And be it noted, how this reacts upon the State. So completely is our government dissevered from Science in general, and, most of all, from the sciences relating to Life, that, on such subjects, there exists not for state-purposes anything like a tribunal of appeal. The Legislature recognises no _Medical Authority_. Occasionally this fact stands out in painful conspicuousness, and brings most injurious results. In contested cases requiring scientific testimony--before Parliamentary Committees, for instance, and in a variety of legal proceedings,--instead of the Court having satisfactory power of referring particular questions to skilled impartial adjudicators, the uniform practice is, that scientific men are retained on opposite sides, to support partisan interests. The advantages, such as they are, which belong to this system, might, I believe, easily be obtained under altered arrangements: the disadvantages are glaring. It might be invidious to refer to illustrations of their reality: but it is of course impossible to doubt of the working of this system, that, in so far as it makes each witness feel himself engaged to maintain the views of his employer, it tends towards a moral prostitution and subornation of science. In the interests of truth, it would surely seem desirable that scientific evidence should be tendered, so far as may be, in a judicial spirit towards the suit; either that the technical point should be referred to a technical jury, or that the technical witness should be summoned at the Court’s discretion, should be examined in-chief by the Court, and should be subject only to such cross-examination as may procure the most complete statement of his knowledge on the matter in hand. Having said so much on the defects and the wrongs of our existing sanitary condition, perhaps I may venture to speak of the almost obvious remedy. ‘Almost obvious’ I say; for surely no one will doubt that this great subject should be dealt with by comprehensive and scientific legislation; and I hardly see how otherwise, than that it should be submitted in its entirety to some single department of the executive, as a sole charge; that there should be some tangible head, responsible--not only for the _enforcement_ of existing laws, such as they are or may become, but likewise for their _progress_ from time to time to the level of contemporary science, for their _completion_ where fragmentary, for their _harmonisation_ where discordant.