THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 431 



lescent patient going to the sea-side. We easily picture him going to 

 the terminus in a London cab, travelling in a public railway-carriage, 

 then travelling in another public conveyance, and finally deposited in 

 a public lodging-house. Early convalescence is often a most danger- 

 ous period in the disorder, when minute particles from the skin- 

 invisible, impalpable take wings, and become elements of danger, 

 multiplying seeds of disease and death. It is safer to travel in a car- 

 riage with parcels of nitro-glycerine than with such a patient. If our 

 national sanitary arrangements were in a satisfactory state, such a 

 case would be certified from the London to the local physician, and, 

 both on road and rail, special carriages would be provided, or the 

 ordinary carriages be at once disinfected. Or if, as is usual in this 

 country, such things must be left in private hands, there is a propei 

 treatment which would entirely, or almost entirely, annihilate the 

 danger of contagion. Many of our readers will recollect the piteous 

 case set forth some time back by Dr. Bradley, the present head of 

 University College, when he was head master of Marlborough College. 

 He wanted to know, in the columns of the Times, and various af- 

 flicted parents made the same inquiry, when it would be safe for a boy 

 recovering from scarlet fever to return to his home. Scarlatina is al- 

 most the one terrible rock ahead which public and private schools 

 have to fear. Many of us know very sad stories of the premature 

 deaths of the young, and the losses and even ruin of school-masters 

 through this terrible visitation. It is not every school which has the 

 vitality of Marlborough College to withstand such trials. In answer 

 to these appeals, the whole theory and practice of disinfection were 

 clearly set forth by competent medical authority. Such obvious meth- 

 ods were suggested as the isolating the patient, the anointing him 

 from head to foot with camphorated olive-oil, the destruction or most 

 thorough cleansing of all things infected, the use of entirely untainted 

 clothes ; and then we are assured that patients might be restored to 

 society after a very limited quarantine. The natural apprehension 

 would be that these simple means might not prove sufficient; but the 

 real fact is, that it is extremely difficult to make people resort even to 

 such simple means as these. Not one hundredth part is found of the 

 energy in preventing disease that is employed in attempting to work 

 its cure. What is wanted is a wider teaching of the elementary prin- 

 ciples of such matters, and a greater degree of courage and conscience 

 iu applying them. 



The fact is, that the prevention of diseases should be more regarded 

 than it is, as a true end and scope of medical science. It is to the 

 credit of medical men that they are more and more devoting their best 

 energies in this direction. The skill of medical diagnosis has been 

 carried to the utmost, but not with the result of any corresponding 

 subjugation of disease. Indeed, it is a humiliating fact that, in those 

 chest-cases where medical science has made the most marvellous dis- 



