ibth,
I have undertaken to speak to you this evening on a branch of
science which I think has not before been brought under your
notice. This course of lectures has hitherto been confined to
those branches of science which deal especially with the things
which we see around us. To-night I am going to confine your
attention almost entirely to things which you hear round about
you. And I want to discuss these things that you hear—the
words that we are using in daily life—somewhat after the manner
in which other scientific men deal with things which we see, the
objects of sight. You know that chemists such as Dr. Roscoe,
and the distinguished chemist whom we are to have next Friday
evening, Dr. Odling, make it their business to examine into
everything which they can find in the heavens above, in the earth
beneath, and in the waters under the earth. They will tell you
what these things are composed of; they will split them up,
analyse them, as they call it, into their remotest and most ultimate
constituents. Now, the geologists, on the other hand, may be
said not to trouble themselves quite so much with the composition
of the substances they deal with; but they are concerned perhaps
more with the manner in which they got into their present
position.
I want to try this evening to show you, as far as I may be able
in the short time during which I can hope to have your attention—
�32
for the lecture is necessarily not illustrated by any experiments—
both how those words which we are using are made up ; and also
how they came to be in their present position. I have said that
I am not able to show you anything to see. I had hoped that I
should have had a map which would have enabled me to explain
at least some of the facts which I wish to bring before you a little
more clearly than I shall now be able to do; but in this I have
been disappointed, so I must, I suppose, ask for your special
indulgence, on the ground that you will have to listen and not to
see during almost the whole of the time allotted to us.
Now if we begin to split up, or to analyse, or to examine closely,
the words which we are using in daily life, we shall find that a fair
proportion of them, quite a considerable proportion, are very closely
akin to the words which Welshmen would use. I do not mean
to say that we use them in exactly the same form in which
Welshmen would use them; but at all events the words are very
strikingly like Welsh words. This is the case with the English that
is spoken all over this country of ours. For instance, when you
want to speak of an article of dress, you may talk about a coat;
you may talk about a gown; you may talk about frieze, from which
you would make the coat; and to come to smaller points, you
may talk about a button, a tassel, of the gussets in shirts, of welts
on shoes, and of clouts and dishclouts. In all these cases we are
using words which are almost exactly like words which Welshmen
would use in such cases. If we come to our household things, if
we talk about a basket, a barrow, a funnel, a pitcher, or if we talk
about crockery—in all these cases we are still using the same class
of words. And here in Lancashire we use a good many of these
Welsh-like words, which scientific scholars call Keltic words, which
are not known or understood in the rest of England. If I were
talking to people in the south, I dare say they would not under
stand what I mean by bamming You may know, perhaps. So
in the same way they do not know what boggarts are. They
would not understand what I meant if I talked about a man being
a farrant or a gradely man; if we talked about setting craddies;
if we talked about cobbing, or wapping, or punsing—all these
vords would be unknown in the south; and I think I may
suppose they are pretty well known here. If we hear that a man
is a cunningyfZ?, it has nothing whatever to do with the file that a
blacksmith would use. That again is only another form of a
Welsh word, meaning a twisty fellow. In the same way, if you
talk about going out for a spree, and of playing fine pranks, in all
these instances you are talking Welsh or Keltic words. The same
�33
thing would be true, if in your business you talked about a cotton
gin, or a weaver spoke about his picking stick. Here again we
still keep to the Keltic element of our language.
Now, one of the first questions that men ask who wish to go
into a subject of this kind scientifically is—How did these words
get into our language ? Of course there are several ways in which
words not belonging to a language originally may come into it.
We may borrow them. For instance, we use the word gntta
percha to describe a substance well known to all of us. That
is not an old English word, we get the name from the country
where we get the thing from. Just in the same way with
coffee; where we get the coffee berry we also get its name.
There is another way in which words may be borrowed, that is,
from fashion. For instance, we have borrowed a great many
French words, and many people now-a-days very foolishly, I think
we may say, prefer to use French words where good English
words would do as well. Nobody, I suppose, imagines that coats
were never known in England until Welshmen came here and
brought them, or gowns or buttons; that cobbing or wapping was
unknown until Welshmen taught it us. We must try to find some
other method of explaining the presence of these words in our
language. That is one of the questions that we shall have to try
to answer to-night.
But now, when we go on and try to analyse or to account for
other words in the language that we are talking about, we find a
good many of them come from the Latin. Some of them come
straight away, very little changed in their passage, so that the man
who knows Latin, whatever country he belongs to, would be able
to understand this sort of English words. A good number of
them are words that everybody knows now, words like science, or
student, or origin, or admit, or adopt—plenty of words of that kind
which have become part and parcel of our everyday English talk.
And there are a great number of other Latin words which are
used perhaps solely in sermons or solely in scientific treatises,
which are not known to us usually in everyday talk, but which we
have to learn specially, and which have come directly from the
Latin to us. But besides this kind of Latin words, we have
another set of words which scholars are able to derive from the
Latin, but not directly; they have got so much changed on their
■way, that they seem to have gone through a different kind of
process, have been sifted or moulded in some way, generally cut
.shorter at the head or the tail, or at both. Such words, for
instance, as cover, or obtain, complain, hour, flower—words of that
�34
kind are abundant, and certainly they are not old-fashioned
English words; they are the children, perhaps in this case I ought
rather to say the grandchildren, of Latin words; but they have
taken such a changed form in their passage from Latin into
English, that we cannot suppose they were borrowed straight from
the one language for the use of the other. When we examine
these words further we find that they are not exactly like Latin
words, but they are almost exactly like French words. I can give
you some instances of words which we have got straight from the
Latin, and words which originally come from Latin have come
to us through French. For instance, we may talk about food
being nutritious, or we may talk about food being nourishing.
These words have precisely the same origin, and have precisely
the same meaning; but one of them has come to us through the
French, and so it has got a little bit changed on its way. In the
same way, to give you a more striking instance of the same kind,
we have the word preach. We have another word which has come
directly from the Latin, not through the French, and therefore is
longer and fuller,—a word which is not commonly used, but may
be found sometimes in the leading articles in newspapers, and
other writings of that kind—the word predicate. These words are
the same in origin, but have got a good deal changed one from the
other. So, again, the poor man is not always a pauper, but the
word poor is only a shortened form of the word pauper, that has
come to us through the French. Story is not quite the same
thing now-a-days as history, and the shortening is to be explained
in the same way. So a mayor, the chief magistrate of a borough,
is a different person from a major now-a-days, but originally they
were the same. So, to give a more striking instance—one which
might not have struck you at first when you saw it—the word
spice, which we now apply to fragrant things like nutmeg and
pepper, &c., is exactly the same word as the word species—of
which we have heard a great deal lately—modified both in form
and in meaning on its way to us.
Well, now, you see we have two more questions to solve, if we
can. Not only are there these Keltic or Welsh-like words in our
language, but there are Latin words very little changed, and Latin
words a great deal changed—so that they are very much more like
French words than Latin words.
You may naturally ask here what proportion of words in our
language can thus be traced back to the Latin. That depends to
a certain extent upon the way in which you count words. Suppose
you put all the different words you find in any writer into a
�35
dictionary or an index, not repeating the same word more than
once, you will find perhaps one word in four Latin. The pro
portion varies very much, the simpler and plainer and the more
straightforward the style of the writer, the fewer of these Latinised
words he will use; the more involved and pompous and formal
and generally unintelligible his writing is, the more of these Latin
words he will use : so that in our old English Bible—which is
among other things just the very finest specimen of the English
language that we have—sometimes out of a hundred words you
will only find four that are not good plain English; and in the
hardest places, where Latin words seem almost necessary, you will
not find more than ten in a hundred. Shakspere, too, who
usually says what he means in a way which most of us can under
stand easily, will only use perhaps from nine to a dozen out of a
hundred words. Milton, who was more stately and formal in his
style than Shakspere, will use generally about twenty. Dr. John
son twenty-five, and the great historian who wrote about a
hundred years ago, Gibbon, will use sometimes thirty. But this
is when you arrange the words in a sort of index, counting
each word only once. But suppose, on the other hand, you take
a piece of English just as it is written, then plain, simple English
words will come over a good deal oftener than that. To get a
fair specimen of the English that is talked now-a-days, when a
man wishes to make his meaning as plain as he can, I took a
speech which was delivered a little while ago by the Bishop of
this diocese. You know that he always tries to make himself
understood as plainly as he can; and out of some three hundred
words that he used, I find there are about fifty belonging to this
class which we are now discussing. What are we to say of the
rest ? Well, of course, we have here and there a word got from
almost every language under heaven; because, generally, wherever
we have got anything new, there we get the name for it; but
almost the whole of the rest of our language, that is to say, perhaps
two words out of every three, belong to what is called the
German class of languages—not quite the German that is spoken
now-a-days by the educated people in Germany, for our language is
based upon what is called the Low German. No disrespect is in
tended to it by that phrase; it simply means the sort of German that
is talked in the low region near the sea, and not in the more hilly
region inland. The High German, as it is called, differs from the
LowGermanin several ways, some of which it would take me perhaps
too long to explain now ; but I think I can give you with very little
trouble an idea of one of the main differences between the Low Ger
�36
man on which our language is based, and which our English really is,
and the High German which Germans now-a-days speak. Suppose
you pronounce any vowel sound, say a; as long as you pronounce
that vowel sound you are letting one uninterrupted stream of
breath come out of your lungs, play on a little instrument at the
top of your throat which determines the sound you produce, and
then pass into the air unchecked. So if you simply content
yourself with pronouncing a vowel, you can go on as long as you
please with it—a-d-a—as long as you have breath. But you can
check that stream of air, producing sound, in three different ways.
You may check it in your throat, and then let it go on again, and
then you will pronounce a consonant like k. Or you may check
it at the top of your tongue, and then you will pronounce the
consonant t. Or you may check it with your lips and then you
will pronounce the consonant/. You can say kay, tay, pay. But
then checking it in just the same place you can produce sounds
that are a little different from those. I can say in my throat not
only kay but also gay; not only pay but also bay. Well, those
who are concerned with the scientific examination of sounds have
given names to these different letters. Those which I gave at
first they call properly surds; those which I gave in the second
instance they call sonants ; for this reason, when you pronounce
b or g or d you make a vocal sound in your throat at the actual
time you are pronouncing that letter; but when you say
/, /, or k, you do not. Now it is a little more trouble to
pronounce those which make a sound in your throat, which
we call sonants, than those which do not produce a sound in
your throat, which we call surds. You can easily test that
for yourselves. It is a little more trouble to say bad than it
is to say pat, and the people who talk the High German language
have got into this lazier or more slovenly way of pronouncing, using
the surd instead of the sonant letters. And you will find that that is
really the main difference between the High German the Germans
talk and the Low German that we English still talk. For instance,
when we talk about a dale they will talk about a tai; if we say
door they will say tor; if we talk about daughter they will say
tochter; if we say drink they will say trink, and so on. Then
further, when we get the t sounds they will soften them down still
more into th or z, not completely cutting off the stream. Foi
instance, our ten is their zehn ; our tongue is their zunge; our tear
is their zerren. When the t, instead of beginning a word, comes
in the middle or at the end, they make a further change. You
know now-a-days instead of saying he hath, or he loveth, we
�31
generally say he has, or he loves. The Germans have adopted
just the same change, changing our t's into s's; so that when
we say white they will say weiss; for water they will say wasser,
and so on. But with these exceptions, we are talking in the
basis of our language, that is to say, in simple, every-day
words, mainly the same sort of language as our German
cousins.
Now we have to consider how to explain these facts. We have
got a fourth one now in addition to our three problems before.
How is it we use Welsh words? How is it we use Latin words?
How is it we use Latin words that seem to have come to us
through the French ? And how is it, finally, that the basis of our
language is just the same as the German which is spoken on the
coast of Germany? History has to help us to explain these facts.
If we go back as far as ever we can in the history of man—I do not
mean as far as Mr. Darwin would take us back, but as far as we
can go back with the men with whom we have any sort of concern
as our fellow men—we find that there must have been some great
hive somewhere about the middle of Western Asia, which was
constantly sending forth swarms of people, for the most part
always westward. Then when one swarm—if I may use the
language they would use of bees—had come out, they would
settle down in some territory which they liked, until another
swarm came from behind, and finding this territory suited them
also, they would drive those who had gone before them a little
further to the west; and so on, until we are able to trace at least
five distinct waves of people coming one after the other from this
part of Asia that I speak of—very much that same part where the
Bible tells us Noah landed out of his ark—and always pushing
before them those who had gone first. Now you know that those
who live furthest to the west of all the people of Europe are the
people of Ireland; therefore we think we are justified in assuming
that the Irish were probably the first to leave, and then they got
pushed further and further on towards the west always, till jthey
got pushed so far that they could not go any farther without
being pushed into the sea. Then, of course, they had not dis
covered the way to America; now they are pushed right beyond
the sea into America. We know this principally because we find
them at the extreme west. We know they could not have come
over the water from America ; we know that they did not grow
as a nation where they are now ; therefore they must have come
the other way. We have additional proof of this in the fact that all
about the continent of Europe there are names which we can showto
�38
be properly Irish names. I shall come back to this question if I
have time this evening—this question of the meaning of local
names. The Irish have left very few traces of their passage
through England; but I think we may find one or two traces of
the time when England was peopled principally by those who are
now living in Ireland, but they are not at all certain, and I should not
like to give them to you as facts. But we do know that there are
plenty of traces of the next great wave, and those are the people
who are now the Welsh. They live the next towards the west.
The people at the top of Scotland were probably originally the
same as the people of Wales. We judge of that also by the
evidence of local names, the names of places. About 1,400 or
1,500 years ago, some tribes of Irishmen who called themselves
Scots—because you must remember that the Scotch came first
from Ireland—came back into Scotland, and practically absorbed
or exterminated the Welsh folk who lived in Scotland then, and
took the country for themselves; so that now-a-days the people in
the north of Scotland, the Highlands, and the people in Ireland
speak languages which are very closely akin to each other, but
not so closely akin to the Welsh as the language of the High
lands used to be. Then, just about 1,800 years ago, the Romans
came—they had been here a hundred years before that, but their
expedition failed—and theyconquered all those Welshmen, or Kelts,
as we call them sometimes, who dwelt in England and Wales—it
was not England then, it was Britain—and subdued them entirely
under their dominion. They remained about 400 years, and then
they withdrew. And before they had gone long, swarms of these
Low Germans came over. I use the word Low, you must re
member, always in its technical sense, meaning the Germans living
by the sea coast, not in the way of disparagement. They lived in
that part of Germany which is just at the bottom of Denmark,
where Denmark joins on to the main land, just about Schleswig
Holstein, of which we heard so much six or eight years ago.
They came over in their families and tribes, as I shall be able to
show you by this same evidence of names of places, and conquered
England by degrees. There were two tribes; one called them
selves Saxons, and the other called themselves Angles, from which
we get our name of England. They did not come over all
together; they kept coming over for nearly a hundred years, one
swarm after another, moving with their wives and their children,
and perhaps their cattle also, and settling here, driving the old
Welsh people, who lived all about the country then, before them,
till they cooped them up into the western parts, i.e., Cornwall,
�39
Wales, Cumberland, and Westmorland. They left a good many
of them in Lancashire. To speak very roughly, if you draw a line
from Chester to London, you will find that the Saxons lived to the
south-west of this line, and the Angles, or the English, lived in the
north-eastern part, right away up as far as Edinburgh. I will show
you one means by which you can tell that at once. Look at those
places which end in sex; Sussex, South Saxons lived there; Essex,
East Saxons lived there; Middlesex, the Middle Saxons lived
there. And in the old days, before these counties were so split
up, all this part was called Wessex, that is to say, where the West
Saxons lived. On the other hand, as you may know still from
the name of one of our railways, all this part was called East
Anglia, and by degrees the name Anglia in Latin, or in English
Angle Land, spread over the country.
There is a subject which has been much discussed by scholars
as to how it was that we came to be called English and not
Saxons. If you are going about in Wales and you meet one of
the rough peasantry and you ask him the way to any place, the
answer you will probably get will be Dim Sassenach—I know no
English; in other fashion, I know no Saxon—another proof, as I
have shown you, that the people with whom the Welsh came into
contact were the Saxon people.
Two theories have been started to explain this; there may be
something in both of them. In the first place there were a good
many more Angles than there were Saxons. In the second place
those people who first came into contact with the missionaries
who came over from Rome to convert the German invaders to
Christianity (for when they came over they were pagans) were
the Angles, and so the missionaries called the whole people
Angles, and the name came to be gradually accepted ; it got used
in books, and then by degrees it was used generally. The Angles
and Saxons founded several small kingdoms : one of them, the
kingdom of Northumberland, stretched to the south and west
beyond Manchester; and in an old book I have read of Man
chester in Northumberland, not because they thought it was up
there, but because in that time Northumberland stretched froip
here right away to Edinburgh. And just about the time when
these various kingdoms were first brought under one king, other
swarms, very much resembling those Saxons and Angles which had
first come over, came from Denmark and Norway; and they pil
laged the coasts when they came in small numbers, and when
they came in large numbers they formed armies which conquered
large portions of the country for themselves ; so that after nearly
�40
a hundred years’ hard fighting between them and the English
people they succeeded in getting a firm footing on the ground.
And almost the same part of the country which I said was held
by the Angles was given up to the Danes, under the name of the
Danelagh. At the same time the Norwegians came sailing round
Scotland and conquered the Isle of Man, and settled in large
numbers in Cumberland and Westmorland and North Lancashire,
and all along this part of the coast, in fact: and I shall be able
in a minute or two, I hope, to show you what tokens we have
still of their presence.
Our English kings—the old English race of kings—reigned for
nearly 300 years after England had been made a united monarchy,
and then the last of them, Edward the Confessor, died without
leaving any children. The English people in those days had the
right of choosing their kings freely. They always exercised it by
choosing one of the royal family, but they chose not always the
eldest son, but the man whom they thought fittest to rule, the
bravest, the wisest, and strongest. But now all the old English
royal family was extinct, except one distant relation, who was a
mere boy, and whom the English people did not think worthy to
rule over them. So they chose a great earl of the time, Earl
Harold, whose father had been the son of a swineherd, and had
raised himself by his valour and ability to the rank of the first
man in the kingdom. But there was some sort of claim upon the
crown—not a very good one—on the part of the Duke of Nor
mandy, and he put forth his claim. He said that as there was
no nearer heir to the crown, it fell by right to him. The English
people held firmly to the king they had chosen ; but William, the
Duke of Normandy, gathered a large body of French troops, and
came over, and, as most of you know, defeated the English king,
Harold, at the great battle of Hastings, and killed him, and
succeeded in compelling the English to choose him as their king.
This is what is meant by the Norman Conquest. The word has
often been misunderstood; it is not very happily chosen perhaps,
because it was not that the English people were conquered by a
foreign people, but rather that the foreign king was strong enough
to make the English people choose him as their king. However,
the result was at first sight very injurious to the English language
and laws, because the foreign king was surrounded by a large
body of French nobles and captains, to whom were given large
estates, and French and not English was made the prevailing
language for something like two centuries. This Duke of Nor
mandy had also large possessions in France, and the first six of
�4i
these Norman kings were much more Frenchmen than English
men. We read in our history books about Richard the Lion
Hearted, and think him a fine specimen of an English king, but
it is extremely doubtful whether he could ever speak a word of
English in his life ; and it is very certain that he only spent two
or three months in England, and that was when he came over
here to get money out of the people. However, his brother, the
bad John, lost all his dominions in France, and was driven out of
them by the French king, and so England became again an inde
pendent kingdom, without any possessions other than those within
her own boundaries. The result of this was that there was no
longer any occasion for French to be the language of the court
and of the nobles. It continued to be so for a short time, because
they were accustomed to speak it; but it was not very long before
the English language raised its head again. It had never been
disused; it had always held its own among the common
people. Their songs were written in English—we have many
of them remaining to us—and they had always talked it among
themselves, but it had been looked down upon. Now that the
English noblemen were shut out from their foreign possessions
they began to be proud of the name of Englishmen, and they
began to learn by degrees to talk the English language. But they
mixed it up with a great many of the French words which they had
been accustomed to use. And now I think you will be able to
see how it is that we have got these four elements in our language
which I was speaking about. I do not know whether you noticed
when I was talking about the Keltic words, that they were either
words relating to home affairs, or else familiar and somewhat
vulgar phrases. A large number of the coarse and bad words
that we use now-a-days are Keltic words. That points to the fact,
which you would naturally expect, that when the Saxons and
English people who came over (after the Romans had left this
country) and conquered the Welsh people, those whom they left
in the land they made their slaves ; and so they would naturally
get from them just those words which were necessary to explain
to their slaves what they wanted. The words which I named
before, like coat, or gown, or basket, or barrow, are the words
which would be common among the household slaves, and they
would be used by the Keltic or Welsh slaves who were made so
by the Anglo-Saxons. You see also how it is we have so many
German words, because these people, when they came from
North Germany and crossed over to conquer England (Britain as
it then was), would naturally bring their own language with them.
�42
The French words came in from the Norman Conquest; and
though it is not true to speak of English as a mixture of this
Low German and French, yet it has borrowed a good many
French words which are incorporated with its own, and are made
one with its own substance. And then the Latin words are to be
explained from this fact, that for many hundred years Latin was
the only language that was written and used by learned men in all
the countries of Europe; and whenever they wanted a word for
something which they did not know how to express in the plain
English of the common folk, they would borrow it from the Latin
with which they were familiar. That is the way in which we
explain the four elements which we get in our language.
Now I want to show you another side of this question, and
that is, the light which the names of places throw upon the origin
of the English people. The first population of this country, you
will remember (supposing we put aside for a moment the possi
bility, or I should rather say the probability, that the Irish people
lived here before they were driven across to their own country),
was the Welsh division of the Keltic stock. Now the first places
which would require names, of course, would be the rivers and
mountains. When the Welsh came to the country they would
want a name of course for a river, and a name for a mountain,
for there were no towns as yet; and so we find that almost all the
names of rivers and mountains in England are nearly Keltic.
Take for instance a few of the Keltic words that we find in pro
per names. One of the Welsh words now-a-days for a river is
avon. Well, however little you know about the rivers of our
English country, you must remember several of them that are
called Avon. There is the Avon on which is Stratford, Shakspere’s
birthplace; there is the Avon in Somersetshire, where Bristol is;
and there are several others. This word avon simply means river,
and we call the river by Bristol Avon simply because the Welsh
men who lived in our country 2,000 or 2,500 years ago called the
river by a name which in their language meant river. There is
another word, dwr, which means water. We get that in plenty of
our words. In the Lake country we have the Derwent and Derwentwater. Derwent simply means clear water. In the same way
that other beautiful lake is named Windermere, which is simply
beautiful water. Wyn is beautiful, dwr is water in the language
of old Welsh, and mere,—you know that from Rostherne Mere, and
so on. We get the same in the names of many rivers. You know
the Calder here, it flows along by Todmorden; that is again a
crooked or winding water. And wherever we have a word with a
�43
meaning of this kind in Welsh, we may be quite sure that it was
Welsh people who gave it that name. Therefore, if we find a
river called the Calder, we may be quite sure that the first people
who came to that river were Welshmen. There is another name
which has got a good deal changed, but perhaps it is the most
widely-spread of all, and that is Wysg—which also means “water.”
If I should have any Irish people here to-night, they will pretty
well understand, I think, what is meant by usquebagh; that has
the same root—water. Well, this occurs in many of the names
of rivers in England, only a little modified. There are two
or three rivers called Ouse; other rivers called Exe, Axe, Esk,
or Usk. All these names of rivers simply show that Welsh or
Keltic people came there, and when they found a stream
of water they: called it in their language river, or water. The
Ribble, which flows by Preston, is again another Welsh word,
which means simply “fast river.” Then the same word Avon,
which I spoke to you about before, comes in in a good many
compound names. Take, for instance, this county in which we
are in now. It is called Lancashire because it is the shire of
Lancaster. I will talk about the second part of it afterwards.
Lancaster is called so because it is on the Lune, which, in old
days, used to be called Alauna. Words always have a tendency to
grow shorter the longer they live. A distinguished English scholar
said once that letters were like soldiers, they had a great tendency
to drop off on a long march. And I could find dozens, hundreds,
thousands, literally, of instances in our English language in which
words have got shorter. To give you just one example. Our
word “ ma’am,” which some persons would use in addressing a lady,
is cut short from a phrase which originally had five syllables at
least. So the name of the Lune was Alauna, and that in the
language of the Welsh people simply means “ white water.” So
we call the county town Lancaster—that is, the camp or castle
that is on the white water river. Then there is the opposite word
in Welsh, dhu, which means black. Thus we get Douglas, or in
the shorter form, Diggles, meaning “ black water.” There is a
word which you have still in Lancashire, cam, which means crooked.
It is a word that Shakespere uses. We get that in several forms,
Camden, for instance. Another instance which most of you
remember is Morecambe Bay, that is, the crooked sea. You
remember how the sea goes in and out there, and Morecambe
must have been called the crooked sea at the time when Welsh
people lived there, to whom this word Morecambe would mean
crooked sea. If time would allow me, I could show you in the
�44
■same way that Irwell (the quick, winding stream), Irk (the leaper),
Med-lock (the full pool), all preserve in their names signs that the
Welsh were here before us. But to pass on from rivers to hills, we
have pen the Welsh word for hill; which of course we get in
Pendleton, which is simply hill town; Pendlebury, another form
of the same name; and the hill which is above Clitheroe, Pendle
Hill. In Wales and Cornwall it is a very common name—
Penrhyn, Penmaenmaur, Pendennis : in all cases pen meaning hill.
And wherever we find this word pen it means simply that the
Welshman was there before us and talked about the “hill.”
Coniston Old Man is called so simply from the Welsh Alt Maen
(high mountain), and has nothing to do with any old gentleman.
Of town names we have very few that are Keltic, for the natural
reason that the Welsh folk who lived here in Lancashire once had
very few towns to give any names to. Ip Doomsday Book, which
gives us a very complete account of the country a few years after
the Normans came here, I find that only 16 villages are mentioned
as existing then in the whole of Lancashire. So that it need not
surprise us if we find that Wigan is about the only instance of a
Keltic name for a town: this means “ battles,” and the place is
so called because of some battles that were fought there in very
early times.
Now, let us pass on. We have seen that the Kelts were here ;
the Romans came after them. They have left us very few names.
One or two will be of interest here. Their word for camp was
castra, which we get in Lancaster. We know that Lancaster must
have been at least as old as the Roman times, because no other
people but Romans would have talked about “castra” for camp,
therefore it must have been Romans who gave the name of
Lancaster to the city or town which was built on the river which
before then the Welsh people had called the Lune or the Alauna—
the “ white water.” So with the name of this city, Manchester.
“ Chester” is only the softened form of this same “castra.” In
all languages that I know anything about there are instances of
this changing of sounds. The k sound gets softened by degrees
either into j or ts or ch. So Manchester means a camp or fortified
place. But what does the “ man ” mean ? If you believe
that the Welsh word man means a plain, and if you will just
ride from Cheetham Hill down to here, you will, I think, easily
see why Manchester was called “the camp at the edge of the
plain.” If you go to the north of Manchester, you get into the
hill country at <: nee ; if you go south—as those know who live on
this side, you get very little hill, but just a broad, flat plain.
�45
Manchester means a camp, or a fortified place which was built by
these Romans, just at the place where the great flat plain of
South Lancashire and Cheshire begins.
We have only one other instance perhaps worth troubling you
about, and that because of its local interest. We have another
Roman word remaining to us, in street. “Street” is an old Roman
word for road. Some of you may know High Street, in Westmor
land, the high mountain over which the Roman road runs at the
top; and an old Roman road runs down to Stretford, that is,
where the “street” went over the river. Camp Field is a later
name; it has nothing to do with the Romans; here we get the
English again. Now we have plenty of local names which are
English. And here is one thing to be noticed at once—we do
not talk now-a-days about Avon, but rather the River Avon, the
River Usk, and so on. That points us to this fact, that when the
English people came here, if they saw a river they asked what it
was called. The Welsh people would say “avon,” that is “river,”
Now the English did not know that avon meant river; they
thought that was the proper name of it, just as we say Irwell, or
Irk; and they would put their word “river” on to this word,
whatever it might be—Ouse, or Avon, or so on. So we get
River Ouse, River Avon. In just the same way we get Pendle
Hill. The English people on coming would ask what that hill
was called. The people there would say it was pen. Then the
English coming would call it Pen Hill, and that would soon get
changed into Pendle, and the hill which is near Clitheroe is still
often called Pendle, and when hill gets mixed up with pen, the
people forget that there is the word hill in the name; and so they
put another hill, and talk of Pendle Hill, which simply means
Hill, Hill, Hill! Just the same with Pendleton ; that is Hill, Hill
Town; Pendlebury, Hill, Hill Borough. We have a curious
instance of this, which may have escaped many of you, here in
Combrook. Brook is intelligible enough, but what is the “ corn ?”
Of course, we suppose at first sight that it is a brook that ran
through cornfields; it must have been a long time ago if it did !
But we should be going quite wrong if we judged so hastily.
Com is simply our old word avon cut short, with the Welsh prefix
cor, which means narrow. Now there is the Irwell, a compara
tively broad stream, and the cor-an, narrow stream flowing into it
The old Welsh people called it the Corn, that is, the narrow
stream. The people coming afterwards asked what stream that
was, and were told the Corn, or narrow stream. The English put
on “brook,” and so we get Cornbrook, narrow stream brook
�46
We can tell very well wherever the English people proper have
been by the terminations. There is an old rhyme that runs—
In Ford, in Ham, in Ley, in Ton,
The most of English surnames run.
And whenever we find any words with these endings, you may be
sure that there the English people settled, not Welsh people, not
Danish people, not French people, but simply the English, either
Angles or Saxons. Wherever we have a word ending in ton, as
we have abundantly here, Pendleton, Bolton, Middleton ; when
ever we have them ending in ley, as in Alderley and Timperley,
and so many places in Cheshire; wherever we have ham, and in
most cases where we have ford*—in these instances you may be
sure that the words are of English origin. I am not sure whether
I shall have time to explain all these terminations. Ton simply
means a sort of enclosure, more like a farmyard than a town. We
have Barton-on-Irwell. Bar, the first part of it, is simply bear, and
ton is the enclosure; and so Barton means the enclosure for what
was borne by the ground, that is to say, for the harvest or the
crop. Barton means a sort of farm yard or rick yard. That
accounts for the fact that we have so many Bartons all over
England, because there are so many enclosures where people put
up their harvest produce. In “ Broughton,” near here, we have
the same ending; and if any of you had the misfortune to live in
Lower Broughton during the floods, you will understand why it
was called Broughton, when I tell you that the first part of it
means marshy ground.
In one name that we have near here, we get an instance of whatis
extremely important and interesting in its way—that is, Withington.
Now here we have not so many of them, but in some parts of
England there are a great many names ending in this ington. We
have a fair number of them about here. You know we have
Bollington, Carrington, Doddington, Rivington, Warrington. And
then we have some in ham—Altringham, Aldingham, and Bir
mingham. And besides these, we have some words which end
simply in ing—Melling, Pilling, and Billing, all just about this
part of Lancashire. But as I have said, there are nothing like so
many in Lancashire as in some other parts of England. In all
Lancashire we have only 19 names with this ing in them, but
in the little county of Bedfordshire we have 63; in HuntingdonFords by the sea are of Danish origin, and contain their word fiord, oxafrith.
�47
shire we have 57; and in Kent 51 names having this ing in them.
Well, of course, just as the chemist as soon as he gets hold of
any substance whatever, no matter whether animal, vegetable, or
mineral, wants to find out what its composition is, so we want
to find out what this ing means. And we go back as far as
we can, and we find that our old English forefathers used
this termination ing to denote the son of a person. Suppose
a man was named Eoppa, his son would be named Eopping,
and all his sons would be named Eoppings. Suppose it was
Boll, his family would be named Bollings. For instance, in
our. oldest version of the list of fathers and sons at the
beginning of our New Testament, we have just the same form
used; they would put ing on to the name of the father to denote
the son. Wherever we have this ing we have an intimation and a
proof, we may say, that the people who founded the town were all
of one family, one little tribe, the children of a man called Boll,
or something of the kind. Warrington is the ton, the enclosure,
the village, we may say, of the children of Wara ; and that is a
proof of the fact which I told you on other authorities, that when
our English forefathers came over from Germany, they did not
come separately, like the Danes, but they came in families, alto
gether, “ clans/’ as the Scotchmen call them, /ng means just the
same thing as the Scotch “ Mac,” or the Irish “ O’. ”
The Danes, I told you, lived in this part (north and east), and
the Saxons in this (south and west). I will just mention the fact,
though I cannot bring out the full meaning of it now, that here
(north) you will find lots of bys, and in this part (south) lots of
tons. Wherever you find places ending in by, as Whitby, Derby,
Rugby, there you find Danes have been. By is the old Danish
form for town or borough ; and when you talk about “ by laws”
you simply mean the borough laws as distinguished from the laws
of the country. Of course now we use the phrase for the laws of
a railway or a club ; but originally by-law meant borough law, as
distinguishing it from the national law of the great Parliament.
Here you find lots of bys, and here lived the Danes j here you
will find tons, and English folk settled there. In Lancashire you
will find bys, as Crosby, Formby, in the West Derby Hundred,
and so on; that means that the Danes, sailing round the country
with their ships, came and settled just on the sea coast, but could
not get any further inland, because the English people drove
them away. Hence you find them chiefly on the coast.
I meant to tell you much more about these Danish settlements,
and also about the manner in which local names bear witness to
�48
the presence of Norwegians rather than Danes in Cumberland
and Westmorland. I should like also to show you how we know
from names where the Angles settled and where the Saxons, but
I cannot allow myself to try your very great patience any longer.
I will simply assure you I have only given you this evening a very
slight sample of the interest you may find in the scientific
study of language.
�THE FOOD OF PLANTS,
A LECTURE
BY
PROFESSOR
ODLING,
F.R.S.,
Delivered, in the Hulme Town Hall, Manchester, 24th November, i$7r.
You all know that a piece of wood, or any quantity of wood, when
set fire to, is capable of being burned entirely away, with the
exception of a small—almost insignificant—residue of white ash
which is left. [Holding up a piece of burning wood.] This
white ash is spoken of as the mineral matter of the wood, from
the circumstance of its being of the same nature as the matter of
which our most common rocks and minerals are composed; whereas
that portion of the wood which burns away is called the organic
matter of the wood, from its being the matter of which the living,
growing plant, with its different parts or organs, is mainly con
stituted. Now, when a piece of wood is exposed to the action of
heat—by being thrust into the fire, for example—it gives off gases,
and these gases, taking fire, bum with flame. A short time back
Professor Roscoe showed you that when coal was heated in the
bowl of a tobacco pipe, it gave off inflammable gases which might
be burnt at the other end of the pipe; and, in the same manner
that the coal when heated gave off inflammable gases, so also this
wood, when heated, gives off inflammable gases ; and when we
say, in ordinary language, that a piece of wood is burning with
flame, our language is not strictly correct; we should rather say
that the heated wood gives off gases, and that those gases burn with
flame,—and they burn with flame you perceive on the surface of the
wood where they are discharged into the air, much in the same
manner that the gas of the coal heated in the tobacco pipe burnt at
�5°
the other end of the pipe where it was discharged into the
air. Now you will observe that where the piece of wood is
subjected to heat, and more particularly where it is subjected to
the hot flame of tfie burning gases surrounding it, it becomes
blackened, or charred, or converted into charcoal. And the
point of interest in connection with this charring process is
that it does not take place where the wood itself, or the
partly burnt wood, comes into contact freely with the air;
but that it takes place where the wood is separated from
the air by these burning gases. Where the wood is subjected to
the heat of the burning gases, or to heat of any kind, and is kept
out of contact with the air by the burning gases, or by some other
means, there it becomes charred or converted into charcoal. But
where the gases are burnt out, the charred residue, now left in
contact with the air, quickly disappears, leaving only the white
ash of which we spoke a moment ago. The same principle is
made use of in the production of charcoal for manufacturing
purposes. When manufacturers want to produce charcoal, they
resort to one or other of two principal methods. One of these
methods is to heat the wood to redness in an iron box or oven,
entirely excluded from the air, with the exception of a pipe allow
ing the gases to escape; and after these gases have been driven
off through the pipe, nothing is found left in the iron box or oven
but a quantity of charcoal. Another way of making charcoal
consists in piling the wood up into a large heap, and setting fire to
it. By this means the outside wood, in contact with the air, gets
burnt away to a greater or less extent; but the inside wood, being
simply heated by the burning which is taking place upon the out
side of the heap, does not get burnt away, but gives off its
gases which bum on the outside; and what is left in the inside is
this substance—charcoal, produced by the action of heat upon
wood out of the access of air. Now if you examine a piece oi
charcoal obtained in one or other of these ways, and compare it
with the wood out of which it was produced, you will observe
that in the conversion of a particular piece of wood into a cor
responding piece of charcoal, there has been an appreciable
shrinking or loss of bulk; so that the resulting charcoal is consider
ably less in size than the original wood. It is also very much less
in weight than the original wood ; or, in the course of the process
of its manufacture, there has been a certain shrinking in bulk, and
a very much greater diminution oi weight. But you will observe that
the resulting charcoal presents exactly the form Oi the original piece
of wood ; so that yuo can recognise in it the stem and
�51
branches and knots of the wood, the bark, and the pith, and even
the longitudinal fibres and concentric laminae of which the wood
was constituted. From the circumstance, then, of charcoal, having
these characters, being produced from wood by the driving
away of certain of its component parts, so as to leave the charcoal
behind, we come to the conclusion that wood is a substance
partly composed of charcoal; or in other words, that charcoal is
one of the constituents of wood.
But the charcoal obtained from wood is not itself a pure
substance; it is contaminated, for instance, with the ashes of the
wood; and, accordingly, when we burn the charcoal away these
ashes are left as a white residue. In its pure state the black com
bustible matter of the charcoal is known by the name of “ carbon,”
and we say accordingly that charcoal is an impure form of carbon.
Now this substance, “carbon,” in its pure state, is what chemists
call a “ simple substance,” that is to say, a substance which they
have not yet succeeded in breaking up, or resolving into two or
more different kinds of substance. Wood, on the contrary, is a
compound substance; and, when subjected to the action of heat,
breaks up into charcoal, which remains behind, and certain
gaseous products which are driven off. We take away something
from the wood which is not wood, and thereby leave charcoal.
But with regard to this substance—charcoal, or rather with
regard to carbon in its pure state,—we cannot take anything away
from it but carbon, and we cannot alter it in any way by the
taking away of something from it, so as to leave anything but
carbon. It is a substance which we may alter by adding some
thing else to it—by combining something else with it—but which we
cannot alter by taking anything else away from it. Therefore, in
practical effect, if not in actual fact, carbon is a simple substance.
It is a substance which has not yet been decomposed, and is not,
so far as our present knowledge goes, decomposable into two or
more different kinds of substance.
Now charcoal is not only a constituent of wood, but also
of hay and corn, and indeed of vegetable produce generally.
[A bundle of hay and a glass jar of corn were exhibited
on the platform.] You know that hay has the property of under
going by itself, under certain conditions, a process of heating,
which sometimes results in its actually taking fire; and on cutting
into a haystack, it is not an uncommon occurrence to find the
interior portion of the stack completely charred by the heating
which has taken place. Much in the same manner, then, that
wood charcoal is produced by the heating of wood in heaps, pur
�52
posely set fire to—so is hay charcoal produced by the spontaneous
heating of hay in haystacks; access oi air to the interior being,
in both cases, more or less completely prevented. And in the
same way, if we take wheat grain and expose it to the action of
heat, out o; access of air, we get the grains completely charred or
converted into charcoal. Here we have some wheat charcoal,
presenting the lorm of the original grains of wheat—just as wood
charcoal and hay charcoal present the forms of the original wood
and hay respectively.
But it is important, in reference to the rest of the story I have
to tell you this evening, that we should know, not only that
vegetable produce—wood, and hay and corn—contain charcoal, but
that we should be able also to form some notion of the amount of
charcoal or carbon which they contain.
Now it is round that pure dry woody matter contains very
nearly half its weight of carbon. It contains in reality 45 parts in.
100, or, as we say, 45 per cent. If it contained 50 parts in 100,
that would be exactly half its weight; but it does not contain
quite this, but only 45 instead of 50 parts in 100. Now, if we
pass from the consideration of pure woody matter to the con
sideration of other forms of vegetable produce, such for instance,
as starch, of which here is a specimen, we find that starch
contains exactly the same proportion of charcoal as woody matter;
and that sugar, of which here is a specimen, contains very nearly
the same proportion. Only a few lectures back, Professor Roscoe
showed you that when sugar was acted upon by a certain
chemical agent, it underwent a great swelling up, and became
changed into a black spongy mass of charcoal, one of the
constituent parts of the original sugar. And the proportion
of charcoal, I repeat, in starch and sugar, is the same or very
nearly the same as the proportion in pure woody matter.
But we are acquainted with other vegetable substances which
contain a much larger proportion of charcoal; such substances,
for instance, as rosin and turpentine, and the oils expressed
uom seeds and fruits, as linseed oil, cabbage seed oil, and olive
oil, &c. All these substances contain a much larger propor
tion of carbon than is contained in wood; and when they
are set on fire, the smoke or soot they evolve in burning is some
evidence to you of the large proportion of carbon which they
originally contained. Now, just as certain vegetable products con
tain more carbon than wood, so there are other products which
contain less; and among these I may reier to the different acids,, or
sour substances, which are iound more particularly in the juices of
�53
unripe fruit There, for example, is a fine specimen of tartaric
ac’d—an acid which exists in the juice of the grape, and is pro
duced on a large scale, in wine-growing countries, in the process of
converting the juice of the grape into wine. In the same way
we meet with citric acid in the juice of lemons, and other
vegetable acids in other vegetable juices. Now all these vegetable
acids contain a smaller proportion of carbon than is contained in
wood. But having regard to the fact that the great mass of vege
table produce is composed of woody matter, or of substances such
as starch and sugar, having substantially the same composition as
wood ; and having regard further to the circumstance that, of other
vegetable products, some of them contain a larger and some of
them a smaller proportion of carbon than is contained in wood, it
results that the amount of carbon contained in woody matter may
be taken as a fair representative of the amount of carbon con
tained in vegetable produce generally, viewed as a whole. We
may say, then, that the dry organic substance of a growing plant
contains on an average about 45 parts in 100, or rather less
than half of its weight of charcoal
Now it is found that on an acre of meadow land, or arable land,
or wood land, there are produced in the course of a single season
several thousand pounds weight of vegetable produce, con
taining not unfrequently as much as two thousand pounds weight
of charcoal; while the charcoal of an average crop may be taken
at over 1,600 pounds, or nearly three-quarters of a ton per acre. In
illustration of the large quantities of vegetable matter, and of its
constituent carbon, produced annually on an acre of land,l et me
call your attention to the table before you, which shows the
numbers deduced by Messrs. Lawes & Gilbert, from their many
determinations of the quantities and compositions of actual crops
of wheat, barley, and oats, as representing the average weights of
produce obtained under the ordinary system of rotation of crops
and moderately good farming.
Wheat.
Gross produce...............
Dry organic matter.......
Carbon...........................
Barley.
4,800
3,869
1,734
4,5 80
3,7U
1,663
1o 1 Pouhds
3,328 r per acre.
L495 )
From results obtained then, on Mr. Lawes’ experimental farm at
Rothamstead—a farm conducted for the purpose of knowledge
and not for the purpose of profit—Mr. Lawes and Dr. Gilbert
have arrived at the conclusion that, taking one year with another,
the average weight of wheat, including grain and straw, produced
�54
from an acre of land in a single season, amounts to 4,800 pounds.
But the gross produce, as it is removed from the land, still contains,
although seemingly dry, a considerable proportion of water; and
if from the weight of gross produce there be deducted the weight of
water which it contains, and if from the resulting weight of perfectly
dry substance there be further deducted the weight of mineral
matter or ash which it yields when burnt, there will be left 3,869
pounds as the weight of dry organic matter, and 1,734 pounds as
weight of carbon contained in this organic matter. Similarly
with regard to barley, the average weight of dry organic matter is
3,714 pounds per acre, including 1,663 pounds of carbon; while
with regard to oats, the average weight of dry organic matter
is 3,328 pounds per acre, including 1,495 °f carbon. From
results of this kind then, obtained in the cultivation of ordinary
crops grown in a single season, you may form some notion
of the large amounts of charcoal or carbon accumulated somehow in vegetable produce. And when we pass to the consideration of
vegetation, not as we see it here, but as it manifests itself in the
luxurious growth of tropical climates, the amounts of produce, and
consequently of carbon contained in the produce, become yet more
astounding. The celebrated naturalist and traveller, Humboldt,
among his experiences in South America, records the existence there
of forests so huge and so thick that monkeys might run on the tops
of the trees for a hundred miles in a straight line, without a single
break. And the millions of tons of dry wood, capable of
being furnished by these forests, are composed, we know, to the
extent of nearly half their weight, of charcoal I You perceive,
then, that the growing plant, whether large or small, tree of the ,
forest or grass of the field, may be regarded by us simply as a
contrivance for producing carbon.
Reverting once more to the case of crops that are grown in a
single season, it is evident that we remove from the land at the
end of the season, several thousand pounds weight of vegetable
produce which did not exist in the form of vegetable produce a
few short months previously. Nevertheless the actual substance, or
weight of matter, constituting this produce must have existed
before the growth of the crop, although in a very different form.
The several thousand pounds weight of wheat and barley and
oats, grown on an acre of land in a single season, were not pro
duced out of nothing; but were produced out of many thousand
pounds weight of somethingpre-existing at the beginning of the season
in the form of certain very different kinds of matter, out of which
this matter of wheat and barley and oats was somehow constituted.
�55
In the same manner, when, in course of time, the acorn grows
into a tall oak tree, the several tons of matter, which go to compose
the woody tissue of the full-grown oak, were not produced out of
nothing, but out of many tons of matter which existed, though in
a different form, before the acorn was even planted; and which have
been accumulated, and transformed into woody matter, by the plant
or tree, during the period of its many years growth.' For the matter
or substance of which the grown oak is finally composed, was
not furnished by the acorn, but was furnished to the acorn, or
young plant springing from the acorn, by external and very
different forms of pre-existing matter. The problem then which I
wish to put to you is this—what is the external matter or substance
out of which the matter of wheat and barley and oats and hay
and wood is ultimately produced ? And more particularly, what
is the sufficiently abundant substance containing carbon, out of
which the carbon of all this vegetable produce is accumulated ? for
I need scarcely tell you that this carbon can only be got from some
substance already containing carbon. Iron, you know, can only be
produced from iron stone, or matter containing iron ; copper can
only be produced from copper ore, or matter containing copper; and
in the same way, it is evident that the carbon of vegetable produce
can only be obtained from matter containing carbon. What, then,
is the primitive matter, containing carbon, out of which, in the
course of the growth of the plant, this carbon of vegetable matter
is ultimately produced ?
It is well known that in forest lands, there exists a large
amount of rich vegetable mould, the produce mainly of the
decay of leaves; and this vegetable mould, which has received
the name of humus, is found to be exceedingly rich in carbon.
Further, richly carbonaceous vegetable matter of much the same
kind is found in a sod of grass turf; and again matter of a not
dissimilar kind is commonly added to arable land in the form of
farmyard manure. Now, until about thirty years ago, the prevalent
notion was that the carbon of vegetable produce was furnished to
the plant by the carbonaceous matter of the soil called humus, or
by matter of a similar nature. The vegetable matter of the grow
ing plant was conceived to be formed out of pre-existing vegetable
matter; and plants, like animals, were thus supposed to live upon
food more or less resembling in composition the tissues or parts
of the plants and animals respectively nourished. Now, notwith
standing the inadequacy of this notion, and notwithstanding its
discordance with well-known facts, and with facts that had been
for a long time well-known, it prevailed for very many years almost
�56
•without question. About thirty or more years ago, however, the
consideration of eminent agricultural chemists both in England
and in France was directed to this view of the subject, and very
serious doubts of its truthfulness began to be entertained. But
the notion was not ultimately exploded until the year 1840, by the
celebrated German chemist, Liebig. Now I do not propose to
take you over all the arguments which may be employed to show
inadequacy of this humus theory to account for the accumula
tion of carbon in plants; but I will direct your attention for a
short time to some of the most prominent reasons only. First
of all it is probable that in certain rich soils there does exist
an amount of humus, or such like vegetable matter containing
a quantity of carbon sufficient to furnish the crop grown
upon the soil, with the carbon j which it ultimately contains.
But this vegetable humus is exceedingly insoluble in water; and
Liebig made the curious calculation that if all the rain,, that falls
upon the land during the period of the growth of the crop, were
to remain upon the land and to dissolve as much of this humus
matter as it is capable of dissolving, so as to become thoroughly
saturated with humus ; and then, if all this water, so saturated with
humus, instead of draining away, as we know that most of it does,
and evaporating from the surface, as we know that much of it does,—
it all of this so saturated water were absorbed into the tissues
of the plants, nevertheless there could not be dissolved in
this water, and so supplied to the plant, a sufficient quantity of
humus to furnish the quantity of carbon ultimately found in the
crop. This of course does not amount to a demonstration that
the plant cannot get its carbon froip the humus of the soil; it
is only a demonstration that the plant cannot get its carbon
from this humus by the only process of absorption of which we
have any knowledge; and accordingly it comes to this, that if
plants do acquire their carbon from humus, they must get it there
from in a manner with which we are totally unacquainted.
But another argument, and a much more striking one, has reference
to the fact, that the carbon of the crop may be increased two-fold,
and even three-fold, by adding to the soil matters which contain
no carbon whatever. And this is very well shown in the table
before you, which records some more of the results of Messrs.
Lawes and Gilbert’s work at Rothamstead. This table gives an
account of experiments made on a tolerably large scale of experi
mental farming during the year 1868 and the 16 years preceding, in
the case of wheat, making 17 years altogether; for 1868 and the
16 years preceding, in the case of barley; and for 1868 and the
12 years preceding, in the case of hay:—
�1
57
Rothamstead Field Experiments, 1868.
Results in Pounds per Acre.
Gross Produce.
Wheat.
Barley.
Hay.
17 years. 17 years. IS years.
Unmanured .............. • 2,434
2,532
2,55s
Mineral Salts........
. 2,912
3,260
3,9X4
Do. + Ammonia...... • 6,394
5,821
5,92i
Farmyard Manure..... • 6,059
4,804
5,903
Dry Organic Matter.
Unmanured .......... .... 1,963
2,054
i,995
Mineral Salts.......... .... 2,347
2,645
3,053
Do. + Ammonia .. .... 5U49
4,618
4,720
—
Farmyard Manure.. .... 4,883
4,788
Carbon.
Unmanured ..........
880
920
902
Mineral Salts.......... .... 1,052
1,186
1,380
Do. + Ammonia .. .... 2,308
2,088
2,115
—
Farmyard Manure.. .... 2,183
2,341
For the purpose of these experiments, considerable strips of land
have been treated every year, each strip in exactly the same way,
for 17 years continuously, up to and including the year 1868 ; and
indeed the experiments have been similarly carried on, and with
similar results, up to the present year, 1871; and are likely to be
similarly carried, on with similar results, for a good many years yet
to come. And I would call your attention simply, as time is
getting on so rapidly, to the case of wheat. You will then be
able to make out for yourselves what were the results of the similar
experiments made with the crops of barley and hay. Messrs.
Lawes and Gilbert have found that, taking the average of these
17 years, the gross amount of produce removed from an acre
of continuously unmanured land, in the case of wheat, was
2,434 lbs., and that when from this gross produce they sub
tracted the amounts of water it contained, and of ash which
it yielded, there remained 1,963 pounds of dry organic matter;
and when they came to analyse these 1,963 pounds of dry
organic matter, they found them to contain 880 pounds of
carbon. And this, mind, is the average produce of 17 years con
tinuous growth of wheat, on land to which nothing whatever was
added. Now to a similar strip of land Messrs. Lawes & Gilbert
added every year a certain quantity of mineral matter, correspond
�58
ing to the ashes yielded by each successive crop removed ; and on
the strip so treated, the amount of gross produce was found to be
increased from 2,434 pounds to 2,912 pounds, the amount of dry
organic matter to be increased from 1,963 pounds to 2,347 pounds;
and the amount of carbon to be increased from 880 pounds to 1,052
pounds. Now to another slip of land they added year by year
exactly the same quantity of mineral matter, and in addition, a
considerable quantity of ammonia salts,—the ammonia salts and
mineral matter being alike absolutely free from carbonaceous
organic matter. And in the case of this strip, they found that the
amount of gross produce was increased to the surprising extent of
6,394 pounds, while the amount of dry organic matter was increased
to 5,149 pounds, and the amount of carbon to 2,308 pounds.
These results, you will observe, are fully as high—in most cases
indeed somewhat higher—than are results obtained on a fourth
strip of land, supplied year by year with an abundance of farm-yard
manure, containing not only the mineral matter and ammonia
added to the third strip, but rich also, as you know, in carbonaceous
organic matter. It is inconceivable then that the plant should
acquire its carbon from these organic matters of the soil,
seeing that the amount of carbon in. the crop may be increased
twofold and in some cases nearly threefold, by adding to the
soil substances such as mineral salts and ammonia which
are entirely free from organic matter.
And this table further illustrates another point. We have
admitted that the amount of humus or carbonaceous vegetable
matter existing in the soil, might in some cases be sufficient to
furnish the organic matter and the carbon for a single year’s crop;
but you observe that these 880 lbs. represent the average amount
of carbon which has been produced for 17 years, and up to the
present time, 21 years in succession; and which now seems to
undergo from year to year no appreciable decrease. So that,
although it is conceivable that the amount of humus in the soil might
furnish the amount of carbon contained in a single crop, it is
quite inconceivable that the original humus in the soil could
furnish the carbon contained in a succession of crops for 17 years
consecutively, and for the several years beyond that to which the
experiment has now been carried, and for the indefinite number
of years to which it will continue to be carried.
A still more cogent argument against this notion of the origin
of the carbon of vegetation directly from organic matter in the soil,
is afforded by the fact, established both by experiments specially
made, and by the observation of nature, that plants and crops
�59
have been, and in many cases habitually are, grown upon soils
which are either absolutely free, or which are practically, and to all
intents and purposes, free from organic vegetable matter. Very
many such experiments have been made by the French chemist,
Boussingault, who has grown plants from seeds in artificially
prepared soils, which had been subjected to a red heat, and from
which the whole of the organic carbonaceous vegetable matter
had been so removed and burned away; and yet the plants have
not only grown in these soils, but have thriven and arrived
at maturity. It is found, moreover, that many plants flourish
best, in a state of nature, upon soils which, if not like the experi
mental soils of Boussingault, absolutely free from organic matter,
are yet to all intents and purposes free. Thus, according to
Darwin, rich harvests of maize are yielded in the interior of Chili
and Peru by soils consisting of the merest quicksand, never
enriched by manure. According to Colonel Campbell, the soil of
the cinnamon gardens at Colombo, and where else the tree is
cultivated, is pure quartz sand, as white as snow. Dr. Schleiden,
again, observes that the oil palms of the western coast of Africa
are grown in moist sea-sand; and that from the year 1821 to the
year 1830, there were exported, as produce of these palm-trees,
into England alone, 107,118,000 lbs. of palm oil, containing 76
million lbs. or 32 thousand tons of carbon; these thousands of
tons of carbon being furnished by trees grown in a soil that was
practically free from organic or carbonaceous matter of any
kind whatever.
The only further argument with which I will trouble you is
based on the observation that when plants are grown upon soils
actually containing organic vegetable matter, so far from this
vegetable matter in the soil being used up or decreased by any
feeding of plants upon it, it is very much increased; so that the
more vegetation we get from the surface the more humus we get
accumulated in the soil; and we say, therefore, that so far from
humus being the cause of vegetation, vegetation, on the contrary,
is the cause of humus—the humus being produced chiefly by the
decay of matter formed by vegetation.
I think, then, I have now brought before you, not all the
arguments which might be adduced, but a sufficient number of
them to satisfy you that the quantities of carbon accumulated
in the crop or tree are not derived from carbonaceous matter
existing in the soil; and seeing, in this way, that the solid substance
of the earth does not suffice to furnish the carbon required, our atten
tion is next directed to the liquid water which falls upon the earth,
�6o
as a possible source of all this carbon. Nowwater—pure water, that
is to say—is a substance which itself contains no carbon,and there
fore cannot furnish any carbon to the plant. But certain natural
waters are found to contain carbon in small quantity. For
instance, the drainage water of peat bogs, and land-drainage water
in general, contains a certain amount of carbonaceous organic
matter derived from the land; but we have already seen that the
land does not contain enough of this organic matter to furnish the
carbon of vegetation directly, and cannot therefore furnish it
indirectly through the intervention of water, taking up organic
matter from the land.
But we find that rain water does contain carbon derived
from another source. The rain, in falling through the air,
acquires different impurities or additions from the air; and
more especially it takes up a certain carbonaceous constituent of
the air, on which I shall have to dwell more particularly in a
minute or two’s time. And I am not merely speaking of the rain
which has fallen in great cities like this, and has so become con
taminated with the carbonaceous soot and smoke of imperfectly
burnt coal; but I am speaking of rain wherever it falls, whetheron
land or ocean, in town or country, at the end of a period of
drought when the air is foul, as at the end of a period of wet, when
it has been washed clean by continuous showers. Pure water I
have said, is quite free from carbon in any form whatever. But
all water that has been left in contact with the air, and especially
water that has been condensed from and fallen through the air,
contains, in small proportion, a particular definite compound of
carbon, namely, carbonic acid, very different indeed in its nature
from the indefinite compounds of carbon we have hitherto spoken
of under the name of humus and vegetable organic matter. .
In this way our attention is necessarily directed to the air as a
possible source of all the millions of tons of carbon that are
accumulated in forest trees and annual crops, growing on
extensive areas of land. And although at first sight it must
strike us all as being improbable — scarcely, we should think,
possible — that any such quantity of solid earbon could be got
from the fresh, transparent, intangible, fleeting air, yet, when we
consider that upon setting fire to a heap of wood, or of the char
coal produced from wood, and letting it go on burning, it is
mainly resolved into matters which are dispersed into the air, and
are themselves aerial, we begin to perceive that the improbability
is not in reality so great as at first it appears. When we burn,
however large a quantity of wood, or of the charcoal produced
�6i
from wood, there is nothing, you know, left behind but an insig
nificant quantity of ashes; there is no solid body formed; there
is no liquid body formed; there is nothing but an aerial body
formed, which is discharged into the air.
Now this aerial
body used actually to be called air—fixed air, to distinguish it
from ordinary atmospheric air — but is now-a-days called car
bonic acid gas. This carbonic acid gas is possessed of many very
curious properties, and is more especially characterised by two
properties, to which I am desirous of calling your attention. The
first of these is the property which it has of extinguishing
the flame of any burning body. On introducing a lighted gas
jet into this bottle of carbonic acid gas, the flame, you observe, is
at once extinguished. [An experiment illustrated this fact.]
Another property of carbonic acid gas is the property it has of
combining with lime, to produce carbonate of lime, or chalk. Now
lime is a substance which dissolves in water to form a clear trans
parent liquid; but chalk is a substance that will not dissolve in
water. You may observe, when you go to the sea-side, that the
sea-salt remains dissolved in the water, while the sea-sand remains
undissolved upon the shore. Now lime, like salt, dissolves in
water, though, indeed, to a much less extent than salt, to furnish
a perfectly bright solution known as lime-water. Chalk, on the
other hand, like sand, is a substance which does not dissolve in
water, but remains simply mixed up with it for a time, in
the form of a white milky opaque liquid. The property,
then, which carbonic acid has of combining with lime to produce
chalk, is manifested to you in this way—that upon adding our
clear lime water to the carbonic acid in the bottle, carbonate
of lime or chalk is formed, and this chalk, not being soluble
in water, is deposited so as to form the milky liquid which
you see we have now produced. [Experiment made.] This other
bottle also contains carbonic acid, but mixed with a considerable
excess of air; so that in this case, there is not a sufficient amount
of carbonic acid present to cause the extinction of flame. When
I put in the gas-flame you see that it continues burning. But that
the bottle really does contain some carbonic acid, I can show you
by adding in this case also our lime water ; and now, on shaking
up the bottle, the lime water is at once rendered milky. You see
in this way, we have two tests for carbonic acid. When the
carbonic acid exists in a large proportion, it has the property of
rendering lime water milky and also of extinguishing the flame;
but when the proportion of carbonic acid is not sufficient to
extinguish flame, we are able, nevertheless, to recognise its presence
�62
by the property it has of converting our clear lime water into an
opaque white mixture of chalk and water.
Now I told you a few moments ago that the aerial substance
into which solid charcoal was converted, when it underwent the
process of being burnt in air, was carbonic acid gas. And,
accordingly, when I put some pieces of red hot charcoal into this
upright glass tube, through which a gentle current of air is being
blown, so as to keep the charcoal burning, and when I cause this
same air, now charged with the aerial matter furnished by the
burning charcoal, to bubble up through lime water, you perceive
the lime water is quickly rendered milky, showing you the forma
tion of carbonate of lime or chalk, a substance producible only
from lime by the addition of carbonic acid to it. [Experiment
made.]
I want next to call your attention for a moment to what takes
place in the act of burning. Ordinary atmospheric air consists
substantially of two distinct kinds of air or gas—one is called
nitrogen and the other oxygen. Now when our charcoal or carbon
burns in the open air, or in the tube through which we are blowing
a current of air, that carbon enters into combination with the
oxygen of the air, and forms a compound of oxygen and carbon,
which is, indeed, sometimes called oxide of carbon, but more
commonly, as I have said, carbonic acid. If, instead of burning
our carbon in the air, which contains only one-fifth of its bulk of
oxygen, we burn it in pure oxygen, it burns with greatly increased
brilliancy, but furnishes exactly the same product, namely, car
bonic acid. Here we have the chalk, which we produced a
moment ago, by taking lime water and adding to it the carbonic
acid we made by combining our carbon or charcoal with the
oxygen of the air; and here we have some charcoal that is
already ignited; and on passing the pure oxygen gas over it, you
observe the very greatly increased brilliancy with which, under
these circumstances, it bums. We next cause the air which is
left by this burning of the charcoal in oxygen, to bubble up through
lime water; and the abundant presence in it of oxide of carbon, or
carbonic acid gas, is at once manifested to you by the immediate
deposition of carbonate of lime or chalk. [Experiment made.] I
venture to impress upon your attention the fact that carbonic acid
gas is a compound of the solid substance carbon with the aerial
or gaseous substance oxygen; and that when carbon or charcoal
burns in ordinary air, it unites with the oxygen of the air to form
the aerial substance, carbonic acid gas, which is discharged into
the air.
�Now, if we reflect for a minute or two, we shall see that inasmuch
as wood and charcoal, and I may add coal (although we are not
talking about coal on the present occasion), when they are burned,
produce the aerial substance, oxide of carbon, or carbonic acid;
and inasmuch as they discharge this carbonic acid into the air; it
is a matter of necessity that the air itself should contain some
carbon in this particular form. And not only is it a matter of
necessity that it must contain, but it is also a matter of easy ex
perimental demonstration that it actually does contain this aerial
compound of carbon, namely, carbonic acid. One rough way of
establishing the fact is this :—If we take some clear, transparent,
colourless lime water, and pour it into a dish, and expose it to the
air for several hours, the top layer of the lime water in contact
with the air, gradually becomes converted into an opaque white
scum of chalk; and chalk, we know, is producible only from
lime, by the acquisition of carbonic acid, which can in this case
have been acquired from no other source than from the air with
which the surface of lime water was in contact. That the air,
then, must contain some carbonic acid is a matter of argument:
and that it does contain some is a matter of experimental fact.
But although the air does, beyond question, contain carbon in
the form of carbonic acid, the proportion that it contains is exceed
ingly small; as you may infer from the length of time we
require to keep lime water exposed to the air, in order for it to
acquire a thick scum; and from the circumstances that we
may even blow a current of air through lime water for a con
siderable time, without producing any sensible effect. [Further
experiments.] We are now blowing ordinary air through this
lime water; and I might go on blowing for a great length of
time, before I should get any appreciable turbidity. This shows
you that although the air does contain carbonic acid, it must
contain it in an exceedingly small proportion. We require, then, to>
know what this proportion is. Now it is found that the amount of
carbonic acid gas in the open air varies within a certain range, but
that it amounts on the average to somewhat less than one-half
part in a thousand parts by volume: or we may say more ac
curately that it constitutes four parts in ten thousand. Here the
composition of the air is written up :—
COMPOSITION OF AIR.
| Oxygen..
4 Nitrogen
Carbonic acid
790
nearly
> Parts per 1000,
�64
Nitrogen gas 790 parts, or about four-fifths; oxygen 210 parts, or
about one-fifth; and carbonic acid gas not quite one-half part.
If it contained exactly one-half part, that would of course be five
parts, instead of only four parts, in 10,000. Now the expression of
four parts in 10,000 does not convey a very definite idea to the
mind, but I may perhaps render it more definite to you in this way.
Imagine four farthings among ten thousand farthings, or, what comes
to the same thing, imagine one penny piece among two thousand five
hundred penny pieces. If you were to take 2,500 penny pieces
and pile them on the top of each other you would produce a
column of pence some 15 or 16 feet high—about as high as this
rod, and considerably more than twice the height of the tallest
man in the room—and if from such a pile of 2,500 pence
you were to remove one penny, that would represent to you
the bulk of carbonic acid gas contained in a similar column of
air : that is, the one part of carbonic acid in 2,500 parts of air,
or, of course, four parts of carbonic acid in 10,000 of air.
But although the proportion is exceedingly small, a little con
sideration will suffice to show us that the absolute quantity is
exceedingly great. I have said that the proportion is four parts
of carbonic acid in 10,000. Now, consider for a moment what
is the quantity existing in the air of a moderately sized room.
A room 25 feet long, 25 feet broad, and 16 feet high, would hold
io,oco cubic feet of air, containing, of course, four cubic feet of
carbonic acid gas. And these four cubic feet of carbonic acid gas
would weigh 2,465 grains, and contain 607 grains of charcoal—
that is to say, the quantity of charcoal I now hold in my
hand (about the size of an egg). This Town Hall holds, in
round numbers, about 150,000 cubic feet of air, and, con
sequently, the amount of carbonic acid contained in it will
be fifteen times four, or 60 cubic feet; and the amount of charcoal
contained in this carbonic acid will be fifteen times 607 grains,
or the weight of the bundle of charcoal, considerably more than a
pound and a quarter, I now hold in my hand. And when we pass
from the consideration of the air in rooms, small or large, to the
consideration of the air pressing everywhere upon the surface
of the earth, we shall get to results great almost beyond concep
tion. You know that the weight of air overlying every square
inch of the earth’s surface is 15 lbs., and that this is what we mean
by saying, as we commonly do, that the atmospheric pressure is
15 lbs. on the square inch. Now, 15 lbs. on the square inch is
2,160 lbs. on the square foot; so that every square foot of the
earth’s surface has overlying it 2,160 lbs. of air, and these
�65
2,160 lbs. of air contain about 1| lbs. of carbonic acid gas,
equivalent to very nearly halt a pound of carbon. I showed
you a few minutes ago that there are produced, in many
cases, from an acre of land, some 2,000 lbs. of carbon in a
single season. Now, reckoning from feet to acres, we find that
not merely at the first instant of the growth of the crop, but that
during every instant of the period of its growth—at the end no less
than at the beginning—there is overlying the acre of land furnishing
those 2,000 lbs. of carbon some 20,000 lbs. of carbon in the form of
carbonic acid, existing, though in such small proportion, in the air.
Calculating in this way, we find that the amount of carbon existing
in the atmosphere, in the form of carbonic acid gas, is not only
enormous in its absolute quantity, but that it is far in excess of
the wants of vegetation, and far in excess, moreover, of the quan
tities of carbon contained in all living beings, both plants and
animals, existing on the surface of the earth, and in inflammable
carbonaceous minerals, such as coal, which exist buried beneath
the surface.
In this way, then, we come to the conclusion that by their
contact with the air, plants are at any rate afforded the
opportunity of getting that carbon, which constitutes so large a
proportion of their structure. The question now is, do they avail
themselves of the opportunity afforded them—do they actually
absorb carbonic acid gas from the atmosphere, and extract the
carbon of the gas which they absorb. Now, the evidence on this
point dates from the latter end of the last century; when it was
ascertained by the older chemical philosophers, and more particu
larly Dr. Priestley, and by Saussure and Sennebier, that when
growing plants are exposed, under the influence of sunlight, to air
containing carbonic acid, they do as a matter of fact absorb some
of this carbonic acid; and, that having absorbed it, they do not
discharge it again into the air, but instead discharge only its one
constituent oxygen; the necessary inference being that its other
constituent, carbon, is retained in their tissues. 'Here you
have an imitation of one of these early experiments, showing
the removal of carbonic acid from, and the restoration of oxygen
to, a confined amount of air, by means of a fresh sprig of mint or
parsley. [Experiment.] Of late years, the subject has been
investigated with great care and elaboration by the French
chemist Boussingault, who has shown not merely that plants
have this property of absorbing carbonic acid from the air,
and of discharging the constituent oxygen of the gas into
the air and retaining the constituent carbon of the gas in
�66
their tissues, but that they do this with extreme rapidity. The
mode of experimenting which he adopted is illustrated to you
here. Taking a growing plant, such as this, he enclosed one
or more branches of the plant in a glass vessel, and through
that glass vessel passed a current of air, which was subjected
to analysis both before and after its passage through the vessel.
[Experiment to show the process of sucking air through a globe
holding the branch of a growing plant.]
I cannot trouble you at this late hour with the details of his
experiments, but will call your attention only to one or two of the
results. In the case of some oleander leaves, enclosed in a glass
globe of this kind, he found, by measuring the leaves and analyzing
the air passing over them, that under exposure to sunlight, there
was an absorption of carbonic acid from the air at the rate of 56^
cubic inches, or a fixation of carbon at the rate of 11| grains per
hour, per square yard of leaf surface exposed, showing the extreme
rapidity with which the absorption of carbonic acid from the air
and the retention of its carbon actually took place. Moreoyer, he
made a great number of other experiments, that I cannot refer to
in detail, which established not merely the general fact that plants
can absorb carbonic acid gas from the air, and can discharge
the oxygen and retain the carbon of the gas so absorbed; but,
operating with seeds, and more particularly with peas and vetches,
and growing them in artificial soils quite free from carbon, he
found that the entire weight of the carbon ultimately accumulated
in the grown plant was identical with the weight of carbon con
tained in the carbonic acid gas which the growing plant had
absorbed from, and the oxygen of which alone it had discharged
back into the atmosphere. In this way, then, Boussingault
established the important fact that plants acquire their carbon
from the carbonic acid of the abundant ever-changing air, in which
they are grown.
We have thus considered the source from which the carbon of
vegetation is obtained. But we have yet another point to consider,
and that is—what becomes of it ? Now, a little consideration, I
think, will show you, that just as the carbon of vegetation is
produced from the aerial substance, carbonic acid gas, so the
destiny, if I may so say, of the carbon of vegetation is to be recon
verted into this same aerial substance. First of all, let us see
what becomes of the most abundant of vegetable products, namely,
wood. You know that a great deal of fresh wood is put to no
intermediate use, but is at once chopped up for the fire ; and when
this wood is burned, its carbon combines with the oxygen of the
�67
from the lungs in the act of respiration. Another portion gets
accumulated in his body, whereby it is fattened and rendered fit
to become the food of the flesh feeder. And when the flesh-feeding
animal eats up the bodies of the vegetable feeders, their vegetablederived fat and lean that becomes assimilated in his body is
found to suffer there a speedy oxidation. Store animals, intended
for food, increase gradually in weight; but hard-working animals,
whether vegetable feeders like the horse, or mixed feeders like
ourselves, or animal feeders like the hound, go on eating day
after day, year after year, without any sensible increase of bodily
weight—the carbonaceous matter of the food continually eaten,
sufficing only to replace that continually destroyed in the
process of gradual oxidation or burning away to which the
substance bf our blood and tissues is ever subjected, in order
that the temperature and activity of our bodies may be main
tained. Accordingly, we find the air expired from the lungs
of both vegetable and animal feeders, to be charged with
carbonic acid, produced by the oxidation of carbonaceous
organic matter—furnished directly or indirectly by the vege
table kingdom, out of aerial carbonic acid, and restored by
the animal back into the same carbonic acid. On breathing into
this lime water for a little time [Experiment made] we have shortly
a dense milky deposit of carbonate of lime, or chalk, produced—the carbonic acid, thus serving to convert the lime into chalk, being
supplied by the' oxidation within our bodies of carbonaceous
organic matter, accumulated in the first instance by the growing
vegetable. So that in the case of food consumed in our bodies,
as in the case of wood consumed on our fires, the carbon ot
vegetable produce is directly or indirectly converted back intc
the aerial carbonic acid from which it was originally formed.
I
need only detain you a few minutes longer. When we burn char
coal in the fire, it evolves in the act of burning a considerable
amount of heat The temperature produced in this way varies
considerably, accordingly to circumstances. We may have a fire
in which the charcoal is just glowing, and the temperature com
paratively low—hardly sufficient to raise a piece of metal to a
visible red heat; and with another quantity of charcoal on the fire,
urged by the blast of powerful bellows, we may obtain an intense
degree of temperature, capable Oi melting that most difficultly
fusible metal—wrought iron. Now, whether we obtain a high
or a low degree of temperature depends mainly upon the
rapidity with which we burn the charcoal. If we take a quan
tity of charcoal and burn it away slowly, it gives out its
�68
air, and is so re-converted into carbonic acid. Again, a considerable
quantity of wood is manufactured into charcoal, and this charcoal
is then burned and so converted into carbonic acid. And with regard
to the diverse applications of wood, we know that much of it is made
into furniture, and that this furniture does not last for ever, but finds
its way from the best rooms to the attics, and at last to the fireplace.
Wood is also used for the building of ships, and in the construc
tion of houses ; but in course of time, the ships get broken up, and
the houses get pulled down, and the wood of both ships and houses
becomes ultimately sold for firewood, and then the carbon of
this wood gets burnt into the very carbonic acid from which
it was long years before produced. In other cases, the wood
or woody matter, although it never undergoes a process of actual
burning, nevertheless undergoes an equivalent process of oxidation.
At the present season, or but very recently, we had large falls oi
autumn leaves, and those leaves are still accumulated in many
places, and undergoing not burning but decay. Now the process
of decay consists really in a slow combination of the carbon of
the leaves with the oxygen of the air, whereby carbonic acid is
produced. Here we have some fallen leaves in a flask; the air
of which you will find is now sufficiently charged with carbonic
acid gas, produced by the union of the carbon of the decaying
leaves with the oxygen of the original air, as to be no longer
capable of maintaining the flame of a taper or gas jet. [Experi
ment.] The moment I introduce the taper you see that its flame
is at once extinguished. Here again we have some sawdust
which is undergoing the same process. ’The moist sawdust
gradually undergoes decay; whereby the oxygen of the air is
gradually absorbed and the carbon of the sawdust gradually
converted into carbonic acid, so that the flame of the taper is in
this case also at once extinguished. [Experiment.] And, indeed,
woody matter of all kinds exposed to the weather, to the action,
that is, of air and water, gradually undergoes decay or oxidation,
and, if left to itself, crumbles away, and in course of time,
disappears altogether, being converted into the invisible aerial
matter carbonic acid.
When we pass from the consideration of wood to that of the
hay and grain eaten by different classes of animals, and mark what
becomes of all this food, we shall find that so much of it as is both
eaten and made part of the blood and substance of the vegetable
feeding animal, undergoes one or other of two principal changes.
A large portion of it gets oxidised in the body of the vegetable
feeder, with production of carbonic acid, discharged principally
�69
heat over a length of time, and at no one instant is there a
very high degree of temperature; but if we take that same
quantity of charcoal and, setting it on fire, burn it rapidly
away, we get a very high degree of temperature; soothat the
degree of temperature produced by the burning of charcoal
depends upon the quantity of charcoal that is burned within a
limited space and time. But if we take any quantity of charcoal,
say an ounce, and burn it in one case very slowly, and in another
case very quickly, and do this in a vessel surrounded on all sides
by water, so that all the heat produced in the hour say, or in the
few minutes, shall be taken up and retained in the water, we shall
find that the quantity of heat imparted to the water is exactly the
same in both cases. So that whether we burn the charcoal
quickly, so as to get a high temperature, or bum it slowly, so as to
get a low temperature, the quantity of heat which that charcoal
produces in burning, as measured by the quantity of water it is
capable of heating through a given rise of temperature is exacty
the same in both cases. And this is true, not only when we actually
burn charcoal upon a fire, but in all cases of the conversion of carbon
or charcoal into carbonic acid, by the act of oxidation. And
indeed the temperature of our own bodies is maintained in a great
measure by the slow oxidation, or quasi-combustion of carbon
aceous matter going on within us. Whether, then, we burn our
charcoal in an open fire rapidly, so as to produce a high tempera
ture, or whether we burn it in our bodies slowly, so as
to produce a low temperature, we find that for so much
carbon converted into carbonic acid, there is exactly the
same quantity of heat produced. For example—In burning one
ounce of charcoal into about 3I ounces of carbonic acid, a
quantity of heat is evolved, sufficient to raise the temperature of
100 pounds, or 10 gallons of water ten degrees; and this, whether
the act of burning takes place quickly or slowly, with production of
a high or of a low degree of temperature. N ow it is a well-established
law in chemistry, established, I mean, by the careful examination
of a great number of instances, that whenever heat is given out by
the act of combination, as of charcoal and oxygen to produce
carbonic acid, exactly the same quantity of heat is absorbed in
the corresponding act of separation, as of charcoal and oxygen,
out of carbonic acid. The conversion of carbon into carbonic
acid, on the fire, is a burning process, attended with the evolution
of heat. The conversion of carbonic acid into carbon and
oxygen, in the tissues of a growing plant under the influence of
the sun’s rays, is an unburning nrocess attended, not with an
�7°
evolution of heat, but with an absorption of heat from the solar
rays : and it follows that there is just as much disappearance of
solar heat in the production of the charcoal, as there is evolution
of heat in the ultimate combustion of the charcoal produced. So
that, you see, the quantity of heat which the charcoal eventually
gives out in burning on the fire, is the exact equivalent of the
quantity of solar heat which disappeared in the act of growth of
the wood, from which the charcoal furnishing our fire was
obtained.
�SCIENCE
LECTURES FOR
THE
PEOPLE.
THIRD SERIES—1871.
THE UNCONSCIOUS ACTION OF THE BRAIN.
A LECTURE
BY
DR.
CARPENTER,
Registrar of the University
of
F.R.S.,
London.
Delivered in the Httlnie Town Hall, Manchester, December 1st, 187r.
Many of you, I doubt not, will remember that I had the pleasure
of addressing you in this hall some months ago, with reference to
researches which I had a share in carrying on into the Depths off
the Ocean; when I endeavoured to give you some insight into the
conditions of the sea bottom as regards temperature, pressure,
animal life, and the deposits now in process of formation upon it.
Now I am going this evening to carry you into quite a different
field of inquiry, an inquiry which I venture to think I have had
some share in myself promoting, into what goes on in the Depths;
of our own Minds. And I think I shall be able to show you that
some practical results of great value in our own mental culture, as
training and as discipline, may be deduced from this inquiry. I
shall begin with an anecdote that was related to me after a lecture
which I gave upon this subject about five years ago, at the Royal
Institution, in London. As I was coming out from the lecture
room, a gentleman stopped me and said, “A circumstance occured
recently in the North of England, which I think will interest you,
from its affording an exact illustration of the doctrine which you
have been setting forth to-night.” The illustration was so apposite,
and leads us so directly into the very heart of the inquiry,
that I shall make it, as it were, the text for the commence
ment of this evening’s lecture. The Manager of a bank in a
certain large town in Yorkshire could not find a key which gave.
access to all the safes and desks in the bank. This key was a
duplicate key, and ought to have been found in a place accessible
�only to himself and to the assistant-manager.
The assistant
manager was absent on a holiday in Wales, and the manager’s
first impression was that the key had probably been taken away
by his assistant in mistake. He wrote to him, and learned to his own
great surprise and distress that he had not got the key, and knew
nothing of it. Of course, the idea that the key, which gave access
to every valuable in the bank, was in the hands of any wrong
person, having been taken with a felonious intention, was to him
most distressing. He made search everywhere, thought of
every place in which the key might possibly be, and
could not find it.
The assistant-manager was recalled,
both he and every person in the bank were questioned,
but no one could give any idea of where the key could be.
Of course, although no robbery had taken place up to this point,
there was the apprehension that a robbery might be committed
after the storm, so to speak, had blown over, when a better oppor
tunity would be afforded by the absence of the same degree of
watchfulness. A first-class detective was then brought down from
London, and this man had every opportunity given him of making
inquiries; every person in the bank was brought up before him;
he applied all those means of investigation which a very able man
of this class know how to employ; and at last he came to the
manager and said, “ I am perfectly satisfied that no one in thebank knows anything about this lost key. You may rest assured
that you have put it somewhere yourself, and you have been
worrying yourself so much about it that you have forgotten where
you put it away. As long as you worry yourself in this manner,
you will not remember it; but go to bed to-night with the
assurance that it will be all right; get a good night’s sleep ; and
in the morning I think it is very likely you will remember where
you have put the key.” This turned out exactly as it was pre
dicted. The key was found the next morning in some extra
ordinarily secure place which the Manager had not previously
thought of, but in which he then felt sure he must have put it
himself.
Now, then, ladies and gentlemen, this you may say is merely
a remarkable case of that which we all of us are continually
experiencing; and so I say it is. Who is there among you who
has not had occasion some time or other to try to recall some
thing to his (or her) mind which he has not been able to bring
to it? He has seen some one in the street, for instance, whose
face he recognises and says, “ I ought to know that person
and
thinks who it can be, going over (it may be) his whole list of friends
�□
and acquaintances in his mind, without being able to recall who it
Is; and yet, some hours afterwards, or it may be the next day, it
flashes into his mind who this unknown person is. Or you may
want to remember some particular and recent event; or it may
be, as I have heard classical scholars say, to recall the source of
a classical quotation. They “ cudgel their brains,” to use a
common expression, and are unsuccessful; they give their minds
to something entirely different; and some hours afterwards, when
their thoughts are far away from the subject on which they had
been concentrating them with the idea of recovering this lost
clue, the thing flashes into the mind. Now this is so common
an occurrence, that we pass it by without taking particular note of
it; and yet I believe that the inquiry into the real nature of this
occurrence may lead us to understand something of the inner
mechanism of our own minds which we shall find to be very useful
to us.
There is another point, however, arising out of the story
which I have just told you, upon which again I would fix your
attention :—Why and how did the detective arrive at this assurance
from the result of his inquiries ? It was a matter of judgment based
upon long practice and experience, which had given him that kind
of insight into the characters, dispositions, and nature of the persons
who were brought before him, -which only those who have got
that faculty as an original gift, or have acquired it by very long
experience, can possess with anything like that degree of assurance
which he was able to entertain. I believe that this particular power
of the detective is, so to speak, an exaltation in a particular direc
tion of what we call “common sense.” We are continually
bringing to the test of this common sense a great number
of matters which we cannot decide by reason; a number of
matters as to which, if we were to begin to argue, there may be
so much to be said on both sides, that we may be unable to
come to a conclusion. And yet, with regard to a great many of
these subjects—some of which I shall have to discuss in my next
lecture—we consider that common sense gives us a much better
result than any elaborate discussion. Now I will give you an
illustration of this which you will all readily comprehend. Why
do we believe in an external world ? Why do I believe that I
have at present before me many hundreds of intelligent auditors,
looking up and listening to every word that I say? Why
do you believe that you are hearing me lecture ? You will say at
once that your common sense tells you. I see you ; you see and
hear me ; and I know that I am addressing you. But if once this
�4
subject is logically discussed, if once we go into it on the basis of
a pure reasoning process, it is found really impossible to construct
such a proof as shall satisfy every logician. As far as my
knowledge extends, every logician is able to pick a hole in every
other logician’s proof. Now here we have then a case obvious to
you all, in which common sense decides for us without any doubt
or hesitation at all. And I venture to use an expression upon
this point which has been quoted with approval by one of the
best logicians and metaphysicians of our time, Archbishop
Manning; who cited the words that I have used, and entirely con
curred in them, namely, that “in regard to the existence of
the external world the common-sense decision of mankind is
practically worth more than all the arguments of all the logicians
who have discussed the basis of our belief in it.” And so, again,
with regard to another point which more nearly touches our
subject to-night—the fact that we have a Will which dominates
over our actions; that we are not merely the slaves of automatic
impulse which some philosophers would make us—“ the decision
of mankind (as Archbishop Manning, applying my words, has
most truly said) derived from consciousness of the existence of
our living self or personality, whereby we think, will, or act, is
practically worth more than all the arguments of all the logicians
who- have discussed the basis of our belief in it.”
Now, then, my two points are these—What is the nature of
this process which evolves, as it were, this result unconsciously
to ourselves, when we have been either asleep, as in the case
of the banker, or, as in the other familiar case I have cited,
when we have been giving our minds to some other train of
thought in the interval? What is it that brings up spontaneously
to our consciousness a fact which we endeavoured to recall with all
the force of our will, and yet could not succeed ?
And then again:—What is the nature of this Common Sense, to
which we defer so implicitly and immediately in all the ordinary
judgments of our lives ?
Now, in order that we may have a really scientific conception
of the doctrine I would present to you, I must take you into
an inquiry with regard to some of the simpler functions of our
bodies, from which we shall rise to the simpler actions of our
minds. You all know that the Brain, using the term in its general
sense, is the organ of our Mind. That every one will admit. We
shall not go into any of the disputed questions as to the relations
of Mind and Matter; for the fact is that these are now coming to
take quite a new aspect, from Physical philosophers dwelling so much
�5
more upon Force than they do upon Matter, and on the relations
of Mind and Force, which every one is coming to recognise. Thus
when we speak of nerve-force and mind as having a most intimate
relation, no one is found to dispute it; whereas when we talk
about Brain and Mind having this intimate relation, and Mind
being the function of the brain, there are a great many who will
rise up against us and charge us with materialism, and atheism,
and all the other deadly sins of that kind. I merely speak of the
relation of the brain to the mind, as the instrument through which
the mind operates and expresses itself. We all know that it is in
virtue of the impressions carried to the brain through the nerves
proceeding from the different sensory organs in various parts of
the body, that we become conscious of what is taking place around
us. And, again, that it is through the nerves proceeding from the
brain that we are able to execute those movements which the Will
prompts and dictates, or which arise from the play of the Emotions.
But I have first to speak of a set of lower centres, those which
the Will can to a certain extent control, but which are not in
such immediate relation to it as is the brain. You all know
that there passes down our backbone a cord which is com
monly called the “Spinal Marrow.” Now this spinal marrow gives
off a pair of nerves at every division of the backbone ; and these
nerves are double in function—one set of fibres conveying impres
sions from the surface to the spinal cord, the other motor impulses
from the spinal cord to the muscles. Now it used to be considered
that this Spinal Cord (I use the term spinal cord, which is the same
as spinal marrow, because it is just as intelligible and more correct)
was a mere bundle of nerves proceeding from the brain ; but we have
long known that that is not the case, that the spinal cord is really a
nervous centre in itself, and that if there were no brain at all the
spinal cord would still do a great deal. For example, there havebeen infants born without a brain, yet these infants have breathed,
have cried, have sucked, and this in virtue of the separate
existence and the independent action of this spinal cord. Let
us analyse one or two of these actions. We will take the act of
Sucking as the best example, because experiments have been
made upon young puppies, by taking out the brain, and then
trying whether they would suck ; and it was found that putting
between the lips the finger moistened with milk or with sugar
and water, produced a distinct act of suction, just as when
an infant is nursed. Now how is this ? It is what we calL
a “reflex action.' I shall have a good deal to say of reflex
action higher up in the nervous system, and therefore I must
�6
explain precisely what we mean by that term. It is just this.
There is a certain part of the spinal cord, at the top of the neck,
which is what we call a ganglion, that is, a centre of nervous power :
in fact the whole of the spinal cord is a series of such ganglia;
but this ganglion at the top of the neck is the one which is the
centre of the actions which are concerned in the act of sucking.
Now this act of sucking is rather a complicated one, it involves
the action of a great many muscles put into conjoint and harmo
nious contraction. We will say then that here is a nervous centre.
[Dr. Carpenter made a sketch upon the black board.] These are
nerves coming to it, branches from the lips; and these another set
going to the muscles concerned in the movement of sucking from
it. Thus, by the conveyance to the ganglionic centre of the
impression made on the lips, a complicated action is excited,
requiring the combination of a number of separate muscular
movements. We will take another example—the act of Coughing.
You feel a tickling in your throat, and you feel an impulse
to cough which you cannot resist; and this may take place
not only when you are awake and feel the impulse, but when
you are asleep and do not feel it. You will often find persons
coughing violently in sleep, without waking or showing any
sign of consciousness. Here, again, the stimulus, as we call it,
produced by some irritation in the throat, gives rise to a change in
the nerves going towards the ganglionic centre, which produces
the excitement of an action in that centre that issues the
mandate, so to speak, through the motor nerves to the muscles
concerned in coughing, which actions have to be united in a very
remarkable manner, which I cannot stop to analyse; but the
whole action of coughing has for its effect the driving out a violent
blast of air, which tends to expel the offending substance. Thus
when anything “ goes the wrong way,” as we term it,—a crumb
of bread, or a drop of water finding its way into the windpipe,
then this sudden and violent blast of air tends to expel it.
Now these are examples of what we call “reflex action”; and
this is the character of most of the movements that are immediately
concerned with the maintenance of the vital functions. I might
analyse other cases. The act of breathing is a purely reflex action,
and goes on when we are perfectly unconscious of exerting any effort,
and when our attention is entirely given up to some act or thought;
and even when asleep the act of breathing goes on with perfect
regularity, and if it were to stop, of course the stoppage would
have a fatal effect upon our lives. But most of these reflex actions
are to a certain degree placed under the control of our Will. If it
�7
were not for this controlling power of will, I could not be address
ing you at this moment. I am able so to regulate my breath as
to make it subservient to the act of speech; but that is the case
only to a certain point. I could not go on through a long sentence
without taking my breath. I am obliged to renew the breath
frequently, in order to be able to sustain the circulation and other
functions of life. But still I have that degree of control over the
act of respiration, that I can regulate this drawing in and expulsion
of the breath for the purposes of speech. This may give you
an idea of the way in which Mental operations may be indepen
dent of the Will, and yet be under its direction. To this we
shall presently come.
Now those reflex actions of the spinal cord, which are
immediately and essentially necessary to the maintenance of
our lives, take place from the commencement without any
training, without any education ; they are what we call “ instinc
tive actionsthe tendency to them is part of our nature ; it is
born with us. But, on the other hand, there are a great many
actions which we learn, to which we are trained in the process of
bodily education, so to speak, and which, when we have learned
them, come to be performed as frequently, regularly, methodically,
and unconsciously as those of which I have spoken. This is the case
particularly with the act of walking. You all know with how
much difficulty a child is trained to that action. It has to be
learned by a long and painful experience, for the child usually
gets a good many tumbles in the course of that part of its educa
tion ; but when once acquired it is as natural as the act of breath
ing, only it is more directly under the control of the will; yet so
completely automatic does it become, that we frequently execute
a long series of these movements without any consciousness
whatever. You start in the morning, for instance, to go from
your home to your place of employment; your mind is occupied
by a train of thought, something has happened which has interested
you, or you are walking with a friend and in earnest conversation
with him; and your legs carry you on without any consciousness
on -your part that you are moving them. You stop at a.certain
point, the point at which you are accustomed to stop, and very
often you will be surprised to find that you are there. While your
mind has been intent upon something else, either the train of
thought which you were following out in your own mind,
or upon what your friend has been saying, your legs move
on of themselves, just as your heart beats, or as your muscles
of breathing continue to act. But this is an acquired habit;
�8
this is what we call a “secondarily automatic” action. Now
that phrase is not very difficult when you understand it. By
automatic we mean an action taking place of itself. I daresay
most of you have seen automata of one 'kind or another, such
as children’s toys and more elaborate pieces of mechanism,
which, being wound up with a spring, and containing a com
plicated series of wheels and levers, execute a variety of move
ments. In each of the Great Exhibitions there have been
very curious automata of this kind. We speak then of the
actions being “automatic,” when we mean that they take place
of themselves, without any direction on our own parts; such as the
act of sucking in the infant, the acts of respiration and swallow
ing, and others which are entirely involuntary, and are of this
purely reflex character. Now those are “primarily automatic,”
that is originally automatic; we are born with a tendency to
execute them ; but the actions of the class I am now speaking of
are executed by the same portion of the nervous system—the
spinalcord—and are “secondarily automatic,” that is to say, we have
to learn them, but when once learned, they come very much into
the condition of the others, only we have some power of will over
them. We start ourselves in the morning by an act of the'will;
we are determined to go to a particular place; and it may be that
we are conscious of these movements over the whole of our walk ;
but, on the other hand, we may be utterly unconscious of them, and
continue to be so until either we have arrived at our journey’s end
or begin to feel fatigued. Now when we begin to feel fatigued, we
are obliged to maintain the action by an effort of the will; we are
no longer unconscious, and we are obliged to struggle against the
feeling of fatigue, to exert our muscles in order to continue the
action.
Now, having set before you this reflex action of the Spinal
Cord, you will ask me perhaps what is the exciting cause of this
succession of actions in walking. I believe it is the contact of the
ground with the foot at each movement. We put down the foot,
that suggests as it were to the spinal cord the next movement of
the leg in advance, and that foot comes down in its turn, and 'so
we follow with this regular rhythmical succession of movements.
We next pass to a set of centres somewhat higher, those which
form the summit, as it were, of this spinal cord, which are really
imbedded in the brain, but which do not form a part of that
higher organ, which is in fact the organ of the higher part of our
mental nature, yet which are commonly included in that which we
designate the brain. In fact, the anatomist who only studies the
�9
human brain is very liable to be misled in regard to the character
of these different parts, by the fact that the higher part—that which
we call the Cerebrum—is so immensely developed in Man, in pro
portion to the rest of the animal creation, that it envelopes, as it
were, the portion of which I am about to speak, concealing it
and reducing it apparently to the condition of a very subordinate
part; and yet that subordinate part is, as I shall show you, the
foundation or basis of the higher portion—the Cerebrum itself.
The brain of a Fish consists of very little else than a series of these
ganglia, these little knots—the word “ganglion” means “knot,”
and the ganglia in many instances, when separated, are little
knots, as it were, upon the nerves. The brain of a fish con
sists of a series of these ganglia, one pair belonging to each principal
organ of sense. Thus we have in front the ganglia of smell, then
the ganglia of sight, the ganglia of hearing, and the ganglia of general
sensation. These constitute almost entirely the brain of the fish.
There is scarcely anything in the brain of the fish which answers
to the Cerebrum or higher part of the brain of man. I will
give you an idea of the relative development of these parts. [Dr.
Carpenter made other sketches on the black board to represent
these ganglia of sense in man and the lower animals.] Now, the
Cerebrum in most fishes is a mere little film, overlaying the sensory
tract, but in the higher fish we have it larger; in the reptiles we have
it larger still; and in birds we have it still larger; in the lower
mammalia it is larger still; and then as we ascend to man this
part becomes so large in proportion that my board will not take
it in. This Cerebrum, this great mass of the brain, at the bottom
of which these Ganglia of Sense are buried, as it were, so overlies
and conceals them that their essential functions for a long time
remained unknown. Now, in the Cerebrum, the position of the
active portion, what we call the ganglionic matter, that which
gives activity and power to these nervous centres, is peculiar. In
all ganglia this “grey” matter, as it is called, is distinct!
from the white matter. In ordinary ganglia, this grey matter lies
in the interior as a sort of little kernel; but in the Cerebrum
it is spread out over the suiface, and forms a film or layer. If any
of you have the curiosity to see what it is like, you have only
to get a sheep’s brain and examine it, and you will see this
film of a reddish substance covering the surface of the Cere
brum. In the higher animals and in man this film is deeply folded
upon itself, with the effect of giving it a very much more
extended surface, and in this manner the blood vessels come into
relation with it; and it is by the changes which take place between
c
�IO
this nervous matter and the blood that all our nervous power is
produced. You might liken it roughly to the galvanic battery by
which the electric telegraph acts, the white or fibrous portion of
the brain and nerves being like the conducting wires of the telegraph.
Just as the fibres of the nerves establish a communication between
the organs of sensation and the ganglionic centres, and again
between the ganglionic centres and the muscles, so do the white
fibres which form a great part of the brain, establish a communi
cation between the grey matter of the convoluted or folded surface
of the Cerebrum and the Sensory Ganglia at its base. Now I
believe that this sensory tract which lies at the base of the
skull is the real Sensorium, that is, the centre of sensation;
that the brain at large, the cerebrum, the great mass of which I
have been speaking, is not in itself the centre of sensation ; that,
in fact, the changes which take place in this grey matter only
rise to our consciousness—only call forth our conscious mental
activity—when the effect of those changes is transmitted down
wards to this Sensorium. Now this Sensorium receives the nerves
from the organs of sense. Here, for instance, is the nerve from
the organ of smell, here from the eye, and here from the body
generally (the nerves of touch), and here the nerves of hearing—
every one of these has its own particular function. Now these
Sensory ganglia have in like matter reflex actions. I will give
you a very curious illustration of one of these reflex actions. You
all know the start we make at a loud sound or a flash of light; the
stimulus conveyed through our eyes from the optic nerve to the
central ganglion, causing it to send through the motor nerves a
mandate that calls our muscles into action. Now this may act some
times in a very important manner for our protection, or for the pro
tection of some of our delicate organs. A very eminent chemist
a few years ago was making an experiment upon some extremely
explosive compound which he had discovered. He had a small
quantity of this compound in a bottle, and was holding it up to
the light, looking at it intently; and whether it was a shake of the
bottle or the warmth of his hand, I do not know, but it exploded
in his hand, the bottle was shivered into a million of minute
fragments, and those fragments were driven in every direction.
His first impression was that they had penetrated his eyes, but to
his intense relief he found presently that they had only penetrated
the outside of his eyelids. You may conceive how infinitesimally
short the interval was between the explosion of the bottle and the
particles reaching his eyes; and yet in that interval the impression
had been made upon his sight, the mandate of the reflex action,
�II
so to speak, had gone forth, the muscles of his eyelids had
been called into action, and he had closed his eyelids before the
particles reached them, and in this manner his eyes were saved.
You see what a wonderful proof this is of the way in which the
automatic action of our nervous apparatus enters into the
sustenance of our lives, and the protection of our most important
organs from injury.
Now I have to speak of the way in which this Automatic action
of the Sensory nerves and of the motor nerves which answer to
them, grows up as it were in ourselves. We will take this illustra
tion. Certain things are originally instinctive, the tendency to
them is born with us; but in a very large number of things we
educate ourselves, or we are educated. Take, for instance, the
guidance of the class of movements I was speaking of just now—
our movements of locomotion. We find that when we set off in the
morning with the intention of going to our place of employ
ment, not only do our legs move without our consciousness, if
we are attending to something entirely different, but we
guide ourselves in our walk through the streets ; we do
not run up against anybody we meet; we do not strike
ourselves against the lamp posts; and we take the appropiate turns
which are habitual to us. It has often happened to myself, and I
dare say it has happened to every one of you, that you have
intended to go somewhere else—that when you started you
intended instead of going in the direct line to which you were
daily accustomed, to go a little out of your way to perform
some little commission; but you have got into a train ot
thought and forgotten yourself, and you find that you are half way
along your accustomed track before you become aware of it. Now
there you see is the same automatic action of these sensory gan
glia—we see, we hear—for instance, we hear the rumbling of the
carriages, and we avoid them without thinking of it—our muscles
act in respondence to these sights and sounds—and yet all
this is done without our intentional direction—they do it
for us. Here again, then, we have the “ secondarily automatic ”
action of this power, that of a higher nervous apparatus which
has grown, so to speak, to the mode in which it is habitually
exercised. Now that is a most important consideration. It has
grown to the mode in which it is habitually exercised; and that
principle, as we shall see, we shall carry into the higher class of
Mental operations.
But there is one particular kind of this action of the Sensory
nerves to which I would direct your attention, because it leads us
�12
to another very important principle. You are all of you, I suppose,
acquainted with the action of the Stereoscope; though you may
not all know that its peculiar action, the perception of
solidity it conveys to us, depends upon the combination
of two dissimilar pictures—the two dissimilar pictures which we
should receive by our two eyes of an object if it were actually
placed before us. If I hold up this jug for instance before my
eyes, straight before the centre of my face, my two eyes receive
pictures which are really dissimilar. If I made two drawings of
the jug, first as I see it with one eye and, then with the other, I
should represent this object differently. For instance, as seen with
the right eye I see no space between the handle and the body of the
jug; as I see it with the left eye I see a space there. If I were
to make two drawings of that jug as I now see it with my two eyes,
and put them into a stereoscope, they would bring out, even, if
only in outline, the conception of the solid figure of that jug in a
way that no single drawing could do. Now that conception is the
result of our early acquired habit of combining with that which
we sec that which we feci. That habit is acquired during the first
twelve or eighteen months of infancy. When your little children
are lying in their cradles and are handling a solid object, a block
of wood, or a simple toy, and are holding it at a distance from
their eyes, bringing it to their mouth and then carrying it to arm’s
length, they are going through a most important part of their educa
tion; that part of their education which consists in the harmonization
of the mental impressions derived from sight and those derived
from the touch ; and it is by that harmonization that we get that
conception of solidity or projection, which, when we have once
acquired it we receive from the combination of these two dissimilar
pictures alone, or even, in the case of objects familiar to us, without
two dissimilar pictures at all—the sight of the object suggesting to
us the conception of its solidity and of its projection.
Now this is a thing so familiar to you, that few of you have
probably ever thought of reasoning it out; and in fact it has only
been by the occurrence of cases in which persons have grown to
adult age without having acquired this power, from having been
born blind and having only received sight by a surgical
operation at a comparatively late period, when they could describe
things as they saw them—I say it is only by such cases that we
have come to know how completely dissimilar and separate
these two classes of impressions really are, and how important is
this process of early infantile education of which I have spoken.
A case occurred a few years ago in London where a friend of my
�own performed an opeiation upon a young woman who had been
born blind, and though an attempt had been made in early years
to cure her, that attempt had failed. She was able just to dis
tinguish large objects, the general shadow as it were of large
objects without any distinct perception of form, and to distinguish
light from darkness. She could work well with her needle by the
touch, and could use her scissors and bodkin and other implements
by the training of her hand, so to speak, alone. Well, my friend
happened to see her, and he examined her eyes, and told her that
he thought he could get her sight restored ; at any rate, it was
worth a trial. The operation succeeded; and being a man of
intelligence and. quite aware of the interest of such a case, he
carefully studied and observed it; and he completely confirmed
all that had been previously laid down by the experience of similar
cases. There was one little incident which will give you an
idea of the education which is required for what you would
suppose is a thing perfectly simple and obvious. She could
not distinguish by sight the things that she was perfectly
familiar with by the touch, at least, when they were first
presented to her eyes. She could not recognise even a pair of
scissors. Now you would have supposed that a pair of scissors, of
all things in the world, having been continually used by her, and
their form having become perfectly familiar to her hands, would
have been most readily recognised by her sight; and yet she did not
know what they were; she had not an idea until she was told, and
then she laughed, as she said, at her own stupidity. No stupidity at
all; she had never learned it, and it was one of those things which
she could not know without learning. One of the earliest cases of
this kind was related by the celebrated Cheselden, a surgeon of the
early part of last century. Cheselden relates how a youth just in this
condition had been accustomed to play with a cat and a dog; but
for some time after he attained his sight he never could tell which
was which, and used to be continually making mistakes.
One day being rather ashamed of himself for having called the cat
the dog, he took up the cat in his arms and looked at her very
attentively for some time, stroking her all the while; and in this way
he associated the impression derived from the sight of the cat with
the impression derived from the touch, and made himself master
(so to speak) of the whole idea of the animal. He then put the
cat down, saying, “ Now puss, I shall know you another time.”
Now, the reason why I have specially directed your attention
to this is because it leads to one of the most important principles
�that I desire to expound to you this evening—what I call in
Mental Physiology the doctrine of resultants. All of you who
have studied merchanics know very well what a c resultant” means.
You know that when a body is acted on by two forces at the same
time, one force carrying it in this direction, and another force in
that direction, we want to know in what direction it will go, and
how far it will go. To arrive at this we simply complete what is
called the parallelogram of forces. In fact it is just as if a body
was acted on at two different times, by a force driving it in one
direction, and then by a force driving it in the other direction [Dr.
Carpenter illustrated this point by the aid of the blackboard.] We
draw two lines parallel to this, and we draw a diagonal—that
diagonal is what is called the resultant; that is, it expresses the
direction, and it expresses the distance—the length of the motion
which that body will go when acted upon by these two forces.
Now I use this term as a very convenient one to express this—
that when we have once got the conception that is derived from
the harmonisation of these two distinct sets of impressions on our
nerves of sense, we do not fall back on the original impressions,
but we fall back on the resultant, so to speak. The thing has
been done for us ; it is settled for us; we have got the resultant;
and the combination giving that resultant is that which governs
the impression made upon our minds by all similar and
future operations of the same kind. We do not need to go
over the processes of judgment by which the two sets of
impressions are combined in every individual case; but we fall
back, as it were, upon the resultant. Now what is the case in
the harmonisation of the two classes of impressions of sight
and touch, I believe to be true of the far more complicated
operations of the mind of which the higher portion of the brain,
the Cerebrum, is the instrument. Now this Cerebrum we regard
as furnishing, so to speak, the mechanism of our thoughts. I do
not say that the Cerebrum is that which does the whole work of
thinking, but it furnishes the mechanism of our thought. It is
not the steam engine that does the work; the steam engine is the
mere mechanism; the work is done, as my friend Professor
Roscoe would tell you, by the heat supplied ; and if we go back
to the source of that heat, we find it originally in the heat and
light of the sun that made the trees grow by which the coal was
produced, in which the heat of the sun is stored up, as it were,
and which we are now using, I am afraid, in rather wasteful
profusion. The steam engine furnishes the mechanism; the work
�i5
is done by the force. Now in the same manner the brain serves as
the mechanism of our thought; and it is only in that sense that I
speak of the work of the brain. But there can be no question at
all that it works of itself, as it were,—that it has an automatic
power, just in the same manner as the sensory centres and the
spinal cord have automatic power of their own. And that a very
large part of our mental activity consists of this automatic action
of the brain, according to the mode in which we have trained it
to action, I think there can be no doubt whatever. And the
illustration with which I started in this lecture gives you, I believe,
a very good example of it. However, there are other examples
which are in some respects still better illustrations of the
automatic work that is done by the brain, in the state which is
sometimes called Second Consciousness, or Somnambulism—
to which some persons are peculiarly subject. I heard only a few
weeks ago of an extremely remarkable example of a young man
who had overworked himself in studying for an examination, and
who had two distinct lives, as it were, in each of which his mind
worked quite separately and distinct from the other. One of
these states, however,—the ordinary one—is under the control
of the will to a much greater extent than the other; while
the secondary state is purely, I suppose, automatic. There
are a great many instances on record of very curious mental
work, so to speak, done in this automatic condition—a state of
active dreaming in fact. For instance, Dr. Abercrombie mentions,
in his very useful work on the Intellectual Powers, an example of a
lawyer who had been excessively perplexed about a very com
plicated question. An opinion was required from him, but the
question was one of such difficulty that he felt very uncertain how
his opinion should be given. The opinion had to be given on a
certain day, and he awoke in the morning of that day with a feel
ing of great distress. He said to his wife, “ I had a dream, and
the whole thing in that dream has been clear before my mind, and
I would give anything to recover that train of thought.” His wife
said to him, “ Go and look on your table.” She had seen him
get up in the night and go to his table and sit down and write.
He went to his table, and found there the very opinion which he
had been most earnestly endeavouring to recover, lying in his own
handwriting. There was no doubt about it whatever, and this
opinion he at once saw was the very thing which he had been
anxious to be able to give. A case was put on record of a very
similar kind only a few years ago by a gentleman well known in
�i6
London, the Rev. John De Liefde, a Dutch clergyman. This
gentleman mentioned it on the authority of a fellow student who
had been at the college at which he studied in early life. He had
been attending a class in mathematics, and the professor said to
his class one day—“A question of great difficulty has been
referred to me by a banker, a very complicated question of
accounts—which they have not themselves been able to bring to
a satisfactory issue, and they have asked my assistance. I have
been trying, and I cannot resolve it. I have covered whole sheets
of paper with calculations, and have not been able to make it out.
Will you try ?” He gave it as a sort of problem to his class, and
said he should be extremely obliged to any one who would bring
him the solution by a certain day. This gentleman tried it over
and over again ; he covered many slates with figures, but could not
succeed in resolving it. He was a little put on his mettle, and
very much desired to attain the solution ; but he went to bed on
the night before the solution, if attained, was to be given in,
without having succeeded. In the morning, when he went to his
desk, he found the whole problem worked out in his own hand.
He was perfectly satisfied that it was his own hand ; and this was
a very curious part of it—that the result was correctly obtained by
a process very much shorter than any he had tried. He had
covered three or four sheets of paper in his attempts, and this was
all worked out upon one page, and correctly worked, as the result
proved.
He inquired of his “ hospita,” as she was called—-I
believe our English equivalent is bedmaker, the woman who
attended to his rooms—and she said she was certain that no one
had entered his room during the night. It was perfectly clear
that this had been worked out by himself.
Now there are many cases of this kind, in which the mind has
obviously worked more clearly and more successfully in this auto
matic condition, when left entirely to itself, than when we have
been cudgelling our brains, so to speak, to get the solution. I
have paid a good deal of attention to this subject, in this way:—I
have taken every opportunity that occurred to me of asking
inventors and artists—creators in various departments of art—
musicians, poets, and painters, what their experience has been in
regard to difficulties which they have felt, and which they have
after a time overcome. And the experience has been almost
always the same, that they have set the result which they have
wished to obtain strongly before their minds, just as we do when
we try to recollect something we have forgotten: they think of
�i7
everything that can lead to it; but if they do not succeed, they put
it by for a time, and give their minds to something else, and en
deavour to obtain as complete a repose or refreshment of the mind
upon some other occupation as they can; and they find that
either after sleep, or after some period of recreation by a variety of
employment, just what they want comes into their heads. A
very curious example of this was mentioned to me a few years
ago by Mr. Wenham, a gentleman who has devoted a great deal
of time and attention to the improvement of the microscope, and
who is the inventor of that form of binocular microscope (by which
we look with two eyes and obtain a stereoscopic picture), which is
in general use in this country. The original binocular microscope
was made upon a plan which would suggest itself to any optician. I
shall not attempt to describe it to you, but it involved the use of
three prisms, giving a number of reflections; and every one of these
reflections was attended with a certain loss of light and a certain
liability to error. And beside that, the instrument could only be
used as a binocular microscope. Now Mr. Wenham thought it
might be possible to construct an instrument which would work
■with only one prism, and that this prism could be withdrawn, and
then we could use the microscope for purposes to which the
binocular microscope could not be applied. He thought of this a
great deal, but he could not think of the form of prism which
would do what was required. He was going into business as an
engineer, and he put his microscopic studies aside for more than
a fortnight, attending only to his other work, and thinking nothing
of his microscope. One evening after his day’s work was done,
and while he was reading a stupid novel, as he assured me, and was
thinking nothing whatever of his microscope, the form of the prism
that should do this work flashed into his mind. He fetched his
mathematical instruments, drew a diagram of it, worked out the
angles which would be required, and the next morning he made
his prism, and found it answered perfectly well; and upon that
invention nearly all the binocular microscopes made in this country
have since been constructed.
I could tell you a mumber of anecdotes of this kind which
would show you how very important is this automatic working of
our minds—this work which goes on without any more control or
direction of the Will, than when we are walking and engaged in a
train of thought which makes us unconscious of the movements of
our legs. And I believe that in all these instances—such as those
I have named, and a long series of others—the result is owing to
�i8
the mind being left to itself without the disturbance of any emotion.
It was the worry which the ba nk manager had been going through,
that really prevented the mind Irom working with the steadiness and
evenness that produced the result. So in the case of the lawyer;
so in the case of the mathematician ; they were all worrying
themselves, and did not let their minds have fair play. You have
heard, I dare say, and those of you who are horsemen mry have
had experience, that it is a very good thing sometimes, if you lose
your way on horseback, to drop the reins on the horse’s back and
let him find his way home. You have been guiding the horse
into one path and into another, and following this and that path,
and you find that it does not lead you in the right direction ; just
let the horse go by himself, and he will find his way better than
you can. In the same manner, I believe, that our minds, under
the circumstances I have mentioned, really do the work better than
our wills can direct. The will gives the impulse in the first
instance, just as when you start on your walk; and not only this, but
the will keeps before the mind all the thoughts which it can imme
diately lay hold of, or which association suggests, that bear upon
the subject. But then these thoughts do not conduct immediately
to an issue, they require to work themselves out; and I believe
that they work themselves out very often a great deal better by
being left to themselves. But then we must recollect that such
results as these are only produced in the mind which has been
trained and disciplined; and that training and discipline are the
result of the control of the Will over the mental processes,
just as in the early part of the lecture I spoke to you
of the act of speech as made possible by the control which
the will has over the muscles of breathing.
We cannot
stop these movements—we must breathe—but we can regulate
them, and modify them, and intensify them, or we can check
them for a moment, in accordance with the necessities of
speech. Well, so it is, I think, with regard to the action of our
will upon our mental processes. I believe that this control, this
discipline of the will, should be learned very early; and I will
give to the mothers amongst you, especially, one hint in regard to
a most valuable mode of training it even in early childhood. I
learned this, I may say, from a nurse whom I was fortunate
enough to have, and whose training of my own sons in early
childhood I regard as one of the most valuable parts of their
education. She was a sensible country girl, who could not have
told her reasons, but whose instincts guided her in the right direc-
�*9
tion. I studied her mode of dealing with the children, and learned
from that the principle. Now the principle is this A child falls
down and hurts itself. (I take the most common of nursery
incidents. You know that Sir Robert Peel used to say that there
were three ways of looking at this question; and there are
three modes of dealing with this commonest of nursery inci
dents.) One nurse will scold the child for crying. The child feels
the injustice of this; it feels the hurt, and it feels the injustice of
being scolded. I believe that is the most pernicious of all the
modes of dealing with it. Another coddles the child, takes it up
and rubs its head, and says, “ O naughty chair, for hurting my
dear child ! ” I remember learning that one of the royal children
fell against a table in the Queen’s presence, and the nurse said,
“ O naughty table,” when the Queen very sensibly said, “ I will
not have that expression used; it was not the table that was
naughty ; it was the child’s fault that he fell against the table.” I
believe that this method is extremely injurious ; the result of
it being that it fixes the child’s attention upon its hurt, and causes
it to attain that habit of self-consciousnesswhich is in after life found
to have most pernicious effects. Now,whatdoesthesensibleand judi
cious nurse do? She distracts the child’s attention, holding it up
to the window to look at the pretty horses, or gets it a toy to look at.
This excites the child’s attention, and the child forgets its hurt,
and in a few moments is itself again, unless the hurt has been
severe. When I speak of coddling, I mean about a trifling hurt
such as is forgotten in a few moments; a severe injury is a
different matter. But I believe that the coddling is only next in
its evil resulcs (when followed out as a system) to the evil effects
of the system of scolding; the distraction of the attention is the
object to be aimed at. Well, after a time the child comes to be
able to distract its own attention. It feels that it can withdraw
its own mind from the sense of its pain, and can give its mind to
some other object, to a picture-book or to some toy, or whatever
the child feels an interest in; and that is the great secret of selfgovernment in later life. We should not say, “ I wont think of
of this”—some temptation, for instance ; that simply fixes the atten
tion upon the very thought that we wish to escape from ; but the
true method is—“ I will think of something else ;” that, I believe,
is the great secret of self-government, the knowledge of which is
laid in the earliest periods of nursery life.
Now just direct your attention to this diagram, as a sort of
summary of the whole :—
�20
[Diagram.]
-THE WILLIntellectual Operations-^
'Emotions
Ideas
Sensations
Sensory Ganglia------------------------------ V
centre of sensori-motor reflection.
Impressions—
You see I put at the top the Will. The will dominates everything
else. I do not pretend to explain it, but I simply say, as Arch
bishop Manning said, in applying my own language to this case,
that our common sense teaches us that we have a will, that we
have the power of self-government and self-direction, and that we
have the power of regulating and dominating all these lower ten
dencies to a certain extent, not to an unlimited extent. We cannot
prevent those thoughts and feelings rising in our minds that we
know to be undesirable; but we can escape from them, we can
repress them ; but as I said the effort to escape from them is
much more effectual than the effort to repress them, excepting
when they arise with great power, and then we have immediately,
as it were, to crush them out; but when they tend to return over
and over again, the real mode of subduing them is to determine
to give our attention to something else. It is by this exercise
of the will, therefore, in training and disciplining the mind, that it
acquires that method by which it will work of itself. The mathe
matician could never have worked out that difficult problem, nor
the lawyer have given his opinion, nor the artist have developed
those conceptions of beauty which he endeavours to shape either
in music, or poetry, or painting, but for the training and dis
ciplining which his mind has undergone. The most wonderfully
creative of all musicians, Mozart, whose music flowed from him
with a spontaneousness that no musician, I think, has ever equalled
—Mozart went through, in early life, a most elaborate course of
�21
study, imposed upon him, in the first instance, by his father, and
afterwards maintained by himself.
When his cotemporaries
remarked how easily his compositions flowed from him, he replied,
“ I gained the power by nothing but hard work.” Mozart had a
most extraordinary combination of this intuitive musical power,
with the knowledge derived from patient and careful study, that
probably any man ever attained. Now in the same manner we
have persons of extraordinary natural gifts, and see these gilts
frequently running to waste, as it were, because they have not
received this culture and discipline. And it is this discipline
which gives us the power of performing, unconsciously to our
selves, these elaborate mental operations; because I hold that a
very large part of our mental life thus goes on, not only auto
matically, but even below the sphere of our consciousness. And
you may easily understand this if you refer to the diagram
which I drew just now on the blackboard. You saw that the
Cerebrum, the part that does the work, what is called the convo
luted surface of the brain, lies just immediately under the skull
cap; that it is connected with the sensorium at the base of the
brain by a series of fibres which are merely, I believe, conducting
fibres. Now I think that it is just as possible that the Cerebrum
should work by itself when the sensorium is otherwise engaged or
in a state of unconsciousness, as that impressions should be made
on the eye of which we are unconscious. A person may be
sleeping profoundly, and you may go and raise the lid and
bring a candle near, and you will see the pupil contract; and yet
that individual shall see nothing, for he is in a state of perfect
unconsciousness. His eye sees it, so to speak, but his mind
does not; and you know that his eye sees it by the
contraction of the pupil, which is a reflex action; but his
mind does not see it, because the sensorium is in a state of
inaction. In the same manner during sleep the Cerebrum
may be awake and working, and yet the Sensorium shall be asleep,
and we may know nothing of what the cerebrum is doing except
by the results. And it is in this manner, I believe, that, having
been once set going, and the cerebrum having been shaped, so to
speak, in accordance with our ordinary processes of mental
activity, having grown to the kind of work we are accustomed to
set it to execute, the cerebrum can go on and do its work for
itself. The work of invention, I am certain, is so mainly produced,
from concurrent testimony I have received from a great number of
inventors, or what the old English called “makers”—what the
Greeks called poets, because the word poet means a maker.
�22
Every inventor must have a certain amount of imagination, which
may be exercised in mechanical contrivance or in the creations of
art; these are inventions—they are made, they are produced, we
don’t know how; the conception comes into the mind we cannot
tell whence , but these inventions are the result of the original
capacity for that particular kind of work, trained and disciplined
by the culture we have gone through. It is not given to every
one of us to be an inventor. We may love art thoroughly, and
yet we may never be able to evolve it for ourselves. So in regard
to humour. For instance, there are some men who throw out
flashes of wit and humour in their conversation, who cannot help
it—it flows from them spontaneously. There are other men who
enjoy this amazingly, whose nature it is to relish such expressions
keenly, but who eannot make them themselves. The power of
invention is something quite distinct from the intellectual capacity
or the emotional capacity for enjoying and appreciating; but
although we may not have these powers of invention, we can
all train and discipline our minds to utilise that which we
do possess to its utmost extent. And here is the conclusion
to which I would lead you in regard to Common Sense. We fall
back upon this, that common sense is, so to speak, the general
resultant of the whole previous action of our minds.
We submit to common sense any questions—such questions as I
shall have to bring before you in my next lecture ; and the judg
ment of that common sense is the judgment elaborated as it were
by the whole of our mental life. It is just according as our mental
life has been good and true and pure, that the value of this acquired
and this higher common sense is reached. We may in proportion
I believe to our honesty in the search for truth—in proportion
as we discard all selfish considerations and look merely at this
grand image of truth, so to speak, set before us, with the purpose
of steadily pursuing our way toward it—in proportion as we
discard all low and sensual feelings in our love of beauty,
and especially in proportion to the earnestness of the desire
by which our minds are pervaded always to keep the right
before us in all our judgments—so I believe will our minds
be cleared in their perception of what are merely prudential
considerations. It has on several occasions occurred to me to
form a decision as to some important change either in my own
life, or in the life of members of my family, which involved a
great many of what we are accustomed to call pros and cons—
that is, there was a great deal to be said on both sides. I
heard the expression once used by a naturalist, with regard to
�23
difficulties in classification,—“ It is very easy to deal with
the white and the black; but the difficulty is to deal with
the grey.” And so it is in life. It is perfectly easy to deal
with the white and the black,—there are things which are clearly
right, and things which are clearly wrong; there are things which
are clearly prudent, and things which are clearly imprudent; but
a great many cases arise in which even right and wrong may seem
balanced, or the motives may be so balanced that it is difficult to
say what is right; and again there are cases in which it is difficult
to say what is prudent; and I believe in these cases where we
are not hurried and pressed for a decision, the best plan is to do
exactly that which I spoke of in the earlier part of the lecture—to
set before us as much as possible everything that is to be said on
both sides. Let us consider this well; let us go to our friends;
let us ask what they think about it. They will suggest considera
tions which may not occur to ourselves. It has happened to me
within the last three or four months to have to make a very im
portant decision of this kind for myself; and I took this method—
I heard everything that was to be said on both sides, I considered
it well, and then I determined to put it aside as completely as
possible for a month, or longer, if time should be given, and then
to take it up again, and simply just to see how my mind gravitated—
how the balance then turned. And I assure you that I believe
that in those who have disciplined their minds in the manner
I have mentioned, that act of “ Unconscious Cerebration,” for so
I call it, this unconscious operation of the brain in balanc
ing for itself all these considerations, in putting all in order,
so to speak, in working out the result—I believe that that
process is far more likely to lead us to good and true results
than any continual discussion and argumentation, in which one
thing is pressed with undue force and then that leads us to bring
up something on the other side, so that we are just driven into
antagonism, so to speak, by the undue pressure of the force which
we think is being exerted. I believe that to hear everything that
is to be said, and then not to ruminate upon it too long, not to be
continually thinking about it, but to put it aside entirely from our
minds as far as we possibly can, is the very best mode of arriving
at a correct conclusion. And this conclusion will be the resultant
of the whole previous training and discipline of our minds. If
that training and discipline has all been in the direction of the
true and the good, I believe that we are more likely to obtain a
valuable result from such a process than from any conscious
discussion of it in our minds, anything like continually bringing it
>
�24
up and thinking of it, and going over the whole subject again in
our thoughts. The unconscious settling down, as it were, of all
these respective motives, will I think incline the mind ultimately
to that which is the just and true decision.
There is just one other point I could mention in connection
with this subject: the manner in which the conscious direction
and discipline of the mind will tend to remove those unconscious
prejudices that we all have more or less from education, from the
circumstances in which we were brought up; and from which it is
excessively difficult for us to free ourselves entirely. I have
known a great many instances in public and in private life, in
which the most right-minded men have every now and then shown
the trammelling, as it were, of their early education and early
associations, and were not able to think clearly upon the subject
in consequence of this. These early prejudices and associations
cling around us and influence the thoughts and feelings of the
honestest men in the world unconsciously; and it is sometimes
surprising to those who do not know the force of these early asso
ciations, to. see how differently matters which are to them perfectly
plain and obvious are viewed by men whom we feel we must respect
and esteem. Now I believe that it is the earnest habit of looking
at a subject from first principles, and, as I have said over and
over again, looking honestly and steadily at the true and the right,
which gives the mind that direction that ultimately overcomes the
force of these early prejudices and these early associations, and
brings us into that condition which approaches the nearest of
anything that I think we have the opportunity of witnessing in
our earthly life, to that direct insight, which many of us believe
will be' the condition of our minds in that future state in
which they are released from all the trammels of our corporeal
existence.
�EPIDEMIC
A
By
Dr.
DELUSIONS
LECTURE
CARPENTER,
F.R.S.,
Delivered in the Hulme Town Hall, Manchester, December 8th, 1871.
Our subject to-night links itself in such a very decided manner to
the subject in which we were engaged last week, and the illustra
tions which I shall give you are so satisfactorily explained on the
scientific principle which I endeavoured then to expound to you,
that I would spend a very few minutes in just going over some of
the points to which I then particularly directed your attention.
My object was to show you that between our Mental operations
and our Will there is something of that kind of relation which
exists between a well-trained horse and his rider; that the will,—
if rightly exercised in early infancy in directing and controlling
the mental operations; in directing the attention to the objects to
which the intellect should be applied; in controlling and repress
ing emotional disturbance; restraining the feelings when unduly
excited, and putting a check upon the passions—that the will in
that respect has the same kind of influence over the mind, or
ought to have, as the rider has upon his horse; that the powers
and activities of the mind are to a very great degree independent
of the will; that the mind will go on of itself without any more
than just the starting of the will, in the same manner as a horse
will go on in the direction that it has been accustomed to go with
merely the smallest impulse given by the voice, or the hand, or the
heel of the rider, and every now and then a very slight check (if
it is a well-trained horse) or guidance from the bridle or from a
touch of the spur, and will follow exactly the course that the
rider desires, but by its own independent power. And, again, I
�96
showed you that as there are occasions on which a horse is best
left to itself, so there are occasions when the mind is best left to
itself, without the direction and control of the will; in fact in
which the operations of the mind are really disturbed by being
continually checked and guided and pulled up by the action of
the will, the result being really less satisfactory than when the
mind, previously trained and disciplined in that particular course
of activity, is left to itself. I gave you some curious illustrations
of this from occurrences which have taken place in Dreaming,
or in that form of dreaming which we call Somnambulism: where
a legal opinion had been given, or a mathematical problem had
been resolved, in the state of sleep waking; that is to say the mind
being very much in the condition of that of the dreamer, its action
being altogether automatic, going on of itself without any direc
tion or control from the will —but the bodily activity obeying the
direction of the mind. And then I went on to show you that
this activity very often takes place, and works out most im
portant results, even without our being conscious of any operations
going on; and that some of these results are the best and most
valuable to us in bringing at last to our consciousness ideas which
we have been vainly searching for,—as in the case where we have
endeavoured to remember something that we have not at first been
able to retrace, and which has flashed into our minds in a few
hours, or it may be a day or two afterwards ; or, again, when we
have been directing our minds to the solution of some problem
which we have put aside in a sort of despair, and yet in the course
of a little time that solution has presented itself while our minds
have either been entirely inactive, as in sleep, or have been directed
into some entirely different channel of action.
Now, like the well-trained horse which will go on of itself with the
smallest possible guidance, yet still under the complete domina
tion of the rider, and will even find its way home when the rider
cannot direct it thither, we find that the human mind some
times does that which even a well-trained horse will do—that it
runs away from the guidance of its directing will. Something
startles the horse, something gives it alarm; and it makes a sudden
bound, and then, perhaps, sets off at a gallop, and the rider
cannot pull it up. This alarm often spreads contagiously, as it
were, from one horse to another; as we lately saw in the
“ stampede ” at Aidershot. Or, again, a horse, even if well
trained, when he gets a new rider, sometimes, as we say, “ tries
it on,” to see whether the horse or the rider is really the
master. I have heard many horsemen say that that is a very
�97
familiar experience. When you first go out with a new horse, it
may be to a certain degree restive; but if the horse finds that you
keep a tight hand upon him, and that his master knows well how
to keep him under control, a little struggling may have to be gone
through, and the horse from that time becomes perfectly docile
and obedient. But if, on the other hand, the horse finds that he
is the master, even for a short time, no end of trouble is given
afterwards to the rider in acquiring that power which he desires
to possess. Now that is just the case with our minds; we may
follow out the parallel very closely indeed. We find that if our
minds once acquire habits—habits of thought, habits of feeling—which are independent of the will, which the will has not kept
under adequate regulation, these habits get the better of us; and then'
we find that it is very difficult indeed to recover that power of self
direction which we have been aiming at, and which the well-trained
and well-disciplined mind will make its highest object. So, again,
we find that there are states in which, from some defect in the
physical condition of the body, or it may be from some great
shock which has affected the mind and weakened for a time the
power of the will, very slight impulses—just like the slight
things that will make a horse shy—will disturb us unduly; and
we feel that our emotions are excited in a way that we cannot
account for, and we wonder why such a little thing should
worry and vex us in the way that it does. Even the best
of us know, within our own personal experience, that, when
we are excessively fatigued in body, or overstrained in mind,
our power of self-control is very much weakened; so that
particular ideas will take possession of us, and for a time will
guide our whole course of thought, in a manner which our
sober judgment makes us feel to be very undesirable. What,
for instance, is more common than for a person to take offence
at something that has been said or done by his most intimate
friend, or by some member of his family ; merely because he has
been jaded or overtasked, and has not the power of bringing t«
the fair judgment of his common sense the question whether that
offence was really intended, or whether it was a thing he ought
not to take any notice of? He broods over this notion, and
allows it to influence his judgment; and if he does not in a day
or two rouse himself and master his feelings by throwing it off, it
may give rise to a permanent estrangement. We are all of us
conscious of states of mind of that kind.
But there are states of mind which lead to very much more
serious disorder, arising from the neglect of that primary dis
�98
cipiine and culture on which I have laid so much stress. We
find that ignorance, and that want of the habit of self-control
which very commonly accompanies it, predispose very greatly
indeed to the violent excitement of the feelings, and to the
possession of the mind by ideas which we regard as essen
tially absurd; and under these states of excitement of feeling, and
the tendency of these dominant ideas to acquire possession of
the intellect, the strangest aberrations take place, not only in
individuals but in communities; and it is of such that I have
especially to speak to-night. We know perfectly well, in our
individual experience, that these states tend to produce Insanity
if they are indulged in, and if the individual does not make
an earnest effort to free himself from their influence. But, looking
back at the history of the earlier ages, and carrying that survey
down to the present time, we have experience in all ages of great
masses of people being seized upon by these dominant ideas, ac
companied with the excitement of some passion or strong impulse
which leads to the most absurd results; and it is of these Epidemic
Delusions I have to now speak. The word “epidemic” simply
means something that falls upon, as it were, the great mass of the
people—a delusion which affects the popular mind. And I
believe that I can best introduce the subject to you by showing
you how, in certain merely physical conditions, mere bodily
states, there is a tendency to the propagation, by what is com
monly called imitation, of very strange actions of the nervous
system. I suppose there is no one of you who does not know
what an hysteric fit means; a kind of fit to which young women are
especially subject, but which affects the male sex also. One
reason why young women are particularly subject to it is that in
the female the feelings are more easily excited, while the male
generally has a less mobile nervous system, his feelings being less
easily moved, while he is more influenced by the intellect. These
hysteric fits are generally brought on by something that strongly
affects the feelings. Now, it often happens that a case of this sort
presents itself in a school or nunnery, sometimes in a factory
where a number of young women are collected together; one
being seized with a fit, others will go off in a fit of a very similar
kind. There was an instance a good many years ago in a factory in
a country town in Lancashire, in which a young girl was attacked
with a violent convulsive fit, brought on by alarm, consequent
upon one of her companions, a factory operative, putting a mouse
down inside her dress. The girl had a particular antipathy to
mice, and the sudden shock threw her into a violent fit. Some of
�99
the other girls who were near very soon passed off into a similar
fit; and then there got to be a notion that these fits were pro
duced by some emanations from a bale of cotton; and the conse
quence was that they spread, till scores of the young women were
attacked day after day with these violent fits. The medical man
who was called in saw at once what the state of things was;
he assured them in the first place that this was all nonsense about
the cotton; and he brought a remedy, in the second place, which
was a very appropriate one under the circumstances—namely, an
electrical machine; and he gave them some good violent shocks,
which would do them no harm, assuring them that this would
cure them. And cure them it did. There was not another
attack afterwards.—I remember very well that when I was a
student at Bristol, there was a ward in the hospital to which it was
usual to send young servant girls; for it was thought undesirable
that these girls should be placed in the ward with women of a
much lower class, especially the lower class of Irish women
who inhabited one quarter of Bristol, as I believe there is
an Irish quarter in Manchester. These girls were mostly
respectable, well-conducted girls, and it was thought better
that they should be kept together. Now the result of this
was that if an hysteric fit took any one of them, the others would
follow suit; and I remember perfectly well, when I happened to
be a resident pupil, having to go and scold these girls well,
threatening them with some very severe infliction. I forget what
was threatened; perhaps it would be a shower bath, for
anyone who went off into one of these fits.
Now here the
cure is effected by a stronger emotion, the emotion of the dread of—
we will not call it punishment—but of a curative measure ; and this
emotion overcame the tendency to what we commonly call imitation.
It is the suggestion produced by the sight of one, that brings on
the fit in another, where there is the pre-disposition to it.—Now
I believe that in all these cases there is something wrong in the
general health or in the nervous system; or the suggestion would
not produce such results. Take the common teething fits of children.
We there see an exciting cause in the cutting of the teeth ;
the pressure of the tooth against the gum being the immediate •
cause of the production of convulsive action. But it will not do
so in the healthy child. I feel sure that in every case where
there is a teething fit, of whatever kind, there is always some un
healthy condition of the nervous system—sometimes from bad
food; more commonly from bad air. I have known many instances
in which children had fits with every tooth that they cut, yet
�TOO
when sent into the country they had no recurrence of the fit.
There must have been some predisposition, some unhealthy
condition of the nervous system, to favour the exciting cause,
which, acting upon this predisposition, brings out such very un
pleasant results.
There are plenty of stories of this kind that I might relate to
you. For instance, in nunneries it is not at all uncommon, from
the secluded life, and the attention being fixed upon one subject,
one particular set of ideas and feelings—the want of a healthv
vent, so to speak, for the mental activity—that some particular
odd propensity has developed itself.
For instance, in one
nunnery abroad, many years ago, one of the youngest nuns
began to mew like a cat; and all the others, after a time, did
the same.
In another nunnery one began to bite, and the
others were all affected with the propensity to bite.
In
one of these instances the mania was spreading like wild
fire through Germany, extending from one nunnery to
another; and they were obliged to resort to some such severe
measures as I have mentioned to drive it out. It was set
down in some instances to demoniacal possession, but the devil
was very easily exorcised by some pretty strong threat on
the part of the medical man. The celebrated physician, Boerhaave,
was called in to a case of that kind in an orphan asylum in
Holland, and I think his remedy was a red-hot iron. He heated
the poker in the fire, and said that the next girl who fell into one
of these fits should be burnt in the arm; this was quite sufficient
to stop it. In Scotland at one time there was a great tendency to
breaking out into fits of this kind in the churches. This was
particularly the case in Shetland; and a very wise minister there
told them that the thing could not be permitted, and that the next
person who gave way in this manner—as he was quite sure they
could control themselves if they pleased— should be taken out and
ducked in a pond near. There was no necessity at all to put his
i threat into execution. Here, you see, the stronger motive is
substituted for the weaker one, and the stronger motive is suffi
cient to induce the individual to put a check upon herself. I have
said that it usually happens with the female sex, though sometimes
it occurs with young men who have more or less of the same
constitutional tendency.
What is necessary is to induce a
stronger motive, which will call forth the power of self-control
which has been previously abandoned.
Now this tendency which here shows itself in convulsive
movements of the body, will also show itself in what we may call
�IOI
convulsive action of the Mind; that is, in the excitement of violent
feelings and even passions, leading to the most extraordinary mani
festations of different kinds. The early Christians, you know,
practised self-mortification to a very great degree; and con
sidered that these penances were so much scored up to the credit
side of their account in heaven,—that, in fact, they were earning
a title to future salvation by self-mortification. Among other
means of self-mortification, they scourged themselves. That was
practised by individuals. But in the middle ages this disposition
to self-mortification would attack whole communities, especially
under the dominant idea that the world was coming to an end.
In the middle of the 13th century, about 1250, there was this
prevalent idea that the world was coming to an end; and whole
communities gave themselves up to this self-mortification by whip
ping themselves. These Flagellants went about in bands with
banners, and even music, carrying scourges ; and then, at a given
signal, every one would strip off the upper garment (men, women,
and children joined these bands), and proceed to flog themselves
very severely indeed, or to flog each other. This subsided for a time,
but it broke out again during and immediately after that terrible
plague which is known as the “ black death,” which devastated
Europe in the reign of Edward III., about the year 1340. This black
death seems to have been the Eastern Plague in a very severe
form, which we have not known in this country since the great
plague of London in Charles II.’s time, and one or two smaller
outbreaks since, but which has now entirely left us. The severity
of this plague in Europe was so great that upon a very moderate
calculation one in four of the entire population were carried off by
it; and in some instances it is said that nine-tenths of the people
died of it. You may imagine, therefore, what a terrible inflic
tion it was. And you would have supposed that it would
have called forth the better feelings of men and women generally;
but it did not. One of the worst features, morally, of that terrible
affliction, was the lamentable suspension of all natural feelings
which it seemed to induce. When any member of a family was
attacked by this plague, every one seemed to desert him, or desert
her; the sick were left to die alone, or merely under the charge
of any persons who thought that they would be paid for rendering
this service; and the funerals were carried on merely by these paid
hirelings in a manner most repulsive to the feelings : and yet the
very people who so deserted their relatives would join the bands
of flagellants, who paraded about from place to place, and even
from country to country,—mortifying their flesh in this manner for
�t02
'the purpose of saving their own souls, and, as they said, also
making expiation for the great sins which had brought down this
terrible visitation. This system of flagellation never gained the
same head in this country that it did on the Continent. A band
of about ioo came to London about the middle of the reign of
Edward III., in the year 1350. They came in the usual style,
with banners and even instruments of music, and they paraded
the streets of London. At a given signal every one lay down and
uncovered the shoulders, excepting the last person, who then
flogged every one till he got to the front, where he lay down ; and
the person last in the rear stood up, and in his turn flogged every
one in front of him. Then he went to the front and lay down;
and so it went on until the whole number had thus been flogged,
each by every one of his fellows. This discipline, however,
did not approve itself to the good citizens of Londofl,
and it is recorded that the band of flagellants returned without
having made any converts. Whether the skins of the London
citizens were too tender, or whether their good sense prevailed
over this religious enthusiasm, we are not informed; but at any
rate the flagellants went back very much as they came, and the
system never‘took root in this country; yet for many years it was
carried on elsewhere. One very curious instance is given of the
manner in which it fastened on the mind—that mothers actually
scourged their new-born infants before they were baptised, believing
that in so doing they were making an offering acceptable to God.
Now all this appears to us perfectlyabsurd. We can scarcely imagine
the state of mind that should make any sober, rational persons
suppose that this could be an offering acceptable to Almighty
God; but it was in accordance with the religious ideas of the
time; and for a good while even the Church sanctioned and
encouraged it, until at last various moral irregularities grew up, of
a kind that made the Pope think it a very undesirable thing, and
it was then put down by ecclesiastical authority; yet it was still
practised in secret for some time longer, so that it is said that
even until the beginning of the last century there were small
bands of flagellants in Italy, who used to meet for this self
mortification.
That was one form in which a dominant idea took
possession of the mind and led to actions which might be
called voluntary, for they were done under this impression, that
such self-mortification was an acceptable offering. But there were
other cases in which the action of the body seemed to be in a very
great degree involuntary, just about as involuntary as an hysteric
�i°3
fit, and yet in which it was performed under a very distinct idea;
such was what was called the “ Dancing Mania,” which followed
upon this great plague. This dancing mania seemed in the first
instance to seize upon persons who had a tendency to that complaint
which we now know as St. Vitus’s dance—St. Vitus was in fact the
patron saint of these dancers. St. Vitus’s dance, or chorea, in the
moderate form in which we now know it, is simply this, that there
is a tendency to jerking movements of the body, these movements
sometimes going on independently of all voluntary action, and
sometimes accompanying any attempt at voluntary movement; so
that the body of a person may be entirely at rest until he
desires to execute some ordinary movement, such as lifting his
hand to his head to feed himself, or getting up to walk;
then, when the impulse is given to execute a voluntary movement,
instead of the muscles obeying the will, the movement is compli
cated as (it were) with violent jerking actions, which show that there
is quite an independent activity. The fact is that stammering
is a sort of chorea. We give the name of chorea to this kind of
disturbance of the nervous system, and the action of stammering
is a limited chorea—chorea limited to the muscles concerned in
speech, when the person cannot regulate the muscles so as to
bring out the words desired; the very strongest effort of his will can
not make the muscles obey him, but there is a jerking irregular
action every time he attempts to pronounce particular syllables.
And' the discipline that the stammerer has to undergo in order to
cure or alleviate his complaint is just the kind of discipline I have
spoken of so frequently—the fixing the attention on the object to
be gained, and regularly exercising the nerves and muscles in pro
ceeding from that which they can do to that which they find a
difficulty in doing. That is an illustration of the simpler form of
this want of definite control over the muscular apparatus, connected
with a certain mental excitement; because everyone knows that
a stammerer is very much affected by the condition of his feelings
at the time. If, for example, he is at all excited, or if he appre
hends that he shall stammer, that is enough to produce it. I have
known persons who never stammered in ordinary conversation,
yet when in company with stammerers they could scarcely
avoid giving way to it; and even when the subject of
stammering was talked about, when the idea was conveyed to
their minds, they would begin to hesitate and stutter, unless
they put a very strong control upon themselves. It is just
in this way, then, only in the most exaggerated form, that these
persons were afflicted with what was called the dancing mania.
�104
They would allow themselves to be possessed with the idea that
they must dance; and this dancing went on, bands going from
town to town, and taking in any who would join them.
Instances are recorded in which they would go on for twenty-four
or thirty-six hours, continually jumping and dancing and exerting
themselves in the most violent manner, taking no food all this
time, until at last they dropped on the ground almost lifeless;
and in fact several persons, it is said, did die from pure
exhaustion, and this just because they were possessed with the
idea that they must dance. They were drawn in, as it were, by the
contagion of example; and when once they had given way to it,
they did not seem to know when to stop. This was kept up by
music and by the encouragement and excitement of the crowd
around; and it spread amongst classes of persons who (it might
be supposed) would have had more power of self-restraint, and
would not have joined such unseemly exhibitions. The extraor
dinary capacity, as it were, for enduring physical pain, was one of
the most curious parts of this condition. They would frequently
ask to be struck violently; would sometimes lie down and beg
persons to come and thump and beat them with great force.
They seemed to enjoy this.—In another case that I might mention
this was shown still more. The case was of a similar type, but
was connected more distinctly with the religious idea, and it
occurred much more recently. The case was that knovvn in
medical history as the Convulsionnaires of St. Medard. There was a
cemetery in Paris in which a great saint had been interred, and some
young women visiting his tomb had been thrown into a convulsive
attack which propagated itself extensively; and these convulsiunnaires spreading the contagion, as it were, into different classes
of French society, one being seized after another till the number
became very great in all grades. Here, again, one of the
most curious things was the delight they seemed to take in
what would induce in other persons the most violent physical
suffering. There was an organised band of attendants, who went
about with clubs, and violently beat them. This was called the
grand secours, which was administered to those who were subject
to these convulsive attacks. You would suppose that these violent
blows with the clubs would do great mischief to the bodies of
these people; but they only seemed to allay their suffering.
This, then, is another instance of the mode in which this
tendency to strange actions under the dominance of a particular
idea will spread through a community. Here you have the direct
operation of the perverted mind upon the body. But there are a
�Io5
great many cases in which the perversion shows itself more in the
mental state alone, leading to strange aberrations of M ind, and
ultimately to very sad results in the condition of society
where these things have spread, but not leading to anything
like these convulsive paroxysms. I particularly allude now to
the epidemic belief in Witchcraft, which, more or less, formerly
prevailed constantly amongst the mass of the population, but
every now and then broke out with great vehemence. This
belief in witchcraft comes down to us from very ancient
periods; and at the present time it is entertained by the lowest
and most ignorant of the population in all parts of the world.
We have abundant instances of it still, I am sorry to say, in our
own community. We have poor ignorant servant girls allowing
themselves to be—if I may use such a word—“ humbugged ” by
some designing old woman, who persuades them that she can
oredict the husbands they are to have, or tell where some article
that they have lost is to be found, and who extracts money from
them merely as a means of obtaining a living in this irregular
way, and I believe at the bottom rather enjoying the cheat.
Every now and then we hear of some brutal young farmer who
has pretty nearly beaten to death a poor old woman, whom he
suspected of causing a murrain amongst his cattle. This is what
we know to exist amongst the least cultivated of the savage
nations at the present time, and always to have existed. But we
hope that the progress of rationalism in our own community, will,
in time, put an end to this, as it has in the middle and upper
ranks of society during the last century or century and a half.
It is not very long since almost everyone believed in the
possession of these occult powers by men and women, but
especially by old women. This belief has prevailed generally in
countries which have been overridden by a gloomy fanaticism in
religious matters. I speak simply as a matter of history. There
•s no question at all that this prevailed where the Romish
Church was most intolerant, especially in countries where the
Inquisition was dominant, and its powers were exerted in
snch a manner as to repress free thought and the free exercise
of feeling; and, again, where strong Calvinism has exercised an
influence of exactly the same kind—as in Scotland, a century and
a half ago, and in New England, where there was the same kind of
religious fanaticism. It is in these communities that belief in
witchcraft has been most rife, has extended itself most generally,
and has taken possession of the public mind most strongly;
and the most terrible results have happened. Now I will
�io6
only cite one particular instance, that of New England, in
the early part of the last century and the end of the century before.
Not very long after the settlement of New England, there was a
terrible outbreak of this belief in witchcraft. It began in a family,
the children of which were out of health; and certain persons whom
they disliked were accused of having bewitched them. Against these
persons a great deal of evidence that we should now consider most
absurd was brought forward, and they were actually executed: and
some of them under torture, or under moral torture,—for it was not
merely physical torture that was applied ; in many cases it was the
distress and moral torture of being so accused, the dread, even if
found not guilty, of being considered outcasts all their lives, or of
being a burden to their friends,—made confessions which any
sober person would have considered perfectly ridiculous; but
under the dominant idea of the reality of this witchcraft,
no one interfered to point out how utterly repugnant to
common sense these confessions were, as well as the testimony
that was brought forward. And this spread to such a degree
in New England, one person being accused after another,
that at last, even those who considered themselves God’s
chosen people began to feel, “ our turn may come next;”
they then began to think better of it, and so put an end
to these accusations, even some who were under sentence being
allowed to go free; and to the great surprise of those who were
entirely convinced of the truth of these accusations, this epidemic
subsided, and witchcraft was not heard of for a long time after
wards; so that the belief has never prevailed in New England from
that time to the present, excepting amongst the lowest and most
ignorant class. In Scotland, these witch persecutions attained to
a most fearful extent during the seventeenth century. They were
introduced into England very much by James I., who came to
England possessed by these ideas, and he communicated them to
others, and there were a good many witch persecutions during his
reign. After the execution of Charles I., and during the time of
the Commonwealth and the Puiitans, there were a good many
witch persecutions; but I think after that, very little more was
heard of them. And yet the belief in witchcraft lingered for a
considerable time longer. It is said that even Dr. Johnson was
accustomed to remark, that he did not see that there was any
proof of the non-existence of witches ; that though their existence
could not be proved, he was not at all satisfied that they did not
exist. John Wesley was a most devout believer in witchcraft, and
said on one occasion that if witchcraft was not to be believed, we
�107
could not believe in the Bible. So you see that this belief had a
very extraordinary hold over the public mind. It was only the
most intelligent class, whose minds had been freed from prejudice by
general culture, who were really free from it; and that cultivation
happily permeated downwards, as it were; so that now I should
hope there are very few amongst our intelligent working class in
our great towns—where the general culture is much higher than it is
in the agricultural districts—who retain anything more than the
lingering superstition which is to be found even in the very highest
circles—as, for instance, not liking to be married on a Friday, or
not liking to sit down thirteen at the dinner table. These are
things which even those who consider themselves the very
aristocracy of intellect will sometimes confess to, laughing at it all
the time, but saying, “ It goes against the grain, and I would
rather not do it.” These, I believe, are only lingering super
stitions that will probably pass away in another half century, and
we shall hear nothing more of them; the fact being that the
tendency to these delusions is being gradually grown out of.
Now this is the point I would especially dwell upon. To the
child-mind nothing is too strange to be believed. The young child
knows nothing about the Laws of Nature; it knows no difference
between what is conformable to principles, and what, on the other
hand, is so strange that an educated man cannot believe it. To
the child every new thing that it sees is equally strange; there
is none of that power of discrimination that we acquire in the
course of our education—the education given to us, and the edu
cation that we give ourselves. We gradually, in rising to adult
years, grow out of this incapacity to distinguish what is strange
from what is normal or ordinary. We gradually come to feel—■
“ Well, I can readily believe that, because it fits in with my general
habit of thought; I do not see anything strange in this, although
it is a little unusual.” But, on the other hand, there are certain
things we feel to be too strange and absurd to be believed; and
that feeling we come to especially, when we have endeavoured to
cultivate our Common Sense in the manner which I described to
you in my last lecture. The higher our common sense—that is,
the general resultant of the whole character and discipline of our
minds—the more valuable is the direct judgment that we form by
the use of it. And it is the growth of that common sense, which
is the most remarkable feature in the progress of thought during
the last century. The discoveries of science; the greater ten
dency to take rational and sober views of religion; the general
habit of referring things to principles ; and a number of influences
�ic8
which I cannot stop particularly to describe, have so operated on
the public mind, that every generation is raised, I believe, not
merely by its own culture, but bytheacquired result of the experience
of past ages ; for I believe that every generation is born, I will
not say wiser, but with a greater tendency to wisdom. I feel per
fectly satisfied of this, that the child of an educated stock has a
much greater power of acquiring knowledge than the child of an
uneducated stock; that the child that is the descendant of a
race in which high moral ideas have been always kept before the
mind, has a much greater tendency to act uprightly than the child
that has grown up from a breed that has been living in the gutter
for generations past. I do not say that these activities are born
with us; but the tendency to them,—that is the aptitude of mind
for the acquirement of knowledge, the facility of learning, the
disposition to act upon right principles,—I believe is, to avery great
degree, hereditary. Of course we have lamentable examples to
the contrary, but I am speaking of the general average. I am
old enough now to look back with some capacity of observation
for 40 years; and I can see in the progress of society a most
marked evidence of the higher general intelligence, the greater
aptitude for looking at things as they are, and for not allowing
strange absurd notions to take possession of the mind; while,
again, I can trace, even within the last ten years, in a most
remarkable manner, the prevalence of a desire to do right things for
the right’s sake, and not merely because they are politic. And I am
quite sure that there is a gradual progress in this respect, which
has a most important influence in checking aberrations of the
class of which I have spoken.
Still we see these aberrations; and there is one just now
which is exciting a good deal of attention,—that which you
have heard of under the name of “ Spiritualism.” Now I look
upon the root of this spiritualism to lie in that which is a very
natural, and in some respects, a wholesome disposition of the
kind—a desire to connect ourselves in thought with those whom
we have loved and who are gone from us. Nothing is more
admirable^ more beautiful, in our nature than this longing for the
continuance of intercourse with those whom we have loved on
earth. It has been felt in all nations and at all times, and we all
of us experience it in regard to those to whom we have been most
especially attached. But this manifestation of it is one which
those who experience this feeling in its greatest purity and its
greatest intensity feel to be absurd and contrary to common sense—
that the spirits of their departed friends should come and rap upon
�109
tables and make chairs dance in the air, and indicate their presence
in grotesque methods of this kind. The most curious part of it is
that the spirits should obey the directions of the persons with
whom they profess to be in communication,—that when they say
“ rap once if you mean yes, and rap twice if you mean no/’ and so
on, they should just follow any orders they receive as to the
mode in which they will telegraph replies to their questions. It
seems to me repugnant to one’s common sense; but the higher
manifestations of these spiritual agencies seem to me far more
repugnant to common sense; and that is when persons profess
to be able to set all the laws of nature at defiance; when
it is said, for instance, that a human being is lifted bodily up into
the air and carried, it may be, two or three miles, and descends
through the ceiling of a room. One of the recent statements of
this kind, you know, is that a certain very stout and heavy lady
was carried a distance of about two miles from her own house, and
dropped plump down upon the table round which eleven persons
were sitting; she came down through the ceiling, they could not
state how, because they were sitting in the dark; and that dark
ness has a good deal to do with most of these manifestations.
Now let us analyse them a little. I am speaking now of what I
will call the genuine phenomena—those which happen to persons
who really are honest in their belief. I exclude altogether, and
put aside the cases, of which 1 have seen numbers, in which there
is the most transparent trickery, and in which the only wonder is
that any rational persons should allow themselves to be deceived
by it.
I have paid a great deal of attention during the last twenty
years to this subject, and I can assure you that I have, in many
instances, known things most absurd in themselves, and most
inconsistent with the facts of the case as seen by myself and other
sober-minded witnesses, believed in by persons of very great
ability, and, upon all ordinary subjects, of great discrimination.
But I account for it by the previous possession of their minds
by this dominant idea—the expectation they have been led to
form, either by their own earnest desire for this kind of com
munication, or by the sort of contagious influence to which
some minds are especially subject. I say “the earnest desire,”
for it is a very curious thing that many of those who are the
most devout spiritualists are persons who have been themselves
previously rather sceptical upon religious matters; and many have
said to me that this communication is really the only basis of
their belief in the unseen world. Such being the case, I cannof
H
�no
wonder that they cling to it with very strong and earnest feeling.
A lady, not undistinguished in the literary world, assured me
several years ago that she had been converted by this spiritualism
from a state of absolute unbelief in religion; and she assured me,
also, that she regarded medical men and scientific men, who
endeavoured to explain these phenomena upon rational principles,
and to expose deception, where deception did occur, as the
emissaries of Satan, who so feared that the spread of spiritualism
would destroy his power upon earth, that he put it into the minds
of medical and scientific men to do all that they could to prevent
it. Now that, I assure you, is a fact. That was said to me by a
lady of considerable literary ability, and I believe it represents,
though rather extravagantly, a state of mind which is very preva
lent; the great spread of the intense materialism of our age
tending to weaken, and in some instances to destroy, that
healthful longing which we all have, I believe, in our innermost
nature, for a higher future existence, and which is to my mind one
of the most important foundations of our belief in it. We live
too much in the present; we think too much of the things of the
world as regards our material comfort and enjoyment, instead of
thinking of them as they bear upon our own higher nature.
I believe that this tendency, which I think is especially noticeable
in America—or at least it was a few years ago—from all that I
was able to learn, had a great deal to do with the spread of this
belief in what is called Spiritualism. The spiritualists assert that
in America they are numbered by millions, that there are very
tew people of any kind of intellectual culture who have not
either openly or secretly given in their adhesion to it. I believe
that is a gross exaggeration; still there can be no doubt from the
number of periodicals they maintain, and the advertisements in
them of all kinds of strange things that are done—spirit drawings
made, drawings of deceased friends, and spiritual instruction given
of various kinds—that there must be a very extended belief in
this notion of communication with the unseen world through
these “ media.”
I can only assure you for myself that having, as I have said,
devoted considerable attention to this subject, I have come to
the conclusion most decidedly, with, I believe I may say, as little
prepossession as most persons, and with every disposition to seek
for truth simply—to allow for our knowledge, or I would rather
say for our ignorance, a very large margin of many things that
are beyond our philosophy—with every disposition to accept facts
when I could once clearly satisfy myself that they were facts—I
�Ill
have had to come to the conclusion that whenever I have been
permitted to employ such tests as I should employ in any scientific
investigation, there was either intentional deception on the part
of interested persons, or else self-deception on the part of persons
who were very sober-minded and rational upon all ordinary affairs
of life. Of that self-deception I could give you many very curious
illustrations, but the limits of our time will prevent my giving you
more than one or two. On one occasion I was assured that on
the evening before, a long dining table had risen up and stood a
foot high in the air, in the house in which I was, and to which I
was then admitted for the purpose of seeing some of these mani
festations by persons about whose good faith there could be no
doubt whatever. I was assured by them—“ It was a great pity
you were not here last night, for unfortunately our principal
medium is so exhausted by the efforts she put forth last night
that she cannot repeat it.” But I was assured upon the word of
three or four who were present, that this table had stood a foot
high in the air, and remained suspended for some time, without any
hands being near it, or at any rate with nothing supporting it;
the hands might be over it. But I came to find from experiments
performed in my presence, that they considered it evidence of the
table rising into the air, that it pressed upward against their hands;
—that they did not rest upon their sense of sight; for I was
looking in this instance at the feet of the table, and I saw that
the table upon which the hands of the performers were placed,
and which was rocking about upon its spreading feet, really never
rose into the air at all. It would tilt to one side or to the other side,
but one foot was always resting on the ground. And when they
declared to me that this table had risen in the air, I said, “ I am
very sorry to have to contradict you, but I was looking at the feet
of the table all the time, and you were not; and I can assert most
positively that one of the feet never left the ground. Will you
allow me to ask what is your evidence that the table rose into the
air?” “Because we felt it pressing upwards against our hands.”
I assure you that was the answer I received; their conclusion that
the table rose in the air being grounded on this, that their hands being
placed upon the table, they felt, or they believed, that the table was
pressing upwards against their hands, though I saw all the time that
one foot of the table had never left the ground. Now that is what we
call a “subjective sensation;” one of those sensations which arise
in our own minds under the influence of an idea. Take for
instance the very common case—when we sleep in a strange bed,
it may be in an inn that is not very clean, and we begin to be a
�112
little suspicious of what other inhabitants there may be in that
bed; and then we begin to feel a “ creepy, crawly” sensation about
us, which that idea will at once suggest. Now those are subjective
sensations; those sensations are produced by the mental idea.
And so in this case I am perfectly satisfied that a very large
number of these spiritual phenomena are simply subjective
sensations; that is, that they are the result of expectation on
the part of the individual. The sensations are real to them.
You know that when a man has suffered amputation of his leg,
he will tell you at first that he feels his toes, that he feels his limb;
and, perhaps to the end of his life, every now and then he
will have this feeling of the limb moving, or of a pain in it;
and yet we know perfectly well that that is simply the result
of certain changes in the nerve, to which, of course, there
is nothing answering in the limb that was removed. These subjec
tive sensations, then, will be felt by the individuals as realities, and
will be presented to others as realities, when, really, they are
simply the creation of their own minds, that creation arising out
of the expectation which they have themselves formed. These
parties believed that the table would rise ; and when they felt the
pressure against their hands, they fully believed that the table was
rising.
Take the case of Table-turning, which occurred earlier. I
dare say many of you remember that epidemic which preceded
the spiritualism; in fact, the spiritualism, in some degree, arose
out of table-turning. My friend, the chairman (Dr. Noble), and
I hunted in couples, a good many years ago, with a third friend,
the late Sir John Forbes, and we went a great deal into these
inquiries; and I very well remember sitting at a table with him,
I suppose 25 years ago, waiting in solemn expectation for the
turning of the table; and the table went round. This was simply
the result of one of the party, who was not influenced by
the philosophical scepticism that we had on the subject, having
a strong belief that the phenomenon would occur; and when he
had sat for some time with his hands pressed down upon the
table, an involuntary muscular motion, of the kind I mentioned
in my last lecture, took place, which sent the table turning.
There was nothing to the Physiologist at all difficult in the under
standing of this. Professor Faraday was called upon to explain
the table-turning, which many persons set down to electricity; but
he was perfectly satisfied that this was a most untrue account of
it, and that the explanation was (as, in fact, I had previously
myself stated in a lecture at the Royal Institution) that the move-
�T13
merits took place in obedience to ideas. Movements of this class
are what I call “ideo-motcr,” or reflex actions of the brain; and the
occurrence of these movements in obedience to the idea entertained
is the explanation of all the phenomena of table-turning. Pro
fessor Faraday constructed a very simple testing apparatus, merely
two boards, one over the other, and confined by elastic bands, but
the upper board rolling readily upon a couple of pencils or small
rollers; and resting on the lower board was an index, so arranged
that a very small motion of this upper board would manifest
itself in the movement of the index through a large arc. He
went about this investigation in a thoroughly scientific spirit.
He first tied together the boards so that th°y could not move one
upon the other, the object being to test whether the mere inter
position of the instrument would prevent the action. He had
three or four of these indicators prepared, and he put them down on
the table so fixed that they would not move. He then put the hands
of the table turners on these; and it was found, as he fully expected,
that the interposition of this indicator under their hands did not
at all prevent the movement of the table. The hands were resting
on the indicator; and when their involuntary pressure was exerted,
the friction of the hands upon the indicators, and of the indicators
upon the table, carried round the table just as it had done before.
Now if there had been anything in the construction of the instrument
to prevent it, that would not have happened. Then he loosened the
upper board and put the index on, so that the smallest motion of
the hands upon the board would manifest itself, before it would
act on the table, in the movement of the index; and it was found
that when the parties looked at the index and watched its indica
tions, they were pulled up as it were, at the very first involuntary
action of their hands, by the knowledge that they were exerting this
power, and the table then never went round. One of the strangest
parts of this popular delusion was, that even after this complete
exposure of it by Faraday, there were a great many persons, includ
ing many who were eminently sensible and rational in all the
ordinary affairs of life, who said—“O, but this has nothing at all to
do with it It is all very well for Professor Faraday to talk in this
manner, but it has nothing at all to do with it. We know that we
are not exerting anypressure. His explanation does not at all apply
to our case.”
But then Professor Faraday’s table-turners
were equally satisfied that they did not move the table, until
the infallible index proved that they did. And if any one of
these persons who know that they did not move the table,
were to sit down in the same manner with those indicators, it
�H4
would have been at once shown that they did move the table.
Nothing was more curious than the possession of the minds of
sensible men and women by this idea that the tables went round
by an action quite independent of their own hands ; and not only
that, but that really, like the people in the dancing mania, they
must follow the table. I have seen sober and sensible people
running round with a table, and with their hands placed on it, and
asserting that they could not help themselves—that they were
obliged to go with the table. Now this is just simply the same
kind of possession by a dominant idea, that possessed the dancing
maniacs of the middle ages.
Then the Table-talking came up. It was found that the table
would tilt in obedience to the directions of some spirit, who was
in the first instance (I speak now of about 20 years ago) always
believed to be an evil spirit. The table talking first developed
itself in Bath, under the guidance of some clergymen there, who
were quite satisfied that the tiltings of the table were due to the
presence of evil spirits. And one of these clergymen went further,
and said that it was Satan himself. But it was very curious that
the answers obtained by the rappings and tiltings of the tables
always followed the notions of the persons who put the questions.
These clergymen always got these answers as from evil spirits, or
satisfied themselves that they were evil spirits by the answers they
got. But, on the other hand, other persons got answers of a
very different kind; an innocent girl for instance, asked the
table if it loved her, and the table jumped up and kissed her.
A gentleman who put a question to one of these tables got
an extremely curious answer, which affords a very remarkable
illustration of the principle I was developing to you in the
last lecture—the unconscious action of the brain. He had
been studying the life of Edward Young the poet, or at least had
been thinking of writing it; and the spirit of Edward Young
announced himself one evening, as he was sitting with his sisterin-law,—the young lady who asked the table if it loved her. Edward
Young announced himself by the raps, spelling out the words in
accordance with the directions that the table received. He asked,
“Are you Young the poet?” “Yes.” “The author of the
‘ Night Thoughts ?’ ” “ Yes.” “ If you are, repeat a line of his
■poetry.” And the table spelt out, according to the system of
telegraphy which had been agreed upon, this line :—
“ Man is not formed to question but adore.”
He said, “ Is this in the ‘ Night Thoughts ?’ ” “ No.”
“ Where
�XI5
is it?” “J O B.” He could not tell what this meant He
went home, bought a copy of Young’s works, and found that in the
volume containing Young’s poems there was a poetical commen
tary on Job which ended with that line. He was extremely
puzzled at this; but two or three weeks afterwards he
found he had a copy of Young’s works in his own library,
and was satisfied from marks in it that he had read that
poem before.
I have no doubt whatever that that line
had remained in his mind, that is in the lower stratum of it;
that it had been entirely forgotten by him, as even the possession of
Young’s poems had been forgotten ; but that it had been treasured
ap as it were in some dark corner of his memory, and had
come up in this manner, expressing itself in the action of the table,
just as it might have come up in a dream.
These are curious illustrations, then, of the mode in which
the minds of individuals act when there is no cheating at all,—
this action of what we call the subjective state of the individual
dominating these movements; and I believe that that is really
the clue to the interpretation of the genuine phenomena. On
the other hand, there are a great many which we are assured
of—for instance, this descent of a lady through the ceiling,—
which are self-delusions, pure mental delusions, resulting from
the preconceived idea and the state of expectant attention
in which these individuals are. Here are a dozen persons sitting
round a table in the dark, with the anticipation of some extraordi
nary event happening. In another dark seance one young lady
thought she would like to have a live lobster brought in, and
presently she began to feel some uncomfortable sensations, which
she attributed to the presence of this live lobster; and the fact is
recorded that two live lobsters were brought in ; that is, they
appeared in this dark seance—making their presence known, I sup
pose, by crawling over the persons of the sitters. But that is all
we know about it—that they felt something—they say they
were two live lobsters, but what evidence is there of that ?—the
seance was a dark one. We are merely told that the young lady
thought of a live lobster; she said they had received so many
flowers and fruits that she was tired of them, and she thought of
two live lobsters; and forthwith it was declared that the live
lobsters were present. I certainly should be much more satisfied
with the narration, if we were told that they had made a supper off
these lobsters after the stance was ended.
Now it has been my business lately to go rather care
fully into the analysis of several of these cases, and to inquire
�Ii6
into the mental condition of some of the individuals who have re
ported the most remarkable occurrences. I cannot—it would not
be fair—say all I could say with regard to that mental condition ;
but I can only say this, that it all fits in perfectly well with the result
of my previous studies upon the subject, viz., that there is nothing too
strange to be believed by those who have once surrendered their
judgment to the extent of accepting as credible things which com
mon sense tells us are entirely incredible. One gentleman says he
glories in not having that scientific incredulity which should lead
him to reject anything incredible merely because it seems incredible.
I can only say this, that we might as well go back to the state of
childhood at once, the state in which we are utterly incapable of
distinguishing the strange from the true. That is a low and
imperfect condition of mental development; and all that we call
education tends to produce the habit of mind that shall enable us
to distinguish the true from the false—actual facts from the
creations of our imagination. I do not say that we ought to reject
everything that to us, in the first instance, may seem strange. I
could tell you of a number of such things in science within your
own experience. How many things there are in the present day
that we are perfectly familiar with—the electric telegraph, for
instance—which fifty years ago would have been considered per
fectly monstrous and incredible.
But there we have the
rationale. Any person who chooses to study the facts may
at once obtain the definite scientific rationale; and these things
can all be openly produced and experimented upon, expounded
and explained. There is not a single thing we are asked
to believe of this kind, that cannot be publicly exhibited.
For instance, in this town, last week, I saw a stream of molten
iron coming out from a foundry; I did not see on this occasion,—
but the thing has been done over and over again,—that a man
has gone and held his naked hand in such a stream of molten iron,
and has done it without the least injury; all that is required being
to have his hand moist, and if his hand is dry he has merely to
dip it in water, and he may hold his hand for a certain
time in that stream of molten iron without receiving any
injury whatever. This was exhibited publicly at a meeting
of the British Association at Ipswich many years ago, at
the foundry of Messrs. Ransome, the well known agricultural
implement makers. It is one of the miracles of science, so to
speak; they are perfectly credible to scientific men, because
they know the principle upon which it happens, and that principle
is familiar to you all—that if you throw a drop of water upon hot
�”7
iron, the water retains its spherical form, and does not spread upon
it and wet it. Vapour is brought to that condition by intense heat,
that it forms a sort of film, or atmosphere, between the hand and
the hot iron, and for a time that atmosphere is not too hot to be
perfectly bearable. There are a number of these miracles of
science, then, which we believe, however incredible at first sight
they may appear, because they can all be brought to the test of
experience, and can be at any time reproduced under the neces
sary conditions. Houdin, the conjurer, in his very interesting
autobiography—a little book I would really recommend to any of
you who are interested in the study of the workings of the mind,
and it may be had for 2s.—Houdin tells you that he himself
tried this experiment, after a good deal of persuasion; and he says
that the sensation of immersing his hand in this molten metal was
like handling liquid velvet. These things, I say, can be exhibited
openly—above board ; but these Spiritual phenomena will only
come just when certain favourable conditions are present—con
ditions of this kind, that there is to be no scrutiny—no careful
examination by sceptics; that there is to be every disposition
to believe, and no manifestation of any incredulity, but the most
ready reception of what we are told. I was asked some years ago
to go into an investigation of the Davenport Brothers ; but then I
was told that the whole thing was to be done in the dark, and that I
was to join hands and form part of a circle; and I responded
to the invitation by saying that in all scientific inquiries I
considered the hands and the eyes essential instruments of
investigation, and that I could not enter into any inquiry, and
give whatever name I possess in science to the result of it, in
which I was not allowed freely to use my hands and my eyes. And
wherever I have gone to any of these Spiritual manifestations, and
have been bound over not to interfere, I have seen things which,
I feel perfectly certain, I could have explained, if I had only been
allowed to look under the table, for instance, or to place my leg in
contact with the leg of the medium. And it has been publicly stated
within the last month, that the very medium whom I suspected
strongly of cheating on an occasion of this kind, was detected in
the very acts which I suspected, but which I was not allowed to
examine. I cannot then go further into this inquiry at the
present time; but I can only ask you to receive my assurance
as that of a scientific man, who has for a long course of years been
accustomed to investigate the curious class of actions to which I
have alluded, and which disguise themselves under different names.
A great number of the very things now done by persons professing
�n8
to call themselves Spiritualists, were done 30 years ago, or pro
fessed to be done, by those who call themselves “Mesmerists;”
thus the lifting of the whole body in the air was a thing that was
asserted as possible by mesmerists, as is now done by Mr. Home
and his followers. These things I say, crop up now and then,
sometimes in one form, sometimes in another; and it is the same
general tendency to credulity, to the abnegation of one’s Common
Sense, that marks itself in every one of these epidemics.
Thus, then, we come back to the principle from which we
started—that the great object of all education should be to give
to the mind that rational direction which shall enable it to form an
intelligent and definite judgment upon subjects of this kind,
without having to go into any question of formal reasoning upon
them. Thus, for example, is it more probable that Mr. Home
floated out of one window and in at another, or that Lord
Lindsay should have allowed himself to be deceived as to a matter
which he admits only occurred by moonlight I That is the question
for common sense. I believe, as I stated just now, that the
tendency to the higher culture of the present age will manifest
itself in the improvement of the next generation, as well as of our
own ; and it is in that hope that I have been encouraged on this
and other occasions to do what I could for the promotion of that
desire for self-culture, of which I see so many hopeful manifes
tations at the present day. When once a good basis is laid by
primary education, I do not see what limit there need be to—I
will not say the learning of future generations—but to their wisdom,
for wisdom and learning are two very different things. I have
known some people of the greatest learning, who had the least
amount of wisdom of any persons who have come in my way.
Learning, and the use that is made of it, are two very different things.
It is the effort to acquire a distinct and definite knowledge
of any subject that is worth learning, which has its ultimate effect,
as I have said, upon the race, as well as upon the individual.
But there are great differences, as to their effects upon the mind,
among different subjects of study; and I have long been of opinion
that those studies afford the best discipline, in which the mind is
brought into contact with outward realities,— a view which has
lately been put forth with new force by my friend Canon Kingsley.
You know that Canon Kingsley has acquired great reputation as an
historian. He held the Professorship of History at the University
of Cambridge for many years, and, in fact, has only recently with
drawn from it. Canon Kingsley also early acquired a considerable
amount of scientific culture, and he has always been particularly
�ng
fond of Natural History. Now he lately said to the working men
of Bristol that he strongly recommended them to cultivate Science,
rather than study History; having himself almost withdrawn from
the study of history, for this reason, that he found it more and more
difficult to satisfy himself about the truth of any past event; whilst,
on the other hand, in the study of science, he felt that we were
always approaching nearer to the truth. A few days ago I was
looking through a magazine article on the old and disputed
question of Mary Queen of Scots, which crops up every now and
then. She is once more put upon her trial. Was Mary Queen
of Scots a vicious or a virtuous woman ? The question will be
variously answered by her enemies and by her advocates; and I
believe it will crop up to the day of doom, without ever being
settled. Now, on the other hand, as we study scientific truth, we
gain a certain point, and may feel satisfied we are right up to that
point, though there may be something beyond; while the elevation
we have gained enables us to look higher still. It is like
ascending a mountain; the nearer we get to the top, the clearer
and more extensive is the view. I think this is a far better
discipline to the mind than that of digging down into the dark
depths of the past, in the search for that which we cannot hope ever
thoroughly to bring to light. It so happened that only a fortnight
ago I had the opportunity of asking another of our great historians,
Mr. Froude, what he thought of Canon Kingsley’s remark. He
said, “ I entirely agree with itand in some further conversation
I had with him on the subject, I was very much struck with
finding how thoroughly his own mind had been led, by the very
important and profound researches he has made into our history,
to the same conclusion—the difficulty of arriving at absolute
truth upon any Historical subject. Now we do hope and believe
that there is absolute truth in Science, which, if not at present
in our possession, is within our reach; and that the nearer we
are able to approach to it, the clearer will be our habitual per
ception of the difference between the real and the unreal, the
firmer will be our grasp of all the questions that rise in the ordinary
course of our lives, and the sounder will be the judgment we form
as to great political events and great social changes. Especially
will this gain be apparent in our power of resisting the contagious
influence of “ Mental Epidemics.”
��THE PROGRESS OF SANITARY SCIENCE.
A LECTURE,
By Professor
Roscoe,
F.R.S.,
Delivered in the Town Hall, Salford, December igth, 1871.
Under, the Auspices of
Manchester and Salford Sanitary
Association.
the
The recent illness of the Prince of Wales may be said for
several reasons to have been a good thing for the country;
and, especially, because it has called attention, and that in a
most marked manner, to sanitary matters. We cannot take
up a newspaper now but we see it filled with letters on sewers and
sewer gases. One suggests that every bad smell may bring to us
typhoid fever, or some other disorder; whilst in another we read
that these fears are mere illusions, and that in towns where there
is a great deal of dirt, and -where the ordinary rules of health are
universally disobeyed, none of those dreadful ills occur which are
painted so gloomily. Now, it is important that we should get to
know as much as we can respecting the truth of these two assertions,
so that on the one hand we may not be frightened with the idea
that whenever we smell a bad odour we are sure to take typhoid
fever; nor yet, on the other hand, be lulled into a false repose
with regard to these matters, and think that sanitary laws
can be broken with impunity. Equally false are both these points
of view; and it is with the intention of pointing out some few
of the distinct facts which science has been able to accumulate
respecting the laws of health that I now address you.
In the first place, of the importance of the science of health
there can be no doubt, Everybody wishes to be healthy, and
�t2I
everybody, when he thinks of it at any rate, wishes to avoid such
things as might bring him disease and suffering. How to preserve
the health is not, however, so clear. For the most part men live
in ignorance of those laws of health by which their action should
be guided ; and if we are asked how we should act under certain
conditions, or whether such and such a state of things is an
unhealthy one, many of us are unable to answer the question.
One reason of this is the complicated and changing nature
of the requirements. For instance, a man who lives under
one set of physical circumstances will have to obey one
set of laws of health; whilst men living under different
circumstances will have to observe quite other laws in order to be
healthy. The red Indian, roaming over the prairies, has to look
out for altogether different dangers from those which surround us
who live in crowded cities, where, perhaps, one thousand persons
in some districts live on an acre. That the science of health is
really less developed and less known than many other sciences
lies, then, in the fact that it is more complicated than these other
sciences, and a little reflection will show you why this is so. Thus,
we find that enormous effects are produced by very minute causes;
and this is the case not only when we catch a fever or a particular
disease, without really being able to tell how we have caught it, or
being able to assign to it any origin whatever; but we also find
that this often holds good when we know that we are introducing
a disease, as, for example, by the vaccine lymph, which, when
introduced into the blood, though it be but the smallest particle on
the point of a needle, produces a very extraordinary and valuable
change on the human body. This, I say, shows us that the effect
which is produced is enormously larger than the cause—larger not
only than the apparent cause, but larger than the real cause. Hence,
then, one great difficulty of determining these questions; and
hence it is that men have lived for so many generations, and for
so many hundreds and thousands of years, without having
obtained even an imperfect knowledge of these subjects ; for
it is evident that we are only just at the threshold of know
ledge as regards these matters; we are merely groping in the
dark, and gradually getting hold of facts here and facts there and
putting them together, in order to lay the foundation of this science
of health of which we all stand so much in need.
If we look back we find that in the olden time, we see that when
ever disease and epidemics broke out and spread over the country
without apparent cause, the people attributed these afflictions to the
visitation of God, or in heathen countries to the work of some
�12 2
offended deity; and even now, in our times and in civilised countries,
we find people who ought to know better wearing charms against
certain evils, fancying that they will keep away disease. The first
idea, then,we must get rid ofin our investigationastomattersofhealth
is this notion that disease is brought about by something indefinite
and intangible, something which we must call upon the spirits of
darkness or the spirits of light to deliver us from. We must first
admit that there is a tangible cause for disease, a cause which we
shall probably be able to find if we seek for it properly; but, at any
rate, whether we find it or not, that a cause exists. It would be
useless to attempt investigation unless we believed that there is a
cause for every disease, and for every changing condition of the
body which may occur. Very well, then, the first question is : can
we arrive at such cause ; can we put our fingers upon any cause or
causes which do affect the general health of the community ?
There is no doubt that if we look back at the history of disease,
of epidemic disease especially, we shall find that the older epidemics,
such as the plague, the sweating-sickness, and a number of these
diseases, have, with the progress of time, gradually disappeared.
We no longer hear of the plague in our cities. You have all read
of the great plague of London in 1665, which was followed by the
great fire of London; and it is said that London never would have
been purified had it not been almost burnt down to the ground
after this visitation. But now a-days we do not hear of these out
breaks of plague, at least in this country, and this is, doubtless,
mainly to be attributed to general improvement in the style of
living, and to care and cleanliness in getting rid of the impuri
ties which the body throws off. I mention this to show that these
epidemic diseases are in some way or other connected with causes
which are removable, or, at any rate, which may be mitigated.
Now, another fact that we have learned with regard to these 1
epidemics of olden time is that they were most felt, and the
mortality was always the greatest, amongst the poor, the dirty and
the degraded portion of the population; as a rule these people
suffered more than did those whose circumstances enabled them
to live in a better way. The general conclusion is therefore that
these epidemics are in some way assisted and abetted by dirt and
degradation, and that improvement in the condition and habits of
life of the people does either avert or lessen the virulence of these
outbreaks of epidemic disease. This is shown by a vast number
of facts; and the first that occurs to me is the case of the city of
Buenos Ayres. You are aware that the year before last a most
severe outbreak of yellow fever occurred in the large city of Buenos
�I23
Ayres, in the Brazils; and on investigation it was found that the
sanitary arrangements of that city were of the very lowest and
crudest character, that they had no drains, but only enormous
cesspools which were never emptied, and under their tropical sun
became festering masses of pollution and impurity. So strong
was the conviction that this outbreak was due to the unhealthy
arrangements of their city, that the authorities resolved to spend
an enormous sum, I believe something like four millions
sterling, on a complete system of drainage and water supply
for the city. They are going to remodel their whole arrange
ments, and do away with these festering nuisances, in the
belief, which I have no doubt will be justified by the result, that
they will thereby prevent such an outbreak in the future.
The question as to the mode in which an individual or a
community becomes infected divides itself into two distinct
branches of epidemic diseases. First we have to consider why the
epidemic comes at certain intervals; why, for instance, the cholera
never visited us before 1831, why it then disappeared and
after a lapse of years again breaks out? Next we have to ask how
is the disease propagated when it has once broken out. As
regards the first question I think we have as yet very little safe
ground from which to draw conclusions. That the march of the
cholera in a westerly direction can generally be traced and its
probable occurrence foretold is quite true, and that plausible
theories have been proposed to account for the possibility of the
existence oi cholera in certain countries at certain times is also true.
Still on the whole our knowledge on this quest on is of the
most incomplete character. Not so with regard to the second
part of our inquiry as to how this particular epidemic disease is
propagated. In an inquiry as to the cause of production
of any diseise, we may take it for granted that the material
causing the disease must be brought to the individual
either in the water we drink, or in the air we breathe, or in
the food we eat. I am not speaking now of what are termed
“ hereditary diseases,” whjch are of a totally different character,
and do not come into the class of those which can be removed by
sanitary improvements. Applying this principle to the case of
cholera, as being one of the best investigated of epidemics, we find
that the poisonous matter which is the cause of this disease is
very frequently, at any rate, taken with the water that is drank.
In order to make this matter clear to you I will only call your
attention to two or three cases of evidence as to the truth of the
statement. The first is from that given before the Royal
�124
Commission on the water supply of the metropolis, by Mr. Simon,
the medical officer of the Privy Council. Mr. Simon says :—
“ It is, I believe, a matter of absolute demonstration that in the
old epidemics, when the south side of London suffered so dread
fully from cholera, the great cause of the immense mortality there
was the badness of the water then distributed in those districts of
London. In the interval between the 1849 epidemic and the
1854 epidemic one of the two companies which supply the south
side of London had amended its source of supply; it had gone
higher up the river, and we at once lost a great part of the
mortality on that side of the river. But it was found that this
great difference did not prevail uniformly through the south side
of London, but was confined to those houses which were supplied
from the amended source. There was still a great mortality on
the south side of the river, but this belonged exclusively to the
houses which were still supplied with impure water.”
From a table given in the report from which I quote it is seen
that the number of deaths per thousand from cholera in the visita
tion of 1848, in the houses supplied by the Lambeth Company, was
12’5; at the next visitation the same houses lost only 37 ; that is
to say, that the rate had diminished by three-fourths; whilst in
the houses supplied by the Vauxhall Company the death rate at
the first visitation was n'8, and in the second visitation 13; so
that the death-rate had actually increased in the houses which
were supplied with water from the company which had not
mended its ways.
Another epidemic, that of 1866, only confirmed the conclu
sions drawn from previous experience, for Mr. Simon clearly
shows that the heavy mortality in this year fell in the east of
London, and was distinctly confined to a district supplied by
water drawn from a foul part of the river Lea and containing
sewage impurity.
A third instance is that singular case known as the Golden
Square case. In the course of five or six days, from the 30th
August, 1854, not less than about 500 persons died of cholera in a
district in London, round Golden Square, containing about 5,000
inhabitants. Upon investigation it was found that nearly all the
people who died had been drinking water from a pump in Broad
Street, which was thought to yield very excellent water, but was
afterwards found to communicate with a cesspool in an adjoining
house. These cases clearly prove that contaminated water may
produce cholera.
We will next take the disease from which the Prince of Wales
�I25
has suffered, and which is known as typhoid or enteric fever.
This disease is generally supposed to be caused either by drinking
impure water, or by breathing the foul gases generated in sewers ;
and it is said that 20,000 persons die annually from this
preventable disease. The preventable nature of this disease is so
generally acknowledged, that when an outbreak of typhoid fever
occurs in a district, the medical department of the Privy Council—
a most important department, and one which will become of greater
influence still, from the act of Parliament passed last session—
sends down a duly qualified medical man to inquire into the causes
of the origin and spread of such an epidemic outbreak. Dr.
Buchanan was sent down in September, 1867, to investigate the
cause of the outbreak of typhoid fever at Guildford. He reported
that a new well had been sunk to supply the higher part of
the town, and that water from this well was supplied to about
330 houses for one day only, the 17th August. On the 28th
of August there were several cases of typhoid fever in these
houses, although they are all situated in the highest and
healthiest district in the town. The number daily increased,
and there were in all about 500 cases and 21 deaths. With
three exceptions, all the persons attacked in August and Sep
tember had drank the water exceptionally supplied for one
day only—as just stated. It was subsequently found that a
sewer ran within ten feet of the well, and that the sewage leaked
through the joints of the brickwork and saturated the soil just
above the spring which supplied the well.
I might give you a great number of other instances of a
similar character. I will content myself by stating that Dr. Parkes,
the well known Professor of Sanitary Science in the medical
school at Netley, has collected a good deal of evidence as to
diseases which may be communicated by water, not only to
the troops, but among the civil population ; and he has made a
list of diseases, all of which may be communicated by means of
water, and amongst these he has collected many instances of
local outbreaks of typhoid fever arising from water impregnated
with typhoid sewage or possibly simple sewage. One case quoted
by Dr. Parkes is that of a young ladies’ school, where infiltration
of sewage into the well supplying the house with water was shown
to be the cause of a severe outbreak of typhoid fever.
These cases prove to us that epidemic diseases may be
produced and have been produced by drinking impure water.
Having assured ourselves of this, let us next see what chemistry
can tell us respecting our means of detecting whether the water
�126
used for drinking is pure or impure. You will understand that
the danger lies in the water being impregnated with animal
decomposing matter, and with sewage matters generally. Now, »
although, chemists, like other men, cannot do all that they would
like to do in these investigations, still they can do something;
and I wish to point out to you what chemistry can tell us respect
ing the purity or the impurity of such water. In the first place
let us clearly understand that neither the chemist, nor the
physician, nor the microscopist, nor the physiologist, can tell us
whether the water contains typhoid poison, or whether the water
contains cholera poison or whether the water contains the poison
of any other particular disease. There are no means of ascertain
ing this, even with the most poisonous exhalations from the
cholera patient, except it be the actual test of the action of the
poison on a human subject. The microscopist cannot detect, for
instance, in the rice water from a cholera patient, that there are any
particular germs of cholera poison in that offensive liquid; and
yet if the smallest quantity of it got into the digestive organs of a
man it would produce cholera. But although the chemist is
unable to do this, he is able to tell the difference between a pure
water and a water which contains animal impurity; and if the
water contains cholera poison, or the germs of typhoid, or of
some other disease, or simply animal excrementitious matter, it
is, I need scarcely tell you, unfit to drink; and the chemist can
help us to detect such matters.
Now what is it that the chemist can do in this respect?
You know that all animal matter makes a disagreeable smell
when it is burnt The difference between burning a feather
and burning a piece of wood is evident to your senses. Now,
this burnt feather smell is caused by the presence of a body
which the chemists call Nitrogen, which exists in the air, but
which also enters as a characteristic ingredient into all animal
matter. In this respect animal bodies differ irom the bodies
of vegetables. Now, when the decomposition of an animal
body occurs, the nitrogenous portions which are thrown off,
that is the liquid and the solid products, get into the sewers; ,
and if we can find in water a large quantity of this nitrogenous 4
animal matter, we may be certain that that water is not fit to
drink. I cannot explain to you to-night how the amount of
nitrogenous matter contained in water is ascertained; but if you
will look at these analyses taken from Professor Frankland’s
report on the Chemical Composition of the Lancashire rivers,
you will see what I mean.
�127
Composition of Lancashire Rivers.
Parts in 100,000.
Invell.
♦1
Total solid soluble...................
Organic carbon .......................
Organic nitrogen ...................
Ammonia ................................
Nitrogen as nitrates and nitrites
Total combined nitrogen .......
Chlorine....................................
Hardness temporary...............
Total hardness ........................
7-8
0*187
0*025
0*004
0*021
0*049
VI5
3'72
3‘72
Mersey.
2
3
7*62
55’8o
i’i73 0*222
0*332
O
o’74o 0*002
0*707 0*021
1*648 0*023
0’94
9’63
15’°4 4*61
15’°4 4*6i
4
39’5°
1231
o*6oi
0*622
0
1*113
—
10*18
10*18
Suspended Matter.
Organic ....................................
Mineral ....................................
Total ........................................
*1.
2.
3.
4.
The
The
The
The
0
0
0
2*71
2*71
5’42
0
0
0
__
—
—
Irwell near its source.
Irwell below Manchester.
Mersey, one of its sources.
Mersey below Stockport.
We have here the composition of Lancashire rivers taken from the
admirable report of the Rivers Pollution Commission. In the
first column you have the analysis of the river Irwell, that is of
the water taken at its source, where it is as pure as we could wish
water to be, being, in fact, very much like the pure water which
the Manchester corporation supply to us from the Derbyshire
hills. In the second column you have the composition of the
Irwell below Manchester. In the same way you will see the
composition of the Mersey at its source, and its composition
below Stockport. Let us confine ourselves to the Irwell. Now,
in the first place, you will notice that the total soluble matter, ot
that which is dissolved in the water, is very much more, as you
may imagine, when the Irwell gets below Manchester than it is at
its source. But this total soluble matter might be perfectly
innocuous; it might, for instance, be common salt, or carbonate
of lime, or gypsum, or any other substance which might not be
hurtful. But the next constituents which we find on this list are
most hurtful; these are the organic carbon and the organic
�12 8
nitrogen, and these are hurtful because they serve as a measure
of the vegetable or animal matter which the water contains.
Observe the difference in the two kinds of water. You see
that in the Irwell below Manchester there is nearly ten times
as much organic carbon as there is in the water when taken
at its source; and that there is more than ten times as much
organic nitrogen (derived solely from animal sources) below
Manchester as there is at its source. The next two substances
we have to notice are the ammonia and the nitrogen, as
nitrates and nitrites, both of which, although harmless in them
selves, are products of the oxidation of animal matter, and
therefore signs of previous pollution. The quantities of ammonia
and nitric acid in the pure Irwell water are almost nothing,
whilst below Manchester they are increased, you see, 300 or
400 times. If we next look at the total combined nitrogen
contained in the water, we find for 49 parts in the pure Irwell
water we have 1,648 parts in the impure water below Manchester !
Thus we see that by a chemical analysis of water, we can at once
detect by the organic, or albumenous nitrogen, whether it still con
tains animal impurity, and by the ammonia and nitric acid whether
the water has been polluted by animal matter which has since been
destroyed, or, by the absence of excessive quantities of these nitro
genous bodies, whether the water has never been in contact with
animal matter. It is thus possible to calculate by a very simple
process how much sewage has come into such a water. Let us,
for instance, take this one case. It is found that in 100,000 parts
of average London sewage there are 10 parts of nitrogen existing,
as ammonia and nitrates, derived from the oxidation of animal
matter. Now, supposing 100,000 parts of Irwell water was found to
contain 10 parts of nitrogen, we should say that the Irwell water is
just as strong as London sewage, that is, equal to the average com
position of the water taken out of London sewers. If it contained
five parts in 100,000, we should say that it was just half as strong ;
or we might then say there are just equal parts of pure water and
London sewage in the river Irwell. Now what is the amount we
find in the Irwell? We find that the nitrogen, as ammonia and
nitrates, as you see in that table, is 1'447 (°'74° + O7O7)«
Very well; now there is also a small quantity of nitrogen, as
ammonia and nitric acid, contained in rain water, but the quantity
is exceedingly small. If we therefore subtract the quantity which
is found in rain (viz., 0'032 part in 100,oco) from the quantity
which is found in the Irwell (viz., 1'447), we shall have the
quantity (1'415) which is due to the sewage impurity in the
�Irwell, and we can then easily calculate how much London sewage
this corresponds to. It evidently corresponds to 14,150 parts oi
London sewage. Thus you see that 100,000 parts of the Irwell
water below Manchester contain the quantity of nitrogenous
animal impurity which is contained in 14,150 parts of London
sewage ; in other words—so far as regards the animal impurity—
if you were to take 86 gallons of pure water and mix with them
14 gallons of London sewage, you would have the composition—
so far as animal impurity goes—of 100 gallons of Irwell water.
What I want to prove is that we have in this way a measure of
the impurity of water, so that when we have made our analysis we
can calculate how much previous sewage contamination the water
has undergone.
In diagram No. 2 you see the composition of the Manchester
Corporation water:—
Manchester Corporation Water, 1868,
Contains in 100,000 parts—
Total solid impurity .................................
Organic carbon ............................................
Organic nitrogen............................................
Ammonia.........................................................
Nitrogen, as nitrates and nitrites ...............
Total combined nitrogen ............................
Previous sewage contamination...................
Chlorine ........................................................
Temporary hardness ....................................
Permanent hardness ....................................
Total hardness................................................
6’20
0183
0'009
0'006
0-025
0'039
o'ooo
1'120
0'14
3'59
373
You see that there is no previous sewage contamination; but
in all river water we find from the drainage of houses or towns
previous sewage contamination ; and it is therefore possible for us
to make the prediction that in the visitation of cholera which this
country is almost sure to undergo next summer, Manchester will
pass nearly unscathed, while London, being still supplied by
river water, will suffer from the epidemic. The point I want you
to understand is that the chemist—thanks chiefly to the labours of
Professor Frankland—is now able to estimate this previous sewage
contamination.
Now, although I cannot show you how the amount of the
nitrogen is ascertained, I can show you in another way the dif-
�i3o
ference between Irwell water and our drinking water. In this glass
jar we have some pure water, as supplied to us by the Corporation
of Manchester. Here we have another clear-looking water, not
quite so nice and clear as the drinking water, but still a very
respectable water, which you might wish to drink and fancy that it
would not be so bad, though the taste might not be so nice as the
pure water. This is filtered water taken from the black stream
which flows past our doors—the river Irwell. I have here a red
liquid which will oxidise animal impurities and destroy them, and
thereby lose its own colour. You will find that one drop of this
coloured solution—permanganate of potash—will be sufficient to
colour this pure water, because there is no impurity in it which
requires oxidation. I will put in three drops, which will render
the water pink. Now I will take the Irwell water and add many
drops of the permanganate. Let us see what happens here.
This Irwell water, you see, soon becomes colourless, showing that
it contains organic matter capable of undergoing oxidation, and
therefore in a condition of decomposition or putrefaction, and
you see I have to add a considerable quantity yet until I get
a permanent pink colour. And, therefore, although this method
of testing water is not so accurate a one, or to be relied on
so implicitly as the determination of the nitrogenous impurity, yet
it is one which is of value, and which I have no difficulty in
making visible to you, thus demonstrating to the sight that the
clear Irwell water is impure.
There is still another means which chemists have of telling
whether water is pure, and that is by the presence of common
salt. Pure spring water ought to contain very little common
salt; but water which contains the infiltrations of sewage brings
in with it a large quantity of common salt derived from the urine.
Any water which contains more than one part of common salt in
100,000 is almost sure to have that salt brought in by sewage,
and will therefore be impure. This does not apply, of course, to
water flowing through salt districts. The springs and rivers
of Cheshire in some places contain large quantities of salt which
does not come from sewage; but I am speaking of places in
which there is no occurrence of rock salt. Thus you see that
we have three means of detecting and determining the amount
of organic impurity in water—first, the nitrogen; second, this
test with the red permanganate; and, thirdly, the presence ot
common salt; and it is clear that the chemist is able to detect
organic impurity in water, and to tell positively that such and such
a water is a pure one, and that such and such a water is an impure
�i31
one and unfit and dangerous or even fatal to drink; so that
although he is not able to say that a certain water contains
cholera poison, he is able to say that the water is poisonous.
Next about the air we breathe. You know that the air contains
oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid. Oxygen is the vital air. I
can show you very easily that air consists of two different things.
I take this glass cylinder, which is filled with air. This cylinder
contains five volumes of air. I will burn a bit of phosphorus
in it, and you will very soon see that the phosphorus will go
out. After a little while these white fumes will disappear, and
we shall see that we have not got as much air as we had before—
about four volumes will be left; we shall also see that the gas
which is left, called nitrogen, has different properties from
common air, inasmuch as a light will go out in the gas which
is left. The oxygen gas, which we use in breathing, is a
colourless invisible gas, in which bodies burn with far greater
brilliancy than they do in the air. If we take a little bit of
charcoal, for instance, and burn it in this oxygen, you will see
that it will burn much more brilliantly than it does in ordinary
air. Now besides these two gases—oxygen and nitrogen—we
have a third gas in the air, called carbonic acid gas. This gas is
given off whenever bodies such as charcoal, coal, or candles bum
in the air; it is also given off by our breathing, as you know. This
will be made evident if I blow into this lime water, which will
become turbid from the presence of this carbonic acid coming
from the lungs. Well, then, we have in the air the oxygen, or the
vital air ; the nitrogen, or the non-vital air; and the carbonic acid,
which we may call the choke damp. The carbonic acid plays a
very important part as regards plants, because it serves as their
food ; but it renders the air impure for the use of animals, and it
is produced by the combustion of bodies. That this is the case I
can show you by a very simple experiment. We have here
a lamp burning under a jar, and the products of the combustion
come out through this chimney. If I hold a clean plate of glass
above this aperture, you will see that a large quantity of
vapour of water comes out, the result of this burning of the
gas. There you see the glass is bedewed with moisture. Now let
us stop the door of our glass house with a piece of putty, and
observe what takes place. The flame, you see, becomes longer
and more smoky, and in a very short time it will go out, because
there is not a sufficient supply of oxygen to keep up the combus
tion ; and if we hold this glass plate over it now the plate does
not become bedewed with moisture, because there is no draught
�132
through the pipe, and no mode by which the vitiated air can
escape. This illustrates to you the principle of ventilation.
Wherever a candle can burn, there an animal can live; but
where the candle goes out, there as a rule the animal also goes out
and cannot live. Here you see the gas flame is very nearly gone
out I will now open the door again and let some fresh air in,
and I think in a short time that the flame will revive, and the
combustion go on much as before. Now the air that we give off
from our lungs is impure, because it contains carbonic air; a
candle cannot bum in it. You have all heard the story of the
Black Hole of Calcutta, and you know that when men are shut up in
a close room in which they cannot get any supply of fresh vital
air or oxygen, they cannot live, they are suffocated. I have
shown you that if we vitiate the air in this bell jar by contamina
ting it with carbonic acid gas, through the withdrawal of the
oxygen from it, the candle will not burn. The candle burns in
this jar which contains air, but if we now breathe this air once or
twice, you will observe the effect upon the combustion of the
candle. There, it has been breathed once ; now we will breathe
it once again. The candle now burns very dimly. With one
further breathing of the air we shall so diminish the quantity of
oxygen, and increase that of the carbonic acid, that the candle
will go out. Here, then, you see at once the necessity for the
ventilation of your rooms. All this has been long well known, and
1 only introduce these facts because they help to give you a general
notion of what chemistry tells us about the composition of the
air.
There is, however, still another constituent of the air of
still greater importance, as regards our health, even than this
carbonic acid, about which our knowledge is newer and less
perfect, and that is Organic Matter. You all know what we
mean by a “close room;” you all know that if you do not
sleep with your windows open, as you ought to do—if you sleep
with your windows shut, and especially if you have no fire-place
in your room, when you come back to the room from the fresh air,
before opening the window, you notice a disagreeable close
smell. That smell ought never to exist in the room; for it shows
that you have something there which is neither oxygen, nor nitrogen,
nor carbonic acid, inasmuch as all these gases have no smell ;
but it is organic matter—emanations from the bodies of
those who have slept in that room. These organic emanations
or substances existing in the air are most dangerous, and
do much towards spreading epidemic diseases, as far as
�13 3
the air is concerned. What does science teach us with
regard to this organic matter in the air? This, again, like
the organic matter in water, is not an easy matter to inves
tigate, and in many cases we are as yet quite in the dark
concerning its mode of action or constitution. Still it is not
difficult to show that organic matter is contained in the air,
and that some of these organic substances are gases and
some of them solid bodies. Thus if we look at the air of
our rooms when the sun is shining in upon it, what do we see ?
We see what we call “motes” dancing in the sunbeam. What
are those motes? They are finely divided bits of all sorts of
things—bits of skin, of the epidermis; bits of clothing ; dust
from the street; bits of stones and bits of iron—a thousand
different things, and all so small that they do not settle down in
the air—at any rate not for a long time—but continually dance up
and down as we see them in the sunbeam, and are as continually
being breathed in to our lungs. We do not see these motes when
the sun is not shining, not because they are not there, but because
they are too small to be seen except when the sunlight strikes
upon them and reflects the light back into our eye. That a
number of these little things are germs, seeds, or spores of various
kinds, has been proved by a great number of experiments. If we
wish to prove the organic nature of these particles, we may
collect this fine aerial dust by drawing air through something
upon which the dust can be filtered out, as upon a piece of
cotton wool; and if we then put this cotton wool with the dust
upon it into a solution of sugar, we find that that dusty cotton
wool can produce all sorts of changes in the sugar—changes which
do not occur if we keep out this dust, as we can do—and thus
we can show the production from the dust not only of living vege
tables but also of living animals. This experiment has been made by
our townsman, Dr. Angus Smith, than whom nobody has done more
to advance our knowledge concerning the organic matter in the air.
Dr. Angus Smith, as long ago as 1848, made the following experi
ment : he placed a little pure water in a glass bottle and took
it into a room where a number of people were present, and very
often shook this water up with the air in the bottle, pumping in a
fresh supply of air and shaking it up again many hundred times.
He then, with his friend Mr. Dancer, examined the nature of the
water which was in the bottle, and they found that this -water,
after a little time, contained living animal organisms — little
vibrios, as they are termed—very minute, but still distinct animal
forms, which are well known to those who occupy themselves,
�r34
as Mr. Dancer has done, with the study of the very smallest and
lowest creatures, both animal and vegetable, which can only be
seen under the microscope. So that of the existence floating in
the air of these germs or eggs—if you like to call them so—of the
animals there can be no doubt. Now, then, comes the other
Question how far these little germs which exist in the air, can
produce disease ? About this, satisfactory evidence is, of course,
more difficult to obtain. It has not, so far as I know, been
positively proved that these little germs are always the cause of
disease, for in many cases the general dissemination of these
geims has proved compatible with a healthy condition of the
people; but that they may, and sometimes do, produce disease
we have abundant evidence to prove. Now the question to which
I wish again to direct your attention is, can the chemist determine
whether the air is pure or whether it is impure as regards these
organic matters? You will say, “we do not want the chemist
to do this, because we can smell when the air is impure.”
But the answer to this is, you cannot always smell when air is
impure any more than you can taste when water is impure; thus
the fever and ague-producing air of the marshes is quite free from
smell, and yet capable of giving rise to most serious diseases.
You therefore require something more than your unaided senses,
and the chemist can help in this matter; for although he cannot
tell whether there are germs present which will produce certain
diseases, he can tell whether there is or is not organic matter in
the air, and whether it exists in such quantity as to make the air
not fit to be breathed for any length of time. In this diagram
you see the amount of organic matter contained in the air, ac
cording to the experiments of Dr. Angus Smith :—
Relative Amount
of
Organic and Oxidizable Matter
Air.
in the
(Angus Smith.)
St. Bernard’s Hospice........................................
Hill in Lancashire ............................................
Lake in Lucerne................................................
At sea, 6o miles from land................................
Kew Gardens ....................................................
Finchley .............................................................
London, Waterloo steps....................................
London, Southwark Bridge ............................
2'8
2-8
1 ‘4
3’5
Io‘°
i5'c
42-0
55*o
�Dr. Angus Smith found in pure air—obtained from St. Bernard’s
Hospice, on one of the passes over the Alps—a very small
quantity (2-8 parts) of this organic matter; but in Manchester,
in the air of his own laboratory, he found 48 parts ; in the air
over the Lake of Lucerne 1’4; in the air of a pigstye 70; he goes
away to sea, and at 60 miles distance, finds 3^ parts; in the
Greenheys fields, with the wind blowing from Manchester, 40
parts
In the neighbourhood of towns he finds less impurity
than in towns themselves. Kew and Finchley air shows much
less than that taken from near London, Waterloo or Southwark
bridges, or from Lambeth. In Manchester, near one of the
sweet streams I have referred to, with its strong smell ot
putrefaction, be got as much as 73 parts of organic matter.
These numbers, you will understand, do not give absolute
quantities, but they show the difference of pure and impure air
as regards this organic matter.
We have heard a great deal lately about sewer gases, and there
is no doubt that not only is a general lowering of the tone of the
body produced by breathing air vitiated by the entry of sewer
gases into houses, but that actual danger to life ensues from the
bringing these impure gases, which may contain the germs of
specific disease, into our dwelling-houses. But I think we ought
to be careful, especially at the present moment, from letting the
impression get abroad, that wherever there is a bad smell we are
in danger of our lives. The public are very apt to run into extremes.
At one time they don’t think at all about the matter, but when
attention is called to the subject by such an event as the illness
of the Prince of Wales, they are apt to fancy that whenever they
perceive a bad smell they are sure to be dreadfully ill. Still,
as I have shown you, there is no doubt that organic germs
exist in the air, and that air coming into houses from sewers, by
bringing in these floating germs, must be a constant source of
danger, and may become a source of fatal disease. But that
effluvia and evil smells from decomposing animal matter are not
invariably, or even generally, accompanied by epidemic outbreaks
is a fact which common experience proves, though in localities
where such effluvia exists the epidemic poison, when it comes,
appears to find favourable ground for its growth, and the place at
once becomes a hotbed of disease. This view is confirmed by
the recent report issued by two very distinguished physicians, Drs.
Burdon Saunderson and Parkes, on the sanitary condition of
Liverpool.. They distinctly say, considering the high death rate in
the lowest parts of that town and finding that there has been no
�outbreak of typhoid fever, that they see no reason to attribute
that high death rate chiefly, if at all, to the escape of these sewer
gases into the houses : so that as far as Liverpool is concerned,
the blame of the high death rate does not seem to lie at the door
of the sewer gases.
I should wish next to bring before you a very remarkable
example of what exact scientific investigation can do to help us
to a knowledge of these most complicated and difficult questions
as to the causes of the propagation of epidemic disease. You
know that France is one of the great silk-producing countries;
and you know that the silk is spun by a small caterpillar or worm
that lives on mulberry leaves, and that it is reared largely in the
south of France. You are all, I dare say, also aware of the
changes which this silkworm undergoes—that the worm changes
its skin several times, and that, having attained a certain growth,
a peculiar secretion, which forms the silk, is produced inside the
animal, which then spins its cocoon and retires into the inside—
forming what we know as the chrysalis. After some time this
chrysalis appears as a moth, which lays its eggs and dies, and
a fresh generation of worms make their appearance from the eggs.
Now the value of the productions of the silk trade in France
is something enormous. In 1853 the silk produced in France
was worth 130 millions of francs. Unfortunately, soon after that
year a fatal epidemic, called pebrine, broke out amongst the silk
worms. Everything was done and every nostrum and contrivance
tried to stop this epidemic, but nothing succeeded, and the silk
worms continued to die. The peculiar symptoms of the disease
were that black spots came out all over the caterpillars, and their
silk secreting power was altogether lost. This went on until, in
1864, the value of the silk made in France amounted to only four
millions of francs; so that the disease caused a loss of about 100
millions of francs per annum. The worms—both the healthy and
stricken ones—had been carefully examined, and it was found
that when they died of this disease they were almost filled
with masses of little globular corpuscles, so that the place where
the silk ought to have been contained nothing but these disease
bringing globules. Nobody, however, could tell how to stop the
epidemic. It was found that sometimes, when the disease could
not be detected either in the egg or in the caterpillar (which spun
silk), the next generation of apparently healthy caterpillars which
came from apparently healthy moths became diseased, and pro
duced no silk. In short, the disease baffled all investigation.
But some time after this dreadful state ot things, the celebrated
�J37
French chemist, Pasteur, was asked to try what he could make
of it. Now Pasteur had previously paid great attention to this
particular subject of organic germinal matter in the air, and he
succeeded in fathoming the whole difficulty. He proved what the
disease was occasioned by, and showed how it might be prevented.
I will give you an idea how Pasteur found this out. In the first
place, I told you that the healthy caterpillar might produce
unhealthy moths, or moths that laid bad eggs; but Pasteur found
that this was because the particles of diseased matter existing in
the caterpillar supposed to be healthy were so small that they
could not be seen by the best microscopes. He investigated the
matter step by step with scientific precision, and he found that by
examining the moth instead of the caterpillar he could invariably
tell whether the moth was a sound moth and would lay sound
eggs, or whether it was an unsound moth and would lay unhealthy
eggs, which afterwards would give birth to a stricken or diseased
caterpillar. He proved this completely; and moreover he showed
that not only could he tell by examining the moth that these little
globules existed in the moth, although not apparent in the cater
pillar, but that the caterpillar could become infected, although it
did not receive the disease by transmission, by contact with
another unhealthy caterpillar. And in this way, by most care
fully guarding against a caterpillar becoming infected by a neigh
bouring one, and by most jealously taking care that all the moths
which laid eggs, or whose eggs were kept, were healthy moths, he
entirely got the disease under his control, and the result is that
the disease is now almost passing away. I will not take up youi
time now by reading, as I intended, a passage from his paper, but
I will simply say that in this way he was able to point out the
cause of the disease, and thus to prevent the great pecuniary loss
which France had been suffering. Here, then, you have a clear
case in which careful scientific examination was successful in
explaining a complicated and apparently insoluble difficulty; and
there can be little doubt that the application of similar methods
of exact investigation to the cases of other epidemic diseases will
in the end show that every such disease is capable of being, if not
altogether prevented, at any rate greatly lessened.
In conclusion I wish you to understand that, whatever progress
men of*science may make in the discovery of the cause of epidemic
disease, and however completely our imperial or municipal authori
ties may carry out preventive and curative measures founded upon
such discoveries, it rests in the end with the people to say whether
such measures shall be productive of good or whether they shall
�138
remain a dead letter without influence on the mass of the popula
tion. All the discoveries of science, all the care of our authorities
can avail nothing, when the people themselves are dirty, dissolute,
drunken, and degraded. This debased condition of the popula
tion is the most powerful cause of the high death rate of our
towns, and this at present far outweighs the evil effects produced
by drinking water contaminated with sewage, or by breathing air
rendered impure by sewer gases.
�II
�JOHN HEYWOOD'S EDUCATIONAL WORKS.
COPY-BOOKS AND WRITING.
John Heywood’s Historical Copy-Books. A Series of Copy-Books containing Exercises
on the History of England. Post 4to, 6d. each.
4.
5.
6.
8. Edward VI. to the Compilation of the
7.
Book of Common Prayer
1. Julius Caesar to the Battle of Hastings
2. Norman Conquest to Richard III.
James I. and Charles I.
Commonwealth and Charles II.
James If.
William and Mary, and Anna
Both Private and Public school pupils, destined to commercial pursuits, by using John
Heywood’s Mercantile Copy Books, may acquire familiarity with a number of the most
useful business terms, which would otherwise have to be “picked up” at much trouble to
themselves, and possibly with some annoyance to their employers, at a time when business
claims the whole of their attention.
John Heywood’s Mercantile Copy-Books. In Two Parts. Post 4to 6d. each.
No. 1, containing the following Business Forms :—
Invoice
Cheque
Draft in favour of
Tradesman s Bill
Promissory Notes
another (In. Bill)
Account Receipted
Note, with Interest
Foreign Bill of Ex
Account Current
Draft to Order (Inland
change
Receipt
Bill)
Business Letters
No. 2, containing Letters on the following Subjects :—
Ordering Goods
Requesting further Credit
Acknowledging Bills
Forwarding Invoice
Forwarding Draft for
and Orders
Enclosing Remittance
Acceptance
Consignment of Goods
Acknowledging Re
Advising Draft
Forwarding Account
mittance
Enclosing Bills and
Sales
Requesting Payment
Orders for Goods
Shipment of Goods
Whatever may be the special destination of pupils, all are pretty sure, in after-life, to
“lave, from necessity or choice, to write to persons at a distance. To supply for both sexes in
All good schools useful models of correspondence on a great variety of subjects, is the design
of John Heywood’s Young Gentleman’s Letter Copy Book, his Young Ladies’ Letter
Copy Book, and The New School Letter Writer. This latter work contains Ninety
Original Letters on subjects specially selected to interest and instruct the young, written in
a style lively and perspicuous, and altogether well-fitted to kindle in the pupil an ardent
desire to acquire the ability to wield his pen with facility and effect. Home practice in
correspondence, either in Private or Elementary schools, may readily be secured by the use of
the Cards, containing The Young Ladies’ a- ,d The Gentleman’s Writing Models.
John Heywood’s Young Gentleman’s .etter Copy-Book. Post 4t«, 24 pp., 6d. each.
Answer to an Advertisement
Son to Parents
Father to Son
Order for Goods
To a Friend
Invitation
Brother to Sister
Sister to Brother
Nephew to Uncle
Daughter to Mother
Addresses
Acknowledging a Present
John Heywood’s Young Ladies’ Letter Copy-Book. Post 4to/,24 j»p.,6d.
Young Lady on her Return
to School
Acknowledging a Gift
Sister to Brother
Sister to Sister
Friend to Another
Daughter to Father
Daughter to Mother
Order for Goods
Application for Situation
Reply to an Advertisement
Invitation to Tea
Reply—Declining
Reply—A ccepting
Pupil to Governess
Invitation Notes
Reply and Addresse
The New School Letter Writer. In Two Books. Consisting of 90 original letters adapted
to all classes of Schools. By Dr. Bullock. Crown 4to, sewed, One Shilling each.
Part I., on Miscellaneous Every-day Matters.
Part II.. on School Matters.
�JOHN HEYWOOD'S EDUCATIONAL WORKS.
COPY-BOOKS AND WRITING.
Handwriting is commonly the first test of education required from a boy, and there is a
tendency to judge of a youth’s general proficiency by his style of Penmanship. Hence, a
slovenly style of writing acts as a bar to advancement, not only as a sort of disqualification in
itself, but as a ready index of a faulty general training. To secure a clear bold style of
writing, with rapidity of execution, the pupil should be furnished with really good models,
carefully graduated from simple strokes to the most finished specimens of the art, and so
presented at every stage as to allure to constant effort to reproduce the model. To supply
these requisites John Hoywood has issued a large variety ef Copy Books, in forms and at
p ices suited to every class of school in the country.
John Heywood’s Copy Books comprise 15 books, which are beautifully graduated,
the earlier numbers having faint copies over which the child may write: thus guided, he by
degrees is encouraged to try his hand alone. The F’cap 4to series are well adapted in price and
quality to meet the requirements of the Public Elementary Schools. The Post 4to will be
found admirably fitted for the Private and High Class School.
John Heywood’s Copy-Books—the best and cheapest. F’cap 4to, 2 4 pp
National or 3rd Quality Foolscap.......................................................... 2d.
Second Quality Foolscap
.................................................................. 2Jd.
Best Quality Foolscap.............................................................................. 3d.
Second Quality Post ..
..
..
..
.-.
..
..
.. 4d.
Best Quality Post
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
.. 5d.
Best Quality Large Post
.................................................................... 6d.
1.
*la.
2.
*2a.
3.
’3a.
4.
5.
Strokes and Turns
Strokes and Turns
Letters
I etters
1 hort Words
Short Words
Large Hand
Text Hand
Text and Round
Round Hand
Round and Small
Small Hand
H- Initiatory Small Hand
8. Angular Small Hand
9. Text, Round, and Small
5J.
6.
6|.
7.
10. Large, Text, Round,
and Small
Ladies’ Angular Hand
Commercial Hand
Commercial Forms
Ornamental Alphabets
Figure Book
Capitals
11.
12.
12|.
13.
14.
15.
* These are printed with faint ink for the pupil to write over.
John. Heywood’S New Code Copy Books, a new and carefully-graduated series, arc so
dosigned as at once to encourage and help a child in his efforts to use his pen with facility
and skill. Throughout the series the spaces are marked out in each page within which
each portion of the line should be written. I 'c slovenly habit into which cliil hen are apt to
fall of oopying their own imperfect writing, t, im line to line, instead of co. stantly com
paring what they have done with the model at the top of the page, may be prevented by the
use of John Heywood’s Fly-leaf Model Writing Books.
John Heywood’s New Code Copy-Books. A new and carefully graduated series of Copy-
Books, so designed as to encourage and help a child in his efforts to use his pen with
facility and skill. Helps are given by faint horizontal lines being drawn so as
to guide the pupils in the heights and lengths of the long letters. The letters and words
also in this series are nicely separated bv short lines, which secure great neatness.
n cap oblong, 24 pp., fine paper, in beautitun^-printed wrappers. Sewed, ’2d. each.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
1.—Letters of the Alphabet.
2.—Short Words without Looped Letters.
3.—Short Words with Looped Letters.
4.— Text and Round Short Words.
5.—Capital Lotters and Figures.
<5.—Text and Round Hand.
,
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
7.—Round <t Initiatory Small Hand.
8.—Text, Round, Small, and Figures.
9.—Ladies’ Angular.
10.—Commercial Small Hand.
11.—Commercial Forms.
12.—Ornamental Printing.
�JOHN HEYWOOD’S EDUCATIONAL WORKS.
COPY-BOOKS AND WRITING.
John Heywood’s Fly-Leaf Model Wnting-Books.
By E. J. Harding. Preventing
Children Copying their own Writing, and containing a Comparison Sheet, by means of
which the Progress of the Pupil may be easily estimated. F’cap 4to, 2d. each.
4. Words and Figures
8. _ Text. Round, Small,
1. Initiatory Exercises,
5. Capitals and Words
and Figures
Easiest Letters, and
6. Sentences and Figures,
9. Figures, Multiplication,
Combinations
Round and Double
and Division Tables
2. More Difficult Letters
Small
10. Forms of Letters, &c.
and Short Words
7. Sentences and Figures,
11. Angular
3. Most Difficult Letters
Small
12. Commercial
and Short Words
“ Mr. John Heywood, of Manchester, has really produced a novelty in Copy Books. The
difficulty that has always been experienced by the teacher is to prevent the pupil from copy
ing his own writing. By the old method, he would probably imitate the writing model in
the first and second line, but soon he would become too indolent to lift his eyes to the top of
the page, and content himself with reproducing the letters or words immediately preceding
those upon which he is engaged in writing. The old ‘ slips ’ of our young days partly accom
plished this, as they could be removed down the page so as to cover the line just executed by
the writer himself. But Mr. Heywood’s scheme is much more desirable—it meets the
difficulty with great success. It is an ingenious process. By means of the fly-leaves, one of
which covers the left-hand page, and the other the right, the pupil has always his model in
a line parallel with that which he himself has to write, and so finds it much easier to imitate
the copper-plate model than simply to follow his own writing.”—Bookseller May, 1869.
“ We have no doubt many of our readers are familiar with these copy-books. Their aim
is to enable schoolmasters to enforce Mulhailser’s dictum. We think the idea a good one.”—
Papers for the Schoolmaster.
To keep up interest, and to stimulate effort in so mechanical an exercise as writing, a
change of model is desirable when a pupil has attained a fair style of writing. Such'a change
may be made with advantage by the use of John Heywood’s Geographical Copy Books, his
Grammatical Copy Books, and his Historical Copy Books, a change which, besides pre
venting the weariness bred of monotony, may be made a means of imparting useful informa
tion in those branches of education, and familiarising pupils with the correct orthography of
a number of words which otherwise they might have few opportunities of learning.
John Heywood’S Geographical Copy Books.
A Series of Copy-Books containing
Exercises in Geography. F’cap oblong, 24 pp. Sewed, 2d. each.
5. Scotland.
1. Geographical Definitions.
6. Ireland.
2. Artificial Divisions.
7. Geographical Derivations.
8. Natural Divisions.
4. England and Wales.
John Heywood’s Grammatical Copy-Books.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
A Series of Copy-Books containing
Exercises on English Grammar, designed for the Use of the Upper Classes of Schools.
By J. B. Millard, M.C.P. F’cap oblong, 24 pp., 2d. each.
6. Adjectives, with their degrees of com
The Definitions of the Subject, Words,
parison
the Alphabet, Vowels, Consonants,
7. Adverbs of Time, Place, Number, Man
Orthography, and the Nine Parts of
ner, Degree, Affirmation, and Negation
Speech
8. Parts of a Sentence, Subject, Predicate,
Nouns—Common and Proper, their Num
Object, &c.
ber, Person, Gender, Case, <fcc.
9. Syntactical Rules relating to Nouns,
Verbs—Regular and Irregular, Weak and
Pronouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs,
Strong, Transitive and Intransitive,
&c.
Active, Passive, and Neuter
10. Cautions and Rules of Syntax
Mood, Tense, Number, and Person
11. Syntactical Rules
Pronouns
12. Specimen of Parsing
John Heywood’S Historical Copy Books,
a Series of Copy Books containing Exercises
on the History of England. F’cap oblong 4to, 24 pp. Price 2d. each.
5. Houses of Lancaster and York
1. Britain under the Romans
6. House of Tudor
2. Britain under the Saxons
7. Houses of Stuart and Orange
3. The Norman Period
8. House of Hanover
4. The Line of Plantr-renet
�John Heywood’s Educational Works.
Science Lectures for the People, first and second series.
Twenty-two Lectures Delivered in Manchester. Crown 8vo. cloth.
852 pages, 2s, 6d.
The First and Second Series may be had separately, in Stiff Paper
Cover, Is. each. The Second Series may also be had in Two
Sections, 6d. each; or in separate Lectures, One Penny each.
First Series.
ELEMENTARY CHEMISTRY (Four Lectures). By Professor
Roscoe, F.R.S.
ZOOLOGY; or, FOUR PLANS OF ANIMAL CREATION (Four
Lectures). By Thomas Alcock, M.D.
ON COAL: Its Importance in Manufacture and Trade. By Professor
W. Stanley Jevons, M.A.
ELEMENTARY PHYSIOLOGY (Four Lectures). By John Edward
Morgan, M.D. (Oxon.) .
Second Series.
CORAL AND CORAL REEFS. By Professor Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S.
SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. By Professor Roscoe, F.R.S.
SPECTRUM ANALYSIS IN ITS APPLICATION TO THE
HEAVENLY BODIES. By W. Huggins, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S.
OUR COAL FIELDS. By W. Boyd Dawkins, Esq., F.R.S.
CHARLES DICKENS. By A. W. Ward, Esq., M.A
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PAVING STONES. By Professor
Williamson, F.R.S.
THE TEMPERATURE AND ANTMAT, LIFE OF THE DEEP
SEA By Dr. Carpenter. F.R.S.
MORE ABOUT COAL. HOW COAL AND THE STRATA IN
WHICH IT IS FOUND WE^E FORMED. With Illustrated
Diagrams. By A. H. Green, M.A., F.G.S.
ON THE SUN. By J. Norman Lockyer, Esq., F.R.S.
Third Series.
In Stiff Paper Cover, price 9d. ; or separate, One Penny each.
YEAST. By Professor Huxley, LL. D., F. R. S.
COAL COLOUR8. By Professor Roscoe,F.R.S.
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. By Professor
Wilkins, M.A.
FOOD FOR PLANTS.. By Professor Odling, F.R.S.
THE UNCONSCIOUS ACTION OF THE BRAIN. By Dr. Car
penter, F.R.S.
ON EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. By Dr. Carpenter, F.R.S.
ON THE PROGRESS OF SANITARY SCIENCE. By Professor
Roscoe, F.R.S.
Fourth Series.
In Stiff Paper Cover, price Is. ; or separate, One Penny eaoh.
THE RAINBOW. By Professor Roscoe, F.R.S.
THE ICE AGE IN BRITAIN. By Professor Geikie, F.R.S.
THE SUN AND THE EARTH. By Professor Balfour Stewart,
F.R.S.
ATOMS. By Professor Clifford, M.A., of Cambridge.
FLAME. By Professor Core.
THE LIFE OF FARADAY. By Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S.
THE STAR DEPTHS. By R. A. Proctor, F.R.A.S.
KENT’S CAVERN. By William Pengelly, Esq., F.R.S.
ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPT ; or, PYRAMIDS VERSUS
THE SUEZ CANAL. By Dr. Carpenter, F.R.S.
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERIES OF FARADAY. By — Barrett,
Esq,
Manchester: JOHN HEYWOOD, 141 and 143, Deansgate,
Educational Department, 141, Deansgate,
London : Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.; J. C. Tacey.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Science lectures delivered in the Hulme Town Hall, Manchester, in the year 1871
Creator
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Huxley, Thomas Henry [1825-1895]
Roscoe, Henry Enfield, Sir [1833-1915]
Wilkins, Augustus Samuel [1843-1905]
Odling, William [1829-1921]
Carpenter, William Benjamin [1813-1885]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Manchester; London
Collation: [2, 1],138, [2] p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Science lectures for the people : third series
Notes: Contents: 1. Yeast / Professor Huxley.--2. Coal colours / Professor Roscoe.--3. The origin of the English people / Professor Wilkins.--4. The food of plants / Professor Odling.--5. The unconscious action of the brain / Dr Carpenter.--6. Epidemic delusions / Dr Carpenter.--7. The progress of sanitary science / Professor Roscoe. Publisher's advertisements ("John Heywood's educational works") on end papers, and on unnumbered pages at front and end. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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John Heywood; Simpkin Marshall & Co.; F. Pitman
Date
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1871
Identifier
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N606
Subject
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Science
Health
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Science lectures delivered in the Hulme Town Hall, Manchester, in the year 1871), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Brain
Coal
Epidemics
NSS
Plants-Nutrition
Sanitation
Science
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e72a840184b41d2889b629c0ad144d67.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=hiEz5TVnKvq%7EZorWw3BucMuXPE4m7x5wb5CvAi3VuMFELBtqVlrDqZOm1VtQSd2AvZs7H-1KjMvO0ikh90qzY1wkBoChU9NTLwPxZC9rS9UwpSJ85IjVgqTwtXmAx9H%7EAs0bBsVSA%7EYtH8gYmiB-fvAnci66rI0h1uqC6kPDQZhqMLnIBye2cwkPtj4OR0KMVLKTNlYZXakEsu-FNjTT76xev1qpLBQNA-vik0Ux0E4fDDUMoRl0XDVILVHjt9qHj93tHqACiAI1EHgTVbOD9aWUWol-RDAaoODZG6StjpmwnIbkX9VCx9PfG0Rv%7EfmcMViu5%7EHIfwrL0WoWCKUmSA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
e48da28e9094cfd0186e190be59013b0
PDF Text
Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
Health, Wealth, & Happiness.
BY/ ARTHUR
B.
MOSS.
CIENCE, at? the - present time, is merely in its infancy.
imagine they know, the wise
S Much astosome jDersons the accumulated knowledge are
ever ready
admit that
of
to-day is but a speck compared with the infinite mass of
knowledge that yet remains ta be acquired, and that future
study and labour will yield to man. Fifty years ago very
little was known by the people of this country of sanitary
science ; the masses lived in total ignorance of the true
cause of the undue amount of disease and death among
the poor; and it was not till the year 1840, when a Parlia
mentary Committee of inquiry into the health of towns was
appointed, that it was discovered to what^® large extent
bad ventilation, bad drainage, and impure air were the
causes of sickness, disease, and premature death. 4f we go
back some centuries, we shall find that our ancestors were,
on the whole, a healthy and hardy people. This may fairly
be explained by the fact that they lived a more simple and a
more natural life than it is possible for us to do in these
of large towns, small houses, immense populations,
excessive competition, railways, tramways, telegraph, and
electricity, and when, indeed, it needs hard^ghtingtp obtain
the bare means of subsistence. To have muscular force,
and the skill to use it, meant that you were well equipped
for life’s battle ; and in the great struggle for existence tKe
elimination of the unfit, which was continuously going on,
left the robust and hardy warriors in full possession of the
field. In civilised times, however, we have to look at
man existing in the cities, towns, and villages, and to ask
how it is that he is so often smitten down with diseases the
cause of which he is too often entirely ignorant of.
Now, there are few, I presume, who will doubt the fact
that many of the employments in which a considerable
number of the citizens of this country are daily engaged
�2
HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS.
are of a very unhealthy character, and that very slight pre
cautions, if any, are taken by employers against the possi
bility of disease arising through the warehouses, factories,
or shops, in which a number of hands are employed, not
being properly ventilated. It may be safely said that the
lives of thousands are annually sacrificed through this
means. And how is this ? Is it because employers are
utterly reckless concerning the health of those they employ ?
Is it that masters deliberately seek to ruin the constitution
of their servants and to wreck the prospects of thousands
of families ? Or is it that employers and employes are alike
ignorant of the rudiments of sanitary science, and from lack
of knowledge allow this frightful evil to continue ? The
latter, it seems to me, is the most reasonable conclusion to
which we can come on this point, for to accept any other
explanation would be to tacitly imply that many employers
of labour were reckless and inhuman monsters, altogether
unfit to live. Let the truth be spoken. We have all of us
grown up without a knowledge of the laws of health ; and
past Governments and individual efforts combined have
done very little towards showing the means by which we
may avoid disease and- become healthy, active citizens.
Sanitary science should be taught in our schools, to girls as
well as boys ; for we should never forget that our daughters
become the mothers of subsequent generations, and that
upon them devolves the duty of bringing up children so
that they may become healthy and intelligent men and
women. At present more lectures, similar to those deli
vered under the auspices of the Manchester and Salford
Sanitary Society, are required in every town in England ;
lectures by ladies specially suited to the requirements of
women; and health lectures dealing with the physiological
aspect of the subject, as well as others, to men, by gentlemen
qualified to speak with authority upon such matters.
Eminent scientists have declared that without a healthy
body it is almost impossible to have a healthy mind; the
one is dependent upon the other. Healthy bodies are the
only trustworthy organs for healthy minds. To repair the
waste that is continually taking place in our bodies—to
replace the brain waste that occurs from intellectual activity,
it is necessary that each individual should have proper food,
and sufficient exercise to cause the food to have the most
useful effect in our bodies. But it is quite possible to
�HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS.
3
develop, in almost equal proportions, the mind and the
body : allow each faculty to be usefully employed; enlarge
the mind by vigorous thinking; strengthen the memory by
systematic study ; increase the perceptive ability ; develop
the muscles by physical effort, by hard labour, or healthful
sports; and so become, as near as possible, physical and
mental giants.
One of the chief reasons why so many of our countrymen
neglect their health, and fail to cultivate their strength, is
because they imagine that a thick, hard hand—a strong,
well-developed frame, looks vulgar; they will not engage in
employments in which they are compelled to use physical
force: these they consider below their dignity; and the
present constitution of society lends countenance to this
mischievous fallacy. As a rule, men and women who
employ their strength in daily labour are rendered thereby
healthier and stronger individuals, while those who are
engaged in merely sedentary occupations decrease in
vigour and vital force. Everybody, no matter what his or
her employment may be, should apportion a certain time
of each day for physical exercise. Men and women alike
should practise swimming and rowing, and any other
healthful exercises to which their tastes may incline them.
Leaving the large question of healthy or unhealthy em
ployments, the next step is to glance at our habitations,
and see whether our surroundings are conducive or not to
the happiness of the masses. Four things are imperatively
necessary in every home—personal cleanliness, pure air,
pure water, and unadulterated food.
Personal Cleanliness.—Cleanliness of the body is one of
the surest preventives of disease; dirt is often the mask
behind which disease hides itself when assailing human
beings. Against personal cleanliness disease hurls its
deadly weapons in vain; and with a clean home and a
clean person one is ensured, to a certain extent, against
some of the most insidious foes of human flesh and
blood.
Pure Air.—Nothing is more important to man than to
see that wherever he goes he breathes pure air—whether at
home, or at his club, or travelling in train, bus, or tram
And what is pure air ? Most intelligent people know now
that man breathes “ two breaths.” The air he gives out
and the air he takes in are different; and they each have a
�4
HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS.
different effect. Pure air is generally admitted to be com
posed of four leading constituents—namely, a mixture of
three gases (oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid), and of
the vapour of water. Air once breathed should not be
breathed over again, for the air you give out contains a
large proportion of carbonic acid gas, which is the same
deadly vapour that is given off after charcoal has been
consumed in a room, where all the cracks and crevices
have been stopped up to prevent any of the fumes escaping.
No person should breathe air heavily charged with carbonic
acid gas, else he may expect that his health will seriously
suffer. Most probably he will grow up a weak, nervous,
pale-faced creature, unfit for the great struggle of life, his
depressed condition leading him to resort to drink, in
order to give him an artificial vitality, which Nature herself
sternly refuses to supply. Many of the poor cause their
children to breathe foul air, keeping them all closely
huddled together in one small room, where disease is often
generated, and where young children are permitted gradually
to pine away, without one word of protest from the British
public, and with absolute silence from sanitary inspectors.
Oxygen and nitrogen give life and health to the human
body; they feed the fire of life, which carbonic-acid gas
of itself would extinguish. What is wanted, then, is plenty
of ventilation in houses, to let in the pure air and let out
the foul. The air we breathe, being warm, rises ; the cold
air descends. Thus, while we breathe out the carbonic
acid it ascends towards the ceiling, while the oxygen and
nitrogen descend into our mouths.
It is very unhealthy to sleep upon the floor of a room
that has been made at all warm during the day, because at
night the carbonic-acid gas, which has risen to the ceiling
on account of its warmth, has time to cool; it then
descends to the ground; and so those who sleep upon the
floor absorb into their system this foul air, which has a
most baneful effect upon the health.
Considering the large number of deaths annually caused
among the poor through neglect and carelessness in regard
to proper ventilation, it is well that something should be
done to acquaint the working classes in every town in
England how much this excessive mortality is due to their
own ignorance and folly. Dr. Lyon Playfair once observed
that a great part of sanitary science can be comprised in
�HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS.
5
-one word—Cleanliness. If everybody would exercise care
in seeing that everything in the home was kept perfectly
■clean, and that they themselves were cleanly in their habits,
the world would be much freer from disease than it is, the
atmosphere would be healthier, and zymotic diseases of
-every kind would certainly decrease.
Pure Water.—This is another essential to good health.
In many provincial towns the water supply is in the hands
■of the Municipal body, and the people can depend upon
having a constant supply of pure water; in London, how
ever, the case is different. There the inhabitants have to
put up with a very impure article, teeming with sewage
matter and animalculae, which is supplied by water com
panies at an excessive price.
Unadulterated Food.—Doubtless the Adulteration of
Foods Act has done a good deal towards preventing the
wholesale consumption of bad food; nevertheless, still
more requires to be done, for, as our sanitary inspectors do
not prove themselves to be ubiquitous, poor persons are
sometimes duped into purchasing diseased for wholesome
meat, butterine for butter, and sausages composed of minute
morsels of fat, well mixed with numerous particles of
mouldy bread, instead of the genuine article. Better far
■to have a little good meat, even if you have to pay dearly
for it, than a large quantity of indifferent stuff. Some
■eminent men just now are persuading the people to become
vegetarians, urging them to live solely on a vegetarian diet.
For my part, I hope that the people will hesitate a long
while before they adopt the advice of these eminent ones.
Looking at the internal physiological structure of man,
some have contended that he is more a herbivorous or a
frugiferous than a carnivorous animal. Perhaps this is so.
Experience, however, is worth a great deal more than
theory. Recent chemical science has made clear the fact
that more albumenous matter is digestible in animal than in
vegetable food; and, generally speaking, vegetarianism
does not prosper in cold climates, or in climates of a very
variable character. Moreover, if vegetarianism were to
become general, it would have the effect of increasing the
price of vegetables, and of lowering the standard of the
diet of the people of this country. This cannot surely be a
desirable result to achieve. Upon the authority of Dr.
Charles Drysdale, whom I know from personal experience
�6
HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS.
to have given the subject deep study for many years, I
allege that a mixed diet is preferable for man. The learned
Doctor says : “ Hofmann found that, on feeding men with
potatoes, lentils, and bread, only 38.7 of the nitrogenous
matter has been digested; 44.4 escaped from the body
undigested. Meineret, again, found that the whole of
the nitrogen in meat was digested with the excep
tion of 2.6 per cent. ; that the same occurred with milk,
eggs, and cheese.” Vegetarianism pure and simple is im
practicable; most so-called vegetarians eat eggs and milk,
neither of which can be rightly described as vegetables.
Having done all that is possible to acquire good health,
it becomes necessary for every adult person to make an
effort towards securing additional wealth, and to increase
the prosperity of the country in which he lives. “ Money
is the root of all evil,” some insane moralist has declared;
there are a good many, however, who would be the better
if they could get a firm clutch at this root. A man may
cut his throat with a razor : is the razor or the man to
blame ? It is the wrong use of money that is an evil.
Many persons still suppose that wealth consists in the
possession of so much hard cash, notwithstanding the fre
quency with which Political Economists have exposed the
fallacy of this idea. Money is not wealth; it is merely a
means of exchange ; it is the medium by which one article
is bartered for another. And it should be understood that
it is quite possible for a nation to be at the height of its
prosperity with the majority of the workers in the country
on the verge of starvation. The rich may possess all the
real wealth. They may have in their hands the land, which
should be in all countries a great source of wealth; they
may have trade, and, while reaping rich harvests for them
selves, may grind down those who assist them to amass
fortunes ; and they may add to this the advantage which
uniform and combined power gives in the Legislative
Chamber. But, for a nation to be truly great, each indi
vidual should at least have the chance of acquiring the
means of subsistence. In many old countries at the
present time this is not the case. So many people are
born that many of them perish for the want of the mere
necessaries of life.
Now, the only source of wealth accruing to the working
classes is the surplus from wages after all necessary expenses
�HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS.
7
in support of the family and home are made. At the present
rate of wages very little can be put by each week by the
poor to be used at times of emergency. The demand for
labour is not large ; the supply is enormous ; and the law
of supply and demand, and the consequent increase or
decrease of price, applies just as much to human labour as
to any commodity brought into the market. Let working
men remember this ; let them remember that it is no use
grumbling, and forming Unions to protect themselves
against employers, when their wages go down ; they have
-only one remedy, and that is the limitation of their offspring,
by wise prudence preventing the labour market from being
•overstocked. Wages are low in England because there are
too many labourers in the field, and in the struggle for
existence the very poor are compelled to accept the lowest
possible wage. In New Zealand labour is well paid because
there are fewer labourers, and these, therefore, command
their own price. Among many erroneous statements, Canon
Kingsley said that science disproved that population has a
tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence.
Saying this does not prove it. If science disproves the
truth of the rather unpleasant discovery of the Rev. Mr.
Malthus, it is somewhat singular that scientific men appear
to be totally ignorant of it. Dr. Darwin bases the whole of
his inferences in “ The Origin of Species ” on what the late
Lord Chief-Justice Cockburn declared was an “irrefragable
truth ”—viz., “ that all animated matter has the tendency
to increase beyond the means of subsistence.” From
ignorance in respect to this law, the poor get poorer and
poorer, until many of them have to seek refuge in our
workhouses, to be kept at the expense of the ratepayers.
Is not this a great iniquity? Are the thoughtful and frugal
ever to be pulled down by the thoughtless and the dissolute ?
Poverty and crime are twin brothers ; throughout life they
are invariably associated. Civilisation means increased
comfort, additional knowledge, and more leisure for the
masses; poverty, being opposed to these, is in reality
opposed to higher civilisation.
Whether drunkenness is increasing or diminishing is a
question that cannot be decisively answered. We all know,
however, that the drinking customs of society still entail an
enormous amount of misery among all classes, and that
poverty is augmented by this means. Drunkenness, indeed,
�•Health, wealth, and
8
happiness.
is a great cause of poverty ; but it is not the chief cause..
Poverty may also be truly said to be a great cause of drunk
enness, or, if it is not a cause, it is certainly an aggrava
tion of the offence. Surrounded by evil influences and a
dirty home, and without the means of getting sufficient food
to sustain life, persons stupidly fly to drink: the artificial
excitement caused by the alcoholic liquors soon dies away,
and the drunkard is left to sorrow and despair.
Men want wealth: how are they to get it
By an
assiduous devotion to their daily work; by enterprise ; by
thrifty and temperate habits; and by -a wise limitation of
their offspring. It is possible for all persons to live in
jcomfort and happiness; but, then, they must look upon
poverty, not as a blessing, but as a positive evil. Remove
the chief cause of poverty—a redundant population—
educate the masses, and with increased knowledge the way
will soon be found by which the other evils may be removed.
Health first, then comfort, arising from a possession of a
sufficiency of the good things of this life; and as pain isobliterated, and pleasure takes its place, the increased
happiness of the masses is ensured. What is happiness ? says
one. Does it not differ in each individual ? Does not one
seem happy' at results which give others pain? To each
of these questions a reply must be given in the affirmative.
But we aim at the highest happiness for all, and this can.
only be achieved by removing all obstacles like poverty and.
misery to the progress of the people.
rj:
'
ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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’ .•'XD/O;.. ...
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The Old Faith and the New ...
. ...
London : Watts & Co., 84,.Fleet Street, E.C.
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Health, wealth, & happiness
Creator
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Moss, Arthur B.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: List of works by the same author available from Watts & Co. on back page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
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[1885]
Identifier
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N502
Subject
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Health
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Health, wealth, & happiness), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Health
NSS
Vegetarianism