IV.

The Climate of Great Britain; or, Remarks on the Change it has undergone, particularly within the last Fifty Years; with the Effects such Ungenial Seasons have produced on the Vegetable and Animal Economy. By JOHN WILLIAMS, Esq. 8vo. London, 1807.

HIPPOCRATES, in his treatise " De Aere, Aquis et Locis,"

strongly insists upon the importance of geographical and topographical knowledge to every practical physician; and his precept and example, independent of more modern authorities, must awaken curiosity to any account of the climate of our native country. The peculiar principle advanced by Mr Williams is this:

"I attribute (says he) the humidity, and consequently coldness of our modern summers, to the increased evaporating surface, caused by inclosing of open fields and wastes; the multifarious intersections of them by fences, especially with hawthorn; to the increased luxuriance of our crops, by a general system of improvement in the agriculture of the coun. try: To these I may, with propriety, add the late increase of pasturage, productive of serious disproportion between that and tillage; to the numerous plantations, more especially of foreign trees, and such whose exhaling power is prodigiously great; and the immense bodies of nearly stagnated water in the numerous canals that have been cut within the assigned period."-P. 15.

He quotes William of Malmsbury and some other evidence, to prove that the vine was successfully cultivated in former ages; and he assumes the coldness of our summers to be the cause why vineyards are no longer regarded. But this is a poor substitute for a series of thermometrical observations to show the average annual temperature, particularly as he fails to show, that other species of plants, either growing spontaneously, or placed in any district by art, now cease to vegetate where they formerly flou

rished.

To prove the gradual increase of cold and wet weather, he says, that the evaporating surface of this kingdom, exposed to the influence of the sun and air, is much greater at the present time than it was some centuries past; and he endeavours to estimate the comparative evaporating power of different plants, by separating the leaves from trees with their footstalks, and weighing them at different periods after exposing them to the air! The number of new inclosures within these thirty years is sufficient, in our author's opinion, by itself, satisfactorily to account for the increased coldness and humidity of our summers since the year 1770.

One

One of his chapters is devoted to the consideration of the influence of a cold humid climate on the animal economy. Here Mr Williams confesses he has never studied medicine as a science, and, therefore, does not presume to think he can offer any thing new. What he says about our national plague, the pulmo nary consumption, and his railing against fashionable stoves, warm rooms, and thin clothing, is enough to satisfy any one of the truth of this confession. The remarks on the effects of heat and moisture are important, but tend in no degree to confirm our author's hypothesis of the unhealthiness of Great Britain, in consequence of the late supposed change in the seasons. The unhealthiness of some of the West India islands, and the neighbourhood of Batavia, in the island of Java, is owing to the heat, combined with a humid atmosphere; and Europeans only suffer from the climate of Hindostan, and of other settlements in the East Indies, during the rainy seasons. It is a curious remark, yet true, that moist seasons in England are the healthiest. Nothing is more common than to hear complaints of the weather, and lamentations over the unhealthiness of our country, as if we were most unfortunately situated, and as if pulmonary consumption was unknown in every part of the world except Great Britain. There seems to be very little reason for such grumbling. If we examine other climates, few will be disposed to change the cloudy land we live in for the scorching summers of other islands, or the cold winters of continents. The diseases occasioned by cold and moisture are to be guarded against by proper clothing; and no people ought to stay at home in houses built for the temperature of Russia, and then walk out in a dress fit only for an Italian sky. Complaints of the change of climate have been made in every country and in every age; like the race of men, the fine weather is always said to have degenerated, so that, whilst we listen to a " laudator temporis acti," it is pleas ant to reflect, how often such comparisons have been made, and with how little foundation. Some changes have taken place in some situations, as in Germany for instance, since the time of Cæsar and Tacitus, but that is from a cold to a milder atmosphere, and by those very means which Mr Williams accuses of spoiling the warm summers of England. In the time of the Romans, the river Rhine was frequently frozen completely over, which seldom happens now; the elk and the rein-deer inhabited the woods, but these now only begin to be found at 62 degrees of latitude in Europe, which resemble, in their mean temperature, what Germany was about fifteen hundred years ago. Notwithstanding the alleged uncertainty of the weather in Britain, it is not so inconstant as in Prussia or in Austria-the vicissi

tudes

tudes are not so sudden, the extremes of heat and cold not so great, and the diseases arising from changes of temperature are not more frequent at London than at Berlin or Vienna. The making of wine, which is so much insisted on, is by no means proved; it might have been from the juice of the apple, not from the grape, and the vintage probably was so bad, and so often failed, that wines were sought for abroad, because they were so far superior to what could be manufactured at home.

V.

Letters from England. By DON MANUEL ALVAREZ Esprietta, Translated from the Spanish. 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1807. WHEN a party of men have engaged to keep a stage-coach, they are obliged to set out at the appointed time, whether there be passengers or not: thus it fares with us periodical historians; and, amidst the good and the bad that we are obliged to register, it is a great relief to meet with a lively and amusing companion. These Letters are very entertaining on many accounts, but we notice them in this place, because some of them are devoted to the history of the credulity and superstition of the English in regard to the cure of diseases. The author has fixed his eye upon superstitions of every kind; and his sentiments about medical quacks coincide so much with our own, that no apology need to be offered for giving some abstract of his remarks, with a few comments suggested by them. It is right to confess, that we are not such true Catholics as to believe every thing said in the title-page; the acuteness and originality of the observations upon our national manners, mark the writer to be a native, nor is the Spanish cloak sufficient to conceal the English coat.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in one of her admirable letters, has accounted for the extraordinary facility with which her countrymen are duped by the most ignorant quacks, very truly and very ingeniously. "The English," she says, " are more easily infatuated than any other people by the hope of a panacea, nor is there any other country in the world where such great fortunes are made by physicians. I attribute this to the foolish credulity of mankind. As we no longer trust in miracles and re

lics, we run as eagerly after receipts and doctors; and the money which was given, three centuries ago, for the health of the soul, is now given for the health of the body, by the same sort of people, women and half-witted men. Quacks are despised in countries where they have shrines and images." True it is, that medical quacks do not flourish in Catholic countries; the business of superstition is there entirely in the hands of the priests; and the comparative poverty of the people prevents them from applying to any but saints and relics for the exercise of their faith and hope in most diseases. The governments of those countries facilitate the acquisition of medical knowledge, by establishing schools in different parts of the kingdom, and prevent the people being duped by ignorant and wicked pretenders, by arresting all those who publickly set forth their false pretensions.

"In England," says Esprietta, "there are a thousand facts to verify the remark of Lady Wortley. The boasted knowledge of England has not sunk deep; it is like the goiden surface of a lackered watch, which covers, and but barely covers the base metal. The great mass of the people are as ignorant, and as well contented with their ignorance, as any of the most illiterate nations in Europe; and even among those who might be expected to know better, it is astonishing how slowly information makes way to any practical utility. In domestic medicine, for instance, a defluxion is here called a cold, and, therefore, for its name's sake, must be expelled by heat. Oil is employed to soften a hard cough, and lemon juice to cut it; because, in English, sourness is synonymous with sharpness, and what is sharp must needs cut. The abracadabra of the old heretics was lately in use as a charm for the ague, and probably still is, where the ague is to be found, for that disease has almost wholly disappeared within the last generation."

Our author has been misinformed about intermittents, if he understands that they are become so extremely rare. They prevail less frequently than formerly, in consequence of improved cultivation of grounds, and greater attention to warmth and comfort, in the houses and dress, and mode of living among the poor, but they still occur, in every situation, in certain seasons, and in marshy districts they are found every year. This last summer and autumn, intermittents have appeared, without any apparent cause, unusually common in dry and highly situated towns, where they are in general seldom met with.

"For warts there are manifold charms. The person who wishes to be rid of them takes a stick, and cuts a notch in it for every wart, and buries it, and as it rots the warts are to decay; or he steals a piece of beef and rubs over them, and buries it in like manner; or stealing dry peas or beans, and wrapping them up, one for each wart, he carries the parcel to a place where four roads meet, and tosses it over his head, not looking behind to see where it falls; he will lose the warts, and whoever

picks it up will have them. But there are gifted old women who have only to slip a thread over these excrescences, or touch them with their saliva, and they dry away." Letter L. Vol. ii.

The author conjectures, that we are indebted to the Jews for the vulgar belief of the divine origin of the healing art. They will have it, that Adam had an intuitive knowledge of medicine, and that Solomon's book of trees and herbs was written by inspiration. The founder of the Quakers was near practising physic for the good of mankind, as he says, from a similar cause; he fancied himself in the same state as Adam before the fall, and that the nature and virtues of all things were opened unto him. John Wesley went even beyond this enthusiast, fancying himself chosen to restore medicine as well as religion, and to prescribe both for body and soul, like St Luke; he published what he called Primitive Physic, which is a precious collection of old women's receipts, some capable of doing neither good nor harm, but others of a dangerous nature. His work went through twenty-one editions, and was read, and no doubt trusted in the 18th century.

Any scientific discovery is immediately seized by some of the numerous adventurers in this country, who prey upon the miseries and the follies of their fellow creatures. The most eminent quack of the last generation was a Doctor Graham, who tampered with electricity in a manner too infamous to be reported, and for which he ought to have received the most exemplary public punishment. This man was half mad, and his madness at last, contrary to the usual process, got the better of his knavery. His latest method of practice was to bury his patients up to the chin in fresh mould. This he called earth-bathing, and the operation lasted four hours: his patients suffered, as might be seen in their countenances, intensely from cold for the first two, during the third they grew warmer, and, in the last, perspired profusely.

Galvanism and oxygen are applied to the purposes of quackery, and the newspapers afford the means of making known the various properties and cures ascribed to those remedies, which are administered under many forms, and boasted of with endless perseverance. At the conclusion of the second volume, the author gives a full account of the theory of animal magnetism, which was put a stop to in France by the joint authority of the church and state, but had its fair career in England. He gives an abstract of the celebrated Mainauduc's lectures, and quotes the extraordinary and daring expressions employed by that enthusiast, and explains the effects which were produced by his pretending to possess a power over the bodily functions of others in the following manner: