Chapter II: Part 2

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.—5_s._), 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.

Since SCIENCE has thoroughly gained the upper hand over Religious and
other prejudices, the position of women, we are happy to say, has been
steadily sinking, and the dream of a Higher Education has been
replaced by the abolition of even Elementary Schools for girls, and
now by the final Act of last Session, which renders it penal for any
woman to read a hook or newspaper, or to write a letter. We anticipate
the very happiest results from this thoroughly sound and manly
legislation.

The last sanitary event to which we need at present advert is the new
law by which, on the certificate of any single Medical Graduate that a
person is Insane, the police will be called on immediately to arrest
and consign him to such mad-house as the Medical graduate shall
appoint. The magistrate by whose order the arrest is made is left no
option as to obeying the Medical graduate’s certificate, and we are
glad also to see that, by another clause in the Act, the only
remaining difficulty connected with these Asylums has been removed.
None but a Medical graduate, responsible only to the great Medical
Trades Union Council, is henceforth eligible to the office of
Inspector of any Lunatic Asylum throughout the kingdom, nor can any
Justice of the Peace grant an order for admittance or search, except
to such a graduate. These wise and reasonable regulations will afford
much satisfaction to the Medical gentlemen who have undertaken the
arduous but not unprofitable profession of managers and proprietors of
Lunatic Asylums.

* * * * *

Our prognostics of last New Year’s Day have been amply justified by
the Summary of Crime for the past twelvemonth, which has just been
published, according to the excellent recent appointment of the
Registrar General of Offences. Crimes of the lesser class, such as
murders, poisonings, electroding and exploding, have indeed increased
considerably in number, and perhaps also in the degree of recklessness
and violence exhibited by the offenders; but on the other hand, as we
prophesied, those crimes which involve so much larger evils to the
community—the detestable Homœopathic and Hydropathic heresies,
Infidelity respecting the sacred doctrine of Evolution, neglect of
Schooling, and neglect of Equination, Vaccination, Canination, and
Porcination, have dwindled under the severe measures of punishment
which we urged for so long on a too lax legislature, but which have at
last been thoroughly enforced. We may really hope to see a few years
hence the Reign of SCIENCE so complete that no man, woman, or child in
the land will presume to whisper a doubt on any subject on which the
Sanitary Office has pronounced, or attempt to evade the seasons
appointed by authority for receiving the Rites above mentioned. The
Act passed at the end of the last century, whereby certificates of
Vaccination were substituted for all legal purposes for Baptismal
certificates, was the first step towards the happy order of things
under which we now have the privilege to dwell.

Lest our readers should feel a not wholly unnatural anxiety, founded
on the admitted increase of the lesser crimes to which we have
adverted, we wish to remind them that such an occurrence was
inevitable on the final collapse of Religion, and that we must be
content to wait till Science shall have had time to substitute some
more effectual checks on human passions than it has yet been in our
power to apply. It is too obvious to need remark that since men have
learned that Death is the end of their existence, they must be
expected to seize more hastily and resolutely every pleasure which
life may offer, nay, that it would be absurd and unscientific to
expect them to do otherwise. Let us do justice to the old effete
superstition, and admit that the delusive notion that an invisible
Being watched human actions, loved good men, and would punish bad ones
in another world, if not in the present, was calculated to exercise
considerable influence of a beneficial sort on ordinary minds. Certain
types of character (not now, of course, to be found in the world) seem
to have flourished under the fictitious charm of these antique
ideas—characters exhibiting a certain courage and unselfishness, of
which it is scarcely possible to read without some little regret that
they are not conformable with sounder philosophic views of the nature
and destiny of man. People had, we must remember, in former days, four
distinct motives for doing good instead of evil. First, they believed
in an omnipotent Lord and Master whom they called “God.” 2nd, they
believed in a sacred internal Guide whom they called Conscience; and
3rd, they believed in a peculiar principle of action which they called
Honour. After all these came the Criminal Law, ready to punish those
who neglected what were deemed to be loftier motives. Now we, in this
glorious _Age of Science_, must remember that of all these four
incentives to virtue only one remains. We know there is no God, or, at
least, that, if there be, he is Unknown and Unknowable; and we are
persuaded that Conscience is merely the inherited prejudice of our
barbarous ancestors in favour of the class of actions which were found
conducive to the welfare of the tribe. As to the Law of Honour, men
had already begun to forget what it signified a hundred years ago,
when the Age of SCIENCE was just dawning, for we find at that epoch a
writer of considerable pretensions, in a periodical called the
_Fortnightly Review_, actually asserting that its standard “is
submission not to Law but to Opinion ... deference to the opinion of a
particular class.” Up to that period we think it was universally
understood by “honourable” persons to signify, quite on the contrary,
Reverence for an inward standard of rectitude, truth, and generosity;
for a man’s own private sense of Honour and self-respect, which he
would not forfeit to gain the applause of a world. In our time, of
course, it is needless to say that all these fine ideal sentiments
have gone utterly out of vogue, and, having left them behind us, we
have only the Criminal Law on which to rely for the protection of life
and property. It is needless to repeat that the delusive exhortations
of some amiable but short-sighted philosophers of the last century to
“labour for the good of Humanity in future generations” (a motive
which they supposed would prove a substitute for the old Historic
Religions) have been once and for all answered by the grand discovery
of the Astronomers that our planet cannot long remain the habitation
of man (even if it escape any sidereal explosion) since the Solar heat
is undergoing such rapid exhaustion. When the day comes—as come it
must—when the fruits of the earth perish one by one, when the dead and
silent woods petrify, and all the races of animals become extinct—when
the icy seas flow no longer, and the pallid Sun shines dimly over the
frozen world, locked like the Moon in eternal frost and
lifelessness—what, in that day predicted so surely by Science, will
avail all the works, and hopes, and martyrdoms of man? All the stores
of knowledge which we shall have accumulated will be for ever lost.
Our discoveries, whereby we have become the lords of creation and
wielded the great forces of Nature, will be useless and forgotten. The
virtues which have been perfected, the genius which has glorified, the
love which has blessed the human race, will all perish along with it.
Our libraries of books, our galleries of pictures, our fleets, our
railroads, our vast and busy cities, will be desolate and useless for
evermore. No intelligent eye will ever behold them; and no mind in the
universe will know or remember that there ever existed such a being as
Man. _This_ is what SCIENCE teaches us unerringly to expect,—and in
view of it, who shall talk to us of “labouring for the sake of
Humanity”? The enthusiasm which could work disinterestedly for a
Progress destined inevitably to end in an eternal Glacial Period must
be recognised as a dream, wherein no man in a Scientific Age can long
indulge.

There is, then, but one Method on which we can rely to repress human
passions and hold together the somewhat brittle chain of Society. That
method is the Scientific Treatment of Crime, under such conditions as
careful investigation and experiments may prove to be best suited to
effect its cure. We can hold out no supersensual motives to the
_Minds_ of the multitude, but we can treat their _Bodies_ in the very
best manner possible to render them virtuous and industrious citizens.
It is true that as yet the results of our efforts in this direction
have not been very satisfactory. The salutary processes employed in
the Penal Hospitals under the most eminent physicians have not been
altogether crowned with success; and crime of the violent kind
increases year by year almost in geometrical proportion. Nevertheless,
it would ill become any of us who have the privilege to live in this
enlightened age to entertain a shadow of a doubt that our Scientific
method is the right one, and that by-and-by (while we respectfully
wait the results of their experiments) our great Medical men will
discover the proper remedies for murder, rape, and robbery. For our
own part, it is superfluous to assure our readers, we retain
unwavering, unbounded faith in the resources of SCIENCE to provide a
perfect substitute for Religion, for Conscience, and for Honour.

J. OGDEN AND CO., PRINTERS, 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.