Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Race, Population, Darwinism, Materialism, Unbelief, Sex

    Reports that in North America the barring of immigration has been put forward as not only 'the most effective method of keeping out the cholera', but also as being 'imperatively necessary for the maintenance of a high order of American civilisation'. The 'principle of the anti-Chinese law', it is argued, must now be applied to 'the Mongolians of the Old World', the numerous 'degraded, illiterate immigrants' who arrive daily from Southern and Eastern Europe. In their home countries 'Scepticism and materialism have dimmed their vision of the heavens', and 'the prospect of an escape to America [...] seemed the nearest equivalent for their wavering faith in a celestial paradise'. If even this 'terrestrial paradise' is denied them, the 'sweltering mass of human misery in Europe' will be left to 'Cut each other's throats in the mad struggle for sustenance'. Announces that there is 'another way out' which the French are 'resolutely practising', and that is 'to limit the family'. Without giving any further details, notes that in France last year there 'were more marriages than any year since 1884, but not more children'. (3)

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Milner 1892 Milner, Alfred 1892. England in Egypt, London: E. Arnold
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Subjects:

Engineering, Engineers, Status, Imperialism

    Notes that 'the work of Scott-Moncrieff Moncrieff, Sir Colin Campbell Scott- (1836–1916) WBI
Close   View the register entry >> deserves a high place in the services which England has rendered to civilization'. In Egypt he has saved the government a huge amount of money by restoring 'a great dam, which had been allowed to go out of repair, about fourteen miles down stream from Cairo', and which has now helped to alleviate, at least partially, the continual 'Struggle for Water'. (83)

Genre:

Essay

Relevant illustrations:

eng.

Subjects:

Vaccination, Controversy, Medical Treatment, Institutions, Endeavour, Bacteriology, Disease, Humanism, Experiment, Gender, Laboratories, Heroism

    In a brief introduction, the editor insists that he has no intention of 'in any way committing myself to either side of the fierce controversy that rages round the great vivisectionist', but is nevertheless glad to print an article 'by an American lady who has shown her faith in Pasteurism'. After describing the 'strength of character' and 'tenacity of purpose' which have characterised Louis Pasteur's Pasteur, Louis (1822–95) DSB
Close   View the register entry >> long scientific career and declaring that 'the facts he wrenched from Nature are now admitted by all', the author of the article details the current programme of research undertaken at the Institut Pasteur Institut Pasteur, Paris
Close   View the register entry >> in Paris, which was 'built by public subscription five years ago'. Although Pasteur has become 'heart-sick with human stupidity' and 'stubbornness', and for 'a long time after the discussions upon inoculation against rabies nothing would have induced the great scientist to introduce any new discovery to the public', he now, at the moment of his seventieth birthday, takes enormous 'satisfaction in the triumph of his brilliant disciple, Monsieur W. M. Haffkine Haffkine, Waldemar Mordecai Wolfe (1860–1930) DSB
Close   View the register entry >>, in having succeeded in transforming and inoculating the cholera microbe'. Indeed, 'the humanitarian problem now at stake' with regard to cholera is so great, that 'the veteran savant has buckled on his armour and descended once more into the arena of controversy'. (89) The author recounts how she put herself forward to be treated with the experimental inoculation because although 'a number of men had been inoculated successfully with cholera, there was necessarily a doubt about the effect it would have upon women'. She then describes her visit to the Institut Pasteur, where she is particularly struck by the youthful good looks of Haffkine (he is 'blond, tall, erect, remarkably well-built') as well as 'the curiosities of his laboratories—a veritable treasure-house of every ill that "flesh is heir to"', which include several test-tubes of cholera microbes. (90) A diary records her sensations after having been injected with these microbes, and relates how, after two or three hours of feeling 'nothing abnormal', 'discreet little pains begin at the point of inoculation, and increase, until getting up and sitting down become matters of serious reflection, especially when your family and friends have no idea that you have been trying to do the heroic'. In order to 'test its efficacy to the utmost', Haffkine proposes applying his method to an area particularly prone to cholera epidemics, and Pasteur has already received permission to do this from King Rama V Rama V (Chulalongkorn Phra Paramindr Maha), King of Siam (1853–1910) CBE
Close   View the register entry >> of Siam. Concludes with the hope that 'cholera may be stamped out within the next few years' if 'the public' offer their assistance to Haffkine's experimental research. (91)

Genre:

Editorial

Subjects:

Monographs, Reading

    Complains that the argument of St George J Mivart's Mivart, St George Jackson (1827–1900) DSB
Close   View the register entry >> book The Origin of Human Reason Mivart, St George Jackson 1889. The Origin of Human Reason: Being an Examination of Recent Hypotheses Concerning It, London: K. Paul, Trench
Close   View the register entry >> is impaired by the author's failure to show 'proper concern about the index' (92).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography

Subjects:

Periodicals, Medical Practitioners

    In recounting the 'antithetic qualities' of the Pall Mall Gazette Pall Mall Gazette (1865–1900+) Waterloo Directory
Close   View the register entry >>, reflects that 'At one time the sworn defender of the medical priesthood, with all its shibboleths—vaccination, vivisection, and the C. D. Acts—it became the enthusiastic champion of all the crusaders against all the infamies of the doctors and of the police' (139).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Blake 1893 Blake, William 1893. The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical, ed. by Edwin J. Ellis and William B. Yeats, 3 vols, London: B. Quaritch
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Subjects:

Spiritualism

    Asserts that the mystical poet William Blake Blake, William (1757–1827) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> was 'what would now be called an inspirational medium', and suggests that the 'Psychical Research Society Society for Psychical Research
Close   View the register entry >> will do well to direct its attention to' aspects of his poetry, for 'Here is telepathy, indeed, if it be not vision. Mr. Myers Myers, Frederic William Henry (1843–1901) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> must see to it' (200–01).

Genre:

Editorial

Subjects:

Medical Treatment, Heterodoxy, Homeopathy, Quackery, Controversy, Boundary Formation

    Prints letters from the five patients still taking Cesare Mattei's Mattei, Cesare (1809–96) WBI
Close   View the register entry >> medicines for the cure of cancer, even though the experimental committee appointed to test their efficacy has long since 'terminated its duties'. Although the letters are 'of course, only of value from a subjective point of view, as expressions of the opinions of the patients themselves', they nevertheless establish that the patients are 'all still alive', and that 'all of them continue to have an unshaken faith in the efficacy of the Mattei remedies as a means of alleviating their pain'.

Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Engineers, Heroism

    Reports that in France, amidst 'the miasma of recent scandals' and 'the malaria of Panama' where many labourers working on the canal have perished, 'Severe sentences of fine and imprisonment have been passed upon the De Lessepses, M. Eiffel Eiffel, (Alexandre) Gustave (1832–1923) CBD
Close   View the register entry >>, and others for their share in the colossal swindling, but the net effect, so far, has not been to weaken the feeling of sympathy for the old Lesseps Lesseps, Ferdinand, vicomte de (1805–94) CBD
Close   View the register entry >>, the hero engineer of this epoch' (244).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography

Relevant illustrations:

eng. [7]

Subjects:

Exploration, Imperialism, Natural Imperialism, Heroism, Naturalists, Natural History, Zoology, Collecting, Medical Treatment, Pharmaceuticals, Extinction, Spiritualism, Materialism

    Observes that in 'Central Africa the human being is rather the parasite of the over-lord than the over-lord himself. The real masters of the interior are the animals, not the men. Hence in these regions the hunter is still the hero [....] the pioneer of civilization' (257). Although Frederick C Selous Selous, Frederick Courteney (1851–1917) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> 'can better drive a bullet from a rifle into the brain of a charging lion than he can impel his ideas into the mind of the British public', he 'would probably wish to be remembered more as a naturalist than as anything else. Though not a trained scientist he has made the scientific world his debtor by the care with which he makes his observations [...] and the intense interest which he displays in all forms of animated nature' (257–58). Indeed, the 'best specimens of wild animals that are to be found in the collection at South Kensington were shot by Mr. Selous in the wilds, and their skins sent home to become a permanent addition to the attractions of the capital', and he is 'just as eager in the pursuit of a moth as he is in the shooting of an elephant or the hunting of a lion'. By 'combining in his own person the prowess of the earliest hunters with the reflection, habits, and observation of the scientific naturalist', Selous is a 'typical man of his time' (258). Also notes that Selous is one of those 'natural miracles that occasionally occur, as if to prove the falsity of all the rules and regulations of the physicians' (259), exposing himself 'recklessly under African suns' without taking 'opium or alcohol, or any prophylactic except quinine and Warburg's fever mixture' (260). Expresses concern for the uncertain future of the few 'straggling specimens' of the African elephant which remain after the 'massacre of such numbers' of the species (263). Relates how during a visit to friends in the Transvaal who 'were deeply interested in the subject of spiritualism', Selous received a warning in a 'message by automatic writing' not to remain in that country (266). Concludes that although as both a 'Darwinian and a Cromwellian' Selous 'emerged from his South African wanderings a materialist in philosophy', there must come a 'doubt born of many strange phenomena' such as the automatic writing, and speculates that we may be 'on the eve of the Fourth Dimension' (269).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Burdett 1891–93, Burdett, Henry Charles 1891–93. Hospitals and Asylums of the World: Their Origin, History, Construction, Administration, Management, and Legislation; With Plans of the Chief Medical Institutions Accurately Drawn to a Uniform Scale, in Addition to Those of All the Hospitals of London in the Jubilee Year of Queen Victoria's Reign, 4 vols, London: J. & A. Churchill
Close   View the register entry >> Myers 1893, Myers, Frederick William Henry 1893. 'The Subliminal Consciousness', Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 9, 3–128
Close   View the register entry >> Willink 1893, Willink, Arthur 1893. The World of the Unseen: An Essay on the Relation of Higher Space to Things Eternal, London: Macmillan & Co.
Close   View the register entry >> Anon 1893a Anon. 1893a. Do the Dead Return?: A Record of Experiences in Spiritualism by a Clergyman of the Church of England, London: T. F. Unwin
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Relevant illustrations:

map

Subjects:

Hospitals, Statistics, Psychical Research, Spiritualism, Christianity

Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography

Relevant illustrations:

eng. [5], map [4]

Subjects:

Exploration, Imperialism, Heroism, Ethnography, Psychical Research, Spiritualism

Publications cited:

Skewes 1889 Skewes, Joseph Henry 1889. Sir John Franklin: The True Secret of the Discovery of His Fate. A Revelation, London: Bemrose and Son
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    Relates the experiences of the naval explorer W Parker Snow Snow, William Parker (1817–95) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >>, who, unlike other 'subjects selected for our Character Sketches', represents the 'much greater number of those who have failed—failed, that is to say, in winning recognition, competence, and what the world calls success' (371). After a varied career in the navy and as a literary amanuensis, Snow, then living in New York, discovered that he was 'naturally psychic, living near the edge of the fourth dimension'. In January 1850 he received 'a kind of clairvoyant vision' of the exact whereabouts of the survivors of John Franklin's Franklin, Sir John (1786–1847) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> ill-fated Arctic expedition to discover the north-west passage (376). This 'dream made so strong an impression upon him that he wrote to Lady Franklin Franklin, Jane, Lady (1792–1875) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> that very day', and she soon 'decided that her private search expedition should go to just those places where the vision had shown the survivors to be'. The 'survivors were not discovered in 1850', however, because the commander of the Prince Albert, on which Snow 'sailed [...] practically as second in command', decided abruptly to return home just when those they were supposed to be 'saving [...] were almost within hail'. (378) It was not until a further nine years had passed that the expedition led by Francis L McClintock McClintock, Sir Francis Leopold (1819–1907) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> brought news of the fate of Franklin's unfortunate expedition, but if in 1850 'the Admiralty Admiralty
Close   View the register entry >> had paid attention to the suggestions and strange notifications given they would have saved the country half a million of money, and probably have rescued at least one half of the Franklin expedition. It is a curious story and may well be borne in mind at a time when it is the cue of the unbeliever to assert that spiritualistic manifestations have never brought to light the existence of any fact which was not already known' (380). Although Snow's 'pamphlets have been suppressed, and all his efforts to bring the facts before the public have failed', he was never inclined to believe that 'McClintock had settled everything. In his opinion many of the crew were still alive, and, strange to say, he is by no means inclined to admit that they are all dead even now' (382), holding that some are 'still living among the Esquimaux' (381).