74 
NATURE 
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s E ‘ ae" 4 aca! Behn See . 
a - : vw 9? A 
(Vou. 24, 1881 
for trephining should be rather low down, to correspond 
to the centres for the arm and lips, which seemed affected. 
This was done; for eight weeks after the operation the 
child was free from fits, and at the periodical exacerbation 
the fits returned with always diminishing severity.”’ 
We have given only one instance, but Dr. Echeverria 
has collected 165 cases of traumatic epilepsy, of which 
64 per cent. were cured by trephining. Nor is it only in 
epilepsy that operative procedure, directed by the know- 
ledge gained from Dr. Ferrier's researches, is useful. 
In abscess of the brain it guides the surgeon’s knife to 
the spot where the pus has accumulated, and even when 
disease is due to tumours, it indicates their site, and 
enables them to be removed and the patient cured, as in 
a case reported in the Glasgow Medical Journal. It 
opens a new region in the treatment of diseases of the 
brain, of which it is impossible at present to see the 
limits ; and when we consider how recently the discoveries 
have been made it seems extraordinary that they should 
have already been productive of so much benefit. Opera- 
tions on the head are not however to be rashly undertaken, 
and in Dr. Ferrier’s first experiments he found that injury 
to the brain was apt to spread beyond the primary limits of 
the lesion. Prof. Yeo therefore commenced a series of ex- 
periments for the purpose of discovering how far improved 
methods of operating would obviate the risk incurred in 
such operations, and his attempts have been very successful. 
These operations were carried out with a proper licence 
and certificate under the Vivisection Act. Dr. Ferrier 
embraced the opportunity of observing these animals, 
and aided Prof. Yeo by his advice, so that each experi- 
ment was utilised for the purpose of increasing our 
knowledge of localisation, and thus aiding diagnosis, 
as well as of improving the mode of treatment. 
For these observations he was summoned before the 
police-court last week by the Society for the Pro- 
tection of Animals from Vivisection, on what grounds 
it is difficult to see. Though the summons was 
dismissed by the magistrate, the prosecution no doubt 
caused much worry to Dr. Ferrier, and might have caused 
expense, were it not that the British Medical Association 
took up and defended the case, in order to show its 
appreciation of the value of Dr. Ferrier’s services both 
to medical science and suffering humanity. It is now 
about five years since the Vivisection Act was passed, 
ani the late prosecution of Dr. Ferrier, while it shows 
how carefully the Act has been observed by physiologists, 
affords evidence that an Act which purported to be for 
the prevention of the abuse, is being converted into an in- 
strument of annoyance to those who are best qualified for 
the use of experiments on animals. At the time the Act was 
passed many persons objected to it, on the ground that it 
was quite exceptional to legislate against an abuse which 
had never been proved to exist in this country. It has 
been shown by many statements made in the medical 
journals within the last few months that the Act is being 
administered in such a manner as seriously to interfere 
with the progress of science ; and it seems not unlikely 
that the present insult to one of their number may rouse 
the medical profession to combined agitation against 
restraints on research for the acquisition of that knowledge 
which may enable them to lessen the sufferings or save 
the lives of their patients. 
EGYPT OF THE PAST 
The Egypt of the Past. By Erasmus Wilson, F.R.S. 
(London; Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co., 1881.) 
HE increased interest taken in Ancient Egypt has 
produced of late two new histories in English, 
and two in French and German. The English histories 
are last in the field, and are those of Prof. Rawlinson 
and Sir Erasmus Wilson. These histories are not really 
the work of Egyptologists or experts like that of Brugsch 
Pacha and M. Maspero, but are attempts to produce 
readable works for popular purposes by writers interested 
in Egypt or writers of history, and have consequently all 
the merits and defects of that kind of way of treating the 
subject. 
The present article is devoted to a consideration of the 
work of Prof. Wilson, which has last appeared, and is 
exclusively devoted to history. It comprises the history 
from the oldest days, the first appearance of the primitive 
Egyptian, the aboriginal of the Nile, till the last of the 
Pharaohs, the miserable Nectanebo, who abandoned his 
country, but not his wealth, to the foreigner B.C. 345, and 
from that time till to-day a foreigner, in accordance with 
the law of monarchical nations, has ruled the country 
with the usual results. 
The question of the first man of the Nile has not yet 
been settled, and he was probably one of those types 
which have disappeared from view altogether, and belongs 
to the fossilised remains of the planet. But history has 
little to seek about the prehistoric races and evidence of 
an antecedent state of dawning civilisation ; flint weapons 
are very scanty and obscure, and do not aid the solution 
of the problem. The obscure period of ‘‘the followers of 
Horus” has no historical or chronological importance, 
and belongs to the hazy epoch known as mythical and 
immeasurable. Actual history, but not positive chronology, 
begins with Menes, and the facts ascribed to Menes are, 
according to historical criticism, such as can be accepted 
as credible. 
It has been agreed to designate as the Old Empire 
that part of Egyptian history which glides from the 
first to the sixth dynasty. This comprises the Pyramid- 
builders, most, if not all, of whose geometric sepulchres 
are situated in the plains of Memphis and its vicinity on 
the western bank of the Nile. Although no pyramid can 
be identified with any king of the first dynasty, and the 
names of monarchs are known only from official lists 
and after-recollections, a monument of the second dynasty 
from a private tomb is in the Ashmolean Museum at 
Oxford, and shows that the civilisation at that remote 
period had attained the same excellence as at the fourth. 
It was under this dynasty that the worship of animals—an 
African idea—arose, and if the pyramid of Sakkarah, with 
its numerous chambers, was, as supposed, an early 
sepulchre of the Apis, that edifice must have been erected 
under the second dynasty, with all its geometric regularity 
and architectural knowledge, four centuries after Menes. 
Certainly writing, sculpture, painting, the arts and sciences 
had attained a great advancement and development- 
Still further advancement is visible under the third 
dynasty, and in the tombs which lie around the Pyramid 
at Meidoom sculpture had then reached a high excellence, 
and the portrait of the individual as well executed as the 
