the neighbourhood, moreover, were large potatoe grounds, where I used to enjoy the air, and study the disease in the evening; and it has curiously happened, that I have made my observations on the potatoe plant in the same garden in which I conducted the experiments for my former work on ElectroMetallurgy," "-P. 11.

We must confess that this statement (which we fear some of our country readers will think savours somewhat of Cockney-land) does not at all convince us that this subject of investigation falls legitimately within the sphere of the surgeon or physician. When we consider that the man engaged in active prac tice is even incompetent to minute investigation of the causes and nature of the diseases of the human frame, and is chiefly occupied in following out indications furnished him by the laborious enquirers who devote themselves to such pursuits, we can easily see his utter unfitness for pursuing a train of enquiry which de mands complete information in several branches of knowledge which he could only have acquired at the expense of others of a more practically important character. However this may be, we cannot congratulate Mr. Smee upon having discovered any efficient cause of this terrible malady. He believes this to be induced by a species of Aphis, "which punctures the leaf, sucks the sap, and destroys the relation between the leaf and the root, thus causing the leaf or some other part of the plant to become gangrenous, or in other words to die." He states that, in the potatoe grounds alluded to above, he observed multitudes of this aphis, which, from its presumed ravaging powers, he terms Vastator. The conferring a new name for hypothetical reasons upon a species, which he states to be identical with the Aphis Rape of Curtis is quite unjustifiable, and must be protested against, for if such a practice were generally followed, endless confusion in the study of Natural History would result. When we consider the multitudes of blasted potatoe plants which have been examined in all stages of the disease by competent observers without their presenting any traces of this insect, as also its comparatively innocuous effects npon the various other vegetables it infests, it at once becomes evident that Mr. Smee has fallen into the too common error of mistaking a coincidence, or perhaps even an effect, for a cause, and consequently has thrown no useful light upon this obscure subject. His work, however, con tains a good account of the Potatoe as an article of diet, which has been compiled with great care and will be read with interest and advantage.

NOTES ON THE EPIDEMIC CHOLERA. By R. Hartley Kennedy, M.D. &c., late Physician-General and President of the Medical Board, Bombay. Second Edition, revised. Small 8vo. pp. 279. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1846.

THIS is a mere reprint of a work that was published upwards of twenty years ago. Dr. Kennedy tells us that, being retired from professional life, he can have no personal object to gain by re-appearing before the public, save the wish to be of service to the profession generally, by making them acquainted with his views on the pestilence of India which seems to threaten a re-invasion of Europe. This can be the only plea (if indeed it is one) for the utter omission from its pages of all new matter. There is not so much as a passing allusion to what has been said or written on the subject, since the date mentioned; so entirely enamoured. we suppose is Dr. Kennedy with his own views and opinions.

Dr. K's theory of Cholera may be gathered from the following passage:—

"I consider a nervous derangement, similar to concussion of the brain, to be the disease, how induced I know not, following the above inexplicable shock sustained by the constitution; and the collapse and spasms to be symptomatic of the disorder of the brain; and finally, I consider the purging and vomiting

1847]

Hassall's Microscopic Anatomy.

253

to be no part of the disease, but the struggle and effort of Nature to relieve the constitution, and cast off the noxious principle which is destroying it. For the treatment of such a disease, the indication is distinctly apparent to relieve the brain by bleeding, and to induce the sanitary process of vomiting and purging where they do not exist, or to moderate them when violent."--P. 57.

He considers Cholera to be quite as infectious as Small-pox or the Plague! "However aware I am of the delicacy of the ground on which I have advanced, and however strongly sensible that nothing would give me more sincere happiness than to be able to change the opinion I entertain, I am under the necessity of ending this part of the discussion with observing, that to the best of my judgment, I know no character belonging to any contagious disease which Cholera does not appear to me to possess; and that, if it be not contagious, I know no other disease which I should be inclined to consider so."—P. 75.

Dr. K. regarding the vomiting and purging (more especially the former) to be, primarily, only sanitary efforts of Nature to relieve herself from the prostrating enemy that she has to contend with, wisely cautions his readers not to seek to check these evacuations at once by powerful astringents and sedatives. He is favourable to the use of Emetics, and also of mild Purgatives in combination with opium and other means; bleeding having been premised in the beginning of the attack. His favourite formula was the following:

"I mingled of castor-oil and honey each six ounces; tincture of opium, twelve drachms; and camphor mixture, ten ounces and a half. For the pills, I powdered three ounces of camphor by friction, adding the necessary small quantity of spirit of nitric ether in lieu of common alcohol; then dissolving two ounces of gum opium in tenacious mucilage of acacia gum, I had the whole effectually beaten into a mass, and divided into 480 pills, each of course containing three grains of camphor and two of opium.

The directions were, that the patients, as soon as they were attacked, should be made to drink plentifully of hot water, which being vomited up, and the irritation of stomach for a moment relieved, two ounces of the mixture were to be administered; if sickness returned, a copious draught, or at least a pint, of warm infusion of the toolsee (Ocimum gratissimum), an herb always at hand as the sacred plant of the Hindoos, should be given. This infusion was generally at first vomited up; but the second draught, if it did not allay the sickness, always came up with less of pain and spasms. One of the pills was then to be given, and, if vomited up, to be repeated after each vomit. When the stomach was soothed by the pills, and, one ghurry after the last vomit, a second dose of two ounces of the mixture was to be administered, and the patient was permitted to quench his thirst, or allay the burning heat at the stomach, by drinking equal paris of milk and thick rice-water cold; after which, in ordinary cases, the patient would sleep. If these did not, however, give relief, but the vomiting continued, they were directed to apply scalding water to the scrobiculous cordi, so as to raise an instantaneous blister."-P. 232.

THE MICROSCOPIC ANATOMY OF THE HUMAN BODY IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. Illustrated with numerous Drawings in Colour. By Arthur Hill Hassall, Author of a "History of British Freshwater Algæ," &c. Part V. London: Samuel Highley, 1846.

THE author has cancelled some of the earlier plates, in which, owing to some mismanagement in striking them off, bad impressions were obtained; more attention has also been paid to the colouring. These are great improvements, and have added to the utility of the work. The Part just published (December) contains a very accurate account of the chemical and microscopic qualities of the

milk, embracing the observations of Simon, Henlé, Donné, and other authorities; and illustrated by original drawings of human milk and colostrum. The seminal fluid is also described, and two figures are given showing the seminal granules and spermatozoa. When completed, the work will be of much service to those who are commencing the study of microscopy, affording a concise descriptive account and illustrations of the several fluids and tissues of the animal body.

THE HANDBOOK OF HUMAN ANATOMY, GENERAL, SPECIAL, AND TOPOGRAPHICAL. Translated from the original German of Dr. Alfred Von Behr, and adapted to the Use of the English Student by John Birkett, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and Demonstrator of Anatomy at Guy's Hospital. London: Longman & Co. 1846. THE handbook of Dr. Von Behr belongs to a class of works for which we must confess we have little affection; in which the ingenuity of the author is taxed rather to contrive how he may best meet the desires of idle students, than in advancing the science of anatomy. The author disavows such an object, and we have no reason to doubt his sincerity; but still the general tendency of these meagre manuals is to encourage a superficial taste in a case where full and complete knowledge is pre-eminently demanded. We regret that we should have occasion to make these remarks, because the volume before us contains much valuable matter; and particularly because the plan of the work, embracing general, special, and topographical anatomy, is excellent. Such a work, judiciously executed, would be a boon to the medical student; and this hand-book, if it were somewhat amplified, would have been just the thing that is required at the present moment.

The details relating to structural anatomy, as might be expected in a work emanating from Germany, form the most valuable part of the treatise; and the most defective section is that on the topographical anatomy. Mr. Birkett has, indeed, by his notes, greatly improved this part of the text; and we only regret that he did not furnish a larger portion of information, as there is no branch of anatomical science that has been more successfully cultivated in this country, or is more attractive to the student.

Although there are the drawbacks we have noticed, the hand-book of Dr. Von Behr will assist English students, especially in that department, minute anatomy, which at present is often neglected; and with this conviction we recommend this manual to those for whose use it is more particularly designed.

PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, WITH THEIR CHIEF APPLICATIONS TO PATHOLOGY, HYGIENE, AND FORENSIC MEDICINE. By William B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. &c. Third Edition. London: John Churchill,

1846.

IT is satisfactory to find, by the appearance of a third edition of this standard work, that the science of physiology, and its inseparable adjunct, minute anatomy, are now studied in our schools on philosophic principles. Whatever may have been the doubts in some quarters concerning the utility of microscopy, they must have yielded ere this before the accurate and great results that have been secured by the labours of English and Continental observers. Structural anatomy and organic chemistry, it is apparent, are the principal means by which further progress is to be attained; and this indeed might be inferred by the

1847]

Trans. of the Med. & Phys. Society of Bombay.

255

history of all other similar branches of enquiry. We have reached a point in human anatomy, at which all that can be studied by the unaided eye, has been well nigh exhausted; so that, unless other, and more subtle, methods of research be devised, we must be content to halt in the path of discovery. If any other proof were required of the position here assumed, it would be amply furnished by the volume before us. Dr. Carpenter, himself a most successful microscopist, has collected together a vast amount of valuable facts, which, combined with chemical analysis and comparative anatomy, constitute the basis on which these philosophic principles" repose.

As we have on a former occasion (see Med.-Chir. Review, No. II. April 1843) noticed at some length Dr. Carpenter's work, we shall merely now state that by a revision, which bears in every chapter the impress of great research and great judgment; and by the addition of new matter to the amount of at least a hundred pages, the author, without augmenting either the bulk or the price of the volume, has enriched it by the most important of the numerous contributions which have been made to Physiological Science within the last two years. It is not the student alone who requires the aid of a work at once so recondite and lucid as that before us; the practitioner, in those obscure cases, implicating important organs, and so often recurring, will in these pages find the means for forming a correct diagnosis, and consequently, for arriving at a rational mode of treatment. With these convictions, we urgently advise our readers to add to their libraries this last and extended edition of Dr. Carpenter's Principles of Physiology.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE MEDICAL AND PHYSICAL SOCIETY OF BOMBAY. For the Year 1844.

THIS Number contains papers by Messrs. Murray, Hunter, and Impey, and by Drs. Arnott and Morehead, the latter gentleman (as on some former occasions) contributing more than one-half of the whole matter. His situation in the European General Hospital at Bombay, affords him an extensive field for observation, and no zeal is wanting on his part to turn his opportunities to good account. His zeal in prosecuting the morbid anatomy of intertropical diseases is most meritorious.

From his paper on the "Pathology and Treatment of Dysentery," we select the following passage bearing upon the important point as to the connection of this disease with Hepatic Suppuration-a subject that has been repeatedly brought under the attention of our readers in recent numbers of this Journal.

"Complication with abscess in the liver constitutes a great proportion of the fatal cases of chronic dysentery, and in such the dysenteric symptoms are not unfrequently in no respect more urgent than in cases which without this compli cation do well. They may indeed even improve for a time but they do not so steadily, and the increasing emaciation and languor are greater than the degree of the dysenteric symptoms can satisfactorily explain. If, under these circumstances, we detect an evening febrile accession, there are very good grounds for suspecting that abscess has either formed or is forining in the liver, very shortly to become evident by the usual symptoms of uneasiness of the right side, followed by distinct fulness and tenseness at the margin of the right false ribs. A reference to the series of cases published by me in this No. of the Society's Transactions and elsewhere, will show very distinctly that ulceration of the large intestines and abscess in the liver are very often found co-existing. In one set of cases, those ranged by me under the head of dysentery, the affection of the bowels was the primary and prominent disease, that of the liver coming on more or less obscurely as a secondary event. In the other set, the symptoms of

hepatitis were the primary and most prominent, those of ulceration of the bowels succeeding and being often not very clearly indicated. But to infer from these facts that the diseases bear to each other the relation of cause and effect, though a plausible enough inference from the exclusive consideration of their morbid anatomy, is untenable as a general proposition.-for it would be to generalise from the fatal cases only, and to leave the successful ones out of account; or to express it otherwise, it would, in the data before us and on the assumption, not a correct one, that in every fatal case of dysentery there was abscess in the liver, be to deduce a general law from 18 per cent. though opposed by 82 per cent. Nor is the force of the statement materially lessened by the admission, which may be made, that it is probable enough that, in some of the successful cases of dysentery, symptoms of hepatic inflammation may have occurred and been subdued, and, in the successful cases of hepatitis, dysentery may have threatened and been averted-for I can state very confidently that this, though occasional, has been by no means a frequent occurrence.”

The following remarks on the Calomel and Opium treatment of Dysentery deserve notice:

"The treatment of dysentery by large doses of calomel repeated and continued for some time, on the principle that such doses have a sedative action on the inflamed mucous coat, does not I think at present find much acceptance in practice in this part of India; and I believe that it may fairly be assumed that a system of treatment strongly recommended and at one time generally followed, as this has been, would not have fallen into disuse, unless the expectations formed of its efficacy and applicability had led to disappointment. On this principle I would explain the comparative infrequency of the treatment of dysentery by large doses of calomel repeated and continued for some time. My own belief is that as a general system of treatment it is inappropriate and very often very injurious."

How comes it that our friends in the East are so tardy in their movements? We did not receive this number, published it is stated in the title-page in 1844, until three months ago.

A TABULAR VIEW OF THE PHYSICAL SIGNS AND DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASES OF THE LUNGS, WITH A SYNOPSIS OF THE SIGNS WHICH OCCUR IN EACH DISEASE. By James Turnbull, M.D. Physician to the Liverpool Northern Hospital.

THIS tabular view affording a coup d'œil of the various auscultatory, &c., phenomena discoverable in health and disease will prove useful to many, practitioners as well as students, in their investigation of thoracic maladies. We should have liked it better if the rational or subjective symptoms of each had been given at the same time, and if a place had been found for diseases of the Heart, as well as for those of the Lungs.

"In the latest works on Materia Medica, the sedative action of large doses of calomel is assumed on the authority of Tropical practitioners. This is not the place to discuss the general question, nor am I prepared to do so, but I may say that I am not convinced that large doses of calomel possess such action independent of the opium with which they may be combined, and I doubt whether the question ought to be considered as one settled."