We contend, therefore, that the time has arrived when the Government ought to intervene, and make compulsory for purposes of public health the carrying out of the Acts of 1846 and 1866. We contend also that Public Baths should form an essential part of our system of medical charities. Boards of Guardians have now power to construct hot-air rooms for disinfecting purposes, and a slight increase of cost would provide the addition of water; for, properly constructed, the disinfecting rooms could be made perfectly available as Hot-air Baths. Do not numerous cases occur daily in medical practice among the poor in which bathing in one form or another would be gladly prescribed as a curative, or, at all events, as a very potent assistant in the treatment of disease, were the means as available for free bathing as they are for the free dispensation of drugs? In fact, medical practitioners among the poorer classes are absolutely deprived of the opportunity of making bathing available in the treatment of many diseases for which they know it would be serviceable, because it would be nothing better than a mockery to order what the poor have neither in their own houses nor in public establishments the means of obtaining. The ratepayers are taxed without remorse to place any amount of drugs at the disposal of dispensary doctors, who are precluded from availing themselves of the remedial agency of the Bath, no matter how convinced they might be that bathing would be preferable to drugging.

This, we cannot help thinking, is a very perverse, unnatural, expensive, and ignorant system, and fraught with great injustice, if not cruelty, to the poor. We are perfectly satisfied that every intelligent dispensary doctor, and practitioner among the poorer classes generally, would be delighted to have it in their power to make bathing available as a remedial agent, as well in our large towns as in country districts, and there is no sound reason why Bathing Establishments should not be provided out of the public rates as drugs are provided. There would, to be sure, be a great decrease in the consumption of drugs, but we may safely conclude there would be a corresponding increase in the public health. Dr. Tucker of Sligo, who has had a very

large experience on the subject, says: "I am no ardent advocate, from medical principles and practice, of hot-air baths, and quite concur in the sentiment of the British Medical Association, that there ought to be baths of hot air and warm water in every city, town, and village. No medical institution can be worthy of the name without baths, for disease is not to be cured by meré drugs alone."

Nor is disease to be guarded against by drugging, for mankind will not indulge in the nauseous luxury of drugs, save as a dernier resort, when disease has unmistakeably manifested itself. "There are,” says Dr. Sheppard, Superintendent of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, in his excellent pamphlet on "Bathing," "there are more clean skins (relatively clean) in the ratio of twenty-five to one among the artisans of London than there used to be twenty years ago. This is a great move in the right direction. But more remains to be done yet. The true bath of hot air, and then of water, by which the skin is rendered absolutely clean, must become a great national institution. Before it our prejudices will fall, and our ignorance be dissipated. Our national life will be larger, our means of resisting climatic changes and repelling disease multiplied.'

Owing mainly to the disinterested and zealous efforts of Dr Barter, the Guardians of the Cork, Lismore, Fermoy, Middleton, and Dungarvan Union Workhouses, have humanely introduced the Hot-air Bath for the use of their hospital inmates. But the other Unions of Ireland have been indifferent to such laudable examples, and it requires active Government interference to overcome the obstructiveness that interposes between so great a blessing and the sick poor who pine for it. If Guardians could only be induced to look into this matter rationally, they would soon perceive that the saving to be effected through the agency of the Bath, as a beneficent substitute for injurious drugs and debilitating stimulants, would economise the rates to an extent they have no conception of.

Government interference is also required to enforce the construction of Baths in all Lunatic Asylums, County Infirmaries,

Jail Hospitals, and Charitable Institutions over which the State has control. Those in authority, on whom the responsibility of Executive administration devolves, are not solicited to adopt any speculative novelty, or give effect to any new-fangled experimental notions, but they are asked to profit by the light of science and experience to make available for "the health, comfort, and welfare" of the helpless, what science has demonstrated to be beneficial, and what a matured and multiplied experience has proved to be at once the most economical and effective means by which their sufferings can be alleviated.

We ask, how is it possible to read the evidence we have adduced in those pages respecting the benefits derivable to health generally from the use of the Bath, and more particularly in the treatment of disease, and yet remain indifferent to its introduction into our public Asylums and Hospitals? When we have the undoubted evidence of enlightened, and eminent scientific practitioners, testifying to the inestimable blessing the Bath has proved in the treatment of mental and other diseases, how can responsibility cloak itself with apathy, and make no effort to secure for the helpless sick so great a "boon to humanity ?"

Into one or two Military and Naval Hospitals the Bath has been introduced with remarkable success, but it should be made available for the Army generally. No Barrack should be without its Baths, and were bathing encouraged as a matter of healthy discipline, one-half the diseases, and more, under which soldiers suffer, would be prevented. There is no prophylactic equal to it, and it is powerfully so in those very diseases to which soldiers are most exposed.

In Cavalry regiments the use of the Bath would be of inestimable service to the horses, as well as to the men, and one bath could be easily constructed suitable for both. Under its influence the sore backs and diseases generally which impair, on the slightest extraordinary exertion, the efficiency of even our "crack" Cavalry regiments, would be effectually guarded against, and in point of mere economy, there is no measure that would effect such a desirable improvement in the efficiency of the

service, as the establishment of a system of bathing, so prophylactic-so universally applicable-so easily attainable, and so truly enjoyable.

There is in these Kingdoms a noble spirit of true Christian benevolence anxious to do good work, and willing to labour with unflagging zeal in a humane cause. Here then is a rich field for active philanthropic labour. It need not be expected that local authorities or our Executive administration will voluntarily assume the initiative in this matter, but much can be done by well-directed zeal to instruct them respecting its importance, and stimulate them to exertion. The machinery exists by which this great blessing can be brought home to those who want it most the helpless in our Hospitals and Asylums, and the cost is insignificant; in fact the cost involves economy. We trust, then, that a true philanthropy may move those who have the means and the opportunity to take this matter up, and enlist an enlightened public opinion to promote a cause the success of which may yet immortalise some spirit akin to that of a Howard or a Wilberforce.

The Sanitary and Sanative influences of the Bath on Horses, Cows, and the Lower Animals generally-Report of the Committee of the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland—The advantages of the Bath in farming operations, etc.

WHAT has been said respecting Sanitary and Sanative influences of the Bath in relation to the human economy, is equally true as regards all domesticated animals. Two years after the Bath had been in use at St. Anne's, the experience Dr. Barter had acquired led him to the conclusion that it would prove singularly beneficial in the diseases to which those animals are peculiarly liable. Prima facie, on physiological grounds, there was every reason to believe that its effects on the lower animals would be similarly sanative as on man. It was indeed but reasonable to suppose that what was highly therapeutical in affections of the lungs, the bronchi, and congested conditions of the human body, would exercise a similar remedial power in pleuro-pneumonia and other distempers to which cattle are sub

ject.

Resolved to bring theory to the certain test of experience, Dr. Barter in 1858 erected a Cattle Bath and instituted a series of experiments which proved remarkably satisfactory, and realised his most sanguine expectations. "The first occasion on which the Bath was tried," says Dr. Griffith, "was that of eight cows labouring under pleuro-pneumonia, out of which number seven completely recovered and one died. About a fortnight afterwards, three cows being seized with puerperal fever, a few days after calving, the Bath was at once had recourse to, with the result of two recoveries and one death,