THE INFLUENCE OF RAILWAY TRAVEL

LING ON HEALTH.

From The London Review. be moonshine. As far as accidents go, railway travelling has been shown to be far more secure than any other mode of conNo great social change was ever yet veyance. In 1859 there were altogether effected without violent opposition. Let us fifty-six railway accidents in the United add that we trust none ever will be. For Kingdom; in these, thirteen persons lost this conservative opposition to novelty has their lives and three hundred and eighty-six a good side as well as a bad one. It acts were injured. In that same year, in London as an elective filter, and though it retards alone, no less than seventy persons were the advance of useful schemes for a time, it killed and nine hundred and ten injured by allows them eventually to pass, while it coach and carriage accidents. In spite of presents a permanent barrier to pernicious this, a suspicion has sprung up of late that innovations. No amount of opposition can railway travelling is not so free from danger long prevent a really advantageous change as these figures would seem to indicate. from carrying the day. When tea was in- Accidents may be comparatively few, and troduced some two centuries ago to super- the evils originally anticipated may have sede twopenny ale at our breakfast tables, been chimerical, yet there is a vague but nothing could be fiercer than the outcry increasing impression in the public mind raised against it. Our women were to lose that railway travelling exercises, from some their beauty and our men their vigor. But unknown cause, an injurious influence on the change was a salutary one, and we are the health. So widely spread is this feelnow consuming some unknown number of ing, that to it, in all probability, is to be millions of pounds every year. In later ascribed the perceptible diminution which times, when Jenner made his inestimable has taken place in the number of railway discovery, press and pulpit alike rang with season-ticket holders. In 1859 there were invectives against vaccination. Yet we all in England and Wales, as shown by the vaccinate our children now-a-days, and not government returns, 35,222 persons holding one of them to the best of our belief has yet these tickets. In 1860 the number had been heard, as was prophesied, to low like sunk to 30,500. Here is a falling off in a a cow, nor has been transformed into the single year of nearly 5,000. A considerable likeness of a beast. There are those still proportion of this class of persons is comliving who can remember the outcry which posed of men who, for pleasure or economy, was raised against the greatest change of live with their families in the country, and this generation-the conversion of the stage- travel daily to and from the town where coach into the railway-carriage. The dan- their business is carried on. These persons, gers with which the public were threatened it is said, find that their health suffers from were countless. To breathe would be an the constant journeying, and the falling off impossibility, when rushing through the in the number of season-ticket holders is air at the enormous velocity of fifteen, or, supposed to be due to their abandoning this as some rash speculators had hinted, even mode of life. How far is this view right? twenty miles an hour. The carbonic acid Is railway travelling really injurious to the generated from the fuel would destroy the health? And if so, what is the reason, and atmosphere in the tunnels, and suffocation how is the evil to be met? These are clearly be the inevitable doom of every passenger, very important questions; and in order to while boiling and maiming were to be every- get as good answers as possible to them our day occurrences. Yet less than forty years medical contemporary, the Lancet, recently have passed since the first carriage was appointed a scientific commission, whose slowly dragged along the first railway from report is now published separately as a small Stockton to Darlington, aad we have already pamphlet. The result of the inquiry tends, in Great Britain more than eleven thousand in great measure, to confirm the popular immiles of railway, and the distance daily pression. Excessive railway travelling is travelled by our passenger trains is more prejudicial to the health. But the amount than six times the circumference of the of harm resulting from it varies greatly whole earth. with the age and constitution of the person affected. The young and strong suffer little.

The prophesied evils have turned out to

INFLUENCE OF RAILWAY TRAVELLING ON HEALTH.

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The old and unsound suffer much. The best | dence to the city gentlemen with houses data are furnished by the travelling employés down the Brighton line. And we presume of the post-office and of the companies. It that the "leading physician " kept his name is found that, in order to stand the wear dark from fear of the wrath of his premaand tear of constant travelling, a man must turely aged acquaintances. not only be of strong constitution, but he must begin young. He then gets acclimatized to it, and not unfrequently even improves in condition. After thirty or thirty-five, men are no longer able to acquire this necessary tolerance. To quote the words of an old engine-driver, "They can't stand it, lose their heads, and get old in no time." The companies have, therefore, been forced to limit their engagements to young and healthy men.

The season-ticket holders, to whom reference has already been made, are as a rule men past the middle point of life. They have not gone through the necessary training in youth, and consequently suffer much. It is said that they, like the railway employés, age rapidly. The following is the evidence of "one of the leading physicians of the metropolis," whose name, however, is not given in the report:

"Travelling a few years since on the Brighton line very frequently, I became familiar with the faces of a number of the regular passengers on that line. Recently I had occasion to travel several times on the same line. I have had a large experience in the changes which the ordinary course of time makes on men busy in the world, and I know well how to allow for their gradual deterioration by age and care. But I have never seen any set of men so rapidly aged as these seem to me to have been in the course of those few years. This was an independent observation made without reference to any investigation then or at any future time to be carried on. The change was so rapid that it forcibly arrested my attention, and I must say that it gave me a strong impression adverse to the practice of such habitually long journeys. It is idle to say that journeys from one end of London to the other occupy as long or a longer period of time; for, as you know, and no doubt have carefully made out, the hurry, anxiety, rapid movement, noise, and other physical disadvantages of railway travelling as peculiar to that mode of conveyance; and a railway journey of an hour, at the rate of fifty miles an hour, is almost as fatiguing as half a day's journey on the road."

The causes which lead to these injurious results are several. First there is the bad ventilation. We all know what a stuffy carriage is. Dr. Angus Smith has analyzed the air of a closely packed railway carriage. He found that it was exactly equivalent to the air of his laboratory at the time when the strong smell of a sewer was entering it. So foul is this atmosphere, that the smell of it clings to the inmates of a carriage some time after getting out. Dr. Angus Smith states that he himself, without unusually acute sense of smell, can perceive this odor after a lapse of twenty minutes. Bad ventilation, however, is not peculiar to railway carriages. The old stage-coach was just as bad. We should have proposed as a remedy to open the windows; but we are afraid of Dr. C. J. B. Williams. This physician, being specially concerned with the chest, has turned his attention to the injurious influence of draughts of air encountered in railway travelling. He is all for shutting the windows, for footwarmers, and railway rugs. We hardly wonder at this, considering the formidable list of diseases which he has traced to cold caught on railways. Here is the catalogue: "The various catarrhal affections of the respiratory organs, sore throats, earache, toothache, pleurisy, pneumonia, and various forms of rheumatism, particularly lumbago and sciatica. It is very remarkable how many cases of serious pulmonary diseases, in my experience, have dated their origin to cold caught in railway travelling." The rapid motion of a train of course increases the draft of cold air, and the liability to chill. But pleurisy and pneumonia, lumbago and sciatica, are to be got in other conveyances than railway carriages. We pass on to a cause of disease which belongs specially to these latter. This is their peculiar motion. The rough joltings of an ordinary stage-coach are converted on the rail into a rapid succession of short, sharp vibrations. These follow each other at the rate of some twenty thousand an hour, and their number increases in proportion to speed. The constant vibration

This must be an unpleasant bit of evi- acts on the body like the motion of a ship,

and causes nausea and sickness. This is obliged to stare out of the window, nor to particularly the case with persons of a bil- read small print. If he be prudent, he will ious temperament; and consequently Dr. abstain from so doing. But the shaking is Lewis, the medical superintendent of the another matter; this is beyond his control, post-office, considers all such persons as un- and we must look to the companies for a fit for the travelling service, and rejects such remedy. Either the rail and carriages must candidates for that employment. Physiolo- be constructed on some better principle, so gists attribute this unpleasant sensation to that there may be absolutely less vibration; the shaking of the stomach and diaphragm, or, if this cannot be done, means must be and to the consequent irritation of the vagi adopted for preventing the vibration of the and phrenic nerves. A tight bandage round carriage causing corresponding vibration in the abdomen and a little chloroform are the the bodies of the passengers. There are best remedies; the former steadies the some simple expedients by which this can stomach, and the latter lessens the irrita- be done in part. The natural antagonist of bility of the nerves. Nausea and sickness jerk is, as the report well states, elasticity. are, however, by no means the worst result It is by this that nature protects our bodies of this vibration; it acts most injuriously from harm. There is an elastic pad under upon the brain and the spinal cord. The our feet, elastic plates of cartilage in all our effect of a violent concussion on these organs joints. Were it not for this, every time we is well known; it annihilates their func- jumped down from a gate we should have tions. The series of slight concussions spinal concussion. In a carriage there are which constitutes railway motion has not, of also elastic appliances. There are the course, this terrible result; yet it gives rise springs, and, in the first-class carriages, in a lower degree to nervous symptoms, and there are the elastic horsehair cushions. "leads up to disease, which, after remaining But these are insufficient; there is still too for a long time latent, may still ultimately much vibration, and to diminish this there end in paralysis." Such at least, we are is only one method. There must be more told in this report, is the case, and it is con- elasticity. A simple plan for providing this firmed by what has been observed abroad. has been adopted in the post-office departM. Devilliers, the chief physician of the ment of the railway; the officials are furParis and Orleans Railway, found that one-nished with mats made of thick sheets of fifteenth of the drivers and firemen on that india-rubber, on which they stand. This line were suffering from affections of the expedient has been found to be of great brain and nervous system. All the mischief benefit. If a person stand with one foot on done is not, however, attributable to the such a mat and the other on the floor of the vibration. The ear and the eye are also carriage, he will at once perceive, from the avenues through which the brain is affected. different sensations in the two legs, how The constant rattling is most distressing to greatly this contrivance diminishes the unsome delicate organizations. The rapid suc- pleasant vibration. On the same principle cession of new impressions on the retina, the new royal carriage has been fitted with and the effort to adapt the sight to the ever- an elastic floor of cork. There is no reason changing distances of objects, produce a feel- why some such device should not be adopted ing of fatigue and even of giddiness, which in our ordinary railway carriages. So long shows how great is the strain. As to these as this is not done, the companies can hardly two latter sources of mischief, the remedy is complain if the passengers, instead of keepin the passenger's own hands. If he is dis- ing their feet on the vibrating floor, place tressed by the noise, a little cotton wool will them on the horsehair cushions in front of effectually protect him. Neither is any one them.

From The Saturday Review.
EAST AND WEST.

cially on India. The real investigation of the ways of thought of the natives cannot, of course, be attempted by any one who does not know India personally, but it may, perhaps, be worth while to notice a few points

is influencing us, or we are producing something like an impression on India.

THERE are a great many books written about India, but they are seldom very entertaining. Or, if they supplied a want that was once felt, the want exists no longer.in which it is not difficult to see that India We have had some tolerably written books of Indian travel, and a few readable sporting memoirs, and at least one sketch of the machinery of government in India. But there are many Indian subjects on which Indian writers never touch, but which would be full of interest to people here who care about the East. We never get near the natives in Indian books. There is plenty about the servants of the writer, about ayahs and grasscutters, and there have been numerous descriptions of Sepoys and other native soldiers. But the habits and thoughts and feelings of the great body of the people remain undescribed. It is, for example, very difficult for Englishmen here to make out the position of the Mahomedans in Indiahow it is that caste has spread among the Mahomedans, and that at one period of Indian history large bodies of Hindoos became Mahomedans. The most we could find in a printed book would be the statement that in the reign of one of the Great Mogul monarchs, force, or the royal persuasion, induced several leading families to make the change. But this only satisfies our curiosity very partially. We want also to know the relation between these Mahomedanized families and the other Hindoo families, whether they have adopted the Mahomedan ways of thinking, and how far they are affected by caste. Still less have we any estimate of the relations of the East and the West, and of the action they are exercising, or are likely to exercise, on each other. Many men must have turned this subject over in their minds while in India, and have speculated on the results which the bringing together of the ends of the earth is carrying with it. They must have pondered over the powers and capabilities of the native mind, and over the thoughts which the native mind, with its strange activity and limitation, naturally suggests to the mind of a western thinker. But no one has tried to give us the benefit of his meditation, or to write anything like a book of general philosophy, or, if that is too pretentious a word, a book of observation and reflection on the East, and espe

Perhaps the notion which, among those we have gained from our intercourse with the East, is the one of the greatest practical importance, is that of the numerousness of mankind. It seems very simple and very familiar to speak of a hundred or a hundred and fifty millions of people in India, and four hundred millions in China. We have grown accustomed to the thought that all these people are going on, with religions of their own, with a certain amount of civilization, and with an amount of happiness which is not so very contemptible. But although this thought seems so simple, it exercises a much greater influence over our way of thinking than would at first sight appear. If the East was barbarous, if the inhabitants of India and China were simple savages, like the inhabitants of the interior of Africa, they would not be near enough to us to affect us much. We should do little more than bestow on them that sort of passing wonder which the condition even of brute beasts may easily awaken in any one who begins to think over the mystery of animated nature. But the Buddhist or the Mahomedan is not to be treated in this way. These people force on us the consideration of the sufficiency, for many purposes of life, of creeds and philosophies so different from our own. The simplest mode of treating this thought is to say that these creeds and philosophies are worth nothing-that ours are right-and that we must make them think as we do. However true this may be as an aspiration of a remote and indefinite future, the fact remains that they do not think as we do, and do not show any signs of wanting to learn new thoughts. It is not that they hate our teaching, or are deaf to our appeals, or consider that they have gone through all which we have to suggest as new. All this we might have expected. But these Orientals manage to make their thoughts, their foolish fatalism, their washings, and their metaphysical reveries fill up the void in their hearts. We cannot remain unimpressed by this. We

One thought does not lead

are compelled to a kind of reluctant tolera- | sarily prevail. tion by the sight of these multitudes of think- to another. As Hindoo philosophy, and ers, thinking thoughts that are not ours. Hindoo sacred observances, and the Hindoo We are moved to a feeling, which may be conception of heaven and earth satisfied the noticed to be gradually increasing in West- Hindoos two thousand years ago, so do they ern Europe, that we cannot push our beliefs satisfy them now. The mind of India has too far in judging of and dealing with the not perished. The Hindoos have not ceased world. Many other causes contribute to fos- to think. But they think forever in the ter this feeling, which is a necessary step, same groove. There are still learned and perhaps, in the education of the West, al-wise men among the natives after the native though it brings with it many counterbal- type. There are natives who still follow up ancing evils; but it is unquestionable that Hindoo philosophy, and learn to read and our intercourse with the East tends to promote what, for the sake of convenience, is called by the vague name of toleration. The root of toleration is uncertainty, or, rather, a peculiar combination of certainty with uncertainty. If there were general disbelief, or absence of belief, there could scarcely be toleration, for there would be nothing to tolerate. Toleration requires a belief, but a belief perceived to be encompassed with difficulties either in its acceptance or its application. The East very slightly affects our acceptance of our belief, but it tells silently but surely on our views as to its application. We regard the Orientals with whom we have to do in a very different way from that in which the Spanish conquerors regarded the Mexicans, or the early European settlers in Asia regarded those whose possessions they coveted or appropriated. We have learned to take them in, as it were, into the horizon of our speculation, and to give them a place in the scheme which we conceive to be de-a constant approximation to something like signed for the human race.

write Sanskrit on purpose to know the knowledge of the ancients, just as we learn Greek to read Plato and Aristotle. They even sometimes go so far as to write to the great Sanskrit scholar naturalized in England, in order to have the best possible help in the examination of the great bases of their speculation. But they always move in the same circle, and follow the same purposeless, unending path of what we should call the most barren metaphysics. The notion of activity without progress, when brought fairly home to us, suggests many things to which we might otherwise be blind. In their anticipations of the future of the human race, most sanguine speculators assume that, because a thing is true it will make its way in the world, and that gradually all men will come to think alike. It appears, so far as the short experience of the modern world enables us to guess, that in all nations where thought is really progressive, there will be

unity of thought; for this is the necessary result of the perpetual interchange of thought that goes on, now that the vehicles of communication have been so largely increased and improved. But that thought will be everywhere progressive appears by no means certain. We should not probably have anticipated what we find to be the fact, that in a vast proportion of the human race thought can exist, but exist without advancing. Still, as the fact is so, we must recognize it, and the recognition of it will tend greatly to mitigate the ardor of expectation with which sanguine minds, accustomed only to the growth of thought in the West, hail the impending enlightenment of mankind.

Another idea, of less practical importance, perhaps, that the East brings home to us, but one full of significance, is that of the possible stagnation of human thought. We have seen in the West the growth, the maturity, and the decay of many trees of knowledge. We have had Greece, and Rome, and medieval Europe all full of genius and thought, and beliefs that have passed away. We know that the march of man's intellect has not, as a matter of fact, been in a straight line. It is only through many wanderings, and after many haltings and much retrogression, that a substantial advance has been made. But the East supplies us with a new phase of human thought-that of standing Among the subjects connected with India still after a certain progress has been made, which we should like to see treated by a comand standing still tranquilly and compla-petent person, is that of the impression which cently. We see that truth does not neces- our teaching produces on the eastern mind,