system of exercises, accurately defined and accurately applied, did not fail in their power of developing strength, of giving innervation where it was wanted, and of equalizing the circulation. During the treatment his waist was reduced in size, and his chest was increased two inches in girth.

CASE 13-Mr. —, aged 27. In February 1856 he consulted the writer. He had cholerine in the Crimea, and again in the Asiatic campaign of Omar Pasha. He had been treated allopathically; but a persistent diarrhea continued to wear him. Every morning the bowels were relaxed, with a sensation of burning in the lower part of the rectum. If he was not most strict in his diet, pain in the stomach with nausea and vomiting immediately punished him for his imprudence. As soon as the diarrhoea was relieved he had head-ache. His feet and legs were always cold. He complained of great weakness in the loins; and stooped very much. His tongue was swollen, and very red at the tip and also underneath. Had lost a stone in weight during the preceding year.

After the first application of the movements, the diarrhoea ceased. After a week of the treatment, thinking himself well, he gave it up: had a relapse, had again recourse to it, and the diarrhoea was again cured. He is now restored to health. Has no head-aches; no coldness of the feet since the normal circulation has been obtained by means of the mechanical stimulus of these exercises.

This brief paper, and these few cases, to which many more might be added by the writer, of patients whom he has recommended to try Ling's system of exercises, may suffice to show the importance of the bio-mechanical treatment. The cases which have been recited are of sufficient variety and importance to claim the attention of the profession; and it is earnestly hoped that medical homœopathists will inquire into and convince themselves of the value of Ling's system of exercises, for purposes of education in the way of physical training, of obtaining a vital re-action where there is want of nervous force or impaired vitality, and of

obtaining as an adjuvant to reformed medicine, in a great variety of chronic diseases, the beneficial influence of the mechanical stimulation afforded by Ling's method.

REVIEW.

Physicians and Physic. Three Addresses. I. On the Duties of Young Physicians. II. On the Prospects of Young Physicians. III. On the Modern Advancement of Physic. By JAMES G. SIMPSON, M.D., F.R.S.E., &c. &c.

THERE were many sermons preached in Scotland upon the occasion of the thanksgiving of equal or greater excellence than that of Mr. Caird, yet by the magic power of the royal touch, his and his alone acquired celebrity, he was accepted as the representative of Scottish pulpit eloquence, and the leading periodicals of the day founded their general criticisms of the merits and defects of the school upon this particular specimen. Dr. Simpson by publishing his addresses claims from the public a similar verdict. He alone has published those he delivered to the students upon the day of their graduation, and his address to the Medico-Chirurgical Society upon being appointed president, although during the twelve years that elapsed between the first and second of these orations, a similar composition has been annually delivered within the walls of the University. He reckons on the influence of his name in giving this volume notoriety and a large circulation. Nor probably does he reckon in vain. Few living physicians have so great a celebrity, and few with such a name are so ill fitted for the office of spokesman of a learned profession. Dr. Simpson's talents are very great, but they do not lie in the direction of literature. An ingenious writer of the present day divides men of talent into three great classes. The first the oratorical or practical, the second the scientific, and the third the poetic or artistic. The first uses for practical purposes the labours of the other two. The second bestows his whole mind in investigating the causes of things;

whether his researches are useful or useless is nothing to him. The third dwells apart like a star, surveying all things and extracting from them materials for the elaboration of his own conceptions in the province of art. As types of the three we may take O'Connell, Newton and Wordsworth. Dr. Simpson belongs to the first class and to it alone. He is not scientific, nor in the smallest degree artistic, but he is essentially practical and oratorical. He is keenly alive to all that is discovered by men of science, and the moment any discovery is made which he can turn to practical use, he pounces on it with the speed of a hawk, and promulgates it with the zeal of Peter the Hermit. An American produced insensibility in his patients by giving them ether to inhale. No sooner did the news reach Dr. Simpson, than straightway all his patients were thrown into a state of delicious ethereal intoxication, and enjoyed a sort of medical debauch. But ether was not potent enough for the country of Glenlivat, whose inhabitants we are told by a great authority are descended from an ancestor "who nearly spoilt the flood by drinking up the water," and so Dr. Simpson turned to the chemists and asked for some more potent spell than ether, to steep the senses in sweet forgetfulness. Chemists sent him various samples, and nightly did he and his associates gather round his table to try some new form of intoxication, till at length on a happy occasion they found themselves all under the table one fine morning, each with his empty glass by his side. This then was the thing. Such satisfactory and profound drunkenness none of them had ever enjoyed, and so Dr. Simpson applied for a large supply of the last sample, and requested to know its name. It had a long and ugly one (the per-chloride of formyle), he popularized it into chloroform. Such is the story of his great discovery. And it is an excellent example of his character. Inquisitive, ardent and impressive, with wonderful powers of acquiring knowledge, and able to endure an amount of mental and bodily fatigue almost surpassing belief, overflowing with a certain superficial geniality of disposition, and real kindliness of heart, yet without any desire to discover principles by which practice may be improved, and even unable apparently to appreciate them; lightly moved himself by every

small novelty, and powerfully moving others, he is pre-eminently the great agitator of physic, the man of the present and practical, exercising an enormous influence upon all immediately exposed to his powerful personality; but his influence being of a physical and not at all of a spiritual nature, in obedience to the laws of physics, it diminishes in direct ratio as his distance increases.

Such a man is not a good exponent either of the duties of a physician or of the advancement of medicine. And for his own sake as well as that of his themes, we regret he should have put forth his remarkably common-place and illwritten pages in such pomp of type. In the addresses to the students we find positively nothing that has the least approach to novelty or originality. The substance of the two addresses consists of such curious examples of composition as thus, "In the language of Chilo, 'man know thyself,' and again in the language of a far higher authority, [whose ?*] physician heal thyself." It would be a waste of time to criticise what should never have been published, and what really gives a most false representation of the author, the university, and the students; and we prefer using these orations as a text for some observations upon the question of medical education.

The number of medical practitioners in the united kingdoms is not less than twenty thousand. A vast proportion of these are scattered over the country, and constitute or ought to constitute a sort of home mission, and should exercise a powerful influence upon the general civilization of the population, for in many places the doctor and the clergyman are the only educated persons in the whole neighbourhood. Thus it is not only their actual scientific acquirements that are of consequence to the state, but the whole tenour of their lives and conversation. Hence it follows that it is of paramount importance to the welfare and future progress of the whole community, that medical education should be as perfect as possible. The great difficulty in securing a high standard consists in the fact that the pro

Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, "Physician heal thyself."— Luke iv, 23.

fession is essentially democratic in its constitution, and recruited for the most part from the middle and lower ranks of society. This has a two-fold effect: first, as a rule, the candidates have not been reared in circumstances to give an opportunity of acquiring the habits and manners which it is desirable they should have, and this very defect prevents them estimating the importance of a higher tone of mind. It is enough to contrast the clergy of the English church and the body of country practitioners, who are probably on the whole much richer, to feel the truth of this observation. In the second place, at the outset of their career they are not able to prosecute so long a course of study as is requisite, from the absolute necessity of doing something for their immediate support.

A lad of 16 or 17 years old, with a smattering of Latin and a faint knowledge of English, goes to Edinburgh. He at once begins to learn chemistry and anatomy, then physiology and the other branches of medical knowledge. Of these he learns a great deal, for the teaching is admirable; but when at the age of 21 he takes his degree, is he really fit to take his place in the world as a representative of the educated mind of his age? To suppose that he is would be absurd. He has had no university education in the proper sense of the word whatever. He has not dwelt in an academic atmosphere during his passage from boyhood to manhood, that plastic period, on the development of which, amid salubrious influences depends for the most part the future tone of mind which will distinguish him through life. In this respect undoubtedly the English universities possess an enormous advantage over the Scotch. A graduate of Oxford or Cambridge may leave with his diploma of doctor of medicine in almost utter ignorance of all that the graduate of Edinburgh knows, but the former is a man of a higher stamp of general attainments, and this will tell upon his whole future career, whereas the rapidly acquired knowledge of the other is in great danger of being forgotten after he is engaged in his profession. Now the great object is if possible to combine the advantages of both systems. This might be done by infusing more scientific and purely professional teaching into the English, and by prolonging the period of study in the Scotch. That in Edin