ful and tedious." We will not spoil this little volume by giving any account of it. Let our readers get it, and read it. The extracts from his Thesis, " De Mentis Exercitatione et Felicitate exinde derivanda," are very curious-showing the native vigour and bent of his mind, and showing also, at once the identity and the growth of his thoughts during the lapse of thirty-three years.

We give the last paragraph, the sense and the filial affection of which are alike admirable. Having mentioned to his hearers that they saw in himself, a living illustration of the truth of his position, that happiness is a necessary result of knowledge and work, he thus concludes:

"If you would further desire to know to what besides I am chiefly indebted for so enviable a lot, I would say -1st. Because I had the good fortune to come into the world with a healthful frame, and with a sanguine temperament. 2d. Because I had no patrimony, and was therefore obliged to trust to my own exertions for a livelihood. 3. Because I was born in a land where instruction is greatly prized and readily accessible. 4th. Because I was brought up to a profession which not only compelled mental exercise, but supplied for its use materials of the most delightful and varied kind. And lastly and principally, because the good man to whom I owe my existence, had the foresight to know what would be best for his children. He had the wisdom, and the courage, and the exceeding love, to bestow all that could be spared of his worldly means, to purchase for his sons, that which is beyond price, EDUCATION; welljudging that the means so expended, if hoarded for future use, would be, if not valueless, certainly evanescent, while the precious treasure for which they were exchanged, a cultivated and instructed mind, would not only last through life, but might be the fruitful source of treasures far more precious than itself. So equipped, he sent them forth into the world to fight Life's battle, leaving the issue in the hand of God; confident, however, that though they might fail to achieve renown or to conquer Fortune, they possessed that which, if rightly used, could win for them the yet higher prize of HAPPINESS.

J. B.

On a New and Successful Treatment for Febrile and other Diseases, through the Medium of the Cutaneous Surface. By WILLIAM TAYLOR, M.R.C.S.E., &c. 8vo. London: 1850.

MR TAYLOR's new and successful treatment consists in rubbing grease into the skin till it is saturated with it. He was led to discover this method of cure in the following way :

"As far back as 1829, I had repeatedly observed that persons admitted into the receiving ward at the workhouse, for the purpose of being cured of itch, were sometimes also suffering from fever, in its different forms and stages. The treatment usually adopted was the warm bath, and the compound sulphur ointment; and when the patients were cured of the itch, I generally found, where the rubbing had not produced excoriation on the skin, that the fever also had frequently disappeared. An alterative, with saline medicine, which was usually administered, had the credit of curing the fever, although in my own mind I was soon convinced that it was removed by other mea

sures.

"Much time passed away; numerous cases came under observation; but I was still unable to find out the agent to which the benefit might truly be

ascribed. At length, however, a case was admitted, where recovery took place without any medicine being administered, and then the frictions fixed my attention. I at once proceeded to make trials with a variety of greasy substances in the hot stage of fever, each substance being used separately. From these experiments I concluded that lard was the ingredient chiefly worthy of notice."-Pp. 3, 4.

Mr Taylor, however, does not seem to have been satisfied with. the lard, and accordingly "set to work to ascertain what form of ointment was most likely to be efficacious."

"A variety of further experiments were accordingly made; proceeding from oil at the one extremity to wax at the other, and attempting to imitate the secretions of the skin,' I by turns resorted to the ceratum cetacei, to prepared lard, to suet (both mutton and beef), but I eventually mixed lard and suet, in equal proportions, melted them carefully over a slow fire (or a water-bath), and this combination, having acquired about the consistence of common tallow, was, on extensive trial, found to answer every requisite, no mixed ointment that liquifies at a temperature below that of the blood being equal to it."Pp. 6, 7.

This application is designated throughout the book as the "hard ointment."

The rules which our author lays down for its application do not appear to us to be very accurately established,-at all events they are not very precisely expressed; for, at page 9, we are told

"With regard to the mode of using the ointment in public institutions, I should state that the friction ought to be made with vigour and energy; and here I met with serious obstacles; for the nurses are often old people, for the most part unfit for, or unequal to, the rubbing process."

Whilst, at page 12, it appears that—

"It should be done freely but gently, during from half an hour to an hour at a time, indeed, until the skin is saturated; when, from being harsh, hot, and dry, like washed leather, it becomes soft, and, for the most part, after a few applications, yields the feeling of velvet."

There certainly is some discrepancy here; perhaps our author may be fairly entitled to reply, that vigour and gentleness are not incompatible in a process of friction; but, from his constantly insisting on the importance of patients being "well rubbed," we are led to infer that the vigorous is, in his estimation, a more important element in the manipulation than the gentle.

Our readers will easily believe the statement made by Mr Taylor in his introduction, that he had very great difficulties to encounter in establishing it in practice :

"The treatment to some was disagreeable; patients objected to rubbingthey disliked the greasy applications-it was something new.”—P. 11.

That all this, however, was mere prejudice, and that when fairly tried it is anything but disagreeable, will appear from the following passage from page 117 :

"The sense of comfort imparted by the hard ointment is remarkable. The expression of this patient, in his illness, was,-'It feels like a coat of mail on you.'

De gustibus non disputandum est. We should have thought a

coat of mail one of the very last articles of dress to be quoted as a type of remarkable comfort; but we must inform our readers that the patient who uses this comparison is a drayman of Barclay and Perkins, one of those warlike gentry whose deeds of prowess are now a subject of correspondence between the Foreign Office and the Court of Vienna.

It is to communicate the results of this practice, the nature of which will be gathered from the foregoing extracts, that Mr Taylor has published this book. He tells us that he would willingly have done so long ago, but for his aversion to the responsibilities of authorship, and his disinclination to thrust himself on the notice of the public. He has, however, now been led to do so partly by the solicitations of his friends, and especially by the appearance of a work by Dr Schneeman, of Hanover, on the treatment of scarlatina by a similar practice, and which made him anxious to show that Dr Schneeman's plan had been pursued by him for twelve years previously in this country. We willingly concede to Mr Taylor his "réclamation de priorité;" we also concede to him, with equal readiness, our belief that he is actuated by no other motive than a sincere desire to communicate what he conceives to be useful knowledge to his professional brethren, and that his book is not of that advertising character which so often distinguishes little works of this kind. But here our commendations end. As a contribution to medical science the book is worth nothing; the author not yet having attained to that most rudimentary point in therapeutics, the faculty of distinguishing the post from the propter. He continues to treat cases of disease with remedies of established activity at least, if not of established utility; to these he superadds this greasy process (which, by the way, from some strange whim, he calls "cutaneous induction"), and ascribes the whole benefit derived in the case to the "hard ointment." It never seems to have occurred to him, that either his cures must not all be due to his "induction," as he would have us suppose, or if they are, that he has all the while been needlessly cramming his patients with physic which was of no use to them.

A brief analysis of Mr Taylor's cases will show how completely his activity as a prescriber of physic has put it out of the power of him, or any one else, to judge as to what share his grease could have in his cures.

We have nine cases of inflammatory fever, in every one of which repeated doses of calomel and saline antimonial mixture are given. Fourteen cases of typhus (?), all treated with calomel and saline febrifuges, with a single exception where the patient refused to take the medicines, and got well under the ointment alone. This is the only case approximating towards evidence in favour of his plan of treatment; and even if we did believe that the recovery was propter the "induction," and not "post" it, we could not forget that one swallow does not make a summer.

Six cases of scarlatina, all treated also with the invariable calomel and antimonial mixture.

Measles, stated generally to be successfully treated by it, without any detail of cases, a statement true of most kinds of treatment of measles, which in general needs little treatment at all.

Nine cases of dropsy, all of which got at least squill and blue pill, some digitalis, some pyrola, and some a grain of elaterium every second night. A tolerably heroic practice this last, if the elaterium be of good quality; and yet all these cases are quoted to show the good effects of rubbing the patients with the hard ointment.

We have said enough, we think, to show that Mr Taylor has mounted a hobby, and has been run away with by his charger. We need not, therefore, follow him through his chapters, in which he narrates cures of phthisis, hydrocephalus, and insanity by his anointing process.

We have not seen Dr Schneeman's original work, which was the exciting cause of Mr Taylor going into print, but we saw an abstract of it in a contemporary. We did not find in this any evidence of the greasing plan being superior to the warm bath, by which we have been so long accustomed in this country to act on the skin in scarlatina, and we avow that our confidence in the Hanoverian doctor's statements was very much shaken by his declaration, that it "materially shortens the duration of the disease, and checks all infection at the end of the third or fourth day," inasmuch as we affirm that no man living can pretend to determine within one or two days when scarlatina, or any similar disease, begins to be contagious, and when it ceases to be so.

Part Third.

CLINICAL REPORTS, LECTURES, ETC.

CLINICAL MEDICINE.-PROFESSOR BENNETT.

THE MICROSCOPE AS A MEANS OF DIAGNOSIS.

(Continued from last Vol., p. 552.)

We have next to speak of the optical parts of microscopes, which are certainly much more important than the mechanical ones, everything depending upon obtaining a clear and distinct image of the object examined. Under this head we may describe the objective, the eye-piece, and methods of illumination. 1. The Objective, or series of Achromatic Lenses, is that part of the optical portion of a microscope which is placed at the bottom of the tube or body, and is near the object to be examined. This may be considered the most important part of the instrument, and the greatest pains have been taken by all opticians in the manufacture of good lenses." It is here I consider that the

London opticians are pre-eminent, for I am not aware that in any part of the world such perfect objectives have been manufactured as the eighth of an inch by Smith, the twelfth of an inch by Ross, and the sixteenth of an inch by Powell. But when we come down to the one-fourth of an inch, which is by far the most useful objective for anatomical and medical purposes, the superiority of the London opticians is very slight, if any. At this magnifying power the compound lenses of C. Chevalier, Oberhaeuser, Brunner, and Nachet of Paris, Schiek and Pistor of Berlin, Frauenhofer of Munich, and Ploesl of Vienna, may be employed with the greatest confidence, and it may be said that by far the largest number of important discoveries in science have been made through their employment. The Parisian lenses, in addition, have one great advantage, namely, their cheapness.

The London opticians have succeeded in combining the lenses of their objectives, so as to obtain a large field of vision, with as little loss of light as possible. These qualities are valuable in the lower magnifying lenses during the examination of opaque objects, and in the higher objectives when observing transparent objects by transmitted light. But in the lenses of medium power, such as the one-fourth of an inch, the amount of light is so great as to be almost a defect. Notwithstanding careful management of the mirror and diaphragm, the field of vision is often dazzling, and always presents a glare most detrimental to the eyes of the observer. I cannot employ Ross's fourth of an inch for fifteen minutes without feeling intense headach, and I know of more than one excellent observer in whom the sight has so much suffered from this cause as to incapacitate them from continuing their researches. In the same manner, the lenses of Brunner and Nachet give rise to a yellow light highly disagreeable; while those of Oberhaeuser, Schiek and Pistor, and Frauenhofer, (with Ploesol's I am not familiar) present a pale blue light, most pleasant to work with, and which may be gazed at for hours without fatiguing the eye. For the above reasons, as well as from considerable experience in the use of many kinds of microscopes by different manufacturers, I am satisfied that the best lens you can employ for ordinary purposes is Oberhaeuser's No. 7, which corresponds to what is called in England the quarter of an inch. For low powers you may have Oberhaeuser's No. 3, or the one inch lens of the London opticians. For all the purposes of the medical man these will be sufficient. The anatomist may occasionally require a higher lens, as during the examination of the ultimate fibrilla of muscle, when the eighth, twelfth, or sixteenth of an inch of the London opticians may be procured. All these lenses may be attached to the model we have recommended by means of a brass screw made

on purpose.

2. The Eye-Piece. This is that portion of the optical apparatus which is placed at the upper end of the tube or body, and is near the eye of the observer. While the objective magnifies the object itself, the eye-piece only magnifies the image transmitted from below. Hence, as a source of magnifying power, it is inferior to the lens ; and when this possesses any defects, these are enlarged by the eye-piece. Two eye-pieces are all that is necessary with the model I have recommended, and those of Oberhaeuser, called Nos. 3 and 4, are the most useful for the medical man.

3. Methods of Illumination.-There are few things of more importance to the practical histologist than the mode of illumination. This is accomplished, -1st, by transmitted light; 2d, by reflected light; and, 3d, by achromatic light.

Transmitted light is obtained by means of a mirror placed below the object, which, to be seen, must therefore be transparent. In large microscopes mirrors are provided with universal joints, so that they may easily be directed in any direction. Below the stage every microscope should possess & diaphragm pierced with several sized holes, whereby the amount of light furnished by the mirror may be moderated. It is also useful in the examination of many objects that the light should be directed upon them sideways; this