Southey, in his Omniana, states that in Dr. Franklin's works an extraordinary circumstance is noticed as having occurred in London about the year 1763. Several medical men who assisted at the unfolding of a mummy died of a malignant fever, which it was supposed they caught from the dried and spiced Egyptian.

Nine years ago Sir James Simpson put forth A Proposal to stamp out Small-pox and the other Contagious Diseases.' He stated that during the ten years from 1856 to 1865, small-pox destroyed in this island 51,034 persons. In 1864 the mortality reached to 9,425. He calculated that in the same decade of years, not less than 600,000 of the population of the United Kingdom had died of that formidable quaternion of diseases, small-pox, scarlet fever, measles and hooping-cough.

Now, if my present contention be well founded-if, that is, all the diseases of our group are as surely due as small-pox is to contagion only-I may use the same arguments as he did in favour of his project for getting rid of the whole group.

The dreadful cattle-plague which invaded England in 1865, and has repeated the invasion this very year, is fruitful in instruction to us here. No other instance has been known to us of a contagious quality so intense, so far-reaching, so tenacious withal and abiding, so fatal, as that evinced by this murrain. Learned commentators have expressed their opinion that it is the same kind of pestilence as that which formed one of the plagues of Egypt. Yet vigorous measures resolutely carried into execution were successful in expelling it from among us, and doubtless will again succeed. The vast pecuniary loss inflicted by its presence was a sufficient motive for the most strenuous efforts to exterminate the scourge. Surely motives far higher and more powerful exist for rooting out our zymotic diseases. Similar measures are applicable to both cases. We cannot indeed slay the human subjects of zymotic disease and those suspected of it, but we may destroy the poison which they bear within and about them.

To this end the requisites are, first, the unfailing and immediate notification to the proper authorities of the occurrence of every case. Second, the instant isolation of the sick person. Third, the thorough disinfection of his body, clothes, furniture, and place of isolation. Fourth, vigilant and effectual measures to prevent the importation of his disease from abroad, and to strangle it should it by mischance

return.

That such liberation from, and protection against, these diseases are feasible, I cannot doubt. The science of State Medicine-what the French call hygiène publique-is yet in its infancy in this country; but it has at length been born, and our Medical Council, and in harmony with it our Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, are nursing its growth by demanding from such of their graduates as

may be ambitious of devoting themselves to the especial service of this new, noble, and hopeful science, full proofs of their competence to fulfil its peculiar claims.

Meanwhile the minds and writings of Mr. Simon, of the late Professor Parkes, of Dr. George Wilson, and of the staff of able men trained under the Local Government Board, may surely be trusted for devising and organising a machinery through the instrumentality of which the momentous exploit advocated in this paper may be effectually accomplished.

What a prodigious mass of premature deaths might in this manner be prevented, may be gathered from the records of the Registrar-General. These enumerate the killed alone. Far greater, and indeed innumerable, is the multitude of the wounded, the maimed, the disabled, the impoverished, by the stroke of these dread diseases, which thus bring wide-spread ruin and misery upon whole families at once.

It may possibly be objected that to enact the isolation, which might be stigmatised as the imprisonment, of those affected with these diseases till they are incapable of imparting their disease to other persons, would be an unwarrantable infringement of the 'liberty of the subject.' But the objection will not bear examination. Our personal liberties must be, and daily are, restrained, when they would be in conflict with the general safety. The Legislature, for instance, does not scruple to enforce the isolation of a homicidal madman. James Simpson puts the matter in a striking light.

A rattlesnake or a tiger, escaped from a travelling ménagerie into a school full of children, would in all probability not wound and kill as many of those children as would a boy or girl coming among them infected with, or still imperfectly recovered from, small-pox, or scarlet fever, or measles, or hooping-cough. Most properly, therefore, the cobra and the tiger, because they are always dangerous, are always as far as possible prohibited from making such visitation; and the infected boy or girl should be prohibited also during the time that they are dangerous, while they exhale from their bodies a virus of disastrous and deadly potency.

Nor does the economic aspect of the question require much consideration, though it is a scarecrow to ratepayers. Upon them, and upon the commonwealth, the continuance of these disorders among our people would unquestionably levy annually a far heavier pecuniary tax and loss, than many multiples of the one cost of their extinction.

The abolition of zymotic disease, which our insular position would greatly favour and facilitate, is then 'a consummation devoutly to be wished,' but it cannot be looked for in the lifetime of an old man in his eighty-sixth year; yet he may not be too sanguine in trusting that it will be witnessed in the next generation, or at least by his grandchildren.

THOMAS WATSON.

397

RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE.

A VERY interesting trial has recently taken place in St. Petersburg, one which reveals the inner working of a Russian secret society of the most revolutionary nature. Another secret society of a nonpolitical kind had a little earlier figured in court at Moscow. But the Club of Knaves of Hearts,' as the latter body styled itself, was merely an association of ordinary criminals, banded together for the vulgar purposes of stealing, forging, and hocussing. Some of its members, it is true, were drawn from the upper classes, but in other respects it differed but little from such prosaic bands of swindlers as the 'Long Firm' with which our own police have of late been successfully occupied. Of a less secret nature was the society of thieves which last winter troubled the peace of Maikop, in South Russia, for its members held their meetings in a pothouse, and their proceedings were matters of notoriety. At length, one day in March, the respectable inhabitants organised an attack upon the disreputable, and killed fourteen of them. The rest escaped into the neighbouring forests, expressing as they fled a determination to come back and burn down the whole town. But the prisoners recently tried at St. Petersburg formed a really secret and political association. Most of them belonged to the always interesting class of revolutionary enthusiasts; and their proceedings, though almost insanely unwise, are rendered to some extent romantic by their nature and pathetic by their result. Their leaders were all persons of more or less culture, being what we should call 'gentlemen and ladies,' but their aim was to carry on a revolutionary propaganda among the common people. With this intention they disguised themselves, adopting the dress of peasants and artisans, and by this means obtained access to manufactories and other centres of labour. Having become personally acquainted with small groups of their fellow-workers, they then proceeded to inculcate their peculiar doctrines, recommending them at times in conversation, but more often relying upon the efficacy of the secretly printed books to which they seemed to attribute a kind of magical influence. With a child-like faith resembling that of many of our own tract distributors, they held that a good deed was done whenever one of their seditious publications was placed in a workman's hands; and they toiled on, in spite of meeting

with little or no encouragement, with a determination worthy of a better cause. The story of their discovery and arrest, as told by the prosecuting authorities, is as follows.

On the 28th of March (O.S.), 1875, an artisan, named Yakovlef, brought to the police authorities at Moscow some seditious books which had been given to him in a tavern by two peasants. The next morning the donors were arrested. Four days later came a woman who said that, as her lover had been imprisoned, she would like to give up the persons who had got him into trouble. They were members of a society which set at naught God, religion, and marriage, and desired to equalise the rich and the poor, with which intent they distributed books among peasants and artisans, urging them to rise in rebellion. This information led to the discovery of a nest of revolutionists, in whose house were found several seditious books and materials for forging permits and passports. Among the men were two Georgians, belonging to the class of nobles or gentry, named Djabadari and Tchekoidze, and a former student of the Technological Institute and the Medico-Surgical Academy, named Georgiefsky. Among the women, who all wore the dress of the common people, were a so-called Princess Tsitsianof; the two daughters, Olga and Vera, of an official named Liubatovich; two ladies belonging to the noble' class, named Sophie Bardine and Lydia Figner; and Betya Kaminsky, a merchant's daughter, who had studied at Zürich and at Bern. They all went under false names, and used forged passports, and most of the women worked in factories. One of them used to go in the evenings into the rooms set apart for the men, and read to them such books as the Tale of Four Brothers or the Cunning System, until at length the proprietor of the mill found a couple of revolutionary tracts which she had left there one night by mistake, whereupon he dismissed her. Some of the inmates of the seditious nest were arrested, but others made their escape for the time.

In the autumn of 1875 the police became aware of the existence of a secret society which was at work in Tula, Kief, Odessa, and some other towns. It turned out that some of the agitators who had escaped from Moscow, discouraged by the small amount of success they had obtained in that capital, had set up a provincial association, supplied with a code of laws and a common treasury, and were carrying on their revolutionary propaganda at different points. At Ivanovo-Voskresensk, for instance, a Tale of Four Brothers was given up to the police by a workman. It had been given to him, he said, by some weavers from Moscow, who stated that they had migrated thence because they were not sufficiently skilful for a metropolitan mill, wherefore they were generally known as 'the unskilled.' On their being arrested, 245 books and papers were found in their lodgings, as well as 253 roubles. In the purse of one

of the women of the party was a writing in cipher. She tried to swallow it, but it was taken from her and laid on a table. Another of the women then repeated the attempt. A policeman seized her, and was in his turn seized by one of her companions, who called on the rest to assist. They attempted to do so, but the bystanders took the part of the police, who eventually got possession of the disputed document. It turned out to be a letter from Moscow, saying, ' We send you books and revolvers. Work, shoot, kill, raise revolt." Another paper appeared at first sight to be merely a letter expressing sorrow at parting from a dear friend; but when read with the aid of a key it was found to convey certain information about the proceedings of the conspirators, how they had failed to effect the release of one of their number, and so forth. On further inquiry it appeared that the propagandists had come to the town from Moscow towards the end of May, and had obtained places as workers in factories. They lived in the same quarters, their women going barefooted, wearing the dress of the common people, fetching water, and doing all the work of the house for themselves. In the evenings, or on holidays, they would invite some of their factory companions to their lodgings, and would there read to them or give them books. Some of their papers showed that there was a revolutionary agent in Tula named Zlobine, the son of a government official, who had been serving for some time in a gun manufactory as a locksmith. There he had introduced revolutionary books among his companions, reading them aloud, explaining them, and inviting discussion. But the head centres at Moscow thought that he needed aid, so they sent several other agents to Tula. One of these, Kovalef, originally worked in a sugar factory at Kief. There he made the acquaintance of some of the propagandists, who induced him to go on their behalf to Tula, giving him five roubles out of their common purse to pay his travelling expenses. At Tula he co-operated for a time with the other agents of the society. Among these were the already mentioned Olga Liubatovich and a young man who passed as her brother. She called him so, she afterwards explained, because it would not have seemed right for her as a girl to be keeping house for a stranger.' But after a time Kovalef was severely reprimanded by a fellow-lodger for saying that he belonged to a society which renounced the Tsar, and sent agents among the common people to incite them to rebellion. So he repented of his co-operation, and betrayed his comrades to the police. This led to numerous arrests, including that of a young 'noble' named Sidoratsky, who had left the Kief Military Gymnasium in the spring, and had taken to being a locksmith, in order to be independent of his parents; also that of an ex-lieutenant of artillery named Petrof, who, finding himself without any other means of earning a livelihood, after suddenly leaving the Petrofsky Academy, bought a false passport for three roubles and went to work on a railway.