30th of November he was 66 discharged on trial for a month: During the month he came to Hayward Heath to ask for a Bath. I found him sound in mind and body, and working for the Brighton Railway Company, in their carriage factory, at thirty-three shillings a-week." And on the 3rd December "he was discharged cured." The Doctor candidly remarks—“ This cure was the only possible result which I did not foresee. I thought first that the case was tending to permanent dementia; then it looked as if general paresis of the insane would be the end; then it seemed as if he were to die from dropsy and albuminuria. I cannot but think that the Bath was the agent which rescued him from these perils, and restored him to health of mind and body."

Similar cases are not unfrequent; and it is now a demonstrable fact that there are no means by which curative effects can be produced in mental infirmities at all comparable with the agency of the Bath. Dr. Edgar Sheppard, medical superintendent of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, Middlesex, most fortunately for the patients entrusted to his care, took the opportunity when in Ireland, five years ago, of visiting the Cork Asylum, when he became acquainted with the Bath, and Dr. Power" communicated to him his great satisfaction at the results which he had hitherto achieved through its agency." On his return to England, so impressed was he with a conviction of its value, that he at once urged the visiting justices to have one erected at Colney Hatch. Equally fortunate for the patients, the justices were enlightened enough to enter into his humane views, and adopt his advice. Accordingly a Bath was constructed, and opened in July, 1865, and, in his annual report, Dr. Sheppard thus records his experience :

"It will be remembered by the committee that many of its members. had a not unnatural mistrust of a power so susceptible of misapplication, and so shrouded in prejudices by the community at large. They will be glad, therefore, to learn from the individual who pressed it so strongly on their favourable consideration, that the Turkish Bath in Colney Hatch Asylum has been an unqualified success. Its power in many forms of disease— especially in melancholia-is most remarkable. Sleep is wooed by its soft.

influences, and morbid fancies chased away. It does not appear, as far as my experience yet goes, to shorten the paroxysms, though it certainly mitigates the violence of acute mania.

"That it removes many obstructions from our path, and expedites ultimate recovery, is, however, as certain with respect to mania as melancholia. It is known to those who are familiar with insanity, that one of its most striking characteristics is a remarkable dryness of skin. In many cases there is a peculiar odour from the scanty dermel secretions, which has given rise to, and almost justified, the common saying, that you may smell a madman anywhere! This state of things invites the action of the Bath. Dry epithelium is peeled from the human covering; poisonous exudations crowded upon it in crystal beads; and not by the lungs only, but by the neglected skin, is oxygen drifted into the circulating current of the blood.

"One of the most noteworthy things in connection with the Bath is the dread with which many patients contemplate its earlier, and the satisfaction with which they regard its latter exhibitions. The measure of its enjoy. ment becomes the measure of its usefulness and success."

Dr. Sheppard states that since the Bath has been opened it "has been visited by many strangers, who have heard of its construction, and by visiting justices and medical superintendents from other asylums, with a view of introducing the same therapeutic agent into the establishments with which they are officially connected," and it is his earnest hope that, in a few years, no county asylum will be without one.

Dr. Sheppard subsequently published the excellent and instructive treatise, from which we have quoted, on Bathing, &c., in which he considers the agency of the Bath in relation to disease generally; while he refers more particularly "to the beneficial effects which are likely to accrue, and have already accrued, from thermal agency in the treatment of lunacy." He has not, like some writers, sought to misrepresent the facts connected with the revival of the Bath, but admits that "Ireland was that part of the United Kingdom where the Bath first found a home, and where it has been received with less disfavour and prejudice than in England, and where its results in the treatment of insanity are best known." And he says, "the functional disturbances which are leagued so extensively with insanity, the imperfect nutrition of the brain, and, above all, the peculiar

condition of the skin, invite the action of the Hot-air Bath, on reasonable grounds, with abundant promise of success."

Alluding to the power of the Bath to remove the noxious secretion of the skin, he says "The Bath is calculated to remove this unpleasant complication. This peculiar fœtor would seem to be owing, according to Dr. Thudichum, to a crystalline deposit round the mouth of the sweat glands, which becomes decomposed, producing carbonate of ammonia, in combination with volatile acid; and he says that healthy fresh sweat from a clean skin has a most agreeable odour, or none at all,”—Bathing, &c., p. 26.

We need not give any further evidence on this subject, for it is one concerning which no medical man has yet ventured to "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." Few of them, indeed, know anything about mental disease, and even some, who profess to have made its study and treatment a speciality, exhibit the most humiliating psychological and physiological ignorance when tempted to appear in a court of justice and enter the witness-box.

It is not to be expected, however, that those who are professionally entrusted with the custody of the insane will, as a rule, follow the laudable example of Drs. Power, Fitzgerald, Robertson, Sheppard, and the very few others who have, most honourably for themselves, and with a true Christian philanthropy, conscientiously endeavoured to afford the unfortunate patients confided to their care all the advantages that such an agency as the Bath is calculated to confer. Experience testifies that the great majority are quite content to jog on in old ways of routine treatment, without giving themselves any trouble about whether the Bath is an invaluable Therapeutic or not.

It is now seven years since the Bath was first made available as a remedial agency in the Cork Asylum, and no one acquainted with the treatment of the mentally afflicted can, without selfcondemnation, plead ignorance of the beneficial effects that have followed its use. Dr. Power has always been most anxious to afford his professional brethren any information concerning its

remedial influences; and the reports, more particularly of Drs. Robertson and Sheppard, now some years before the profession, ought surely to have inspired every superintendent of an Asylum with a desire to follow their laudable and humane example. Is it creditable that such has not been the case? Is it creditable to their profession, and to their humanity, that an appeal should be necessary to other influences to spur them to the discharge of the most solemn obligations they have voluntarily contracted by their professional position?

That appeal now lies to the Governors of Asylums in Ireland, to the Visiting Justices in England, and the Commissioners of Lunacy in Scotland. They cannot excuse indifference in this matter by pleading "the doctor's opinion." It is their paramount duty to investigate and judge for themselves, and there is no way of evading their responsibility. The salutary effects of the Bath is not a matter to be judged by any doctor's opinion; it is a matter of simple evidence, concerning which the intelligence that rules in "" a common jury" is just as competent to judge as all the colleges of physicians in the United Kingdom combined, and, indeed, with a vast deal more probability of an unbigotted and impartial verdict being returned.

Public officials and public boards are, no doubt, difficult and slow to move; but there is no excuse-there can be none for an apathy that amounts to inhumanity. An agent at once safe and powerful, agreeable and economical, is offered, fully tested by experience, and certified as incomparable in relieving various phases of the most terrible disease humanity can be afflicted with, and is it creditable to the civilization and intelligence of our age, that an active philanthropy should be wanting to make it available ?

Tubercular diseases, their variety and malignancy-Conflicting Physic remedies all abortive-The testimony of Sir John Forbes-Sources of Tubercular disease-The curative properties of the Bath and Hydropathy-A change of climate delusive and unnecessary-What sound Physiology dictates to be done.

CONSUMPTION has been incidentally alluded to as one of those forms of disease over which the Bath exercises a powerfully remedial influence. "Among the whole range of human infirmities," observes Sir James Clarke, "tuberculous diseases are the most deserving the study of the physician, whether we regard their immense frequency or appalling mortality. Confined to no country, age, sex, or condition of life, they destroy a larger proportion of mankind than all other chronic diseases taken together. If we add to consumption, tuberculous disease of the glandular system, of the brain, of the large joints, of the spinal column, &c., we shall probably be within the truth in stating that one-third part of the mortality of this country arises from tuberculous diseases; and if to this frightful destruction of mankind we add the numerous crippled and disfigured sufferers whom we daily meet with, the blind, the deaf, and the maniacal-for mania is not an infrequent form of this disease-and, above all, the painful reflection that the predisposition to this destructive class of maladies is transmitted from the parent to the offspring-we shall surely have no need to press upon medical practitioners the claim which tuberculous disease has, above all others, upon their earnest consideration. -Cyclopædia Pract. Med., Art. Tubercular Phthisis.