upon some other cutaneous disorder, or upon another disease. In fortytwo of these the supervening exanthema was measles; in eight, scarlet fever; in six variola; in three varioloid; and in two varicella. Five of the patients suffered, each in quick succession, from three different exanthemata. The comparative rarity of smallpox after other diseases is easily explained by the influence of vaccination, but against scarlatina no such protecting influence is known to exist. Dr. Weisse suggests that, as no case is known (?) where scarlatina has supervened upon true variola, the tendency to the former may be destroyed by genuine smallpox, and thus perhaps may be explained the great increase of virulence in the scarlatina of later years. "Most practitioners of the present day," observes Dr. Weisse,"will admit that our scarlatina is no longer the smooth red blush formerly described, but is on the contrary almost always the miliary form of the disease." With Dr. Jahn, of Meiningen, he considers the vesicles of our present scarlet fever as the residuum of the tendency to smallpox (pocken-anlage), existing in the constitution. Dr. Weisse has even seen some of the vesicles surrounded by a distinct areola, and filled with a fluid resembling pus.

The acute exanthemata are more easily communicated to those labouring under chronic than under acute disorders. Patients suffering from fever, are not liable to the exanthemata until their disease is subsiding.

The mortality in the children's hospital has of late years been only 14 per cent., while in similar institutions in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, the deaths have amounted to 24 per cent. annually. Into all these other hospitals, however, it must be remembered that children merely labouring under scabies are not admitted.

XIV. On the uses of calendula and of fuligo splendens in the diseases of women; by Dr. Ockel. Both these remedies, the plant and the root, were employed by ancient physicians. Dr. Ockel administers the extract of calendula in a certain condition of the uterus, much resembling that described by Professor Simpson and others as hypertrophy of that organ. The uterus descends low down into the pelvis and is much increased in size, thickened and indurated, though still to a certain degree elastic, and possessing none of the hardness of scirrhus. The uterus thus enlarged fills the entire pelvis, and the patient suffers from constant dragging pain, while the os uteri becomes extremely tender to the touch. The bowels in this disease are almost always much constipated, and require free evacuation by the usual purgatives, after which the ext. calendulæ should be given, with glauber salts three times a day. The cure occupies generally the space of five or six weeks. Dr. Ockel has occasionally observed this condition of the uterus to be connected with violent metrorrhagia, and in such instances he believes the calendula to be the only efficient remedy.

Fuligo splendens is extolled by Dr. Ockel as an excellent remedy against abortion.

XV. This is a history of a case of chorea, treated and cured (?) by the muriate of tin, in the dose one sixteenth of a grain for some weeks, by Dr. Person.

XVI. Report of the Private Ophthalmic Institution of St. Petersburg, from May, 1833 to May, 1841; by Dr. W. Lerche. Four cases of confirmed cataract were treated by galvanism, or rather by galvano-puncture. Three of the patients completely recovered their sight, but the vision of the fourth was little, if at all, improved. The history of these cases has been already published in several of the continental journals, and also in our own.

The volume concludes with a number of chirurgical cases by Dr. Salomon: none of these, however, are of any great interest. Dr. Salomon is evidently a pains taking and prudent surgeon, and seeks rather to enlighten his brethren by recording his experience, than to astonish the medical world by the boldness and success of his operations.

As an appendix, we have the address presented to Professor Busch upon his fifty years' jubilee as a practitioner. In this address is contained an excellent recapitulation of the transactions of the German Medical Association, from its origin until the present period; the noblest tribute that could be paid to one who may justly be regarded as the founder of that Society.

A few typographical errors occur in this volume; but upon the whole it is a fair and good specimen of Russian typography. We sincerely hope that seven more years may not elapse ere we are favoured with another volume from our northern friends.

ART. XII.

An Essay on the Properties of Animal and Vegetable life; their dependence on the Atmosphere, and Connexion with each other, in relation to the Functions of Health and Disease. By EDWARD JAMES SHEARMAN, M.D., &c. &c.-London, 1845. 12mo. pp. 175.

OUR readers are well aware that we have always drawn a broad line of distinction between those works addressed to the general public which tend to enlighten them with regard to the healthful regulation of their bodily functions and the avoidance of causes of disease, and those which profess to bring down the rules for the diagnosis and treatment of disease within the popular capacity. Of the former subjects they cannot, in our estimation, know too much, and every particle of fresh information has its use. In regard to the latter class, we regard the old adage "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," as pre-eminently true; there being, in our minds, no safe medium between that entire abstinence from all interference with nature's own method of curing diseases (the access of which is due, in nine cases out of ten, to some infringement of her laws), befitting a state of entire ignorance of her operations, and that kind of interposition which is justified by extensive observation of the phenomena of disease, and full acquaintance with the most successful methods of treatment which experience can dictate.

The little volume, whose title we have quoted, fairly belongs to the first of these categories, and it has merits which distinguish it from other works of its class, in the more comprehensive survey which it takes of

the general phenomena of life, and in the introduction of numerous facts derived from the most modern sources of information. But, on the other hand, we feel in duty bound to state that it is disfigured by numerous errors of a very grave description, some of which display either a positive ignorance of the elements of science, which we should have scarcely imagined possible in a well-educated physician, or a lamentable want of power of accurate expression, both of which faults are alike injurious to an author who addresses the general public, or indeed to any author whatever; whilst others result from a want of scientific discrimination, which leads to the enunciation of crude theories as admitted scientific facts. A few short extracts will serve to justify our criticism; we shall not tire the patience of our readers by much comment, nor by lengthy quotations.

"It is an established fact in natural philosophy that transparent convex lenses absorb, and opaque concave lenses reflect, the rays of light." (p. 13.)

We should like to know where Dr. Shearman learned his optics.

"The mind of man evidently depends upon the organization of the brain, and when the organs cease to act, in death, the brain, and consequently the mind, is, as will be discovered as we proceed, converted into gas, to supply the wants of vegetable matter, in the same way as the rest of the animal creation." (p. 14.)

Although "imagination may trace the noble dust of Alexander, till we find it stopping a bunghole," yet our author's powers far transcend those of the poet; for, by some undescribed process, he seems to detect the solid mind of a philosopher in the corn and potatoes of the next generation (a new relation which we recommend to the consideration of the political economists); whilst the lighter mind of the poet may find a fitter habitation amongst roses and violets, carnations and lilies; the mind of the physician, we presume, will furnish food to medicinal plants, and that of the architect or artisan will aid the development of timber-trees. Two pages further on we have the following novel theory of calorification:

"Whenever hydrogen and oxygen meet in the chemical laboratory, under the influence of galvanic action, they are decomposed, water is formed, and heat is set free. The nerves supplying the lungs sufficiently account for the galvanic battery." (p. 16.)

"Which fully accounts for the milk of the cocoa-nut," we are tempted to add by way of parallel. It would be difficult, we think, to put together anything more incongruous than the ideas contained in the above quotation. In our simplicity we had always imagined oxygen and hydrogen to be undecomposable substances; we were further taught in our younger days, that whilst an electric spark would cause these two gases to unite and form water, a galvanic current decomposed water, and resolved it into its component gases. Moreover, we are at a loss to perceive how "the nerves supplying the lungs account for the galvanic battery;" unless the author means to assert that they convey galvanic influence from the nervous centres, which no one has yet succeeded in proving, all evidence on this point being decidedly negative.

In endeavouring to explain the nature of the respiratory process, and to harmonize the rival theories of Liebig and Mulder, Dr. Shearman involves the subject in a most perplexing jumble, through which it must be difficult, if not impossible, for any uninformed reader to find his way to

the simple truth, that oxygen is imbibed in the lungs in exchange for carbonic acid given off, the reverse process taking place in the tissues; and that the blood is the carrier of these gases between the pulmonary and systemic capillaries, in all cases in which the air does not come into direct relation with the latter.

In a subsequent chapter, on secretion, we are told that "the arteries, when supplied with proper nerves, have the power of secreting that peculiar fluid from the blood which the various organs require; the real cause of this principally depends upon that peculiar galvanic power which the nervous system has over the various organs." (p. 32.) Here again we find an ignorance of the tendency of recent investigations, which we should not have expected in a writer who seems to be on many other points "well up" with modern science. Everything indicates that the secreting process is no more dependent upon the nervous system in the animal than it is in the plant, that its immediate instruments are the same in both, namely cells, and that the vessels are only subservient to it, by furnishing a constant supply of the requisite material.

In the same chapter, under the head of perspiration, after learning that about thirteen ounces of watery fluid are excreted from the skin of a healthy adult in the form of insensible perspiration every twenty-four hours, and that this is loaded with nitrogen, "which is taken into the stomach with the food, in the form of nitrogen gas of the air" (of which last statement we must confess ourselves unable to comprehend the precise meaning), we meet with the following novel and startling announcement:

"But the skin has the power of excreting a large quantity, not only of fluid, but of nitrogen. Eleven grains of matter are exhaled from the skin per minute, or thirty-three ounces in twenty-four hours; and of this eighty-eight per cent. is solid,-principally nitrogen." (p. 47.)

Eighty-eight per cent. of thirty-three ounces is precisely twenty-nine ounces, a quantity greater than the average amount of solid matter daily taken in by an adult as food. Where did Dr. Shearman find such a statement as this? Certainly not in the works of Billing, Bird, Brongniart, Carpenter, Dumas, Johnson, Liebig, Müller, and Mulder, to whom he refers as his physiological authorities. That the above assertion is not a mere clerical error, but expresses the author's convictions, appears from a repetition of it in the appendix (p. 161), where it seems to rest upon the authority of Müller. The source of the author's mistake is evidently to be found in the idea that the analysis of the solid matter of the cutaneous exhalation, which does not average above 1 or 2 per cent.,-represents that of the entire secretion, of which 98 or 99 parts are water. How any

man in his sober senses could make such a mistake, we are at a loss to conceive.

We are sorry to feel called upon to express so strong an opinion as to the demerits of this treatise. Dr. Shearman may be, and we gather from many of his pages that he is, a judicious practitioner and an estimable man. But he has assuredly much mistaken his vocation, in committing himself to authorship. The general plan of the book, as we have already stated, seems to us to deserve much commendation. It is in its execution that the author has so lamentably failed; and we cannot but regret that we have felt ourselves called upon to expose his errors.

ART. XIII.

Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis; being the Fossil Zoology of the Sewalik Hills, in the North of India. By HUGH FALCONER, M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S., &c. &c., and PROBY T. CAUTLEY, F.G.S., Captain in the Bengal Artillery, &c. &c. Part I.-London, 1845. 8vo. pp. 64. With Twelve Lithographic Plates, large folio.

ALTHOUGH this is but the first number of a work which will not be completed in less than twelve, and which may very probably extend to more, we think it right to bring it thus early under the notice of our readers; both in order that we may do what in us lies to make it extensively known, and that we may enjoy the pleasure of paying our humble tribute of praise to its extraordinary merits, or rather to the merit of those researches of which it is one of the results or exponents,-a still more brilliant result and a yet more satisfactory exponent being the magnificent collection of fossil remains deposited in the British Museum, and now in course of arrangement under the superintendence of Dr. Falconer.

"The object of this publication," to use the words of its authors in their prospectus," is to make known, in a connected and complete series, the numerous fossil animals which have been discovered in the North of India, by the authors and other inquirers, during the last twelve years; and to develop the bearings of these discoveries on the physical and geological history of India, during a great part of the tertiary period. The fossil fauna of the Sewalik range of hills skirting the southern base of the Himalayahs has proved more abundant in genera and species than that of any other region yet explored. As a general expression of the leading features, it may be stated, that it appears to have been composed of representative forms of all ages, from the oldest of the tertiary period down to the modern; and of all the geographical divisons of the Old Continent, grouped together into one comprehensive fauna in India. Of the forms contained in it may be enumerated, in the pachydermata, several species of mastodon and elephant, the hexaprotodon hippopotami, mery copotamus, rhinoceros, anoplotherium, sus, and three species of equus; in the ruminantia, the colossal genus sivatherium, peculiar to India, with species of camelus, camelopardalis, bos, cervus, and antelope; in the carnivora, species of most of the great types, together with several remarkable undescribed genera; in the rodentia, several species; in the quadrumana, several species; in the reptilia, the gigantic tortoise (colossochelys), with species of emys and trionyx, and several forms of crocodile. To these may be added the fossil remains of birds, fishes, crustacea, and mollusca."

Of all these remains those of the colossochelys are perhaps the most wonderful, since the idea of a tortoise twenty-two feet long (over the arch of the carapace), from the snout to the tail, is more completely foreign to our ordinary notions regarding that group of animals, than would be the description of an elephant standing thirty feet high, or of a hippopotamus measuring as much round the belly,-accustomed as we are to connect the very names of these animals with the idea of gigantic size. But the most interesting of these remains, to the zoologist and comparative anatomist, are such as tend to fill up the hiatuses left in various parts of the existing series, to indicate affinities where no near relationship previously seemed to exist, and to show how every conceivable union of organs, that could possibly coexist, finds its realization in nature. And to the geo