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THOMAS WAKLEY,THE FOUNDER OF "THE LANCET."

A BIOGRAPHY.1

T

CHAPTER XXVI.

Wakley’s Aim in -Entering Parliament.-The Aviendments tothe Apothecaries Act.-A "Member for Medicine."-TheBorough of Finsbury.- Wakley’s Clainas as a Candidate.-The Invitation of his Constituents.WAKLBY’S aim in entering Parliament was very definite.

.At a time when all around was reforming itself or being reformed, when the word I I Radical " was for the first time 1attached collectively to the more progressive groups of tEnglish politicians because of their constant and common demand for radical reform in one direction or another, rWakley desired to represent the interests of his profession in Parliament and to press there for reform in medical politics.’Over and over again in his war against the constituted t.authorities of the professional world, in his conflicts with the ICollege of Surgeons, and in his attempts to break down the sbarriers of secrecy erected by the administrators of the 1.hospitals to screen their work, he had felt the need tfor a strong friend within the walls of Parliament House.

(

The great English corporations had many such friends. Sir Henry Halford and Sir Astley Cooper were powers in the 1social world whose influence could always be brought to bear I.upon political questions and whose persons were familiar to ,many legislators. When the Members of the College of Surgeons presented their petition to the House of Commons,it was received without enthusiasm, almost without com-

ment, and no attempt was ever made to inquire into thejustice of their demands. This apathy on the part of the iHouse Wakley considered to have been directly due to the ,private representations of the impeached corporation. He abelieved that the College of Surgeons had been able to 1,catch the ears of individual members of the Govern- t-ment, and his grounds for the belief were very sound. tHe desired, therefore, that some one with real know- iledge of the needs of the medical profession should be in (Parliament to prevent such petitions being brushed aside (,contemptuously. Rating the influence of a private member 1very high he thought that if a well-informed man could give (the legislature the benefit of his experience on medical topics from the advantageous standpoint of being himself a legis- Jator the assistance would receive respectful attention,while a few well-timed words from such a man would show up ,manoeuvres similar to those by which the cause of medical re-form had been recently strangled. Wakley perceived that itwas imminent that other medical questions would find theirway into the House. Reform was the order of the day all,round, and the constitutional agitation that was spreadingfar and wide in opposition to authorities or privileges havingno better reason for their existence than the prestige of

history was certain not to stop at one petition against theruling body of one corporation. He felt that the move-

.ment represented by that petition was gaining in

strength, and inasmuch as the possessors of power do notusually resign their positions upon moral conviction, but,generally await the legal curtailment of their privileges-this being the first thing, as a rule, to bring moral con-viction into play-he foresaw that the House of Commons

1 Chapters I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII.XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., XIX., XX., XXI., XXII.,XXIII., XXIV., and XXV. were published in THE LANCET, Jan. 4th,11th, 18th, and 25th, Feb. 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th, March 7th,14th, 21st, and 28th, April 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, May 2nd, 16th,23rd, 30th, June 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th respectively.

must be the ultimate scene of the adjustment of many dis-putes involving the rights of the medical man.The Apothecaries’ Act of 1815, for example, was to be

amended, greatly to the disgust of the Master and Wardensof the Worshipful Company, who were straining every nerveto resist projects of reform which would interfere withtheir valuable warrant to dispense medicines and to preventother persons from doing so. The rights and wrongs of thequestions here raised must have been absolutely un-

intelligible to the lay member of Parliament. The Apothe-caries’ Act of 1815 created a large class of generalpractitioners in England who had a monopoly of dispensingand could if they chose enforce their privileges againstduly qualified practitioners not belonging to their Society.Yet many of the Licentiates of the Society desired theAct to be amended, and one of the reasons givenby them for this was that under an amended Actthe status of the English general practitioners wouldbe raised and they would thus be better able to

resist the very general invasion of the country bygraduates of the Scotch Universities. On the other hand,a larger number of the Licentiates joined the officers of

the Society in protesting against the abolition of their

privileges, and one of the reasons which they gave for de-siring to remain in their present estate was that the Societyby exercising a monopoly in England and Wales of the rightto carry on the business of apothecaries, was able to fine andotherwise harry the Scotch interloper back to his country.And this view at first sight would seem to be soundbecause the Scotch medical corporations petitioned Govern-ment urgently in favour of the amending of the ApothecariesAct, clearly believing that their country had more to gainunder the new proposals than under the old charter. Herewas a coil ! In the matter of an ancient society persons whowere not within its fold asked for its reform, while personswho were within could not agree among themselves whetherit ought to be reformed or no, the two parties differingentirely as to what they wanted while each used the sameargument to enforce their views. Wakley had the wholematter at his fingers’ ends and only desired to expound it to

the Legislature, his feeling being that the country as well asthe House ought to be properly informed on such points orinjustice would be done. Questions arising out of the

existing Poor-law, out of the State regulation of the studyof anatomy, and out of the acknowledged abuses existent inthe administration of the law in coroners’ courts were also

engaging the attention of Parliament at the time, and inevery case the Editor of THE LANCET felt that the medical

profession needed someone within the House to make medicalmatters, often of a severely technical kind, clear to the com-prehension of the legislators.That was his single aim in desiring to enter the House-to

further the cause of medical reform, to be an expert witnessready to hand whenever a point arose in the deliberations ofthe House where the views of one thoroughly experienced inmedical matters might be valuable. He was not without the

exaltation that every man must feel within his breast on

attaining a position entitling him to hope for a voice in thegovernment of his country. Wakley was, on the contrary,an ambitious man, and to sit in the mother of Parliaments

had for him, being young and the architect of his own

fortunes, a promise of pleasure that it would not have hadeither for one grown grey beneath the worries of public lifeor for one born in a social sphere where a seat in the Houseof Commons was but a due appanage to hereditary position.But the cause of medical reform was the cause that he

intended to advocate there if he could obtain the suffrages ofhis fellow citizens.

It is not sufficient, however, for a young man to have acall to politics, as a revivalist preacher has a call to a pulpit,to justify him in attempting to obtain a seat in the House

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of Commons, and had Wakley offered himself as a politicalcandidate for Finsbury solely on the ground that he feltwithin himself the capability of being useful to his genera-tion because of his professional knowledge he would havebeen wrong and also unsuccessful. If he had acted uponhis own initiative his opponents would have been able tosay: " Granted that the House is sorely in want of a

’Member for Medicine,’ a member who shall at all timesand seasons be watchful over the best interests of the

profession, a member who shall keep the House in touchwith the true trend of feeling in the profession and helpit to discriminate between the real hardship and the

hardship that only looks real in a petition-granted all

that, but who says that you are the man for the post ? Who says that you are right in claiming for yourself thisproud and representative position? " And had Wakley comeforward and invited suffrages as the "Member for Medicine" such questions would have been very hard for him to answer.Clearly he could not claim to represent the whole professionwhen he was at personal war with many of the leaders anduntiring in his criticisms of the charters by which thedifferent corporations were ruled. He would have had

to explain that the powerful individuals and wealthysocieties on whose methods or morals he had felt it

his duty to comment severely in his paper were alreadyrepresented in Parliament, being in a position to make theirviews known to members of the House, while it was the

interests of the profession at large that required protection,which interests he desired to represent. It would have been

a fair answer, but not a very conclusive one, so that it isfortunate that Wakley never placed himself in a positionwhere he would have been compelled to make it by claimingto be the " Member for Medicine." It was ’his aim to

promote medical reform in Parliament and it was on accountof the work in that direction that he had already done, andthat he proposed to do, that he felt his political aspirationsto be reasonable ; but he saw from the beginning that nosuch simple electoral cry as "Justice for Doctors" wouldsecure him a seat. There was no constituency in Englandthen, and there is not one now, where the personalities ofthe medical men or the importance of the medical interestsare so predominant as to warrant a candidate asking for aseat to represent them. Wakley stood for Finsbury at thefirst election after the great Reform Bill as an advocate ofadvanced reformed principles, as the supporter of all schemesfor the amelioration of the condition of the people, and as theavowed enemy of all monopolies, religious disabilities, andprotectionist tariffs on the nation’s daily food-a compre’hensive, if somewhat vague, programme.The newly-constituted borough of Finsbury comprised thf.

whole of the thickly-populated district extending from SeverDials in the south-west to Stoke Newington in the northeast. It included nearly all the parish of St. James’s

Clerkenwell, the parishes of Stoke Newington, IslingtonSt. Luke, St. George-the-Martyr, St. Gil&s-in-the-1Jïeldsand St. George’s, Bloomsbury; the liberties of Saffron-hillHatton-garden, Ely Rents, the Rolls, and the CharterhouseLincoln’s-inn, Gray’s-inn, and those parts of the parishes oSt. Sepulchre and St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and of Furnival’sinn and Staple-inn respectively which were without thliberty of the City of London. The approximate population of this, one of the largest of the boroughs calledinto existence by the Reform Bill, was 330,000, and iwas regarded as among the most important of the metrepolitan seats. To this enormous constituency Wakley habecome favourably known during his four years’ residencin Bedford-square. His work in THE LANCET as

medical reformer had attracted the attention of all classeHe was recognised as a man who had fought the monpolists of his own profession with unflinching couraand great success. He had established a reputatic

as a public speaker not only at the meetings held in

advocacy of the cause of medical reform, but at the pollfor the office of coroner for Middlesex, a post for which he-was a candidate in 1830 under circumstances that will bedescribed later. Here he became known to the general publicfor the first time as an orator, as one who possessed themagic power of holding a large audience, of carrying itwith him in his sentiments and of playing with its finer

feelings while dominating its coarser. Finally Wakley wasselected by Joseph Hume and William Cobbett as a properperson to fill a seat in the first Reform Parliament, and eachof his supporters had a right to speak on the subject withauthority. Hume, the member for Middlesex, had been aconsistent Liberal and exponent of reform principles forfifteen years in the House and was regarded by the publicas a Parliamentary leader in the fight for an extended andpurified franchise that had just been won. Cobbett was

general of the popular forces without the walls of West-minster, his vigorous, clear, unscrupulous pen having con-tributed more to the bloodless revolution of 1832 than anyone man’s individual efforts. He popularised each step,making it comprehensible by the clarity of his language, andreasonable by the convincing strength of his arguments andsent to the poll voters by the thousand educated to under-stand their new privilege.

It was natural that Cobbett, who, on the passing of theReform Bill became a political power, should think of

Wakley as a man for whom a seat must be found in Par-liament. He had known him intimately for twelve years.He had assisted him in the publication and editing ofTHE LANCET, and having lent him the benefit of his stormyexperiences in the battles against the College of Surgeons,it is not surprising that he considered him to have fought.those battles upon proper lines. In approving of Wakley andcommending him to Finsbury as a reform candidate, Cobbettwas promoting the election of a man to whom he had taughtthe game of constitutional agitation. Hume’s connexion

with Wakley was later, dating only from the presentation ofthe petition of the Members of the College of Surgeons tothe House of Commons. Hume, it may be remembered, tookthe chair at the meetings of the Members which had theiroutcome in the petition, and, being on those occasions

brought into close contact with Wakley, had been very muchimpressed with his powers as a speaker and as an organiser,and with the obvious enthusiasm and sincerity of his actions.Hume and Cobbett recommended Wakley to the voters of

Finsbury, but only at the last moment, and when there werealready four candidates in the field-two Conservatives, theRight Honourable Robert Grant, afterwards governor of

Bombay, and Mr. Serjeant Spankie, a Conservative barrister ;and two Liberals, Mr. Christopher Temple, also a barrister,and Mr. Charles Babbage, the inventor of the calculatingmachine. The Liberal candidates were not prepared to go.the lengths necessary to commend them to Hume and

Cobbett, who therefore thought of Wakley. As a result oftheir representations and the local work of a Mr. George

; Rogers, Wakley was invited by an influential group of trusty, voters to represent them in Parliament, the following being. the letter of invitation :-

We, the undersigned, electors of the Borough of Finsbury,.- being anxious that our newly-attained franchise should be1 used as a means of promoting the interests of the greatt body of the people, and believing that your political opinions

are in unison with our own, respectfully request you to-

state whether you are willing to become our representativein Parliament provided you are elected in a constitutional

e manner.

We on our part pledge ourselves to the endeavour to

; impress upon our fellow electors the propriety of protectingour representatives from electioneering expenses of every

’" description ; and we will ourselves promote that object to thee utmost, of our power, knowing as we do that in asking youn to devote your time and unceasing attention to our interests

44

n Parliament we require of you as great a sacrifice as anhonest man can or ought to make.We invite a public reply to this requisition, and in that

Teply we invite you to declare your opinions on the greatpolitical questions which are at this moment so important toall-namely, the extension of the suffrage, the duration ofParliament, the abolition of all property qualifications eitherfor electors or elected, the repeal of the law of primogeniture,the continuance of tithes, corn laws, trade monopolies, stampson newspapers, and the system of slavery.We are also anxious to learn your sentiments on the pro-

priety of a complete revisal of the laws, civil, criminal, andparochial, with a view to simplify and condense their enact-ments and thereby to relieve the community from the enor-mous expense at present invariably incurred in every attemptto obtain justice.We shall also be glad to learn from you how far, in your

opinion, a representative ought to be governed by theopinions of a majority of his constituents, when made knownto him through a public meeting convened for that purpose,and how far he is in honour bound at their request to resignhis trust into their hands.

Should your opinions on the above subjects accord withour own, we pledge ourselves to nominate and support youat the ensuing election, and from our knowledge of the

opinions and wishes of our fellow-electors we confidentlyanticipate that our exertions will lead to a successful andtriumphant termination,

(To be continued.)

APPARATUS FOR THE ASEPTIC MANIPU-LATION OF FLUIDS.

BY HAROLD NOLAN.

(FROM THE BRITISH INSTITUTE OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE.)

1.—FILTERING APPARATUS AND MEANS FOR BOTTLINGUNDER CONDITIONS OF PRACTICAL ASEPSIS.

WHERE fluids may not be sterilised by heat, as is the casewith therapeutic serum or of the new raw culture media, itis generally necessary to filter through a porous cylinder in.order to render the liquid aseptic. There will be described

below-(a) a suitable form of apparatus for effecting this-flltration ; and (b) a means whereby the fluid may be filledinto tubes under conditions of practical asepsis, conditions,,however, not so rigorous as those afforded by the use of theapparatus to be described in the second part of this paper.

(a) A Berkefeld bougie with a cylindrical mantle is con-nected by strong caoutchouc tubing to a glass tube. Thelatter passes through an indiarubber bung in the neck of a’conical filtering flask (" Kitasato fiash "). Through the samebung there passes a second tube, which, coming from thebottom of the flask, near the side, passes through the

bung and curves over outside. Here there is attached ashort length of caoutchouc tubing bearing a Mohr’s

burette-clip. To this tubing there is attached a glasspipette. The last inch of this pipette is protected by a’glass hood 4 cm. in external diameter and about 4 cm. long.The opening of the hood is plugged with cotton wool.The side tube of the filtering flask has a short length of.caoutchouc pressure tubing wired to it, to which in turnis wired a piece of glass tubing provided with two con-strictions, between which cotton-wool is tightly and evenlypacked. The upper end of the mantle is fitted with a tightbung perforated by a small and a large opening. The latteris merely for the exit of air and is plugged with wool and,provided with a stopcock; the smaller is provided with a.tube leading to a tubulure near the bottom of a carboy of.two litres capacity. The mouth of this carboy is pluggedwith cotton-wool. The whole is now sterilised in an auto-clave. When the apparatus is cool the fluid is placed in the.carboy, which is raised above the level of the bougie. Theair-exit tube in the mouth is opened and the fluid is allowed,to flow until the bougie is covered The air exit is now.closed and the air in the filtering flask exhausted throughthe side tube. In this way a constant and automatic-ally regulated flow of fluid to the filter is maintained..(&) When enough fluid has entered the flask the tube leading.",,0 the filter is tightly clipped and cut above the clip ; thus

the flask is detached. Two courses may now be pursuedWhere only one operator is available, or where the asepsismust be rigorously certain, the apparatus described in thesecond part of this article must be attached to the syphontube. In this case the Mohr’s clip on the syphon tube hasbeen replaced by a removable screw clamp, and the penulti-mate half inch of the syphon pipette surrounded by a pieceof seamless caoutchouc tubing of such a size as to make atight joint when introduced into a tube of 15 mm. internaldiameter. Where, however, two or three operators are

available the method now to be described will prove quitesatisfactory. To the side tube which was used for exhaustionof the air a tube is attached leading to the laboratory foot-blower. By means of this the air in the flask is compressed,and on opening the clip of the syphon tube the fluid willfill this latter. The plug of the hooded pipette is now with-drawn and the end of the tube well flamed. The bottles ortubes, having been already plugged and sterilised, are nowunplugged one by one; slightly flamed, pushed up under thehood, and filled by opening the clip on the syphon, thepressure on the fluid in the flask being maintained by meansof the footblower. Each bottle when full should be handedto the second operator, who flames the mouth and inserts asterile cork or plug. If an antiseptic is to be added a thirdoperator will be required between the above two. By thismethod, with three operators, 400 tubes, each containing10 c.c., can be filled, corked, and camphor added, in onehour. The apparatus described above has been in constantuse in this Institute since July, 1895. Thousands of bottlesof serum have been filled by means of it with satisfactoryresults. Also, many litres of raw, highly albuminous culturemedia have been prepared and filled into culture vesselswithout becoming contaminated.

II.-FILLING OR BOTTLING APPARATUS FOR STRICTASEPSIS.

The apparatus described below has been constructed torender possible the performance of certain operations underconditions of rigorous asepsis. By its use the manipula-tion of putrescible fluids may be carried out in a germ freeatmosphere and therefore more leisurely than with the ordi-nary methods. As described below, the apparatus includesits own steriliser, and it is intended for steam sterilisation at100° C., but by obvious modifications it may be adapted forsterilisation under pressure.The body of the instrument consists of a copper box

roofed in by glazed frames. The floor is perforated inseveral places to admit steam from the boiler. The frontand back walls are rectangular and measure 40 centimetresin length and 22 centimetres in height. The side wallsare irregularly hexagonal in outline. The lowest edge is26 centimetres long. The front and back edges correspondwith the lateral edges of the front and back walls and are22 centimetres high. From the upper extremity of each ofthese there slopes upwards and inwards an edge; the anteriorslope is a gradient of 14 in 18, the posterior of 14 in 16.These sloping edges are united above by a horizontaledge of 5 centimetres in width, which corresponds to theend of a copper bar or roof-ridge running longitudinallyalong the top of the instrument. Skirting the boundaries ofeach of the two rectangular openings thus formed there runsa continuous groove whose mean depth is twelve millimetres.The inner edge of each groove presents a continuous flat-tened surface six millimetres broad, parallel to the generalsurface of the opening, and sunk five millimetres below thatsurface. There are thus formed two grooved frames, in eachof which is laid a framed sheet of patent plate glass restingon a bed formed by packing the groove with cotton wool.These glazed frames may be fixed in position by bolts

working in sockets borne by the roof-ridge. The roof-ridgeis 50 mm. wide and is perforated by three or more tubesabout two centimetres in internal diameter. One of these is

plugged with cotton wool and is for the exit of steam ; theremainder are fitted with indiarubber bungs perforated forsyphons and pipettes. Through each bung there passes aglass tube, about 12 cm. long, which expands above into anopen cylinder 18 mm. long and 15 mm. in internal diameter.During sterilisation this is plugged with wool and coveredwith a paper cap. When the apparatus is brought into usethe plugs are removed and a Bunsen flame directed over theopening, into which the end of the syphon tube is passed,making a tight junction by means of the caoutchoucwasher on it. Below this tube is united to a shortpipette by caoutchouc tubing having a Mohr’s clip.