204

from the congestion of internal organs that was thus oc-casioned. The matter is made worse by the fact that, atBrighton, the policeman on duty had posted up on the wallbefore his eyes an order that no one brought drunk or insensible eshould be locked up until he had been seen by Mr. Penfold,the police surgeon. This order was simply ignored, anddeath in a few hours followed the night spent in a cell.Fortunately for the policeman, the coroner’s jury took alenient view of his neglect, for which he himself expressedmuch sorrow; and the matter is therefore likely to go nofurther. The general principle, however, is one that shouldbe insisted upon by the Home Office, and not left to thediscretion of subordinates. It is impossible for a police-constable to distinguish between drunkenness and illness,and no such responsibility ought to be thrust upon him.These cases show, moreover, that the unwarmed lock-upwould be dangerous to life in the case of many sober people,and all these buildings should at once be placed undermedical inspection. It is monstrous that X 22 should beable to inflict upon a possibly innocent person a night ofsuch torture as would be endured by no criminal undersentence. We trust that the attention of Parliament willbe called to the whole system of " locking-up " at an earlyperiod of the coming session.

THE REMAINS OF PLATYCNEMIC MEN INDENBIGHSHIRE.

AN interesting paper by Mr. Boyd Dawkins and Prof.Busk appears in the January part of the Journal of theEthnological Society, on the occurrence of the remains of menwhose tibiae were remarkably compressed laterally, giving totransverse sections of the bone almost the form of a vertical

antero-posterior section of a canine tooth, instead of theirregularly rhomboidal form by which they are usually cha-racterised. This peculiarity was first noticed by Dr. Falconerand Mr. Busk in 1863, in human remains procured from theGenista cave at Gibraltar, and almost coincidently by Prof.Broca, in tibiae procured from the dolmen of Chamant (Oise),and subsequently in those discovered at Montmartre by M.E. Bertrand. Mr. Busk considers it in the highest degreeimprobable that it constitutes a race character, and still lessthat it can be looked upon as indicative of simian tenden-

cies, a notion that M. Broca seems inclined to favour. Theremains were found in a cave at Perthi Chwareu, near Cor-wen, with bones of the dog, fox, badger, pig, roe and reddeer, sheep, Celtic shorthorn, horse, water-rat, hare, rabbit,and eagle, and in another at Cefn, near St. Asaph, wherethe tomb was remarkably divided into chambers. There

appear to have been at least sixteen bodies, and Mr. Daw-kins refers them to the Neolithic age.

HABITUAL DRUNKENNESS.

WE are glad to see that Mr. Dalrymple, M.P., purposesonce more to bring before the House of Commons his Billfor the reformatory seclusion of habitual drunkards. Wefeel that in doing so he deserves the warmest support of allwho desire to promote the welfare of society. Among therespectable classes there is no other curse to compare withthe habitual drunkard in a family. Medical practitionerssee more of the nature and extent of the evil than mostother persons; and we call upon our readers to urge uponmembers of Parliament, and to enforce by illustrationsdrawn from their personal experience, the necessity thatexists for some such law as that which Mr. Dalrymple’sBill will provide. The Legislature has recently greatlyextended the facilities for the sale of alcoholic drinks, andhas thus indirectly rendered the descent to habitual intoxi-cation more easy than it has ever been before. It requires

to be guarded, therefore, by additional securities ; and itcannot be doubted that Mr. Dalrymple’s Bill would have alargely preventive, as well as a curative, operation. It hasbeen cordially approved by the Public Health Departmentof the Social Science Association, under the presidency ofDr. Symonds, and may be regarded, on the whole, as amongthe most crying wants of the day.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY AND VACCINATION.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Marylebone Mercury recently re-ferred to Professor Huxley as "one who had himself signedthe protest against compulsory vaccination"; and a reportto the same effect has been diligently spread abroad throughvarious channels. We thought the matter of sufficient im-portance to justify us in inquiring of Professor Huxleywhether the report was true; and we rejoice in being ableto meet it with an authoritative and formal contradiction.Professor Huxley states that, 11 during his candidature fora seat on the School Board he found himself compelled tocontradict a report, which had been industriously set about,that he was a champion of spirit-rapping and table-turning;and he cannot but think that the report that he is opposedto compulsory vaccination is a piece of work from the samemanufactory." We should have felt no difficulty in ex-

pressing our total disbelief of the statement, even if theProfessor could not have been himself appealed to; butnow the matter is for ever set at rest. We hope that anyjournals that have assisted in publishing the report willgive at least equal publicity to the contradiction.

WATER FROM THE CHALK.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S proposal to supply London withwater from the chalk has produced a letter in The Timesfrom a writer who seeks to show that pure water would be

injurious to men, from its very tendency to dissolve andappropriate any noxious matters that it might encounter.His argument is that any idea of purity must be Utopian;and that man is placed in the world to use its good thingsas they are. The writer forgets, or perhaps does not desireto see, that Professor Tyndall’s proposal is to take a naturalwater, and to remove from it a single substance which unfitsit for certain domestic uses. By doing this he would shutout, partly or entirely, a water that is not natural in anysense-that has been frequently defiled by human excre-ment and tidal filth, and that carries into our cisterns allmanner of solid dirt in suspension. There is here no

straining after unattainable purity; but simply a proposi-tion that, having a good and a bad thing equally at ourdisposal, we should use the former rather than the latter.It has also been objected by more than one writer that theyield of the chalk would be insufficient, and that there areserious engineering difficulties in the way of its beingutilised. To the first part of this objection the Professorhimself furnishes a very simple and conclusive reply-saying, 11 Let us at least use the good water as far as it willgo." To the second we make answer that engineers alwaysfind means of overcoming difficulties that it is not theirbusiness to magnify. -

DOMESTIC ANODYNES.

WE regret to announce a death said to have been occa-sioned by a self-administered over-dose of chloral hydrate.The deceased was rector of a village in Northamptonshire,and suffered from sleeplessness, on account of which he hadbeen in the habit of taking opiates for some time past.Latterly he had used chloral hydrate instead; and he wasone morning found dead from its effects. We are not toldwhat amount was taken, nor by what post-mortem appear-