The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays

table to have the point settled: we now know "where we are at," and can take our course accordingly. It has for a number of years been known to all but a few back-number physicians-

ows; but against the testimony of so eminent bacteriologists as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their carping is as that of the idle angler. The bacillus is not to be denied; he has brought his blankets and is here to stay until evicted, and eviction can not be wroug

d alive. Whether there is one general-or as the ancient and honorable orders prefer to say, "grand"-bacillus, producing a general (or grand) criminal impulse covering a multitude of sins, or an infinite number of well defined and several bacilli, each inciting to a particular crime, is a question to the determination of which the most distinguished microscopist might be proud to devote the powers of his eye. If the latter is the case it will somewhat complicate the treatment, for clearly

ope to find another evidence of the brotherhood of man, another spiritual

rane, and the newspapers, with business-like instinct, give, for a season, unusual prominence to the record of similar offenses. Then, self-deceived, they talk about a "wave," or "epidemic" of it. So far is this from the truth that one of the most noticeable characteristics of crime is the steady and unbroken monotony of

red to be an "epidemic of garroting." The public mind was terribly excited, and when Parliament met it hastened to pass the infamous "flogging act"-a distinct reversion to the senseless and discredited methods of physical torture, so alluring to the half instructed mind of the average journ