ART. IV.-A Letter to the Right Honourable Lord Campbell, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, on the Clause respecting Chloroform in the proposed Prevention of Offences Bill. By JOHN SNOW, M.D., Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; author of The Inhalation of Ether in Surgical Operations. London, 1851. 8vo., pp. 16.

ON Monday, the 24th of February 1851, the Right Honourable Lord Campbell brought forward, in the House of Lords, the heads or draft of a bill framed with the intention of preventing certain forms of robbery, and the fourth clause of which was particularly directed against the alleged commission of robbery upon persons who were supposed to have been previously rendered insensible by the inhalation of chloroform. It was remarked at the time, or shortly after the time at which this bill was brought forward, that the learned Lord Chief Justice had taken up rather strong ideas upon the effects of chloroform, and the facility which that agent is supposed to afford for the perpetration of robbery and similar offenees.

The clauses is as follows.

“And, whereas, it is expedient to make further provision for the punishment of persons using chloroform, or other stupifying things, in order the better to enable them to commit felonies; be it enacted, that, if any person shall unlawfully apply or administer to any other person, any chloroform, laudanum, or other stupifying or overpowering drug, matter, or thing, with intent thereby to enable such offender or any other person to commit any felony upon the person to whom the same may be applied or administered, or attempted to be applied or administered, or upon his or any other person's property; every such offender shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof, shall be liable, at the discretion of the Court, to be transported for life, or for any term not less than seven years."

Dr Snow is decidedly of opinion that chloroform is most unjustly accused in such circumstances; and that, so far as the reported facts of all the alleged cases of robbery or violations under the insensibility induced or supposed to be induced by chloroform go, not only does the evidence not prove the facts libelled, as they say in Scotland, but they prove that chloroform had nothing to do with these crimes, and could not have been the agent which the delinquent employed.

Dr Snow maintains, in the first place, that chloroform can be breathed and inhaled only by a person willing to inhale it, and

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able, therefore, to concur in the process of rendering himself insensible. The individual cannot be made insensible, he mantains, merely by dashing in his face, and even his mouth and nostrils, a handkerchief impregnated with chloroform. He must inhale it deliberately and several times. Even, if chloroform be given, that is placed near the nostrils of a child when asleep, the child awakes in nearly every instance, he says, before being made insensible, however gently the vapour may be insinuated. No animal, either wild or tame, can be made insensible without being first secured. If the chloroform be suddenly applied on a handkerchief to the nose of an animal, the creature turns his head aside, or runs away, without breathing any of the vapour. Lastly, when a handkerchief sufficiently wetted with chloroform to induce insensibility, is suddenly applied close to the face of any one, the pungency of the vapour is so great, as immediately to interrupt breathing, and the individual cannot inhale the vapour, even were he desirous to do

So.

From these and similar facts, Dr Snow draws the inference, that it is quite impossible, or at least very difficult, without immediate detection, for any one, especially in an open thoroughfare, to render another person insensible so as to perpetrate robbery or any other crime. He thinks that it could only be after long resistance, and the exhaustion consequent thereon, that sons desirous to induce insensibility in the victims of their crimes, could effect their purpose; and long before that could be accomplished, he argues, there must be means of detection and apprehension of the felons.

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Dr Snow examines shortly the history and circumstances of several of the cases in which chloroform has been represented to have been administered with criminal intentions, and arrives at the conclusion, that in not one case is there evidence to establish the inference that it been so employed. Dr Snow has consequently infers that legislation on such a subject is not only unnecessary, but likely to be ineffectual. Dr Snow suggests, that while the act may be allowed to stand as a preventive measure, the word chloroform should be withdrawn from it, as likely to be alarming to the public, suggestive to the criminal, and not creditable to the sagacity and gravity of the law.

It is not easy to say what should be done as to those instances in which persons appear to have been affected with sudden stupor and insensibility previous to having been robbed. So far as the term chloroform is suggestive of felonious intentions, the evil has already been done. It may become, nevertheless, a fair question, whether the law does not possess already sufficient means in the ordinary provisions for the detection of crime, if not the prevention of its commission. Where thieves are bent upon rob

bery, they will readily find means to enable them to carry their intentions into effect, whether they use chloroform or any other article to stupify their victims. The wisest course, in the present state of matters, appears to be to leave the alleged crime to be dealt with by the powers which the law at present possesses.

ART. V.-On a Remarkable Effect of Cross-breeding. By ALEXander Harvey, M.D., Physician to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Lecturer on the Practice of Medicine in the University and King's College of Aberdeen, and formerly Lecturer on the Institutes of Medicine in the Marischal College and University. Edinburgh, London, Aberdeen, 1851. 8vo, pp. 39.

THE effect of Cross-breeding, which forms the subject of Dr Harvey's tract, may be stated in the following terms. In any given case in which a male animal has prolific connection with a female of the same genus, but differing in some instances in species, in others only in variety, that connection exerts upon the system of the female a modification so decided and so energetic, that all her subsequent offspring, though the result of connection with different male animals, present, in figure, colour, aud other external characters, distinct marks of this peculiar influence and modification.

This may be regarded as the general expression of the phenomenon derived from and founded upon a number of individual facts.

The facts are not new. They have been long observed and more or less noticed. Sometimes they were doubted. In other instances they were received with suspension of judgment, as facts which could not easily be referred to any general physiological head. Dr Harvey does not claim the merit of reducing the facts to a general principle. This, it appears, belongs to Mr James M'Gillavray, a veterinary surgeon at Huntly in Aberdeenshire. But Dr Harvey has arranged the whole facts in such a manner, and accompanied them with such comments and elucidations, that he will probably be regarded as the chief promulgator of the physiological and zoological doctrines contained in the present tract.

The first fact given, is the well-known one of the Arabian mare of the Earl of Morton, which, after being connected with the quagga or striped wild ass, not only produced a hybrid or mule, which presented distinct marks of the quagga in the shape of the head and stripes on the shoulders, but afterwards, after connection,

with an Arabian horse, produced three foals, all of which bore distinct and unequivocal marks of the quagga.

A second instance is given, in which a mare belonging to Sir Gore Ouseley, after being connected with a zebra, gave birth to a hybrid; and, subsequently, upon being served by a thorough-bred horse and an ordinary horse, still produced foals with the original markings of the zebra.

Similar facts have been observed by others, both in the horse family, the ox, the dog, the hog, and the sheep family. There is also, Dr Harvey thinks, reason to believe, from various facts, that the modification holds good in tribes and varieties of the human

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Now, there is, it seems, a popular belief, that in the case of a woman twice married, and fruitful by both hushands, the children of the second marriage may resemble their mother's first husband, both in bodily structure and in mental powers. An instance of this has been communicated to me by the Rev. Charles M'Combie of Tillyfour, as coming under his own observation in this county, and very remarkable. It is obvious, indeed, that in any case,—as in the one just referred to,-where all the parties are of the same variety of the human family, the alleged resemblance must be comparatively difficult of verification. But it is equally obvious, that means exist for subjecting the question to a pretty decisive test. There are equally distinct varieties of the human family as of any of the lower animals; and all that is requisite for bringing it to a satisfactory issue is, to observe accurately whether the children of European parents, when the mother has, in the first instance, had offspring by a Negro, exhibit traces of the latter in the colour of the skin, the quality of the hair, the form of the features, &c.; or, contrariwise, whether the children of Negro parents, when the mother had, first of all, been impregnated by a European, manifest the peculiarities of the latter."-P. 8.

The first point in all new hypotheses, is to ascertain that the facts are well founded, and correctly stated. Next comes the mode in which these facts are to be generalized, that is, referred to some more general and better known principle. Dr Harvey thinks that the facts, though not numerous, are well established; and he subjoins the following explanation.

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"Now, an ingenious explanation of the phenomenon has recently been offered by Mr M'Gillavray of Huntly. When a pure animal any breed (says Mr M'Gillavray) has been pregnant to an animal of a different breed, such pregnant animal is a cross ever after, the purity of her blood being lost, in consequence of her connection with the foreign animal;' and again, If a cow, say of the pure Aberdeenshire breed, is in calf to a bull of the short-horn breed, (known as the Teeswater breed), in proportion as this calf partakes of the nature and physical characters of the bull, just in proportion will the blood

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of the cow become contaminated, and herself a cross, for ever incapable of producing a pure calf of any breed.' It is maintained, therefore (Mr M Gillavray adds), that the great variety of nondescript animals to be met with are the result of the crossing system; the prevailing evil of which is, the admission of bulls of various breeds to the same cow, whereby the blood is completely vitiated.

"This theory, of course, applies only to that class of animals (the mammalia) where the female is provided with a womb, and has her offspring lodged there for a time. And in order to the better understanding of the theory, attention is requested to the following considerations By the formation of the after birth (placenta), a connection is established between the mother and the living creature (fœtus) in her womb, through which the latter is continually drawing supplies from the mother's blood, for its growth and maintenance. But there are good grounds for believing that, through the same channel, the mother is as constantly (though, doubtless, in much less quantity) abstracting materials from the blood of the foetus. Now, is it at all unreasonable to suppose, that the materials in question may be charged with (or have inherent in them) the constitutional qualities of the fœtus, and that, passing into the body of the mother, and mixing there with the general mass of her blood, they may impart those qualities to her system? This supposition will, perhaps, appear the less improbable, if regard be had to the length of time during which the connection between the mother and fœtus is kept up, and during which this transference of materials must go on,-a period of some weeks, or even of several months. But the qualities referred to must in part be derived by the fœtus from its male parent, and be to that extent identical with his. The distinctive peculiarities, therefore, of this parent may thus come to be engrafted on the mother, or to attach in some way to her system; and if so, what more likely than that they should be communicated by her to any offspring she may afterwards have by other males?

"The influence thus supposed to be exerted by the male parent, through or by means of the foetus, on the constitution and on the breeding powers of the female, may appropriately be designated inoculation-influence. To go more largely, however, into this part of the subject, were beside our present purpose, and would involve details, perhaps fully intelligible only to the professed physiologist. But it is due to Mr M'Gillavray to state, that his theory not only furnishes a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon, but is consistent with acknowledged facts in physiology, and is borne out to a greater extent than he was perhaps aware, by the known history of blood-diseases." —Pp. 10, 11. ́

The author then enters on the question of mental influence, or the operation, rather, of certain objects through the medium of the stress upon the nervous system and mind. Here it is unnecessary to follow him. It is sufficient that the principal outlines of his hypothesis be stated, for in that manner its truth or incorrectness can be brought to the test of subsequent experience.