50 Faraday. [Jan., 
not unfit for its purpose—which does not kill many of those it 
ought to cure. Surgical fever, or Pyzmia, is the bane of general 
hospitals ; puerperal fever, of obstetric institutions. Small are the 
chances, more especially at certain seasons of the year, of the man 
whose leg has been smashed by a railway accident or similar casualty, 
and who undergoes amputation in an old-fashioned hospital. Far 
better would it. be for him to be treated in a hovel on a bleak hill- 
side, or under a tent. In like manner, the poor women who in 
their hour of sorrow have to depend on public charity, have far 
better chances if attended im their own comfortless homes, than in 
many a luxuriously furnished maternity hospital of the old con- 
struction. The conviction of these truths has recently led to the 
proposal to abolish hospitals altogether, and to substitute for them 
clusters of cottages which shall accommodate one, or at most two, 
patients in each room. . Happily we need not make a change so 
sweeping and likely to be attended with so many inconveniences. 
Hospitals built on the pavilion system, carried out in its integrity, 
may have as pure an atmosphere as a detached cottage, and the 
medical officers of the older hospitals, who do not with all possible 
urgency strive to impress upon those in authority the duty of 
rebuilding their hospitals on the improved plan, will assuredly 
incur a grave responsibility. The example has been set in the 
Herbert Hospital, in the new St. Thomas’s, and in the new im- 
firmaries at Leeds, and some other places, and it is to be hoped that 
it will be universally followed. 
VII. FARADAY. 
On the 25th day of August, 1867, a spirit passed away from 
amongst us, leaving a gap amidst the noble few, who have, by 
the powers of their intellectual industries, placed themselves in the 
position of being the rulers,—the instructors,— of mankind. All that 
remained of Faraday was laid in the earth at Highgate, on the 30th 
of the same month, without display, without parade, and the busy 
world, involved in the circles of its joys and cares, appeared to be 
little conscious of the extinction of a light, by the aid of which it 
had been advanced into some of the recesses of Nature, and gleaned 
a few of those truths which alone are capable of giving man power 
over matter. 
With a strange inconsistency the world applauds with enthu- 
siasm the doings of the warrior, the influences of whose labours are 
often the chaining of truth, the reinvigoration of vice, and the per- 
petuation of ignorance amongst men. The appreciation of his 
ereatness is shown by recording in enduring bronze, above his ashes, 
