Clara Vere de Vere implored that she might be even Ratified sooner than given over to the students, but her request was, of course, sternly refused. It is indeed specially fortunate that so sensitive a subject as this young and delicate-looking lady is likely to prove should fall, in course of law, under physiological investigation at the moment when the exquisite experiments of Dr. Blacksmith on the Nervous System are in course of exposition. Even these startling announcements, however, are less surprising than the following:— _SANITARY OFFICE._ Dec. 25, 1977. The proceedings of this most high and solemn Court in the Realm were, as usual, held with closed doors. There were present five Lord Doctors, and sentences were passed, after due deliberation, and (it is rumoured) the application of the Question, ordinary and extraordinary, on nine obstinate heretics. Three of these were members of that fanatical sect, the Peculiar People, who refuse to consult physicians on the ground of religious scruples—an instance of the survival of outworn superstitions scarcely credible in this enlightened _Age of Science_. One of these miserable delinquents, named John Nokes, alleged that his twelve children had enjoyed unbroken health till his youngest little boy cut his finger. The wretched father, instead of hurrying instantly for the nearest surgeon, himself dressed the child’s wound (which appears to have been superficial) with adhesive plaster, and gave the child a fragment of toffee to stop his crying, in lieu of the proper therapeutic remedies for the shock to the nervous system which any medical attendant would have exhibited. The crime came fortunately to the knowledge of the police, who immediately brought the matter before the Sanitary Office. A second offender of the same sect, named Styles, had, it seems, an attack of Podagra, but took no advice, and having rather quickly recovered, was in hopes (it is supposed) that his neglect to obey the law would pass undiscovered. A crutch seen in his room raised the suspicion of a visitor, and the offender was eventually arrested. When interrogated by the Lord Presiding Doctor of the Sanitary Court as to the motives of his crime, the man (as his sentence sets forth) actually dared to reply by quoting a passage from an obsolete book, wherein it is narrated of a certain King, “Now Asa was diseased in his feet, yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers.”[1] This narrative, as Styles had the audacity to argue, was an authentic, and, indeed, inspired report of a fit of the gout—its diagnosis, treatment, and the result. As he did not desire to “sleep with his fathers,” he (Styles) had avoided consulting the physicians, and had endeavoured to consult the Lord by following the dictates of