We are on the high-road, it cannot be doubted, to a period of prosperity and universal longevity (after all, the main object of all rational ambition) such as the world has not hitherto beheld.
The foreign news of the hour is somewhat unsatisfactory. In consequence of the generally lawless condition of the Southern Russian Republics, the great corn districts of those regions have for some years been falling out of cultivation; and no hopes are entertained that we shall be able to import any more grain from Odessa, or indeed from any quarter of the world. In a similar way, the native rulers to whom we restored what was formerly called our Indian Empire, and also China after its brief occupation, have so far adopted American and European ideas as to place for this next year such duties on rice and tea as will almost prohibit the importation of those articles into the English market, while they have positively forbidden the introduction of English cotton or iron into their respective States. The bad and deceptive quality of the goods furnished by our manufacturers is the alleged cause of these unfortunate regulations. Science will, no doubt, ere long enable us to supply the deficiencies thus caused both in our Commissariat and the income hitherto derived from manufacture; but, for the present, some anxiety is naturally felt in commercial circles regarding these untoward events. Against all mishaps, however, we rejoice to set the announcement—which will be greeted with universal exultation—that the researches of the learned Professor Coppervale respecting the animalculæ causing the Vine Disease, the Silk-worm Disease, and the Potato Disease, have resulted in the glorious discovery of a method of conveying the infection with absolute scientific certainty from a plant or insect which has been attacked to another still healthy. In this manner the vineyards of Château La Rose and of Château Yquem have both been effectively inoculated by the processes recommended by the English Professor to the French Director of Agriculture; and the result is perfectly satisfactory. Not a grape on either ground was available during the last vintage for wine-making. In the words, then, of an illustrious philosopher of last century, “From this vantage ground already won we look forward with confident hope to the triumph of science over all the loss and misery which the human race has experienced.” Anyone who has eaten a grape infected with the phylloxera according to Professor Coppervale’s stupendous discovery, will have enjoyed a foretaste of the triumph of Science in ages to come.
Considerable excitement prevails just now in many of our large towns in consequence of the needful, but somewhat troublesome, formalities required by law before any trade or handicraft may be exercised. Blacksmiths’ apprentices, we are told, very generally resent the necessity of passing their proper examinations in Metallurgy before they are qualified to shoe a horse; and the Artificial Flower Makers constantly evade attendance at the lectures on Botany, given expressly for their benefit. The candidates for licenses as Cabdrivers have more than once exhibited signs of discontent, when rejected on the grounds that they failed to answer some of the simplest examination questions on the principles of Mechanics applied to Traction, and on the correlation of Heat and Motion, as discovered by the illustrious author of “Heat as a Mode of Motion.” A strike (it is even rumoured) is impending among the stonemasons and bricklayers and slaters in a certain large city, because the Police, at the order of the Magistrates, having brought up several members of those trade-unions to the Local Examining Board for inquiry, it was elicited that none of them had acquired a competent knowledge of Geology in general, nor even of the formation of the strata of rocks wherewith their proper business is concerned.
These difficulties were to be anticipated in the progress of Scientific knowledge among the masses, and we earnestly hope that no proposal to relax the late very wise legislation will be made in Parliament, but rather to reinforce the existing Acts by severer penalties upon ignorance and inattention. Who can for a moment think, for example, of allowing his shirt to be washed by a person who knows nothing of the chemistry of soap, blue, and starch? or his dinner cooked by a man who (however skilled in the mere kitchen art of sending up appetising dishes) is totally ignorant of how much albumen, salts, and alkalies go to the formation of vegetable and animal diet?
A kindred subject of unreasonable popular dissatisfaction are the Medical Certificates of good Health now legally required from men, women, and children performing any kind of labour in factories, warehouses, shops, fields, ships, or in domestic service. Obviously it is impossible to certify the health of any individual for more than a few days at a time, and the necessity which the recent Act enforces of obtaining a fresh certificate (and, of course, paying the doctor for it) every week, is felt by discontented persons as a burden unfairly laid upon them by the State. We regret that the process is, in truth, slightly troublesome and expensive (the minimum fee for the humbler trades is, as our readers are aware, half-a-crown; for exercising the higher professions—artists, merchants, lawyers, &c.—5s.), but it was recognised so long ago as 1876 as a right principle of legislation in the case of factory works, and it now forms so legitimate a source of regular income to a large body of most respectable medical gentlemen, who make it their business to grant certificates, that we cannot imagine anyone being so ill-advised as to suggest the repeal of the law. Of course the number of persons thus excluded from the labour market is very considerable indeed, but we must accept such a consequence as inevitable. Since cripples were rejected a century ago for the office of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, the practice has been constantly followed of placing restrictions upon the feeble attempts at industry of persons labouring under natural defects and disabilities, and the Blind, for example, are no longer allowed to compete with the seeing in making mats and baskets. For all such wretched people there are open the proper asylums, the Hospital for the diseased, and the Workhouse for the feeble, the maimed, the deaf, and the blind. Charity itself can ask no more. The resistance of these unfortunates against entering these institutions must be put down. The world is, after all, made for the strong—the strong in mind, and the strong in body; and the notion that it is our business to “bear each other’s burdens” belonged altogether to an Unscientific age. What if physicians and surgeons do try experiments daily on the patients in the hospitals, sometimes involving a good deal of pain, or loss of limb or life? These people are fed and housed, and often extravagantly fattened up on the most luxurious food, on the condition of serving the cause of Science as subjects of experiments. And what, again, if the children in the workhouses be given over now and then by the Guardians, at the request of the Medical authorities, for vivisection? They are nearly always placed under the influence of anæsthetics, indeed, we may say invariably so, unless the object of the experiment would be frustrated by their use. Could the humanest of our humanitarians ask anything more? The rule of Science is the most benign, as well as enlightened, the world has ever seen.
The sanitary interests of the community are now recognized on all hands as the supreme concern of the State, as the care of his own health and the prolongation of life at all costs are the chief ends of each individual man. We therefore commence our yearly review by noting in what manner the advance of Science, (in which lies our only hope,) has contributed during the past twelvemonth towards this grand object.
The foremost place of honour is, of course, due to the discovery of the eminent Dr. Howlem of the scientific way to give Cholera; after which we may reckon Dr. Mowlem’s short method of conveying the Plague; and last, Dr. Bowlem’s most interesting and valuable plan for producing Leprosy. These immense discoveries (effected, it is needless to remark, by laborious pathological experiments on animals and idiots) may well make the past year memorable in the annals of the Science of Medicine; and though the particular specific remedies for the diseases in question have not yet been ascertained by the Faculty, we can scarcely fail to attain that secondary object ere long, together with the proper treatment of Consumption, Scarlet Fever, and other maladies which Science has been able to convey for the last hundred years, and must ere long find out how to cure.
Next in importance to actual discovery we are inclined to place the new Regulations which Parliament has laid down in obedience to the High Court of Convocation. The absolute prohibition to Women to read or write—even in cases where they may have formerly acquired those arts (now recognised as so unsuitable to their sex)—will, we apprehend, tell importantly on the health of infants, and of course eventually on that of the community. So long as females indulged in no more deleterious practices than dancing in hot rooms all night, unclothing their necks and chests, wearing thin slippers which exposed their feet to deadly chills, and tightening their waists till their ribs were crushed inwards, the Medical Profession very properly left them to follow their own devices with but little public remonstrance. The case was altered, however, when, three or four generations ago, a considerable movement was made for what was then called the Higher Education of women. The feeble brains of young females were actually taxed to study the now forgotten Greek and Latin languages, and even Mathematics and such Natural Science as was then understood. The result was truly alarming; for these poor creatures flung themselves with such energy into the pursuits opened to them, that, as one of their critics remarked, they resembled “the palmer-worm and the canker-worm—they devoured every green thing”—and not seldom surpassed their masculine competitors. At length they began to aim at entering the learned Professions—the Legal, and even the Medical. Our readers may be inclined to doubt the latter fact, which seems to involve actual absurdity, but there is evidence that there once existed two or three Lady Doctors in London, who, like Pope Joan in Rome, foisted themselves surreptitiously into an exalted position from which Nature should have debarred them. Of course it was the solemn duty of the Medical Profession to put a stop at once to an error which might lead to such a catastrophe, and numerous books were immediately written proving (what we all now acknowledge) that the culture of the brains of women is highly detrimental to their proper functions in the community; and, in short, that the more ignorant a woman may be, the more delightful she is as a wife, and the better qualified to fulfil the duties of a mother.