PAGE ART. III.-Practical Dissections. By RICHARD M. HODGES, M.D. ART. IV.-On Echinokokker i Hjernen. Af Dr. VALD. RASMUSSEN, Hospitals-Tidende, Kjöbenhavn d. 12 Decbr., 1866 . On Echinococci in the Brain. By Dr. VALD. RASMUSSEN ART. V.-On Anthracosis or Coal Miners' Phthisis. By J. WARBURTON BEGBIE, M.D. (Reprinted from the Glasgow Medical Journal.') ART. VI.-Chemistry, Inorganic and Organic, with Experiments and a Comparison of Equivalent and Molecular Formulæ. By C. L. BLOXAM, Professor of Practical Chemistry in King's College, London ART. VII.-Hospitals, Infirmaries, and Dispensaries: their Construction, Interior Arrangements, and Management, with descriptions of existing Institutions, and remarks on the present system of affording Medical relief to the Poor. By F. OPPERT, M.D., F.R.C.P.L., &c. ART. VIII.-Guide for using Medical Batteries; showing the most approved apparatus, methods, and rules for the medical employment of Electricity in the Treatment of Nervous Diseases. By ALFRED C. Garratt, M.D., &c. ART. IX.—Insanity in its Medico-legal Relation. Opinion relative to the testamentary capacity of the late James C. Johnston, of Chowan County, North Carolina. By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M.D., &c. ART. X.-Tapeworms (Human Entozoa): their Sources, Nature, and Treatment. By T. SPENCER COBBOLD, M.D., F.R.S., &c. ART. XI.—A Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art, comprising the definitions and derivations of scientific terms now in general use, together with the History and Description of the Scientific Principles of nearly every branch of Human Knowledge. Fourth Edition. By W. T. BRANDE, F.R.S., and the Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A., assisted by contributors of eminent scientific and literary acquirements ART. XII.-The Forms, Complications, Causes, and Treatment of Bronchitis. By JAMES COPELAND, M.D., F.R.S. ART. XIII.-The Climate of the South of France, and its varieties most suitable for Invalids; with Remarks on Italian and other Winter Stations. By Charles T. WILLIAMS, M.B. Lond. Original Communications. 424 ib. ib. 427 428 ib. 430 432 433 434 435 437 ART. I. On the Influence of Age in Hereditary Disease. By WILLIAM ART. II.-The Practical Medicine of Galen and his Time. By JOSEPH R. ART. III. On the Diagnosis of Obstructive Disease of the Left Auriculo- Chronicle of Medical Science. (CHIEFLY FOREIGN AND CONTEMPORARY.) Report on Micrology. By J. F. STREATFEILD, F.R.C.S. Report on Surgery. By JOHN CHATTO, Esq., M.R.C.S.E. Report on Midwifery. By ROBERT BARNES, M.D. Lond., &c. Report on Materia Medica and Therapeutics. By ROBERT HUNTER SEMPLE, M.D., &c. THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1867. PART FIRST. Analytical and Critical Reviews. REVIEW I. 1. London Pauperism amongst Jews and Christians. An Inquiry into the Principles and Practice of Out-door Relief in the Metropolis, and the Result upon the Moral and Physicial Condition of the Pauper Class. By J. H. STALLARD, M.B. Lond. London. 1867. Pp. 527. 2. The Female Casual and her Lodging. With a complete Scheme for the Regulation of Workhouse Infirmaries. By J. H. STALLARD, M.B. London: London. 1866. Pp. 143. 3. The Lancet Sanitary Commission for Investigating the State of the Infirmaries of Workhouses. London. 1866. Pp. 171. 4. The Eighteenth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board. 1866. 5. Report of Dr. EDWARD SMITH, LL.B., F.R.S., Medical Officer to the Poor Law Board, and Poor Law Inspector on the Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards. 1866. 6. Report of H. B. FARNELL, Esq., Poor Law Inspector on the Infirmary Wards of the several Metropolitan Infirmaries. 1866. 7. Report of W. CORBETT, Jun., Esq., and W. O. MARKHAM, Esq., M.D. Poor Law Inspectors, relative to the Metropolitan Workhouses. 1867. 8. Various other Papers, Reports, and Returns made to Parliament by the Poor Law Board. 79-XL. 19 9. Various Papers and Reports of the "Association for the Improvement of London Workhouse Infirmaries;" and of the "Metropolitan Poor Law Medical Officers' Association." 10. An Act for the Establishment in the Metropolis of Asylums for the Sick, Insane, and other Classes of the Poor, and of Dispensaries; and for the Distribution over the Metropolis of Portions of the Charge for Poor Relief; and for other Purposes relating to the Poor Relief in the Metropolis. (30 Vict. c. vi). 11. The Medical and Legal Aspects of Sanitary Reform. By ALEXANDER P. STEWART, M.D., and EDWARD JENKINS, Barrister-at-Law. London. 1867. Pp. 100. 12. The Management of Workhouses. By SAMUEL W. NORTH, M.R.C.S. A Paper read at the Meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1866. 13. Report of the Committee for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases. Harveian Medical Society of London, 1867. It is difficult to conceive of a community arrogating to itself the title of a Christian community in which the claims of its destitute members to the means of existence are altogether ignored. Religion in its primary and most comprehensive sense as "quod religit" must bind to something, and in so far as it does so it destroys the freedom of the individual who professes it to do or not to do as he chooses. And among all the obligations of the Christian system there is none more characteristic than that which, uniting all its adherents into a brotherhood, recognises the necessities of one as a claim upon the sympathy of all. It adopts the heathen system of hospitality, invests it with a sanction peculiarly its own, and, prescribing no definite limit to its exercise, inculcates instead the cultivation of a Divine and universal love. Its teaching is, "Bear ye one another's burthens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." It is thus that the Christian religion binds the individual. How does it bind a Christian state?-for surely its profession must bind a Christian state; surely it is the duty of a Christian community to see that no individual laxity of practice, no individual lack of Christian principle, shall interfere with the performance of a duty which would still remain a duty were Christianity banished from the earth. But in virtue of its profession it is bound to do something more than merely to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to visit and to cure the sick; it is bound also to carry into this common and national work something at least of the peculiar motives and principles by which it declares itself to be guided, and to exhibit towards the necessitous, in an obvious degree, a sympathy with the sufferings of our common nature. From a very remote period of our history the support of the poor as a religious duty was acknowledged by the State. Horne, in his "Mirror of Justice," records among the ordinances of our kings prior to the Norman Conquest the provision that "the poor should be sustained by parsons, rectors, and the parishioners, so that none of them should die for want of sustenance," and a portion-a third part-of the tithes of the Church was devoted to this object. As monastic institutions increased and the rectorial tithes became absorbed by the religious orders, the latter accepted with them the burden of providing for the poor, and they, together with various institutions endowed for purposes of charity, constituted the chief resource of those who were unable to sustain themselves. arrangement continued up to the period of the dissolution of monasteries in the 27th year of Henry VIII. No other or different national system of relief was attempted-no other seemed to be necessary. Nolan1 remarks - This "Such abstinence from regulation on the part of our civil government is no slight testimony that the clergy devoted a suffi- . cient portion of their immense property to maintain the poor. * But a more direct proof of the fidelity with which the clergy administered the trust reposed in them arises from observing that the first important legislative attempt to provide for the impotent poor was made in the same year when the property of so many religious houses was vested in the crown." We, in this England of the nineteenth century, blinded as we often are by party zeal, are very apt to forget that the monastic system with all its faults had some excellent points about it, that, amidst the wars and political tumults of less settled times, it was the rallying point of very much that was good, the salt which preserved our social organisation from total corruption. But Henry made no attempt to dissociate the relief of the poor from the obligations of religion. Begging was restricted, but it was ordered (27 Henry VIII, c. xxv) that alms should be collected after Divine Service on Sundays, and on one Sunday in the year the names of persons willing to give for the ensuing year were taken down in writing, the minister being enjoined to exhort the people to liberal contributions. Refusals to give were reported to the bishop, and on his requisition being of no avail, the Justices in Sessions were empowered to assess the obstinate individuals what they thought reasonable. And so it went on until the 43rd year of the reign of Elizabeth, when a poor-rate was first established, and the payment of it made compulsory by statute-law. The ecclesiastical 1 Treatise on the Laws for the Relief and Settlement of the Poor,' 1825, vol. i, p. 4. division of the kingdom into parishes was retained, and the state, holding to the old principle that each parish ought to maintain its own poor, relieved the Church of the duty of collecting the necessary sum as alms, and also of the distribution of it, vesting both offices in the hands of laymen, having still, however, a nominal association with the ecclesiastical establishment. It was for the churchwardens and overseers to make the needful rate and to see to the support of the poor out of it. Since this time every change that has been made has been further and further in the direction of secularising the relief of the poor, as a national system, until at last it has come to this, that the administration of the laws to this end throughout the kingdom is vested in a secular board of commissioners nominated by the crown, and the distribution of relief itself in the hands of lay "Guardians of the Poor" selected by the ratepayers in their several parishes or unions of parishes. The ancient association of the relief of the poor with the notion of religious obligation, so far as the State is concerned, has been at an end for very many years, and unhappily, whatever other advantage may have been derived from the alteration, it has borne bitter fruit to those most concerned. If the monks erred on the side of too profuse liberality, as it is probable they did, it was an error which the excellence of their motives might well condone the same fault certainly cannot be laid at the door of their lay substitutes in the present day, whose grand object appears to be to render the tax upon the ratepayers as light as possible. Paid agency has taken the place almost wholly of individual voluntary labour in the investigation of the circumstances of applicants for relief, and this too has borne its fruit in the loss of that individual sympathy which is certain to be excited in a well-constituted mind by the unaccustomed sight of a brother in distress. The poor-rate is claimed as a right and paid as a tax, is regarded on all hands as a disagreeable impost, and its distribution is effected with little of the sympathy which ought to accompany the relief of material necessity, and with little, if any, variation of method in accordance with the peculiarities of individual cases of distress. It has been attempted to do by the paid agency of a few hirelings what is strictly due as the voluntary labour of many, who compound both for duty and labour, as they imagine, by the money payment demanded from them; and the attempt has miserably failed. Bad indeed would be the case of the poor had not the Church as an establishment, and nonconformist congregations everywhere, still held it their duty as Christian communities to seek out the distressed in their own neighbourhoods, and to minister to their necessities by their own voluntary alms. From these : |