558

other enactment bearing on the conduct of trade, inspectionis a logical and needful part of the legal process, and that itshould not imply an offensive closeness of supervision. The

fact that shopkeepers generally hail the expected regulationof their business hours may in itself, we think, indicate areadiness on their part to accept a certain degree of official

oversight. Wholesale houses, it is to be noted, do not takekindly to the present wording of the Bill. They complainthat their work is very irregular in its duration from day today, and varies between the wide limits of nine and fifteenhours in the twenty-four, and they would therefore prefera weekly or monthly rather than a daily regulation.They prophesy dismissal of apprentices and damage to tradeshould the Bill become law. On the other hand, a letterlately published informs us that the figures above stated donot, in one such house at least, represent the true state ofmatters. There the assistants work during slack times fortwelve hours daily, and in the busy season for fourteen orfifteen. It does not, therefore, seem very clear that whole-sale houses deserve the discretionary power as to dailyworking time which they seek. If we look at the Bill as a

whole, we cannot but feel, while admitting its value, thatit goes hardly far enough. Thus there seems no good reasonwhy adults as well as youths should not be included withinits range. Overtime work may sometimes be allowable for

such, but if so, it should not on that ground be consideredas acquitted from possible restriction, otherwise the excep-tion may become the rule, and adults have to make goodthe leisure granted to their juniors. We miss also some

arrangement which will concede to shopmen the weeklyhalf holiday now common in many callings. If we turn

again to the proposed exceptions, there seems no greatnecessity for most of them. Let refreshment bars at placesof entertainment be allowed to close late, and enough willprobably have been done for public convenience. Becausea shop is closed it need not follow that it is barred againstemergencies. The messenger of an invalid, for example, maybe served by a chemist even after he has retired for thenight, but in order to meet such urgent cases it is not

necessary to attract custom of every kind by keeping openshop. For these various reasons we would hope that furtherevidence may assist the committee in framing a measuresomewhat wider even than that which now lies beforethem.

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THE UNDOING OF A DEED OF GOODNESS.

THE pity of it ! After opening up a way of return andproviding a place of repentance for the most pitiable lostclass of our great mixed community, and extending theblessings of the healing art to those who have perhaps thevery least claims on the sympathy and help of their fellows,a rampant spirit of that self-righteousness which affects tofind an excuse for refusing to do good lest evil should comehas succeeded in undoing all that mercy has achieved. The

crazy and fatuous agitators against the Contagious DiseasesActs have clamoured at the office doors of a weak Govern-ment and profited by the impressibility of a sentimentalmajority in a scratch House of Commons. Henceforward,forsooth, that we may not run the risk of seeming to counte-nance vice by dealing kindly with the vicious, disease andimmorality in their most revolting forms are to riot in themidst of our army, navy, and the civil population of garrisontowns ! When will the weak-minded sentimentalists of thisnineteenth century cease to worry the life out of humanitywith their whimperings? It is too late to treat this subjectas involving a question for serious argument. It has been

conclusively demonstrated that the Contagious Diseases Actswere of marked value to the interest of health and morals.It remains only to bemoan the fatuity which has allowedthem to be set aside.

M. JULES VERNE.

THE many admirers of M. Jules Verne were distressed toi

hear last week that he had been attacked by his nephew,"

and had received a serious bullet wound of the leg. The,

ball has buried itself in the tibia, and we learn that a pro-longed but unsuccessful attempt to remove it has been made,

I

and that the wound has been left open in the hope that theball may be spontaneously discharged. Probably in thisthere is some error. It is a common popular notion that thesafe extraction of a bullet removes the chief danger of agunshot injury. This is, of course, not the case. The mainelement of danger arises from the injury inflicted by thebullet in its path through the tissues, injuries which areonly rarely benefited by the extraction of the offendingmissile. Then follow secondary, and scarcely less formidable,perils arising from inflammation in the track of the ball,occasioned in part perhaps by the direct injury of thetissues, but to a much greater extent by irritating andpoisonous materials finding access to the wound or generatedtherein. The removal of the bullet does not directly lessenthe danger from this source. Still the extraction of aball is important; it is often essential to the proper treat-ment of the deeper parts of the wound; and even when noacute mischief follows the injury the mere presence of theball may cause such a degree of chronic inflammation as willprevent the closure of the wound. The two cases of bullets

long imprisoned in the lower end of the femur which werelately recorded in our columns by Sir W. Mac Cormac aptlyillustrate this, and the excellent results which followedextraction in those cases will, we hope, be attained in thecase of M. Jules Verne. For we hope soon to hear that hehas submitted to a second and successful operation.

LOCAL DISTRIBUTION OF SUICIDE IN ENGLANDAND WALES.

IN the discussion that followed the reading of Dr. Ogle’srecent paper on " Suicides in England and Wales" before theStatistical Society, it was pointed out that the local distribu-tion of suicide was a subject not devoid of interest, althoughthis branch of the subject was not dealt with in the paperunder discussion. Dr. Ogle, in his reply, called attention tothe difficulty of obtaining a sufficient basis of facts to yieldfigures trustworthy for comparative purposes for such popu-lations as inhabited many of the English counties. Whilst

fully admitting the validity of this objection to suicide-ratesfor small populations, some available figures may be referredto which are useful in throwing light upon the varyingdeath-rates from suicide in different parts of .England andWales. It appears from the Decennial Supplement recentlyissued by the Registrar-General that the annual death-ratefrom suicide in the ten years 1871-80, which was equalto 71 per 1,000,000 persons living in England, did notexceed 41 in Wales. With reference to this low rate

from suicide in Wales, it may be pointed out that in Corn-wall, where the population shows affinities in race to thatof Wales, the suicide-rate was almost identically the same,40 per 1,000,000. On the other hand, the rates in thecounties on the borders of Scotland exceeded the generalEnglish rate. Apart from the low suicide-rates prevailing inWales and in Cornwall, it would appear that the death-ratefrom this cause is governed to a large extent by the pro-portion of the urban element in the population. In theeleven registration divisions the rate from suicide in the tenyears 1871-80, without correction for differences of age andsex distribution, was highest, 85 per 1,000,000, in London,and 81 per 1,000,000 in the south-eastern division, contain-ing the counties of Surrey, Kent, and Sussex, which containa large proportion of the metropolitan suburban population.The high rate in Sussex is mainly due to the exceptionally

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