On Sunday morning President Timothy Nicholson read a letter written by William Dudley Foulke, United States civil service commissioner, entitled, "Political Influence in Hospitals for the Insane."

The conference sermon in the afternoon on "Altruism and Charity" was delivered by Rt. Rev. John Lancaster Spalding, Roman Catholic bishop at Peoria, Ill.

"The love of self is the radical passion of humanity," said the speaker. "It is strongest in those most alive, and is the source of strength in the highest and most heroic souls. The love of self in the savage and degraded is a selfish love, because the individual is unable to realize the relationship between himself and nature and the rest of humanity. The degree in which man rises above this is the degree in which he has progressed in religion and civilization." With this thought as a key note, the speaker elaborated on the necessity for the individual to identify himself with that which is good, true, ennobling and philanthropic, in order that he himself may be lifted up. He emphasized the necessity for dependence on others at the beginning of

existence.

Rev. Hastings H. Hart, LL. D., of Chicago, made an address on "The Juvenile Court." He said:

"If a child under 16 years of age commits an offense, no warrant is issued, but instead a summons is sent to his parents to bring the child before the judge. Under the juvenile delinquent law of Illinois, it is not so much the child who is on trial as the parents. If the parents fail to respond, a warrant may then be issued compelling them to appear.

"In the court there is no criminal warrant, and no prosecuting officer. A petition is filed, setting forth the facts, and a probation officer appears to take care of the interests, not of the people, but of the child. Throughout the state, the cases are tried in the Probate or Circuit Court; in Chicago, there is a distinct juvenile court, which is in session two days out of the week, and is presided over by one of the circuit judges. At present the salary of this official is $7,500, and in the future it will be $10,000, for we believe that no man in the state is too good to look after so important a matter.'

On Monday morning Dr. S. A. Knopf of New York read a paper on "What Shall We Do With the Consumptive Poor?"

Dr. Knopf is a gentleman of national reputation and an acknowledged authority on tuberculosis. Some of the points that Dr. Knopf emphasized were as follows:

Only in rare instances is tuberculosis transmitted from parent to child. It is usually transmitted after birth.

Predisposition may be inherited.

Tuberculosis is communicable rather than infectious, and in that respect may be differentiated from smallpox, scarlet fever and diphtheria.

It is not dangerous. It can be cured. It is not transmitted by simple contact. The discussion of tuberculosis should be treated as much as a sociological problem as a medical one.

A person does not need to travel long distances. What is needed is sanitariums for the special treatment of the disease.

Let our millionaires stop building li braries, colleges and churches, and devote their wealth to sanitariums for the care of consumptives and to the erection of model tenements as a preventive.

Dr. Knopf declared that the best preventive would be model tenements and that a much needed improvement would be wives who could furnish their families

with properly cooked food. If the women were good housekeepers and the homes were bright and pleasant the disease would decrease and the saloons would not have so large a patronage.

He advocated the establishment of agricultural colonies and seaside sanitariums. He said he believed that salt water baths were an excellent treatment for children who were suffering from the disease. He pointed out the excellent work that is being done by these institutions in France.

On Monday evening "The Treatment of the Insane" was considered by Dr. Frederick Peterson, President State Lunacy Commission of New York, New York City, and Dr. C. D. Burr, Flint, Mich.

At the Tuesday morning session a paper on "The Work of the District and Visiting Nurse" was read by Miss Harriet Fuliner, Superintendent of Nurses of the Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago.

She said: "When very poor people have to go to hospitals, especially in the case of a sick mother or father, it means the break

ing up of a family, let alone the rebellion against their lot that is caused in a miserably poor person's breast, by living for a few weeks in a finely furnished hospital. While not at all deprecating the great work done by hospitals, there is a vast number of people they cannot reach, and it is these that the visiting nurses get at, showing them methods of hygiene that can be applied at once, right in the home."

In the evening the Report of the Committee on the Treatment of Criminals, prepared by the chairman, Judge John W. Willis of St. Paul, Minnesota, was read.

Times and also The Lancet of London. This high authority seems to vouch for the good faith and scientific accuracy of the investigation. The scholars who have done the work described the results of their experiments and exhibited their pictures of the holy shroud to the Academy of Sciences at Paris. The conclusion is that the marks upon the cloth are due to some natural photographic action of a human body upon the chemicals with which it was once impregnated.

The report in The Lancet says:

"This winding sheet has on it certain markings printed in a brown color which when photographed give a white imprint, as does a negative when printed from. These markings, therefore act as a true negative, and M. Vignon has shown by certain very careful experiments that cloth impregnated with oil and aloes, as was the winding sheet in question, will receive an impression when in contact with ammoniacal vapors such as would be given off from a sweat very rich in urea, as is the case in the sweat of a person dying a lingering and painful death.

"Any idea of fraud need not be considered, for no one has touched this winding sheet since 1353 (until recently), and no painter at that date had the skill to reproduce such an exact drawing. The impression of the head is excellent. The wounds produced by the crown of thorns and the marks of the blood drops are quite obvious. The wound in the side and even the marks of the stripes produced on the back by the flagellation are also quite evident. Each of these stripes has at its end an enlargement such as would be produced by a cord with a ball of lead at the end. It is well known

that this form of scourge was employed by the Roman soldiers and such a one has been found at Pompeii. M. Vignon's paper has created an extreme interest both in the scientific and the religious world."

Dr. Vignon finds in the impressions on the shroud an image which must be attributed either to a painter or to the imprint of a human body. The first theory he dismisses as impossible not only because there is no paint upon the cloth but also because of the realism of the figure. A drop of blood on the forehead is in the natural spherical shape and not conventionally designed in the form of a tear. He pertinently asks: "Who in the Middle Ages knew the exact impression which would be made by a drop of blood?"

There are also marks of driven nails, not through the hands but through the wristsnot through the lower part of the feet but through the instep. "Who would have dared to take such liberties with the traditions?"

The wounds and lacerations indicated upon the sheet are of the kind that would have been made by the Roman flagrum and are entirely different from the wounds pictured. by the medieval painters. The face too is very different from any which has been portrayed by either brush or pencil. It is expressive of great sweetness and majesty.

Dr. Vignon contends that all the evidence bears in favor of the authenticity of the relic. In the course of an interview published in the Gaulois he says:

"How could I doubt? Look closely at the photograph. You will find the stigmata as they are described in the Holy Scriptures. The New-Testament

narra

tive tells us that Christ was beaten, crucified, crowned with thorns, and his side pierced with a lance. The marks of this fourfold torture, which are found on the Turin shroud, are too accurate, too much in conformity with the laws of anatomy, to have been invented by an imposter. A striking testimony to the genuineness of the shroud is found in the impression of the lance-wound. Medieval painters gen erally located this wound on the right side, and they were right, from the artistic point of view, because in making a picture they faced their model. The same reasons do not obtain in the case of the shroud, and we find the wound on the left side."

Fine photographs of the cloth were ob

THE HOLY SHROUD OF TURIN.

tained by Chevalier Pia in 1898, and authenticated by copies and descriptions which have come down from the fourteenth century. During the last four years exhaustive researches have been made along different lines in connection with the subject and especially in relation to the effect produced by the vapors from a dead body upon cloths which had been previously saturated with a mixture of myrrh, aloes and olive oil. Commandant Colson, of the Polytechnic School, who had made a study of the actions that may be exerted at a distance by radiations and vapors on a sensitive surface worked faithfully along his own lines of practical research. The resulting collaboration gave the investigation a trend

RING OF THE SECOND CENTURY SHOWING THE HOLY SHROUD.

tigation and a series of experiments demonstrated that it makes no difference whether the object reproduced is above or below the sensitive film; in both cases the vapor is diffused in the air in all directions and reaches the film with a density which is greater as the distance is smaller. The possibility of obtaining the representation of a body in relief by means of its vapor was thus demonstrated. It remained to ascertain whether in the case of the cloth in question, the two indispensable. elementsvapors and sensitive layer-could have existed and the answer was in the affirmative.

A study of the details of the image upon the cloth, and experiments concerning the action of ammoniacal vapors on aloes, together with a study of the historic conditions of Christ's burial, resulted in the following conclusions as given by by a writer in La Nature:

"As time was lacking, since it was the eve of the Jewish sabbath, the burial was only temporary, and the body .nust have been laid, without washing or anointing in a large linen cloth soaked in a mixture of aloes, myrrh, and olive oil. This cerement, enveloped the body in its length, passing over the head.

"Then the ammoniacal vapors from the urea that must have been present in the sweat and blood in considerable proportion, after suffering such as that on the cross, began to act on the powdered aloes of the shroud and determined its oxidation, turning it brown in different degrees, according to distance, and producing a negative image as in the case of the vapor of zinc. The oil also plays a part; it is attacked by the alkaline vapors and solidifies, forming a mordant that incorporates the brown color with the fibers of the linen. We have thus an actual print, giving a negative image in brown, identical with that of the holy shroud. M. Vignon has reproduced the conditions with a model.

"The reproduction of images in relief by means of their vapors is thus a proved fact: and it has been brought to light for the first time in connection with an image nearly twenty centuries old, due to exceptional circumstances resulting from the provisional and temporary character of an entombment."

After giving a description of the method by which the impressions must have been produced, an editorial in The Lancet says: "The action by which therefore the image

of the dead Christ was recorded on the cloth would appear to be due to chemical change rather than to the effect of light. On this explanation an exact image even to minute details, such as wounds produced by the thorns, the marks of the blooddrops and of flagellation by whips of a definite kind is not by any means beyond the bounds of probability."

The "holy shroud" which is preserved under many locks in a casket over the altar of the Capella del Santissimo Sudario of Turin Cathedral is a piece of linen, thirteen feet and five inches long by four feet and seven inches in width. The color of the cloth is yellow, covered with various prints. Some are black marks made by fire, others indicate contact with dripping water. Finally there are brownish red marks giving the blotted image of the human form as shown in the cut, one impression being seen from the front and the other from the back. This winding sheet can be clearly traced back to the year 1353, when it passed into the hands of the house of Savoy. According to tradition it was venerated in Constantinople until 1205, but between that date and 1353 there is a gap in its history.

There is in the University of Pennsylvania an engraved gem belonging to the second century, upon the surface of which portrayed the long winding sheet bearing the imprint of the body of Christ. The inscription upon the stone is simple and the whole picture represents a conclave of early Roman dignitaries holding in front of them the shroud with its wondrous imprints. They are evidently looking at it and talking about the events which it represents.

The stone is a chalcedony which was discovered by Maxwell Somerville, professor of Egyptology at the University, and added. to his collection. The authenticity of this relic is regarded as of the greatest importance, especially in connection with the scientific investigations above noted.

During the Roman decline in the second century the gem engravers made many of these record-bearing stones representing the most important events then taking place.

ELIZABETH A. REED, A. M.

CONGRESS, THE PROCEEDINGS OF.During the past month the Philippine question resumed its place in the center of the stage of congressional deliberation, as was indeed to be expected after a period in

which, comparatively speaking, it had been suffered to play a role of second, or of third, importance. Cuban affairs, too, received their due share of attention; though nothing of consequence occurred on the floor of either chamber, the Senate Committee was conducting hearings which may ultimately prove to have been of great consequence.

THE PHILIPPINES.-On the 1st, there was a heated controversy in the Senate in regard to the refusal of the Philippine Committee to call in Aguinaldo, Major Gardener, and others as witnesses in the pending investigation of army scandals. This discussion was continued two days later; the Democrats demanded that Major Gardener be sent for at once, but this course was angrily opposed by the Republicans. The latter, feeling that their policy was being too severely assailed by the other side of the house, rallied to the support of their party in the following week. Senator Lodge, therefore, spoke on Monday, May 5th, in defense of the army. He maintained that occasional instances of cruelty on the part of officers or men should not be made the basis of an attack upon the entire military fabric of the country. On Tuesday Senator Beveridge took up the thread of Republican argument where Mr. Lodge had left it, and accused the Democrats of clothing the facts in an unwarranted interpreta

tion.

Mr. McComas followed on Wednesday, the 7th, with a series of contentions similar to those already made by his two associates. Incidentally he referred to some of the questions that are now agitating the South, and was thus the innocent cause of displeasure to Senator Tillman, who lent a temporary picturesqueness to the proceedings by a characteristic speech, in which he defended the "shotgun" and other methods of overreaching the Southern negro at the polls. The rest of the Democrats, between whom and Tillman an ever-widening breach now yawns, left the chamber during the course of the Senator's remarks. Two days after this amusing affair Senator Lodge was defeated by the Democrats in an attempt to fix the date for a vote in the pending bill.

During the next week of Congress, the only important event in connection with the Philippine problem occurred on the 12th. when Senator Foraker made a long and noteworthy speech. He declared that the Government cannot honorably release its hold on the islands, and that it need not