LITERARY NOTICES. 



701 



caso that has come under our notice is 

 in a well- written story called A Comedy 

 of Masks, by Ernest Dowson and Arthur 

 Moore. Two friends are sitting out 

 one summer evening, looking over the 

 Thames, and the story goes on: "By 

 this time the young moon had risen, 

 and its cold light shimmered over the 

 misty river." A novelist need not be 

 an astronomer, but he should at least 

 try to draw from Nature, and should 

 not pretend to have seen the young 

 moon rising at the very hour when it 

 was being packed off to bed. Some 

 day, perhaps, a little acquaintance at 

 first hand with the broadest facts of 

 Nature will be thought a requisite for 

 writing a good novel, but the time is 

 not yet. Meantime, if our novelists 

 would try to bear in mind that the 

 young moon, like other young things, 

 goes to bed early that Nature does not 

 trust it out late at night they might 

 get into the way of seeing it at the right 

 time and in the right place, and not 

 treat us to "cold shimmers" that are 

 only moonshine in the least favorable 

 sense of the term. 



Since the foregoing was put in type 

 our attention has been called to a pre- 

 cisely similar blunder in an article en- 

 titled Notes from a Marine Biological 

 Laboratory, written by a man of sci- 

 ence and a college professor, and print- 

 ed in the February number of this 

 magazine. 



In the light of what has previously 

 been said, the situation, we must con- 

 fess, is decidedly awkward, and not at 

 all to the credit of our editorial scrutiny. 

 Yet, while freely admitting that the 

 case is far less excusable than the one 

 cited above, we are still inclined to re- 

 gard it as an even more emphatic ad- 

 monition that writers, and particularly 

 writers on scientific subjects, are under 

 obligations to know what they are talk- 

 ing about, and should also be able to 

 subordinate their poetical ambitions to 

 the requirements of truth. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Recrudescence of Leprosy, and its 

 Causation. A Popular Treatise. By 

 William Tebb. London: Swan, Sonnen- 

 schein & Co., 1893. Pp. 20-21 to 412. 



In the first chapter of this polemic against 

 vaccination the author states that leprosy has 

 greatly increased and is still increasing, and 

 he cites as evidence reports from various 

 countries that the disease is more or less 

 prevalent. We submit that there is no evi- 

 dence of the increase of anything, disease or 

 other, unless facts are given regarding the 

 number reported each year for a series of 

 years. What social economist would be rec- 

 ognized that stated the population of a coun- 

 try was increasing because he saw more 

 children in the maternity hospitals ? What 

 financier would be regarded as authority that 

 said the country was richer because he had 

 so many thousands of dollars deposited in 

 his bank, though he was ignorant of the 

 amount of deposits of fifty years previous ? 



Let us cite an example. Leprosy is in- 

 creasing in the United States because Dr. 

 Blanc reported forty-two cases of leprosy in 

 New Orleans in 1889. We have practical 

 personal knowledge regarding leprosy in Lou- 

 isiana, and it is a statistical fact that leprosy 

 is less prevalent there to-day than it was one 

 hundred years ago, and, whether the heredi- 

 tary causation is always known or not, the 

 disease only affects those having Creole an- 

 cestors. Dr. Allen's and Dr. Morrow's specu- 

 lations regarding the increase of leprosy in 

 this country are worthless, and are not ac- 

 cepted by the leading dermatologists. 



No reference is made to the paper of 

 Hansen, the discoverer of the lepra bacillus, 

 who stated that his investigations among 

 Norwegian lepers that had emigrated to the 

 United States showed that the disease had 

 died out among them. 



An elaborate account of the increase of 

 leprosy in India is given ; and yet since the 

 publication of this volume the Indian Leprosy 

 Commission has made its report, and, while 

 its figures suggest a decrease rather than an 

 increase in the prevalence of the disease, the 

 commission conservatively prefer to say that 

 the leper population has remained stationary. 

 This lack of the critical facultv in the author 



