-than growing up in misery and vice. The foundling hospital in connection with the lying-in hospital would prevent this unnatural crime.

The objection so often urged against foundling hospitals, that they would be productive of immorality and increase the number of illegitimate births, is not justified by statistics. Thus it is shown by Gerando, that while France, Naples and Austria, which have foundling hospitals, have a proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births of 71, 46, and 42 per 1000 respectively, the following is the proportion among States that have no hospitals:-Prussia, 69; England and Wales, 55; Wales alone, 83; Saxony, 121; and Hesse, 149 per 1000 births; while puritan, sabbatarian, and whiskey-drinking Scotland, without the aid of foundling hospitals, shows in its different counties a proportion of illegitimate births from 61 as the lowest up to 157, 162, 171, and 175 per 1000 births!

It is not for the writer to enter into details as to how these foundling and lying-in hospitals are to be constituted and conducted. The corresponding institutions of Paris, Vienna, and Rome might be studied with advantage and profit by those whose business it would be to establish them.

And whose business should it be to furnish us with lying-in and foundling hospitals? * We think that the genius of our institutions would render it necessary that they should be under the control of the Boards of Guardians of the Poor, and subject to the general direction and surveillance of the Central Poor Law Board; but an Act of Parliament would be required to initiate them. Some active and influential member of Parliament, on the outlook for an interesting hobby to ride in the house, might profitably take up this subject of infanticide and its remedy, and thereby do a world of good to humanity, besides ensuring his own immortal fame.

* It may be objected that there is already a Foundling Hospital in London. There is an institution bearing that name no doubt, but though it spends a vast annual income, it is so hampered by absurd regulations, that it is not of the slightest use to those who most need a Foundling Hospital, and it has not the slightest atom of influence in preventing the crime of infanticide. The purpose of its benevolent founder, Captain Coram, is utterly frustrated by the mode in which it is now conducted.

The length to which our remarks have extended forbid us to say much about Dr. Ryan's book. And, indeed, there is not much to be said about it. It is written in a style we abhor. There is no method or order in it. A large portion of it is borrowed from an article that appeared in the British and Foreign Medical Review for 1842, and the chief statistics of the book are those of that ancient essay. The author repeats the same facts over and over again in wearisome iteration. The remedies proposed for infanticide, with the exception of the establishment of foundling hopitals, are absurd and cruel, and would be totally inoperative.

One passage only redeems his book from the charge of absolute dulness, and that is an attack upon homœopathy, at page 169. Apropos of the temptations to medical men to produce abortion, he thus pours forth his withering denunciation of homœopathy.

"Quackery in all times has existed, and has flourished, as in England, where the people are willing dupes. But in all cases has the profession kept aloof, and even warned the deluded people of the risk they ran; and, indeed, great has been the risk up to this last, and most impudent, and untenable imposture-the homœopathic delusion. Had that delusion anything in it, the lie would be given to all previous history, and to all previous efforts of the human mind. The labours of ages must go for nothing; and the experience handed down from generation to generation, to be improved upon as time goes on, is utterly worthless. All philosophical theories of progress must be thrown to the winds; and Bacon, with the inductive sciences, must be ignored as worse than useless; for they only lure us to the loss of time which might be better employed. For is not here Hahnemann and his disciples, who have absolutely sprung to perfection, without trouble and without study, in an art that has taken century after century of hard working, high-minded and honourable men, in an endeavour to bring-and unsuccessfully to bring, up to the present-to something like perfection. But there is no danger for the divine art of healing; and this last quackery, which promised to be so gigantic an error, has already collapsed. Having nothing of vitality in it-being

simply the baseless fabric of a vision'-its impending destruction will leave no wreck behind. Belying their professions by their acts, the disciples of this new creed-if creed it can be called-have long been known, in cases of real disease and where great danger threatened, to pitch their globules to the winds, and to fly to those good allopathic' remedies which. stood the test of time," and so forth, in a continuous stream of execrable grammar and wretched twaddle.

The reader will be pleased to hear that the profession has always kept aloof from quackery, and especially from that most impudent and untenable imposture, homeopathy. Without being obliged to consider homoeopathy an imposture, he may hitherto have been under the delusion that its practitioners were recruited from the ranks of the profession. The pleasure of the reader will be enhanced when he learns that if there is anything "in homœopathy, all previous history and all previous efforts of the human mind are merely lies. Perhaps he was not formerly aware that the authenticity of Heroditus, Tacitus, Gibbon, Hume and Macaulay depended on the nullity of homoeopathy, so that the announcement of this great fact will come upon him with all the charm of a surprise. Perhaps he was under the delusion that the labours of Aristotle, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz and Kant were independent of the truth or falsity of homœopathy; he is undeceived by Dr. Ryan. Bacon and the inductive sciences must be ignored as worse than useless, if an infinitesimal dose of aconite cures an inflammation, and yet Bacon was no friend to the traditional physic of his time, which he abused as unphilosophical and defective, pointing out that the only way in which medicine could advance towards anything like certainty was by searching for specifics, which is in fact the main object of homœopathy.

The reader will not fail to observe that "Hahnemann and his disciples" are not honoured with a plural verb, and that "they absolutely sprung to perfection without trouble and study." We were not aware that we had "absolutely sprung to perfection," as Dr. Ryan eloquently expresses it, but of course we are glad to hear it from such a disinterested witness; * Advancement of Learning, Book iv. chap. 3.

still we do not imagine this testimony to our perfection will make us relax our endeavours to improve the practice of our art just as though we had not quite attained to absolute perfection. Some little trouble and study it certainly cost Hahnemann to bring his system up to the present point, otherwise we should scarcely have the testimony of his high-minded opponents, such as Hufeland and Sir J. Forbes, that he was a man of great learning and indefatigable industry; but we suppose Dr. Ryan speaks comparatively, and means that the trouble and study required by Hahnemann in order to bring his system to perfection were as nothing compared with what Dr. Ryan has gone through in order to attain to the grammatical perfection he displays in this work. Apparently the system practised by Hahnemann and his disciples has not fared so well as its practitioners, for while they "have absolutely sprung to perfection," their system "has already collapsed," and has been found to be but the "baseless fabric of a vision," that leaves "no wreck behind." We do not exactly see how the practitioners can have attained to absolute perfection amid the collapse of their practice, but it is none of our business to discover sense in Dr. Ryan's maunderings. In fact, we have already dwelt too long on this paltry exhibition of venomous spite against the homeopathic system and its practitioners, the former much above the comprehension of a man of Dr. Ryan's mental calibre, the latter not the least injured by this miserable explosion of silly abuse.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Report of the Committee appointed by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, to investigate the subject of Suspended Animation. The inquiry was conducted,

By means of experiments upon living animals;

By means of experiments upon the dead human body.

In investigating anew the subjest of apnoea by means of experiments on the lower animals, it seemed expedient to observe, in the first place, the principal phenomena of apnoea in its least complicated form-namely, when produced by simply depriving the animal of air.

The principal facts to which attention was directed during the progress of the apnoea thus induced were

The duration of the respiratory movements;

The duration of the heart's action.

The duration of the heart's action was observed

(a) In relation to the duration of the respiratory movements. (b) In relation to the time after the stoppage of the breathing. From the experiments performed it appeared that in the dog the average duration of the respiratory movements after the animal has been deprived of air is 4 min. 5 sec., the extremes being 3 min. 80 sec. and 4 min. 40 sec. The average duration of the heart's action is 7 min. 11 sec., the extremes being 6 min. 40 sec. and 7 min. 45 sec.

From these experiments it appears that on an average the heart's action continues for 3 min. 15 sec. after the animal has ceased to make respiratory efforts, the extremes being 2 min. and, 4 min. respectively.

Rabbits, on an average, ceased to make respiratory efforts in 3 min. 25 sec. Their heart's action stopped in 7 min. 10 sec.; consequently, the interval between the last respiratory effort and the cessation of the heart's action was 3 min. 45 sec.

The next question investigated was the period after the simple deprivation of air at which recovery is possible, under natural circumstances, without the aid of any artificial means of resuscitation.

The experiments performed led to the conclusion that a dog may be deprived of air during 3 min. 50 sec., and afterwards recover without the application of artificial means; that a dog is not likely to recover, if left to itself, after having been deprived of air during 4 min. 10 sec.

The force of the inspiratory efforts during apnoea was observed in the experiments to be so great that it was determined to measure them. They were found to be capable, in the dog, of raising a column of mercury four inches. It appeared, moreover, that their force increases up to a certain period.

In other experiments, Plaster-of-Paris, and even Mercury, were thus drawn upwards into the minute bronchial tubes.

It is easy to understand, therefore, how foreign bodies may be drawn into the lungs in cases of drowning, and the importance of this fact in the consideration of the pathology and treatment of apnea.