part of this Number, between Dr. Joseph Clarke of Dublin, and Sir Charles M. Clarke, will throw some light on this subject.

It

Our last word with Dr. Meigs is in justification of ourselves. He takes us to task for an uncalled for severity towards Professor Simpson, on account of his uterine sound, which Dr. Meigs praises most highly. is rather a failing with the Doctor to be strong in his eulogy; he has an amiable way with him of becoming warm and glowing in his laudatory testimonials; and we should have paid more attention to his short criticism on ourselves, only that we see he has been premature in his judgment. He wants experience in the uterine sound. His work on Females and their Diseases, is dated 1848; and in it there is no mention of the uterine sound. His pleasing conversations with the ladies, with his drawings of the womb retroverted, did not contain the sound in the act of turning it forward and backward, and backward and forward; making and unmaking the displacement. We are now in 1849. Let him wait and try it, and let be seen in general practice; and we are well confident that our estimate of it will be verified. Our observations in the review referred to (January) on the uterine sound, and the uterine stem pessary, were founded on an abundant experience of these instruments; and we adhere, without a tittle's abatement, to the practical truth of our remarks.

ART. XV.

A Physician's Holiday; or a Month in Switzerland in the Summer of 1848. By JOHN FORBES, M.D., F.R.S. With a Map and Illustrations. -London, 1849. Post 8vo, pp. 520.

It is refreshing to have a legitimate opportunity now and then permitted to us, of diverging from the beaten track of professional criticism, into the more verdant paths of general literature; such opportunities, however, are but too seldom presented to us. Considering the high mental accomplishment which exists in the ranks of our profession, it seems to us that there is too great a fear of allowing the public to know it, and that in consequence our body contributes proportionally less to the mental food of the present generation, than it has done in past times. We think that this is a matter of regret on several accounts; and not least because it tends to discourage that general cultivation of mind, on the part of the younger members of our profession, which is requisite, not merely to enable them to take that social position at which they ought to aim, but also to give them a comprehensive view of the objects of their professional study. If the men in highest repute among us for their practical skill, and at the same time the most distinguished for their ability as thinkers and writers, shrink from ever committing themselves to publication except on topics purely professional, their silence may well discourage younger men who have yet their position to gain, and who too often feel themselves compelled, not merely to avoid the ostensible display of the accomplishments they may possess, but even to the positive concealment of them.

On these grounds, then, even if on no others, we should welcome the appearance of the 'Physician's Holiday,' as an agreeable indication that taste and ability as a writer on a non-professional subject are by no means

incompatible with high medical attainments; and as helping to redeem our body from the imputation of being good for nothing else than "doctoring." But the book has claims of its own on our friendly regard, which our readers will best appreciate after perusing a few samples of its contents, which we shall now place before them. The first chapter contains an amusing account, drawn from the life, of the various modes of spending the "holiday" which it is the custom of London physicians to take some time in the August or September of every year, that arise from the diversity of individual tastes :-some going to their country houses, to farm or garden; others to sport on hill or moor, or to fish in some out-of-theway salmon-stream; others joining a yachting party, or circumnavigating our islands in a steam-boat; and others being obliged to content themselves with an occasional breath of country air, obtained by a hebdomadal trip to their families or friends out of town between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning.

"A philosophical friend, whose active brain will not allow him to desert his books and his apparatus, even for the woods and fields which he loves so much, takes his holiday sometimes in quite a different style: he sends his horses to grass, shuts up his front-windows, retires to his library in the rear, and leaves strict injunctions with the footman to inform all inquirers, patients especially, that he has gone on his annual holiday." (p. 3.)

The travelling trip, however, seems the method of spending the holiday most approved by our author, as combining the most complete change with the most healthful influences; but in the genus traveller there is wide range of specific differences: one set thinking it best, as Dr. Forbes happily expresses it, "to let the written troubles of the brain be effaced spontaneously by time alone; whilst another prefers driving the old notions out by forcing in new ones, on the principle of the pop-gun." Of these two methods he gives us the following examples; the individuality of the second of which is well known, we doubt not, to most of our readers.

"Of the former class of travellers I know one who will hardly accomplish his hundred miles of distance in half as many days, and whose delight it is to interpose a week between each successive stage of his progress, such week being mainly spent in a gentle daily walk to some easy height in the neighbourhood, which may command a quiet view of the open sea or secluded valley, and where he may stretch himself unmolested on the green turf until the hour arrives for his return to his gay hotel or village inn, as the case may be.

"Of the latter class, the most prominent member is one who is among the very first, as well in professional station as in intellectual endowment and varied knowledge, and whose annual delight is to speed to the uttermost end of the earth that can be reached and returned from, within the period of the inexorable holiday. Year after year has he thus visited, in succession, not merely all the nearer countries of Europe, but the most remote; and has repeatedly gone beyond these, to the east, to the south, and to the west. Norway, Russia, Asia Minor, Egypt, Algeria, Greece, Spain, Canada, the United States of America, have been thus swept over -if with the wing, also with the eye, of the eagle-and yet the old Library in the West End is infallibly regained on the very day fixed on for the termination of the holiday ere yet it had begun. Could my Publisher prevail on him to write out his 'Holidays,' there would be then something of a stamp that would enable many, for a time at least, to make holiday at home.” (pp. 4-5.)

By way of apology for adding another to the many records of travel

over ground of which the greater part is already familiar, Dr. Forbes tells us that on returning from his trip, he felt himself so renovated in health, strength, and spirits, and retained such a vivid impression of the exciting pleasures enjoyed during its continuance, that he could not repress the disposition to relieve his own "stuffed bosom" by making known to others something of what he saw, did, and felt, with the benevolent hope that by so doing he might induce some of his town-tied friends to do as he had done, and to enjoy as he enjoyed. Those who, like ourselves, saw him when fresh from his intercourse with Nature, under some of her grandest and most beautiful aspects, witnessed the enthusiasm with which he described some of the most striking features of these scenes and the effects which they had produced on his mind at the time, and listened to his earnest recommendation to his friends to " go and do likewise," can easily understand how this account of his experiences came to be laid before the public. He makes "no pretensions to the power which can give to familiar things the gloss of novelty, or make a desert blossom as the rose," nor has he laid himself out for the collection of that solid information which interests the grave matter-of-fact reader,-nor is there anything to excite in the personal incidents which the book narrates; but he has great faith in the merits of his subject, and cannot bring himself to believe that any attempt to delineate its beauties could be altogether uninteresting, so long as it keeps nature and truth in view. To those who have the privilege of familiar intercourse with the author, the book will have a peculiar charm as a record of his individual impressions; and to those who have not, we can strongly recommend it, not merely as a valuable guide in the accomplishment of any similar design, but as a picture of the scenes it describes, reflected by a mind distinguished for its high cultivation, for its ardent admiration of nature, and yet more for that thorough geniality of temperament, which leads to a cordial appreciation of every healthful form of pleasurable excitement, and dwells as little as possible upon sources of annoyance or discomfort. Perhaps his recent emancipation from those editorial chains which he bore so manfully for twelve long years, added not a little to the zest of his enjoyment; at any rate they do not seem to have cramped the vigour of our "healthy sexagenarian," whose pedestrian performances, we suspect, would astonish some of his brethren whose legs seem as if only fit for stepping out of their carriages into the houses of their patients.

In his Second Chapter, he gives some valuable Sanitary Hints to Travellers, as to "what to eat, drink, and avoid;" from which we shall make a quotation in regard to the use of cold water,-a subject as to which we believe that there is much needless and indiscriminating alarm, leading to unnecessary abstinence from one of the most refreshing and invigorating of all beverages:

"With the Alpine pedestrian, toiling hour after hour in the sun's rays, in the deep valley or up the mountain's steep sides, the supervention of thirst is almost a necessary result of the great loss of fluid by the skin and lungs, and is a natural hint for the resupply of them. It would be strange, therefore, if the due gratification of this natural and irresistible instinct were injurious to health, much more if it were highly dangerous, as it is generally considered to be. The prevalent dread of drinking cold water I believe to be an entire mistake; and so far from regarding it as a thing to be forbidden to the heated pedestrian, I consider its use to be no less wholesome than it is delicious.

"I am well aware of the fact that dangerous and fatal results have followed the sudden ingestion of cold water by travellers and others who had been undergoing great bodily exertion in hot weather. In recommending the use of it to the Alpine traveller, I must, therefore, guard myself against all risk of leading him into danger. It is its moderate and rational use I sanction and advise, not its immoderate and irrational use. The circumstances and bodily condition under which dangerous consequences have resulted, or are likely to result, from drinking cold water, seem to be the following: first, the exhaustion of the strength from previous over-exertion and consequent depression of the heat-producing and cold-resisting powers; second, the sudden application to the stomach of a large quantity of very cold water, when the system is in this state. And so long as the pedestrian eschews this combination of circumstances, I believe he may freely indulge his taste by filling his drinkingcup at every spring he passes in his way. So far from the simply heated state of the body being here an element of danger, I believe the hotter the individual is, provided he is not exhausted, and provided he does not drink an excessive amount of water, the safer is the practice. But he should content himself with a small cupful at a time, should drink this slowly, and, as a rule, rather drink often than much. This is more especially proper when the water is very cold; and for this reason the pedestrian should always consider this quality of coldness when he is indulging his thirst, the rather as there is considerable variety in the degree of temperature of the springs he meets with.

"When no other supply is at hand, the traveller may, if in the condition of vigour above mentioned, drink with perfect safety of water just melted from the glacier, as I have myself repeatedly done; but in this case he should drink very slowly, sipping rather than drinking, so as not to chill the stomach too rapidly, aud not in large quantity, rather renewing his draught after a time, than quite satiating his thirst at once. In drinking water of the temperature of 33° under such circumstances of extreme bodily heat, I have been surprised to find how very little its extreme coldness was felt either in the mouth or stomach; it seemed to the sensations hardly to exceed the ordinary temperature of summer water.

In regard to this matter of drinking cold fluids when the body is heated, I should be sorry to draw positive conclusions on a matter of this importance, either from theory or from my own limited experience; I think it right, therefore, to corroborate my opinion by the practice of the guides: each of these carries his leather or wooden drinking-cup in his pocket, and never hesitates to take a moderate draught from the passing springs as his thirst prompts him, and without any injurious result, as far as I know." (pp. 22-5.)

Dr. Forbes's previous convictions in regard to the beneficial results of the habit of total abstinence from fermented liquors, were fully borne out by his personal experience on this journey; and he found the guides of Chamouni and the Oberland unanimously of opinion that, in their winter excursions among the snow, spirits are injurious; and, although they regarded the moderate use of wine as beneficial, it must be remembered that the ordinary wines of Switzerland are very weak.-Among the great advantages of travelling to the dyspeptic or bilious invalid, Dr. Forbes enumerates the emancipation from the trammels of systematic dieting. "Instead of enjoying real, vigorous, independent health," he truly remarks, "the votaries and victims of such a system can only be said to live a sort of negative, artificial life, as if by Nature's sufferance, not her sanction and, for a man's life, one surely both afflicting and degrading." Out of such a thraldom it is barely possible for an invalid to escape at home the chain of associations, and the feeling of dependence, are too strong for the will weakened by protracted indisposition; but with an entire change of circumstances, the spirits and stomach are so altered, that the plain or even coarse food which would have been previously felt

:

like poison, becomes not only harmless but wholesome. The only proviso is, that the invalid must "seek for and see the sights as others do, take all the exercise his strength will admit of, and remember the golden rule of moderation at all times, but more especially in the commencement of his emancipation." The use of the Alpenstock has thus the same beneficial effect on the digestive powers, with the water-cure as practised amid the bracing breezes of Graefenberg or Malvern. "Both systems substitute action for inaction, the toil of muscle for the toil of brain, exposure for coddling; the roughness of the ruder times and humbler classes for the luxuries and refinements of an advanced civilization: and the return to a natural condition of the system, that is, to Health, is the consequence."

We have been thus tempted back by the sound sense of our friend's introductory remarks, into that very beaten track from which we were but just now rejoicing in our temporary escape. We must give our readers a taste of a purer atmosphere and the sight of a brighter sky; and the first passage we shall cite by way of sample, is Dr. Forbes's account of the impression produced upon him by the oft-described Falls of Schaffhausen :

"Later in the evening we walked out on the terrace in front of the hotel, to enjoy the view of the Falls by moonlight. The evening was as lovely as the day had been; warm, cloudless, and without a breath of wind. The huge white mass of tumbling foam lay straight before us, the only bright spot in the dimly-lighted landscape, and attracting and fixing the eye exclusively on itself. No sound was heard but the one continuous roar of the water, softened by the distance, and seeming to fill the whole air, like the moonshine itself. There was something both wild and delightful in the hour and its accompaniments. The mind yielded passively to the impressions made on the senses. A host of half-formed, vague, and visionary thoughts crowded into it at the same time, giving rise to feelings at once tender and melancholy, accompanied with a sort of objectless sympathy or yearning after something unknown. The ideas and emotions most definite and constant were those of Power and Perpetuity, Wonder and Awe. What was now impressing the senses and the mind seemed a part of something infinite which they could neither comprehend nor shake off: the same mass, the same rush, the same roar, day and night, year after year, age after age, now and for ever! A fanciful idealogist of the Hartley school might explain all this by supposing that an unmanageable idea -that of Eternity to wit-had got into some cranny of the brain, too small and weak either to contain or sustain it, and had thus given rise to a sort of intellectual Fall, just as has here betid the Rhine, struggling in its rocky channel and overleaping its broken barriers. Hence, in both cases, the whirl and confusion, the hubbub and hurlyburly...............................

"In regard to the general effect of these Falls on the mind, I think I might say that they impressed the intellect much less than the feelings. The first view was somewhat disappointing, particularly as to the dimensions of the Falls, both in breadth and height; and as I gazed I felt a sort of critical calculating spirit rising within me; but this was speedily subdued by something in the inner mind beyond reasoning, and there only remained behind, such ideas and emotions as I have vainly attempted to describe. Milton makes his Adam and Eve tell us that they feel they are happier than they know the spectator of the Rhine-falls feels they are grander than he thinks." (pp. 69-73.)

Our next tableau shall be of a purely Alpine scene, the Eismeer, or Ice Sea, on the flanks of the Schreckhorn.

"As we looked up to it from this position, the view of the glacier was singularly grand. It had exactly the aspect, and excited in the mind the impression and