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Title: The age of science

Subtitle: A newspaper of the twentieth century

Author: Merlin Nostradamus

Release Date: October 31, 2020 [EBook #63581]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF SCIENCE ***




                          THE AGE OF SCIENCE.
                _A NEWSPAPER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY._


                                   BY
                          MERLIN NOSTRADAMUS.

              “Forerun thy time, thy peers, and let
              Thy feet, milleniums hence, be set
              In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet:

                     ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

              Thou hast not gained a real height,
              Nor art thou nearer to the light.”
                                            _Two Voices._

[Illustration]

                               _LONDON_:
                         WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER,
                    WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW.




                                LONDON:
                      PRINTED BY J. OGDEN AND CO.,
                       172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C.




                           THE AGE OF SCIENCE


The greatest discovery ever achieved by man is beyond all question that
which it is now our privilege to announce, namely, that of the new
PROSPECTIVE TELEGRAPH. By this truly wonderful invention (exquisitely
simple in its machinery, yet of surpassing power) the obstacle of _Time_
is as effectually conquered as that of _Space_ has been for the last
generation by the Electric Telegraph; and future years—even, it is
anticipated, future centuries—will be made to respond to our call as
promptly and completely as do now the uttermost parts of the earth
wherewith the magic wire has placed us in communication.

For obvious reasons the particulars of this most marvellous invention,
and the name of its author, must be withheld from the public till the
patents be made out, and the enormous profits which must accrue from its
application be secured to the Company which is invited to undertake to
work it (with limited liability). We are only permitted by special
favour to hint that the natural Force relied on to set the machinery in
action is neither Electric, Magnetic, nor Galvanic; nor yet any
combination of these; but that other great correlated imponderable
agency, whose existence has been for some time suspected by many
intelligent inquirers, called the _Psychic Force_, whose laws of action
it has been reserved for this new and greater WHEATSTONE to develop and
apply to practical utility. That no scepticism may linger in the minds
of our readers, we desire to add that we have been gratified by the
actual inspection of several short fragments forestalled by this
invaluable process from the press of the next fifty, eighty, and one
hundred and thirty years respectively; and have at this moment in our
hands a complete transcript (the most important document of the series)
of a newspaper bearing date January 1st, 1977, photographed in a very
beautiful manner by the machine upon an enormous sheet of paper, which
was found needful to contain the type in the most compressed form. As
the printed matter of this gigantic periodical equals at least in bulk
the whole of Gibbon’s History, or Mr. Jowett’s edition of Plato, we
cannot attempt to do more than offer our readers a few brief extracts,
serving, however, we trust, as not inadequate samples of the literary
treasures which are shortly to be revealed to our curiosity, and
satisfying even the most incredulous that the invention of which we
speak has been crowned with triumphant success. We have only to add that
the great originator of this discovery entertains hopes that, by an
ingenious _inversion_ of the action of his machine, he may be able to
convert it, when required, into a RETROSPECTIVE TELEGRAPH, bringing back
the Past, as it already antedates the Future, and restoring to us all
the records of antiquity whose loss we have deplored, as, for example,
the Odes of Sappho, the missing Books of Livy, the Prometheus Unbound of
Æschylus, and the original MSS. of the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, and the
Pentateuch. The final completion of this latter discovery, however, is
scarcely perfected, and we shall not therefore pause to describe its
probable value, but proceed without further delay to put our readers in
possession of all the details for which we can find space concerning the
Newspaper of 1977, which has been very sagaciously selected by the
inventor as the first fruits of the working of his Prospective Machine.

The name of this journal (which, we conclude, may be considered as the
_Times_ of the twentieth century) is

                          THE AGE OF SCIENCE,

and obviously refers with pride to the consciousness of its readers that
they live in a period of the world’s history when Science reigns supreme
over human affairs, having achieved unimaginable triumphs, and
altogether superseded most of the pursuits of mankind in ruder ages,
such as War, the Chase, Literature, Art, and Religion. This appropriate
title is printed, we may remark, in the largest and clearest possible
Roman type, instead of in the Old English character now commonly used
for a similar purpose. No fount, indeed, which we have ever seen
employed, save in a few old Italian folio _éditions de luxe_, has type
so large and legible as that in which the whole newspaper is printed,
the greatest care apparently being taken to spare the eyes—or perhaps we
should say the spectacles—of the readers, since, judging from the
opticians’ advertisements of “Spectacles for Infants,” “Spectacles for
Elementary Schools by the gross,” and “Cautions to Mothers” against
allowing babies to use their eyes, it would appear that unassisted
vision had become rare, if not unknown. There are ten columns on each
page, each ten times as long as it is broad, and there are a hundred
pages in the journal, proving that the decimal system has been
thoroughly adopted even in such details. Spread out open, the _Age of
Science_ would cover the floor of a very large hall, and we apprehend
from certain marks that a convenient method of suspending it on pulleys
from the ceiling, must have superseded our clumsy practice of holding
our papers with extended arms.

Proceeding to peruse the intensely interesting contents of the _Age of
Science_, we first note that it is written in English differing from our
own chiefly by the use of a strange and, to our eyes, barbarous
orthography, (intended, we presume, to facilitate elementary education,)
and by the introduction of a vast number of technical terms of the class
we reserve for scientific treatises, but which are apparently brought
into use in everyday parlance. The familiarity of the contributors with
all gases, fluids, and substances of chemistry, all the bones of all the
beasts, birds, and fishes which live, or ever did live, on this planet,
and all the diseases incidental to humanity, speaks volumes for the
superiority of their scientific education over our own. At the same
time, on two or three occasions when illustrations have been chosen from
past History or Poetry, the writers betray that their studies have not
been much extended in the direction of Literature. One gentleman thinks
that Mr. GLADSTONE wrote the Iliad on hints afforded by Dr. Schliemann,
and that MILTON was the author of the Book of Genesis. Another refers to
the period when Rome was founded by ROMEO and JULIET, while a third
mentions the “once celebrated _Divina Commedia_ by MOLIERE,” and regrets
that “so curious a specimen of archaic Japanese art as Titian’s
‘Assumption’ should not have been spared from the pile in which the
‘Transfiguration’ of _Phidias_ and the ‘Last Supper’ of _Praxiteles_
were so judiciously destroyed by order of the Committee of the Royal
Academy, to put a stop to the propagation of bad æsthetic taste.” For
the intelligence of our readers we shall be compelled to translate the
singular phraseology of the _Age of Science_ as nearly as possible into
familiar English, and our present spelling; and shall only quote a few
of the Leading Articles, touching on specially interesting topics, out
of the twenty-five which the vast newspaper publishes as its daily
contribution.

The arrangement of the _Age of Science_ is a little different from and
more logical than that of our journals. The first page is rationally
devoted to TELEGRAPHIC INTELLIGENCE, which everyone may be supposed to
desire first to read. Instead of political news, however, or records of
battles, deaths of eminent personages, floods, storms, or fires, these
telegrams consist exclusively of minute verbatim reports of the
proceedings of above ninety Scientific Congresses, which seem to be
taking place at the same time in Europe, Asia, America, Australia, and
even in one instance (a Geographical Meeting) in Africa, on the shore of
Lake Albert Nyanza. The various sections of the British Association have
been obviously long broken up, and again divided and subdivided till
separate congresses have been found desirable for each department.

It would occupy more space than the whole of this volume to offer even
the briefest condensation of these Reports, as the discussions and
papers of the learned members of the different congresses are carried on
chiefly in terms quite unintelligible to us, and refer to scientific
disputes to which we do not possess a clue. We must pass over these
columns of the _Age of Science_, and proceed to the next department,
which is a Report of the ASSEMBLY OF CONVOCATION—a topic which we were
surprised to find possessed such prominent interest, till we discovered
that the Convocation of 1977 will consist exclusively of Medical men.
The Upper House seems to be formed of Physicians and Surgeons who have
obtained titles of Nobility, and take rank according to the dioceses
over which they exercise medical supervision, and the Lower House to be
a representative body elected by medical graduates throughout the
kingdom.

The meetings for the Province of Canterbury take place respectively in
Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, and in the nave of Westminster Abbey;
Jerusalem Chamber and the Board Room of the Bounty Office having
probably proved inconveniently small, and the whole Abbey (as we learn
accidentally from a paragraph in another part of the paper) having been
“set aside, since the Dissolution of the Churches, for the use of the
Medical Profession, and for anatomical and physiological lectures and
craniological researches, for which latter purpose the vaults beneath
offer peculiarly interesting specimens.”

The Report runs as follows:—


                       _PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY._

                              UPPER HOUSE.

               SESSION CCXLI.—Monday, January 1st, 1977.

  The House assembled at eleven o’clock in Henry VII.’s Chapel, pursuant
  to the order of prorogation. His Grace the Lord Archphysician of
  Canterbury presided. There were also present the Right Rev. Lord
  Doctors of Winchester, London, Oxford, Ely, Salisbury, Exeter,
  Lincoln, and Peterborough. After the presentation of sixty-four
  Petitions, a Report was received from the Venerable Congregation of
  the Index, which was approved and ordered to lie on the table. Among
  the works whose perusal will henceforth be prohibited to the laity
  will be found all Medical Guides and Treatises on Domestic Medicine,
  Household Surgery, and the like, which have pretended to direct the
  multitude how to cure or prevent disease without the aid of a
  physician. As the Lord Doctor of Lincoln judiciously observed, “the
  heresy involved was precisely analogous to that of the old religious
  sect of Protestants, who taught the ignorant laity that they might
  save their souls without applying to a priest. Doctors,” his lordship
  added, “were the appointed Ministers of the Body, and the man who
  imagined his health could be saved without them would find out his
  error when it was too late.”


                              LOWER HOUSE.

  The Doctors, Archdoctors, and Pro-Apothecaries constituting the Lower
  House of Convocation assembled in the Nave of Westminster Abbey at 11
  o’clock. The Very Eminent Cyrup Camomile, M.D., Archdoctor of
  Cheltenham, Prolocutor, presided.

  The Prolocutor having bowed to the busts of Hippocrates, Galen, and
  Harvey (a ceremony which has been substituted for the old form of
  prayers), præconization was taken by the actuary of the names of
  members; assessors were appointed, and a multitude of petitions
  presented. The Schedules of Gravamina and Reformanda were then called
  for. Among the former the most important (which was sent up at once to
  the Upper House as an _Articulus Medici_) was the gravamen of the
  Archapothecary of Sarum, which set forth that, contrary the interests
  of the profession and ordinary usage, a Coroner had been recently
  elected for the county of Dorset who was not a Medical Man. Another
  gravamen referred to the inadequacy of the fees to be legally claimed
  by Doctors for granting Certificates of Birth, Vaccination,
  Equination, Porcination, Sanitary Fitness for Factory or other
  labours, Fitness for Marriage, and, finally, the most important
  Certificates of having died under due Medical care and supervision,
  and being consequently admissible for Cremation.

  Members were then called upon to give notice of motions, and
  discussions followed on those of Sir William Puffin—

  That Convocation should remonstrate with Her Majesty’s Ministers for
  the laxity wherewith the laws relating to Medical Heretics are
  enforced.

  Of Sir Andrew Scrivener—

  That Convocation should desire Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for
  Home Affairs to introduce immediately into Parliament a Bill
  prohibiting Dinner Parties, exceeding seven persons in number, to be
  held without the presence of a qualified Physician or Surgeon.

  Of Dr. Aqua Fortis—

  That a Bill should be likewise required, compelling Railway and
  Steamboat Companies to employ, at suitable salaries, a staff of
  properly qualified Surgeons, one of whom at least should travel by
  every train and on every steamboat.

  And of Dr. Scurvydrop—

  That a Deputation from Convocation should wait on the Lords of the
  Admiralty to remonstrate on the subordinate position allotted to
  Surgeons on board Her Majesty’s Ships, and to demand that the Medical
  Officer should at all times (except when the immediate conduct of the
  ship is in question) takes precedence of the Captain as Commander.

  A similar motion was made by Dr. Turniquet for a deputation to the
  Horse Guards on behalf of the Army Surgeons, and was, like all the
  preceding motions, adopted unanimously.

The Report concludes with the observation—

  As Parliament does not meet for another week, there must be a delay of
  a few days before the recommendations of Convocation are carried into
  effect, but it is unnecessary to remark that they will be adopted
  unchallenged by the Legislature. Since the solemn Protest, carried by
  the 50,000 doctors, who marched down Whitehall in procession, “against
  the Interference of the Secular Power in Things Medical,” no Minister
  of the Crown, much less any private member, has attempted to move an
  Amendment to any of the numerous Bills presented by the profession.

After the Report of Convocation, the _Age of Science_ contains one
column of STOCKS AND SHARES, not possessing any special interest for
readers of the present day, but appearing to prove, strangely enough,
that investments are much fewer than in our time, and cannot be made in
any Foreign securities. After these, in lieu both of NAVAL AND MILITARY
INTELLIGENCE, and of the CHURCH, five columns are devoted to MEDICAL
APPOINTMENTS AND PROMOTIONS, and to a considerable correspondence on the
proposed endowment of two new Physicianships (with seats in the House of
Lords) at St. Albans and Truro. After all these we find twenty columns
devoted to LATEST INTELLIGENCE, in short paragraphs, of which we cull a
few of the most interesting.


                          _OCCASIONAL NOTES._

  The magnificent Joss House now in process of erection by the Chinese
  of London forms a striking ornament to Regent Street, standing as it
  does on the site of the old deserted Langham Chapel. It will, we
  imagine, be the only place dedicated to religious purposes which has
  been built during the last twenty years in the metropolis, and almost
  the only one in actual use. Although we cannot, of course, ourselves,
  as a Scientific nation, formally join in the worship of Buddha, we
  must all regard with sympathy and satisfaction the honours paid to
  that great Teacher by the very important section of our community, the
  Chinese day labourers and domestic servants, of whom it is said more
  than half a million have contributed to the erection and adornment of
  this Temple. Considering the impossibility of inducing Englishmen to
  undertake in these days the lower kinds of work, we should come
  altogether to a standstill were it not for the tens of thousands of
  industrious Chinese who have replenished our labour market. The statue
  of Buddha is a noble work of modern sculpture by Mr. Merino. The
  traditional pose of the crossed legs is slightly altered to bring them
  within the rules of scientific anatomy, and the Sage is obviously
  pondering those profound lessons of Pessimism (that it is a bad world
  we live in, and that we need not expect a better) which have justly
  secured for him the reverence of cultivated Europe.

                  *       *       *       *       *

  An accident of the ordinary sort occurred last night to the new
  Magnetic train, which was at the moment passing under the Channel,
  about 10 miles from Dover. From messages sent by the portable electric
  machine along the wires the moment before the catastrophe took place,
  it would appear that the engineers have been again at fault in the
  construction of the roof of the tunnel, and that the sea was rushing
  in with such violence that little hopes were entertained of bringing
  the train to the next watertight compartment. The result justified
  these fears, for the whole compartment of the tunnel in which the
  train was stopped is to-day entirely full of water, and it must be
  assumed that the unfortunate passengers—numbering, it is supposed,
  about 800—have been drowned like so many rats in a trap. The accident
  is unfortunate for the proprietors of Submarine Tunnel Stock, and also
  for several Insurance Companies, as extensive repairs will be
  required; but Science teaches us to regard these occurrences with
  composure, as serving to check the increase of a superabundant
  population.

                  *       *       *       *       *

  The Simian Educational Institute (on Frobel’s system), for members of
  the Ape family, continues to attract the strongest interest. In
  testing the educability of the Simian tribe we are solving one of the
  most important problems of Science, and hitherto everything seems to
  promise the triumphant success of the experiment. There are now among
  the pupils at the Institute three Chimpanzees, whose grandfathers and
  grandmothers have all been well-educated monkeys; so that the set of
  the brain of these young people is already marked towards progress and
  civilization. It is needless to observe that all the students are
  required to wash and dress themselves every morning in the becoming
  male and female habiliments provided by the taste of the Governors of
  the Institute. Great pains are also taken with their manners at meal
  times, and, to avoid temptation, nuts are not admitted at dessert. One
  of the young gentlemen (Joseph Macacus Silenus, Esq., generally known
  by his intimates as “Joe”) is said to exhibit extraordinary talents,
  and to be able to answer any question in elementary science by means
  of an alphabet and a system of knocks, which (in view of the yet
  unconquerable speechlessness of monkeys) has been accepted as the best
  substitute for language, having been formerly invented by an ingenious
  race of impostors named Mediums, who flourished in the obscurity of
  the Victorian age. The plan adopted in France, in deference to the
  advice of the great French naturalist, M. Houzeau, to employ the
  anthropoid apes as domestic servants, has proved, we are informed,
  altogether successful in several families. Madame Le Singe, a fine
  specimen of the Gorilla tribe, has acted for some months as
  confidential Nurse in the family of a distinguished Member of the
  Institute (M. Gobemouche), and is said to maintain discipline among
  her charges excellently well. It is an instructive spectacle to see
  Madame Le Singe walking on a fine day with the children, and pushing a
  perambulator in the Gardens of the Tuileries. The more ordinary
  employment found, however, for domestic Apes is that of cooks, when it
  is observed they occasionally call in the services of the household
  cat to assist them as kitchenmaid, especially when roast chestnuts
  form part of the entertainment.

                  *       *       *       *       *

  The cheerful ceremony of opening the new “Incineration Hall” was
  performed an hour ago in Manchester by the Lord Doctor of Manchester,
  attended by the Mayor. It is a magnificent building, with a furnace
  capable of reducing 12 bodies at a time to ashes, which, after a
  certain period, will be used in the manufacture of water-filters for
  the drinking-fountains of the town. It is specially fortunate that the
  Hall can be employed at once, since the number of persons despatched
  by Euthanasia has been so great during the past week all over the
  country that the other Cremation establishments have proved inadequate
  to dispose of the corpses with sufficient rapidity.

                  *       *       *       *       *

  An important addition has been made to that instructive place of
  public amusement, the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park. The ground
  formerly occupied by a great Dissenting College (long in ruins) has
  been devoted to a department destined to contain those species of
  animals which are rapidly dying out in Europe, and which, if not thus
  carefully preserved, must soon be lost altogether to Zoological
  science. Among these are the Ass, the Fox, the Dog, the Hare, the
  Pheasant, and Partridge. In this age of Science it is, of course,
  impossible to go on employing a creature like the Donkey, proverbial
  for its intellectual deficiency, and we have no regret that only two
  pair of animals of the species (both in the Regent’s Park collection)
  now survive in England, though a few are said to linger in Egypt.
  Connected with the dog (_Canis Familiaris_) there are so many
  traditional records of sagacity, having a certain scientific interest
  in connection with the form and size of its brain, that we should have
  been glad if a more complete collection of the varieties could have
  been preserved. The Foxhound, however, the Greyhound, Setter, and
  Pointer, seem all to have become extinct within about thirty years of
  the repeal of the Game Laws and the consequent cessation of held
  sports; and several of the more favoured kinds of dogs—Italian
  Greyhounds, Toy Terriers, Pomeranians, and Poodles—were, it is said,
  privately destroyed by hundreds by their owners, who disgracefully
  sought to withdraw them from the researches of physiologists. The
  remaining kinds have been perhaps rather recklessly used by
  vivisectors, whose ardour in the noble cause of science has caused
  them to experiment, on an average, on about 14,000 dogs apiece (an
  example originally set by the sainted Maurizio Schiff), and the result
  has been that we only find at present twelve animals surviving, of
  whom nine belong to the class Mongrel. One noble old Newfoundland, who
  would have greatly graced the collection, was, it is said, drowned by
  his owner last year under interesting circumstances. The dog was much
  devoted to his master (a celebrated physiologist), and especially to
  his boy, a child of six years old. One day the little fellow fell out
  of a boat, and sank for the last time, when the dog arrived, and with
  immense difficulty (the water being very deep and stormy) dived for
  him and brought him safe to shore. The animal itself was so nearly
  exhausted that its stertorous breathing and other symptoms suggested
  to the physiologist the scientific interest which would attach to
  watching it slowly drowning in a suitable vessel, where all the
  conditions of that death could be accurately investigated on so large
  a scale as that of a full sized dog. The learned gentleman
  accordingly, in obedience to these fine and fleeting suggestions of
  the intellect, drowned the animal in a tub in his physiological
  laboratory as soon as his son was sufficiently recovered to witness
  the instructive and entertaining spectacle. The dog, when withdrawn
  half dead for a moment from the water, having attempted to lick the
  boy’s face, the child was weak enough to implore his father to spare
  it; but the learned gentleman of course pointed out to the boy the
  folly of such a request, and the experiment was completed. We trust to
  see this young gentleman hereafter as sound and eminent a physiologist
  as his distinguished father.

After some five columns more of similar _Intelligence_, the _Age of
Science_ proceeds to give its readers a few Reviews of Books. The
brevity of the remarks vouchsafed to these productions seems to indicate
that no great importance is attached to Literature properly so called,
but only to treatises on Physical Science.

The Notices run as follow:—


                               _REVIEWS._

  We do not usually in the _Age of Science_ intrude on the province of
  the sixteen leading daily Scientific Newspapers devoted to critical
  notices of the books which pour from the press on Electrology,
  Physiology, Astronomy, Geology, &c. We are tempted to depart from our
  rule, however, so far as to offer our meed of applause and
  congratulation on the publication of the last of the six splendid
  volumes forming the magnificent monograph on CHEESE-MITES, and the
  still more costly and exhaustive treatise on the great mystery of the
  FORMATION OF DUST IN DISUSED APARTMENTS. THE ANALYSIS OF THE DUST BIN,
  which constitutes Book VIII. of this noble work, is a triumph of
  scientific investigation and (to employ an obviously appropriate term)
  of industry. In the inferior non-scientific walks of Literature we
  find that no Histories have been published during the last
  twelvemonth, and only one _Historical Essay_, namely:—

  _The Fall of the Church of England._ By the late (and last) Dean of
  Westminster. The author of this book composed it, we are informed,
  during his retirement in the Isle of Anglesea, whither, like most of
  the clergy, and the Druids in former ages, he retreated after the
  great victory gained by Science, when the Cathedrals and Churches were
  made over by Parliament to the Medical Profession. The Dean traces the
  fall of the Anglican Establishment to the disrepute into which it had
  sunk in consequence of the folly of a party in the Church, who, in an
  age of doubt and transition, when religion needed to be presented in
  its most spiritual shape, made it appear by their practices a matter
  of rites and forms altogether childish. It is quite possible that
  these idle doings may have contributed to make sensible men impatient
  and contemptuous, but we are persuaded that the abolition of the
  Churches was due to a deeper and more widespread cause, namely, the
  growth of that sound philosophy which recognises Matter as containing
  itself the germ and potency of every form of life, and, of course,
  dismisses the dream of a Soul in man, which might enjoy existence
  after death. As soon as this great truth had had time to penetrate the
  minds of the masses, the collapse of Religion obviously became
  imminent. The sole attention and hopes of all classes have since been
  confined to the preservation of health and the extension of life to
  the utmost term of old age. That we have _bodies_, nobody can for a
  moment question, and we properly recognise as our guides and masters
  the Doctors who remedy their diseases. We have satisfied ourselves
  that we have no _Souls_, and it would be truly absurd to expect of us
  to maintain an order of clergy to undertake their “cure.” The
  endowments originally devoted to the latter profession have been
  naturally and fitly transferred to the former.


                               _POETRY._

  _The Loves of the Triangles._ Reprinted from the _Anti-Jacobin_. We
  rejoice to see the merits of this Poem recognised at last, and the
  stupid idea of some dull critics that it was intended as a travesty
  exploded in this graver age. With the exception of the _De Rerum
  Natura_ of Lucretius, and of Darwin’s _Botanic Garden_, it is almost
  the only poem bequeathed to us by the past worthy of retaining a place
  in our libraries.

  _The Gout, and other Poems._ By the Poet Laureate. We warmly commend
  this beautiful and affecting volume, especially to our youthful
  readers. The accuracy wherewith the peculiarly poignant pangs of
  Arthritis are delineated is beyond praise. We should, however,
  recommend the omission of the episode of the patient’s marriage to his
  shampooer. It is a tribute to that false taste which requires Poetry
  to deal with Romance instead of with the facts of Science.


                               _FICTION._

  _The Precession of the Equinox, and other Tales._ By Wilkinson
  Collinson, Esq. This is a highly sensational story, and will sell like
  wildfire at the bookstalls. The interest of the plot turns on the
  phenomenon in question, but embraces subsidiary problems respecting
  the sun’s path through the Zodiac.

  _Daniel Allround._ By George Evans. The chief attraction of this book
  lies in the abstruse technical terminology which the author has
  employed to illustrate profound observations of men and things. From
  this point of view the work has a certain scientific value, but too
  much space is lost by delineations of characters without tracing them
  to the laws of Heredity.

  _Edwin and Angelina._ By J. Fitzparnell. Taking for his guidance the
  observation of the immortal Bain, that the Tender Emotions are
  exclusively Glandular Affections, the author of this charming novel
  has afforded his readers a perfect study of the effects of each of the
  passions—Pity, Sympathy, Regret, Disappointment, Hope, and Love—on the
  various glands which they respectively affect. A simple love story
  naturally describes each emotion in its turn, and allows us to pause
  and acquaint ourselves with its physiological results. The lucid
  explanation of the physiological reasons why Mothers love their
  children is particularly valuable, as calculated to explode the last
  stronghold of the superstitious reverence which was once paid to
  parents among semi-civilized nations.

After these critical Notices of Books, the _Age of Science_ proceeds to
offer the following remarks on Art and the Drama:—


               _EXHIBITION OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS._

                             FIRST NOTICE.

  To-day being the first of the New Year, this Exhibition was as usual
  opened to the public, and we think all true lovers of Art will agree
  that it is a most satisfactory one, and displays more than the usual
  average merit of our Exhibitions, whether we consider the aggregate
  number of important works, their size, their execution, or the noble
  prices they have realised to their authors; such prices having been,
  according to the lately adopted custom, published in the catalogues
  issued after the day of the Private View, when connoisseurs have made
  their selection of the works not previously disposed of in the
  _ateliers_ of the artists. This (which is, after all, the true test of
  success) greatly enhances the interest of these catalogues, affording
  a guide as to the degree of public favour in which the respective
  artists are held. Reform in the Academy itself, so long demanded, has
  been at last effected, in spite of all the obstacles thrown in the way
  of the reformers, who desired to break down the monopoly so long
  maintained by the painters and sculptors, who would only consent to
  the admission of a limited number of architects and engravers into
  their privileged body. Now, at last, the claims of all artists have
  been recognised, and Decorators, Carpet-designers, Metalworkers and
  Electrotypers, Wood Carvers, &c. &c., have been admitted within its
  walls, and the magic letters R.A. may frequently be found attached to
  the names of the leading members of many of our manufacturing firms.
  In fact, we may say that Painting and Sculpture have found their
  level, and now that the great canon of Art has been thoroughly
  established, and it is acknowledged that _Utility_, not _Beauty_, is
  its only legitimate aim, and Scientific Reality and Accuracy, not wild
  attempts at attaining a so-called Ideality, its true goal of
  perfection, the merits of these too-long unrecognised geniuses have
  been found to surpass all others. The mechanical helps with which
  Science has supplied us have rendered it possible to accomplish feats
  of which our ancestors had no idea. Photography has enabled us to
  reproduce all possible forms, thus securing, with great economy of
  labour, the facile execution of stupendous works adapted for the
  decoration of the outside as well as the inside of our buildings. In
  this Exhibition, of course, these gigantic works cannot be seen, but
  the smaller ones by the same artists give us good specimens of their
  power. No. 3,004, for instance, is well worthy the attention of
  visitors. It is intended, as the catalogue informs us, for the wall
  decoration of the Terminus of the Great Central Balloon Station, and
  gives a very wonderfully correct representation of the three Provinces
  into which London is now divided, as seen from the distance of six
  miles above the height of St. Paul’s. Every roof and chimney is
  accurately represented, and every feature of the smallest interest, on
  the scale of an inch to a mile. Portrait-painting may be said to have
  been entirely superseded now that the Sun has been compelled to add
  colour to form in the pictures taken by the photographic camera, and
  Landscape Art has died out in its old inaccurate fanciful sense,
  having been succeeded by a more scientific method of representing
  Nature as she really is. The geological formation of every mountain,
  the physiology of each tree and blade of grass, as determined by
  expert geologists and botanists, will alone satisfy us in this age of
  science, and we demand this accuracy from all who pretend to record
  the aspect of our country. We find all these requirements met in the
  works of the distinguished landscape painter of No. 60,072, “View of
  the Great Smelting Works,” in the iron district, lately discovered in
  the North of Scotland. We venture to affirm that none but a thoroughly
  educated man of science could have painted the details of this
  picture, and we cannot bestow higher praise. The “Interior of the
  Factory,” No. 20,621, is also a work deserving of much commendation
  for the minuteness of its detail, which must be examined with a strong
  magnifier to be thoroughly enjoyed—the complicated arrangement of the
  machinery escaping the naked eye; also the texture of the materials
  which are being manufactured into webs of the most gossamer-like
  lightness from heaps of rough coarse yarns and woollen threads. The
  faces of the operatives are exquisitely rendered, and you seem to hear
  the noise of the wheels and cranks.

  The Sculpture Gallery is perhaps less attractive to the general public
  than are the pictures; still it contains some interesting works, and
  the tailors and milliners who were consulted by the art critics as to
  the details of the costumes of the portrait statues, gave their
  opinion that very few errors had been committed this year, thanks to
  the advice tendered by them at sundry lectures delivered on the
  subject last summer. Our statesmen and benefactors are no longer
  represented in dress, or undress, in which they were never beheld, but
  in the exact apparel which they actually wore; and future ages will be
  afforded a correct idea not only of their features, but of any bodily
  defects they may have laboured to conceal. Thus an archæological and
  historical interest will attach to these effigies, and truth will be
  upheld. Science has done much for this art also. Mechanical means have
  assisted this accuracy of representation—notably in the application of
  metal, which can now be applied to the dress, &c., where great
  elaboration of detail is required, so as to admit, for example, of
  stamping out patterns in lace ruffles, and imitating the very texture
  of the materials, while the resemblance to marble is perfect.
  Especially useful is this invention for the application of colour; and
  we defy anyone to detect the difference of substance without the
  closest observation, such as a skilful workman alone could bestow. The
  advantages offered by this discovery are obvious in the case of veiled
  statues, so much admired by the British public. (See Nos. 720 to
  1,293.) We cannot bestow too much praise on the exquisite polish of
  surface and delicacy of the workmanship of many of these works,
  notably in the feathers of the bird’s wing in No. 2,320, “A Chinese
  Scullion plucking a Goose.” Compare this with the rude and uncouth
  attempts of the ancient Greeks to idealize the naked human form!


                              _THEATRES._

  At this season in former times, when boys were foolishly allowed to
  leave school for the holidays, the theatres (as some of us are old
  enough to remember) were much frequented, and were principally used
  for a silly kind of entertainment called Pantomimes. Of the three
  theatres in London which still continue to be devoted to some sort of
  dramatic performance, and have not been transferred into Lecture
  Halls, one only (the _Gaiety_) seems successful this winter. Crowds
  attend every night to witness “School,” a piece in which there is no
  folly of love-making, but the anxieties of a Competitive Examination
  for Honours in Science are finely realised. A tragic interest is
  imparted to the plot by making the hero become insane just as he has
  achieved the object of his ambition. At the _Haymarket_ there has been
  a failure which we fear will result in the ruin of the lessee. This
  enterprising gentleman imagined it might be possible to revive in
  these days an interest in some of the old plays once popular in this
  country, and after (it appears) long consultation and deliberation,
  determined to bring the _Merchant of Venice_ upon the boards. It was
  hoped that the proposal of one of the characters of the piece, named
  Shylock, to cut a pound of flesh from another, and the discussion
  whether this could be done without the effusion of blood, would excite
  the interest of the spectators. Unfortunately, as the author of the
  drama (Shakespeare, we are informed) stops short at the very crisis of
  the physiological experiment, and allows the intended subject to
  escape, the audience not unnaturally have exhibited disappointment,
  and the piece has been pronounced a failure.

  At the St. James’s Theatre the manager has likewise made a mistake in
  reviving Moliere’s _Malade Imaginaire_. We see no humour in this,
  so-called, comedy. Where is the point, for example, of the supposed
  jest of making the young medical student, _Thomas Diafoirus_, present
  his lady-love with a ticket of admission to a dissection? The act was
  a natural and delicate attention.

The next department of the _Age of Science_ is very short as usual.


                                _COURT._

  Her Most Gracious Majesty, accompanied by the Princess Urania, and
  attended by Dr. Brown and Dr. Robinson, Lords Physicians in Waiting,
  honoured Dr. Scalpel’s studio by a visit, during which Dr. Scalpel
  exhibited to the youthful Princess several beautiful preparations of
  various cutaneous diseases, and of the morbid anatomy of Lupus and
  Elephantiasis.

  Sir R. Atmosphere, Astronomer Royal, Sir A. Diggory, Geologist in
  Ordinary to her Majesty, and the eminent Chemist, Herr Von
  Pestle-Mortar, had the honour of dining with the Queen at Windsor
  Castle at 10 P.M. The Lord Doctor of Winchester, Her Majesty’s Medical
  Confessor, said the new Grace (“May good digestion wait on appetite”)
  at the commencement of the repast, and the Band, with chorus of male
  and female voices, performed at the conclusion the Hymn, “Oh, take thy
  pill,—Oh, take thy pill,—Oh, take thy pilgrim home.”

In examining the journals of a foreign country, the intelligent reader
will generally be able to gather some insight into the habits of the
natives by passing his eye down the columns of advertisements and noting
the class of objects presented for sale. In the _Age of Science_ there
are no less than fifty the vast pages we have described devoted to
announcements and puffs of the most astonishing variety, including
hundreds of articles whose names and uses are at present quite unknown.
Of advertisements of servants and other persons requiring employment we
have not found a single instance, but there were at least twenty columns
of invitations to “Ladies and Gentlemen” to be so kind as to act for the
advertiser in the capacity of housekeeper, steward, superintendent of
the house, or some equally well-sounding office, the remuneration
offered being at the lowest, it would seem, about £200 a year, with “the
use of a steam carriage,” and “every other luxury desired.”

We must, however, leave the columns of ADVERTISEMENTS for future
examination, and proceed to give an account of the more important LAW
AND POLICE REPORTS, which form, perhaps, the most surprising part of the
_Age of Science_. It would appear that it had become necessary to hold
assizes in at least twenty towns and villages in every county; and that
the judges were incessantly occupied with cases of robbery, garrotting,
arson, rape, stabbing, poisoning, and (strange to remark) a number of
offences with new names, of whose nature we can merely guess, but which
appear to involve mortal injury to the victim. The words employed, such
as “Debarrassing,” “Morbifying,” “Disbraining,” “Petroleumization,”
“Electroding,” “Mesmeraciding,” &c., seem to have become so common as to
need no definition, and to have taken their place in the statute book.
For all these crimes the same class of penalties are allotted; the
convicted persons are invariably sentenced by the presiding judge to so
many weeks’ or months’ detention—not in prison, but in the Penal
Hospitals of their respective towns or villages. The principle on which
crime is thus visited appears from the addresses of several of the
magistrates, who remark that the “diseased minds” exhibited by the
robbers and murderers “obviously require careful medical treatment,” and
that they trust that the eminent Physicians and Surgeons to whom the
prisoners are consigned will not fail to complete their cure. In
numerous cases, as the offenders have been sentenced many times
previously, the judge speaks of their crime as exhibiting “an
intermittent fever” of homicidal rage, or of covetousness. Remarks are
also always made by the reporters as to the “abnormal cerebral
development” or “morbid symptoms” exhibited by the criminals, and the
tone assumed in speaking of them (even in cases of what we should term
the most cruel and brutal murders) is invariably one of scientific study
and calm philosophic analysis.

A very different method of treatment, however, is adopted towards
another class of offenders, whom it would appear the authorities in the
_Age of Science_ are determined to put down in grim earnest. That our
readers may not suppose we mistake the sense of the amazing paragraphs
in which these new features of English legislation appear, we quote them
as they stand in the _Age of Science_, pp. 63 and 64.


                               _POLICE._

  At the Mansion House this morning, 79 men and 140 women were summoned
  for the non-attendance of their boys under two years old at the Public
  Infants’ Science Classes in the new Kinder Garten in the Tower.
  Various pleas were, as usual, put forth by the defendants, purporting
  to prove in some cases that the children were ill with small-pox and
  scarlet fever, and in several instances that they were dying or dead.
  Mr. Alderman Busby remarked that “if they were to listen to such
  pleas, children would grow up to three or four years old without
  learning even the rudiments of astronomy or palæontology.” He ordered
  all the fathers to be publicly flogged, and the mothers to receive
  each a dozen stripes of the birch privately, in the State Whipping
  House, and to stand on benches for three days in the nearest
  Elementary School during school hours.

  [Similar judgments are recorded at Westminster, Worship Street,
  Clerkenwell, and several other police-courts in London and the
  provincial towns.]


                         _MIDDLESEX SESSIONS._

  The Duke and Duchess of Broadacres, the Marquis of Carabas, Lady Clara
  Vere de Vere, and the Lady Adeline Amundeville were brought up (in
  chains) to receive sentence on the charges (fully proved against them
  last week) of having deceived the Officers of Domestic Inspection
  respecting their own and their children’s Canination and Porcination.
  It was shown that all the defendants had been Vaccinated according to
  law four times during the last twelvemonth, and Equinated twice during
  the late prevalence of glanders, but though Rabies and the Measles
  were both known to be raging in London, they had not only neglected to
  present themselves and their children at the Canine and Porcine
  Stations in Queen’s Gate, but had deceived the Inspectors as above
  stated by exhibiting the former scars for the latter. Being unable to
  produce any medical certificate showing that they had obeyed the law,
  and having been found “guilty” by a special jury (containing, of
  course, the legal proportion—three-fourths—of Medical graduates), all
  five prisoners were sentenced by Mr. Justice Draco to the extreme
  penalty of the law. They will be vivisected for the instruction of the
  students at the magnificent new School of Physiology in Carlton
  Gardens, as soon after the opening of the session as may be
  convenient. Some sympathy was expressed in court for the Duke of
  Broadacres, who, being an elderly nobleman in feeble health, seems to
  have feared superstitiously the processes (unknown in his youth) of
  using, for the purpose of inoculations, the saliva from mad dogs, as a
  preventive of hydrophobia, on the principle of “a hair of the dog
  which has bitten you.” The expression of misplaced public
  commiseration was instantly checked by the learned Judge, and the
  prisoners were removed, exhibiting many signs of trepidation. Lady
  Clara Vere de Vere implored that she might be even Ratified sooner
  than given over to the students, but her request was, of course,
  sternly refused. It is indeed specially fortunate that so sensitive a
  subject as this young and delicate-looking lady is likely to prove
  should fall, in course of law, under physiological investigation at
  the moment when the exquisite experiments of Dr. Blacksmith on the
  Nervous System are in course of exposition.

Even these startling announcements, however, are less surprising than
the following:—


                           _SANITARY OFFICE._

                             Dec. 25, 1977.

  The proceedings of this most high and solemn Court in the Realm were,
  as usual, held with closed doors. There were present five Lord
  Doctors, and sentences were passed, after due deliberation, and (it is
  rumoured) the application of the Question, ordinary and extraordinary,
  on nine obstinate heretics. Three of these were members of that
  fanatical sect, the Peculiar People, who refuse to consult physicians
  on the ground of religious scruples—an instance of the survival of
  outworn superstitions scarcely credible in this enlightened _Age of
  Science_. One of these miserable delinquents, named John Nokes,
  alleged that his twelve children had enjoyed unbroken health till his
  youngest little boy cut his finger. The wretched father, instead of
  hurrying instantly for the nearest surgeon, himself dressed the
  child’s wound (which appears to have been superficial) with adhesive
  plaster, and gave the child a fragment of toffee to stop his crying,
  in lieu of the proper therapeutic remedies for the shock to the
  nervous system which any medical attendant would have exhibited. The
  crime came fortunately to the knowledge of the police, who immediately
  brought the matter before the Sanitary Office. A second offender of
  the same sect, named Styles, had, it seems, an attack of Podagra, but
  took no advice, and having rather quickly recovered, was in hopes (it
  is supposed) that his neglect to obey the law would pass undiscovered.
  A crutch seen in his room raised the suspicion of a visitor, and the
  offender was eventually arrested. When interrogated by the Lord
  Presiding Doctor of the Sanitary Court as to the motives of his crime,
  the man (as his sentence sets forth) actually dared to reply by
  quoting a passage from an obsolete book, wherein it is narrated of a
  certain King, “Now Asa was diseased in his feet, yet in his disease he
  sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his
  fathers.”[1] This narrative, as Styles had the audacity to argue, was
  an authentic, and, indeed, inspired report of a fit of the gout—its
  diagnosis, treatment, and the result. As he did not desire to “sleep
  with his fathers,” he (Styles) had avoided consulting the physicians,
  and had endeavoured to consult the Lord by following the dictates of
  common sense, and the consequence was that he had recovered with
  unusual rapidity. The Lord President was moved to great indignation by
  the obduracy of this heretic. He remarked that the book which
  contained such a passage—a volume which, he was happy to say, he had,
  for his part, never read—ought to be burnt before the doors of the
  London University; and as to the prisoner Styles, it would be useless
  for him to hope to escape sharing in the same combustion.

Footnote 1:

    2 Chron. xvi. 12.

  After the Peculiar People, two Homœopaths were found guilty—one of
  administering globules to an old woman, the other of refusing to join
  in the processions on the 5th of November, when the busts of Hahnemann
  are carried to be calcined. The remaining four heretics avowed belief
  in as many different heinous errors. One gave credit to MICHEL’S
  process for the cure of external cancer, another thought new-born
  infants ought not to be dosed with castor oil; a third placed
  confidence in bone-setters, and the fourth (a very old lady) retained
  an infatuated preference for the remedies which were in vogue a
  century ago—bromide of potassium and chloral—which, of course, have
  been since peremptorily condemned and pronounced highly injurious by
  the supreme authority of the Faculty.

  The aforesaid nine heretics, having been solemnly found “guilty,”
  after due inquisition by the High Sanitary Office, were condemned as
  contumacious by the Lord Presiding Doctor, and the Most Eminent
  Doctors Pole, Gardiner, and Bonner, and were delivered over last night
  to the Secular Arm. Piles are in process of erection in Trafalgar
  Square. It is announced that Her Gracious Majesty Queen Mary III. will
  preside at the execution, which will take place on Sunday morning
  next, after hearing a Lecture on “True Medical Belief,” to be
  delivered by Her Majesty’s Medical Confessor in Ordinary, Dr. Torr
  Quemada, under the dome of St. Paul’s.

Such is a brief abstract of these most astounding _Law and Police
Reports_ in the _Age of Science_. We make no comments upon them, except
the expression of our wonder at the similarity between the office and
behaviour of a Priest of Religion in the fifteenth century and a Priest
of Science in the twentieth. With complete citations of four out of the
twenty-five Leading Articles of the _Age of Science_, we must conclude
this imperfect but thoroughly reliable account of the remarkable journal
of 1977, whose discovery has been the glorious first-fruits of the
PROSPECTIVE TELEGRAPH.

  Since the epoch, now nearly forty years past, when SMITH made his
  immortal discovery of the Army Exterminator, followed up so rapidly by
  JONES’ invention of the Fleet Annihilator, international policy has
  necessarily undergone a great modification. As war has become
  impossible as an _ultima ratio_ in any case, and the principle of
  Arbitration, on which such hopes were founded, has proved ineffective,
  in consequence of the general refusal of the working classes to permit
  their governments to pay the _amendes_ agreed upon by the Arbitrators,
  a permanent state of discord between nations seems to have become
  established. The dream of Free Trade having also been exploded,
  following the example of the American Empire, at that time a Republic,
  (prohibitive duties having been placed by the different States on
  their own exports and the imports of other countries,) commerce is
  undoubtedly, just now, considerably hampered. The immense facilities
  for travelling which we possess, thanks to the æro-magnetic propeller,
  have also their disadvantages, since the abandonment of extradition
  treaties allows the criminals of each country to take refuge
  immediately in the neighbouring State, when they happen to entertain
  any serious objection to detention in the Penal Hospitals. For all
  these drawbacks to our progress, however, SCIENCE will no doubt soon
  provide an efficient remedy.

  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.—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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          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_.

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