citizens is involved; the observed amount of sickness, as the basis of the calculations and practical operations of benefit societies. And here we must present our readers with a short table contrasting the results obtained by the Highland Society and those of Mr. Ansell with the more recent calculations of Mr. Neison.

Annual Sickness to each person in weeks:

On this table the author has the following remarks.

"The remarkable increase in the amount of sickness, as shown by the present results, beyond the two other tables, will no doubt appear very startling to those not intimately familiar with the condition of friendly societies throughout the country. The rate of sickness as given in the table of the Highland Society, has been long and generally acknowledged to be much below the actual average, and even so far back as 1825 it was thought unfavorably of by a Committee of the House of Commons. It is unnecessary to enter into the objections against the nature and source from which the data for the Highland Society's tables were obtained, as that subject has been amply discussed elsewhere. For some time after Mr. Ansell's work appeared, it was thought that contributions calculated according to the increased amount of sickness shown in his tables would render friendly societies perfectly safe; but instances occur almost daily of societies breaking down whose contributions approximate to these tables; and recently the increased amount of sickness has become so apparent to the members of some of the best regulated societies, that meetings have been held, and reports of a very clear and opposite kind published, pointing to the increased amount of sickness as the cause of their falling condition. A knowledge of circumstances of this kind first led to the present inquiry, the original object of which was simply to answer the question -whether friendly societies were subject to a higher rate of sickness."

We shall not follow Mr. Neison into his discussion of the causes of the difference existing between results so recent as those of Mr. Ansell, and his own; but content ourselves with expressing our entire confidence in his own tables, and the strong sense we entertain of the benefit which he must be the means of conferring on the societies in whose welfare he has taken so deep an interest. We can scarcely conceive a more important subject than that to which he has directed our attention. If it be important to encourage to the utmost habits of forethought and frugality it is little short of a crime to disappoint the cherished hopes of the deserving persons who display these virtues by negligently leaving the solution of the question on which a future provision must rest to the chance efforts of individuals. We, therefore think that there is much force and justice in the following observations:

To those interested in the progress of friendly societies, the results are highly important, as they will demonstrate the impossibility of permanence in those institutions on their present foundation. Considering the immense number of those societies which have broken down, it is lamentable to think that so little should have been done to ascertain the real nature and extent of the risks to which they

are subject. It is still more remarkable that so many legislative enactments should have occupied the attention of the government of the country from time to time, and that committees also of the House of Commons should have had the condition of those societies for several years under consideration, without any practical measure being carried out for collecting and arranging data in a proper shape to point out the true character of the liabilities to which they are subject. In fact, the stimulus given to the formation of those societies by some recent acts of Parliament should be regarded as an evil rather than as a benefit to the working classes. An immense number of societies were formed in a very short period, and their contributions regulated by the most delusive and inadequate data, so that at the present time very few are to be found calculated to survive many years. Under a scientific and amply-developed system, those societies would be calcu lated, in a few years, to completely remove the cause of nearly all that poverty, distress, and misery, which haunt our manufacturing towns, and fill our workhouses with the working classes of the country; but owing to the imperfect and unstable foundation on which they are at present built, instead of being a help and support to a poor man, they involve him in those difficulties for which he might otherwise have provided. On becoming a member of such a society, he reasonably looks forward to it as a support for his declining years, and a protection during periods of sickness and disease; but, ultimately, at the very time when assistance is required, he discovers that the society has been formed on a ruinous plan, that the increasing years and infirmities of its members have absorbed all its funds, and that those surviving must be thrown destitute on the parish or a public charity. It is thus, by the most ill-conceived of all proceedings, the legislation of the government has hitherto tended. Every facility and encouragement are given to the formation of societies, without any help or information for their management or guidance. The ship is cast upon the waves without a rudder or a compass, and the safety of the vessel left to accident or chance.”

There is a glimpse here of what will assuredly some day come to pass, when the government shall be alive to the value of the principle of insurance carried out to its full extent, and substituted for the clumsy, cumbrous, and costly machinery of poor-laws and union-houses, and all the wasteful extravagance of our present system of mending, and soldering, and patching; when in all things the great practical motto, "Prevention better than Cure,” shall become the motto of the state, and the system of Laissez faire, with all its fearful offspring of misery, disease, and crime, shall cease and determine. Can any one doubt for an instant what the effect would be of a comprehensive system of benefit-societies, coextensive with savings'-banks, guaranteed by government against the accident of limited observation or incorrect calculations, and in which the labouring classes might place implicit reliance? We may rest assured that, ere many years had passed over our heads, some of our unions would be found too large, and our prisons perchance to offer too much accommodation. The principle of assurance, like our civilization, is but in its infancy, and the art of government in its cradle. But the nineteenth century has something better than railroads in store for us, or we greatly mistake the signs of the times.

We are warned by the length to which the foregoing remarks on this truly valuable work have extended, that we must hasten to a close; but we cannot conclude without quoting a somewhat lengthened passage, which embodies our author's views on one of the greatest practical questions of the day-the sanitary question :

"If in any public inquiry it should be attempted to ascribe the increased amount of sickness in the town districts to the less healthy nature of the districts,

XLII.-XXI.

2

or their peculiar local influence on health, the conclusion would certainly be fallacious. Precisely similar arguments to those made use of in reference to the mortality of those districts, will explain the differences in the ratio of sickness in the same places; and it is therefore to be inferred, that whatever sanitary regulations may be carried out for promoting the health of towns, the wide distinction between the rates of sickness and mortality in particular districts will still not disappear. The cause of that difference is beyond the reach of any sanitary measure; and unless a change were to take place in the character and machinery of the manufactures of a town, by which the workmen would be habituated to less restrained but more active and complete physical exercises, no improvement in the state of health is to be looked for. The evils, so far as relates to health, represented to exist by some writers to so frightful an extent, and to connect themselves with inferior sewerage, filthy streets, and ill-planned houses, are certainly overstated by them. The data brought forward have generally been of the most indefinite and insufficient nature; and when, in connexion with this, the erroneous methods employed, and the promiscuous manner in which their figures are generally combined, are kept in view, it must seem surprising that the thinking and intelligent portion of the community should have given their opinions any credence, or believed their conclusions entitled to so much weight. Perhaps no statistical facts are better established than the duration of life among the middle and upper classes of this country; and if the data brought forward in this paper be received as of sufficient merit to represent the duration of life among the working classes, it will then appear clear that any important change to be hoped for in the value of life in the town districts, must be effected through other means than sanitary regulations. Those persons purchasing government annuities, and having dealings with assurance companies, are certainly beyond the reach of any improvements to be introduced by local regulations; and if cleanliness of habit, comfort of dwellings, and fresh air be of themselves powerful elements in raising the standard of life, their influence should be felt among that class of persons. But what are the actual results? The poor workmen inhabiting the miserable streets of our large towns, and inhaling their supposed noxious vapours, are actually longer lived than the affluent and upper classes, whose easy circumstances enable them to inhabit comparatively the palaces of the kingdom. It is evident, from the disparity in the value of life among different classes of workmen, whose conditions as to whatever is within the scope of public sanitary measures are the same, that other elements must exist having a powerful influence on the duration of life. It would further appear, by viewing the various classes of society more in connexion with the physical exercises to which they are habituated, than in connexion with their moral position and rank in society, and consequently with their sanitary condition, that a better clue will be found to the differences in the duration of life. It is not to be expected that any arrangements whatever as to the drainage and planning of streets, are likely to add to the longevity of a tailor; but if it were possible to give his frame the physical exercises of a ploughman, twenty per cent. would be added to the duration of his life. Neither is it to be thought that the plumber, painter, and glazier is to be relieved from the poison of the metallic emanations to which he is subject; nor that the clerk can inhale the fresh air and indulge in those exercises necessary to develop his physical constitution, while he follows the drudgeries of the counting-house. It is an aggregation of these, and other employments similarly conditioned, which make up the excessive mortality of our large towns; and since it has been shown in the preceding pages, that this class of lives is also less healthy even in the country districts, and that the town populations are chiefly made up of persons following such occupations, the legitimate result to be expected is a shorter duration of life in towns, independent of any local influence on health. If improvements and changes are to be effected in the sanitary regulations of our large towns and cities, let them at once be carried out-not upon the necessity of such municipal innovations to avert a pestilential havoc in human life-but on the true merits of the question-the comforts, conveniences, and elevation of taste and moral purity thence arising."

These opinions of Mr. Neison, though, as we think, hastily formed and greatly exaggerated, are entitled to be treated with the respect due even to the errors of one who spares no pains or expense in collecting facts, and who exhibits unusual assiduity in using them. But we cannot withhold the expression of our surprise and regret that Mr. Neison should have treated with so little respect the conclusions of the many men of science, who have concurred in tracing the high mortality of our large towns to the causes to which he attaches so little importance. It is at least within the bounds of possibility that similar fallacies to those which Mr. Neison assumes to have misled Mr. Chadwick, Dr. Southwood Smith, the members and witnesses of the different health-commissions, and the government itself, may have crept in among his own conclusions.

The higher classes may be short-lived in spite of their broader streets, and larger houses, and better food, and warmer clothing, and greater personal cleanliness; just as the lower classes may be short-lived from the want of all these advantages. Luxury and self-indulgence may be to the full as fatal as hardship and privation. A king may not be one whit healthier or longer-lived than a beggar, a peer than a tailor, a member of the House of Commons than a delegate of a trade's union, an author than a compositor; but non constat that the unhealthiness of the extremes of the social scale may not spring from such different causes as to render any comparison between them ridiculous. The one may take as much poison into his stomach as the other into his lungs, the chief difference between them being, that the rich man has more control over his cook than the poor man has over his employer. It will be much easier for the one to order a plain dinner, than for the other to procure a single breath of fresh air. When Mr. Neison shall have succeeded in explaining away the eighty cases of fever, including relapses, occurring in one house in Dublin in the course of twelve months; the fifty cases occurring in another in the same period; the thirty patients in eight months from a third; and the nineteen in six weeks from a fourth, and scores of similar facts occurring in all the large towns of the empire, without the aid of defective drainage and sewerage, we will discard this item of our sanitary creed. When he shall have instituted an exact comparison between the tailor, compositor, or needlewoman, working in a crowded, heated, and unventilated apartment, and the same class following the same avocations for the same number of hours a day, in a cool and pure atmosphere, and shall succeed in proving that the one class is to the full as healthy as the other, we will give up all faith in ventilation, and embrace his own theory of deficient exercise. All this, and something more, must come to pass before our friends of the Health-Commission and their allies can be forced from the strong position which they have taken up. They may have fortified themselves with some worthless arguments, and entrenched themselves behind some showy fallacies, but in the main we are convinced that they will stand their ground, till they find Mr. Neison himself of their mode of thinking. Not content with advocating "municipal innovations," as conducing to "the comforts, conveniences, and elevation of taste and moral purity, thence arising," they will continue to urge them with all their power and influence as essential to the enjoyment of such health as is compatible with the disadvantages to which the social occupations of the

-

labouring class expose them. In the mean time, they cannot be insensible to the great value of Mr. Neison's labours, and they hail him as a fellow-worker with themselves in that stubborn and tangled field of mingled facts and fallacies, where the wheat and the tares still grow together, and the weeds cling even to the sheaves.

ART. II.

Dr. J. L. Schönlein's, Professor in Zürich, Allgemeine und Specielle Pathologie und Therapie, &c. &c. In Vier Theilen. St. Gallen, 1839. The General and Special Pathology and Therapeutics of Dr. J. L. Schönlein, Professor at Zürich. Edited by several of his Class, from Notes taken at his Lectures. In Four Parts. The Fourth Edition, much-improved. St. Gall, 1839. 8vo. pp. 327, 276, 281, 208. Schönlein's Klinische Vorträge in dem Charité Krankenhause zu Berlin. Redigirt und herausgegeben von Dr. L. GÜTERBOCK. Erster und Zweiter Heft, 1842; Dritter Heft, 1844. Berlin.

Dr. Schönlein's Clinical Discourses in the Charité Hospital at Berlin. Taken and edited by Dr. L. GÜTERBOCK. In Three Parts. 8vo, pp. 480. Berlin, 1842. 1844.

Dr. Schönlein als Artz und klinischer Lehrer aus der Schilderung der Dr. Güterbock; einer unabweisbaren Kritik unterworfen von Dr. LEHRS und Dr. SCHARLAU. Berlin, 1842.

An unimpeachable Critique on Dr. Schönlein, as Physician and Clinical Lecturer, &c. &c. By Dr. LEHRS and Dr. SCHARLAU. 8vo, pp. 201.

WE feel that an apology is due to our readers for our tardy notice of the pathology and therapeutics of Schönlein. His fame is European, and whether justly or unjustly awarded, that extended reputation was reason sufficient for his trial in our critical crucible. If, however, we were to print a whole page of excuses our readers would be little the wiser; therefore, we content ourselves with observing that the delay has been advantageous, inasmuch as it enables us to judge of the clinical performances of Schönlein, as well as of his labours at the desk. We begin with the latter.

Medicine concerns itself with life generally, and with the life of man specially. Man is a part of the general system of the universe, and in common with all other organisms, seeks to separate himself from the great whole, and to be manifested as an independent entity. The great whole resists, antagonizes this effort;—a contest arises between the egoistic and planetary principles; and so long as the latter is equipoised or overcome by the former, there is health to the individual. The ascendancy of the planetary principle is death. Diseases is the struggle of the egoistic with the planetary-the resistance of the individual organism against injurious agents (schädlichen potenz) which seek to destroy it. These struggles appear under diverse forms which mark the forms of disease. The form of disease may be determined by three circumstances: 1. The nature of