the appendix to Wilde's excellent work on Aural Surgery (1853) where he has given us some able remarks on the deaf and dumb, he says, "in most of our schools in Great Britain and Ireland, the system" (teaching articulation) "has, except in some rare instances, been abandoned." Again, we find in the "Transactions of the First and Second Conferences of the Principals of Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb, held in 1852," Mr. Baker says: You "It will probably be expected that I should make some allusion to articulation as an instrument of instruction. are most of you aware that my opinion is unfavourable to any large devotion of time to this object, except in cases where a natural aptness exists. Though there will be found in every institution a few pupils, especially among those who have become deaf after learning to speak, whose improvement repays the care of a teacher, (and to such I would afford every facility for recovering the lost faculty,) the success hitherto attendant on the efforts to teach articulation to the totally deaf, is by no means flattering; and I do not believe there is one institution in our country which can produce a dozen pupils whose articulation could be understood by indifferent auditors. But I am content to let the intelligent and educated deaf and dumb themselves settle this controversy, confining the decision to those whose deafness is congenital, but who have had every advantage that the best teachers of articulation and reading from the lips have been able to bestow on them. Do such educated deaf persons converse orally among themselves? On the contrary, do they not invariably converse with each other by signs and spelling? Do they prefer oral conversation with others, who are not deaf and dumb? On the contrary, do they not prefer the means presented to them by their writing materials, or the manual alphabet? We are all acquainted with deaf and dumb individuals, either personally or by report, who have been educated by the means of articulation. Can we say that the value of speech is to them in any degree equal to the cost of its attainment? that either they or their friends value it as the advocates of articulation would lead us to anticipate? or that the acquisition is in any respect equal to its cost in money, and in the even more precious cost of time bestowed upon it? But although I admit that speech is a good and natural exercise for the lungs and voice, I have never discovered that it is requisite for the health; nor that the pupils of an institution in which articulation is not taught have worse health than those of one where it is an object of attainment. I must therefore decide against giving up the time now bestowed on the acquisition of language and useful knowledge by my pupils, to devote it to the specious acquirement of articulation." After these considerations, we hardly think that Mr. Johns can consider the means for forming a conclusion on this branch of deaf mute instruction are scanty, or that its investigation by deaf and dumb teachers has been neglected. May it not be rather said, that his conclusions drawn from such limited experience were hasty, and that previously to his condemning the use of pantomimic signs, as he has done, he ought to have more fully investigated the place they occupied in the schoolroom, and the use made of them by all intelligent teachers. That it is highly advisable, on some occasions, to cultivate articulation, we believe; that it is better in the mass of cases not to do so, we are also convinced; while to give up the employment of natural signs, or neglect instruction in written language, in any case, no experienced teacher could for a moment consent. Nor, indeed, will articulation or anything else ever take the place of signs in deaf mute instruction, and for this very good reason that nothing else ever can. We have devoted the greater part of our space to this particular point of Mr. John's essays, because it is the one which he himself considers the most important, and because it is the one where he appears to us to be the most mistaken, and on which his work may tend to mislead the public. With many parts of his essays we heartily agree, and fully enter into the spirit of the following. After shewing the difficulty the deaf and dumb have in acquiring single words, he says, "and if it be so, with the acquisition of single individual words, how vast must be the labour and arduous the task of acquiring but a fair knowledge of an ordinary modern language is at once apparent. The whole process of educating the deaf mute, is a slow and lengthy one. The teacher who succeeds in it, attains succsss only after years of diligent and patient toil. The blind boy may learn his letters in a week, and be a basket maker in a month; but with a deaf mute no such immediate fruit can be expected. The harvest is not reaped until perhaps more than one cold and barren winter has dragged its slow length away. Spring comes with little sign of life, and summer with scanty blossom; yet autumn comes at last, and the fruit is worth the waiting for." Mr. Johns has alluded shortly to the statistics of deaf-dumbness, but has not dwelt on what appears one of its most strange and interesting features, viz., the difference with which it manifests itself in different parts of our own island. The proportion of the deaf and dumb in Europe is 1 in 1593. In Britain it is 1 in 1670. But if we examine it in more minute sub-divisions, we shall find that this proportion varies considerably in different districts. We find in London it is 1 in 1,783, in the northern districts of England, 1 in 2,058, in the southwestern parts, it is 1 in 1393; while in the Scilly islands, out of a population of 2,677 persons we find 6 deaf and dumb, or I in about 446 persons. As a general principle, a greater degree of prevalency of the disease seems to exist in rural and hilly localities, than amidst urban and manufacturing populations, though this does not hold true absolutely. To the vital statistician these facts are exceedingly interesting, and demand investigation. Until the last census, no means worthy of credit had been instituted to ascertain exactly the number of deaf mutes in the British Isles, and it is only since that time that we have at all been acquainted with the facts now related. We cannot help feeling that they point to some important truths, and indicate causes of deterioration at work in certain places not hitherto suspected. In every institution where deaf and dumb children are congregated, we find several cases the offspring of cousins. And we learn from the " Report on the Status of Disease in Ireland," where by far the most complete statistical account of the deaf and dumb is to be found, that no less than 170 instances were recorded where the parents of deaf and dumb children were related in the degree of either first, second, or third cousins. If we take the places where deaf-dumbness predominates least, we find they are the large populous manufacturing districts. London itself stands above the average freedom from deaf-dumbness, having only 1 in 1783 so afflicted; while amongst the secluded and rural population in the district embraced by the Union of Crediton, in Devonshire, we have no less than 1 in every 1143 so diseased. After some thought, and a careful examination of the subject, we are inclined to think that one of the main features of difference amongst the inhabitants of such places is, that in districts where the deaf and dumb prevail most, there is little movement or change amongst the inhabitants, while in districts where such persons are fewest, we find a population of a migratory character. In the former case, breeding in and in goes on for generation after generation; while in the other it does not, new blood being supplied by the frequent changes taking place amongst the inhabitants. All who are acquainted with agricultural parishes can at once point to certain names which predominate there, and which have predominated there for generations. But this is not the case in large manufacturing towns, many of which, indeed, have only risen up into existence within the last century, and have been peopled with persons coming from every corner of the island; not to mention others, and these are not a few who might write their birthplace at any point between the Elbe and the Archipelago. We have given some attention to the investigation of this subject, and have endeavoured to discover differences in soil, climate, and other such like modifiers of human health and disease, but have failed to find any cause that would appear to be so constant, in acting upon places freed from this disease, as that of frequent changes amongst the population; and on the other hand, where the disease most developes itself, we find a population little liable to change or fluctuation. In one district extending over four counties of England, we even examined the occupations of life, to which the parents of deaf and dumb children had been accustomed, thinking it possible such causes might in some degree operate in producing the disease, but we failed to find out any appreciable difference in this direction. Each trade only giving its proportion of deaf and dumb to the proportion of persons employed in it. Of course we have here been considering the disease in its congenital form, and not the cases arising from accident, which however, bear only the small proportion, to the former cases of 1 in 843. It is here worthy of remark, that this is directly opposite to what is found in the blind. Amongst the blind 47 per cent. are upwards of 60 years of age, shewing the existence of blindness to be only of small extent amongst young people, while with the deaf and dumb the highest proportions exist at the periods of age varying between 5 and 25 years, the numbers gradually diminishing as the ages advance. The blind on the other hand, increase at each period from infancy to old age, and after 55 very rapidly, nearly in the same ratio as the general mortality. Of Mr. John's essay on the blind, we have left ourselves very little room to speak. He gives us some statistical information of interest, discusses at some length the merits of the different alphabets invented for their use, which we would strongly recommend to the perusal of all interested in the subject, and winds up by giving us an account of several men of eminence, who have distinguished themselves in different ways, and closes in the following words: "Our task is now fairly concluded. We have seen the blind man at work on a willow basket, or a door-mat for dyspeptic Mr. Brown; we have seen him elsewhere solving the deep philosophy of Newton's Principia; or with Handel for a listener on fulltoned organ, pouring forth strains of solemn joy and praise to God, "Grandisonum volvens organa pulsa melos;" we have found him climbing mountains and hunting elephants; we have seen him as guide, postman, and fisherman; he has discoursed to us of the private life and loves of bees, the structure of bridges and highways, the wonders of the eye and the solemn voices of the poet, the beauty of the flowers that blow by day and the stars that shine by night; and under all these varied conditions he is for the most part happy and content. But this has been rather the lot of the few than the many; for real happiness and content will never mark the lot of the blind as a class, until the means of knowledge and the power of reading are within the reach of all, and he can read for himself in the pages of eternal wisdom. He must learn to read his Bible for himself; if not by the best system, by any system rather than none; that so, day by day and year by year, he may feel, as the great poet of old felt, "the shadow of the divine wings around him;" and, with keener vision than eye of flesh, look unto "the land which is very far off," of unseen and eternal things; for that toil on honestly and heartily, and there hope for reward. "Thus man may soar above the shade of night, On Epilepsy and Epileptiform Seizures, their Causes, Pathology, and Treatment. By EDWARD H. SIEVEKING, M.D., London, Churchill, 267. In medical authorship, as in other departments of science, a difficult and obscure subject appears to offer peculiar fascinations. Epilepsy which was called by one of the wisest of our art, the opprobrium medicorum, seems to attract authors almost in proportion to its barrenness as a field of investigation. In our own country the recent works of Radcliffe Reynolds, and others and abroad those of Boileau de Castellan, Herpin, Delasiauve, and Moreau, indicate that if the soil is impracti |