457LOOKING BACK.—PUBLIC HEALTH AND POOR LAW.

Sketching Witnesses in Court.The announcement has been made that in the Probate,

Admiralty, and Divorce Division the practice of makingdrawings of witnesses, which afterwards figure as illustra-tions to newspaper reports of the trial, must be discontinued.The order of Sir John Gorell Barnes will be welcomed bynone more than by medical witnesses, who come into courtas a rule unwillingly and can feel nothing but annoyance atseeing ridiculous travesties of their features figuring oftenin very objectionable company, and usually in connexionwith cases the unpleasant characteristics of whichconstitute their principal claim to public attention.The present regulation is confined to the division named,but it may set an example to be followed elsewhere.That it is needed is shown by the wide circulationwhich has been given to statements that in the courtwhere the inquiry was held into the mental condition ofthe Marquis Townshend an artist actually set up a canvaswith a view to the production of a large painting of thescene, that cameras were used, and that the paint brush aswell as the pencil was employed in more than one instance.After this we might expect before long a pause in thehearing of a trial in a badly lighted court for the takingof a flashlight picture such as we are familiar withat public dinners. The making of these sketches is aninnovation which has arisen and increased with themodern craze for publicity in private matters and withthe misguided enterprise of certain journalism ; butthose whose memories go back but a little way can recallhow the late Mr. Justice Denman, a most dignified judge,and one with strong views on the decencies of life, forbadean artist to draw a witness in a cause eelebre arising out ofthe theft of a pearl. Many portraits of witnesses andaccused persons have been drawn since then, and in manyinstances the mere fact of being sketched as well as staredat in a crowded court must have added to the discomfortand hardship endured by an unwilling victim. There is

only this to be said for the practice-that the publicationof the portraits of witnesses or of persons charged withoffences may sometimes lead to results beneficial to thecause of justice by making their identity more easilyrecognised than would the mere publication of names whichare possibly assumed. Against this must be set the bad-ness of the likenesses which must render such desirable

recognition of even less frequent occurrence than it wouldbe otherwise, and also the distress and annoyance caused inthe majority of cases without any possibility of compensatingadvantage. To members of the medical profession called aswitnesses the annoyance must always be considerable, and,as we have observed, they will welcome the prohibition.

Looking Back.FROM

THE LANCET, SATURDAY, August 16th, 1828.POISONING BY PRUSSIC ACID.

THE attention of the public in this country has recentlybeen directed to the subject of poisoning by Prussic Acid, inconsequence of the suicide of a condemned felon, by thismeans ; and, in France, at the present moment there is muchexcitation on the same subject, from the occurrence of amost lamentable catastrophe in one of the public hospitals ;no less than SEVEN patients having been poisoned by theincautious use of it.......... The account which has reachedus, respecting the death of seven patients by prussic acid, Iin one of the French hospitals, (Bicetre), is as follows :-M.Ferrus, one of the physicians, was in the habit of employingprussic acid in cases of epilepsy; and the formula whichhe used was that of Magendie, under the title of syrup ofhydrocyanic acid, consisting of one part of medicinal prussicacid to 128 of syrup. In private practice, the medicine hadalways been procured at the shop of M. Pelletier, and anounce was usually prescribed for a dose. M. Ferrus, wishingto try the medicine in the hospital, ordered it in the dose ofan ounce to fourteen epileptic patients. The house surgeonrepresented to M. Ferrus, that drachm doses only were given,and that these occasionally produced unpleasant symptoms.This induced M. Ferrus to prescribe half an ounce, although

he had, as before stated, usually directed half an ounce tohis patients in private practice. The medicine was procuredfrom the Pliaritiaoien Centrale des Hopitaux, where thesyrup is prepared according to the Codex, or French Pliarma-copoeia, which is, one part of prussic acid to nine parts ofsyrup. The Infirmary man commenced the exhibition on the14 epileptics ; by the time he had given it to the sevenththe first was dead, and the others expired in the course oftwenty minutes. Magendie uses the acid prepared accord-ing to the formula of Gay-Lussac ; he adds six times itsvolume, or 8 5 times its weight of distilled water, and hethen designated it medicinal prussic acid. The acid directedin the French Pharmacopoeia, is prepared according to theprocess of Scheele, which, in the opinion of Magendie, is

exceedingly uncertain in its results. The formula of Gay-Lussac, or of Vauquelin, should always be followed. Mr.Garden, of Oxford Street, prepares it according to

Vauquelin; it is made at Apothecaries’ Hall by Scheele’sprocess.

HARDENING OF STEEL BY A CURRENT OF COMPRESSED AIR.

FROM the observation of travellers, that the manufactureof Damascus blades was carried on only during the timewhen north winds occurred, M. Anozoff made experimentson the hardening of steel instruments by putting them, whenheated, into a powerful current of air, instead of quenchingthem in water. From the experiments already made, heexpects ultimate success. He finds that, for very sharp-edged instruments, this method is much better than theordinary one ; that the colder the air and the more rapidthe stream, the greater is the effect. The effect varies withthe thickness of the mass to be hardened. The methodsucceeds well with case-hardened goods.

Public Health and Poor Law.LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD.

ANNUAL REPORTS OF MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH.

The City of Liverpool.—The history of the sanitaryadvancement of the city of Liverpool is one of the mostinteresting in existence and the short account which Dr.E. W. Hope furnishes in his current annual report of thesanitary condition of Liverpool in the earlier part of thenineteenth century is one which must make the presentcitizens on the banks of the Mersey thankful that they wereborn a generation or more later. In 1841 the population otLiverpool was 223,000 (it is now 733,714) and of this numbersome 160,000 belonged to the working classes. Of theselatter more than a third lived in courts and cellars, thecourts being connected with the street by a passage or

archway about three feet wide. The houses themselves wereback to back and side to side, having no yards or open spacesat the sides or rear. As regards the cellars they were from10 to 12 feet square, generally flagged but frequently havingonly the bare earth for a floor, the cellars being sometimesless than six feet in height. There was frequently no

window, so that light and air could gain access to the cellaronly by the door, the top of which was often no higher thanthe level of the street ; consequently the cellars were darkand ventilation was out of the question. There was some-times a back cellar used as a sleeping compartmentand having no direct communication with the external

atmosphere, deriving its scanty supply of light and airsolely from the door of the front apartment. A populationof over 20,000 inhabited these cellars and the whole ofthis population was without out-offices or places of depositfor their refuse matter. Speaking of the lodging-houses, Dr.Hope tells us, apparently on the authority of Dr. Duncan,who was health officer of the city for so many years, that inevery room except the kitchen and common rooms the floorwas covered with bedsteads, each of which received at nightas many human beings as could be crowded into it, and this,too, often without distinction of sex or regard to decency.As to the cellars, Dr. Duncan himself said: "The floor ofthese cellars, often the bare earth, i. covered with straw,and there the lodgers, all who can afford to pay ld. for theaccommodation, range themselves as best they may untilscarcely a single available inch of space is left unoccupied."