certain, whether the person or persons so vaccinated have passed through the said Vaccine disease.

Sect. 6. And be it further ordained and enacted by the authority aforesaid, That each of the Physicians hereby provided to be appointed, shall keep a Book, wherein shall be recorded, the name, age, and place of residence of every person he shall vaccinate, stating whether the patient has had the Vaccine disease, or not, with such other notes as in his judgment it may be proper to preserve; and the said Physicians are hereby required and enjoined, at the expiration of every three months, calculating the commencement from and after the day of their appointment, to make a fair copy of the Records made in their Books, during the term of each three months, and deposit the said transcript for safe keeping in the Office of the City Clerk. And it shall be the duty of the said Clerk, annually, to publish a Statement of the number of patients thus vaccinated in each District, with the name of the Physician by whom they were vaccinated.

Sect. 7. And be it further ordained and enacted by the authority aforesaid, That in consideration of the services to be performed by the Physicians, to be appointed for carrying this Ordinance into effect, they shall each be paid one hundred dollars per annum; and the Mayor is hereby empowered to draw his warrant on the Treasurer, quarterly, if desired, in favour of the said Physicians; directing, for the present year, that the same be charged to account of Monies in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated, and annually hereafter, to such fund as Councils may apply to the purpose.

Enacted into an Ordinance at the City of Philadelphia, on the thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixteen.

JOHN C. LOWBER,

JAMES S. SMITH, President of the Common Council.

ROBERT RITCHIE,

President of the Select Council.

Clerk of the Common Council.

Vaccination in Hayti.

FEBRUARY 8, 1816. We have great satisfaction in announcing that we this day enjoy the blessing of Vaccination; and that we need no longer dread the ravages, in our warm country, of that insatiate scourge, the Small Pox.

Mr. Prince Saunders, lately arrived from London, has brought out the Vaccine fluid; with authentic documents from Mr. Moore, the Director General of Vaccination in England, for its use. Mr. Saunders has already vaccinated the children in the palace of Sans Souci; and his Majesty has directed all the physicians of Hayti to take instructions from him on the subject. He has also ordered, that establishments be made in all the parishes for the effectual vaccination of all the inhabi. tants liable to the infection of Small Pox.

We are informed, on good authority, that we are indebted for this great blessing, under God, to the virtuous Mr. WILBERFORCE, the venerable father of the abolition of the Slave Trade. This great man-whose labours are all directed to the promotion of human happiness-when he learned that Vaccination had not been introduced into Hayti, expressly engaged Mr. Prince Saunders, who was then on the point of embarking, to suspend his voyage, in order to gain instruction in the art of Vaccination, for the sole purpose of introducing the blessing into Hayti.

PROCEEDINGS OF PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETIES. [From the Annals of Philosophy, for March, 1816.]

ROYAL SOCIETY.

On Thursday the 25th of January a paper by Sir Humphry Davy was read, containing further experiments on the effect of wire sieves to prevent the combustion of gases from passing through them. A sieve formed of wire th of an inch in diameter, and containing 10 wires in the inch, prevented the

combustion from penetrating; but when agitated in an exploding mixture explosion took place. The explosion likewise took place when the wire became red-hot. When there were 14 wires to the inch, agitation did not occasion an explosion. With 24 wires to the inch, the mixture did not explode even when the wire became red-hot. The author accounts for these singular phenomena in this manner. A red-hot wire of a considerable size is required to produce an explosion in gases; hence, when the wire is very small, explosion does not take place, even when the wire becomes red-hot. The gas will not explode till it acquires a certain temperature. Now in the experiments with the wire sieves this temperature only takes place at the top, where the gas is so much diluted with azote and carbonic acid gas, that it is incapable of exploding.

At the same meeting a paper by Dr. Wilson Philips was partly read, containing experiments on the nervous influence in secretion. In two former papers he had shown, that the circulation of the blood and the action of the muscles were independent of the nervous influence, and that this influence only acted on the muscles like any other stimulus. But the case is very different with the secretions. Whenever the nervous influence is interrupted the secretion is at an end. Several rabbits had the eighth pair of nerves divided, and in all of them the parsley, which they ate after the operations, remained in the stomachs quite unaltered, and exactly resembled parsley chopped small with a knife. The stomach was always much distended,and a portion of the food was contained in the œsophagus. This was owing to the unsuccessful attempts which the animal made to vomit, which alway's follow the division of the eighth pair. The animal soon shows a violent dyspnea, and seems to die at last of suffocation.

Since the experiments of Galvani on animals, it has been a favourite opinion of many physiologists that the nervous influence is the same with galvanism. To put this to the test of experiment, a portion of the hair of a rabbit opposite to the stomach was shaved, a shilling tied on it, the eighth pair was divided and the extremities of the nerve coated with tinfoil. These were connected with a galvanic battery of 47 pairs of plates four inches square. The trough was filled with a liquid com

posed of one part muriatic acid and seven parts water. This action was kept up for 26 hours. No dyspnea took place, and after death the food in the stomach was found as much digested as in the stomach of a healthy rabbit which had eaten food at the same time. The smell of the parsley was destroyed, and the smell existed which is peculiar to the stomach of a rabbit during digestion. This experiment was several times repeated with the same result. So that it appears that the galvanic energy is capable of supplying the place of the nervous influence, so that while under it the stomach digests food as usual.

Mr. Wilson likewise made a number of experiments to show that heat is a secretion from the blood produced by means of the nervous energy. When new drawn blood is subjected to the action of the galvanic battery, it continues several degrees hotter than blood not subjected to the same process.

It appears to me that Mr. Wilson has gone rather farther than his experiments will warrant, when he concludes that the nervous influence and galvanism are the same. It is clear that the section of the nerve interrupts the nervous influence. Mr. Wilson's experiments (supposing them correct) show us that galvanism puts an end to this interruption. But it may do this merely by serving as a conductor to the nervous influence.

On Thursday, the 1st of February, Dr. Wilson Philips' paper was continued: he considers it as proved by his experiments that the ganglia communicate to the nerves proceeding from them the general influence of the brain and spinal mar row. Nerves proceeding from them supply all the involuntary muscles. But if this be the case, it will be asked, how comes the digestive power of the stomach to be destroyed by cutting the eighth pair of nerves, seeing that the stomach is supplied with nerves from ganglia? The eighth pair coming from the largest portion of the nervous matter possesses the greatest influence; but the digestive power of the stomach is weakened likewise by the interruption of the nerves proceeding from ganglia. This he proved by destroying part of the lower portion of the spinal marrow of different rabbits. In every case the digestive power of the stomach was impaired or destroyed; the urinary bladder and rectum lost the power of discharging their contents, and paralysis of the lower extremities ensued,

anda great degree of cold took place. The heat of one rabbit before death sunk as low as 75°. Though the power of the stomach as an organ of digestion is destroyed by cutting the eighth pair of nerves, still its muscular power remains; but it does not act as usual, because the stimulus of digested food is wanting; or it acts so as to throw the food out of the stomach the wrong way, in consequence of the unnatural stimulus of undigested food.

On Thursday, the 8th of February, Dr. Wilson Philips' paper was concluded. He showed that the heat of animals was in all probability owing to the nervous energy. He finished his paper with a general view of the facts which he had established in the three papers which he had laid before the Royal Society. The muscular energy depends upon the particular structure of the muscles; the nervous system is supported by the sanguiferous; but the sanguiferous can act without the influence of the nervous system. Secretion and animal heat are entirely dependent upon the nervous system. Hence the muscles cannot for any length of time continue to exert their energy if the nervous influence be cut off. The nervous influence appears the same with the galvanic energy.

At the same meeting a paper by Dr. Brewster, on the structure of the crystals of fluor spar and common salt, was read. Hauy had observed that all minerals whose primitive forms were symmetrical, as in the cube and tetrahedron, refract singly; these figures belong to fluate of lime, common salt, alum, &c. Biot first attempted to give a reason for this curious circumstance. He observed that doubly refracting crystals act upon light two ways; some draw it nearer the axis, while others repel it to a greater distance: the first exert an attractive, the second kind a repulsive force. The crystal of fluor spar, &c. according to Biot, are intermediate between the other two, and therefore neither attract nor repel. Dr. Brewster found that crystals of fluor spar and common salt, in certain cases, depolarize light, in others not. Whenever any deviation from the exact figure of the crystal takes place, they acquire the power of depolarizing; and the deviation may be either towards the side of attraction or repulsion.

On Thursday, the 15th of February, a paper by Mr. Tod,