even doubtful whether his guilt as a murderer could have been legally established without the assistance afforded by his own confession. Though this confession was made to a clergyman, and after to others, on his trial he declared his innocence, even after the verdict of the jury had been pronounced. The facts, as proved on trial, will appear from the following address of Judge Littledale, on passing sentence: "You and she were both fellowservants in the same house; and, on that account, it became your duty to see things well conducted in the family. It seems the deceased had reason to find fault with your conduct with your mistress: this, you said, made your blood boil. It appears, from your own confession, that you had purloined your mistress's property: whether it was on that account the deceased wished to make complaint, does not strictly appear: and it seems the murder was a most deliberate act on your part. You also said, if you did not commit it that night, you should have done it at some future time. You are guilty, not only of the murder, but of the fraudulent manner in which these things have been conducted. You arranged the house, so as to make it appear that robbers had come in over the wall; you broke down the back door; you brought the things into the house from their proper places; then you fired a pistol through one of the doors, and gave an alarm of murder, so as to make it appear that thieves had entered the house, and robbed it, and, in order to avoid detection, and to complete the robbery, had murdered the deceased: when it appears from your own confession, that you had yourself plundered your mistress of her property; and because your victim had hinted her intention of informing her mistress, you cruelly, deliberately, and maliciously murdered her, and thus added crime to crime."

During the trial, Gillam betrayed the most insuperable apathy, frequently turning round and looking with the greatest indifference on the assembled multitude. He was handed some refreshment, which he ate with avidity, and with a seeming unconsciousness of the awful fate which awaited him; nor was there a visible alteration of a muscle of his countenance, when the most touching scenes in the horrible tragedy in which he

had been the sole actor, were brought to his recollection by the witnesses.

On the day before his execution (June 10), he made a fullconfession of his guilt, but said "he was goaded on to commit the act from the unkindness and ill treatment he had experienced for the last nine months from Maria Bagnall, and that, if he not taken her life, he most certainly should have taken his own." I have made direct inquiries of the family as to the truth of this; and certainly my own conviction is, that the only "ill treatment" which he received from Maria Bagnall, was her threatening to inform her mistress of his repeated thefts, which she had for some time detected, and, it is believed, had come to the determination no longer to suffer; and that the real cause of the murder was his determination to remove, as he thought, the only possible evidence of his guilt.

SCIENCE REMOVING TORTURE.

SCIENCE shows its glory in a most pleasing aspect when presenting means by which harsh things can be done in a kindly way. In nothing are illustrations of this more rife than in the improvement in the mechanics of SURGERY. It will, at the present day, hardly be credited, that formerly it was the practice, when a surgeon amputated a limb, to staunch the blood by applying boiling pitch to the surface of the stump. The celebrated surgeon, Ambrose Paré, in the time of Francis the First, introduced the present practice of tying the arteries; and yet, strange to say, he was persecuted by the corporate medical bodies in France. Just think of the horrors of boiling pitch to a bleeding stump! This brutalism has disappeared, and so have many other brutalisms.

Even now, however, there is much torture inflicted in the restoring of limbs displaced from their joints to their sockets, technically called, the reduction of dislocations. Such infliction of torture is not done voluntarily, but because the surgeon does

not possess appropriate means to effect his object. Knowing this, and knowing also that a wide field for improvement exists in this direction, it is with considerable satisfaction that the contents of the following letter are recorded.

THE EXTENDER FOR THE REDUCTION OF DISLOCATIONS.

To the Editor of the Journal of Health and Disease.

SIR,-In the reduction of dislocations, it has appeared to me, that the usual means (and among these the pulley may be placed,) do not effectively afford the condition necessary to the realization of the object in view-namely, a steadily continued, and a gradually increased extension.*

The extending force, when made through the medium of towels, sheets, table-cloths, or any similar means, depends wholly on the power of the person or persons who extend; and in such a case, can be, in very few instances, applied with a steadily continued and gradually increased force. The want of firmness sometimes, sometimes the want of power, sympathy with the sufferer at other times, and indeed a variety of causes, may tend to make the individual or individuals to extend unsteadily.

The pulley, especially the multiplied pulley,† meets in part these difficulties—but only in part; and it, as well as the modes above noticed, require much muscular exertion on the part of the operator.

In the case of the pulley, the assistant must not only extend steadily, but, when the due extension is gained, must, while the surgeon is effecting the coaptation, hold steadily, not giving way in the least till the joint is positioned. In many cases the assistant does give way a little, and thus loses the object, and the extension must be made again.

With the view of meeting these difficulties, I have invented the instrument of which the accompanying is a representation,

* Mr. Samuel Cooper, First lines, p. 244, 7th edition, 1840.

Sir Astley Cooper, Dislocations of Hip Joint.

consisting of a toothed bar moved by a cog wheel, through which a pinion passes, to which pinion the handle is attached.

COXETER

2H CRAFTON ST LAST

This instrument will enable the surgeon to gain the following advantages:

1. A steadily continued and gradually increased extension. The steadily continued extension is realized by the extending power being carried on by turning the handle, and thereby drawing in, with mechanical precision, the bar by which the extension is made. The power can be regulated to the eighth of an inch, the rack * preventing the bar from returning. The gradually increased extension is realized by the mechanical contrivance of the cog wheels, the teeth being at regulated distances.

2. The muscular power necessary to be exercised by the operator is very inconsiderable. Any one can, by means of this instrument, can pull with ease three powerful men; the surgeon has thus not to exhaust his power, and appears as a surgeon, and not as a mechanic toiling.

3. He can, in addition, by means of the rack, fix the extender at the point he chooses; and then, without any difficulty, can perform the other part of his duty-namely, the coaptation of the limb to the joint, from which it was dislocated; in fact, the extension can be made with one hand, and the coaptation with the other.

4. This instrument does not require any distance from the patient in order to gain the resistance.

Trusting that these advantages will render the "Extender" useful to the profession, and tend to diminish the amount of

* I had proposed the usual rack applied to cog wheels, and am indebted to Mr. Coxeter, surgical instrument maker, for the present more convenient contrivance.

human suffering, I beg, through the pages of your Journal, to

offer it to the profession as the contribution of

Your obedient Servant,

GEORGE N. EPPS, Surgeon.

79, South Audley Street, Grosvenor Square.

THE MISERABLE UNCERTAINTY AND CONSEQUENT WANT OF SCIENCE, OF THE COMMON SYSTEM OF TREATING DISEASE.

A PROPER means of helping forward truth is to show that error, who defames the truth, is herself obliged to testify to her own lying. Job expresses his desire to be, that "mine adversary had written a book."* Allopathy, one of the progeny of error, has written her books, and it is likely that from her books may be drawn materials to prove that she has the parentage referred to; and any depreciation which thus may come to allopathy will be from her own statement.

To begin the following is from the Lancet :- +

TREATMENT OF ERYSIPELAS.

(1.) "There has (the writer means have) been almost as many remedies applied for the treatment of this disease as for half the other diseases in the nosology ‡ put together, and each remedy has had a certain amount of reputation and does good by possessing exactly opposite properties to what has been recommended in the preceding case. (2.) This confusion has arisen from not considering the peculiarity of habit in which the disease occurred, and, in the next place, from not remembering that, if left to itself, it will, in a large majority of cases, do well. It is quite certain, then, that no remedy will be found possessing equally sanative power in every form of the disease. (3.) Yet, notwithstanding the truth of these assertions, we are constantly hearing of the use and value of new remedies for

*Job xxxi. 35.

+ Vol. I. 1844, page 18. Writers on diseases have collected diseases into systematic groups, calling the whole "nosology."