88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pursued, I would propose the appointment of a committee or com- 

 mission, composed in equal parts of lawyers and medical men, 

 whose duty it should be to visit the asylums as often as they 

 might deem expedient, to examine individually all patients de- 

 tained there who have been charged with murder, and also the 

 officers of the asylums, and their case-books and registers, and to 

 report annually on the mental condition of every such patient, 

 with special reference to the circumstances of the crime of which 

 he or she was accused, and the evidence adduced at his or her 

 trial, adding such remarks on the relations of insanity and crime, 

 and such recommendations for alterations' of the law, as their ex- 

 perience may suggest to them. 



Looking forward to such reports, the faithful scientific witness 

 would speak with confidence, assured that his evidence, although 

 it might appear strained at the time, would be confirmed by 

 events ; while the pseudo-scientific witness, if there be any such, 

 who is led into the box by a thirst for notoriety or a spurious phi- 

 lanthropy, would pause before committing himself to statements 

 which might rise up in judgment against him in a very dam- 

 aging and persistent way. And there can be no impropriety in 

 alleging that such reports would ultimately prove useful to judges 

 and counsel. 



Beyond this, the deliberations of such a commission would 

 conduce in some degree to an agreement between lawyers and 

 doctors on the question of insanity and crime. It is in the atmos- 

 phere of the courts of law that differences between them spring 

 up, differences which in private conference speedily dwindle away. 

 It is about theoretical definitions and verbal distinctions that they 

 contend ; and wherever they are brought together in actual con- 

 tact over a case anywhere save in a court of law, the lawyers with 

 striking aptitude adopt the scientific standpoint, and harmony 

 results. TJie Lancet. 



** 



THE LUCAYAN INDIANS. 



By Prof. W. K. BROOKS, 



OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 



IN three years the world will unite in celebrating the four hun- 

 dredth anniversary of what, from our point of view, is the 

 grandest and most important event in history, the landing of Co- 

 lumbus ; but in our consciousness of its profound significance, are 

 we not in danger of forgetting that the Spaniards discovered Amer- 

 ica in the way that pirates discover a vessel with a helpless crew ? 

 While no one can doubt that the world, as a whole, has been 

 benefited, there is reason to question whether any of the islands 

 which Columbus himself discovered have profited by the change. 



