1885.] Madmen and Madness at Rome. ^3 
StSS'k 
contemporary:— Ocular. Says our 
It is not often that an ostensibly respectable journal has 
h j U £ , umi ia * 10n > publicly and copiously, as the “ Spectator ” 
ad to do on Saturday last, when it was compelled to nub 
! • a letter from Dr. Crichton-Browne coSviding it o 
haying knowingly said what was direCtly untrue in a review 
^pSrtor ’> V ha k ° n , 0ver P ressure - The attitude which the 
mS f has ado P ted and maintained towards the 
J^^cal profession throughout the overpressure controversy 
* an / d 8S ree surprised us, for it might have been 
expected that a journal that gushes over the twitchings of a 
decap.tated frog would be deaf to the cries of suffering 
children , but the discreditable position into which its ran"’ 
cour has betrayed it does certainly awaken wonder as well 
B atTH mi l e i ratl0n - - h WaS scarcel y t0 have been anticipated 
tha a h^hly superior journal that is for ever congratulating 
itself that it is not as other journals are should have been 
caught fibbing flagrantly, and has been ignominiously 
punished on the spot. Yet such is unhappily the case ; and 
so audacious is the untruth that has been brought home to 
oui contemporary that it is almost impossible to avoid the 
conclusion that this is not its first offence. Presuming we 
suppose, on the indisposition of authors to meddle with their 
critics, even when they are very far wrong, it repeated the 
misiepresentation which was put in circulation last year 
and was then contradicted, that Dr. Crichton-Browne’s 
lepoit on Overpressure in Schools,’ was an officious and 
spontaneous production which was violently thrust upon the 
mild and unsuspecting Mundella, very much against his will. 
But it miscalculated the endurance of Dr. Crichton-Browne* 
who has promptly turned upon it and compelled it to eat its 
leek with what grace it could muster. With an extract from 
Hansaid containing Mr. Mundella’s intimation to the 
House of Commons that he had invited Dr. Crichton- 
Browne to report to him, held up before it, it admits that it 
was ‘ mistaken.’ But this is not a question of mistake, but 
of mendacity, for the accusation is that the reviewer made 
his untrue statement knowing the real fads, and no one can 
question that the charge has been fully proved. Our con- 
temporary is abjeCt, but we fear unreformed, for in its note 
to Dr. Crichton-Browne’s scathing letter, it performs a 
