Imperialism, Darwinism, National Efficiency, Religion, Biblical Authority
Reprints the initial editorial of the Review of ReviewsReview of Reviews
(1890–1900+)
Waterloo
Directory CloseView the register entry >> for the benefit of new members of 'what is to all intents and purposes a Civic Church' (2). Notes that during the course of the previous year 'Science and photography have both demanded recognition in our columns' (6).
Discusses dispassionately the 'gradual elimination of the Redskin from the American Continent', and compares the ethical codes of the Sioux tribe with those of the 'supporters and defenders of Mr. ParnellParnell, Charles Stewart
(1846–91)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >>' (9).
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 34–51.
Can Cancer be Cured? A Visit to Count Mattei: His Challenge to the Faculty. With Letters from Prof. Huxley, Prof. Tyndall, Sir Morell Mackenzie, Prof. Ray Lankester, and Others
Anon
Genre:
Editorial, Polemic / Biography, Travelogue / Editorial, Polemic, Letter
Polemical defence of 'the "new medical science"' (39) by which Cesare MatteiMattei, Cesare
(1809–96)
WBI CloseView the register entry >> claims to cure cancer and other chronic ailments. It is a subject that relates closely 'to the vexed question of the credibility of miracles' for, although 'it is no miracle in the supernatural sense', to 'cure a deep-seated virulent cancer is an exploit which is almost as marvellous and unprecedented as the making the blind to see' (35). The medical establishment, however, refuse to acknowledge the testimony of even the most prestigious patients with regard to the efficacy of Mattei's cures, and continue 'hissing "quack" at him from behind their diplomas'. Most patients would nevertheless 'rather be cured of cancer by a quack than left to die according to the rules of and regulations of the College of PhysiciansRoyal College of Physicians
CloseView the register entry >>'. (37) William T Stead'sStead, William Thomas
(1849–1912)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> visit to Italy reveals that the secret cure is made up of certain mountain herbs that are supplemented with a 'mysterious [...] electrical principle' which, according to Mattei, is 'the vital principle of the universe, and, as far as I could make out, is cousin-german to the astral fluid of the occultists, or the strange etheric force of KeelyKeely, John Ernst Worrell
(1827–98)
WBI CloseView the register entry >>' (39). He then claims that the numerous 'facts [...] which seem to be indisputable' presented in the article 'demand from the medical profession more respectful treatment than [...] hitherto received'. Indeed, 'It will not do for men to come from the uttermost parts of the earth to investigate the secret remedy of Dr. KochKoch, Heinrich Hermann Robert
(1843–1910)
DSB CloseView the register entry >>, a remedy which so far seems to have caused more deaths than cures, to rule the Mattei remedies out of court because they are secret. They may be secret but at least they are not deadly'. (48) Letters received from John TyndallTyndall, John
(1820–93)
DSB CloseView the register entry >> and Thomas H HuxleyHuxley, Thomas Henry
(1825–95)
DSB CloseView the register entry >> suggest respectively that the efficacy of the remedies must be tested either in the 'scientific journals of the world' (49), or by testing the condition over a period of time of 'at least fifty cases of cancer (if possible more) [...] under the same general conditions' in a single cancer hospital (50). In a further letter Morell MackenzieMackenzie, Sir Morell
(1837–92)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> volunteers his services to such an 'experimental committee' to establish the truth of Mattei's claims (51).
Section: Leading Articles in the Reviews
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 58.
The Truth About Dr. Koch and His Poison. By Sir Morell Mackenzie
While H H Robert Koch'sKoch, Heinrich Hermann Robert
(1843–1910)
DSB CloseView the register entry >> secret treatment for tuberculosis was 'unduly puffed in November', it has now 'fallen into some degree of disrepute in January'. His proposed remedy is in fact 'a poison infinitely stronger than the concentrated venom of the most poisonous snake' and it should be administered only with extreme caution. Also reproduces a satirical cartoon of a blundering Koch from LaSilhouetteSilhouette de Nice, La
(1886–94)
Bibliotheque
Nationale CloseView the register entry >>.
Agnosticism, Freethought, Ethnography, Progress, Physiology, Sex
Reports the death of Charles BradlaughBradlaugh, Charles
(1833–91)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >>, the 'militant and aggressive Agnostic' who nevertheless showed 'much of the strength of a "soldier of God", although of the unconscious and unrecognised sort' (112). In a 'tardy but complete homage', Parliament erased the resolution preventing Bradlaugh from taking his seat as he 'lay dying', indicating that the 'passionate prejudice which sought to do service to God by doing injustice to one of His creatures, has long since subsided' (113). Also notes that the Indian Government's proposal to raise the age of consent from ten to twelve years is a 'very moderate concession to physiology and humanity' which is nevertheless being denounced as an attack on 'the religion of the Hindoo' (116).
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 137.
Portrait Gallery of Munificencies. I.—Mr. Horniman, of Horniman's Museum
Praises Frederick J HornimanHorniman, Frederick John
(1835–1906)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> for entrusting 'the treasures of his museumHorniman Museum
CloseView the register entry >>' to the public. Observes that he is 'not only a successful City man, but is devoted to scientific pursuits', in particular entomology and zoology. Science and commerce is 'a somewhat rare combination in these days when so many of our merchant princes are absorbed in the race for wealth'.
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 138–39.
Count Mattei's Remedies and the Cure of Cancer. The Proposed Experimental Hospital
Anon
Genre:
Editorial, Polemic
Subjects:
Disease, Medical Treatment, Controversy, Heterodoxy, Boundary Formation, Professionalization, Medical Practitioners, Experiment, Observation
The Book of the Month. Aristotle's Treatise on the Constitution of Athens
Anon
Genre:
Regular Feature, Abstract
Subjects:
Ancient Authorities, Induction, Natural History
Comments that although 'AristotleAristotle
(384–322 BC)
DSB CloseView the register entry >> was accused by BaconBacon, Francis, 1st Viscount St Alban
(1561–1626)
DSB
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> of ignoring induction from observed facts, and trusting over much to deduction à priori [...] this is a strange perversion of the truth'. Indeed, 'Few philosophers have been so careful to base their conclusions on a firm foundation of concrete facts', and Aristotle 'accumulated an immense amount of observation on the structure and habits of animals, in order to write his works on natural history'. (177)
Describes the role played by the recently deceased Charles BradlaughBradlaugh, Charles
(1833–91)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> in 'the bitter conflicts by which an organised freethought party was built up in this country' (235). Asserts that 'To-day, largely because of the work this man has done for liberty, thought and criticism have become so free that they seem a matter of course' (238). Also recounts how the publication of Charles Knowlton'sKnowlton, Charles
(1800–50)
WBI CloseView the register entry >> neo-Malthusian The Fruits of PhilosophyKnowlton,
Charles 1877. The Fruits of Philosophy: An Essay on the
Population Question, new edn (with notes [by G. R., i.e. George Drysdale,
and a preface by Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant]), London: Freethought
Publishing Co.
CloseView the register entry >> led to a celebrated obscenity trial (242).
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 244.
Can Cancer be Cured? The Mattei Experimental Ward at St. Saviour's Hospital
Anon
Genre:
Editorial
Subjects:
Disease, Medical Treatment, Controversy, Heterodoxy, Boundary Formation, Professionalization, Medical Practitioners, Hospitals, Experiment, Observation
Considers whether 'the division of consciousness into several parts' is confined only to those suffering 'a nervous affection of the personality'. There is, after all, 'hardly anyone who has not at times been aware of the existence of a double consciousness in his healthiest self'. Also asks whether 'the moral personalities which have been known to coexist, and to alternate without knowledge of each other, may possibly reach the point of communicating with one another, and [...] the question asked orally of one personality of the medium, may be answered by another through the hand which raps on the table, or which holds the so-called inspired pencil'.
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 253.
Compulsory Childlessness. A Curious Plea by a Doctor of Divinity
Suggests that the insistence that the state should 'enforce compulsory childlessness upon all criminals, paupers, and victims of heredity disease' ignores the fact that 'the children of the well-regulated family have double the chance of surviving and ultimately becoming parents themselves possessed by the children of the morally and physically unfit (253).
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 262.
Ghosts: What are They? By Professor Alfred Russel Wallace
Relates how 'Dr. Wallace regards it as proved that the spirits of the so-called dead still live', even though 'he admits that most of their communications are trivial and commonplace'. His 'conclusion on the whole matter is that if we look upon these phenomena not as anything supernatural, but as a perfectly natural and orderly exercise of faculties and powers of the spiritual being [...] we shall find every objection answered and every difficulty disappear'. This explanation, however, 'leaves untouched the great difficulty, which indeed it suggests, viz. why in the nature of things should these communications be so very occasional and accidental?'.
Contends that Gaetano Casati'sCasati, Gaetano
(1838–1902)
WBI CloseView the register entry >> book is superior to Henry M Stanley'sStanley, Sir Henry Morton
(1841–1904)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> account of the same events in Central Africa, because the latter 'is an explorer [...] and not a scientist, while the Major is both'. In Africa Casati gave Emin PashaEmin Pasha (originally Eduard Schnitzer)
(1840–92)
CBD CloseView the register entry >> 'great assistance with the flora and the fauna', and the colour maps and illustrations in his book 'are extremely interesting both from a scientific and from a general point of view'.
Relates how the 'American people are beginning to look' at the issue of immigration 'from a scientific statistical point of view' (325). They are in 'the position of the owner of one of the finest stud farms in the world for the production of human beings' and do not want 'to spoil their breed of pedigree stock by allowing the introduction of the refuse of murder breeds of Southern Europe' (325–26). The 'English-speaking Republic' must not allow 'this murder strain into the blood of its citizens'. At the same time, however, the unlamented death of 'the Epicurean cynic' Napoleon J C P BonaparteBonaparte, Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul
(1822–91)
CBD CloseView the register entry >>, who had 'not an iota' of his uncle's 'military talent' or 'political genius', 'reminds us of the limitations of the law of heredity'. (326) Also praises the 'energy and capacity of Mr. W. H. PreecePreece, Sir William Henry
(1834–1913)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >>, the chief electrician of the Post Office, who last month has opened telephonic communication between Paris and London' (330).
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 358–59.
Experimental Hospital for Cancer Cure. The Mattei Ward at St. Saviour's Hospital
Anon
Genre:
Editorial, Polemic
Relevant illustrations:
photo. [2]
Subjects:
Disease, Medical Treatment, Controversy, Heterodoxy, Boundary Formation, Professionalization, Medical Practitioners, Hospitals, Experiment, Observation
Describes how Thomas A EdisonEdison, Thomas Alva
(1847–1931)
DSB CloseView the register entry >> has 'adapted the phonograph to the nursery' by placing 'an exact copy of the real phonograph reduced to one-fourth the size' inside a doll. Once this has been completed he 'will turn his attention to other kinds of phonographic toys, and we may expect [...] menageries noisy with the cries of animals [...] and even little peanut boys who go among the audience and sell pink lemonade'.
Condemns the 'modified snake-bite' being produced by 'Dr. KochKoch, Heinrich Hermann Robert
(1843–1910)
DSB CloseView the register entry >> and the Kochites' and questions whether 'the art of inventing a new disease or series of diseases in order to cure or prevent this disease which seems to occur spontaneously is a true and useful art in its application to medicine'. Insists that 'innoculation is bad sanitation'.
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 370.
The Last Days of the Earth. By M. Camille Flammarion
In an 'interesting imaginative paper' the 'well-known French astronomer' presents a vision of life in the year 2,200,000, when the 'exhaustion of the sun's heat' forces the last remnants of humanity to dwell in 'the heart of equatorial Africa' as a single 'unified race' who 'drop dead of total exhaustion about their twenty-fifth year'.
Argues that continual reproduction, whether performed as a conscious or unconscious act, is 'the law for all' and the most important factor in the continuance of life throughout the natural world.
With it being 'census year with the world', the exponential increase of the global population is being made clear by 'fresh statistical result[s]'. There has been an increase of '48,000,000 in the last ten years, with more to follow. The figures bewilder one'. (424) Also records the death of Helmuth K B F von MoltkeMoltke, Helmuth Karl Bernhard Freiherr von
(1800–91)
CBD CloseView the register entry >>, the 'supreme embodiment of the military science of our time', and reflects 'What a contrast between the blustering Mars who was the war god of our ancestors, and this calm, reserved, and studious Alchemist of Victory!' (429).
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 442.
The Mattei Remedies: Cure of Leprosy. Remarkable Reports from India
Anon
Genre:
Editorial, Polemic
Subjects:
Disease, Medical Treatment, Controversy, Heterodoxy, Boundary Formation, Professionalization, Medical Practitioners, Hospitals, Experiment, Observation
An 'illustration of the ferment of Socialist thought that is pervading the human mind', Gould's article 'extends the law of the conservation of force to biological and psychical things' arguing that 'Life is a unity and indivisible, and as inextinguishable as physical force'. Life is 'shared equally by trees and animals as much as by men' and the notion of an immortal individual soul is merely 'the flimsiest of conceits'. Like all 'socialistic schemes', however, this view of life 'destroys all incentive to well-doing'.
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 457.
Will Morality Survive Religion? By Professor Goldwin Smith
Argues that 'the inevitable result of religious agnosticism will be to bring in an era of immorality' because 'scientific sociology offers but a poor substitute' for the moral sanction previously afforded by religion.
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 459.
The Iron and Steel Industries of America. By Sir James Kitson
Attributes the cause of suicides 'in the first place, chiefly to heredity. Suicide with some people is a family peculiarity'. Also notes that 'In all the countries of the civilised world men are becoming more and more weary of the burden of life'.
Reports that Benjamin Waugh'sWaugh, Benjamin
(1839–1908)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> newly founded Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to ChildrenSociety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
CloseView the register entry >> has 'secured the quasi-conditional support of Mr. Herbert SpencerSpencer, Herbert
(1820–1903)
DSB CloseView the register entry >>'. The 'great apostle of the doctrine, "let the devil take the hindmost"' and 'very Pope of laissez-faire' is quoted as saying that although 'by protecting the children of bad parents (who are on the average of cases themselves bad), there is some interference with the survival of the fittest, yet it is a defensible conclusion that in the social state philanthropic feeling may, to this extent, mitigate the rigour of the natural law'. (538)
The introduction eulogises the recently deceased Helena P H BlavatskyBlavatsky, Helena Petrovna Hahn
(1831–91)
ODNB CloseView the register entry >> as one who 'in the midst of a generation that is materialist and mechanical, which probed everything, and dissected even the human heart with a scalpel, did at least succeed in compelling a race of scientists and economists to realise the existence of the conception that all material things are but a passing illusion, and that the spiritual alone is' (549). Sinnett's account of the life of the founder of the Theosophical SocietyTheosophical Society
CloseView the register entry >> endeavours to clear her name of the 'injurious accusation' (556) of fraudulence made in Richard Hodgson'sHodgson, Richard
(1855–1905)
WBI CloseView the register entry >> 'famous' ReportHodgson,
Richard et al. 1885. 'Report of the Committee Appointed to
Investigate Phenomena Connected with the Theosophical Society', Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research, 3, 201–400
CloseView the register entry >> to the Society for Psychical ResearchSociety for Psychical Research
CloseView the register entry >> in 1885 (550). He complains that although Hodgson was 'fatally [...] hoodwinked by the enemies of the Theosophical movement', and his 'methods of inquiry' were 'narrow-minded and unjust', even at 'the present day [...] people who are out of touch with the deep realities of the Theosophical movement' still consider the devotion shown by many towards Blavatsky as 'an unaccountable manifestation of human credulity' (556). These 'unworthy suspicions' mean that 'the grandest metaphysical and scientific theories which are lurking amongst us at the present day are ignored by conventional orthodoxy because they are for the moment associated with a name defiled by vulgar accusations'. It is to be hoped, nevertheless, that they may yet be treated with the proper respect they deserve by 'a more spiritually minded generation than ours'. (557)
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 559.
The Marvels of Matteism. A Remarkable Report of Dr. Arthur Roberts, of Keighley
Anon
Genre:
Editorial, Polemic
Subjects:
Disease, Medical Treatment, Controversy, Heterodoxy, Boundary Formation, Professionalization, Medical Practitioners, Hospitals, Experiment, Observation
Zoology, Sound, Zoological Gardens, Evolution, Descent, Human Species, Comparative Philology
Describes Garner's attempts to use a phonograph to 'learn the monkey tongue very much in the same way men learn the language of a strange race of mankind'. Garner's article argues that the reasoning of monkeys 'differs from that of man in degree, but not in kind', and 'if it be true that man cannot think without words, it must be true of monkeys'. It concludes, 'If the races of mankind may be the progeny of the Simian stock, may not their languages be the progeny of the simian tongue?'.
Review of Reviews, 3 (1891), 578.
The Power of Ideas Over Matter. A Hypnotic Study by M. Fouillée