thecaries' Act to make certain charges for drugs sent to his patients, and this practice has now become general throughout the country.

The public are, we fear, wholly to blame for this very objectionable practice. An attempt has been made by the medical profession to break through it by charging for time instead of physic-a much more sensible method of payment, and one calculated to save the patient from the infliction of unnecessary drugs; but this plan as yet has failed altogether, in the provinces at least. People, as a rule, like to be drugged; they prefer the practitioner who takes active measures; they like something, they say, for their money, and they unfortunately prefer to pay for the coloured bottles of stuff that come into the sick chamber with such alarming rapidity, to paying the medical man for his time and skill. In the larger towns the patients are more reasonable, and see through the absurdity of putting the medical man under the necessity of supplying drugs that are often hurtful to them.

As a general rule, however, the people like strong medicines, and will have them; hence the doctor, if he will live, must bow to the popular decision. The lower we go in the social scale, the stronger is its tendency to rely upon strong drugs to cure disease. We have only to glance over the pages of newspapers, to see the swarms of patent medicines which address themselves to the eye of the public. Every druggist thinks he is entitled to find out some specific for all the ills that flesh is heir to; and some gigantic professors in this art astound us by the magnitude of their operations. Mr. Holloway, to wit, sends out his pills by the ton weight; and Mr. Morison, with his gamboge boluses, is equal to a persistent diarrhoea throughout the country. There is a tendency, however, in medicine to rush to extremes, and the abuse of the drugging system has led to the adoption of a doctrine which is tantamount to a practical denial of the value of medicine altogether. It cannot be gainsaid that the upper classes of this country are deeply bitten with the doctrine of Homœopathy. Disappointed with the present routine system of medicine, they fly to one which appeals to their imagination. There is something truly wonderful in the power of remedies which they believe to act in billionth doses, and forthwith they give themselves up to the simple treatment of Nature; for to say that homoeopathic doses

can have any effect upon the human body is a simple absurdity.

The pleasure of doctoring one's self-no slight pleasure, as the practice of mankind shows-can be indulged in by its believers to their heart's content. The little cabinets of bottles and the handbooks of symptoms are at hand to minister to the belief that every man can be his own doctor. We have no doubt that after the use of these pretty little trifles people get well, for it is the tendency of the minor disturbances of health to right themselves. We may concede, perhaps, that the very belief in infinitesimal doses may have some effect towards a cure, for we know how great is the effect of the mind over the body; but this we know also, that where indisposition grows into downright illness of a serious character, either of two things happens. The homœopathist varies his doses to allopathic proportions, or the patient has recourse to the legitimate practitioner. Nevertheless, we cannot help admitting that the very fact of the existence of homoeopathy is a proof that there is something wrong or deficient in our present state of knowledge as to the action of drugs.

Whilst in every other department of medicine our advance has been great, whilst our knowledge of the minute structure of the body has been thoroughly elucidated by the use of the microscope, whilst the science of physiology has taught us the method of action of healthy structure, whilst pathology has gone far to teach us how disease alters these different structures and interferes with their functions, there is one department of medicine the advance of which has been entirely of a negative kind. Therapeutics, or the art which treats of the action of remedies, is very little advanced from what it was in the time of Galen. We cure ague with quinine, and give colour to the cheek by the aid of iron; we subdue delirium tremens with opium, and so forth; but the modus operandi of the action of these drugs upon the various organs they effect, we know no more really about than the big-medicine man of the North American Indian.

It may be a melancholy fact to confess, but we know well the best-informed medical men will agree with us, that our knowledge of the action of remedies upon the human body is at present entirely empirical. We do not by any means say that an able empiricism in such matters is not a very

good thing, and that practically it is of little importance to the patient that his doctor should know the how, as long as he gets cured; but it must be confessed that it is some reproach to Medicine that there should be such profound darkness as regards the true theory of action of medical remedies, and it is not a little remarkable that it has neither been the fashion of the profession to make deep inquiry into this subject, nor has the bent of any distinguished individual led him into this little-beaten track.

Our experience, day by day, is, however, contracting the number of drugs that we know to be efficacious empirically. Out of the thousands of drugs that load our chemists' shops, and among the numberless preparations authorized to be used by the “Pharmacopoeia," we may safely say that we may count on our ten fingers the number of drugs that are really valuable; and whilst the tendency of modern medicine is to simplify the manner of prescribing, the skill of our pharmaceutical chemists is to reduce the bulk of our medicines. Instead of the decoctions, and infusions, and the huge boluses with which the sick man was nauseated of old, it is growing a practice to prescribe the active principles alone of medicines, and thus all the woody particles and the thousand and one adulterations occurring in the raw drug, which only passed through the patient to the injury of his stomach, are now being eliminated. Thus far, doctors' stuff is reforming itself in the right direction, and we trust that the thoughtful minds of the profession will turn their attention towards building up what may with truth be called a rational system of therapeutics.

MESSAGES UNDER THE SEA.

IT required many years to bring our system of Land Telegraphs to its present state of perfection. For a long time. it was found impossible to send a message a further distance than twenty miles. This feat could be performed only in fine weather; when a storm came on, or a fall of snow covered the poles and wires, it was found impracticable to sustain the insulation of the conducting-wire, and consequently the electricity escaped by way of the suspending poles to the earth. Is it wonderful, then, that our early efforts in Submarine Telegraphy have been marked by so many failures? Instead of passing the wire through the air, which in its dry condition is a good non-conductor, we boldly pass it under the ocean, where it is surrounded by a medium whence its electric spark is eager to escape. We condemn the subtle flame to traverse thousands of miles of wire under the sea, and yet are surprised that in the long journey it finds a minute pinhole by which to escape.

If we could catch a glimpse of the physical formation of the ocean depths, we should, without doubt, find that it possesses precipices as abrupt as those to be found on dry land, mountains as high, and volcanic formations as rugged as those still pouring forth their lava; yet upon this irregular and unknown surface we cast forth a slender line thousands of miles long, but not more than an inch and five-eighths in diameter (as in the case of the Atlantic Cable), allow it to sink for miles through rapid and sometimes diverse currents, and trust that it will remain perfect, not only in its conducting-wire, but in the delicate gutta-percha sheath which insulates it.

Is it wonderful, we ask, that in too many cases cables thus

cast forth to seek an unknown bottom, surrounded on every side by an element working against the efforts of man, are cast forth but to destruction? That this is unfortunately the case is but too evident. Out of, say, 12,500 miles of cable so laid, up to the year 1863, not more than 7000 miles are working. As might have been suspected, the failure was almost entirely in the deep-sea cables. We lay our shallow or channel cables with almost as much certainty as we erect land telegraphs; and if the community were to find itself one morning cut off from telegraphic communication with the Continent, it would feel as surprised and indignant as it would at being cut off from its usual supplies of gas or water. With the deep-sea cables, however, it is the exception rather than the rule to lay them successfully. Out of the thousands of miles which are now the exclusive possession of coral insects, zoophytes, and other sea creatures, no less than 6949 miles belong to four undertakings-viz., the Atlantic, 2200 miles; the Red Sea and Indian, 3499 miles; the Sardinia, Malta, and Corfu, 700 miles; and the Singapore and Batavia, 550 miles.

The ordinary obstacles to the laying of a cable in a deep ocean are without doubt very great. In the first place, the "paying-out" process, as at present conducted, is barbarous in the extreme. In but too many cases steam-vessels have to be employed, which are utterly unfitted for stowing away the cable. When great lengths have to be laid, the coils are of such magnitude that they cannot be stowed away in one part of a ship's hold, and consequently, in the midst of "paying-out," the manipulators have to shift from one part of the ship to another. Then, again, a storm suddenly arises, and the cable hanging over the stern is liable to constant and severe jerks and strains, as the ship pitches in a broken sea. Whilst paying out a cable, a vessel must steam right ahead, and has no power to accommodate herself by meeting a sea. Hence she is subjected to greater motion than an ordinary vessel. Again, the difficulty of taking soundings at a depth of two or three miles is so great that it is not to be wondered at that cables are now and then laid on ocean beds which are sure to destroy them almost as soon as deposited.

When to these natural impediments to success we add those created by carelessness, or worse; when we find that, in the language of telegraphy, cables are "starved," or made so