determination, because you are not in a physical state to undergo it, because the mere surgical operation is the dernier, not the primary resource of our art, never to be adopted but from necessity and in doubtful or ambiguous cases with awful reluctance; but when decidedly indispensible with calm courage and well grounded hope: in your instance no such necessity exists, therefore we protest against any such a dreadful perversion of the views and resources of so incomparably valuable a branch of science as that of medicine, Chester, July 13, 1810. I am, &c. GEORGE NESSE HILL. To the Editors of the Medical and Physical Journal. GENTLEMEN, ANOTHER very accurate and ready test for arsenic has just occurred to me, which, being easily performed, requiring neither expence, apparatus, nor a nice acquaintance with operative chemistry, may deserve the attention of your readers and the profession at large. It is, however, more suitable to detect the dry oxide itself than when in solution, and, therefore, as this poison is, I believe, always administered in powder when some fatal purpose is to be effected, the method I shall now suggest will consequently be found more practicable though not more certain than the former; but, at all events, one will serve to corroborate the other, for, when we can avail ourselves of an extended evidence in criminal conviction, nothing should be lost, nothing neglected. From the difficult solubility of the white oxide, especially in cold fluids, we may in most cases obtain, from one source or other, a sufficient quantity for examination, for it is astonishing how very delicate these tests are, particu larly the first, which will render the effect obvious when water is even slightly impregnated with the poison, so that a mere fractional part of a grain, could not escape notice. As an instance of this second process, let us take about a grain of the white powder, or suspected arsenic, mix this very intimately with two or three grains of nitrate of potash ; potash; introduce this mixture, by the point of a penknife, into a small phial, in such a way, by inclining the phial horizontally, that the powder may remain undisturbed on the side or thinner part of the glass: now, apply the flame of a small lamp just under the powder, and presently, if there be arsenic, the nitrate will be decomposed, nitrous gas and nitrous acid evolved, and arseniate of potash will remain as the result. I would prefer spirit of wine to oil, for the lamp, as it produces no smoke that can tinge the phial and intercept our seeing distinctly the yellow fumes peculiar to nitrous gas when in contact with the atmosphere. The acid va pour is easily recognised, either by its smell, by presenting the point of a feather imbued with solution of ammonia, or even by placing a morsel of moistened litmus paper within the phial and over the materials during this short operation. As a farther support of this test, proceed thus with the new product, the arseniate of potash-fill the phial with warm rain water, that some of the salt may be dissolved; then, to the mere surface of the solution, present a piece of dry nitrate of silver (lunar caustic), and the peculiar dark brick-coloured precipitate, which I described in my last communication, will fully evince the fact, that arsenic had been administered. Since either of the schemes I have proposed must soon become familiar and practicable, I trust your Correspondent, Mr. Jones, will, at his leisure, again submit some of the powder to trial; and I have no doubt he will readily favour us with a faithful report, whatever the result may be. I cannot quit my pen without acknowledging his kindness in offering the remainder of the powder for analysis; this I would willingly undertake, did I not implicit ly depend upon his own accuracy, when assisted by the new means I have announced, as well as on his candour and liberality in confessing that the poison actually does exist in the same powder, should he succeed in the research. Long Acre, July 13, 1810. I am, &c. JOS. HUME. CORRIGENDA. In the second paragraph of my last letter, after precau tions, add, were taken. Το To the Editors of the Medical and Phyfical Journal. GENTLEMEN, IN January, 1808, Mrs. B having some obstruc tion in the urethra, attempted to relieve it by the introduc tion of an iron bodkin, which, slipping from her fingers, escaped into the bladder. Soon after this accident, symptoms of inflammation of the bladder came on; a constant desire to make water, attended with almost insupportable pain, arising from the contraction of its muscular coats on the sharp ends of the bodkin. Several weeks had elapsed from the introduction of the instrument to the bladder, before Mrs. B. became my patient, whose sufferings had much reduced her health, and had induced high symptomatic fever. I commenced my process of cure by injecting into the bladder a pint of thin mucilage, with an ounce of olive oil, which was ordered to be retained as long as possible; and a bougie as large as the urethra would admit, was also retained till the discharge of the fluid from the bladder rendered it necessary to be withdrawn; when that took place, another injection was thrown in, and the urethra distended by a bougie as before. This plan was continued for a fortnight, care being taken to throw in an injection as soon as the last had come off, and to increase the size of the bougie every day, in order to produce mechanical distention of the urethra; at the end of this time, the irritation had ceased, and the urethra was sufficiently distended to allow the introduction of a pair of forceps, with which I extracted the bodkin. It was of iron, about two inches long; and it is worthy of remark, that it was thickly encrusted with stony matter, except about a quarter of an inch on each point, which was free from the calculous coyering; this must have arisen from the bladder having contracted so firmly on the points as to have prevented the deposit from taking place. The bodkin has been seen by Dr. Parry and several other professional gentlemen who were unacquainted with the case. I am, &c. JOHN BUSH. Tiverton, Bath, July 16, 1810, To To the Editors of the Medical and Physical Journal. GENTLEMEN, IN the last Number of your Journal, I see that you have inserted a Report from the National Vaccine Establishment, which diflers so widely from my observations on that subject, that I have been induced to hand you the following statement, of which you are at liberty to make what use you please. In the Finsbury Dispensary, St. John's Street, Clerkenwell, it has been my practice for the last four years, to vaccinate the patients, or to inoculate them for the smallpox, agreeably to their own choice; nor have any means been taken to bias their judgment; within the last twelve months, only four patients have been vaccinated, and upwards of one thousand have been inoculated for the smallpox. Greville Street, Hatton Garden, I am, &c. JOHN TAUNTON. CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RECENT PUBLICATIONS IN THE DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF PHYSIC, SURGERY, AND MEDICAL PHILOSOPHY. An Essay on the Nature of Scrofula, with Evidence of its Origin from Disorder of the Digestive Organs; illustrated by a Number of Cases, successfully treated, and interspersed with Observations on the general Treatment of Children. By RICHARD CARMICHAEL, Surgeon. 8vo. pp. 111. IT has become of late so fashionable to attribute various diseases of the human body to a derangement of the functions of the chylo. poetic viscera, that it excited no surprise in us to find an attempt made to refer scrofula to the same source; indeed, the functions of the digestive organs so readily become disordered, and their des rangement so frequently accompanies most constitutional diseases, that L that with our present imperfect knowledge of cause and effect, nothing is more easy than boldly to charge them as parents of the many untoward symptoms that denote any particular disease, while they only participate in common with other parts of the frame in numerous evils arising from some general cause. The greater the obscurity in which the nature and causes of any particular disease are involved, the more boldly may the assertion be made of that disease; scrofula therefore opens a wide field for speculation, and our author has availed himself of it with no little dexterity it becomes us, however, to examine upon what grounds his hypothesis rests, and to bestow an attention to Mr. Carmichael's treatise, proportioned to the reputation he has already acquired, for we ought not to suffer doctrines to be promulgated by authority merely, which are not supported by facts and established by reasoning fairly deduced therefrom. : One of the most obvious requisites to a fair discussion of any subject is a clear comprehension of the terms employed; it becomes then an important question, what is the precise disease meant to be included under the name of scrofula? Here we find ourselves much at a loss for want of a definition by the author, for he shifts his ground so frequently, and takes so much for granted, which should have been proved, that we know not how to meet him. Assuming those symptoms to be scrofula which have never yet been allowed to be so, and which we should deny to be any part of that disease, and finfering, that because these disputed symptoms appear together with certain other symptoms, they are caused by these latter, and that, as they all disappear under a certain treatment, scrofulo is cured by that treatment, is a mode of reasoning neither fair nor correct, yet, upon this, and no better foundation, rest some of our author's peculiar doctrines in the treatise before us. Among those who have chiefly contributed to hand down and propagate errors respecting this disease, the author would place in the foremost point of view Dr. Cullen. 66 "In support of this statement, it is only necessary to recollect his opinion that scrofula arises from a peculiar acrimony of the fluids," that the disease rarely appears but in children whose parents had at some period of their lives been affected with it; and his belief, that when it fails to appear in the children of scrofulous parents, it may discover itself afterwards in their offspring in the succeeding generations; as also his reliance upon mineral waters, and his supposition that they produce their beneficial effects by "washing out, the lymphatic system." We transcribe this passage to notice a mistake Mr. C. has fallen into, as to Dr. Cullen's reliance upon mineral waters, for the cure of scrofula, and we shall let the Doctor speak for himself on this subject. "For the cure of scrofula, we have not yet learned any practice that is certainly or even generally successful. The remedy which seems to be the most successful, and which our practitioners especially trust to, and employ, is the use of mineral waters; and |