and the most artful manipulation of physic; while its curative properties are incomparable.

"It is absurd," says Dr. Tucker, "to send consumptive patients to hot climates when they can have higher temperatures at home, at less expense to their physical strength and pecuniary circumstances. When under the beneficial influence of a Hot-air Bath of a temperature to suit each particular case, they can have in two hours more impurities of blood removed from the system, through the skin, than could be removed in a two months' residence in a warm climate."-The Reformed Roman or Oriental Baths, p. 30.

Besides, it is totally impossible for any climate, no matter how genial it may be, to do for an invalid what the Bath has proved its capability of accomplishing. A foreign residence, in addition to other discomforts, necessarily involves more or less of physical fatigue, if not of mental anxiety, and this at a time, too, when the patient's vitality should be most carefully husbanded. The Bath, on the contrary, never causes physical fatigue, while its influence on the mental state is most soothing and salutary—it always strengthens and exhilarates.

Wisely guided, then, patients will seek relief at some Hydropathic establishment at home, where they will enjoy home comforts, and have combined with the Bath all the healthgiving resources of scientific Hydropathy. They may repose implicit confidence in the assurance, that by such means alone can predispositions to disease, and disease itself, be successfully encountered, overcome, and cured. Failing Hydropathic means, consumption, like some other forms of disease, is absolutely incurable by art, and patients should reflect on this, for what is curable up to one stage becomes incurable when that stage is passed. Let not valuable time be wasted in the miserable and fatal folly of aggravating disease and lessening the chances of recovery by following the destructive process of physic doctoring-a course against which common-sense and sound physiology alike protest most vehemently.

CHAPTER XXV.

Legislative provision for the voluntary establishment of Baths, etc. -The Acts permissive and inoperative-Sanitary Legislation ought to be compulsory-Duty of the Government.

THE utility of Baths as public institutions has been incidentally referred to, and the Legislature more than twenty years ago acknowledged the duty of making provision for their establishment. In 1846 an Act (9 and 10 Vict. cap 74) was passed for England, to encourage the voluntary establishment of public Baths and Wash-houses, and in the same session a similar Act (cap 87) was passed for Ireland. The preamble sets forth that "it is desirable for the health, comfort, and welfare of the inhabitants of populous towns and districts" that such institutions should be established, and power is given to corporate bodies by voluntary assessment to raise funds for that purpose. In Eng. land some Baths were erected under the Act, but the Irish Act has remained a dead letter.

It was not till ten years after the passing of these Acts, that the Oriental Bath was revived by Dr. Barter, and its extension throughout the United Kingdom assuredly has done a great deal to promote "the health, comfort, and welfare of the inhabitants of populous towns and districts," but all that has been done is utterly insignificant in comparison with what remains to be done in order to afford anything like proper bathing accommodation for the great bulk of the population.

In 1866, under the panic of a threatened Cholera invasion, The Sanitary Act (29 and 30 Vict. cap. 90) was passed for the United Kingdom, and under the 23rd section power is conferred on local authorities to provide a proper place and the necessary

apparatus and attendance for the disinfection of clothing, etc., and under the 43rd section local authorities may adopt the Act for the Establishment of Public Baths and Wash-houses, the expenses to be defrayed out of the district rate.

The supreme authority for enforcing the provisions of the Act in England is the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and in Ireland the Lord Lieutenant in Council, but as the dread of Cholera passed away comparatively nothing has been done in taking advantage of the comprehensive provisions of the Act, to promote "the health, comfort, and welfare of the inhabitants of populous towns and districts" as far as the erection of public Baths is concerned.

The great vice of such legislation is that, to a large extent, the care of the public health is left discretionary with local authorities, and not rendered compulsory. Unless under the pressure of actual threatened danger from pestilence, local authorities, Boards of Guardians, Municipal Councils, etc., have shown that they will not voluntarily avail themselves of the powers conferred on them by Parliament to promote “the health, comfort, and welfare" of the population by adopting proper precautionary measures for the prevention of disease. With ample powers to do so, experience has shown that there exists a most reprehensible indisposition-whether arising from ignorance, prejudice, or a callous indifferentism-to make those powers available.

It may be said that the apathy of Local authorities, in this matter, is but a reflection of that of the public generally, and no doubt this is in a great degree quite true, therefore it is so desirable that the public mind should become enlightened and seriously alive to the politic wisdom that declares "prevention to be better than cure." The general public have yet to learn how much more economical it is to prevent the spread of disease than to provide remedies for its treatment by the ordinary operation of our medical charities. Millions sterling are annually expended in maintaining dispensaries, hospitals, infirmaries, and asylums for the treatment of disease, while no consistent efforts

have yet been made to preserve the public health, by the adoption of rational preventive measures directed to the social condition and moral habits of the population.

An eminent medical authority has said "We, up to this time, have always paid our doctors for curing diseases, not for. preventing them, and, consequently, very little of this unprofitable, viz., preventive hygiene, has been taught in our schools, or is to be found in our medical treatises." We have, in fact, dealt with disease on the same vicious system that we applied to the repression of crime-we provided a complex and costly machinery for the detection, conviction, and punishment of criminals, but bestowed little attention on the eradication of the germs of vice in the rising generation-the source whence the criminal ranks are so plentifully recruited. A more enlightened intelligence has, however, of late years, been directed to the investigation. of the vital questions of Social Science, and all men whose opinions are entitled to any consideration or weight concur in admitting that the true way to check crime is by judiciously operating on juvenile offenders. Formerly, and to a large extent still, our pernicious system was, and is to foster juvenile offenders, and, in truth, educate them in crime, from the petty larcenies that received a fortnight's imprisonment up to the serious offences that entail death or penal servitude. The Reformatory system, though very partially applied as yet, is a great step in advance. Improved classification in jails, with more intelligent prison administration, affords evidence of progress in the right direction, but as yet we are only on the threshold of great changes which must ultimately be carried out.

In like manner our whole system of medical charities is vicious in principle because it is mainly designed to deal with developed disease, and not to anticipate its insidious approaches, counteract its latent tendencies, and arrest or avert their development. Independently of public sanitary measures, as yet but very imperfectly enforced, preventive Hygiene forms no part of our whole expensive Dispensary system, nor is it under

stood or applied as it ought to be, either to the general preservation of public health, or in the private relations of life.

We must take into consideration that, as regards sanitary measures, affecting public health generally, there are two essential distinctions to be observed. We must distinguish between measures that can be enforced by public law, and those even more essential measures which legislative enactments may, in some degree, encourage, but cannot directly enforce. For example, the compulsory enforcement of measures relating to Sewerage, the regulation and inspection of Lodging-houses, etc., is strictly within the province of the Legislature, and safeguards can be provided to a large extent against the inroads that would otherwise be made on public health. But with respect to enforcing such precautions on the part of individuals, as are necessary to eradicate or keep in subjection hereditary predispositions to disease, or to preserve a sound condition of bodily health by restraining intemperate habits, and observing in daily life sanitary rules conducive to health-it must be quite obvious that the Legislature is altogether powerless. The wisest precautions Parliament could devise, with a view to practical enforcement, could act but very indirectly and partially, at best, on the great mass of home-bred disease, and more especially predisposition to disease, which, in our civilised and highly artificial life, is unfortunately born into the world with so large a proportion of our population.

And this complete failure of legislative power is easily accounted for. The sanitary precautions necessary to operate effectively on such sources of disease are so intimately blended with the social and moral habits of all classes, with the private life of individuals, that it would be utterly impossible to make their enforcement the subject of legislative action—they must necessarily be left to the guidance of individual intelligence and conscience.

By keeping this distinction in view, we will be better enabled to arrive at practical ideas as to where legislative action. must cease and individual responsibility commence. We will