1084 late husband's death Mrs. Lewis-Hill has also given large sums to medical charities and for other philanthropic objects. -SOAP, ANCIENT AND MODERN. IT is not everybody who holds the view that soap is an absolute sine quâ non in personal cleanliness and there are certainly those who go to the other extreme and use soap too freely to the detriment of their skins. Soap, as we know it, is after all a comparatively modern invention, but for all that there is no reason for believing that the

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... le of ancient and medimval times were not jealous of the cleanliness of the person. The Egyptians, Greeks, and more especially the Romans, we know, took great pains to preserve a clean body ; the bath was a great institution in their day when soap, as we know it, was not in vogue but oils and fragrant compounds were used to anoint the body. The references to "sope" in the Bible probably meant fuller's earth or wood ashes or alkalies and these were employed, generally speaking, not on the body but for such operations as the cleansing of wine and oil caks or marble statues. The juice of certain plants which forms a lather was, however, employed for washing and is still resorted to at the present day in certain localities. Though soap is not mentioned by Horner, who, however, refers to the use of cosmetics in the bath, Pliny distinctly describes a substance for beautifying the hair prepared from good tallow and the ashes of the beech tree. Modern chemistry teaches us that soap is a true compound of fat (or fatty acid) with an alkali and it is evident, therefore, that in Pliny's time soap was known which could not have differed very materially in composition from the modern product. As an industry, however, soapmaking on any scale was not known until some time in the seventeenth century. From that period the manufacture increased enormously, but at first the demands were for rough cleansing purposes or for certain industrial operations and not so much for the person. It is, indeed, probable that the soap of a hundred or so years ago was not adapted for personal cleansing owing to its too powerfully caustic and detergent properties acting harmfully on the skin. Nowadays soap is manufactured which is so pure as to leave unscathed the most delicate skin, so beautifully balanced are the fatty and alkaline constituents. The huge proportions which the soapmaking industry has attained are a strong indication that soap has become a necessity of modern life. Only recently we have heard that the soap-makers of this country have combined their energies and their capital to the sum of many millions sterling. It is interesting to consider what are likely to be the results of this monopoly on the great soap-using public. Economy of production is, of course, the great aim of the combination but, as a rule, monopoly does not mean cheapening the ultimate product, If the constant use of soap, therefore, is a modern necessity and is a practice forced upon us in the interests of hygiene, the fact of soap becoming higher in price may reduce the hygienic standard. Again, will the monopoly affect the purity of soap ? ? It is a fact that hitherto we have to thank competition for the purest soaps that can be made-soaps, that is, which are absolutely free from those foreign ingredients which are irritating to a delicate skin and which interfere with the soap's normal detergent properties. There is, in fact, no other article used in the domestic toilet upon which so much attention and so much pains have been bestowed to produce it pure, bland, and soothing. Will this standard of excellence be maintained ? ? For the sake of our skins it may be hoped so. These questions, to our mind, raise another of equal importance. Is it not time, seeing how universal is the use of soap and more particularly for the purposes of personal cleansing, that its. purity should be placed under some kind of control and that the public should be protected in regard to soap in much the same way as it is in regard to food and drugs 2' Honest manufacturers would have no objection to such a suggestion. -HOSPITAL OFFICERS AND CASES OUTSIDE. AT a recent inquest upon a case of sudden death in Westminster the question arose as to what may be demanded of a hospital in the way of help outside its walls. The coroner remarked, in our opinion very properly, that "the hospitals are always ready to receive patients but they cannot supply doctors to the public." It is quite obvious that, except in cases of great urgency and in the immediateneighbourhood, the resident medical and surgical officers of a hospital should confine their work within the walls of theirown institution. If the opposite were the case and these gentlemen were held to be at the service of the public out. side the hospital then the hospital inmates would certainly suffer great risk of deficient attention and medical men outside would be inconveniently interfered with. On the occasion in the Westminster court to which we are referringa grievance was also expressed that the hospital applied to had not been willing to send an ambulance. The complaint was natural but ill-founded, for the simple reason that thisparticular hospital, like so many others, had no suitable ambulance to send. The question of ambulances for street accidents and for cases such as this has often been raised in our columns and up to the present London undoubtedly is deplorably lacking in any accommodation of the sort. The blame, however, is in no way to be imputed to' the hospitals. It is their business to treat people brought within their walls, not to bring them there. Similarly they are in duty bound to supply good medical and surgicat attention to those who are already in the hospital but in no manner of means are they liable for similar services to the public without. an inquest recently at Lewisham' upon the body of a man aged 57 years, described as an independent gentleman, who was said to have died in the following; circumstances. He had been in the habit of taking laudanum in order to induce sleep and instead of waiting, as was his habit, for his wife to measure out a dose he had drunk what he thought sufficient directly from the bottle, with the result that he swallowed a quantity equal to about 24 grains of opium and died. Evidence was given to the effect that the wife was able to procure laudanum for her husband without difficulty and a medical witness and the coroner, in addressing the jury, called attention to the ease with which laudanum can be bought and to the limited restrictions placed upon the sale of poisons by the Pharmacy Acts. As is well known,. the law provides for the division of poisons into two classes, those included in the first being sold subject to conditions which include entry in a book of all particulars of the sale with the signature of the purchaser, or, if he be unknown to the seller, with that of someone introducing him to the selleras well. Those in the second list have to bear upon the box or bottle containing them the description of the article, the name and address of the seller, and the word "poison." It is not easy with these or with any other conceivable regula. tions to prevent persons who deliberately intend to take poison from doing so on account of the number of poisonous substances which enter into various manufactures or are used for agricultural and other purposes in large quantities. At the same time greater stringency in the law and in.