RABELAIS-RABIES The scientific treatises of R. are-almost in the nature of the case—long since utterly forgotten; but his romance, in which are narrated the wonderful adventures of Garagantua and Pantagruel, continues to take rank as one of the world's masterpieces of humour and grotesque invention. In the form of a sportive and extravagant fiction, it is, in fact, a satirical criticism of the corrupt society of the period, the prevalent follies and vices of which are parodied with surprising effect and ingenuity. The difficulty of its allegorical form, however, and the quantity of recondite allusion it embodies, tend somewhat to impair the effect of the work for most modern readers. Also, it must be said, that in his attempt to farm in the neighbourhood, celebrated for the accompany him, in fulfilment of a desire long quality of its wine, the sale of which he perhaps cherished. While at Rome, he petitioned Paul IIL combined with the business of an apothecary. His for a remission of the penalties still attached to his prosperous circumstances enabled him to give to his misdemeanour before mentioned; and through the son every advantage of education, and at an early interest of Du Bellay and others, a bull was age, the boy was sent as a pupil to the neighbouring obtained, absolving him, and permitting his return Abbey of Seully. His progress in his studies being to the order of St Benedict. But he continued the found by no means satisfactory, he was thence exercise of his profession of medicine at Montpellier removed to the university of Angers. Here and other towns till 1538, when he withdrew as though as a scholar he still remained quite canon into Du Bellay's own abbey of St Maur des undistinguished-he was fortunate enough to Fosses, near Paris, and resumed his monastic habit. make the acquaintance of Jean (afterwards the The death of Francis L. in 1547, was followed by celebrated Cardinal) Du Bellay, to whose steady the fall of Cardinal du Bellay, the new monarch, and helpful friendship he was subsequently much Henry II., favouring the Cardinal de Lorraine. R indebted. At the desire of his father he consented shared for a time in the disgrace of his old protector, to embrace the monastic state, and after passing whom he appears to have followed to Rome, but through the preliminary novitiate, became a brother his tact and irresistible humour won him friends of the order of St Francis, in the convent of Fon- among the Lorraines, and in 1551 he obtained the tenay le Comte, according to the annalist, Pierre curacy of Meudon, in the occupancy of which de St Romuald, in 1511, but the discovery of a the remainder of his life was passed. So far as document by M. B. Fillon (Poitou et Vendée, Fon- record remains of it, his life here was happy and tenay, 1861), renders the date 1519 more probable. blameless. He was exemplary in the fulfilment of R. now devoted himself with the utmost ardour duty, profuse of charity, sedulous in the relief of and perseverance to the prosecution of his hitherto suffering, for which his medical knowledge afforded neglected studies. Aiming at the widest culture him unusual facilities; and always specially attainable, he ranged the whole circle of the delighted to cultivate, as occasion served, the sciences as then understood. To medicine, in society of those any way noted as eminent in learnparticular, he seems to have been strongly attracted; ing or science. He died at Paris, in 1553, in the and in the sphere of language, in addition to Latin Rue des Jardins, in the parish of St Paul, in the and Greek, he is said to have attained a compe- cemetery of which he was buried. tent mastery of Italian. Spanish, German, English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Meantime, with his brothermonks, he was much the reverse of a favourite. They hated him for his devotion to the new learning, and suspected his Greek to be only a cover for heresy. About 1523, a search was made in his cell for suspicious books; the whole were confiscated, and to save himself from further and sharper persecution he fled. But though only a poor monk, the wit and learning of R. had gained him several influential friends, through whose exertions he obtained from Pope Clement VII. an indulgence to transfer himself from the order of St Francis to that of St Benedict, and became an inmate of the monastery of Maillezais. For the calumny afterwards circulated, that his removal was necessitated by the odium attached to a life of profligate indulgence, there seems no reason to it is the whim of the writer to infect himself with suppose that there ever was the smallest ground. not a little of its foulness; and such is the We must infer that in his new abode he found riotous licence of the buffoonery, from behind which, himself not much more comfortable than before, as a stalking-horse, he shoots the arrows of his wit, as after a few years he quitted it abruptly, without that few books are less fitted for general perusal in the sanction of his ecclesiastical superiors, thereby the present more decorous times. On the publication incurring the severest censures of the church. But of his work, the charge of irreligion and atheism it was not persecution that induced this second was freely preferred against R., and certain other flight from the monastic state. It was the incurable scandals were circulated, for which there seems to aversion of the grotesque hun. rist to the restraints have been in his life no foundation, except as the of the 'regular' clergy. And nobody seems to have free tone assumed by the writer might suggest a really blamed him for his professional apostacy-precarious inference to defective morality in the his own bishop, among others, receiving him at his man. The religious corruptions of the time, and table in the most friendly manner! During 1524 the vices of the priestly class, had formed one 1530 he appears to have frequented the universities favourite theme of his satire, and he simply paid of Paris and Bourg; which may account for the the usual penalty in thus incurring the easy retort intimate knowledge of university manners and calumnions. See Delécluze, François Rabelais (Par. opinions shewn in his great work. In the year 1530, 1841), and P. Lacroix, Rabelais sa Vie et ses Ouvrages he settled himself at Montpellier, and taking a (Par. 1859), in the latter of which works the incimedical degree at the university, was appointed to dents of his career are for the first time clearly and the post of lecturer. In 1532 he went as hospital correctly narrated. physician to Lyon, where he published several works on medical science, besides other miscellaneous matter bearing on archæology, jurisprudence, &c. In the beginning of 1534, his old friend, Jean Du Bellay, then Bishop of Paris, and shortly after to be Cardinal, passed through Lyon, on an embassy to Rome, whither, in the capacity of travelling physician, R. was delighted to Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, RA'BIES, the name given to a disease affecting the dog and other animals, was known to the ancients, and is spoken of by Aristotle, Pliny, and Horace; but it does not seem to have been then so virulent in its nature, or alarming in its consequences, and Aristotle, perhaps in ignorance. states that man was not subject to its attacks. was very prevalent on the continent two or three lt RABINET-RACCONIGI. centuries ago, but was comparatively rare in this country until the last century. This malady stands almost alone in this, that all animals seem liable to its attacks. It is a matter of dispute among some of our best authorities whether rabies be occasionally spontaneous in the carnivora-the only animals in which it is undoubtedly inherent or communicated solely by inoculation. Looking simply at the history of the disease, the facts would seem to be against the spontaneity theory. Rabies is not known in some countries, such as the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, Egypt, Syria, the South Sea Islands, Lisbon, where dogs swarm; and in Constantinople, where they go at large, and support themselves on offals of all kinds and qualities, the disease is of very rare occurrence. John Hunter relates that it was not known in Jamaica for forty years previous to 1783, when it was introduced by an affected dog from America; and Dr Hamilton says that curs of the most wretched description abound in the island of Madeira-that they are affected with almost every disease, tormented by flies, by heat, thirst, and famine, yet no rabid dog was ever seen there. There is often, no doubt, great difficulty in tracing the cause of rabies from inocu.ation. The owner may feel convinced that his diseased dog had almost never been out of his sight, or exposed to an affected animal; but when we consider the predatory habits of the dog, and his love of association, and how easily he can steal away unobserved by night or by day for a longer or shorter time, we can readily account for the most vigilant eye being occasionally off its guard. It has been asked, as an objection to the exclusiveness of contagion or inoculation, How was rabies at first originated? But the same difficulty attends the case of small-pox and other diseases which now arise only from contagion. There is another important peculiarity in this disease on which medical men are divided-viz., whether the virus of a rabid animal, other than of the carnivorous species, can communicate the disease. Experiments to test this were made by some foreign surgeons of eminence, by Drs Vaughan and Babington of London, and at the Royal Veterinary College; and it is reported that in every instance they failed in producing the disease. It is certain, however, that others have not so failed in their object. MM. Majendie and Brechet in 1823 inoculated two dogs with the saliva of a hydrophobic man, and it resulted in one of the dogs becoming rab.d, which in turn communicated the disease to other dogs and some sheep. Mr Earl, the wellknown London surgeon, in administering medicine to a hydrophobic woman, was bitten by hier, and he immediately excised the bitten part. Being accused of unnecessary fear and cowardice, he determined to justify his fears, and having inoculated several rabbits with the woman's saliva, some of them became rabid. Mr King of Bath succeeded in producing the disease in a common hen by the virus of a cow. Several other cases could be related, but it may serve our purpose to quote the following remarks of Mr Youatt: 'I can imagine that the disease shall not be readily communicated by the saliva of a graminivorous animal; but I have once produced it in the dog with the saliva of an ox, and twice with that of the horse, but I have failed to do it in very many cases. While on this point, it may be remarked, that the writer once saw a rabid horse bite a young man's hand rather severely, while incautiously giving it a ball of medicine, and he accompanied him to Sir Astley Cooper, who, according to his invariable practice, as he told us, applied nitrous acid to the injured part, and he assured us that no bad effects would accrue; and neither there did.' We shall briefly notice some of the leading symptoms of rabies in the dog and horse. These may be exhibited in the dog in a few days, or it may be, and often is, weeks, and even months after he has been bitten. At first he loses his appetite, becomes sullen, fidgety, has a vacant gaze, licks or gnaws the injured part, laps any liquid that comes in his way-for he has, unlike man, no dislike for water, although he has a difficulty in swallowing it-ents wood, straw, hair, and other indigestible substances; and in a day or two he becomes quarrelsome, bent on mischief, bites at anything that comes in his way, and his bark is more like a howl; his lower jaw often becomes pendulous, and general paralysis sometimes precedes death; and as a rule, on the fifth or sixth day he dies. The principal post-mortem appearances are these enlargement and increased vascularity of the salivary glands, inflamed condition of the base of the tongue and fauces, epiglottis, and stomach, which last organ almost invariably contains such indigestible substances as straw, hair, offal, &c. The symptoms in the horse, which become apparent in a few weeks, are those of extreme irritability. He trembles, heaves, and paws, staggers, and falls; and after a severe struggle, he suddenly rises again, and appears settled and collected, when he will again exhibit the usual distressing symptoms. He is sometimes mischievous, bites, foams, and snorts; and generally in three days he dies paralysed and exhausted. The disease seems primarily to be one of bloodpoisoning, and not, as some have represented it, an affection of the nervous system. We know that some instances of blood-poisoning terminate with coma, or convulsions, but are not, on that account, to be considered as proceeding from nervous disease. Whatever may be the precise nature of the disease, it is certain that no cure has been discovered for it. The writer has seen many dogs, some horses, and an ox in all the different stages of it, and many attempts at a cure tried, without producing even any palliative effects, and every one of the patients died in the ordinary course, whether anything or nothing was done. As the disease is so rare, and— contrary to popular belief-is not more prevalent at one period of the year than another, no anticipatory precautionary measures can be taken. Preventive measures, however, when it is known, or suspected, that the disease has manifested itself, should not for an instant be neglected. All dogs known to have been bitten, or been in the company of the rabid animal, should be immediately destroyed, and every other dog in the town and district confined, or closely muzzled, for several weeks, or even months. As to the measures to be taken when a human being is bitten by a rabid animal, see HYDROPHOBIA. even RACCOON-RACHEL Silk the country residences of the royal family. fabrics and twist, and woollen cloths, are manufactured. Pop. 10,350. RACCOON, or RACOON (Procyon), a genus of quadrupeds of the Bear family, Urside, but differing widely from the typical members of that family, in being less perfectly plantigrade, the whole sole of the foot being indeed rested on the ground when the animal is still, but being partly raised when it walks, whilst when running it only touches the ground with the tips of its toes, and moves in a Bounding manner. The dentition also differs from that of bears, there being, for one thing, only six instead of seven molars on each side in the lower jaw. The dentition indicates an aptitude both for animal and vegetable food. The general appearance may be described as intermediate between that of a fox and of a bear in miniature. The raccoons are exclusively American. The Common R. (P. lotor) is a native of North America, from Canada to the south of Mexico. It is about the size of a small fox, grayish-brown; the muzzle white. The hair is of two kinds, an under-coat soft and woolly, of a uniform gray; and long and rather stiff hairs projecting through the wool, and alternately marked with black and grayish-white. The R. frequents the seashore, and the margin of swamps and rivers. It commits great ravages on fields of Indian corn, plantations of sugar-cane, &c., and is not less destructive to poultry. It feeds much on oysters, particularly in the alluvial coast-lands of Carolina and neighbouring regions where the American oyster abounds on the banks of rivers and creeks, and exhibits great dexterity in opening oysters. It is also very fond of crabs and other crustaceans. It has a curious habit of dipping or washing its food in water, whence its specific name Lotor (Lat. washer). When pursued, it often takes refuge in a tree, climbing with great agility, but its destruction is then considered sure, whence the American proverbial reference to a tree'd 'coon. The fur of the R. is used in the manufacture of hats, and is a considerable article of commerce.-Another species, the CRAB-EATING R. (P. cancrivorus), the Crab-dog of Guiana, is found in all parts of South America east of the Andes. It is rather larger than the common R., although very similar to it.-Both species of R. display the same love of glittering things which is so remarkable in magpies, jackdaws, and others of the crow family. Mr Wood mentions in his Natural History that a common R. did its best to get a ring off his finger by hitching one of its crooked claws into the ring, and pulling with all its strength; and a gentleman once resident in Guiana informed the writer of this article that a crab-eating R., which he caught young, and completely tamed, shewed such a propensity to steal silver spoons, that he was obliged to send it away into the woods. RACE. A race is a class of individuals concerning which there are doubts as to whether they constitute a separate species, or a variety of a recognised one. Hence the term is subjective; i. e., it applies to the opinion of the investigator rather than to the object of the investigation; so that its power is that of the symbol for an unknown quantity in algebra. The present writer having as yet found no tribe or family for which a sufficient reason for raising it to a new species has been adduced, has either not used the word race at all, or used it inadvertently. Its proper place is in investigation, not in exposition.' -Latham, Natural History of the Varieties of Man. RACE, the portion of a loom from which the shuttle is projected through the shed, or separated threads of the warp. RACEHORSE, a breed of horses distinguished for extreme fleetness. It owes its origin in great measure to Arabian, Barbary, and Turkish horses introduced into England. The great interest taken in Horse-racing (q. v.) since the time of James I., has led to the greatest care of the animals employed in it, and the utmost improvement of the breed. The racehorse is generally longer-bodied than the hunter, and the same power of leaping is not required. See HORSE-RACING. RACE'ME (Lat. racemus, a bunch of grapes), in Botany, a form of Inflorescence (q. v.) which is centripe al (see CENTRIFUGAL AND CENTRIPETAL), and in which the flower-stalk throws off branchlets (pedicels) of nearly equal length, and each bearing a single flower. Familiar and very perfect examples of the R. may be seen in the Red or White Currant and in the Barberry. Notwithstanding the origin of the name, a bunch of grapes is not a true R., but a Panicle (q. v.). RACE MIC ACID. See TARTARIC ACID. RACHEL, ELISA (properly ELISA RACHEL FELIX), a celebrated French tragedienne, was born at Munf, in Switzerland, of poor Jewish parents, on the 28th February 1820. The family removed to Lyon, in France; and in order to aid in its support, the child R. and her sister Sarah were in the habit of singing for chance gratuities in the streets and cafés of the place. In 1831, the household was transferred to Paris, and for R., lessons were procured in singing from an eminent teacher of the day. In music, she gave no promise of special excellence; and in 1833, she made her first appearance on the stage as an actress. Though her talent had previously been discerned by certain of the more judicious (among others, Jules Janin and the celebrated Mademoiselle Mars), it was only in 1830 that in the character of Camille. in Corneille' tageds. RACHIS-RACINE. of Les Horaces, she first strongly attracted the attention of the public. The admiration excited by her performance rapidly grew into enthusiasm; and from this time forward, in the great parts supplied by the classic masterpieces of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, she shone without a rival. In 1843, her fame may be said to have culminated in her appearance as Phedre in the tragedy of that name by Racine. In Adrienne Lecouvreur, a piece expressly written for her by MM. Legouvé and Scribe, she had also immense success, though in other more modern parts, her popularity was somewhat less. The furor excited in Paris in 1848 by her public recitation of the Marseillaise Hyma, in the interest of the revolutionary government, will continue to connect her name with the public history of the period. In 1849, she made the tour of the French provinces, and subsequently visited England and Russia, everywhere meeting with success and enthusiastic recognition. Her health, however, had begun to fail: in 1855, in the course of a professional visit to America, it altogether gave way, and she returned utterly prostrated. A residence at Cairo failed to restore her to strength; and on the 31 January 1858, she died at Cannet, near Toulon. As an artist, within the limits prescribed by her genius, she has probably never been quite equalled. Of the burning intensity which characterised her rendering of passion in its fiercer concentrations, no words can give an adequate image. She does not act-she suffers,' some one very well said of her. Her Phedre-by common consent her masterpiece-was an apocalypse of human agony, not to be forgotten by any one who ever witnessed it. In character, R. was neither exemplary nor amiable. Of the details of her private life, it is as well that nothing should be said. In her professional relations, she was notoriously grasping and avaricious. Her immense popularity enabled her, during much of her career, pretty much to dictate her own terms to managers, and of this power, she is said to have availed herself without scruple or generosity. In this way she very rapidly amassed a large fortune. If little else of good is on record of her, she was constant in her home affections, and throughout she frankly made her whole family sharers of her prosperity. RA'CHIS (Gr. the back-bone), in Botany, the primary floral axis, an elongation of the stem or of a branch, from which arise the flower-stalks (peduncles), or to which the flowers are immediately affixed. RACINE, JEAN, the most admired of all the French dramatists, was born at Ferté-Milon, 21st December 1639, of a respectable family belonging to the bourgeoisie. At the age of four he lost both his parents, and then went to live with his maternal grandfather, by whom he was sent to the college of Beauvais Here he remained till he was 16, at which time his grandfather died. He was then taken to Port-Royal (q. v.), where his grandmother and his aunt Agnes were leading a recluse life, and placed at the school which had been opened in that celebrated retreat by the pious scholars assembled there. R. astonished his teachers by the rapidity of his progress in all his studies, especially in Greek; but he won their regards still more by the affectionate seriousness of his character, which gave a delicacy to his ardent sensibilities and vivid imagination. They loved him, yet they trembled for him. When they saw him wander Sophocles or Euripides in his hand-among the shadows of the abbey, anxiety took po session of their hearts; and when they learned that he secretly indulged in the sinful pastime of making verses, they even thought it necessary to punish their favourite. Their punishment was indeed an odd one, for they obliged him to turn the hymns of the Roman breviary into French verse! Novels were placed under the same ban as poetry. One day the sacristan Lancelot found him reading the Byzantine romance of Bishop Heliodorus (q. v.), entitled The Loves of Theagenes and Charicieus, and threw the book in the fire; but R. says that it was already fixed in his memory, and that he smiled at this futile attempt to rob him of it. We can easily see that R. was not at all ascetically disposed as yet. After a residence of three years at Port-Royal, during which time he had, among other things, read and annotated the best Greek and Latin classics, he went to the Collége d'Harcourt to finish his curriculum with the study of logic. Then he went out to see life,' got into loose company, became irregular himself, and even grew so reckless as to burlesque, in his correspondence, the pious phraseology in vogue at Port-Royal. Deep was the grief and incessant were the remonstrances of his old friends, but they were long without avail. He had made some little name as a poet by an Ode on the marriage of the king, and had had the good fortune to get a pension for it, but still his income was small and precarious; and when a maternal uncle, who was a canon-regular of the church of St Genevieve at Uzès, in Languedoc, held out to him the hope of a benefice, R. went to live with him in 1661, and tried to study systematic theology. But the effort was a hopeless one. While he gazed vacantly into the Summa of St Thomas, his thoughts were with Ariosto and Sophocles. In the summer of 1662, he returned to Paris in disgust, and commenced life as a dramatic writer, having meanwhile made the acquaintance of Molière and Boileau. His first piece was the Frèrcs ennemis, played in 1664; but it was not till 1667, when his Andromaque appeared, that the power and peculiar character of his genius excited marked attention. For the next ten years, his career as a dramatist was unsurpassably brilliant, yet, strange to say, we know almost nothing of his private or social life during that time. We have to content ourselves with little more than a few meagre facts relative to his literary performances, the chief of which are and Phedre. Suddenly, at the early age of 38, in Britannicus, Berenice, Bajazet, Mithridate, Iphigenie, the full sunshine of his fame and vigour of his the world, and become a Carthusian monk. The power, he resolved to abandon both the stage and effect of his Port-Royal training was now seen. the midst of all his literary ambitions and strifes, his little excesses, irregularities, and amours, R. had carried with him a keen and faithful conscience; and partly from disappointment, partly from remorse, he longed to forget all in acts of devotion. With difficulty, he was prevailed upon to modify the rigour of his purpose, and instead of seeking for religious felicity through the privations of solitude, and the severities of penance, to do so through marriage with some pious woman, and the cultivation of domestic virtues. A suitable lady - very devout, but not very intelligent-was found for the poet in the daughter of the city-treasurer of Amiens, and the marriage took place in 1677. Seven children, two sons and five daughters, were the fruit of this union. Shortly after it, R. was appointed historiographer to the king. Henceforth, his course of life was pursued with the utmost regularity-one-third of the day being given to God, another to his family and friends, and the remainder to the king. His Esther (1699) and Athalie (1691) are the only dramas which he produced after his conversion, and they are profoundly imbued with religious In RACINE-RADCLIFFE. feeling. Athalie is reckoned by some his finest effort, and certainly the only one which can at all be placed in comparison with it is the Phedre. The poet died, after a brief illness, on the 21st of April 1699. R.'s dramatic genius was essentially French, or pseudo-classical, and therefore it is not easy for Englishmen trained to appreciate the power, magnificence, and variety of the Shakspearian tragedy, to sympathise with it or to criticise it impartially. In the eyes of his countrymen, he is the most perfect, if not the most sublime, of all their dramatists. Corneille may at times exhibit a grander and more rugged energy, but in beauty, grace, and a certain tender majesty of style, R. is held to be without a rival; and it must be remembered that style, and not portraiture of human character, is the thing in which French dramatists aim to shine. The declamations in which the heroes and heroines of R. indulge, are marvellously fine pieces of rhetoric; but, compared with the Elizabethan drama, they are deficient in deep insight into human nature and in genuine passion, while humour is altogether excluded. See Mémoires of R., edited by his son Louis. The editions of his works are innumerable, and some are of great splendour; that of Girodet (Paris, vols. 1801-1805) being reckoned one of the finest specimens of typography in the world. RACINE, a city of Wisconsin, U.S.. situated on Lake Michigan, at the mouth of Root River, which forms an excellent harbour, and on the line of the Chicago and Milwaukee Railway, 23 miles south of Milwaukee. It has 3 ship-yards, factories, and furnaces. Pop. (in 1860) 7822. full yearly value of lands It RACZ, or O BECZE, a town of Hungary, in the Servian Wojwodschaft, on the right bank of the Theiss, 26 miles north-east of Peterwardein. carries on an extensive trade in corn. Pop. 11,000. RADACK AND RALICK, two parallel chains of islands in the group called Marshall's Islands. See POLYNESIA. RADCLIFFE, DR JOHN, a celebrated physician, and the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, in the year 1650. He was instructed in Greek and Latin at the grammar-school of his native town; and at the early age of 15, was sent to University College, Oxford. In 1672, he took his degree of M.A., applied himself to the study of medicine, and having taken his degree of M.B. in 1675, began to practise as a licentiate at by the originality of some of his ideas, treating the cases in which he was engaged with a total disregard and even holding up these to censure and ridicule. of the usually received rules of the profession, At the very commencement of his practice he made some remarkable cures; and in less than two years, the degree of M.D., and remained still two years was on the high road to celebrity. In 1682, he took longer at Oxford in the practice of a lucrative profession. In 1684, Dr R. removed to London. He estab lished himself in Bow Street, Covent Garden, where, in less than a year, he became the most popular physician of his time. It is said that his conversato this result, quite as much as his professional skill. tional powers, ready wit, and pleasantry contributed RACK (Sax. wrocan, Ger. recken, to stretch), an instrument of torture, used for extracting confessions from criminals and suspected persons. Itxford. He immediately made himself conspicuous consisted of a large oblong frame of wood, with four beams a little raised from the ground, on which the sufferer was stretched and bound. Cords were attached to his extremities, and gradually strained by means of a lever and pulleys, till the operation, if persisted in, caused dislocation of the limbs. The rack was known in the 1st and 2d centuries in the south of Europe, and applied to the early Christians. It was in use in England in the 15th and 16th centuries. According to Coke, it was first introduced into the Tower by the Duke of Exeter, Constable of the Tower, in 1447, whence it came to be called the Duke of Exeter's daughter.' It is mentioned by Holinshed in 1467; but its use first became common in the time of Henry VIII. as an implement of torture for prisoners confined in the Tower. The infliction of the punish ment of the rack took place during the reign of the Tudor sovereigns by warrant of council, or under the sign-manual. In 1628, however, on the murder by Felton of the Duke of Buckingham, it being proposed in the Privy Council to put the assassin to the rack, in order that he might discover his accomplices, the judges resisted the proceeding, as contrary to the law of England. In various countries of Europe, the rack has been much used both by the civil authorities in cases of traitors and conspirators, and by members of the Inquisition to extort a recantation of heresy. It is no longer in use in any part of Europe. RACK, or RACK-WORK, is a straight bar, with cors or teeth placed along it, so as to correspond with similar cors or teeth placed on a wheel, thus: If the bar is not movable, the wheel is attached to a traversing frame, and as it revolves, is moved along by the resistance of its teeth to those on the bar. It was in this way that the formation of a her physician. In 1686, the Princess Anne of Denmark made him After the Revolution, he was sent for by King William, who frequently had recourse to his advice, and the example of the sovereign was followed by most of the nobility and influential persons about the court. Dr R., however, was himself no courtier; he had no occasion to become one. Dr Mead, who knew him well, pronounced of him, that he was 'deservedly at the head of his profession, on account of his great medical penetration and experience.' Blunt and independent in nevertheless recognised under his rough exterior that his manners-some indeed say even brutal, people quick perception and keen observation of symptoms which are so important in a master of the healing art; and thus his advice was asked by persons of all ranks, in return for which he received fees of an unprecedented amount. In 1694, he was called upon to attend Queen Mary, when attacked by the small-pox. It proved to be her last illness, as Dr R. predicted, even before seeing her-merely upon reading the prescriptions |