Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

554
S C R —S C R
comedies, tragedies, opera-libretti. To one theatre alone
he is said to have furnished more than a hundred pieces.
But his life was entirely uneventful, and his election to
the Academy in 1834 is almost the only incident which
deserves chronicling. It ought to be said to Scribe’s
credit that, although he was the least original of writers
and was more an editor of dramas than a dramatist,
although he was for many years an object of the bitterest
envy to impecunious geniuses owing to his pecuniary
success, and although he never has pleased and never can
please any critic who applies purely literary tests, his
character stands very high for literary probity and indeed
generosity. He is said in some cases to have sent sums of
money for “copyright in ideas” to men who not only had
not actually collaborated with him but who were unaware
that he had taken suggestions from their work. His
industry was untiring and his knowledge both of the
mechanism of the stage and of the tastes of the audience
was wonderful. Nevertheless he hardly deserves a place
in literature, his style being vulgar, his characters common¬
place, even his plots lacking power and grasp. He wrote
a few novels, but none of any mark. The best known of
Scribe’s pieces after his first successful one are Une Ghame
(1842), Le Verre cVEau (1842), Adrienne Lecouvreur (1849),
and the libretti of many of the most famous operas of
the middle of the century, especially those of Auber and
Meyerbeer.
SCRIBES. See Israel, vol. xiii. p. 419.
SCRIVENER’S PALSY. See Cramp, vol. vi. p. 543.
SCROFULA or Struma (formerly known in England
as “king’s evil,” from the belief that the touch of the
sovereign could effect a cure1), a constitutional morbid
condition generally exhibiting itself in early life, and
characterized mainly by defective nutrition of the tissues
and by a tendency to inflammatory affections of a low type
with degenerative changes in their products. The subject
has been considered in most of its features under Patho¬
logy (vol. xviii. p. 405), and only a further brief reference
is here necessary. Scrofula may be either inherited or
acquired. Heredity is of all causes the most potent, and
naturally operates with greater certainty where both parents
possess the taint. As in all hereditary diseases, however,
the liability may be scarcely perceptible for one or two
generations, but may then reappear. Other causes refer¬
able to parentage may readily produce this constitutional
state in children, as weakness or ill health in one or both
parents, and, as seems probable, marriages of consanguinity.
But, apart altogether from hereditary or congenital influ¬
ences, the scrofulous habit is frequently developed, especi¬
ally in the young, by such unfavourable hygienic conditions
as result from overcrowded, cold, and dark dwellings, in¬
sufficient and improper food, exposure, and debauchery.
Even among the old in such circumstances the evidences
of scrofula may be seen to present themselves where before
they had been absent.
There are two well-marked types of the scrofulous con¬
stitution to be often observed, especially among the young.
In the one. the chief features are a fair complexion with
delicate thin skin, blue eyes, dilated pupils, long eyelashes,
soft muscles, and activity of the circulatory and nervous
system j while in the other the skin is dark, the features
heavy, the figure stunted, and all the functions, physical
and mental, inactive. In many instances, however, it will
be found that both types are more or less mixed together
in one individual. The manifestations of scrofula generally
appear in early life, and are often exhibited in young
] This superstition can be traced back to the time of Edward the
Oonlessor in England, and to a much earlier period in France. Samuel
Johnson was touched by Queen Anne in 1712, and the same pre¬
rogative of royalty was exercised by Prince Charles Edward in 1745.
children during the first dentition by inflammatory skin
eruptions of obstinate character on the face and other
parts; later on in youth there appear glandular swellings
either externally, as on the neck, or affecting the gland
structures of the chest or abdomen, while at the same
time mucous, membranes and bones may become implicated.
The distinctive features of the scrofulous inflammatory
affections are their tendency to chronicity and to suppura¬
tive, and degenerative changes, the affected parts either
healing slowly with resulting disfigurement, as on the neck,
or continuing to retain traces of the products of the
diseased action, which may set up serious disturbance of
the health at some future time. Further, the scrofulous
constitution always influences the duration and progress of
any disease from which the individual may suffer, as well
as its results. Thus in pneumonia, to which the scrofulous
would seem to be specially liable, the products of the
inflammation are not readily absorbed as in previously
healthy persons, but, remaining in the lung-tissues, are
apt to. undergo caseous degenerative changes, which may
issue in phthisis (see Pneumonia and Phthisis). The
connexion of scrofula with tubercle is pointed out in the
article Pathology (loc. cit.).
Scrofula may under favourable circumstances tend to
improvement as age advances, and it occasionally happens
that persons.who in early life showed unmistakable evi¬
dences of this condition appear ultimately to outgrow it,
and become in all respects healthy and vigorous. The
treatment is essentially similar to that described for
rickets or phthisis, and is partly preventive and partly
curative. It consists mainly in hygienic measures to pro¬
mote the health and nutrition of the young, and of suitable
diet, tonics, &c., where evidences of the disease have
declared themselves. See Rickets, Phthisis.
SCRUB-BIRD, the name (for want of a better, since it
is not very distinctive) conferred upon the members of an
Australian genus, one of the most curious ornithological
types of the many furnished by that country. The first
examples were procured by the late Mr Gilbert between
Perth and Augusta in West Australia, and were described
by Gould in the Zoological Society’s Proceedings for 1844
(pp. 1, 2) as forming a new genus and species under the
name of Atrichia clamosa, the great peculiarity observed
by that naturalist being the absence of any bristles around
the gape, in which respect alone it seemed to differ from
the already known genus Sphenura. In March 1866 Mr
Wilcox obtained on the banks of the Richmond river on
the eastern side of Australia some other examples, which
proved the existence of a second species, described by Mr
Ramsay in the Proceedings for that year (pp. 438-440) as
A. rufescens j but still no suspicion of the great divergence
of the genus from the ordinary Passerine type was raised,
and it was generally regarded as belonging to the Maluridse
or Australian Warblers. However, the peculiar formation
of the. sternum in Atrichia attracted the present writer’s
attention almost as soon as that of A. clamosa was exhibited
in the museum of the College of Surgeons, and at his re¬
quest Mr Ramsay a little later sent to the museum of the
university of Cambridge examples in spirit of A. rufescens,
which shewed a common structure. One of the sternal
peculiarities was noticed by Mr Sclater (Ibis, 1874, p. 191,
note); and in the present work (Birds, iii. p. 741) the
Scrub- birds were declared to form a distinct Family,
Atrichiidee, standing, so far as was known, alone with the
Lyre-birds (see vol. xv. p. 115) as “abnormal Passeres.”
Much the same view was also taken the next year by Garrod,
who, in the Proceedings for 1876 (pp. 516, 518, pi. lii.
figs. 4-7), further dwelt on the taxonomic importance of
the equally remarkable characters of the syringeal muscles
exhibited alike by Menura and Atrichia, which he accord-