So far indeed has Doctor’s Doctrine made its way that, whenever any Bill concerning sanitary measures or public hygiene is before Parliament, there is exhibited by the speakers in the House, and by the journalists who discuss the matter, a readiness to trample on personal rights to an extent which would excite indignation, were any religious or commercial interest in question. Men may spread the most deadly _moral_ diseases, and teach doctrines which make virtue a mockery and life a hopeless desolation, and scarcely an effort is made to stop them. But let them threaten to spread bodily disease, and (unless they be medical men, and thus authorized transmitters of infection) the most stringent measures are adopted; and besides a Compulsory Vaccination Act and the ever-infamous Contagious Diseases Acts, even while these sheets are passing through the press, no less than three Bills are before Parliament to make compulsory the notification of infectious disease and segregation of infected persons. I am not now discussing the merits of these Acts and Bills: I am only observing that the spirit wherewith they are carried forward is quite an innovation in English legislation. Health of body has been accorded the importance which the--real or supposed--interests of the soul alone commanded two centuries ago; and the tyranny of the priesthood of Hygeia threatens to be as high-handed as ever was that of the Churches of Rome or of Geneva. Lastly there is, outside of legislation, and hidden from the knowledge of the majority of the laity, one remaining application of the new principle of morals which more than all exhibits its evil, its disastrous tendency. For obvious reasons, I cannot write plainly of this moral poisoning, which I believe to be going on to a frightful extent, both in this country and abroad. I can only quote some observations made on it by an experienced minister of religion, published in the _Modern Review_ for April, 1880:-- Any one who will make a few casual inquiries will be amazed to discover the frequency with which medical men of high repute--men who are admitted to the friendship of good and unsuspecting women--offer counsel to young men, and even to boys, which strikes at the root of all morality, and indeed can proceed from nothing else than scepticism concerning the very possibility of morality itself. We speak what we know not of one, but of many, and what no medical man will deny, though many a medical man will revolt from the action of his fellow-practitioners as vehemently as we ourselves. What we ask of these purer spirits in the healing fraternity is that they will speak out on this and other matters of professional practice, and condemn their less honorable colleagues with no faltering tongue.