Next in importance to actual discovery we are inclined to place the new Regulations which Parliament has laid down in obedience to the High Court of Convocation. The absolute prohibition to women to read or write—even in cases where they may have formerly acquired those arts (now recognised as so unsuitable to their sex)—will, we apprehend, tell importantly on the health of infants, and of course eventually on that of the community. So long as females indulged in no more deleterious practices than dancing in hot rooms all night, unclothing their necks and chests, wearing thin slippers which exposed their feet to deadly chills, and tightening their waists till their ribs were crushed inwards, the Medical Profession very properly left them to follow their own devices with but little public remonstrance. The case was altered, however, when, three or four generations ago, a considerable movement was made for what was then called the Higher Education of women. The feeble brains of young females were actually taxed to study the now forgotten Greek and Latin languages, and even Mathematics and such Natural

Science as was then understood. The result was truly alarming; for these poor creatures flung themselves with such energy into the pursuits opened to them, that, as one of their critics remarked, they resembled "the palmer-worm and the canker-worm—they devoured every green thing "—and not seldom surpassed their masculine competitors. At length they began to aim at entering the learned Professions—the Legal, and even the Medical. Our readers may be inclined to doubt the latter fact, which seems to involve actual absurdity, but there is evidence that there once existed two or three Lady Doctors in London, who, like Pope Joan in Rome, foisted themselves surreptitiously into an exalted position from which Nature should have debarred them. Of course it was the solemn duty of the Medical Profession to put a stop at once to an error which might lead to such a catastrophe, and numerous books were immediately written proving (what we all now acknowledge) that the culture of the brains of women is highly detrimental to their proper functions in the community; and, in short, that the more ignorant a woman may be, the more delightful she is as a wife, and the better qualified to fulfil the duties of a mother.

Since Science has thoroughly gained the upper hand over Religious and other prejudices, the position of women, we are happy to say, has been steadily sinking, and the dream of a Higher Education has been replaced by the abolition of even Elementary Schools for girls, and now by the final Act of last Session, which renders it penal for any woman to read a book or newspaper, or to write a letter. We anticipate the very happiest results from this thoroughly sound and manly Legislation.

The last sanitary event to which we need at present advert is the new law by which, on the certificate of any single Medical Graduate that a person is Insane, the police will be called on immediately to arrest and consign him to such mad-house as the Medical graduate shall appoint.The magistrate by whose order the arrest is made is left no option as to obeying the Medical graduate's certificate, and we are glad also to see that, by another clause in the Act, the only remaining difficulty connected with these Asylums has been removed. None but a Medical graduate, responsible only to the great Medical Trades Union Council, is henceforth eligible to the office of Inspector of any Lunatic Asylum throughout the kingdom, nor can any Justice of the Peace grant an order for admittance or search, except to such a graduate. These wise and reasonable regulations will afford much satisfaction to the Medical gentlemen who have undertaken the arduous but not unprofitable profession of managers and proprietors of Lunatic Asylums.

Our prognostics of last New Year's Day have been justified by the Summary of Crime for the past twelvemonth, which has just been published, according to the excellent recent appointment of the Registrar General of Offences. Crimes of the lesser class, such as murders, poisonings, electroding and exploding, have indeed increased considerably in number, and perhaps also in the degree of recklessness and violence exhibited by the offenders; but on the other hand, as we prophesied, those crimes which involve so much larger evils to the community—the detestable Homoeopathic and Hydropathic heresies, Infidelity respecting the sacred doctrine of Evolution, neglect of Schooling, and neglect of Equination, Vaccination, Canination, and Porcination, have dwindled under the severe measures of punishment which we urged for so long on a too lax legislature, but which have at last been thoroughly enforced. We may really hope to see a few years hence the Reign of Science so complete that no man, woman, or child in the land will presume to whisper a doubt on any subject on which the Sanitary Office has pronounced, or attempt to evade the seasons appointed by authority for receiving the Rites above mentioned. The Act passed at the end of the last century, whereby certificates of Vaccination were substituted for all legal purposes for Baptismal certificates, was the first step towards the happy order of things under which we now have the privilege to dwell.