1876.] 
Notices of Books , 
395 
rule, but the exception. Seldom has a deadlier blow been struck 
at the well-being of our race — physical, intellectual, and moral — - 
than when young children were first led or driven into an indus- 
trial career. One no less deadly is aimed by those who, under 
what pretext soever, aim at transferring women from the house- 
hold to the workshop and the office. 
Dr. Lankester’s remarks on the absence of physiological 
knowledge among statesmen, municipal bodies, and literary men 
are excellent. “ To those,” he writes, “ whose professional avo- 
cations lead them to speak on physiological subjects, it is often 
a source of great annoyance to find that their remarks have been 
thoroughly misunderstood by the ignorance of physiology among 
those whose duty it is to supply information through the press.” 
But this complaint admits of generalisation. The ignorance of 
physiology is merely part and parcel of that want of scientific 
culture of which we daily meet with strange instances among 
the “ educated and respectable classes.” Not long ago, in an 
eminent daily paper, we came upon a lengthy notice of an 
astronomical work, in which the reviewer gravely stated that all 
gases would explode at temperatures far below redness, the pro- 
duct of the explosion being “ a vacuum, with a few grains of 
dust.” This reminded us of a fellow-student of ours, long ago, 
who on being required to analyse a mineral gave in a certain per- 
centage as “ dirt.” 
But ignorance is far from being the only reason why town- 
councils and vestries meet sanitary regulations with cold support, 
if not even with passive opposition. Disease and dirt are vested 
interests, and are generally influentially represented in town- 
halls and board-rooms. 
Dr. Lankester evidently holds that a more generally diffused 
acquaintance with physiology would be a great boon to the com- 
munity. He says — “ The sum of human suffering that might 
be prevented and the amount of wealth that might be saved by 
a knowledge of the laws of disease is incalculable.” And again 
— “ As long as this subject is thus slighted and negleCted in our 
plans and systems of education, so long will the miseries that 
arise from premature disease and death occur, and so long will 
poverty and physical debility obstruct the progress of mankind 
in the path to wealth and happiness.” Now no one can deny 
that many persons are reduced to want, and may even become 
burdens to the public, in consequence of disease. It must further 
be conceded that if a child dies before arriving at the age when 
productive labour becomes possible, all that has been expended 
on its nurture and education is wasted. But, on the other hand, 
if every person born were to survive to the age of a century and 
upwards, as in the model city Hygeia, or even to the traditional 
three score years and ten, unless the means of subsistence could 
be increased in a corresponding proportion the struggle for 
existence would be fearfully intensified, and destitution would 
