their fellows to marry; allow them, with certain restrictions it is true, tending to limit their tenure to a period of ten years, but, in effect, making the fellowship tenable for life, if the holder only reside at Cambridge and place himself on the staff of his college, which at the smaller colleges it is always easy for a man of ability to achieve. I have merely stated roughly the principle on which their statutes are laid down; of course each body has adopted its own varieties. The ludicrous effect has been that, in some cases, tutors, expected to stand in loco parentis to the undergraduates, and to be accessible and close at hand at all hours of the day, may be living a mile or more from the scene of action, or possibly in an adjoining village. The modification of statutes at St John's, which allows college lectureships to be retained by those who have vacated their fellowships, seems likely to produce no inconvenience, as the duties of a lecturer are not incompatible with married life. Even he, however, would be better able to support the college discipline, if resident within the walls, which residence for a married man is, as I have said, impossible.

Looking, therefore, from the academic side of the question, the celibacy of fellows would seem very desirable; but, of course, no one can deny that such a principle involves the sacrifice of individual comfort for the sake of the common advantage. Is this fair to the celibate? I think not. It has always seemed to me that a single man is in an unnatural position; a being created by the Almighty to "increase and multiply" a race" made from the beginning male and female," that "a man might cleave to his wife and the twain be one flesh," will, of course, have his natural instincts in accordance with this design; and mortify or control them as he may, they are still there, and cannot become extinct. The sufferings of an abstinent life I believe to be cruel to every man between five and twenty and five and forty; and though athletic exercise, regular diet, and so forth, supply some slight relief, still it is never permanent; and in any event of reaction the sufferer will find himself the worse for his previous regularity. Of course a sedentary life aggravates the symptoms, and I cannot believe that any man of ordinary vigor, so living and so abstaining, will be free from emissions, nocturnal or involuntary, or whatever you please to call them. Still these would be among the least of his distresses; nay, in nine cases out of ten I presume that safety valve of nature is a most happy and beneficial relief; and though I cannot fly in the face of medical authority and deny that there is a pernicious class of the disorder, still I firmly believe all those cases immensely exaggerated by the sufferers and capable of an easy cure, to wit, matrimony, unless the patient by degrading practices has reduced himself to a state of impotence. Moving as I did in many circles, and living on intimate terms with men of all ages, I never heard of or noticed one single case approaching in the remotest degree to the accounts I have read. Of course no sensible person would attach a moment's credit to the poisonous and disgusting works which are issued by advertising firms, or thrust into one's hand in Leicester Square; though still I fancy on weaker minds these books have a great hold, and a tendency to promote the very evils they profess to militate against.

To the majority of men, therefore, who hold Fellowships I believe that celibacy is physically and morally a pernicious state to themselves and a very dangerous temptation; but as the abolishing that principle would strike at the root and vitality of the Universities, I hold that in this case, as in many similar, volunteers must be found to compose a forlorn hope, and sacrifice themselves for the objects of the mass. Doubtless there are exceptional temperaments to whom the sacrifice is not serious; these are the few men who persevere in retaining their Fellowships for twenty years or more, doing an immensity of good to their college and their university, and growing ripe in years and labors,

"'Till some snug rectory to their lot shall fall,

Or e'en that fondest wish, a prebend's stall.'

It is to this happily constituted minority that Cambridge owes her practical advantages and her immense success. The more self-indulgent majority of Fellows win their way to some satisfactory position by the time they are thirty, and then exchange (without much regret) for domestic life the two hundred or so per annum which they have previously

been drawing from their college. The emolument of a Fellowship is in itself a mere pittance at Cambridge, on which no man could live there with any comfort. But it makes a pleasant addition to the income a person may ensure from other sources, such as lectureships, tutorships, professorships, &c. It is strange how misinformed the outer world have always been on this point, I mean, "the affluence and idleness" of academic life: though the undergraduate has to work somewhat hard for any degree which will ensure him a Fellowship, he soon finds that the real labor of life begins only as soon as he is made a fellow of his college. I don't suppose there exists in England a more diligent, persevering, energetic body of men than the Fellows of Colleges at our Universities, or any who receive more insignificant payment in requital for their serious exertions. If a life of constant and healthful employment were really a safeguard against incontinence (alas! that it only were so!), no member of that society would ever go astray: the instances, it is true, of such scandal are extremely rare; but why? because the good feeling and morality of the men keep them pure in spite of obstacles.

I feel I have trespassed already on the space so kindly allowed me; but I venture to add yet a few words as to what I hold to be the means for preserving continence. Mr. Acton's advice as regards exercise and diet is invaluable, and the greater extreme to which that system can be carried, without injuring the health, so much the better A man should go into training for a conflict with his appetites just as keenly as he does for the University Eight, the only difference being that the training will be more beneficial and more protracted. Besides diet and exercise, let him be constantly employed; in fact, let him have so many metaphorical" irons in the fire" that he will find it difficult to snatch ten minutes for private meditation; let his sleep be very limited and the temperature he moves in as nearly cold as he can bear; let neither his eye nor his ear be voluntarily open to anything that could possibly excite the passions; if he see or hear accidentally what might have this tendency, let him at once resort to his dumb bells, or any other muscular precaution, till he is quite fatigued; whenever any sensual image occurs involuntarily to his mind let him fly to the same resource, or else to the intellectual company of friends till he feels secure of no return on the enemy's part. Lastly, I would fain add what Mr. Acton, looking expressly at the physical question, has of course passed over: let the sufferer from sexual causes make his affliction the subject of most earnest prayer at any and all times to that Ear where no supplication is made in vain. Thus armed, he may keep his assailant at bay, though I fear conquest is impossible, and the struggle a most severe one. Sound old Jeremy Taylor, after discoursing on chastity in something like the above strain, says, if I remember right, "these remedies are for extraordinary (i. e. celibate) cases, but the ordinary remedy is good and holy marriage." CAMBRIDGE.

B.

Suprà, p. 109.

STATISTICS OF MARRIAGE.

THE synopsis of the state of the population with reference to marriage, birth of children, &c. extracted from the census of 1851, and published in the former edition of this work, was as follows:

Of persons of the age of twenty and upwards, the bachelors amount to 1,689,116: the spinsters to 1,767,194.

The proportions of the married among the population of the age of twenty and upwards are 62 in 100 males: 57 in 100 females.

About 1 in 3 of the whole population, and nearly 4 in 6 of men, 4 in 7 of the women, of the ages of twenty and upwards, are living in the married state.

The proportional numbers of the ages between twenty and forty, married, are 52 in 100 males; 55 in 100 females.

At the ages between forty and sixty there are 79 in 100 men, 70 in 100 women, married. At the ages between sixty and eighty, in 100 men there are 65, in 100 women 42, married. And finally, at the ages between eighty and a hundred there are 37 in 100 men, while there are only 12 in 100 women, married.

The mean age at which marriages are first contracted in England and Wales is nearly twenty-six years for males, and about twenty-four years and a half for females.

The wife is two years and a half younger than the husband.

The duration of marriage is, on an average, twenty-seven years.

A man or woman above twenty and below forty is called young; so those of the age of forty and above are called old.

Viewed in this light, it will be found that there are in the kingdom about 1,407,225 "young," and 359,969 "old" maids; 1,413,912 "young," and 275,204 "old" bachelors. Of 100 men of the age of twenty and upwards, 31 are bachelors in Great Britain. Of 100 women of the age of twenty and upwards in Great Britain, 29 are spinsters. In London, Bath, and Cheltenham, they amount to 40 per cent.

20 in 100 families are childless, and 80 in 100 have children living.

In 1851, the births of 615,865 living children were registered in England and Wales573,865 as the children of married, and 42,000 as the offspring of unmarried women; and the census returns show that the women of the age of fifteen to fifty-five married were 2,553,894; the women unmarried, including widows as well as spinsters, 2,449,669. So that to 1,000 married women of that age, 224 living children are born annually; and to 1,000 unmarried women, 17 living children are annually born.

Upon the hypothesis that as many unmarried women must, cæteris paribus, be living irregularly to every child born out of wedlock, as there are wives to every child born in wedlock, then 186,920, or 1 in 13, of the unmarried women must be living so as to contribute as much to the births as an equal number of married women.

C.

Suprà, p. 162.

PRESCRIPTIONS.

HAVE thought it better, for many reasons, to collect a few of the more usual prescriptions in an Appendix, than to encumber the Text with them.

B. Ferri Citratis c. Strychniâ, gr. iij ;

Quinæ Disulp. gr. j.

M. fiat pilula ter die sumend.

B. Ferri Citratis c. Strychniâ, gr. xvj;

Ferri Citratis c. Quinâ, gr. xxiv;

Syrup. 3vj;

Aquæ ad šiv.

M. fiat mist. cujus cap. coch. ampl. ex cyath. vin. aquæ ter die.

B. Ferri Ammon. Citratis, 3j;

Ammon. Sesquicarb. 3j;

Etheris Chlorici, 3ij;

Sp. Lavandulæ c. 3vj;

Aqua Piment. ad 3vj.

Sumat coch. j amplum ex cyath. vin. aquæ horâ 11 A.M. et horâ 4ta

B. Syrup. Ferri Superphosph. 3j;

Acid. Phosp. dilut. 3iss;

Mist. Acaciæ, Jiij;

Sp. Aurant. 3ss;

Aquæ Anethi ad šviij.

Two tablespoonfuls to be taken twice a day, at eleven and four, with a tablespoonful of Cod-liver Oil

Two tablespoonfuls to be taken three times a day; at eleven, four, and

at bedtime.

In cases where a local stimulant is necessary, I have found the following answer well:

B. Tinct. Sinapis comp. 3ss;

Eau de Cologne, 3j. M. ft. embrocatio.

D.

Suprà, p. 252.

EXPOSURE OF THE QUACK SYSTEM.

BLOOMSBURY COUNTY COURT.

July 30, 1857.

(Before Mr. LEFROY, DEPUTY-JUDGE.)

V. KAHN.

THIS was an action brought by the plaintiff, a clerk in a mercantile house, against the defendant, Dr. Kahn, proprietor of the Anatomical Museum in Coventry Street, to recover the sum of 201. alleged to have been fraudulently obtained under the following singular and extraordinary circumstances.

The case has excited a great degree of interest in the medical world, and the court was crowded with spectators, anxious to hear the result of the trial. Among the company were several eminent medical practitioners.

Mr. BOWEN MAY, solicitor, of Russell Square, appeared for the plaintiff; and Mr. BARNARD, counsel, conducted the defence.

In opening the case, Mr. MAY said, This action is brought to recover the trifling sum of 207. The particulars of the plaintiff's demand set out that it is for damages occasioned by the defendant's improper treatment during the months of August and September, 1856, while employed by the plaintiff to cure him of a complaint under which he was then laboring, whereby the plaintiff was put to useless expense and pain, and the plaintiff claims the said sum of 201. for money had and received, and fraudulently obtained of the plaintiff by the defendant.

The learned counsel for the defence here suggested the propriety of all females leaving the court, which having been complied with,

Mr. MAY proceeded,—The action is to recover the sum of 201., fraudulently obtained from the plaintiff, but in spirit it is brought for the good of the public and society at large. The plaintiff is clerk to an eminent firm in the city, and is a very respectable man. The defendant is one of those gentlemen who live upon human nature, by frightening weak-minded people, and reducing them to such a state of alarm as to be enabled to act upon their credulity. He is not a qualified practitioner, but avows to the world that he is a physician, and it is under that representation, I shall show, that the public are induced to go to him. Directly he obtains his fee, he does not care one farthing for the cure of the patient, and he also presupposes that persons are laboring under "spermatorrhoea." Now, your Honour, this young man in a weak moment went to Dr. Kahn, and the first thing Dr. Kahn said to him was "You have spermatorrhea; what money have you? You see this is a very dangerous disease, and I am the only one who can cure it; but if I cure you, it must be for a good amount. However, as you are a poor man, I'll do it for 207." And nothing more was said then, but a panacea was given-supposed to contain antimony, the effect of which is to depress the patient to such an extent, that a person laboring under its influence for any period would believe anything. Then by a microscope the doctor discovered some animalcule. This is one of the microscopic dodges, which frighten nervous people. He produces this before the man, who said, "What am I to do?" He answered, "I shall want 50l." Then when he finds this poor young man is acted on in this way, who could not give 50l. as he said, the