Surgery was active, though the days of appendicitis and adenoids were still a long way off. _Punch_, however, was more interested in mental maladies and the pathology of the social system. The Victorian age had no monopoly of superstition and credulity, but prophets and spiritualists and diviners reaped a rich harvest in the 'fifties and 'sixties. The comet of 1857 caused a good deal of anxiety, so much so, that in December of that year an insolvent butcher gave as a reason for his failure "the loss he had sustained in June, when the comet was expected, by a large quantity of meat being spoilt." Dr. Cumming was assiduous in prophesying the end of the world, but unfortunately _Punch_ ascertained that the doctor had renewed the lease of his house for fifty years, and the prophet's defence of his action did not mend matters:-- _Mr. Punch_ finds in a Liverpool journal the following part of a lecture which Dr. Cumming has been delivering on Prophecy:-- "He had been, he said, taunted in the columns of _Punch_ with having, notwithstanding his belief that the world was to come to an end in 1867, recently renewed the lease of his cottage for 50 years. The accusation, he said, although not literally, was generally true, but his answer to it was, that a belief in prophecy should not override commonsense. The doctor was frequently applauded throughout his eloquent lecture." And by no person should he have been applauded more loudly than by _Mr. Punch_, if that gentleman had had the good fortune to be in the schoolroom at Claughton, where the lecture is reported to have been delivered. The last quoted sentence is so admirably frank that _Mr. Punch_ cannot withhold his tribute of veneration. In other words, although it is all very well, in the way of business, to work the old Hebrew scrolls, which boil down into capital stock for the rather thin yet spicy soup vended by our Doctor, he has no notion of eating his own cookery. We wish we were as certain of our friend's orthography as we are of his commonsense, and would give a trifle (say the next three hundred Tupperian sonnets) to know whether, in his private ledger, he does not spell Prophets as worldly people spell the opposite of Losses. [Illustration: A SPIRIT RAPPING SEANCE! MR. FOXER (a medium): "Oh, dear! There's a spirit named Walker writing on my arm!"] [Sidenote: "_Diviners and Dupes_"]