178 COLOGNES FOB THE SICK BOOM. 



and, if he does not get that, he goes away sorrowful, and does just what his 

 teelings prompt — that is gets married when he has fallen in love, persuading 

 himself that Nature will somehow make an exception to inexorable law in 

 his favor, or that his love is sufficient justification of a union in scorn of con- 

 sequences. Certainly, T have never met with so extreme a case as I chanced 

 to light upon in a book a short time ago. " I actually know a man," says the 

 author, "who is so deeply interested in the doctrine of crossing that every 

 hour of his life is devoted to the improvement of a race of bantam fowls 

 and curious pigeons, and who yet married a mad woman, whom he confines 

 in a garret, and by whom he has insane jDrogeny." But I have met with many 

 instances which prove how little people are disposed to look beyond their 

 immediate gratification in the matter. If it were put to two persons pas- 

 sionately in love with one another that they would have children, one of 

 whom would certainly die prematurely of consumption, another become in- 

 sane, and a third, perhaps, commit suicide, or end his days in workhouse or 

 jail, I am afraid that in three cases out of four they would not practise self- 

 denial and prevent so great calamities, but self- gratification, and vaguely 

 trust "the universal plan will all jDrotect!" 



Those who pay no regard in marriage to the evils which they bring upon 

 their children, or in their lives to the sins by which the curse of a bad in- 

 heritance is visited upon them, may plead in excuse or extenuation of them- 

 selves the vagueness and. uncertainty of medical knowledge of the laws of 

 hereditary action. We are unable to give them exact and positive informa- 

 tion when they apply to us, and they naturally shelter themselves under the 

 uncertainty. Were our knowledge exact, as we hope it will some day be, we 

 could foretell the result with positive certainty in each case, and so speak 

 with more weight of authority. It is one of the first and most pressing 

 tasks of medical inquiry to search and find out the laws of heredity, mental 

 and bodily, in health and in disease, and, having discovered exactly what 

 they are, to apply the knowledge purposely to the improvement of the race 

 — that is, to prevent its retrogression and to promote its progress. through 

 the ages. I see no reason to doubt that by discovery of these laws and in- 

 telligent practical use of our discoveries we might in the fullness of time 

 produce, if not a higher species of beings than we are, a race of beings, at 

 any rate, as superior to us as we are superior to our primeval ancestors; 

 the imagination of men seems, indeed, in the gods which they have created 

 for themselves, to have given form to a forefeeling of this higher develop- 

 ment.— Prof. Maudsley, in Popular Science Monthly. 



COLOGNES FOR THE SICK ROOM. 



Our pharmaceutists are well aware of the fact that during the past years 

 we have had innumerable compounds and chemicals offered as antiseptics, 

 the merits of each being vaunted and extolled in its turn. After repeated 



