In Nanking, lepers are not isolated, but live with their families and mingle freely with the people. They come and go, stop at inns and tea-houses, ride on chairs and on donkeys, sit in the dispensaries and chapels, buy and sell, and manufacture articles of use. We can always infer contagion, that is, there has always been another person in the family or neighborhood; but, if so, how is the contagion introduced? Dr. Robt. C. Beebe, of Nanking, says t must be in some way not readily induced, from the fact that lepers are constantly mingling with the people and only a small portion get the disease. The most plausible way is inoculation. It is not uncommon for a leper to have scabies also, and many of them have it before the leprosy. Dr. Beebe thinks it very possible that the Acarus Scabiei to be the medium. In some parts of China donkey riding is the usual method of conveyance. Imagine a foreigner taking in hand the reins of a donkey which a leper had recently handled, disengaging a leprous Acarus Scabiei from a drop of pus left on the cotton strings, or reins, taking up its abode between the fingers. Prudence would, at least, caution us to be careful.

Osler says that it is contagious in the same sense as syphilis; that the closest possible contact may exist for years between parent and child, without transmission of the disease. Morrow states that in the majority of cases the disease is propagated by sexual congress. Osler mentions a case of inoculation having been successfully done. He also says that in anaesthetic leprosy there is a peripheral neuritis due to the attack on the nerve fibers. In the case here reported the musculo-spiral and median nerves were undoubtedly involved, showing that the attack is not necessarily confined to the peripharae. Fox says that the fear of the disease spreading in an intelligent community is without foundation.

Taylor says the disease is never observed in infantile .ife. Dr. W. H. Park (China), however, reports a a boy, Aet, eight years, admitted to the New Brunswick Lazaretto, and Dr. McGowan saw a case in a leper village near Hanoi, Aet, four years. However, there is no authen

tic congenital case on record so far as I am able to find. Treatment. Chaulmoogra oil is mentioned with painful regularity by our American authors as a cure, and with the same frequency we are admonished that the cure is very doubtful. The same has been used in China for centuries in the form of the seed. Dr. Douthwaite, who has had a wide experience in Chekiang and Chefoo, China, uses Creolin and Glycerine, equal parts for local application, with apparent good results.

In my case I used Creolin and Glycerine locally, and internally I gave Nux Vomica, beginning with ten drops three times a day, gradually increasing it to forty drops. The case did remarkably well up to September 15th, when I saw it last. He left my care at that time and went to look after his business-sewing machine agent.

Recently I have learned (March, 1897) that he, from exposure, during the fall and winter, has broken down, almost blind, lungs affected, a helpless wreck.

Conclusion. It is thought by some that the disease enters through the skin only, from the fact that the parts covered by the clothing are affected last; and that those wearing shoes and stockings all the time never have it in the feet.

I have quoted, preferably, those writing for the Chinese journals. They have had better opportunities from long service and association with the disease in its native haunts. Many of our authors have no experience except from short stays at the Lazaretto. Such experience cannot be as valuable as that obtained under more favorable circumstances. Our Medical Missionaries give the most satisfactory clinical reports I am able to find. Although it is a disease of centuries it is passing strange how little is known of it. It is thought by some that the Leprosy Conference which is to meet in Berlin, October, 1897, will accomplish nothing more than to thresh over the old straw.

Note. On Sept. 2nd, I saw Mr. W. The distortion of nose is much increased, the necrosis advanced, the folds in the face enlarged and his sight gone. He presents a very much advanced picture from September, 1896, when

he resumed his business. His cough is possibly not so bad. as a few months ago. He does not seem to be in an advanced stage of lung affection. He has been under no special treatment since September,. 1896.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

I am indebted to Prof. E. G. Matson, M. D. and Dr. T. L. Disgue for assistance in Pathological and Bacteriological examination; and Rev. Stephen A. Hunter, M.D., (Ph. D., LL. D.) for articles published by Chinese missionaries and to the authors quoted in the body of the report.

DEGENERACY STIGMATA AS BASIS OF

MORBID SUSPICION.*

A STUDY OF BYRON AND SIR WALTER SCOTT.

By JAS. G. KIERNAN, M.D.

Fellow of the Chicago Academy of Medicine; Foreign Associate Member French Medico-
Psychologic Association: Professor of Forensic Psychiatry, Kent College of Law.

THE

HE meteor-like career of Byron has been a stock proof for decades of the origin of genius in degeneracy. The degree to which the reality is obscured by fiction, is astonishing even in this fertile field of literary industry. Few careers are more deeply stamped with degeneracy in its contrasted lurididity of seeming gifts with the somber gloom of defect. To Macaulay's summing up of Byron's career used as a hypothetic case, any alienist would answer that the subject is a degenerate in environment tending to increased degeneracy.

The pretty fable by which the Duchess of Orleans illustrated the character of her son the Regent might, with little change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies save one, had been bidden to his cradle. All gossips had been profuse of their gifts. One had bestowed nobility, another genius, a third beauty. The malignant elf, who had been uninvited came last, and unable to reverse what her sisters had done for their favorite, had mixed up a curse with every blessing. In the rank of Lord Byron, in his understanding, in his character, in his very person there was a strange union of opposite extremes. He was born to all that men covet and admire. But in every one of those eminent advantages which he possessed over others was mingled something of misery and debasement. He was

*Read by title before the Chicago Academy of Medicine, Dec 11th, 1897.
†Moor's Life of Lord Byron, Macaulay's Essays.

sprung from a house ancient indeed and noble, but degraded and impoverished by a series of crimes and follies which had attained a scandalous publicity. The kinsman whom he had succeeded had died poor, and, but for merciful judges, would have died upon the gallows. The young peer had great intellectual powers; yet there was an unsound part in his mind. He had naturally a generous and feeling heart; but his temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head which sculptors loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. Distinguished at once by the strength and by the weakness of his intellect, affectionate yet perverse, a poor lord, and a handsome cripple, he required if ever man required, the firmest and the most judicious training. But capriciously as nature had dealt with him, the parent the office of forming his character was intrusted with, was more

capricious still. She passed from paroxysms of rage to par-mother

oxysms of tenderness. At one time she stifled him with caresses; at another time she insulted his deformity. He came into the world; and the world treated him as his mother had treated him, sometimes with fondness, sometimes with cruelty, never with justice. It indulged him without discrimination. He was truly a spoiled child, not d merely the spoiled child of his parent, but the spoiled child of nature, the spoiled child of fortune, the spoiled child of fame and the spoiled child of society. His first poems were received with a contempt which, feeble, as they were, they did not absolutely deserve. The poem which he published on his return from his travels was on the other hand extolled far above its merit. At twenty-four he found himself on the highest pinnacle of literary fame, with Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and a crowd of other distinguished writers, beneath his feet. There is scarcely an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence.

Every thing that could stimulate, and everything that could gratify the strongest propensities of our nature, the gaze of a hundred drawing rooms, the acclamations of the whole Nation, the applause of men, the love of lovely women, all this world and the glory of it were at once afforded to a youth to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom education had never taught to control them. He lived as many men live who have no similar excuse to plead for their faults. But his countrymen and his countrywomen would love and admire him. They were resolved to see in his excesses only the flash and outbreak of that same fiery mind which glowed in his poetry. He attacked religion; yet in religious circles his name was