POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



139 



of refuge for vessels in stormy seasons. 

 The people were skillful ship-builders and 

 prosperous ship-owners. Steam ha3 de- 

 prived them of most of their old advan- 

 tages, and they have had to turn their 

 attention to other pursuits. The mild cli- 

 mate and the good soil of the islands are fa- 

 vorable to all kinds of vegetation. Kaising 

 early potatoes and vegetables for the English 

 markets has been a remunerative occupation. 

 Recently the raising of narcissus and other 

 bulbs has promised to be still more profit- 

 able, and the people are every year giving 

 more and more attention to it. In 1887 

 more than a hundred tons of flowers were 

 exported. The small extent of the islands 

 bringing them into close relations, and al- 

 most inevitably under one another's eye, the 

 Scillonians are quite sociable and considera- 

 bly prone to gossip. They give occasional 

 dinners, at which heavy cake and clotted 

 cream are favorite dishes ; but they object 

 to dancing and card-playing, and abhor jest- 

 ing and flippancy. They are great readers, 

 and keep in the current of English periodi- 

 cal literature ; and, having had George Eliot 

 and Tennyson to visit them, they are " not 

 to be awed by the prestige of any literary 

 magnate." Finally, Mr. Frank Bonfield says 

 of them, " Most of them seem to have had 

 a tradition of having come in from some- 

 where at no very remote period of the past, 

 and I am very doubtful if there is any abo- 

 riginal population — that is to say, families 

 who have no record or reminiscence handed 

 down of having lived somewhere else." 



Chemical Bibliographies. — The report of 

 the American Association's Committee on In- 

 dexing Chemical Literature mentions as pub- 

 lished, the "Provisional List of Abbrevia- 

 tions of Titles of Chemical Journals," Dr. 

 A. Tuckerman's " Index to the Literature of 

 the Spectroscope," and Prof. Clarke's " Table 

 of Specific Gravities " ; as completed, Prof. 

 Traphagen's " Index to the Literature of Co- 

 lumbium," and Prof. Bolton's "Bibliography 

 of Chemistry" for 1887 ; and as in prepa- 

 ration, indexes on " Ethylene," by Mr. A. A. 

 Noyes ; " Methane," by Prof. W. P. Mason ; 

 "Caesium and Rubidium," by Mr. William 

 Rupp; "Tantalum," by Prof. Traphagen; 

 a "Bibliography of the History of Chem- 

 istry," by Dr. Bolton ; and " Thermodynam- 



ics," by Dr. A. Tuckerman. Bibliographies 

 are mentioned of "Food Adulteration and 

 its Detection," by Dr. J. P. Battershall ; 

 " Milk," by E. ' W. Martin ; and "Butter," 

 adulterations, testing, etc., by Prof. El- 

 wyn Waller and others. Among lists of pat- 

 ents relating more or less to applied chem- 

 istry are those of Mr. C. T. Davis on the 

 manufacture of leather; of bricks, tiles, 

 and terracotta ; of paper ; and his " Treatise 

 on Boiler Incrustations " ; and Mr. William 

 T. Braunt's " Treatise on Animal and Vegeta- 

 ble Fats and Oils." B. Tollen's " Handbuch 

 der Kohlenhydrate," Breslau, 1888, contains 

 about fifteen hundred references to the lit- 

 erature of carbohydrates. Dr. A. B. Lyons 

 is publishing, in the " Pharmaceutical Era," 

 a monthly "Index Pharmaceuticus." The 

 work of the committee is now being supple- 

 mented by chemists in Great Britain. 



Old and New-Fashioned Ideas in Medi- 

 cine. — Dr. Malcolm Morris has indicated 

 some points in medical practice in which a 

 mysticism, which was one of its predominant 

 features in the middle ages, still lingers 

 around it. " There remains in the people," 

 he says, " a belief in the efficacy of drugs as 

 drugs — a belief that, as for every bane there 

 must be an antidote, so for every disease 

 there must be a curative leaf or root. Nature 

 is distrusted; disease is still represented as 

 some evil influence to be exorcised. In the 

 popular mind Disease walks the earth as a 

 devouring fiend, and has a personality about 

 it as of old. The phrases ' Stricken with 

 disease,' ' visitations,' and ' seizures,' are 

 survivals of the conceptions of primitive 

 times. . . . The mysticism survives in the 

 courtly phrase and the ambiguous language 

 of the practitioner of modern times. When 

 sorely pressed by the sick man, the physician's 

 only armory is equivocation, from which he 

 draws such verbal weapons as ' the state of 

 the constitution,' ' the tone of the body,' ' the 

 general health,' ' lowered vitality,' and all 

 that kind. . . . Are these not in some sort 

 a survival of the circle of the horoscope ? " 

 The profession is also at a disadvantage be- 

 cause of a skepticism, reacting from the im- 

 plicit faith in drugs of the olden time, which 

 " repudiates all aids and accessories ; briefly, 

 it states its deliberate opinion that disease 

 is infinitely better left to itself. The natural 



