given to drink, the coroner suggested to the foreman of the jury that they should state in their verdict that the accident was the result of her intoxicated condition at the time; but the jury refused to accede to his wish; and he afterwards informed me, that when he held inquests at public-houses, he always found a disinclination on the part of the jury to notice the fact of intoxication playing any part in the death, even when the fact was but too evident!

Having no teetotal tendencies, and believing that to take a pledge of total abstinence from alcohol is simply a piece of puritanical absurdity, which, if carried out in all cases where temptation presents itself, would result in an abnegation of the will itself, I nevertheless could not help being struck with the astounding fact, that in the first four inquests held promiscuously in one day, every case of death was clearly caused, either directly or indirectly, by the vice of intoxication.

Mr. Gough might have lectured upon the subject for years, yet I will venture to say that he never would have made such an impression on me as did the faces of those four poor creatures, staring up at me from their coffins-not emaciated by disease and long-suffering, but perishing in the prime of life, and leaving behind them long trains of suffering children and helpless widows. There are many sayings that we use glibly enough, and none among them further from the truth than one we often hear " Providence takes charge of drunkards and little children."

The next case was that of a little Irish boy who had been killed by a cab running over him. The lad had been following an Irish funeral,—one of those noisy, demonstrative affairs which are pretty sure to gather up all the loose Milesian element that lies in the line of procession. The lad was riding behind one of the mourning cabs, and falling off, the next cab in the line ran over him.

The cab-according to the only intelligible witness who saw the accident take place-was loaded with six persons inside and six on the roof; it was not wonderful that the wheel passing over his body ruptured the liver, and killed him within two hours. He was the last of three children whom his mother, a poor widow, mourned.

The duties of a metropolitan coroner extend over a very wide district; from Paddington, accordingly, we had to hurry away to Islington, where a new beadle was awaiting

his superior, with a fresh jury ready to be sworn in. Coroners' beadles are characters in their way, and they have all their peculiarities in getting up their cases; but they all agree in one particular—a desire to make as much of each inquest as possible, not from any pecuniary advantage derivable therefrom, as they are paid only 7s. 6d. for each case, but simply for parade sake. Thus they invariably put forward their weakest witnesses first, and in this manner often waste the time of the court in parading testimony of no importance whatever, whilst the only material witness is kept until the last. Unless the coroner is up to this little weakness, his time is often taken up in a very unnecessary

manner.

The three following inquests were on children, two of whom were illegitimate. The first, Ernest Han infant of two years old, "out quite beautiful with measles," as his mother said, was seized with a fit, in which it died. As no medical man was present, and no medical certificate of cause of death could be given, the registrar refused a burial order, and hence the inquest. Coroners in the metropolitan district are more than usually critical in cases of illegitimate children, in consequence of the fearful amount of infanticide prevalent in such cases.

I remember Mr. Wakley giving it as his opinion that a fearful amount of children were cunningly got rid of at the moment of birth, by simply allowing the new-born babe to fall into a tub of water. The medical test of a child

having been born alive is the inflation of the lungs; where this has not taken place, it is held to have been stillborn, a fact taken advantage of by some mothers in the way we have mentioned.

In the case of this poor child, however, there appeared to have been no foul play. In a second case, a child of two years of age-"a little come by chance," as one of the witnesses phrased it was allowed to run out into the road uncared for; and a cart, coming by, ran over and killed it. The verdict might, with justice, have been "Went by chance," for the little care that was taken of it.

Still another child called for the verdict of the twelve good men and true. It was a sad sight to see the little face, placid as though it slept, in its mimic coffin of blue, and still sadder to hear the young mother's agonized recital of its death. It was alive and in her arms at three o'clock in

the morning, when she gave it the breast; then she went to sleep with the child "on her arm." When she awoke she kissed it, "as was her custom," when she found it was cold. The child evidently had been either overlaid, or smothered with the bed-clothes.

Scarcely a week elapsed, the coroner informed me, without his having to hold an inquest on a poor infant, put out of life, in some cases perhaps purposely, but in the great majority of instances by over-fondness of the mother in covering the little one's face up for warmth sake. The majority of women treat their tender little ones just as if they were so many hot rolls, smothering them in blankets, forgetting that the breath of life in their fragile frames is but too easily extinguished, and that they have not the power to struggle as older children would against the covering that is poisoning them with their own foul breath.

Our hard day's work terminated with the case of an old sailor, who, after braving all the terrors of the ocean, came off a long voyage to die of diseased heart in his own bed. The body lay in a small dark room, next to the common living-room, and the stench of decomposition was so great that the jury started back in dismay when the door was opened for the purpose of his being identified. The practice adopted in this country, and in this country only, we believe, of allowing the dead to remain in the very apartments of the living, is certainly most revolting; and we hope the time is not far distant when the public will seek for the establishment of perfectly ventilated reception-rooms for the dead, previous to interment. Those who have witnessed the arrangements in Munich, Frankfort, and other places abroad, for separating the lifeless clay from the living for the short time previous to burial, must see how we are sinning against the commonest hygienic rules, as well as against decency itself, in tolerating our national habit of hugging the dead until we are compelled to relinquish them by their very offensiveness.

Walking home, I wondered how the coroner lived, moved, and had his being without being terrified lest at every turn some little unforeseen occurrence might bring a brother coroner to sit upon him. Having seen how lightly accidents occurred, it was days before I could get the thought out of my mind, that we are continually within an ace of our life.

In all probability, however, the coroner is the last person

in existence to feel these foolish fancies, as death in his experience comes from so many and from such conflicting causes, that the one balances the other, and thus keeps his fears in a happy equilibrium.

We are not all coroners, however, and I must confess that for days afterwards I looked much shyer at a crowded crossing than was my wont, and took especial good care to walk outside of ladders.

If, however, accidents take place according to a regular law, and we all go out in the morning with a hundredthousandth chance of breaking our legs, a five-hundredthousandth chance of being drowned, or say a sixty-thousandth expectation of stepping upon a piece of orange-peel and fracturing our skull, we may at least be less nervous about these matters, for, do what we will, the statistician, in estimating the number of annual accidents and offences, claims a certain right in us which we cannot avoid or dispute.

VIVISECTION.

THE Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was some years ago greatly perturbed with respect to the vivisecions practised on horses in the veterinary schools of France. This is no matter for surprise, as the public generally have leen moved with disgust by the recitals given in the public apers some time since, of the experiments performed upon iving horses in the veterinary colleges of France, for the ake of affording instruction to the pupils. No doubt the ociety was quite right in the representations it made to he late Emperor upon the subject, and it is satisfactory o know that its remonstrances led to the suppression of he unnecessary cruelty inflicted for instruction sake across he water.

Not content with this success, however, it commenced crusade against the performance of vivisection in any form, and its members class any operation which may lead o the most important results in surgery, calculated to relieve human suffering, in the same category as the maltreatment of i donkey.

It is extraordinary what absurd speeches excited philanhropists will make when they meet together, and mutually alarm each other by exaggerated statements.

We have now before us the Report of the International Congress held by this society at the Crystal Palace in 1863, and more audacious misstatements of fact than are contained in that Report we certainly never read. Really it would appear from them that surgeons in this country are