238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the superstitions of the Masures, that " consecrated communion- wine 

 is used in all diseases as the most sovereign and last resort. The 

 Masures often ask their pastors for it. If they will not give it to 

 them, they go to the Catholic priests, who grant their requests without 

 hesitation. They frequently have the wine blessed at the Catholic con- 

 fessionals ; and some of them think that communion-wine from Catho- 

 lic churches is more efficacious than that from evangelical churches. 

 Nevertheless, Catholics sometimes go to evangelical pastors to get 

 their communion-wine." Herr C. G. Hintz, another writer on folk- 

 lore, mentions it as a time-honored custom in old Prussia to put a 

 bottle of wine on the altar, so that it may be blessed at the sacra- 

 mental service. 



The beliefs on this subject are in some cases contradictory : thus, 

 while the Lauenburg peasant regards the communion-wine as a sov- 

 ereign cure, and calls in the priest when he finds the doctor too dear, 

 or that his remedies fail, the people of Oldenburg and East Prussia 

 put off the taking of the sick-bed communion as long as possible, for 

 fear that it will be followed by a speedy death. — Translated for the 

 Popular Science Monthly from Die Natur. 



MALARIA AND THE PROGEESS OF MEDICINE.* 



THE attempt to estimate the successes of medicine on the grand 

 scale is met at the outset by a source of fallacy which can not 

 well be eliminated. Medicine has certainly a share, and it may be a 

 very large share, in the general lengthening of life, in the decrease of 

 pain and suffering, and in the increase of working-power ; but other 

 influences, besides the thought and endeavor of the medical profession, 

 have helped to bring about those results. A brief consideration of 

 malarial fever (including simple ague and the more deadly tropical 

 forms), of the causes that have made it less common at home, and 

 more amenable to treatment everywhere, and of the views entertained 

 about it, will serve to show how various are the forces that make for 

 improved well-being, and how checkered the medical record has been. 

 No single cause of premature death, of life-long misery, and of loss 

 of working-power, has ever equaled malaria. There is some reason 

 to think that it was from personal experience of the ague, and the 

 hepatic derangements consequent on it, that Descartes got his pro- 

 found conviction of ill-health being the greatest of all hindrances 

 to the wisdom and capability of the individual. There can, at least, 

 be hardly any question that malaria is, and always has been, the 



* Abstracted from an article entitled " The Progress of Medicine," in the " Quarterly 

 Review " for July, 1883. 



