equivalent in simplicity to the powder. As medical writers often catch the water instead of the fish, in reasoning on the operation of medicines, we shall speak of the modus ope randi of colchicum with caution. We attribute much to its equal and divided effects upon the organs of secretion, when in combination-much to the simultaneous influence of these manifold qualities-much to its tendency to relieve plethoric circulation in the veins; and we value it for diminishing nervous and arterial energy, so little at the expense of mucular power. It is no depreciation of the value of colchicum to say, that we have no unequivocal proofs of its efficacy when singly exhibited; the art of combination is too seldom well managed, and the judicious use of every medicine greatly consists in thus creating and varying the effect. In Mr. C. Haden's cases, we do presume that he has given its powers a rather unnatural direction; and indeed he admits the too liberal addition of purgatives, and thinks that his practice may have been consequently less efficacious than his father's. Perhaps it is, Dr. Paris says, too much diverted from the kidneys. The fundamental principle on which Dr. Scudamore has founded his treatment of gout, was derived from the early reports of the action of the eau medicinale, viz. simultaneous excitement of all the secretions.* We have means of stating, from a relation of Dr. Huisson, that the basis of this celebrated specific is a concentrated preparation of colchicum and briony. This or any other uncombined preparation of colchicum will always probably be injurious in most affections, but we are sorry that a medicine possessing such powers should have undergone no trials in modification. In the case of an in

dividual of the sanguine temperament, with hereditary gout, the eau medicinale produced, to our surprise, that singular black exudation of the gouty joints, which has been observed upon Pradier's poultices, or its substitutes. To continue speaking of colchicum in its general bearings, a medical friend informs us, "I have been using the vin. colchic. in inflammatory rheumatism translated from the wrists to the pericardium and pleura. Its immediate operation was cathartic and emetic, and the patient suddenly recovered as far as the chest was concerned. The disease returned in a

we have found nothing that exceeds the acet. colchici neutralized with magnesia, and combined with tartar emetic, for removing the irritative action of the mucous membranes, by restoring the languid action of the skin, and dislodging, by expectoration and purging, viscid mucus and slime from the bowels and trachea.

See article Gout, in Rees's Cyclopædia.

mitigated form in his extremities, and hung partially about him for some time. The patient being at the brink of the grave, I prescribed the colchicum with scarce a ray of hope. In chronic rheumatism it generally does good. I have now an athletic patient, 23 years of age, who has had acute rheumatism in the knees and arms; it left these parts, and his chest became affected; the pericardium most prominently. Copious v. s. and vin. colchici. He is progressively improving." We ourselves have recently been using vin. colchici in metastatic rheumatism of the pleura and pericardium without effect in 3j. to 3ij. doses. In this dreadful case of two months standing, there have been six general blood-lettings, at very short intervals, blistering, purging, sinapisms, digitalis, leeching to syncope repeatedly, with slight mitigations only. The patient is now living, but circumstances have prevented our using the powders, or further attending to the case. We have lately checked the progress and mitigated the pain of an abscess deeply seated in the shoulder of a rheumatic patient by the acet. colchici. In exhibiting it according to Mr. Haden's formulæ, in cases of biliary obstruction, not mechanical, in bysteria, with vascular irritability, acute inflammation of the mucous membranes of the intestines, apoplectic determinations, we have by no means found it infallible, or to be confided in alone. An extreme thirst, with a subjection of active symptoms for a time, not unlike the effect produced through the medium of the brain and nervous system by that class of medicines called sedatives, has followed in many instances. In children's cases, as urticaria with intestinal disorders, and similar affections, we find it very efficacious. Professor Herberski, in the chair of materia medica at the university of Wilna, has personally informed us, that in Germany and Poland it has been long used and overrated, but that it is considered to possess considerable influence in emulging the biliary and urinary glands.

We have been so closely busied on the valuable parts of Mr. Haden's work, (and as a collection of facts there is very much that is valuable) that we have been sparing of criticism. We ought to have remarked some incongruities in the application of the proofs to the propositions; but above all, we consider his general arrangement unconformable to any law with which we are acquainted, except the laws of writing in the order of a day-book, from which his work appears to be a transcript.

We conceive that in his title-page Mr. Haden has promised too much-particularly as to the favourite medicine being a substitute for bleeding in inflammatory complaints

-a position contradicted, we imagine, by some of his own facts. These trifling strictures, however, we are confident the author will take in good part, like a man of sense and science, who can distinguish between wanton criticism and candid commentary.

XIII.

I. A Treatise on Gunshot Wounds, on Injuries of Nerves, and on Wounds of the Extremities requiring the different Operations of Amputation; in which the various Methods of performing these Operations are shown, together with their After-treatment; and containing an Account of the Author's successful Case of Amputation at the HipJoint, &c. &c. &c. With five explanatory Plates. Being a Record of the Opinions and Practice of the Surgical Department of the British Army, at the Termination of the War in Spain, Portugal, and France, in 1814. The Second Edition, considerably enlarged. By G. J. GUTHRIE, Deputy Inspector of Hospitals during the Peninsular War; Surgeon to the Royal Westminster Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye; Consulting Surgeon to the Western Dispensary for the Diseases of Women and Children; Member of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; Associate of the Medical Societies of the Faculty of Paris, and of Aberdeen; Lecturer on Surgery, &c. One vol. octavo, pp. 526. London, 1820.

II. Principles of Military Surgery, &c. &c. By JOHN Hennen, M.D. F.R.S.E. Deputy Inspector of Hospitals. Second Edition. Edinburgh, 1820.

III. Dictionaire des Sciences Medicales, Tom. 43, Art. "Plaies D'Armes à feu." Par M. M. LAURENT et PERCY.

factorum est copia nobis,

Res gestæ Regumque Ducumque et Tristia Bella.

"Je vais dans les loisirs d'une paix, helas! trop certaine, preparer, si je puis, de nouveaux secours aux guerriers." Percy.

THE revolutionary war has furnished ample materials to swell the medical as well as the military annals of Europe. In this long and sanguinary conflict, man was but too often placed in situations which were calculated to call forth the whole energies of his nature; and obstacles, previously considered insurmountable, were overcome with a celerity-it

might be almost said, with a facility, truly astonishing. In our days, armies from the North were seen marching in the hottest season of the year, over the burning sands of Suez -while those raised on the luxurious shores of the Mediterranean were braving a Russian winter on the snow-covered plains of Moscow. Whole fleets of LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIPS have rushed forth from the ports of Britain, in the very depth of winter, and fearlessly steered their course amid the dangerous syrtes of the Rhine and the Scheldt, regardless of the tremendous storms which assailed them from the West, or the still more formidable fields of ice which came drifting on them from the East. In this eventful period the mental and corporeal powers of British soldiers and sailors were put to the test of ultimate exertion in every clime. They were exposed to all the "skiey influences" of the torrid and the frozen zone, in addition to the havoc of warfare, and the ravages of disease. Did the medical officers of our fleets and armies participate in the moral and physical excitement produced by these portentous scenes around them? Unquestionably they did. That grand parent of inventionNECESSITY, was ever at work, prompting measures to obviate rising difficulties, by which means these officers ascertained the real extent of the powers of Nature and Art in a far more accurate manner than ever could be done in private life, where, not only a multiplicity of means are used, but a multiplicity of counteracting agents are perpetually interfering and leading to error. No one is now so unjust as to deny the numerous improvements which medicine and surgery have derived from the observations and experience of practitioners in the public service of their country; and nothing can be more clear than that the professional as well as the general public are daily appreciating the value of that hard-earned knowledge reaped by the meritorious class of officers in question, and now applied to the exigencies of private life.

Mr. Guthrie has long been well known as a medical officer who has profited by the extensive field of experience which the campaigns of the immortal Wellington presented to his view, amid the mountains of the Peninsula, and on the plains of Waterloo; and he has communicated the result, not only of his own personal experience, which must have been very extensive; but also "that of the whole of the officers during several (peninsular) campaigns." In this way Dr. Hennen and himself have laid the surgical profession under the deepest obligations, for the assiduity with which they observed themselves, and the industry with which they collected the observations of others, on all the im

portant points of military, and indeed we might add, civil surgery. The works of these two officers form a lasting trophy to the surgery of the late war, and much do we hope that military medicine may be enriched by some similar publications, in the same manner as a Desgenettes and a Broussais have acted in France. The Practitioners of the Army, Navy, and Company's service have greatly extended our knowledge of the diseases affecting our countrymen between. the tropics and in the warm latitudes of the Mediterranean; but the diseases from which our troops must have often suffered in the Peninsular war, are yet without a historian, excepting Dr. Somers on Dysentery, and some detached papers in periodical publications.

Mr. Guthrie, with a very laudable attention to the convenience of his brethren, has published the entirely new part of the present work separately, for the accommodation of those who purchased his work on "wounds of the extremities requiring amputation," published a few years ago. It is proper to observe, however, that in reprinting the latter work, he has made some important additions, which we shall notice in the proper place. Meantime our analytical labours must be directed almost entirely to the first or new part of the volume before us, which is occupied with the important subject of gunshot wounds in general and in particular.

When arrows were exchanged for ball-cartridge, the lodgment of these latter projectiles in the human body caused great alarm in the minds of our chirurgical brethren of the fourteenth century; and the idea of such wounds being poisoned, led to dressings (boiling oil for instance) more tormenting than the original injury. An accidental want of oil discovered to Ambrose Paré the cruelty of this mode of treatment, but it was long before a rational one was substituted in its stead. To this day some erroneous notions respecting gunshot wounds continue to prevail. For instance, being contused wounds they have been supposed to be comparatively free from pain and hemorrhage, and to be almost inevitably attended with suppuration or sloughingerrors, Mr. Guthrie observes, which operate with fatal influence on the practice growing out of them. The degree of contusion depends on the shape of the projectile, the force of its impulsion, and the resistance opposed, the symptoms and appearances being influenced accordingly. Neither are gunshot wounds painless, at the moment of infliction, as some have supposed. In some instances the pain is trifling, being, cæteris paribus, in an inverse ratio to the degree of contusion. In fact, however, the sensation of