ficient force to induce a republication of their Pharmacopoeia, in a form corresponding with, and adapted to, the present improved state of scientific knowledge. Two translations of this work have appeared, one by Dr. Powel, and the other by Dr. Campbell. A practical Materia Medica, a Pharmacopaia Chirurgica, and Dr. Thornton's elaborate Herbal, containing the properties of plants used in medicine, diet, and the arts, are to be added to this enumeration. The authority from whence the London Pharmacopoeia proceeds, gives to it an elevation of sta tion, which equally displays its excellencies and its defects. No human production is faultless. Whether the London Pharmacopoeia has a larger proportion of this penalty of man than should in reason belong to it, party will determine; but with a spirit that will hardly admit a cool and candid judgment. Errors certainly it has; but these seem more the fault of inattention than of intellect. Of the two translations, it may be said, that they have mistakes which might and ought to have been avoided. Upon very different ground are they, however, censurable. Dr. Powell owes to his station and to the College, more attention and care than his translation exhibits. Dr. Campbell, when one of his objects, at least, in publishing, was to reprehend Dr. Powell, should himself have been free from errors equally glaring, and more dangerous.

A mode of relieving, and sometimes of curing diseases, of very antient application, and when subjected to proper management, of extraordinary efficacy, has, this year, had the chance of being elucidated by the taste and liberality of a gentleman who possesses all the means for the encouragement of science that ample wealth affords.

The honourable Basil Cochrane, from observations on the vapour bath in India, and other places, and perhaps excited by the publication of Dr. Kentish's Essay on warm and vapour baths, has erected, at his house in Portmansquare, an ingenious and extensive apparatus, which, by various mechanical contrivances, controuls the vapour of boiling water in a manner that renders it of easy applica tion. The construction of this apparatus and its application, Mr. Cochrane communicates to the public in a 4to. Volume, with eleven explanatory plates, under the title of "An improvement in the mode of administering the Vapour Bath, and in the apparatus connected with it; with the plans of fixed and portable baths for hospitals and private houses, and some practical suggestions on the efficacy of vapour, in application to various diseases of the human frame, and as may be beneficial to the branch of veterina

ry

ry medicine." It has been the fate of the vapour bath to have often been the resort of empiricism; and the positive assertions of projectors and partizans, that it has suddenly cured the most obstinate diseases, have had the misfortune to give it an air of charlatanism, which it has not always deserved. Under the impression of this fact, our anxiety to guard against the designs of quackery, whether it attacks from batteries disguised by the humanity of the honourable and the affluent, lurks in the ambuscade of diurnal paragraphs, or impudently issues to the destruction of mankind in the armour of a patent, may occasion ob servations that appear to implicate Mr. Cochraue. To obviate this impression, it becomes a duty to say, that a fairness and honourable candour are manifest in the views of this gentleman, accompanied with a desire to lessen the sufferings of human nature. Though we ad mit, in the fullest manner, the liberality of Mr. Cochrane's intentions, we see no reason to change an opinion matured by many years of reflection, that the powerful and rich will afford more effectual means for the improvement of medical science, by an encouragement of persons prac tically employed in its cultivation, than by attempting themselves to cure diseases; or by fancying that the therapeutica can be suddenly improved by means adopted on slight evidence, founded on single facts often ill understood, and by hastily-drawn inferences. The most sanguine can hardly expect that the experience and observa】 tion of Mr. Cochrane can add much to medical science; but if he has enabled those who are in the constant habit of watching the progress of disease, to observe the effects produced by the application of heat in the form of vapour, he has benefited society more essentially than he can by any detail of morbid affections managed by himself. When we hazard these observations, we do not mean to detract from the liberal ingenuity of Mr. Cochrane; but we know there is a habit, which from long exercise becomes almost intuition, that enables the medical practitioner to observe, and distinguish with acuteness and precission, the smallest shades of deviation from the healthy state; and to discover with quick penetration the nature and quality of symptoms, extremely obscure, doubtful, or absolutely unintelligible to the gentleman doctor. It is this habit too which enables the physician to discriminate the causes of cures, and which are often very different from those which popular opinion assigns. Under the di rection of the gentleman whose name appears to certify

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the practicable ingenuity of the construction of these baths, the curative powers of the vapour of heated water may be fully ascertained; and we anxiously hope that this may not prove another ephemeral project, but that the enthusiasm of Mr. Cochrane, under the guidance of men of science, and learned in the operations of nature, not only by study but by habit, may prove what the vapour bath will, and what it will not do.

The sciences considered as auxiliary to the medical art have not been neglected; and if their career has not been so brilliant in this as in some former years, still that career is not without interest. Botany, Chemistry, and Natural History, have each had some additions in 1809. Mr. Joseph Knight has published some ingenious and practical observations on the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteca, with their generic and specific characters, and places where they grow wild. A second edition of Dr. Smith's valuable introduction to physiological and systematic botany, has appeared; and a new edition of a very pleasing little book, with the title of Elements of the Science of Botany, as established by Linnæus, with examples to illustrate the classes and orders of his system.

Chemistry, which, by the genius of Mr. Davy, has been raised in England to a very exalted station, still pursues its investigations with alacrity. The researches of this chemist, directed to the decomposition of bodies hitherto thought elementary, are employed with an ardour that probably will effect discoveries of great importance.

The French chemists, since Mr. Davy's brilliant discovery of the base of alkalies, have been deeply engaged on that subject; and have been able to procure potassium by chemical affinities, without the aid of galvanism. The inquiry into the constituent principles of bodies by chemical analysis, has been followed with much assiduity; and when employed with a view of developing their properties and powers, has been of much service to society. On this subject, the chemists of France have done much; neither have those of England been idle. Dr. Bostock, as noticed in the preceding part of this Report, has been engaged in examining the constituent parts of the blood; and has also instituted an experimental inquiry to ascertain the real nature of vegetable astringents. M. M. Vauquelin and Le Sage have analysed the juice of the atropa belladonna, and made experiments with it on animals. M. Nyston has injected various gases into the blood vessels of animals, and

reports

reports the effects produced on those animals, and the changes occasioned in the blood itself.

A subject of great interest to the farmer, and not very remotely connected with the practice of physic, has employed the talents of M. M. Fourcroy and Vauquelin. They have analysed the smut of wheat, which is stated to consist of phosphoric acid, phosphoric salts, a carbonaceous matter, and a foetid oil; and is gluten in a state of decomposition. There is no circumstance that has excited in the agriculturist a greater degree of anxious curiosity than this peculiarity in wheat. Many hypotheses have been formed as to its nature and origin: sometimes it has been asserted to originate with animalculæ, or to be animalculæ itself: at another, it is a parasitical fungus, a non-descript agaric: and now it is a gluten under particular circumstances. Perhaps even yet we do not understand its real nature and properties. The farmer believes it to have a contagious principle, and is eager to free the mass of sound grain from it by washing with water, with solutions of sea salt, arsenic, or sometimes an alkaline ley. Secret, and if we mistake not, patent nostrums have been employed in England to remove or eradicate this animal or vegetable contamination from among sound wheat. Various opinions have been entertained of the efficacy of the means employed; but it seems, as the object is to remove the particles of this substance merely, that a strong solution of potass promises to succeed best. This singular substance, whatever it is, has a peculiar fœtor, well known to farmers and millers; and which it imparts, with its dark colour, to meal.

Persons compelled to eat bread made of meal thus contaminated, may, it is not improbable, have their health much injured. And in this point, it becomes to the physician an important object of inquiry. That those singular cases of gangrene which have been attributed to feeding upon meal made from injured corn, or from corn having a large admixture of lolium temulentum, were not occasioned by smut, may be, at least, doubted.

The remark that was applied to Richerand's work on Surgery, is also suitable to the ingenious Memoir of the celebrated traveller Humboldt, "sur l'Anguille electrique du Nouveau Continent," which was published at Paris, about the same time with the Nosographie Chirurgicale. If the conuection of natural history with the medical art is more remote than botany and chemistry, still in many instances it strongly illustrates the physiological branch of that art; and, asin the present, may possibly tend to explain some

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very obscure functions of the animal machine. In this Memoir of M. Humboldt, will be found extremely curious facts respecting the gymnoties electricus. The method of taking the fish, the history of its powers, with observations on those circumstances, afford not only an entertaining relation, but materials for prosecuting the history of Animal Electricity. Perhaps the circumstance of its instantly losing its electric power on the separation or destruction of the brain, may lead to further knowledge of the modus operandi of that organ and the nerves.

The importance of Medical Jurisprudence we have always felt it a duty to assert, and the still doubtful Liverpool Case, again occasions it to be noticed. The controversy arising from that case has extended to the present year; and two pamphlets, on opposite sides, shew distinctly how far it has excited a local sensation. Mr. Dawson's " Exposure of some of the false Statements contained in Dr. Carson's Pamphlet," and Dr. Campbell's "Reflections on the Vindication of the Opinions delivered by the medical witnesses for the Crown," will probably terminate the dispute: but not with it, we trust, the impression which the subject and the mode of investigating it has produced. About the period of the trial at Lancaster, another remarkable one, for procuring abortion, took place at St. Edmunds Bury. A curious physiological fact was subjected to some investigation at this trial. It became an object to the Court to ascertain the period of quickening,* and whether the foetus then first receives the principle of animation. The evidence on this question, shews how vaguely professional men understand the subject; and how indeterminate the law upon it is, from a want of precise knowledge of the fact. The parties escaped punishment in this instance, because they employed the effectual mode of procuring abortion, when the law only reaches a method that is always ineffectual.

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Quickening, as it is popularly termed, is a sensation of a peculiar quality, occurring to most women at some period of utero-gestation, (between the 10th and 25th week, says a writer of great authority;) and is believed to be the first indication of life in the foetus. Perhaps this sensation has no de, pendance on the life of the fœtus, but is simply produced by the impregnated uterus rising suddenly out of the pelvis into the cavity of the abdomen. This peculiar sensation occurs but once; and is never reproduced by any subsequent motions of the foetus. A very little attention might ascertain the fact. Do women labouring under a retroverted uterus ever experience

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