to another; and though we believe that the preceding event has a power of producing that which succeeds, yet, in reality, we only know the fact of succession. The author has put this matter in so clear and strong a light, and has demonstrated, both by direct arguments, and by the reductio ad absurdum, the error of referring to a specific principle, that we shall make no apology for the following long quotation, trusting that it will induce our readers to refer to the copious and interesting illustrations contained in the lecture itself.

In the science of physiology we proceed on the observation of facts, of their order and connexion: We notice the analogies between them; and deduce the general laws to which they are subject. We are thus led to admit the vital properties, already spoken of, as causes of the various phenomena; in the same way as attraction is recognised for the cause of various physical events. We do not profess to explain how the living forces in the one case, or attraction in the other, exert their agency. But some are not content to stop at this point: they wish to draw aside the veil from nature, to display the very essence of the vital properties, and penetrate to their first causes; to show, independently of the phenomena, what is life, and how irritability and sensibility execute those purposes which so justly excite our admiration. They endeavour to give a physical explanation of the contraction of a muscle, and to teach us how a nerve feels. They suppose the structure of the body to contain an invisible matter or principle, by which it is put in motion. Such is the impetum faciens of Hippocrates, the Archeus of Von Helmont, the Anima of Stahl, the Materia Vitæ of Hunter, the calidum innatum, the vital principle, the subtle and mobile matter of others. There are many names for it; as each successive speculator seems to have fancied that he should establish his own claim to the offspring by baptizing it anew. Either of the names, and either of the explanations may be taken as a sample: They are all equally valuable, and equally illustrative. Most of them, indeed, have long lain in cold obstruction amongst the rubbish of past ages; and the more modern ones are hastening after their predecessors to the vault of all the Capulets.

The object of explanation is to make a thing more intelligible. Explaining a phenomenon consists in showing that the facts, which it presents, follow each other in an order analogous to that which is observed in the succession of other more familiar facts. In showing that the motions of the heavenly bodies follow the same law as the. descent of a heavy substance to the earth does, Newton explained the fact. The opinion under our review is not an explanation of that kind; unless indeed you find, what I am not sensible of, that you understand muscular contraction better by being told that an Archeus, or a subtle and mobile matter, sets the fibres at work.

This pretended explanation, in short, is a reference, not to any thing that we understand better than the subject to be explained; but

VOL. XII. NO. 48.

to something that we do not understand at all,-to something which cannot be received as a deduction of science, but must be accepted as an object of faith.

If animals want such aid for executing their functions, how is it that vegetables proceed without the same assistance? They perform vital motions, and exhibit some of the most important: do they accomplish them without an Archeus, or a vital principle? have they no subtle fluid of life?

If the properties of living matter are to be explained in this way, why should not we adopt the same plan with physical properties, and account for gravitation or chemical affinity by the supposition of appropriate subtle fluids? why does the irritability of a muscle need such an explanation, if explanation it can be called, more than the elective attraction of a salt?

To make the matter more intelligible, this vital principle is compared to magnetism, to electricity, to galvanism; or it is roundly stated to be oxygen. "Tis like a camel, or like a whale, or like what you please. You have only to grant that the phenomena of the sciences just alluded to depend on extremely fine and invisible fluids, superadded to the matters in which they are exhibited; and to allow further that life, and magnetic, galvanic and electric phenomena, correspond perfectly: the existence of a subtle matter of life will then be a very probabic inference. On this illustration you will naturally remark, that the existence of the magnetic, electric, and galvanic fluids, which is offered as a proof of the existence of a vital fluid, is as much a matter of doubt, as that of the vital fluid itself. It is singular also that the vital principle should be like both magnetism and electricity, when these two are not like each other.

It would have been interesting to have had this illustration prosecuted a little further. We should have been pleased to learn whether the human body is more like a loadstone, a voltaic pile, or an electrical machine: whether the organs are to be regarded as Leyden jars, magnetic needles, or batteries.

The truth is, there is no resemblance, no analogy between electricity and life: the two orders of phenomena are completely distinct; they are incommensurable. Electricity illustrates life no more than life illustrates electricity. We might just as well say that an electrical machine operates by means of a vital fluid, as that the nerves and muscles of an animal perform sensation and contraction by virtue of an electric fluid. By selecting one or two minor points, to the ne glect of all the important features, a distant similarity may be made out; and this is only in appearance. In the same way, life might be shown to be like anything else whatever, or anything else to be like life.

Identity or similarity of cause can only be inferred from identity or resemblance of effect. Which electric operation is like sensation, digestion, absorption, nutrition, generation? Which vital phenomenon resembles the attraction of bodies dissimilarly electrified, or the repulsion of those in similar states of electricity? What

function resembles the ignition of metals, and the firing of gases, the decomposition of water, and the subversion of the strongest chemical affinities?' p. 165–172.

The author goes on to state his opinion, that this fiction of an invisible matter to explain the vital motions, must have ori ginated from that universal propensity of mankind to account for those phenomena, of which the causes are not obvious, by the mysterious aid of imaginary beings. Whence the ancients had gods for every operation of nature, to hurl the thunderbolt, and agitate the waves ;-the people have their elves and fairies, and the theorist his Archeus, his Anima, his Vital fluid. These fictions are not out of place in the regions of poetry; but they deserve the reprobation which they have here received, when brought forward in the array of philosophical induction.

II.

Essays on Insanity, Hypochondriasis, and other Nervous Affec tions. By JOHN REID, M. D. Member of the Royal College of Physicians, London; and laté Physician to the Finsbury Dispensary. 8vo. pp. 272. Longman & Co. 1816:

IN

N order to give our readers some notion of the nature and character of these essays, it will be necessary to recal to their recollection the amusement which some of them may have formerly experienced from the perusal of a series of Medical Reports, as they were called, which appeared for a course of years in a popular journal, the Monthly Magazine of London, with the name of our author appended. As they were not addressed to the profession, so they uniformly discarded all grave medical discussion, and dwelt much upon the aberrations and derangements of the intellect, upon hypochondriacal and nervous disorders, and all the train of real and imaginary evils, which indolence, intemperance, and various moral and physical irregularities, committed chiefly by persons of leisure and cultivated minds, are liable to produce. Many of them, therefore, were rather moral disquisitions, than medical reports; and were delivered in brilliant metaphorical language, calculated to im press readers of this class, who would have shrunk from the perusal of mere didactic medical details. This was well enough,

under the circumstances in which these reports were originally published. They served to amuse and instruct common readers, although there was often more of dazzling impression, than just and solid information, conveyed by them. But in a work, which, from its title at least, appears to be addressed to medical men, surely something more serious and methodical, something more distinctly applicable to the study and practice of the art, was to be expected, and not a series of moral apothegms, laboured with epigrammatic terseness, and clothed in all the metapho rical splendour that poetical language can bestow. No doubt the author has evinced himself a powerful, and in many instances an elegant writer; and had his work been addressed to the readers of the Monthly Magazine, with an appropriate title, it would have merited and met with its due share of applause.

It is but just to observe, however, that Dr Reid apologizes för having committed these essays to the press in this form; as he had considered them merely as materials towards the formation of a larger and more methodical work, which he had intended to complete, on the subject of mental diseases. But some domestic circumstances, with which the public are not interested, have interfered with the prosecution of that object.

After what we have said, it will scarcely be expected that we should enter into any thing like an analysis of the contents of this volume. It will be sufficient to state the nature of them generally, and to adduce a few specimens of the style of the author, and of his manner of treating the different subjects.

There are seven and twenty essays within the compass of this thin volume, which follow each other in a desultory manner, without any immediate connexion, and the subjects of which are necessarily treated with a light and sweeping pen. The first is on the Influence of the Mind on the Body;' and it is followed by others thus headed. 2. The Power of Volition.'

3. The Fear of Death.'- 4. On Pride.'- 5. Remorse." 6. On Solitude.' 7. Excessive Study.'-' 8. Vicissitude,' &c. &c. In the treatment of these subjects there is generally as little that is truly medical, as in the titles of the chapters themselves. There is, however, a considerable degree of point and smartness in the statement of the objections to several popular errors, which often stands in the place of more methodical logic. Thus, in the chapter on the Power of Volition,' the absurdity of attempting to laugh nervous patients out of their maladies, is pretty well exhibited.

Nothing surely can surpass the inhumanity, as well as folly, with which patients of this class are too frequently treated. We of

ten act upon the ill-founded idea that such complaints are altogether dependent upon the power of the will; a notion which, in paradoxical extravagance, scarcely yields to the doctrine of a modern, though now obsolete writer, on the philosophy of morals; who asserted, that no one need die, if, with a sufficient energy, he determined to live. To command, or to advise a person labouring under nervous depression, to be cheerful and alert, is no less idle and absurd, than it would be to command or advise a person, under the direct and most intense influence of the sun's rays, to shiver with cold, or one who iswallowing naked in December's snows,' to perspire from a sensation of excessive heat. The practice of laughing at, or seolding a patient of this class, is equally cruel and ineffectual. No one was ever laughed or scolded out of hypochondriasis. It is scarcely likely that we should elevate a person's spirits by insulting his understanding. The malady of the nerves is in general of too obstinate a nature to yield to a sarcasm or a sneer. It would scarcely be more preposterous to think of dissipating a dropsy of the chest, than a distemper of the mind, by the force of ridicule or rebuke. The hypochondriac may feel indeed the edge of satire as keenly as he would that of a sword; but although its point should penetrate his bosom, it would not be likely to let out from it any portion of that noxious matter, by which it is so painfully oppressed.' pp. 7-9.

We are disposed to think, however, that this is not the right way of meeting this disposition, to laugh and bully nervous pa tients into health and complacency. For we cannot fully accord with the doctrine here delivered, and commonly maintained, that, in the class of what are called nervous affections, it unfortunately happens, that the very essence of the disease often consists in a debility of the resolution; that the ailment of body arises from an impotency of spirit, a palsy of the power of resistance. A malady occasioned by the weakness of the mind is not likely to be cured by its energy,' &c. p. 17. We have little doubt, on the contrary, that this impotency of spirit, and the other symptoms called nervous, are invariably the result of actual corporeal disease, sometimes of structure, but commonly of function; and upon that ground principally we deem the disposition to deride the sufferers equally preposterous, as it would be to attempt to laugh them out of a cough or a colic. Every practitioner must be aware of the long and fruitless attempts that he has often made to rouse this impotency of spirit' by volatiles and stimulants; and how few sleepless nights he has prevented by his opiates and anodynes; while some, on the other hand, will have marked how unnecessary were such substances, when certain disturbed functions, be they of the stomach, of the bowels, of the liver, or of the uterus, &c. were by any means restored to health. Morbid sensation or morbid it