OCCASIONAL NOTES.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 809, 25 January 1877, Page 3

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

(From the Pall Mall Budget.)

Small-pox appears to be on trie increase not only in London, but also at Manchester. Nor is this to bs wondered at, if we may judge from a letter printed in the Manchester Guardian The writer complains that on geti itg into an omnibus |tne other day en route to Newton Heath, he observed among about fifteen inside passengers a girl evidently suffering from eome serious diseaee " very like small-pox." On her descending with three women close to Monsall Hospital his suspicions were increased, and he asked the conductor of the omnibus whether he thought the girl had the small-pox. " How am 1 to tell 1" was the reply. " They get in here regular coming from the hospital." It is not surprising under these circumstances to hear from the report of the Manchester and Sal ford Sanitary Association for the week ending the 11th inst, that "small pox has considerably increased, thirty-six cases being reported." A correspondent of the Journal de Geneve, writing from Kissinew, in Bessarabia, says :—" We are absolutely overwhelmed by the influx of Russian troops Upon the last day of October several of the detachments stationed between Kharkow, Kiew, and the frontier received orders to hold themselves in readiness for a movement; and, as moat of these detachments had to come through here, you may imagine the difficulty we experienced in providing for them all — nearly 50,000 men. It is interesting to follow the method adopted for what may be called the instantaneous movement of so large * body, and this method is a very simple one. Trains of from fifteen to twenty car riages each are despatched every half-hour from Kiew, Kharkow, and several intermediate staiious, each carriage holding futy men. In this way, 20,000 men were conveyed upon the first day, 18,000 upon the second, and 12,000, including 4,000 troopert and their horses, and 2000 artillerymen and their guns, upou the third. As soon as b train entered the station the military and civil authorities, who were waiting upon tin jlatfortn, distributed thebilletiug order* I' is true that these orders were not upon a very precise scale, but as each hous> aad to lodge at least half a company, tei .nen more or less were not held to mak. nuch difference. I will let you know, a; •oon as I can obtain the information myself, what is the ultimate destination of tnes i 60,000 men, to Whom must be added 25,000

more, who have been encamped for the last two months near Kissinew. It; is at present uncertain whether the 50,?00 are to be sent. into camp with the 25 000, or whether the latter will be sent by rail to join the former."

There appears to be a stroig opinion among medical men that sanitary administration was, for some reasons or o'.har, very defective and very unsuccessful during the recent Arctic expedition. The Lancet again refers to the subject most emphatically, and the other medical journals follow suit. It appears, indeed, according to the Report of Proceedings of the Arctic expedition submitted by Captain N*reß to the Lords of the Admiralty, that the of the expedition was seriously marred by the prevalence of scurvy, because the debilitating effects of this disease render d it impossible for the men to advance further North, and very materially influenced the decision of Captain Nares not to remain in the Polar regions another winter. But the report gives no account of the rations isau d during the sledging exped tions, and no notes from auy of the medical officers have as yet ben made public. The Lancet evidently believes that no antiscorbutics of any kind were cent with the sledgers, and so considers that, in the absence of other evidence, "it is the duty of the Government to produce the instructions issued from the medical department of the navy to tho surgeons of the Arctic expedition," Having regard to the fact that the Investigator was in 1850 on a similar expedition for upwards of two y<-v,.-before scurvy appeared among her crew, mid that since 1868 the disease has dimished in the mercantile marine by from 70 to 80 per cent, it is stranga that, with all possible pro- \ tnti vhb at command, the malady was allowed to appear among the members of the Arctic expedition. There was no scarcity of lime juice, for Captain Nares says, towards the close of his official report—" Finding that several of the inhabitants of Egedeeminde (North Greenland) were attacked with scurvy, I made the Governor a present of lime juice for general use " The Slade prosecution has ended unfavourably for the defendant-, who was sentenced by Mr Floweis to three monthh' imprisonment with hard labour. Notice of appeal, however, was immediately given, and Mr Slade was liberated on bail. The decisioa of the magistrate was marked by the discretion characteristic of English judicial authorities in dealing with cases in which a large amount of public feeling is engaged on one side or the other. Mr Flowers decided the charge on the narrowest possible issue of fact, and wisely declined to be enticed into the very wide field of controversy opened out to him by the defence. He held that the conduct imputed to Slade—namely, that of falsely pretending to procure from spirits messages which in reality he wrote himself —amounted to the " subtle craft " indictable under the Vagrant Act ; and the only ques tion then was whether Blade on one specific occasion, and that only, had been gudty of this conduct. Mr Flowers decided mainly on the evidence of two witnesses —Professor Lankester and Dr Donkin—that he had ; and in view of the pending appeal from the decision we shall express no opinion on this part of the case, What it is most satisfactory to note, however, is the judgment with which the magistrate dismissed all other considerations from the case, the marvellous evidence —if evidence it may be called —of Sergeant Cox included. The fact that on another occasion certain wonders took place in Mr blade's presence which were unaccountable on the hypothesis of legerdemain was, the magistrate held, immaterial to the questiou whether on this particular occasion Mr Slaie performed his wonders by sleight of hand. Thus Mr Flowers need not fear any of the results to himself which were foreshadowed in the defence of Mr S ade's counsel, who, in comparing his client to Galileo, seemed to suggest that Mr Flowers was in danger of handing himself down to the ridicule of posterity in company with Urban VIII. If Galileo had resorted to legerdemain to prove the motion of the earth, he would have been justly convicted under the Vagraut Act in spite of the soundness of his astronomical theories. A decision of Dome importance to railway travellers wos given by the Judge of the Liverpool County Court recently. An action was brought by a gentleman named Cooper against the Midland iiailway Company to recover the sum of 4s, the amount ot a cab fare which he had paid in consequence of the defendants neglecting to provide ac' commodation for himself and his wife ia a train leaving the Central Station, Liverpool, for Mersey road, and for which they had taken first-class tickets. On reaching *he train it was found that there was only one seat vacant. The railway officials offeied the plaintiff two seats in a first class smoking carriage ; but these he declined, and look a cab to his destination. The Judge held that the company was bound to take the plaintiff by the train for which he had purchased tickets ; and' that the offer of seats in a smoking carriage did not, free them from liability. Ha therefore gave judgment for the plaintiff. Some days ago a curious story appeared in the French, and afterwards in the English newspapers, concerning a rematkable woman banker at Mairid. This enterprising person stated in some accounts to be of German origin, altogether turpassed Mr Ricbud Banner Oakley in the magnificence ot her promises and the magnitude of her bufin<:BS, She promised a fabulous rate of interest p *y able monthly to depositors of 500 franca and upwards, and the small thopkeepersof Madrid as well as the peasants of the surrounding country have crowded to her establishment to place their savings in trust upon her personal security. So far only the drama na3 advanced heretofore ; but the catastrophe is not beyond tho reach of conjecture, Meanwhile the Vienna correspondent of the Economist has drawn attention to a very iamarkable coincidence. He says the Madrid enterprise " ia a precise repetition of the Spitzeder affair which took place at Munich four yearsago. Thelatter woman lived in opulence, spending the money of her creditors, and as she could not repsy them s'ie wm sentenced to three years' imprisonment. Some mouths ago Mhe left prison, and we should not be astonished to hear that it is she who na3 recommeuced her profitable transactions at Madrid. Certainly her way of doins ouainess resembles minutely that of het Spanish eolleague." The resemblance it perhaps worth the investigation of the Madrid Government, for by the latef-t ac jounts the " lady banker" was still receiving large sums in cash from the Madrelenos. If <he be the heroine of the Munich case, her appeals to public confideuca might aa well be stopped at once.