ACCORDING to the report on coroners' inquests recently published under the direction of the Home Secretary in the Judicial Statistics, suicide is steadily on the increase in this country. The returns for 1876 have not yet been officially declared; but there can be little doubt that they will exceed those of 1875. From 1864 the number has regularly increased. In 1868 it was 408. During the four following years there was a slight declension, though the average was far above that of 1864. The last return reports 407 cases.

THE announcement of the recent death of Mrs. Nassau Senior will be received with much regret. She was intimately connected with the work of the Red Cross Society during the Franco-Prussian War, but it is chiefly as the first lady inspector of the Poor-law Board that she has come before the public. Her report on the subject of Workhouse Girls' Schools, which excited considerable attention at the time of its publication, some three years since, is an able record of a year of very arduous and delicate work, which was attended with practical good results of an unusual character.

WATER-CLOSETS IN CARLISLE.

FROM the interesting report of Mr. Robinson, sanitary inspector for Carlisle, we learn that in that city waterclosets are carrying the day against middens, for out of 760 middens in 1874 only 300 remain in 1877, and we are further told that in two years all offensive privies will be replaced by water-closets, and the old ashpits replaced with smaller ones and of less objectionable construction, and in enclosed yards and courts, be abolished altogether, and the ashes collected from the streets.' Doubtless this conversion is being carried on under a local act, but it is rather curious to observe that while one town makes war to the knife against water-closets another insists upon their introduction. Redditch and Carlisle should exchange notes and experiences.

CREMATION IN LONDON.

IT is a matter of reproach for so great a country as England, whose colonies are washed by every ocean, that the metropolis is not possessed of an establishment where our Indian visitors can have the rite of cremation performed upon the bodies of relatives who die whilst on a visit to this country. It might be forgiven to Italy that the remains of the Rajah of Kellapore had to be burnt in a very rude and unsatisfactory manner in Florence in 1873, for she has no Indian possessions. The comparison is all the more striking, too, now that Italy can boast of a crematorium in Milan. We are led to make these remarks, it having come to our notice that the Rajah Rampal Singh, now resident in London, has lost his wife, the Ranee, and, on applying to the chief promoters of cremation here as to the practicability of carrying out the rite in England, he was answered to the effect that it was at the present time im. possible, as no cremation apparatus existed in this country. The body will therefore remain, as many others we know of remain, in the grave or catacomb awaiting the erection of a proper temple for fire-burial.

THE EARLY LITERATURE OF HYGIENE. THE Academy tells us that Mr. Faulke Watling has made an interesting old-book discovery in the British Museum, namely, that the little sixteen-leaf anonymous 'boke for to lerne a man to be wyse in buylding of his house for the helth of (his) body and to holde quyetnes for the helth of his soule and body, etc. Imprynted by me, Robert Wyer, dwellynge at the sygne of St. Iohn Euangelyst,' etc., is, in fact, the first eight chapters of the well-known quaint old Doctor Andrew Boorde's racy 'Dyetary of Helth' of 1542, etc. Mr. Faulke Watling has drawn up an account of the little volume, with a copy of its additional verses and collations which will be printed at once by the Early English Text Society, and issued as a supplement to Mr. Furnivall's edition of Andrew Boorde.

A NEW WATER-SUPPLY FOR WIMBLEDON. THE Wimbledon local board have just completed the engineering and other works in connection with a new sewage farm for irrigation purposes, and are now engaged in the construction of a new cemetery immediately adjoining. In addition to these works, they are likewise taking steps to obtain a separate and distinct water-supply, independent of one of the metropolitan water companies, by which the parish is at present supplied. They are negotiating with an engineer who has laid plans before them, and as a preliminary proceeding they have just issued the following interrogatory communication to the ratepayers within the parish:-'The Wimbledon Local Board being anxious to obtain a constant supply of pure water, and at a cheap rate, for the use of the parish, have obtained from a civil engineer of large experience, a scheme for carrying out the same, which has met with the approval of the board. To assist them in completing their calculations, the board request you to make a return, on the form appended, of the amount paid by you to the water-company for the past year.'

RAILWAY PLATFORMS.

IT is a pretty constant practice among those who revel in statistical lore to reduce everything to the denomination of a percentage. Thus we are told, after all the disastrous railway accidents of last year, that really only one passenger to so many thousands who travelled by rail during that

period was killed. The question, however, which most interests the public is not so much the exact percentages of killed and wounded among railway travellers, as the means of averting such catastrophes in the future. Below different headings the fatal and non-fatal railway casualties of the year 1876 have been recently classified under official inspiration. It is not intended, however, here to dissect or to analyse the black catalogue itself, although it may be broadly stated that we cannot hold the railway authorities to be free from blame in respect of its enormous length. The official record in question asserts that such and such percentages of travellers perished by reason of 'their own recklessness and folly,' and then explains that so many were killed by 'falling between platforms and carriages.' Now let us pause and ask whether these latter sufferers ought not to come under a very different classification. Had the platforms and the footboards of the carriages been properly constructed and arranged, would not those lives in all probability have been saved? Was the 'recklessness and folly' theirs then, or that of those who contrived the stumbling-blocks and pitfalls which proved fatal to the unfortunate victims? The heading in this instance ought really to have been, Deaths from defective construction of platforms and footboards.' The varying heights of the one, and the noncontinuity of the other, as seen on many of our lines of railway, is simply disgraceful to the various companies to whom they pertain, and cannot fail to ensure the occurrence of future accidents.' These points, and others of a cognate character, are entirely under control, and those who neglect to regulate them properly incur responsibility of the gravest nature.

ADULTERATION IN BAVARIA.

It would seem that the adulteration of articles of food is sharply looked after by the police in Bavaria. Within the course of twelve months 39,816 analyses were undertaken at their instance. Among the articles analysed were 4,727 samples of bread, 9,310 of beer, 9,782 of milk, and 14,506 of meat. Legal proceedings were taken against 272 retail tradesmen, the greater number of whom were convicted and severely punished. This vigilance affords a striking contrast to a certain large East-end district, where the analyst reported that only two samples had been submitted to him for analysis during the year.

BACK DRAINAGE v. UNDER-HOUSE DRAINAGE.

The

THE question of back-drainage came under discussion at a recent meeting of the Camberwell vestry, when, as it will be seen from what follows, the vestry approved of back-drainage as compared with having drains under houses, when circumstances admit of the former system being carried out. The Sewers Committee had recommended that permission should be given to Mr. Bailey to drain some houses now being built by him in Lordship Lane, at the rear of the same, at his own expense. recommendation was opposed by Mr. Drayner, who moved as an amendment the construction of a sewer in the main road in front of these particular houses, and that Mr. Bayley should be requested to drain into the same. He observed that sooner or later a sewer would have to go along the front road, and it might as well be made now. Mr. Roy (a builder) said there was a splendid fall at the back of the houses in question, and there would be a 9 in. drain into the main sewer. As a sanitary matter he would not put a drain under a house if it could be kept outside. He could not understand any person advising the putting of a drain under a man's house when there was no necessity for it. Mr. Denny said the disadvantage of having drains under houses was too apparent to be lightly treated, and he for one would vote for a house being drained at the rear if it could be done without any corresponding disadvantage. The vestry confirmed the recommendation of the committee, sanctioning the back-drainage of the houses in question.

FRESH FRUIT.

AT a recent meeting of the Society of Arts, Mr. G. C. Bartley read a paper on The Cultivation of Common Fruits from an Economic and Social Point of View,' in which he made some valuable remarks on the hygienic importance of the consumption of fruit. He said that in all classes of society the absence of vegetable food in the shape of fruit was a serious calamity. For children it was not only a wholesome, but in certain seasons of the year a highly important form of nutriment. As a temperance question, fruit ought to be plentiful in hot weather, and for those engaged in manual labour an ample and cheap supply would be invaluable, and thousands would patronise the fruit stall rather than the publican's bar. The annual value of the imports of fruit was about 6,000,000l., and so profitable was the business, that extensive preparations were being made on the Continent for increased production and export, while at the present time about 40,000 acres was all that was set apart for the market gardens of this country, the products of which showed that a large amount of fruit might be raised on a comparatively small piece of land. In every direction in England there were small pieces of waste land, which it was possible to rescue for the cultivation of common fruit, and it only required to be gone into in a few villages to show how much was now lying useless. The railway embankments of England, now allowed to lie waste, represented about 200 square miles, some of which was admirably adapted for fruit culture; and, allowing only a third as suitable, it would be sufficient to double the area of the present gardens. Villagers, again, might be encouraged to grow fruit in their gardens,

and lords of manors might make allotments of their waste land. As a matter of ornament there was no reason why fruit trees should not be grown in gardens, and if some persons in authority could be induced to plant them instead of forest trees a great deal of useful and wholesome diet would be the result. We now imported nearly 2,000, cool. worth of apples, and other hardy fruits, and there was no reason why a great deal, if not all of this, should not be grown in this country. Thus wholesome fresh fruit would become so plentiful that it would soon cease to be a luxury, but a common, though always a pleasant, article of food.

HYDRANTS v. FIRE-ENGINES.

SOME very useful information was given a short time since by Mr. Edwin Chadwick, C. B., before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to consider the condition and working of the Metropolitan Fire

neces

Brigade. He had gone very completely into the working of the system in Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool. satisfactory in the highest degree; they had constant The general result of the inquiry as to these towns was supplies of water, and a constant supply was sary. Water was supplied by the local authorities, with high pressure, and with enormous economy of water. It would also be of great advantage to have hydrants laid up to the doors. In Paris and Hamburg the authorities were bringing hydrants almost to the doors of the houses. The cost of these hydrants did not constitute an insurmountable obstacle to the adoption of such a system, and by the saving of water, by economising the staff, and by unity of action the rate-payers of the metropolis would not have cast upon them such a pecuniary burden as had been alleged. Enormous economy might be effected by washing the streets by jets of water. Constant low pressure might be advisable, and hydrants might then be If the whole of London were protected by hydrants at an average distance of 50 yards that would be a sufficient protection, and it would be very economical, taking the present state of things into account.

put down.

Mr. Chadwick further observed that at Manchester they extinguished 70 per cent. of the fires by the quick application of water as compared with the cases where they would have had to wait for the arrival of the engines. In Manchester the police had a reward when a fire was put out rapidly. The force in Manchester had moreover been reduced one-third, and in Liverpool, he believed, the reduction was in still greater proportion. If a closer communication likewise could be established between the fire brigade and the police, Glasgow, the result would be that in London the done in inhabitants would have the advantage of 4,000 men patrolling the streets at night. In part of the metropolitan district the police assisted in the extinction of fires with satisfactory results. By this union the working of the telegraphic system might be much improved, as had been shown in America.

as

was

We understand Mr. Chadwick considers that a million of money is very far in excess of what would require to be spent in order to carry out a complete system of fire hydrants for the metropolis, and here he differs from the Metropolitan Board of Works. It is certainly a pity that so many years' examination of this question has up to the hydrants here and there for street-watering purposes. present resulted in nothing beyond the erection of a few

A MECHANICAL COAL-GETTER. DYNAMITE, tonite, gun-cotton, cotton gunpowder, and other explosives are fast superseding the old blasting-powder' so long used in the coal-pits, metalliferous mines, and quarries of this country, and no doubt the change is in all ways one for the better. Nevertheless, the employment of explosive substances of any kind must ever be attended by a certain amount of risk, and especially so in collieries and confined spaces. The careless use of powder' has indeed been responsible for very many of the fatal casualties which

have happened of late years in the coal-pits of the Wigan district, and a knowledge of this fact has led to attempts being made for the banishment of all explosives from the process of coal-getting in that neighbourhood. Perhaps the most effective contrivance yet devised for the winning of coal from its natural bed, without incurring the danger of blasting, is one recently introduced by Messrs. Dingley and Ackers, of Lower Ince. The apparatus is of a portable description, and comprises a hand drilling-machine, for boring deep holes into the coal, together with an arrangement for subsequently undercutting and dislodging large masses of the latter. The framework of the drillingmachine is provided with screws for securing it at any desired point between the floor and the roof of a pit. Toothed wheels are carried on the framing, and a handle is attached to one of the wheels, so as to cause them to rotate, and to impart a rotary motion to the drilling bar. The drilling bar in its turn carries a steel cutting tool, which is fed' forward by means of an adjusting screw. When holes have been thus drilled into the coal seams, expanding tools are introduced, and by pressure of a lever and screw they are made to open out forcibly at the bottom of the bore-holes, and thus to break down, or break out, the coal with much more ease than would be accomplished with miners' 'picks,' and in far larger quantities within a a given time. We understand that the mechanical coalgetter is becoming popular among the pitmen, and certainly it appears to us to be well calculated for saving their lives and filling their pockets. The recent fatal casualty at Tyldesly, by which five colliers were killed, would not have happened had the mechanical coal-getter been there in use, for the disaster is clearly traceable to 'powder.'

THE MARCH OF CIVILISATION. SOME forms of barbarism persist unreasonably amidst the great refinements of comfort in which modern civilisa

tion abounds. Not the least of these is the still surviving

habit of inflicting on men, women, and children nauseous pills, potions, and draughts for ordinary aperient purposes. Many still remember with a shudder the frequent penance of doses of Epsom salts, castor oil, aloes, pills, and other horrors of the medicine chest. Their use has altogether died out in Germany and France, and is disappearing more slowly in English-speaking countries. Professor Silver, M.D., Physician and Lecturer on Medicine at Charing Cross Hospital, sums up recent progress by observing that 'the Hunyadi Janos aperient water is as great an improvement on all other waters of the kind as they were on Epsom salts.' In proof of this, the experience and testimony of all the great European names in medicine may be cited. In Germany the illustrious Liebig describes it as 'the richest in aperient salts:' and Virchow as the most prompt and

valuable.' Baron Scanzoni, the great European authority on treatment of women and children, says: 'I use now no other aperient than this; it is far superior to all others.' This verdict is endorsed by the great American practitioners in the treatment of women and children, Marion Sims and Fordyce Barker. The authors of the three great modern text-books of medicine in England, Professors Aitken, F.R.S., T. L. Brunton, F.R.S. (St. Bartholomew's), and Roberts (University College Hospital), describe it as 'most palatable and efficient,' 'preferred to Friedrichshall and Pullna,' and entitled to universal use as an ordinary aperient in biliousness, constipation, indigestion, headache, and all the forms of disease and disorder of the system, in which it is desirable to promote mild, prompt and efficient aperient action. A wine-glass full in the morning makes a palatable dose, which requires no preparation, produces no disturbance, and requires no change in the daily habits. Already some hundreds of thousands of bottles are sold in England alone; it is not difficult to predict that when its superiority over all others is universally recognised, its sale will extend to millions, for it must find a place in every household on both sides of the Atlantic.

VACCINATION AMENDMENT (IRELAND) BILL.

THE following resolution was passed on the 24th ult., by the Board of Trinity College, Dublin :-'Resolved, That the Provost and Senior Fellows approve of the principle of the Bill for amending the Acts relating to Vaccination in Ireland, and consider it deserving of the support of her Majesty's Government. (Signed) SAMUEL HAUGHTON, Medical Registrar. March 28, 1877.'

COOKERY FOR SCHOOL GIRLS.

THE Cooks' Company have completed arrangements with the National Training School of Cookery, by which twelve girls of the City Ward Schools (for which a special class has been formed) will have an elementary education in simple cooking and general domestic economy. The schools of Aldersgate, Bridge, and Cornhill Wards have been selected, and each will send four pupils; and should the idea prove successful, and the company's funds permit, the grant may be repeated. One of the members of the court of the Cooks' Company has offered a prize for proficiency and good conduct.

Special Reports.

MODERATE DRINKING.

ON the 7th ult. a special public meeting of the National Temperance League was held in Exeter Hall, to discuss the subject of moderate drinking. Sir Henry Thompson, F.R.C.S., presided, and said they were met together that evening because they believed there was a great deal of erroneous opinion current in society as to the use of alcoholic liquor in dietary, and to declare to what extent it was desirable to have alcoholic liquor at all. Raised a few years ago, such a question would have created, and did create, the greatest opposition, but now the attitude of the public was very largely changed, and they no longer found hosts expecting their guests to get drunk at their tables. They had nothing that night to say to drunkards or to people who sometimes got the worse for liquor without getting drunk, nor to the people who drank good wine daily, appreciating its bouquet and flavour; for as to the former, the case was already settled, while the latter admitted that by their daily consumption of wine they shortened their lives. Their controversy was with the great mass of people who believed that alcoholic liquors were good and necessary articles of diet, and to convince them two arguments must be employed. The first must be the physiological one, and as to that he should maintain that alcohol was of a certain value under certain very exceptional circumstances. When a man had lost his nervous pluck, when the nervous system, and not the muscular one, had come to grief, then a stimulant was useful. By giving alcohol when a man had lost all desire to live, he had saved life, and he would ask them not to talk nonsense about putting anything out of their reach if they could ever do any good with it. But that made his argument all the stronger that this alcohol should not be taken daily by healthy people. His second argument was based on experience, but he must remind them that alcohol varied enormously in its effects, and that they could not dogmatise and lay down absolute rules on the subject. The people who could not stand alcohol were the brain-workers, a daily increasing class, whose nervous systems were more susceptible and irritable than those of their

forefathers. He often had the old men, hard drinkers, who lived to seventy or eighty used against him in argument, but they were told nothing of the thousands of men who had gone down, and nothing of the different position of men in those days and these. Those who envied the habits of living and the drinking customs of old he would advise to go and live as they did, if they could.

Dr. Richardson, who was very warmly received, said moderate drinking was the moral mainspring of all the drunkenness and all the crime in the world. Defining alcohol as the devil in solution, he maintained that it did not warm the body, did not give muscular power, increased the action of the heart but weakened its strength, built up no tissue except useless fat, and was of no good whatever. By experiment on himself he found that he could do more work, more varied work, and never worked with such facility, or with such a sense of freedom from anxiety, as when abstaining. Observing that the difficulty of dealing with moderate drinking was that nobody could agree what it was, he proceeded to point out the effects of what certainly must be considered moderate drinking. A. drank daily a pint of mild liquor, half-pint of wine, and one or two glasses of whisky at bedtime; this was equal to six ounces of alcohol, made the heart beat 30,000 times faster in the day, and was equal to raising nineteen tons a foot. B. took a pint of cooper, one brandy-and-soda, and a pint of claret, equal to four ounces of alcohol, to 12,000 extra beats, and to fourteen foot-tons. C. drank two glasses of port or sherry, and a pint of claret, which was equal to three ounces of alcohol, to 10,000 extra beats, or to nine foot-tons. From such figures they might judge of the harm done to the heart by the use of alcoholic liquors. From the amoeba floating unperceived in liquid up to the highest type of animal, Nature built up the constitution of each with water alone, and on this fact Dr. Richardson based a telling appeal to his audience in favour of total abstinence.

Vice-Admiral Sir B. James Sullivan gave several remarkable instances of the value of total abstinence in Arctic expeditions.

A vote of thanks to the chairman closed the proceedings.

COST OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

AT the meeting of the Statistical Society last week, Captain Craigie read a paper on The Cost of English Local Government.' After pointing out the deficiencies in the returns of local finance, the recent improvements, and the points on which information was still wanting, he showed that while the cost of local government in 1868 stood at 30,237,000l., of which pauperism cost 7,419,000l., or 24 per cent., it had risen in 1874-75 to 41,877,000l. The cost of pauperism alone showed a decrease since 1868 of 738,000l., or nearly 10 per cent.; every other head of expenditure had risen to a net increase of total outlay of 11,640,000l., or 38 per cent. The largest share of this increase was due to the 'so-called' sanitary expenditure of provincial towns, which now spent 7,646,000l. more than they did seven years ago. The local debt was 94,000,000l. at the present time. The great diversity in the objects of local government precluded reliable comparisons between districts. In Birmingham only il. 14s. 5d. seemed to be spent, against 57. 4s. in Manchester. Five great towns, viz., London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, containing one-fifth of the

population of England, account for about one-third of the local expenditure of the country and owe onehalf of the debt. A glance at the geographical distribution of local expenditure inclined to the belief that the denser and more wealthy areas had less pauperism and more crime to pay for than country districts, and that in populous counties a local outlay of 10s. 6d. per head on these two heads was divided into 6s. 3d. for poor relief and 4s. 3d. for crime repression, while in rural counties, out of 10s. 3d. regularly paid, pauperism claimed 8s. Id., and crime only 2s. 2d. The cost, however, of poorrelief in the metropolitan area was as large as that of the whole six northern counties of England, with a population nearly twice as great as London. Captain Craigie also dealt with the complex organisation and vast number of local authorities, showing that 12,336 such bodies existed. He noticed the large number of paid officials required by these varied governments, annually receiving 2,400,000. in salaries. In conclusion he urged the need of more uniform and complete statistics, a better system of local finance, and a regular official audit in all cases, and enforced the advantages which might be derived by consolidating local governments, concentrating local functions, and establishing powerful provincial authorities in county areas, which should strengthen local institutions, and introduce greater economy, efficiency, and uniformity into our local systems.-A discussion followed the reading of the paper, in which many fellows and visitors took part.

THE ARTISANS AND LABOURERS' DWELLINGS IMPROVEMENT ACT.

MR. CUBITT NICHOLS held a public inquiry, on the 14th ult., in connection with the Goulston Street and Flower and Dean Street, Whitechapel, improvement scheme. Mr. Cubitt Nichols conducted the inquiry by authority of the Home Secretary, the purpose being to inquire into the correctness of the official representations made to the Metropolitan Board of Works by the medical officer of health of the board of works of the Whitechapel district, as to the areas to which the inquiry relates being unhealthy areas, into the sufficiency of the scheme provided for their improvement, and into any local objections which may be made to the scheme. Mr. Grantham, Q.C., and Mr. Prior Goldney appeared for the Metropolitan Board of Works. Dr. Liddle, the medical officer, testified that he considered it essential for sanitary purposes that property in the neighbourhood of Middlesex Street should be taken. Some of the houses were of a good description, but there were others which were not. In the district in question the ventilation was insufficient, which showed its effect on the inhabitants by their general paleness, and the difference of their appearance from those who live in open places. There were also prevalent diseases showing a low condition of health, and the death-rate was very high. Mr. Sequierra, surgeon, thought that these localities were unhealthy, and that the scheme proposed was desirable to make it healthy. There was an excessive amount of preventable disease, owing to the closeness and general unhealthiness of the area. He thought it most important that the streets should be widened. The death-rate was considerably above the proper average, though it was difficult to get correct statistics, owing to the number of people who died in hospitals and workhouses, but it seemed in