268 



NATURE 



{July 19, 1888 



cook and the kitchen are not scrupulously clean, the 

 health of the household suffer with every touch given 

 to food, and many an obscure derangement of health 

 which baffles medical skill is due to this poison of dirt." 

 Touching the question of national cleanliness, we are 

 very glad to find Prof. Seeley spotting the greatest of all 

 political evils of a social kind — the evil of allowing a 

 monopoly to companies for the supply of fresh water to 

 the community. " The wisdom of the State," he affirms, 

 " never permitted any greater obstacle to come between 

 the people and their health than the monopoly of water 

 companies who make water an article of trade ; " from 

 .which saying we only dissent in regard to one word — 

 the word wisdom, for which the truer word folly ought, we 

 think, to be substituted. 



Prof. Seeley takes a decisive view of the duties of the 

 members of the profession of medicine, to whom he 

 would apply the drastic reformation inaugurated by that 

 heathen Chinee, who makes the doctor earn his fees not 

 by treating the man that is sick, but by keeping the man 

 that is whole always free from sickness. The doctor, 

 according to this prescription, would keep up the health 

 of the household by contract, through which plan there 

 would be no necessity for sick-hospitals, sick-beds, or any 

 other of the extensive and costly methods now in use 

 for keeping up the cure of disease. The whole art of 

 medicine would be an art of prevention ; and cure, now 

 the almost sole object of the highest skill in medicine, 

 would be quite subordinate to prevention. But where 

 then would poor medical science be landed ? Every 

 man would be his own general practitioner, every house- 

 wife would be a physician, every old woman who had 

 gained most experience from observation of preventive 

 measures would be a consulting physician, and there 

 would be nothing to cure. Fie on you ! learned, if not 

 jealous, Professor, for suggesting such a heartless disinte- 

 gration of the great and noble sciences of pathology and 

 therapeutics. The next time we meet you we will not 

 speak to you unless you publicly recant such brazen 

 heresy, and repent in dust and ashes. Seriously, the idea 

 of such a change is not far off, and indeed has, to some 

 extent, commenced amongst the more advanced members 

 of the educated community. It is an idea that will 

 spread far and wide, and in half a century or so may be 

 the fashion of the time. 



On the topic of food our author is very explicit, and is 

 strong in his recommendations to feeders generally that 

 they should distinguish carefully between foods that are 

 bond fide foods, and those which are merely stimulants. 

 Tea and drinks of its class owe their popularity to their 

 power of arresting waste or nervous exhaustion, and 

 this constitutes their superiority over alcoholic drinks. 

 Neither, perhaps, is food in the popular sense of the 

 term. " Wine and its allies give a fillip to the nervous 

 system, which enables exceptional work to be done at 

 the price of increased nervous exhaustion, and draw a 

 bill on the strength which must be met at a short date : 

 while tea and its allies enable increased work to be done 

 by making the dormant strength available, and discount, 

 on favourable terms, the bills we hold on nervous energy." 

 This is sound and plain teaching, told in a concise form, 

 that deserves to be retold by all who have the advantage 

 of learning from the volume before us. 



We are glad to see that Prof. .Seeley inclines calmly 

 and judiciously to the advocacy of a more distinctive 

 national leaning towards vegetable products as foods. 

 He sees that the ease with which animal foods can be 

 prepared for the table is greatly to the advantage of their 

 popularity, until a better system of cookery is established 

 throughout the land, in which vegetable foods shall play 

 a more distinguished part than they have ever yet played 

 in this country up to the present date. " The sum," he 

 tells us, " that is annually spent on animal food in this 

 country is more than £1 14,000,000, or upwards of a ninth 

 of the national income ; while the sum spent on bread, 

 potatoes, and vegetables combined is ^127,000,000. By 

 a reformed diet it is probable that a substantial saving of 

 about ^30,000,000 a year might be made in the cost of 

 nitrogenous food alone, without any serious change in 

 national habits, and with advantage in every way." 



Turning lastly to the essay on education as a factor in 

 life, we find excellent rules for combining education with 

 health, and both with good morals. " Education begins 

 earliest in childhood, ends only in death, and survives 

 death itself in its effects on after time." In fact, " Nature 

 has appointed no period for education." These are some 

 of the wise and prudent sayings which the author places 

 before his readers, with many others on which we have 

 not space to dwell. But it would not be just to conclude 

 without directing attention to the simimum bonum of 

 educational efforts which, in his last pages, Prof. Seeley 

 impresses on his countrymen. He deals here with the 

 subject of education on its religious side. The religious 

 feeling is, he contends, partly an inherited character of 

 the race, and partly theiproduct of education. But, unless 

 it permeates and saturates life so that every act and 

 endeavour of existence has a basis which unites them into 

 one sustained movement onward towards higher things, he 

 should not express what he conceives the religious side of 

 the education of life should be. The sciences are the 

 sisters of religion, in that they unfold something of the 

 laws by which the universe is governed and by which the 

 life of man is directed. " They are thus far the stepping- 

 stones of faith. And those who have learned that health 

 is the reward of moral discipline, that mental vigour may 

 be augmented by the wise or moral use of food, and that 

 education is the systematic exercise of moral responsi- 

 bility in any or all the affairs of life, may find that in the 

 practice and the pursuit of the truths of science they are 

 conscious of a religious education which is a light to their 

 feet." The words are true. The words are a true gospel 

 — a gospel new and true and ever-extending ; and we 

 congratulate the religious Society which has had the 

 courage to publish them, as heartily as we congratulate 

 the author who has had the good sense and moral faith 

 to send them forth for publication. 



THE LANDSLIP AT ZUG. 

 Die Catastrophe von Zug, 5 Juli, 1887. (Zurich : Ho 

 und Burger, 1888.) 

 N account of this catastrophe, written by P 

 Bonney, who visited the scene of ruin, has aire 

 appeared in the pages of Nature (vol. xxxvi. p. 389! 

 The present volume, compiled from official documents, 



A' 



I 



