70 Notes of the Month on [Jan. 
The conduct of the “Lancet” itself is altogether another question. It 
- injures its cause most seriously by its violent, and often vulgar, personality. 
It destroys the respect which might otherwise be attached to its state- 
ments, by the palpable virulence which it feels towards many profes- 
sional individuals of great personal worth and professional ability. Yet 
its science is good, and its result is good. But the work that could best 
combine the avoidance of individual insult, with the due vigilance 
over hospital abuses, would rapidly supersede any publication stained 
by personal bitterness. 
But one subject we strongly recommend to its pages: the gross habit of 
filling the hospital situations with the cousins and connexions of leading 
professional men. We have too much of this in every public department. 
But as government takes care only of our liberties, and the church only 
of our souls, we may spare our indignation on such trivial points. But 
our bodies must not be tampered with at the mercy of the nearest and 
dearest blockheads, that ever walked in the go-cart of patronage. The 
nepotism that we should not allow toa pope, we shall not allow to a sur- 
geon ; and we heartily wish that Sir Astley Cooper and his nephew would 
take the hint, and that the governors of our hospitals would, in every 
example, discountenance the family system. If it have loaded other 
professions with imbecility, why should it be less cumbrous, stupifying, 
and hazardous, where the blockhead stands knife in hand ! 
Tue Directors of the Thames Tunnel, who seemed to have at length 
given up the idea of accomplishing that admirable and extraordinary 
work, have yet, by their allowing its exhibition to the public, encou- 
raged us to believe, again, that they only wait for better days. We fully 
hope that they do, and that they are only pausing till the first influx of 
public prosperity leads our monied men to think of the completion of 
the Tunnel. Knowing nothing, and caring nothing, about the direc 
tors or projectors, we yet should feel the final abandonment of this 
work as a national misfortune. It was amongst the finest and most singular 
attempts ever made to shew the mastery of science and man over the 
brute powers of nature; its success would have established an era in 
engineering, and would have excited a multitude of efforts of the same 
kind in situations of scarcely less importance. The incumbrance of 
bridges to the navigation of our principal rivers, the perpetual 
repair, and the enormous original expense, would have probably been 
avoided ; and from the cheapness, the facility, and the security of the 
Tunnel system, advantages of incalculable value to the internal (the 
most important) commerce of the empire would have been obtained. 
Let us look at the comparative expense. The Tunnel has been already 
driven through two-thirds of the bed of the river, at an expense of about 
250,0001., including all the experimental expenditure attending on a 
first trial of this difficult kind, and a considerable part of which, expe- 
rience must render unnecessary on subsequent occasions. For 100,000/. 
more, the work would unquestionably be completed. The Waterloo 
Bridge cost a million. London Bridge will not cost much less, if not 
much more. None of the other bridges under 750,000/., as well as we 
can recollect ; and the expense of the material invariably increases with 
every new building of this kind, while:the tunnels, from the cireum- 
stance of their being so much move the work of skill than of materials, 
