been superannuated and retired on two-thirds of their permanent salaries. These gentlemen have been connected with the University for a period of thirty-five years. NOVEL REMEDY For Hay Fever.-Dr. Sebastian (Med. Herald,) recommends the wearing of a thick ladies veil over the face and mouth during the critical season as a preventive. He has employed it with most successful results in his practice. BLEEDING IN PUERPERAL FEVER.-Dr. Ellerslie Wallace of Philadelphia recommends copious bleeding in the treatment of puerperal fever, to be followed by full doses of the watery extract of opium. He has no faith in leeches or blisters. APPOINTMENTS.-Dr. King, of this city, has been appointed physician to the "Mercer Reformatory for Women," and also to the "Ontario Industrial School for Girls," both of which are in course of erection in Toronto. We understand that Dr. Canniff of this city proposes to form a class for private instruction in pathology, clinical medicine and surgery, during the winter session, time and place to suit convenience. He will also give clinical lectures at the Toronto Hospital. The death of Mr. Maunder F.R.C.S. Surgeon to the London Hospital is announced in our British exchanges. Beports of Societies. MICHIGAN STATE BOARD OF HEALTH. The quarterly meeting of the state board of health was held in Lansing on the 8th of July, all the members were present. The president presented a letter from Theodore H. Monk of the meteorological office at Toronto, asking for a set of reports of this board, as they desire to inaugurate a system of health and weather observations similar to that of the Michigan board. Secretary Baker presented a communication from the secretary of the epidemiological society of London, expressing great interest in the work of the Michigan board, especially that for the registration of disease. A letter was presented from Mr Avery of Balti. more relative to lead poisoning as set forth by DrKedzie's article on that subject, and claiming that he had demonstrated that electroplating the tin kinds, with a thin coating of silver would prevent cans used in preserving fruit, and tin utensils of all any poisoning thereby. A communication was presented from A. J. Murray, veterinary surgeon at Detroit, relative to "cattle diseases in Michigan," and their relation to public health; also a part of a letter from a member of the National Board of Health on a similar subject. Secretary Baker presented his report of the work in the office during the last three months. It included the distribution of a large number of the registration report of births, marriages and deaths. regular reports and other documents, and of the These were sent to meteorological observers, regular correspondents, sanitary exchanges, and other persons interested in such subjects in Michigan. Meteorological observations were regularly taken in the office of the board, and a condensed statement is each week published in the Iansing Republican. Weekly reports from over 60 observers of diseases have been received, examined and filed. A number of meteorological instruments have been purchased and sent to observers, and some new stations have been established. A demand for weekly reports of diseases has been made on health officers of cities, as fast as the names have been furnished by the city recorders. The secretary has spent considerable time in supervising vital statistics, particularly those for 1877, and in studying deaths from certain diseases in a series of years. The board has in contemplation the examination of candidates in sanitary science, and the examination papers on this subject used in the university of London and other foreign colleges have been secured for study in this connection. Dr. Lyster reported a plan for the examination of physicians in sanitary science. Dr. Hitchcock made a report of depot privies, and made specific recommendations for remedying the nuisances which now prevail. He said depot privies should never have a vault, but should be water closets connected with a sewer, or be supplied with dry earth or coal ashes; and it should be made the special duty of a station employee to see that the floors are scrubbed daily, proof, were any wanted, of the indomitable industry and persevering practical research of our German professional brethren. The very first lines of the author's preface cannot fail to prepossess the reflecting reader with a favourable opinion of the work, and to incite to its thorough exploration. "At the present day," writes Frerichs, "it is agreed, that the science of life is undivided, and that no real defined limits exist between the varying phenomena.” And again, the closets kept clean and in perfect operating order, and the whole closet thoroughly disinfected each day. In places where a sewer is not accessible, the closet in which the dry earth or coal ashes is used should be often cleaned, and the refuse buried. For water-closets he recommended "Rhoad's Porcelain seated hopper closet" supplied with Meyer's No. 1 Patent waste preventing cistern. This closet is arranged to flush when the door is opened and is just the thing for public places, as" Our general views of disease have been simplithe hopper is non-absorbent and the shape prevents persons using it from getting on it with their feet For smaller stations where a water closet could not be used, he described and recommended an exceedingly simple dry earth closet but insisted upon the necessity of every-day attention to it by an employee at the station. The committee on sanitary conventions recommended that one be held in Detroit in December or January, and the next at Grand Rapids. Efforts will be made to get as large an exhibition of sanitary ap pliances together as possible. Manufacturers and dealers in sanitary appliances are requested to forward catlaogues, advertisements etc., and to correspond with the secretary relative to placing their wares on exhibition. A sample of red flannel from Dr. Nash of Lapeer, reported to have caused sores, had been examined by Dr. Kedzie, and found to have been colored with analine which contained arsenic and tin. fied since we have ceased to disconnect it from the phenomena of life, as something foreign and endowed with a peculiar and individual existence ; while the several pathologcial processes have been rendered more intelligible, since they have been referred back to their physiological origin, and since their fundamental structural lesions have been carefully and thoroughly examined." In these rational preliminary enunciations, the cultivated professional reader will promptly see that he may anticipate high gratification and valuable instruction, from the studious perusal of the entire work. How different this doctrine, from the antiquated, and far too long time hallowed, The next regular meeting of the board will be on still the conception of the ignorant, and such conOctober 14th, '79. Books and Lamphlets. stitutes the almost entire trading capital of all quackery and charlatanry. Not before the great central fact of the affinity,-nay indeed, of the very identity-of disease and health, has been re study and pursuit of medicine. A CLINICAL TREATISE ON DISEASES OF THE cognised, can a fair start be made in the rational The above work has just been issued from the press, in 3 volumes of the usual size of "Woods Library of Standard Medical Works." The name alone of the illustrious German author, might suffice for a guarantee of the excellence of the treatise, which is, beyond question, the most comprehensive, as well as the most luminous exposition of the morbid affections of the liver ever yet contributed to the science of medicine, and affords another To signalize any special chapter of Frerich's treatise, might be but to run the risk of unwittingly falling into unjust or ignorant oversight of the higher merits of many others; but, in truth, an adequate review,-much less, indeed, a competent criticism, of these volumes, would be a labour as far above our abilities, as its extent would be beyond the available limits of our space for this department of journalistic recognition. Yet we cannot close this brief notice without allusion to the frightful exhibitions of the consequences of tight lacing, shown in the plates given in the third volume, and inspect the plates, without being chapter of vol. 1. We had almost begun to say, that could our young ladies, (and their mimetic sisters of the industrial classes), only see, even in wood-cut plates, the fearful havock perpetrated on their Godgiven natural organs, and especially on their lives, by the present ruling mania of transformation of their truly æsthetic original figures into dissociate, wasp-form monstrosities, they might tremble on the brink, and resolve to content themselves with that personal outline which the Creator-has beneficently bestowed on them; but no, it is, and ever has been, and forever will be, utterly bootless, to remonstrate against this, or any other feminine aberration. They must fulfil the behests of destiny. The rigid Darwinian law of the "survival of the fittest" demands the weeding out of all soil-cumberers, in order to afford room and adequate sustenance for the more robust and more sensible survivors. So nice, delicate, pale darlings, pull away whilst your ribs are yet pliable, reduce at once your waists and your lives to the "shortest span," and leave the field to your physical and mental betters, who know better than to squeeze the maternal zones so far away up and down into the arctic and antarctic regions. Poor liver! poor stomach ! poor pent up, and crammed down colon whither must ye drift; which way shall ye flee? Which way ye flee is, as was that of Milton's Satan-hell. We say nothing in behalf of the spleen, for though only in women is its office well understood, in them its loss would be rather salutary than hurtful. thrown into a fit of compassion towards the peninsulated heart caskets every day met by him on our thoroughfares; but they must go on and complete their work of self-immolation, for they all, and all their seniors, say the men admire small waists, and why should not all girls do their best to please and capture the lords of their destiny? Poor fools, both! We sincerely hope that our erratic jottings will not in any serious degree detract from the reader's pre-estimate of the book now before us; but should such unfortunately be the result, the mis-adventure must be soon corrected by every one who determines to possess it, and will sedulously master its contents; and assuredly no better disposal of either his money or his time can he possibly make. "MAN'S MORAL NATURE." AN ESSAY BY RICHARD M. BUCKE, M.D., Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane. New York: G. P. Putman's Sons. Toronto: Wiili g & Williamson. Though Dr. Bucke is not so flagrant a heretic in medicine, as Dr. Poole, whose work was briefly noticed in the April number of the LANCET, we must not say that in the regions of moral or theological science, he evinces a whit less of bold insubordination than his adventurous confié e. Dr. Poole well nigh repudiated all pretensions to originality in physiological therapeutics, whilst proving to his own satisfaction, the general principles of his thesis from the writings of many eminent authors, who had failed to reach the logical conclusions which he educed from their recorded facts and opinions. Dr. Bucke has rehabilitated, in very attractive garb, an old doctrine which has been, There is one class of the medical profession who are reaping a golden harvest from female follies and maternal misdirection. These are the Gyna-[though often only incidentally, or quaintly,] procologists. If we may believe all we hear, read, and see, there are not 500 women over 25 years of age -nor 600 girls over 14, in this city, who labour not under some form of other or uterine trouble. This evil is still more common south of the Lakes than here. It would be more common in Canada, our practitioners more astute, and less general in the States were women there more rally modest. Suggestive writers, such as Frerichs, are sure to draw their readers away into tangential by-paths. In fact no man with half a heart, or ever so little head, could read his third chapter of the 1st pounded by several eminent physiological moralists; among whom Dr. B. particularly recognizes the lamented Bishat, whose early demise was one of greatest losses ever sustained by medical science. Bishat said that "all which relates to the passions appertains to the organic life." Dr. Bucke says "the physical basis of the moral nature is probably the great sympathetic nervous system." The two propositions are essentially identical, as any person who reads Dr. B's book cannot fail to perceive. Hardly any careful and dispassionate investigation of human actions and character, can hesitate to admit that in their development and manifesta tion, something more than, and different from, mere most eminent jurists and theologians so regarded intellectual sovereignty, bears sway. This is a fact them, and descanted learnedly on their enormity. which has either escaped the consideration of legis- Was it not held by some overwise ancient physiolators and jurists, or has been ignominiously ignored logical moralists, and accordingly subscribed to by by them; hence their pertinacious adherence to many disciples, that the seat of the soul is in the their blood-stained dogma, that moral and legal re- stomach? And considering the potent influence sponsibility must be guaged by the capability of this organ over the moral manifestations of all of delinquents to distinguish between right and mankind, and all animal kinds, would it be a greater wrong; a doctrine which utterly excludes from the stretch of assumption to ascribe to it the seat of all realm of judgment, all recognition, or considera- the affections, than to its far less susceptible neightion, of the entire range of our affectional nature, bour, the heart? than which nothing can be more absurd, or more We do not feel half pleased with Dr. Bucke for barbarous. Dr. Bucke, in the course of his essay, telling us that the "moral nature" (that is the emodesignates a certain class of persons as "moral tional, or as Bishat has it, the "vie organique,”) of idiots." We remember, reading, a couple of years woman, obtains preponderance at the expense of the intellectual capacity. Dr. B. says, 66 we know that her brain is smaller than that of man," and "we have reason to believe that the great sympathetic is larger relative to her size." We doubt if either of these propositions has been established. Woman's brain is smaller, no doubt, than that of man, but so is her body; and as to the assumption that her sympathetic nervesystem is larger-because to supply certain organs not found in man, it should be so, though this is an element called for by Dr.. B's theory, it is neither a demonstrated fact, nor if ago, the report of a trial for murder, in which Dr. Bucke gave evidence, as an alienistic expert, and designated the prisoner by this very term. We presume Dr. B. will not have forgotten the contempt with which his deliverance was received by the prosecution and the court, nor the derision showered on him by certain erudite editors. It was our belief at the time, based on the general tenor of the evidence, that Dr. Bucke's expression was the exact designation of the prisoner's psychical condition, and we are now gratified in finding in his book an explicit exposition of this mental defect. Dr. demonstrated, would it follow that the aggregate Bucke adduces various reasons for his supposition "that the moral nature and the intellectual are really distinct functions, or rather groups of functions." We are rather disappointed in finding that amongst these reasons, he gives first place to the conventional aphorism by which he alleges all nations are wont to depict the emotions. influence over the moral economy would thereby be augmented. How do we know that the smaller sympathetic realm of the reproductive system in man, is not an ample equivalent, if not indeed an over-match, for that of wider extent in woman? That in both sexes the reproductive system may be under the arbitary control of the sympathetic system, we are not called upon to dispute; but we think no observant physiologist, or moralist, will deny that the intensity of the sexual passion in man, and in the males of all animals, is almost supremely greater than it is in the opposite sex. Quantity is not quality. We know a very eminent and able man whose hat would probably sit on the summit of Dr. B's head, and yet all who know this gentleman are astonished to think how so small a brain masters so much. "In the first place," writes Dr. B. "we feel that our emotions have their seat, not in our heads, but in our bodies, and the languages of all nations and of all times refer the emotions to the heart, in and about which organ are grouped the larger ganglionic masses of the great sympathetic system." This appeal to the authority of all nations and all times appears to us as but a limping reason to be stationed in the front rank of any argument; for what absurdity or what moral monstrosity, might not be sus tained on this authority? Dr. B. must surely be Dr. Bucke has very skillfully utilised the Jewish well enough read in his own specialty, to know that race, who certainly should feel very thankful to witchcraft and demoniacal possession were, until him for the moral altitude to which he has elevated very recently, believed in by all nations, and that them, and not the less so because they may not, not merely were they in all languages spoken of by before, have felt conscious of their own superior the vulgar-as indisputable facts, but that even the merits. Dr. B. alleges that the moral nature of the Jews must be better than ours, because "their lives are better." We are always thankful for new facts, and this is certainly new to us. But the Dr. says he has still a surer ground for this fact, than the half-dozen or so credited to his money-loving brethren. "This ground," he writes, "is that the Jews have initiated the most advanced religions of the world, during the whole course of its history." In these religions no doubt Dr. B. ranks Christianity as the most excellent. Is it the general opinion of modern Christians that their religion has been but a natural evolution of Judaism, and that to His mere Hebrew affiliation Jesus was indebted for His competence to enunciate His new faith? If so, one of the most potent arguments adduced by writers on "the evidences," the miracle of its most unpropitious origin, is completely sapped. Why, Dr. B. tells us in another place that only one thorough, educated, Jew became a Christian, and for his conversion a miracle had to be wrought. Does this look like intellectual evolution? If Christianity was but a sublimated Judaism, why was it not most largely embraced by the highest intellects of the nation, instead of by a few poor and ignorant fishermen ? Verily had the religion of Jesus never found a more congenial soil than that of Judea, we doubt whether it would to day number so many millions of professors. Had not Constantine become a convert, and commanded his legions to follow him, would the Pope now sit in Rome? Truly, if Christianity was a mere evolution, or outcome of Judaism, it must have sprung, not from Jewish intellectual eminence, but from Dr. Bucke's supereminent Jewish "sympathetic nerve system;" and perhaps Dr. B. will be content with this con cession. There is no small gratification in reviewing a book so replete with substantial, clever and courageous writing, as is the little volume now before us. If we have singled out a few passages to which we decline subscription, our readers must not infer that we hold in low estimation the general substance of the work. It is assuredly a work which has cost its author much thought and large study, and it is written in a style, which, though not always elegant, is yet attractive and terse, and we welcome its entrance into Canadian literature, as a first fruit's offering highly creditable to our young Dominion. Should a second edition be called for, as we sincerely hope may be the fact, we would recommend the correction of a few grammatical oversights, which may be chargeable against the compositor, or the proof reader; for example on page 39, "the mental image of all forms of hopelessness and infancy awaken;" a singular nominative governing a plural verb. Again at top of page 164, "to justify the expectations which he or she excite." Every writer who has had experience of the havoc often made in his text by ignorant or conceited typos, must well understand the annoyance thus caused to an author of such ability as this book proves Dr. Bucke to be. ELEMENTARY QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS. By Alexander Classen, Professor in the Royal Polytechnic School, Aix la Chapelle. Translated by Edgar F. Smith, A.M., Ph. D. Published by Henry C. Lea, Philadelphia: Willing & Williamson, Toronto. This is a compendious little treatise which must be of great value to the analyst and practical chemist. "It has been adopted as a text-book in the laboratories of almost all the prominent German universities and polytechnic schools, and has taken rank by the side of the older and larger works on the same subject," and has been translated into the French, Russian, Polish, as well as now into English. A MANUAL ON EXAMINATION OF THE EYES.— By S Landott, Directeur-Adjoint of the Ophthalmological Laboratory at the Sorboune, Paris. Translated by Swan M. Burnet, M.D. Published by D. G Brinton, Philadelphia; Willing & Williamson, Toronto. This work must, of course, be best appreciated by the specialty for whose instruction it has been designed. It is given in 24 lectures, which are illustrated by 44 well executed plates, with a chart at the end," of the movements of the eyes, and their derangements." Births, Marriages and Deaths. At Bloomfield, on the 30th of July, A. C. Bowerman, M.D., to Miss Ida E. Bedell of the same place. In Aberdeen, Scotland, on the 30th of July, W. S. Muir, M.D., L.R.C.S. & P., Edin., of Truro, N.S., to Catharine Jane, eldest daughter of W. Lawson, Esq., of Aberdeen. On the 7th of June, Robert Campbell Fair, M.D., of Orangeville, in the 38th year of his age. At Brockville, on the 27th ult., J. H. Morden, M.D., of heart disease. |