report upon the case from one of the Medical Visitors in Lunacy. If the English law were not more careful about property than about life, it would long ago have acted upon this principle in criminal trials.
However, he who advocates a reform in the legal proceedings of this country is assuredly a voice crying in the wilderness, and with less result than the Baptist had when he cried aloud there. It is not likely that any thing we can say will induce those who have the privilege or pain of constituting our government to leave for a time the ambitious struggles of politics, and to devote their energies to a reform of the law. And yet a government could not be better employed than in laboring to effect such a reform. A system of just laws and a simple and expeditious administration of justice would assuredly conduce more to the welfare of the community than years of parliamentary squabbles about politics. Many parliamentary questions which have occupied much time and made a great show in their day will look very small, if they are ever heard of at all, in history, while the reputations that grew out of them will have been lost in oblivion; but an effectual reform of the jurisprudence of the country, which is now an urgent need, would be a lasting benefit to the community, and an eternal honor to the statesman who initiated and carried it through.—Abstract from the Journal of Mental Science.
| CONCERNING CORPULENCE. |
By W. J. YOUMANS, M. D.
MR. BANTING had defective hearing, and consulted a physician for his deafness. The doctor was William Harvey, aural surgeon to the Royal Dispensary for Diseases of the Ear, and also for the great Northern Hospital of London. Dr. Harvey told the patient that his deafness was complicated with his corpulence, for Mr. Banting was very fat. He told him that, to improve his hearing, it would be necessary to reduce his obesity, and he prescribed a diet for the purpose. This was good news for Mr. Banting; he had come to get his ears syringed for deafness, and a way was pointed out by which he could get back his hearing and get rid of his burden of adipose at the same time. He commenced the dietetic treatment, and so successful did it prove in relieving his corpulence, that he rushed into print to convey the glad tidings to all over-unctuous people. He thus became immortal as a philanthropist, and enriched our speech with a new term—Bantingism—which will last as long as the literature of fatness endures. Banting was, however, only a layman, after all, and his ambition was satisfied to produce a pamphlet; but now comes the doc-
