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No. 66.-VoL. V.
PERTH,
FEBTttIARY 13, 1879.
PRICE 6n.
very remarkable fact that delirium that the new prelates who shortly will tremens was unquestionably increasing. ba sent to them may poesess the eminent That was a dreadful state of things, virtues of their predecessors. IRELAND. and he made this statement as a hospital surgeon, that is/et-Ion tremens, and the SUNDAY CLosract. results accompanying it, both immediate HOW FAST CAN YOH THINK. It is nearly eight years since the and remote, were aeproductive of pre" Quick as thought " and " Quick as Most Rev. Dr. M'Evilly, Lord Bishop mature death as typhoid fever in the of Galway, impressed upon the people city of Dublin. It was a terrible thing lightning " are commonly used as of the diocese and, of the diocese of to think of the amount of injury men did synonymous expressions. But their Kilusacdusgh and Kilfbaora, of which to children yet unborn by the vice of difference is really great. An electric his Lordship is Apostolic Administrator, excessive drinking, and the question impulse traverses a wire as a wave of the propriety of closing public houses on was one of great political moment. Dr. motion ; a nervous impulse proceeds by a development of chemical change in Sundays ; and his Lordship was almost O'Leary further pointed out the the nerve. It runs along the nerve implicitly obeyed. Since that time enormous number of cases of lunacy nearly all the respectable traders in that resulted from the abuse of alcohol. somewhat as combustion follows a train Galway, in Gort, in Oughterard, in He himself could remember the names of gunpowder, and not much if and Ennistymon, in Kinvarra, and all the of 37 cases which he sent to lunatic more rapidly. Indeed, Helmholtz has large towns in the dioceses mentioned, asylums, every one of them snatched out clearly determined the rate of nervous have kept their establishment, closed on of delirium tremens-the life saved-the propagation to be less than a hundred Sundays. Hence the law makes very animal life saved-by the intellect, the feet a second, or about a mile a minute. little difference in this part of Ireland. intelligent soul, if he might use the To use a rude illustration, if a railway Two, or at most three, obscure public phrase, having gone into another sphere could feel, the sense report of a train In the hospitals to-day starting in New York would reach houses were kept open on Sunday in altogether. Galway, and these were frequented by would be found 40 per cent. of the cases Albany but little in advance of the a straggling lot of persons. It is a supported out of the public funds fastest trains that have been run upon remarkable thing about Galway that suffering from the abuse of alcohol, or the Hudson River -road. Even along courses as short as the nerves of the when the bill for Sunday closing was from the indirect result of it. human body an appreciable time is before Parliament a petition was setts required for the passage of nervous forward from the vintners of Galway in impulses. AMERICA, favour of that measure. There are With a simple apparatus, Hirsch about 120 public -house -keepers in the found that a touch upon the face could DEAD ON THE FIELD OF HONOUR. county of the town of Galway, and over be recognised and responded to by a 100 signed the petition From week to week the Pilot has some of the others were absent at the time. But, exerted itself to ascertain the work of pre -determined signal operated by the as I have said, nearly all obeyed the the Church in the fever -infected districts hand, in one -seventh of a second. Lord Bishop, so that virtually.he opera- of the South. As the force of the With a sound test, acting, of course, tion of the Sunday closing Act will plague has now well-nigh spent itself, upon the ear, the answering signal was make very little change in the City of we present to our readers the total made in one -sixth of a second ; when the eye was addressed, the response the Tribes. number of those priests and nuns who came in one-fifth of a second. Since have given their lives in their efforts to the distances travelled by the nervous relieve the sufferings of the unfortunate impulses DR. O'LEARY, M.P., ON THE EFFECTS were very nearly the same in victims to this terrible scourge. The all these experiments, it is evident that OF ALCOHOL. Diocese of New Orleans alone lost its Dr. O'Leary M.P.. lecturing in Vicar -General, 1.5 priests and 19 the greater part of the difference of Dublin said that all alcohol, all liquor sisters ; that of Natchez, including time noted must be charged to the in fact iu which alcohol is found- Vicksburg, 6 priests, 5 sisters ; that of greater or smaller rapidity of the act of whiskey, ale, porter, and wine, when Nashville, 9 priests, 3 sisters ; that of recognition ; the entire process in each Case being the transmission of a sensataken into the mouth and swallowed, Mobile, 1 priest, 1 sister ; making a must pass through one organ of the total of 32 priests and 28 nuns who tion (touch, hearing, or sight) to the brain, its
regard to the fleetness of thought. And we may reasonably " discount" also the stories told by men saved from drowning, cut down before death by hanging, or rescued from sudden and deadly peril from other causes. Igo doubt a man may think of a vest multitude of experiences, good or bad, in a few minutes; but that the thoughts and emotions of' a long life may surge through the mind during the seconds of asphyxiation is manifestly impos-
genettal gleanings,
;
-
sible.
INDIA, CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN LNDIA.
An official calendar recently published at Madras contains full particulars of the establishments connected with the Catholic Church in India, Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam, from which it appears that in 1877 there were 23 vicars apostolic, 21 bishops, 1,098 priests, 1,088,309 professing members of the various churches, besides 1,422 schools, containing between them 51,494 pupils. The archbishopric of Goa contained 766 priests, having under their charge flocks to the number of 156,162. These numbers compare with 20 vicars apostolic, 16 bishops, 790 priests, having congregations of 915,590 persons, and 716 schools, with 27,068 pupils, in 1866. The Journal du Commerce _Mariam says that of Pondicherry alone there were, in 1866, 69 priests, whose flocks numbered 112,000, and 90 schools with 1,800 pupils, while in 1877 the numbers had increased to 85 priests, 141,250 persons professing the Catholic Faith, and 67 schools with 4,000 pupils. Of this number of Catholics in the French colony of Pondicherry, only 3,000 were Europeans. Of the 85 priests, 25 were natives of India. The number of adult converts from heathenism baptized in 1877 was 1,920, besides 513 children ; and 87 Protestants are said to have been converted to the Catholic Faith in the same period. Pondicherry has four separate orders of sisterhoods. The greater part of the natives professing Catholicism are said to be deseem.ed from the converts made by the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
recognition, the willing of the body before it produces its effects, and have fallen victims to yellow fever in that is the liver. The alcohol is carried the discharge of their duties. The signal agreed upon, the transmission of through the liver and passes straight Catholic Relief Association has given the order to the muscles of the hand, into the right side of the heart within a aid already to the amount of 86,000 and the movement of those muscles. very few minutes from the time it is dollars from total receipts of 90,000 Thus it would appear that less time is swallowed. The liver becomes over- dollars. This amount, however, by no required for recognising a touch than a less time to hear than to see. worked-it was stimulated by drink to means represents the whole of the sound, overwork-there was an increased Catholic charity towards the South. In But what part of the fifth, sixth, or 'amount of blood determined to it, and every town and city where subscriptions seventh of a second, as the case might the liver becomes hard. It assumed a were taken the Catholic business men be, was consumed in the act of fhrtn which was sometimes described as subscribed individually, and the money recognition ? Donders was successful in answering a hob -nailed liver-indeed if men only passed through the official channels. knew the names the d, ctors applied to But, as it stands, the above record is this question by the use of several forms GREAT BRITAIN. livers of drunkards they would be, one in which we may justly take of apparatus, involving entirely different methods, yet yielding the same results. indeed, ashamed of themselves. Dropsy pride. He found, for instance, with the "noe- THE CATHOLIC CALINDA.R. FOR 1879. ensued in an immense nun-the, of cases, matachograph" that the double act of The Catholic Calendar for 187J, just and dropsy in its most disgusting form. recognising a sound and willing the issued from the press by Mr. Wash BISHOP ROSENCRANS. There was not a large hospital that response required thou. bourne, gives among its other varied could not supply at least three such Again the Church is called to mourn sandths of a second.seventy-five Of this time, contents a carefully -prepared analysis cases. Eighty-eight cases out of every the loss of one of her most worthy forty thousandths of a second were re- or digest of the list of converts to 100 of the kind were the result directly prelates. On Saturday Bishop Rosen- quired for simple recognition, thus Catholicism in this country, recently of the use of alcohol. Fatty degenera- Crans had the happiness of seeing the leaving thirty-five thousandths for voli- published iu the pages of the Whitehall. tion, too, was one of the children of the great work of his life, thus far, com- tion. With the " noernatachometer " The summary thus presented to view, abuse of alcohol. Whenever alcohol pleted ; his cathedral, which he had he found that the same time, forty the compiler remarks, might be headed, goes in the heart is sure to get some of erected at Columbus at the cost of thousandths (or one -twenty-fifth) of a he believes, by a member of the Royal it. No hospital surgeon who had been 300,000 dols., was consecrated in the second, was required to judge which Family, most intimately related to her in practice in Dublin for the past fifteen presence of the Venerable Archbishop was first of two irritants acting on the Most Gracious Majesty, whose converor sixteen years could have failed to of the Province, several prelates, and a same sense. A slightly longer time sion for certain reasons it was deemed notice the growing of a very singular vast concourse of clergy and laity. On was required to judge the priority of prudent not to publish at the time. The condition of things in connection with a the following Monday Bishop Rosen- signals acting on different senses, as a classified statement thereupon subjoined particular class of disease. He bad in crans was dead. He had seen the sound and a light. It also took, longer runs thus-thirteen Peers, twenty-four St. Vincent's Hospital occasion to travail of his soul, and was satisfied ; to recognise a letter by seeing its form Peeresses, nineteen sons of Peers, observe a class of nervous diseases in but his diocese, as well as the Church than by hearing its sound. twenty-eight daughters of Peers, thirtyyoung children which could not be at large, has sustained a great loss This in a man of middle age. Young five titled men, seventy-eight fitted attributed to any cause save the in- the death of a bishop who was still in so people thought quicker, but the ladies, thirteen members and ex temperance of their parents. He was young, but so gifted, zealous, devoted, difference was not great. In all the members of Parliament, 227 untitled almost appalled at what seemed likely and popular-beloved and esteemed even experiments the time required for a men, 299 untitled ladies, 163 clerical to be coming as the result of intemper- by those of our separated brethren who simple thought was never less than a and sixty-five lay members of the ance ; he was appalled to think that had become acquainted his virtues. fortieth of a second. In other words, University of Oxferd, 110 clerical and if there was the same progress made in Two of the sees in the with United States the mind can perform not more than thirty-eight lay members of the Unithis class of disease, in fifty years there are now widowed-that of Hartford and 2,400 simple acts a minute, 1,500 a versity of Cambridge, 129 other ergywould not be a soldier left to fight for of Columbus. While offering to our the defence of his country-there would bereaved brethren of these dioceses our minute being the rate for persons of men Whose Universities are not itatd, middle age. three members of the 1:TuiyerSity 'of not be a man with the spirit ofa soldier, heartiest and most sincere condolences From these figures it will be seen Dublin, six members of the V nor with an arm of power. It was a and sympathy, let us pray, with them, how absurd are many popular notions in of London, eigptr,fiyq ,e t the
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