mencement of the malady, five out of eight recover. After the third year of the disease's appearance, the proportion of cured is not more than one in thirty. The age most favorable for recovery from insanity is the period from the twentieth to the thirtieth year; few recover after the fiftieth. During the period of convalescence, there is great liability to relapse. The treatment of insanity in France resolves itself into the medical and moral. The medical treatment indicated at the commencement of the disease consists chiefly in the attempt to reduce increased nervous or cerebral excitement. In the more chronic conditions of the disease, the medical treatment is chiefly directed to the restoration and maintenance of a healthy state of all the functions of the body. A strengthening diet, cleanliness, fresh air, and exercise are all necessary. The asylums of France afford all these requirements. Physical restraint, except in cases of absolute necessity is avoided, and one never hears in this country of the outrages perpetrated by guardians such as frequently come to light elsewhere. The attending physicians of French asylums know all their patients by name, the exact nature of their insanity, and the measures which usually appear to calm them. The slightest change in a sufferer is noted, and he or she is transferred from one ward to another as occasion requires. As far as food, attendance, and interior luxury go, many of the inmates are better off than in their own homes, and it is for this reason that the insane asylums of the Republic of France serve as models for the whole world. FEIGNED INSANITY AND HOW IT WORKED.-A barrister of the City Court of Louisville is very much chagrined on account of a trick played on him by one of his clients, thereby causing him to lose a fee of $25. Several days ago a man was arrested on the charge of "shooting at without wounding." This picturesque figure of the City Court, who brags that the rich coloring on his nose has cost him a small-sized fortune, was consulted and consented to defend the man. Before the trial came up the barrister called his client from the court-room and said: "Now, the only way you can get out of this scrape is to play insane. Whenever a question is put to you, instead of giving an intelligent answer, just wave your hand in front of your face and whistle. The Judge will at once adjudge you insane, and, of course, you will be all right." The man consented to play insane, and took his seat on the stand. "What is your name?" asked one of the attorneys. The defendant looked idiotic, waved his hand, and then whistled. Everybody in the court-room began to laugh. Question after question was asked the man, but he answered all of them by waving his hand and whistling immediately afterward. "I adjudge you insane," said the Judge. "Ah, what did I tell you?" said the barrister, walking over to his client and congratulating him. "That was a magnificent play. I will charge you $25 for defending you and would like to have my money now." The alleged insane man looked worried and scratched his head. He never said a word, but waved his hand through the air, gave a short, shrill whistle, and bade the attorney a fond adieu.-Louisville Courier-Journal. HEREDITY RUN MAD-AN ILLUSTRATION.-"Dr. Kendrick, of Mississippi, recently related a case in which a colored girl, while pregnant, became very angry with an old colored woman who had paralysis (wrist drop) of the left hand, and who also limped badly from an injury to the left leg. The pregnant girl would imitate the walk of the old cripple for the amusement of others. In due time a female child was born possessing a deformed left hand and the left leg smaller than the right. It lived to be grown and died of phthisis. It had wrist drop and always walked exactly like the old woman whom the mother ridiculed. The mother was, is now and always has been, healthy, and has given birth to four other children, all of whom are healthy."-Medical and Surgical Reporter, July 31, 1897. And this is cited by Dr. Wm. M. Ogle (in the article from which this extract is taken) in support of "Darwin's assumption that from all parts of the living body, living gemmules are being thrown off which are aggregated in the reproductive organs.” Whose, or rather which, in this case-the old paralytic's gemmules (thrown off and aggregated in the reproductive organs of the pregnant girl), or the girl's, thrown off and transplanted at the sight of the paralytic?-ED. SANITARIAN. HUMANITY AND EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS. Lord Lister recently made an important and interesting address on the subject of modern pathologic research at the opening of the Belfast Physiological and Pathological Laboratories, an extract from which as published in the "British Medical Journal" being as follows: "There are people who entertain exaggerated views," he says in effect, "regarding the work that is accomplished at such laborator; ies. There are people who do not object to eating a mutton-chop. people who do not even object to shooting a pheasant with the considerable chance that it may be only wounded and may have to die after lingering in pain, unable to obtain its proper nutriment, and yet who consider it something monstrous to introduce under the skin of a guinea pig a little inoculation of some microbe to ascertain its action. Those seem to me to be most inconsistent views. With regard to all matters in which we are concerned in this world, everything depends upon the motive. A murderer may cut a man's throat to kill him; any one of you medical students may have to cut a man's throat to save his life. The father who chastises his son for the sake of the good of his morals is a most humane man; a father who should beat his son for the mere sake of inflicting pain upon him would be an inhuman monster. And so it is with the necessary experiments upon the lower animals. If they were made, as some people seem to assume, for the mere sport of the thing, they would be indeed to be deprecated and decried; but if they are made with the wholly noble object of not only increasing human knowledge, but also diminishing human suffering, then I hold that such investigations are deserving of all praise. Those little know who lightly speak on these matters how much self-denial is required in the prosecution of such researches when they are conducted, as indeed they always are, so far as I am aware, with the object of establishing new truth. The exercise of a little charity might lead those who speak of us as inhuman to reflect that possibly we may be as humane as themselves. "The profession to which I have the great honor to belong is, I firmly believe, on the average, the most humane of all professions. The medical student may be sometimes a rough diamond; but when he comes to have personal charge of patients, and to have the life and health of a fellow creature depending on his individual care, he becomes a changed man, and from that day forth his life becomes a constant exercise of beneficence. With that beneficence there is associated benevolence; and in that practical way our profession becomes the most benevolent of all. If our detractors knew this, common sense would enable them to see that our profession would not be unanimously in favor of these researches if they were the iniquitous things which they are sometimes represented to be. "I have been interested in the following account of a part of Pasteur's work on rabies: It had been established that the introduction of a portion of the brain of a mad dog under the skin of a healthy animal was liable to cause rabies, and Pasteur had reason to believe that it was principally in the nervous centers that the poison accumulated. He felt a very strong desire to introduce some of the poison into the brain of an animal; but he was a peculiarly humane man. He never could shoot an animal for sport. He was more humane than the great majority of human beings, and for a long time he could not bring himself to make the experiment of trephining an animal's skull and introducing some of the poison of rabies into the brain. He was exceeding desirous of doing it to establish the pathology of the disease, but he shrank from it. On one occasion, when he was absent from home, one of his assistants did the experiment, and when Pasteur came back he told him that he had done so. 'Oh!' said Pasteur, 'the poor creature! His brain has been touched. I am afraid he will be affected with paralysis.' The assistant went into a neighboring room and brought in the animal, which was a dog. It came in frisking about and investigating everything in a perfectly natural manner, and Pasteur was exceedingly pleased, and although he did not like dogs, yet he lavished his affection upon that particular animal and petted it; and from that time forth he felt his scruples need no longer exist. So soon as our poor selves are directly concerned our objections vanish into thin air; a tiger threatens to invade our camp; who would care much about what kind of trap was set for it, or what suffering the trap caused the animal, so long as it was caught? When the matter affects only the welfare of others, including that of generations yet unborn, the good done does not appeal to the individual and the objector sees only the alleged horrors of modern scientific investigation; of which horrors, however, he quickly loses the sense as soon as he becomes personally concerned." THE MINE. BY GRACE DUFFIE BOYLAN. D'ye know what it means to work under there, The only free gifts even God can give To help a man in his struggle to live? Where the laugh of a child, the song of a bird, Where the only sound is the click, clang, click The thought of the damp grows a haunting dread- But for children, for wives, who bide above We burrow and store, like the senseless mole, We look from the dark and we cannot see In the glare of the world how this can be, That you, who're but men such as we, can hold -From Chicago Journal. |