More Science From an Easy Chair Part 10

Who were these G.o.ddesses, the Muses, and what were their names? What was the speciality of each, and how do they come to have to do with collections of works of art and specimens of natural history? Two learned "cla.s.sical" friends whom I lately met in Paris could not help me further than by giving me the names of the first three. I was a little shocked, but the next evening discovered that these G.o.ddesses are, in modern times, very generally neglected and ignored. In an extremely amusing play, called "Le Bois Sacre"--the Sacred Grove (of the Muses)--a name applied jocosely to the Ministry of Fine Arts--I found that the minister of that department was represented as a pompous and fatuous person who completely fails to call to mind, in the course of an eloquent speech, the name of more than one. On ringing for his secretaries and airily asking them to refresh his memory, he did not succeed in extracting from them more than two doubtful additions to his list!

I am able, nevertheless (after due investigation), to put my reader in possession of the facts so unfamiliar to the modern oracles of cla.s.sical mythology! Briefly, it appears that in the best period of ancient Greece nine Muses were recognised, namely, Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry; Euterpe, of lyric poetry; Erato, of erotic poetry; Melpomene, of tragedy; Thalia, of comedy; Polyhymnia, of sacred hymns; Terpsich.o.r.e, of choral song and dance; Clio, of history; and Urania, of astronomy. The last two seem to have very little in common with the addiction to singing and dancing characteristic of the rest, and are the only ones who can be imagined as feeling themselves at home in a modern museum, excepting on those evenings when the authorities use the museum (as is the custom in London) for a "conversazione,"

enlivened by bra.s.s bands and songs.

Apollo was said to be the leader and master of the Muses, but was not related to them. They were in origin the "nymphs" or "genii" of mountain streams worshipped by an ancient bardic race (resembling our own sweet-singing Welsh folk), the Thracians. At first the number of the Muses was indefinite, and they had no names. Then three were named--one of Meditation (Melete), one of Memory (Mneme), and one of Song (Aoide)--a much prettier embodiment of the impression made on a poetical mind by rock-pools and cascades and leafy gorges than the formal and redundant nine of later times. One can a.s.sociate the primitive three with a museum of natural history; but the later official G.o.ddesses, each insisting on her own department of poetry, are too clearly representative of the all-appropriating pretensions of literature in modern seats of learning. They remind me of the enumeration of studies which a dear old head of an Oxford college innocently regarded as complete and reasonable when he a.s.sured me that all branches of knowledge were fairly and equally represented on the college staff. "We have," he said, "a lecturer on Greek literature, one on Latin literature, one on Greek history, one on Roman history, one on cla.s.sical philology, one on modern history, one on mathematics and one on the natural sciences." What more, he asked, could you wish for?

It appears that, without any special reference to the attributes of the Muses, the word "museum" has been adopted in recent times for a building in which collections of works of art and specimens of natural history are housed, and even for the collections themselves--in consequence of the foundation by the Ptolemaic Kings of Egypt of a splendid inst.i.tution at Alexandria to which the name museum (mouseion) was given. It included the great library, apparatus for the study of astronomy, anatomy, and other sciences, and collections of all kinds.

The most learned men were employed in its management and were lodged there and provided with the means of study and teaching. It was a combination of university, learned academy, and temple, and was the pride of the ancient world. It survived many changes of lordship, but at last the library and collections were deliberately destroyed by Moslem invaders in 640 A.D. The precious ma.n.u.scripts were served out as fuel for the public baths, and were so numerous that it took some months to consume them! The destruction of the museum of Alexandria marks the commencement of the "Dark Ages"; the ancient culture was dead. Eight centuries of submergence with strange mysterious upfloatings were its fate until the Renascence, when its fragments were recovered, and soon did more harm than good to the fetish-worshipping peoples of Europe.

The first use of the word "museum" in this country for a place in which collections of ancient works of art and specimens of natural history were stored and arranged for exhibition was in the early eighteenth century, when it was applied to the building at Oxford, erected for Mr. Ashmole's collections, presented to the University.

This was called "Ashmole's Museum," or the Ashmolean Museum.

Previously such a collection and its location were spoken of as "a cabinet of rare and curious objects." "Museum" was occasionally used for what we now call a "study," and even to describe lecture-rooms and library. I have not been able to discover that the word was used in its modern sense at an earlier date on the Continent than in England.

The first great typical example of a "museum" was the British Museum, founded in 1753. Montagu House, in Bloomsbury, was purchased by the State to serve as a "repository" (the word used in the Act of Parliament of that date) for the vast collections of natural history made by Sir Hans Sloane, with which were a.s.sociated certain valuable libraries and collections of ma.n.u.scripts, of coins, and antique marbles. A large part of the money required for the undertaking was raised by a public lottery, over which the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker presided (according to the custom of those days in regard to State lotteries), and it is thus that this remarkable group of great officials became, and have remained ever since, "the Three Princ.i.p.al Trustees of the British Museum."

Additional trustees were named (since increased to a total of nearly fifty), and provision was made for the appointment of a princ.i.p.al librarian and other curators of the collections. The Act declared that the collections placed in the "repository" (Montagu House) were to remain there for the benefit and enjoyment of posterity for ever--a provision which until seven years ago was misinterpreted, so as to prevent the sending out of unnamed and unstudied collections of small portable objects like insects, dried plants, and sh.e.l.ls, to be named and compared with other specimens, by foreign naturalists.

Consequently, there was a great acc.u.mulation of specimens unstudied and useless, and a great loss to knowledge. But the late Lord Chancellor (Halsbury) decided that it was not only legally within the power of the trustees temporarily to remove specimens from "the repository" for the purpose of having them named and studied, but actually their duty to do so.

We now very generally recognise in Great Britain, as in other parts of the civilised world, the value and importance of public "museums" in the sense of "repositories of collections of objects of ancient and modern art and of natural history." Museums, as at present existing, may be divided into four kinds, according to the nature of the public or private bodies by which they have been set up and carried on. There are, first of all, national museums maintained and continually increased by the expenditure of a great State, and placed in the capital city; secondly, provincial or local museums, supported by a munic.i.p.ality or by local munificence; thirdly, academic museums, which are those related to the instruction and investigations carried on in a university or a school, and forming part of its regular provision for study; and, fourthly, the museums of private individuals (which as a rule, become eventually transferred by gift or purchase to some existing public museum).

The word "museum" would, and often does, fitly include picture galleries, but very usually in Great Britain a museum is not considered as comprising a picture gallery, and a picture gallery is treated and managed as something distinct from "a museum." The distinction is recognised in London, where we have as separate inst.i.tutions the British Museum and the National Gallery. Probably the distinct method of exhibiting and caring for pictures, and the very large amount of special knowledge connected with the reasonable employment of public funds in the purchase of these very high-priced objects, as well as the example of private collectors of pictures, are the causes which have led in the past to the complete separation of "picture galleries" from "museums." It is, however, a curious fact that the British Museum (which once possessed some oil paintings, now removed to other public galleries) retains and expends money on its splendid collections of water-colour pictures, drawings, and engravings, whilst in the latter half of the last century (in opposition to the custom of separating pictures from other museum objects) there grew up in London, under the State Department of Education, a vast collection of all kinds of works of art (pottery, furniture, lace, metal-work, etc.) of all countries and ages, including pictures, which is now sumptuously housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Though I propose to write here with special reference to "museums," in the more limited sense as repositories of objects which are the bases of our knowledge of the history of man and his arts, and as the storehouses of specimens which in the same way are the material by the study of which we arrive at a knowledge of the history of the earth, and of the living things which have existed, and of others which still exist on its surface--yet it is obvious that the general purposes of all collections of interesting objects (including even pictures) and their arrangement for public use and benefit must be the same, although there are special purposes in view in regard to some collections which do not exist in regard to others. Not long since Mr.

Claude Phillips ably set forth some of the principles which should guide the arrangement and exhibition of objects in an art museum, and criticised the plan at present adopted in the Victoria and Albert Museum. As I hold views in regard to the arrangement of natural history museums which are very similar to his, I think it may be useful to explain here what they are.

I may point out that nearly every branch of knowledge should have--in a civilised well-provided community--its collection of material objects, either specimens, models, or ancient examples and remains, which should be "records" to be religiously preserved for future reference and comparison by expert students, whilst others should be there to serve as demonstrations of "great" facts of nature or of human art--direct and straightforward appeals--to the ordinary intelligent (but not specially learned) man. You might well have (what does not at present exist!) a museum (in the modern sense) of astronomy, containing models of the solar system showing the relative distances and sizes of the heavenly bodies--as well as modern and ancient astronomical instruments, and the records obtained by their use. Again, you might have (and to some extent such museums exist), at the other end of the scale in dignity and age, a museum ill.u.s.trating the history and present developments of the smelting of iron and other metals, their purification, their alloying, and properties--as also a museum of paper-making and one of the steam engine and its modern rivals. In such cases the purpose of the museum would be plain enough and comparatively easy to carry out.

Most museums which have come into existence within the last 200 years suffer from the fact that they are mere enlargements of the ancient collector's "cabinet of rare and curious things," brought together and arranged without rhyme or reason. No one has ever attempted to say what is precisely the aim and intention as a public enterprise of any of our great museums, and accordingly there has been no consideration, discussion, or agreement as to the methods of collection, selection, arrangement, exhibition, and storage of the objects a.s.sembled within their walls. Thousands, even millions of pounds, have been expended on the building of museums, on the purchase of specimens, on cases and cataloguing, and on the salaries of directors, and keepers, and a.s.sistants, yet the museums remain, so far as any declaration of purpose and principle is concerned, mere "repositories," as in the words of the old Act of Parliament const.i.tuting the British Museum--for the use and enjoyment of the public, it is true, but without any expression of a conception of how that use and enjoyment is to be limited so as to make them something better than a dime-show, or how any serious purpose is to be achieved by their costly housing and up-keep. No doubt various directors and keepers have from time to time shown intelligence and laboured to make museums not only places of enjoyment and "edification," but also the means of increasing knowledge and rendering service to the State. But the scope of our public museums, and the principles and methods by which it may be realised, have never been agreed upon, and consequently are not definitely recognised by the State nor by the curiously ill-chosen committees of managers, or trustees, to whose tender mercies the ultimate control of these inst.i.tutions is confided--apparently by haphazard or misapprehension.

The notion of a town corporation, or of the central government at this or that date, has been that museums are best controlled and public money expended in connection with them by persons who know nothing about the real importance of the collections, and receive no guidance from any scheme or statutable declaration of specific purpose drawn up by a competent authority. I will endeavour to state what those purposes should be.

When one tries to estimate what is really the value to the community of public "museums," one is led inevitably to the conclusion that their most important purpose--whether they are museums of natural history, of antiquities, or of art--is to serve as safe and permanent "repositories" (the old word used in the British Museum Act of 1753) for specimens which are costly and difficult to obtain--not to be either "picked up" or readily "housed" by everybody, and at the same time of real importance as "records." The first and most commanding duty of those who set up and maintain a public museum is to preserve actual things as records--records of the existence in this or that locality of each kind of plant and animal, records of the former existence of extinct plants and animals, with irrefragable certainty as to the locality and the exact strata in which they were found--records of prehistoric man, his weapons and art, and of the animals found with them, records of modern times. Everyone is familiar with this duty of the State and of local public bodies, when it is a matter of preserving written and printed records. They are preserved in various public offices and libraries, and are continually being studied by experts (volunteers or official) and copied in print, so as to furnish us with accurate knowledge of the past.

It is the first and leading business of museums to collect and preserve, with great accuracy as to the locality and circ.u.mstances in which each was found, the actual concrete things which are the records of nature, and of the various stages of man's art and industries in every region of the world, just as a library or the Record Office preserves ma.n.u.scripts and printed doc.u.ments and books. Collections of such specimens are often made by private individuals, and become too c.u.mbersome for him or his heirs to keep in order. They are then frequently given to a public museum, and I regret to say in many provincial museums are neglected and become mere rubbish, even if they were not so when first given. Often such gifts are rubbish before they are received, and should never have been accepted. But in a great many instances the local museum of a country town is nothing but a rubbish-heap, because the townspeople will not spend the money necessary to obtain the services of a capable curator and to provide cases, labels, catalogues, and attendance. The town councillors usually know nothing about the museum or the value of the objects gathered there, and do not recognise the duty of making it an orderly and carefully tended storehouse of the records of Nature and antiquity of the neighbourhood. Too frequently the town museum is made the means of gratifying the vanity of some local collector, who hands over all sorts of ill-chosen, badly preserved specimens to its ignorant guardians, and is advertised by labels on the cases and by votes of thanks, whilst valuable records placed there in a previous generation are swept into a corner or broken and cast into the cellar in order to make s.p.a.ce for the new rubbish!

Unless funds are found to place a specially educated man at the head of a local museum, the museum had better be shut, and such of its contents, as may be desired, offered to one of the big city museums or to the National Museum in London. It is no child's play, maintaining and guarding efficiently a museum which contains "records." It would be a good thing were a committee of naturalists and antiquaries to visit the local museums of the United Kingdom and report on the efficiency of their guardianship and the state of the treasures which they contain. I know two provincial museums very well in which extremely valuable records of prehistoric man and of wonderful extinct animals--found in the neighbourhood and preserved by those who established the museums fifty years ago--are utterly neglected and destroyed by loss of the labels and mixing up of the specimens, in consequence of the death of the persons originally interested in the museum and of the refusal of the town councils to find money to pay for the care of the collections. There can be little doubt that in the present state of local interest in such matters all really important record specimens should find their way to the British Museum in London, where, if accepted, their preservation, so far as it is humanly possible, is a.s.sured. That is the distinctive and most creditable feature of our great State-supported museum. At the same time it seems obvious that the records of a provincial area can be, and should be, kept in the county town museum, with a detail and completeness impossible elsewhere, and that it should be the pride of the county to be able to show to a stranger full records of the distinctive features of its natural history and antiquities.

It is clear that whatever failures in this respect may be inevitable in those hopelessly starved and mismanaged "museums" at present surviving to bear witness to the decay of public spirit and intelligent culture in our country towns, the prime duty of the great London museum is to preserve "records" with the greatest nicety and readiness for reference, whilst the duty of actively adding to these records from all parts of the Empire, and, therefore, of the world, and that of minutely studying and reporting upon the collections so obtained and guarded, follow as a matter of course. These collections are the absolutely necessary foundation for the building-up of our knowledge of Nature and of man. We can never say that this branch of scientific knowledge is valuable and that another is a mere fanciful pursuit. Every year it becomes more and more clear that unexpectedly some apparently insignificant piece of detailed scientific knowledge may become of value to the State and to humanity at large. Everyone knows that geology has a great practical value in mining, water supply, and various kinds of engineering, also that botany, as represented by the great State inst.i.tution at Kew, is of immense value to those who introduce useful plants from one part of the world for cultivation in another. But of late we have seen that entomology--"bug-hunting" as it is scornfully termed--is a science upon which hang not only the revenue of an Empire, but also the lives of millions of men. Destructive insects must be known with the utmost accuracy in order to stop their injury to crops in the distant lands which they inhabit, and also in order to check the diseases carried by them which sweep off vast herds of costly cattle. The mosquitoes and the tsetze flies have been, only recently, proved to be the causes, the carriers, of diseases--malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping sickness--which annually have killed hundreds of thousands of men, colonists as well as natives. I was able to bring together at the Natural History Museum collections of mosquitoes from every part of the world, amounting to thousands of specimens and to some hundreds of kinds. The study of these and of the tsetze flies by skilled entomologists employed in the museum has been a necessary part of the steps now being taken everywhere to preserve human population from the attacks of certain deadly kinds among them, distinguished from the others which are harmless.

Thus, then, it seems that the first and most important purpose for which great "museums" exist is that of "the making of new knowledge"--the increase of science--by furnishing carefully gathered and preserved "specimens" of all kinds, and by working out the history and significance of those collections. But there is a second and distinct purpose which is often ignorantly put in the first place. It is of less importance and quite unlike the first in the methods necessary for its attainment, and yet is conveniently and satisfactorily carried out in conjunction with the first. This second and distinct purpose is the exhibition of such portions of the collections in a museum as are suitable for exhibition (only a smaller portion are so) in public galleries, so chosen, arranged, lighted and labelled as to afford to the public at large the maximum of enjoyment and edification. This is, as it were, a readily accessible enjoyment given to the public in recognition of the large sums of public money expended on the severer and less easily appreciated enterprise of the museum. The public galleries of a museum, whether of natural history, antiquities or art, should not contain the bulk of the collection, but only special things, carefully selected, and equally carefully placed in case or on wall, with artistic judgment as to s.p.a.ce-bordering and colour of background, and with scientific perfection of illumination, so as to produce the "just" impression on the leisurely visitor. The public "exhibit" should be arranged so as to draw attention to a series of important facts of structure or quality clearly shown by the specimens, whether they are natural products or works of art, and these facts should be described in printed labels fully, and the reason for attaching importance to them explained at sufficient length. The man who arranges the public galleries (as distinct from the closed study-rooms) of a public museum, should have a special gift of exposition in plain language, and be able to separate (both in regard to his words and to the specimens he selects) the essential from the non-essential, the significant from the redundant.

It is important to make a complete distinction between an exhibition intended for the general public and that intended for advanced students in schools, colleges and universities. The confusion of these two kinds of exhibition is the cause of the failure of many museums and of the dislike with which most people regard a visit to them. The public museum--metropolitan or local--should not include in its purpose the "academic" instruction of schoolboys and university students. That requires a different kind of museum, which is (or should be) provided by the school or university, though, of course, the students should also visit the more popular museums. The funds and staff and s.p.a.ce required for the one are not sufficient for both. If both are attempted, the unpopular academic, or scholars', exhibition will get the upper hand and suppress the other, since it is a far easier thing to carry out successfully (for the cla.s.s aimed at) than is the carefully planned exhibition intended for the "edification" of the greater public. The university museum aims at imparting a much greater amount of detailed and elaborate information than does the great public museum, and requires from the student who uses it a special previous study of the subject, and an exceptional amount of attention and pains in examining the objects exhibited.

Too many of the public museums of Europe aim at the "instruction" of the special student rather than at the "edification" of the general public, whilst most aim at nothing at all except showing, without explanation or comment, a vast ma.s.s of specimens or pictures, at the sight of which the patient but bored public gapes with wonder. The public galleries of the Natural History Museum in London have been arranged more distinctly with a view to the edification of the public than those of any other museum which I know. But they still contain too large a number of specimens, and still require an immense amount of work in weeding, selection and labelling, and in deliberately making the specimens exhibited tell a tale which is worth remembering, and can be remembered. Except in the case of the larger specimens, and especially those of fossilized skeletons and sh.e.l.ls of extinct animals, it must be remembered that the bulk of the specimens (and, indeed, all the valuable skins of animals and birds, and the vast series of insects and such small things) in that, as in every other large museum, are contained in cabinets protected from the destructive action of light, and arranged for the most part in rooms to which access is obtained only by serious workers after special application.

The fishes and other animals preserved in alcohol are kept in a special fire-proof "spirit-building."

A provincial public museum, even if it does not aim at the guardianship of important local "records" of natural history and antiquity, should aim at the edification of the public--the grown-up public--and not at the instruction of school children. The notion that museums are meant for children, which exists, I am sorry to say, even in regard to so splendid and expensive a display of wonderful things as that to be seen at the Natural History Museum, is due to the bad tradition justified by the condition of other museums, where a child may enjoy being astonished, but a grown-up person can take in nothing which appeals to the intelligence. A new city museum is, it is reported, to be established at Birmingham. We may hope that it will not contain the usual unsatisfactory series of badly stuffed exotic animals, birds, and reptiles, and trophies of South Sea islanders'

clubs and spears. It should contain first-rate specimens of the living and extinct fauna of Warwickshire, and specimens of foreign animals carefully selected to compare with them and throw light on them; also local prehistoric and antiquarian specimens, ill.u.s.trated by comparison with the work of savage and remote races. The excellent suggestion has been made that it should contain specimens of the insect-pests of Warwickshire crops. It should also exhibit the minerals from which manufactories of Birmingham draw their metals, and should show the stages of their preparation. It should appeal, not to the boys and girls of Birmingham in the first place, but to the adults, and to do this it should be placed under the care of a really first-rate and ingenious man, who might possibly do for the Birmingham Museum what skilful arrangement and sound knowledge have done for its Art Gallery--an inst.i.tution intended to appeal not to school children, but to the reasonable adult population of the city.

The principle of exhibiting permanently in public galleries a portion of our great national collections and of preserving another and larger portion in smaller rooms, where they can be more closely but not less carefully disposed and brought out into perfect light and position when required, should be applied to collections of pottery, metal-work, carving, embroidery and such objects, and also to pictures as well as to collections relating to natural history. The chief reason for this is the enormous s.p.a.ce required in order to place permanently "on exhibition" all the objects contained in our national art collections, which are continually growing. The vast size of the galleries required, if the entire collections are to be exhibited so that the public may walk in and see anything and everything in it, permanently displayed on walls or in cases--entails gigantic and ever-increasing expenditure of public funds.

But this is not the only objection to these great galleries. The mult.i.tude of objects--it may be of pictures--exhibited creates a state of mind in the visitor which prevents his enjoyment of the works of art so exhibited. He is overwhelmed by the vastness of the series offered for his examination and confused and distressed by the close setting of things which require isolation and appropriate surroundings each in its own special way, if they are to be duly appreciated. Not only this, but pictures, as well as other works of art, are, in consequence of the necessity of placing them all in the great public galleries used for the purpose, rarely placed in the most favourable conditions of lighting, and are very often so ill-lighted as to lose all their beauty even if they are not nearly invisible. More public money would be available for the proper care and study of works of art were less spent on the land, building and up-keep necessary for huge galleries.

The desirability of separating a large unexhibited portion from the well-chosen and well-shown exhibited portion of works of art, exclusive of pictures, is, I believe, generally admitted. In the case of pictures the opinion has been expressed that there would be great difficulty in managing a reserved unexhibited portion of our national collections so that the pictures could be properly cared for and yet readily brought into view when required. One can well believe that a similar difficulty was antic.i.p.ated when it was first proposed to keep books on shelves instead of on tables. Those who take this objection have overlooked the resources of modern engineering. Reserved pictures could be affixed in perfect security in appropriate groups on large screens, and these disposed, like the scenery above a stage, upright and in series, each screen 4 ft. distant from its neighbours. There could be three or four floors of such closely packed screens arranged in two rows, twenty in a row. On a lower floor there would be provided a room with the most perfect light possible for seeing, enjoying and studying a single one of these screens. They would all be numbered and the pictures on each catalogued. A person duly authorised and approved desires to see such and such a picture. He is given a seat in the special exhibition room. The attendant or a.s.sistant in charge touches the appropriate b.u.t.ton, and by simple electric-lift machinery the screen upstairs carrying the desired picture travels automatically into position and then gently descends into the special exhibition room. There the other pictures on the screen may be, if it be so desired, covered by drapery, the light may be varied in intensity or direction, and, in fact, the most perfect examination of the picture in question may be made. When another b.u.t.ton is touched, the picture-screen returns automatically to its place upstairs.

It seems to me that in the case of the growing collection of pictures known as "The National Portrait Gallery," this treatment would not only avoid the necessity of constantly providing new galleries for new acquisitions--but would enable the Trustees to separate those portraits, which are of more general interest and suitable for permanent exhibition in a good position, from less important portraits, which nevertheless must be acquired and preserved as public records. From time to time special groups of the reserved or unexhibited portraits might be put for six months in one of the public rooms--thus providing a change and variety of interest for the general public.

The same plan might be adopted with regard to the pictures in the National Gallery--though no doubt a large number of splendid pictures would be permanently placed in the exhibition rooms. Three things should be remembered in regard to the disposal of these pictures: Firstly, that not one in a hundred among them was intended by the painter to be hung in a gallery closely side by side with other pictures; secondly, that no picture should be exhibited in a public gallery unless it is worthy of the best lighting and surroundings; thirdly, that it is reasonable that the expert and the student should be asked to take some special trouble in order to see special pictures not on public exhibition, and that "the man in the street" who says that he likes to walk in and see all his pictures at any time and without any trouble, will value his collection more when he can only see some of it on special occasions.

The heavy and sometimes fragile character of the "frames" affixed to large pictures has been made an objection to the proposal that they should be fixed to screens moved by electric gear. I cannot venture to discuss the subject of picture frames here. I am aware that it is a very serious and important subject, and that a great deal of the effect of a picture depends on its being bordered by a frame of sufficient size and dignity and one which is really and artistically fitted to allow the finer qualities of the picture to become apparent.

How often is such a frame seen? Who is there who has an adequate understanding of picture-frames as adjuncts to, or necessary accompaniments of, great pictures? The splendid carved and gilded wooden frames of some great pictures have a value of their own as examples of design. But how many of them are really suited to the picture which they surround? How much attention has been given by art experts to the question of the best possible "exhibitional"

surroundings--nearer and more distant--for this, that and the other, among the great pictures of Europe?

CHAPTER XX

THE SECRET OF A TERRIBLE DISEASE

This generation, which is so thankless to the great discoverers of the causes of disease, so forgetful of the epoch-making labours of the English sanitary reformers of last century, has not seen nor even heard of the awful thing once known as "gaol-fever." A hundred years ago it was as dangerous to the life of an unhappy prisoner to await his trial in Newgate as to stand between the opposing forces on a battlefield. Gaol-fever attacked not only the prisoners, but the judge and the jury and the strangers in the court. The aromatic herbs with which the hall of justice was strewn were supposed to arrest the spread of the terrible infection, and it is still customary to provide with a bouquet of such plants the judge who presides at a "gaol delivery." The inexorable ministers of justice, who, seated high above the common herd, and clad in their ancient robes of office, were about to deal shameful death to the guilty wretches brought from the prison cells, were often themselves struck down by the Angel of Death moving invisibly through the court. The "black a.s.sizes" were not isolated, but repeated occurrences in our great cities. Typhus fever was the name given by the learned to this awful pestilence. There was a mystery and horror surrounding it which paralysed those who came into contact with it, and produced something like consternation. Men fled in terror from the infected buildings, business was arrested, the universities deserted, palaces left empty, and the dying abandoned to their misery when it appeared. There was a feeling that some deadly unseen power was present, irresistible and malignant.

It is only to-day--in fact, within the last two years--that we have learnt what that unseen power was. The Angel of Death which moved through the Old Bailey Sessions House in bygone days was, indeed, a living thing. It pa.s.sed silently and unseen from the prisoner to the warder, from him to the usher, thence to the bar--the jury and the exalted judge. It had no wings, yet it moved slowly and surely carrying black death with it. This terrible and mysterious a.s.sa.s.sin has at last been unveiled. The shroud of concealment has been torn away and there the dire monster stands--naked, remorseless and hideous. It is of small size, though it makes us all shrink with horror and disgust. It has six claw-like legs and no wings. It is, in fact, neither more nor less than the clothes louse, the _Pediculus vestimenti_. The filthy, crowded condition in which the prisoners were kept, and (let us well remember and reflect thereon) the personal want of cleanliness of judge, jury, barristers and ushers, rendered the existence of the little parasite and its effective transference from man to man possible. Those pompous emblems of authority, the horsehair wigs--those musty robes of unctuous dignity--were full of dirt, and harboured the wandering bearer of typhus infection. Gaol-fever was due to dirt; its infecting germs were distributed by loathsome insects.

It is an interesting and really instructive thing to pa.s.s in review the gradual process by which the cleanliness of the population of Western Europe has advanced, and to observe that, consciously or unconsciously, the end pursued has been, step by step, the removal from man's body outside (and inside), from his clothing, from the water he drinks, from the food he eats, from the air he breathes, and from the surfaces with which he necessarily comes into contact, of injurious parasites and hurtful living things which lurk in dirt and rubbish. At first the larger and more obvious hurtful creatures--snakes, rats, mice, scorpions, blow-flies--were eliminated by some elementary attempts at removal of rubbish and kitchen middens. Then ticks (which African savages still do not trouble to remove from their bodies) and later fleas and bugs became unpopular; lice were long regarded as inevitable, and even beneficial, and by some populations and by part of the most civilised at the present day, are still, not merely tolerated, but favoured. In a country school in France a child who was found to be afflicted in this way was the daughter of the local medical pract.i.tioner. She remarked, "Oh! Ce n'est rien; papa dit que c'est la sante des enfants"! Parasitic worms of various kinds, though they often cause disease and death, are accepted and tolerated even by the most refined and luxurious, who risk infection rather than submit to the precaution of abstention from raw vegetables and fruits, or to the expenditure of trouble in cleansing those nests of infective germs. It is only within the last thirty or forty years that such cleanliness of body and of clothing and of house-fittings as will banish parasitic insects has become at all general. The common house-fly is still tolerated, although it is a notorious carrier of dirt and disease, and is bred by dirt and dirt only, its eggs being hatched in old stable manure. The diminution of late years of house-flies in London houses is simply and solely due to legislation compelling the removal of horse manure from the "mews" so frequent at the back of London streets. Egyptian natives still allow flies to gather on their eyelids without protest.

Of the bacteria and similar microscopic germs of disease--to which all our infective fevers are due--we have only become aware quite recently, within the half-century. Before they were known, cleanliness and the destruction of putrescible matter in man's surroundings had, it is true, been urged by sanitary reformers. Disinfectants and antiseptics were deliberately made use of for this purpose in the mid-Victorian period, when carbolic acid and chlorinated lime were established in the place of those feebler destroyers of the germs of putrefaction and disease--namely, the extracts of aromatic herbs or the essential oils themselves. These, as perfumes and unguents, really served, not merely to gratify the olfactory sense, but to destroy by their chemical action the germs of disease. Men tolerated gnats and their bites (mosquitoes as we prefer to call them in order to delude ourselves into the belief that they are not British) until it was discovered that they, and they only, carry the parasitic germs of two deadly diseases--malaria, or ague, and yellow fever. Now we shall destroy the pools in which they breed, just as we are destroying the manure heaps in which the house-fly breeds. When we look over the list it is really astonishing how much remains to be done, even in England, in establishing increased cleanliness and freeing ourselves from the murderous tyranny of parasites. It is a simple but horrible fact that the poorest cla.s.s in our big cities still swarms with vermin. And not only are the poor in great cities thus afflicted. The recent compulsory medical inspection of school children has shown that in some of the smiling rural districts of England 80 per cent. of the children have lice in their heads. Everyone should help to gain further cleanliness and freedom from this form of oppression.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, England alone, and with absolute conviction and determination, demonstrated to the civilised world the beneficial results in diminishing the death-rate of large towns, to be obtained by cleanliness, the destruction or removal from man's body and surroundings of organic "dirt," viz. his excreta, the exudations and exuviations of his body, the waste and fragments of his food. The names of Rawlinson, Chadwick and Simon remain as those of the prime movers in that legislation which has given us improved water supply, sewerage, removal of dust heaps, clearance of cesspits, cleansing of houses, and prevention of over-crowding. Yet there are writers who, in ignorance and infected with the modern madness which makes half-educated Englishmen presume to teach where they have yet to learn, and to pose as prophets by belittling and running down, without regard to truth, their own country and its finest efforts in the cause of civilisation, actually declare that Germany has led the way in this matter. This is the very reverse of the truth. Foreign countries are, in this matter, following long in the wake of England.

There are no cities in the world so healthy as British cities.

Practical measures of cleansing, faithful activity in destroying dirt and preventing over-crowding, enforced by legislation, have reduced the death-rate of our great centres of population in fifty years by more than one third--that is to say, from something like 29 per 1,000 to something like 18 per 1,000. No other country can show such a result.

Gaol-fever, spotted or putrid fever, or typhus fever has practically ceased to be a regularly occurring disease in the West of Europe. The last cases in London were, I well remember, in a poor district near the Marylebone Road about thirty years ago. A very few cases have appeared since, in the over-crowded and poorest districts of our largest cities. Beleaguering armies and beleaguered cities suffered from it as late as in the Crimean War, but we may now fairly say that it has disappeared from our midst. It, however, still abounds in Russia and her eastern provinces, and in Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco.

It is a disease of cold and temperate climates rather than of the tropics.

In the last century typhus was distinguished definitely and clearly from "typhoid" or "enteric" fever, and from "relapsing" or "famine"

fever, with which it had previously been confounded. The bacterial germs causing enteric and relapsing fevers are now known, and have been isolated and cultivated, and the mode in which they are conveyed into the body of a previously healthy patient is ascertained. But until the past year we knew neither the parasitic germ which causes typhus fever nor the mode by which it pa.s.ses from one individual to another. A vague idea that it was spread through the air prevailed.

Typhus is remarkable for the frequency with which the nurses and doctors attending a case become infected. About 20 per cent. of those attacked by it die, but in persons above forty-five years of age the mortality is much greater--about half succ.u.mb.

Dr. Nicole and his colleagues of the Inst.i.tut Pasteur in Tunis have recently had the opportunity of studying typhus there. They found that the ordinary local monkey could not be made to take the disease. But a drop of blood of a typhus patient injected into a chimpanzee (which is far nearer akin to man) produced the disease after an incubation period of three weeks. This fact was definitely established. From what is now known as to relapsing fever, malaria, yellow fever, plague, and sleeping-sickness, it seemed probable that some migratory insect must be the carrier of the typhus infection from man to man. The typhus patients brought into the hospital at Tunis were carefully washed before admission, and no infection of other patients or nurses took place in the wards, although the cases were not isolated, and bugs were abundant. The only cases of infection which occurred were in persons who had the duty of collecting and disinfecting the clothing of the patients when admitted. This seems to exclude the bug as a carrier. The flea is excluded by the fact that in the phosphate mines of Tunis the flea is abundant, and bites both natives and Europeans.

Yet when typhus fever broke out among the miners--although all were equally bitten by the fleas--no European was infected. The indication, therefore, was that if any insect is the carrier, it is neither the flea nor the bug, but probably the clothes-louse. Although the smaller monkeys cannot be directly infected with typhus fever from man, it was found that (as with some other infections) the bonnet monkey was susceptible to the infection after it had pa.s.sed through the chimpanzee. Experiments were, therefore, made with clothes lice taken from a healthy man, and kept for eight hours without food. They were placed on a bonnet monkey which was in full typhus eruption. A day afterwards they were removed to healthy bonnet monkeys with the result that the healthy bonnet monkeys developed typhus fever. There is thus no doubt whatever that typhus fever can be carried in this way from bonnet monkey to bonnet monkey. The whole history of typhus fever fits in with the carriage of the infection in the same way from man to man, and not with the notion of an aerial dispersion of the infection.

The fact that typhus only exists in very dirty and crowded populations, and that it has disappeared where even a moderate amount of cleanliness as to person and clothing has become general, coincides with the possibility of the body louse as carrier. This little parasite is known to be a wanderer, and is gifted with a very acute sense of smell. An individual placed in the centre of a gla.s.s table invariably walked, guided by the scent, towards the observer, at whatever position he placed himself. Sulphurous acid is a violent repellant of these creatures. Not only will it kill them if they are exposed to its fumes, but traces of it drive them away. Hence doctors and nurses who have to handle typhus patients or their clothes have only to wear a small muslin bag of sulphur under their garments, or to rub themselves with a little sulphur ointment in order to be perfectly guarded against infection; the louse will not approach them, nor remain upon them should it accidentally effect a lodgment.

It is not always obvious at once in what way a knowledge of the mode of carriage of a deadly disease can be of service to humanity. But in this case it is strikingly and triumphantly clear. In the vast poverty-stricken population of Russia typhus is still common. Public medical officials attend these cases, and the Russian Government keeps a record of the annual deaths of its medical staff, and of the causes of their deaths. In the first six months of last year 530 Russian medical officers died, and twenty-four of these deaths were caused by typhus fever acquired by these devoted public servants in attendance upon cases of that fever. Henceforth they will make use of sulphur or sulphurous ointment to keep the little infection-carriers at a distance, and not one medical man or nurse will catch the disease, still less be killed by it.

A remarkable fact in this history is that the actual parasitic germ which causes typhus, whether a bacterium (Schizophyte) or a protozoon, has not been detected, although the louse has been shown to be its "carrier." The same is true of yellow-fever: we have not seen with the microscope the microbe which produces it. But we know with certainty that the gnat, _Stegomya fasciata_, and no other, is the carrier of the unseen germ, and that we can obliterate that fever by obliterating the gnat. So, too, although we know how the infection of rabies acts, and how it is carried, yet no one has yet isolated and recognised the terrible infective particle itself. There is a very high probability that in these cases, and also in cancer (where as yet no specific infective germ or parasitic microbe has been detected), such an infective microbe is nevertheless present, and has. .h.i.therto escaped observation with the microscope on account of its excessive minuteness and transparency.