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accident which, without such supervision, is sure to come ? 7

From Mr. Stuart Brooke’s letter in our last week’s issue theEast Indian Railway, the largest undertaking of the kind inIndia, has made its medical officers responsible for the sightand colour vision of its employés, and has thus made everyendeavour to protect the travelling public from accidentsattributable to this cause. If it can be done in India whycannot it be done in England ? We travel more than anyother nation in the world, and it is only right and fitting thatour risks should be reduced to a minimum.

THE ABUSE OF STREET COLLECTIONS.

IT may seem ungracious to check the kindly impulses ofthe charitable, but we must enter a grave protest againstthe growing practice of street collections, which, if per-mitted to continue uncontrolled, can only have one effect,and that a disastrous one, upon the cause of charity itself.It would almost seem as if the promoters of charitiesof all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent, had found

it to be more profitable for the cause they championto sit at the street corners or perambulate the foot-

ways with money-boxes than to deluge the householderwith circulars and appeals. Doubtless they are justifiedfrom their standpoint in this change in their mode ofattack upon the purse, but its very aggressiveness will intime do much harm to collective charity. The "man in thestreet" will not discriminate between the different objectsfor which he is importuned in this fashion, and, followingthe wholesome rule he applies to the vagrant beggar, hewill resolutely abstain from responding to any such appealin person. We fear, too, that the abuse of this practicewill react injuriously on causes which really deserve recogni-tion, and that the apathy of the Londoner, which hasbeen so strikingly evinced in respect to Hospital Sunday,will be confirmed and extended by reason of this impor-tunity.

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THE ORIGIN OF MASSAGE.

DR. FORESTIER of Aix-les-Bains has an interesting paperin Le Progres Medical of May 25th last on the Origin andTerminology of Massage. The physician of 1’HospiceEvangelique is of opinion that the method of treatment nowknown as massage was first introduced into Europe bysome of the returning members of Bonaparte’s Egyptianexpedition of 1799, aud relies for his information upon a bookentitled I I Des Eaux Thermales d’Aix en Savoie," publishedat Chambery in 1808. Dr. Daquin, the author of the work inquestion, after a passage à propos of the douche, speaks ofthe manipulations and frictions which were observed byCaptain Wallis amongst the aborigines of Otaheite, and thenproceeds as follows: "Those who followed the EmperorNapoleon in Egypt inform us that this method was alsoin existence amongst the people of that country, and

that it was employed after the bath ; the name ofmassement has been given to it, and it is administeredto the person whom they want to masser by rubbing suc-cessively the entire surface of his body....... According tothis account I think that this operation, which strikes me asa very salutary procedure, might with great advantage beput in practice, after their bath or douche, upon those whomake use of our thermal waters." Dr. Forestier is satisfiedthat this evidence is conclusive ; but if confirmation of the

antiquity of the term massage be needed it is forthcoming. In1838 Dr. Despine produced a work under the title, "Observa-tions de Medecine Pratique faites aux Bains d’Aix en Savoie "(Anneoy, 1838), and in it the following passage is to befound : "Since the renaissance of our Thermes in 1816 webathe and we douche ...... we scrub, we masse, we stew."As regards the etymology of the words massage, masseur,&0., Dr. Forestier believes that they are derived from the

Arabic by a species of transliteration. He has beentold by a native of Egypt that at the present timethe word "matz" is used to indicate the operation of

massage, and seems to pin his faith to the assertion. Weare not aware that there is such a term current in modern

Arabic, but there is another way of accounting for the originof the name masseur" which we have much pleasure inbringing to Dr. Forestier’s notice. The country whichwe call Egypt is, in reality, Masr, which is commonlypronounced Musser. If the process of massage was reallyintroduced by one of Napoleon’s Savoisien medical men, whatmore natural than the bestowal upon its professor of thename of the country whence he brought it : the new arthailed from Musser, and hence the person who practised itcame to be called a masseur ?

THE NEW LOWER SCHOOL AT THE ROYALMEDICAL BENEVOLENT COLLEGE.

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES, whoseinterest in medical politics has before now been prominentlymanifested, has consented to lay the foundation stone of thenew lower school buildings at the Royal Medical BenevolentCollege, Epsom. The day fixed for the ceremony is Tuesday,July 9!.h, and full details will shortly be issued. It is an

interesting coincidence that about forty years ago His RoyalHighness was present upon the occasion when his father,the Prince Consort, opened the buildings of the originalRoyal Benevolent College. The Prince Consort bad byprevious promise arranged to lay the foundation stone of thebuilding, but was prevented from doing so by an attack ofmeasles.

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THE EVICTION OF MR. T. M. WATT.

THE eviction of a medical man from his home may bethe greatest hardship that can be inflicted upon him,and from the case of Mr. T. M. Watt no single elementof hardship would seem to be absent. He has residedat Hovingham for twenty-four years, and has now beenturned out of his house by his landlord, Sir William

Worsley, whose opponent he has been in rural politics. Hehad invested all his capital in his practice, and theaction of Sir William Worsley must go far to deprivehim of his livelihood, for on geographical and othercounts no chance remains for him in an attempt to holdhis own against a rival established in his old headquarters.With regard to Sir William Worsley’s perfect legal right totreat his own property as he chooses and to re-enter into itspossession at any time that his legal covenants permit himto do so, there can be no question. On a minor point as tothe correctness of the wording of the notice to quit, thelegality of his action was unsuccessfully disputed byMr. Watt ; but on the broad case there can be but one

opinion-Sir William Worsley has acted within his legalrights. We propose to consider his conduct, however, on thelines of his duty towards his neighbour, and viewed in thelight of the written words of the Book of Common Prayerand the unwritten code of common sense we find SirWilliam Worsley, wanting in charity and reason. It hasbeen Mr. Watt’s duty, as he conceived it, to oppose the headof the village in questions of rural policy. Therefore hemust go. We cannot conceive a step more damaging tothe order to which Sir William Worsley belongs-theEnglish squirearcby of which it was an English fashionto be proud-than such arbitrary exercise of authority,albeit legal. Why should Sir William Worsley judgefor the villagers of Hovingham and district what medicalman they should employ? 1 But by driving out Mr. Wattand supporting a successor to him that is precisely whathe will do. And in questions of public health, whyshould not the medical man, who knows the technical