with drugs, which, though certain to do no good, are anything but certain of doing no harm."

But drug-bigotry, with which the general run of practitioners are so deeply imbrued, is not easily made amenable to science or common sense. The extent to which it is carried, despite all reason and experience, is truly marvellous. The most poisonous drugs are those that are more generally valued and employed as a last resource. To recover a patient from true choleraic collapse is an effort the vis medicatrix naturæ but rarely succeeds in accomplishing, even when not thwarted by drugging, or when aided by rational means. But to restore a patient dosed in that stage with strychnine, or other deadly poisons, as the unfortunate British soldiers selected at Malta to be inhumanly experimented on were dosed, is a wicked mockery of nature, or, at best, asking nature to counteract not the fatal tendencies of the disease alone, but also the destructive effects of a murderous practice. The conclusion the Medical Press arrives at, from a review of the whole evidence as to the value of Drug medication in cerebro-spinal fever exactly accords with that previously concurred in by scientific physicians as to its deleterious influences in the treatment of cholera, and is thus stated :

:

"After carefully considering the abundant evidence bearing on this point, and now readily accessible, we do not hesitate to affirm that according to our judgment this evidence amounts to irresistible proof, that in the treatment of cerebro-spinal fever, drugs are useless, and that the chances of life of sufferers from the disease are, cæteris paribus, greatest in those cases in which none are given."

What, then, is to be done? Is the disease to be left to run its course? Better so, indeed, than to interfere ignorantly and irrationally by drugging. But it has been observed that he is a physician "poorly equipped, who cannot soothe the nervous system without poisoning it," and in this disease, as in cholera, there are rational and simple means by which its fatal tendencies may be averted. Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, in his report "Of the results of an inquiry into the epidemics of Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis, prevailing about the Lower Vistula," in the beginning

of 1865, advocates the application of ice to the spinal cord. Dr. Simon, in his report already referred to, says :

"In various processes of disease which resemble meningitis in their nature, the local application of cold judiciously and skilfully made, has given to modern medicine some very notable successes; and to it, more than to any known resource of the art, I should myself have been disposed to look hopefully in the present instance. And Dr. Thudichum (who has seen something of meningitis on the continent, and who has favoured me with a memorandum on the recent epidemics in Bromberg, Ottmachan,) tells me that present experience in Germany is in favour of this principle of treatment."

Notwithstanding that the weight of evidence and experience is decidedly against the use of Drugs, and in favour of the ice treatment, yet in Ireland, in all cases, save one, Drugs were persistently and fatally employed :

"We confess to some surprise (says the Medical Press) in observing that, as far as we are aware, these authoritative recommendations have, with one exception, been wholly ignored or disregarded in the treatment of cerebro-spinal fever in Ireland. In no instance, we believe, has ice been applied to the back of the neck, and in only one case (treated by Dr. Lyons) does there appear evidence that it has been applied to the head."

Unfortunately there is no mystery about the ice treatment. Ice is only congealed water, and it is beneath the dignity of pretentious practitioners to employ a simple thing that any child could understand. Were ice only a drug poison, extracted by pharmaceutical ingenuity from some animal, vegetable, or mineral substance, then, indeed, it might stand a fair chance of being employed. But modern medicos, for the most part, have an abhorrence of nature and of simples. They delight in administering nauseous compounds, and drug, drug, drug on with a pertinacity that would be commendable were it not so deadly.

But this ice treatment, which Medical authorities admit has been followed by successful results such as no drugging could obtain, is only a very partial and imperfect application of the great Hydropathic agency-Temperature, the proper employment of which, in the treatment of disease, forms no part of

medical education, and, indeed, is not even recognised as within the sacred sphere of "legitimate medicine!" Thus, from ig norance of Hydropathic principles, and of the best mode of securing their skilful realisation in practice, the ice bag in the hands of Physic-doctors is little better than the chance-medley that is an attribute of all quackery. It is used as a sort of Abernethy club, and, because it is so simple an agent, it is rashly and foolishly concluded that no great harm can be done, should it strike Nature on the head instead of the disease.

Cholera and the Black Death have been selected for the purpose of illustrating, more forcibly, the essential worthlessness of all the resources of Drug practice in the presence of serious disease, for the more serious the disease the more worthless does that practice appear. Were there any truth in Drug theories, exactly the reverse ought to be the case, and powerful drugs should exhibit their powerful curative effects just in proportion to the malignancy of the disease to be overcome. But the contrary is the invariable effect, and the more virulent the disease, and the more powerfully "heroic" the remedies employed, the more certain is death. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, for surely as Dr. Wendell Holmes observes, "the presumption always is, that every noxious agent, including medicines proper, which hurts a well man hurts a sick one." It only shows how wonderfully perverted the medical mind can become by educational training and professional habit-how insensible to the teachings of science and of experience, when a superstitious faith in Drug-poisons, based on a contrary presumption, still continues to be the recognised guide in medical practice.

Insanity-First introduction of the Bath in a Lunatic Asylum Its highly Salutary effects-Experience of Superintendents of Asylums in Ireland and England-The Culpable apathy of those entrusted with the treatment of the Insane.

"INSANITY," says Bingham, in his treatise on mental disease, "is an affliction as singular as it is terrible-a perfect Proteus, whose mysterious nature and infinite diversity of forms have made it from time immemorial the wonder of the multitude, the sport of the unfeeling, the gain of empyrics, and the opprobrium of medical science. Pitiable, indeed, has been the lot of insane persons through centuries of neglect and mismanagement. But a brighter day has risen. Diseases of the mind are become a subject of general interest. They have been carefully investigated by numbers of highly educated professional men in this and other countries, and found to be in their early stages as tractable as others, and in their more advanced state not hopeless."— Observations on the Religious Delusions of Insane Persons, p. 7.

Hydropathic applications in various forms had long been practised in the treatment of lunacy, but on the establishment of the Hot-air Bath by Dr. Barter, the attention of Dr. Power, Resident Medical Superintendent of the Cork District Lunatic Asylum, was happily directed to it, and he became convinced that it could be employed with beneficial effects. Having, as he tells us, reflected deeply on the subject, for a considerable period, he concluded to recommend the Board of Governors to introduce the Bath, which, "after much discussion and opposition," they finally consented to do. At their solicitation Dr. Barter under.

took to superintend its erection, and in February, 1861, it was opened for the reception of patients.

The first Bath was administered to seventeen patients under the personal direction of Dr. Barter, who in one of his published lectures thus refers to the circumstance:

"At the first bath I gave at the lunatic asylum in Cork there were seventeen lunatics. When they were in and seated on the bench they then came to tell me all their diseases. In a short time they began to perspire, and it is a remarkable fact that you can recognise a lunatic by the peculiar smell from his person, and, except in cases of organic disease, it is that impurity going to the brain that makes him mad. It is the diseased condition of the blood acting on the brain, something in the way that whisky does, which causes those morbid ideas in which lunacy consists to emanate from the individual, and accordingly it will be found that no remedy exists for cases of lunacy at all comparable to the bath, owing to its purifying action on the blood. I asked the seventeen what brought them to the asylum. Their answer was very significant. Two-thirds of the number said it was whisky and porter, and the remaining third told me it was mercury.

It

"I then came to one man, and questioned him. He told me nothing about himself, but he said, 'I think this bath is good for every body.' I noticed that he was very intent on rubbing down his arm, and he was smelling it, and licking it too. Standing up again, he cried, 'I say this bath is good for every boly.' Another one of them said, 'I say it is not.' I asked him why he said it was not good for every body. He said, ‘I am a tailor, and if we were here always we would not want any clothes.' I asked the other man why he said it was good for every body. Now, attend to the answer, for it is worth a thousand lectures of mine. He said, 'When I was working in the fields my sweat rolled down from me like water. had no nasty smell, nor disagreeable taste. Now sir,' said he, 'my perspiration is thick and nasty, like oil. It has a bad smell, and a worse taste. When the cook puts a pot on the fire, with a piece of meat or vegetable to boil, doesn't the fire throw the impurities to the top, and doesn't she take a spoon and skim them off?' I asked him, 'How long have you been here?' He said, 'Nine years.' I then further learned that he was what was called a taciturn lunatic, and that for six years previously he had not interchanged a single word with his fellow-men. His case was considered incurable, but after the fourth bath he was discharged as cured. He has remained out of the asylum since, a comfort to society, and to his fellow-men.

"I told the matter to Lord Carlisle, then Lord Lieutenant, and he directed the erection of a bath in Limerick, and directed his secretary to see about the erection of one at the Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum. I now speak it here publicly-though the reporters are present—that it is