IS CONSCIENCE PRIMITIVE? 647 



placed more flannel, or a piece of cotton-wool, to prevent it from getting 

 cold. By this method we are able to apply the linseed-meal boiling 

 hot without burning the patient, and the heat, gradually diffusing through 

 the flannel, affords a grateful sense of relief which can not be obtained by 

 other means. There are few ways in which such marked relief is given 

 to abdominal pain as by the application of a poultice in this manner. 



Besides blisters and poultices, there is a third class of remedies act- 

 ing reflexly, which is often too much neglected or despised, but is of 

 exceeding service ; I mean plasters. In chronic bronchitis, a plaster on 

 the chest affords great relief, the plaster employed being either the 

 simple pitch one, or the emjylastrum calefaciens of the British Pharma- 

 copoeia. The pain in the chest just under the mamma, which is so often 

 associated with anaemia and leucorrhoea, is relieved in the most remark- 

 able way by the application of a belladonna-plaster, and the same 

 application also relieves when the pain is dependent on organic disease 

 of the heart. The pain in the back, also, which is associated with leu- 

 corrhoea and uterine disturbances, is greatly eased by the application 

 of a pitch plaster, or by a strip of emplastrum calefaciens placed along 

 the lower part of the spine. In place of this, the linimentum sijiajyis, 

 put upon a piece of spongio-piline four or five inches broad and ten or 

 twelve inches long, has recently' been recommended by Dr. Gamgee. 

 The cause of the pain in the back is not known, but Dr. Gamgee's 

 theory is that it is due to exhaustion of the lumbar portion of the spinal 

 cord, that part from which the nerves for the urinary and genital organs 

 are derived. In order to repair this exhaustion, he thinks that the 

 supply of blood should be diminished, because functional activity is 

 usually associated with rapid circulation, while the opposite condition 

 of partial anceraia occurs during the period of rest and repair. To 

 obtain this partial anemia he employs counter-irritation, differing from 

 that of the blister in being less intense and more prolonged. 



Such are a few of the more prominent instances of reflex action, as 

 a cause of disease and a means of cure. To enter fully into all of them 

 would occupy more time than the Society can afford, and to explain 

 them satisfactorily would require more knowledge than I either possess 

 or am able to obtain. — J^rain. 



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IS COXSCIEXCE PRIMITIYE? 



By WAEKIXG WILKINSON, 



MR. DUGDALE, in his recent monograph, " The Jukes," has en- 

 deavored to show by rather startling statistics how crime and 

 pauperism become hereditary. In this vicious and depraved family, 

 there is a conspicuous absence of moral sensibility — a lack of what we 

 call conscience — that strikes the social scientist as something abnor- 



