June 22, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



fective brain-power and general perversion of healthy activity ; 

 also the door is open for many varied nerve-changes and degrees 

 of brain instability, which always give a doubt to the sanity of the 

 victim. The fact of being an inebriate points to an unsound mind, 

 and more or less incapacity to act or think normally. 



When the trance state is determined, the actual responsibility, 

 or cognizance of right or wrong, is suspended : the person is a 

 mental waif, without compass or chart. No evidence of premedi- 

 tation or apparent judgment in his actions can change this fact. 

 Any special act may spring from some impression laid up in the 

 past, which, when conscious reason is withdrawn, takes on form 

 and semblance. The real condition of the mind is always more or 

 less concealed. Where the case is a periodical inebriate, with dis- 

 tinct free intervals of sanity, a possibility of concealed or masked 

 epilepsy should always be considered. Epilepsy is likely to be 

 present, or to follow from some organic tendency or favoring con- 

 ditions. When this defence of no memory of the act is made, the 

 case should receive a thorough medical study before any conclu- 

 sion of responsibility can be reached. 



The present treatment of inebriates in courts is nothing less than 

 legal barbarism, founded on error and superstition. The oft-re- 

 peated statement that " drunkenness is no excuse for crime," as- 

 sumes a definition of inebriety that has no support from scientific 

 study and the teaching of facts. 



Inebriety in all cases must be regarded as a disease, and the 

 patient forced to use the means of recovery. Like the victim of an 

 infectious disease, his personal responsibility is increased, and the 

 community with him are bound to make the treatment a necessity. 



The following propositions sum up many of the facts men- 

 tioned : — 



1. Inebriety must be recognized as a condition of legal irrespon- 

 sibility to a certain extent, depending on the character and circum- 

 stances of the case, and the general mental integrity displayed. 



2. All unusual acts or crime committed by inebriates, either in a 

 state of partial coma or alleged amnesia, which come under legal 

 recognition, should receive thorough study by competent physicians 

 before the legal responsibility can be determined. 



3. When the trance state is established beyond doubt, he is both 

 legally and practically irresponsible for his acts during this period, 

 and each should be measured by the facts of its individual history. 



4. Inebriety is a disease requiring physical means in the treat- 

 ment. Society demands of the patient that he use diligence to re- 

 cover ; and, so far as he may neglect this, both himself and com- 

 munity are responsible. 



5. It is the duty of the State to provide asylums, and encourage 

 private enterprise to furnish the means and appliances for restora- 

 tion. 



6. Lastly, standing on this borderland, and looking back at the 

 monstrous injustice and legal crime that is daily committed in the 

 punishment of inebriates, who are practically insane, I am con- 

 vinced that the time has come for a revolution of sentiment and 

 practice, in which both the inebriate and the community must be 

 held responsible, not alone for his acts or the consequences of them, 

 but the causes and conditions which have developed in this way ; 

 then the victim will be forced to avail himself of every means for 

 prevention, restoration, and recovery. 



A New Military Ration. — All the garrisons within the 

 limit of the Seventh German Army Corps, we learn from the Med- 

 ical Herald, have now been provided with larger samples of the new 

 article of food which is in future to form the so-called ' iron ration ' 

 of the men in the field. It is a peculiar kind of bread, in the shape of 

 small cubes the size of a chocolate-drop, made of fine wheat-bread, 

 strongly spiced, and calculated to keep for a long time. When 

 taken into the mouth, it quickly softens, and is both palatable and 

 nutritious. It is chiefly intended for forced marches, when there is 

 no time for camping and cooking. 



Wounds of the Abdomen. — Modern surgery, aided by 

 antisepsis, has enabled sjirgeons to accomplish results which, 

 twenty-five years ago, would have been deemed impossible. This 

 is in no department more marked than in abdominal surgery. 

 While formerly a wound of the abdomen, either from a gunshot or 

 a stab, was considered almost necessarily fatal, at the present day 



many lives are saved by an operation, which consists in opening the 

 abdomen, tying every blood-vessel that may have been lacerated^ 

 and sewing up any wound which may have been made in the intes- 

 tines. One of the most difficult parts of the operation consists in, 

 finding the intestinal wound. Dr. Senn of Milwaukee proposes to- 

 inject per rectum hydrogen-gas, which, he has demonstrated in 

 dogs, finds its way through the entire length of the intestine ; and, 

 if an opening exist, the gas will escape, and can be detected. 



BOOK -REVIEWS. 



Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought. By F. 

 Max Muller. Chicago, The Open Court Publ. Co. 12". 



These lectures were delivered last year at the Royal Institution 

 in London, and are intended as an introduction to the subject of 

 which they treat, and which the author has dealt with more largely 

 in his work on ' The Science of Thought.' Many writers before 

 Professor Miiller had maintained that language is necessary as an 

 instrument of thought, so that we could not think without it ; but 

 he goes much further than this, and maintains that language and" 

 thought are identical. This means, if taken literally, that the word 

 ' orange,' when I pronounce it, is identical with the idea of an 

 orange which I have in my mind. When stated in this concrete 

 form, the absurdity of the theory is manifest, but Professor Miiller 

 endeavors to escape the absurdity by explaining that the word he 

 identifies with the idea is not the word as actually uttered by the 

 voice and heard with the bodily ear, but the word as heard men- 

 tally, or in imagination. This, however, does not remove the dif- 

 ficulty ; for the word as heard mentally is not a word at all, but 

 only the idea of a word ; so that, when stated in this way, the 

 theory means that the idea of a word is identical with the idea of 

 the thing that it stands for. 



Such, then, is the absurdity inherent in Professor Miiller's theory x. 

 nor does he succeed in removing it in any way: on the contrary, he 

 aggravates it by the addition of others. For instance : in his pref- 

 ace he undertakes to tell us how language first arose ; and in so, 

 doing he gives himself away to start with. According to his theory 

 of thought, we cannot have a concept, or general idea, until we 

 have a word to symbolize it ; and he ought, therefore, to account 

 for the origin of language without assuming any concepts what- 

 ever. We need not here repeat his whole account of the matter ; 

 but he maintains, that, "before we can get a single conceptual 

 word, we have to pass through at least five stages," and the first 

 of these stages is " consciousness of our own repeated acts." Now, 

 this consciousness involves at least four concepts : (l) the concept 

 of an act, since it is not a single act that we are conscious of, but a 

 series of acts ; (2) the concept of number, or of many as distin- 

 guished from one ; (3) the concept of repetition ; (4) the concept 

 of causation, since the acts are regarded as our acts, that is, as 

 caused by us. Thus, according to -Professor Miiller's view of the 

 origin of language, we must have had at least four concepts before 

 we had a single word ; and, if this is so, what becomes of the 

 theory that we cannot have concepts without words .'' As another 

 example of Professor Miiller's reasoning, take his remarks about 

 the thinking of animals. Some one had remarked that animals 

 think, to a certain extent at least, and that this proves that thought 

 is not identical with language, to which Professor Miiller replies in, 

 this curious way : " If we mean by thought that mental function 

 which has its outward sign and embodiment in language, we must 

 say that animals do not think as we think, namely, zji words. They 

 may think in their own way. . . . But I cannot allow that they 

 think, z/w^ define thinking by speaking." A more ludicrous ex- 

 ample of reasoning in a circle it would be impossible to find. 



Professor Miiller's theory is such a one as we often get when a^ 

 scientific specialist undertakes to deal with the problems of philos- 

 ophy. Such a man is apt to think that all philosophical problems, 

 can be solved by the methods and principles of his science ; and 

 the consequence is a great deal of unphilosophical reasoning. 

 Thus, we have had mathem aticians who thought that mathematics, 

 was the key to philosophy ; and in our own time the biologists have 

 put forth similar claims ; and now comes Professor Max Muller, 

 maintaining that philosophy is only a problem of language. But 



