PART SECOND.

Bibliographical Record.

ART. I.-The Work and the Counter-work, or the Religious Revival in Belfast. By EDWARD A. STOPFORD, Archdeacon of Meath. Third Edition.-Dublin, 1859. pp. 104.

It is very palpable that, however much of genuine religion may find a place in the revivals that are now going on in the north of Ireland, there is a very great alloy of the meretricious and profane. This admixture is the more painful where it is promoted and fostered by those whose duty should especially lead them to guard the holiest aspirations and emotions from being sullied by carnal and morbid passions. The Archdeacon of Meath, in addressing his clerical brethren and the public, writes with a very good knowledge of the vagaries to which ill-fed bodies and ill-stored minds lay open the nervous system; and asserts roundly, that much of what is creating so great an interest in Belfast, is nothing more than hysteria, male and female assuming for the nonce the garb of spiritual conversion. To medical men this is nothing new, and we should merely regard as truisms such sentences as-"I cannot recognise as the act of God, hysteria thus produced and forced, neither can I so recognise hysteria which is produced by preaching." But it is not necessary to converse with many clergymen on these topics in order to discover that, as a body, they are ignorant of all means by which they may distinguish the vigorous manifestations of a healthy mind from the vicious exhibitions resulting from morbid excitement. Let them read the Archdeacon's pamphlet, which will enable them to estimate correctly much of what the daily papers report, concerning the particular phenomena in question, while it will prove a guide to them in their daily walk of life, and render their ministrations more useful, by enforcing the soberness and earnestness of true Christian regeneration. Well does our author illustrate this. Having maintained that numerous cases which he saw at Belfast were unmistakeably hysterical, he continues

"It becomes us to inquire whether the preaching of Christ and his Apostles did ever produce hysteria; I have read of Him that He went about healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people' (Matt. iv. 23); but I have never read that his preaching did ever create anything of the nature of disease. I have read that our Lord did give power and commission to His twelve disciples to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease' (Matt. x. 1), but I never read that any sermon preached by them, or any word spoken by them, except in the execution of miraculous judgment, 49-xxv.

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did ever produce anything of the nature of disease. On the day of Pentecost itself, to which the prevalence of hysteria under preaching is now compared, when three thousand were pricked in their hearts on the awful charge that they had crucified Him whom God had made both Lord and Christ, I find no trace of hysteria, but on the contrary, in the very period of conviction, the best and highest exercise of their moral and intellectual faculties."

The Archdeacon goes on to demonstrate how great the moral power is which may be exerted over these morbid manifestations, and shows by his illustrations how, on the one hand, they may be checked by firmness and decision; how, on the other, by yielding and vacillation feeble symptoms may be nursed into uncontrollable paroxysms. Owing to peculiar circumstances in his ministerial career, our author has had extensive experience in the treatment of hysterical phenomena, and he has been led to a strong conviction that—

"Apart from all Divine or miraculous power, and assuming only the facts of our constitution and the influences which we know to act on it, hysteria could neither have arisen nor existed in the presence of Christ; that it must have stood mute and have ceased in the presence of the calm power of his perfect manhood. The woman taken in adultery could not become hysterical, she stood quietly in the midst, and spoke calmly. Neither could that sinner, who poured forth all the emotional feeling of her soul in washing his feet with her tears and wiping them with the hair of her head."

There are two main elements in the production of the dangerous and painful phase of these revivals which we are considering; the one active, the other passive; the one the mistaken, and it may be culpable, interpreter of the word of God; the other the feeble, excitable, and erring listener in the congregation. Let us see how, when these two elements come into contact, the result cannot fail to be such as delineated

"I was myself present in a Presbyterian meeting-house at a prayer, offered with the most frenzied excitement and gesticulations, that God would, then and there, descend and strike all the unconverted to the earth. That prayer was accompanied throughout by a storm of cries, and groans, and exclamations, and amens, all having the true hysteric sound. This was the most frightful scene I have witnessed in life; at the moment of the awful COMMAND to the Almighty to come down and strike, it was perfectly terrific. No such scene would be permitted in any Bedlam upon earth. Presence at such a prayer could be redeemed from guilt only by the purpose of warning. I have many terrible recollections of life, but this prayer is the most frightful of them all. I have been used to be calm in the presence of hysteria; I was calm then; but the physical effect upon myself was as if I had been drinking plain brandy."

Can we be surprised that girls fed upon bread and tea, worn out by work, and subjected in crowded and ill-ventilated assemblies to such influences, should yield to their emotions, especially when they are anticipating some peculiar manifestation of spiritual influence?

In another instance, the preacher, taking the parable of Dives and Lazarus for his text, neglected all other topics which it might suggest, to the exclusive consideration of hell; hell, h-e-ll, h-e-ll, was the one cry; and the "sole object aimed at was to produce a sensation of intensified torture of physical self feeling." The sermon was remarkable for the paucity of ideas, some passages were devoid of them. One part in which, by a constant repetition and transposition of "the

existence of Dives," and "endless duration," no impression remained upon the hearer but the prolongation of agony, struck Archdeacon Stopford as remarkable for its skill in wording; but the whole object of the speaker seemed to be the elimination of every idea or thought, "and it was precisely here, where every idea had disappeared, that the preacher bestowed the whole force of voice, and tone, and gesture," a fact which the narrator had observed in other sermons before.

The effects were such as any one remotely conversant with mental operations must have anticipated—

"Precisely as I expected, when all sense and meaning was gone, the preacher had his base and unmanly triumph in evoking a wild and long-continued scream of hysteric agony, which as it rose more loud, and thrilled more wild, did effectually silence the preacher, and left him standing in his pulpit with a most self-satisfied air, until her tardy removal enabled him to proceed. My horror was not lessened, as I watched the effect on a well-dressed and nice-looking girl near me. Her countenance did change at that fearful cry, but it changed into an expression of steeled indifference hateful to be seen in

woman."

We have no doubt that Archdeacon Stopford's pamphlet, which we need scarcely state is written in a truly Christian and manly spirit, will be largely read. We feel assured that it will prove of special use to the clergy, by initiating them into mental and physical phenomena with which few of them have any acquaintance, but which they must learn to appreciate, if they are to know the full scope of their ministrations. The author lays much stress upon the information to be derived from medical men by the clergy upon distressing and perplexing parts of their duty, and advises them to have recourse to the advice and guidance of Christian physicians. It is only exceptionally that now-a-days the functions of the clergyman and the physician can be suitably united in one person, but this renders a good mutual understanding and co-operation between the two professions the more necessary, and we trust that the suggestions on this point will not be thrown away upon the clergy. Nowhere is this co-operation more wanted, more imperative, than in large towns, and we feel assured that we shall never see the work of the clergy crowned with all the success we desire for them, until they have practically and universally acknowledged the necessity of this union. The abuses that have been manifested at Belfast prove this in a palpable way, but in a minor degree circumstances are daily occurring throughout the country which remind us of the necessity of a more cordial interchange of good offices between the clergyman and the physician. Let it be our part to do all that lies in our power to promote this consummation.

In taking leave of Archdeacon Stopford, we would venture to suggest a doubt as to his view being correct, that all the cases he witnessed were solely hysterical. We are almost disposed, from his descriptions, to infer, that some of them must have been epileptic. This, however, in no way affects his general argument, but rather strengthens it; inasmuch as we are thus required to admit the production of even a more serious form of disease than the one to which alone the author adverts, as resulting from the prevailing excitement.

ART. II.-The Surgeon's Vade-Mecum: A Manual of Modern Surgery. By ROBERT DRUITT, Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London; Fellow of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, &c. &c. Eighth Edition. Much improved, and illustrated by three hundred and twenty-eight highly finished wood engravings.-London, 1859. pp. 791.

THIS popular volume, now a most comprehensive work on surgery, has undergone many corrections, improvements, and additions, and the principles and the practice of the art have been brought down to the latest record and observation. In a short preface the author thus points out the novel features of the edition:

"In the chapter on Inflammation, which is entirely new, I have endeavoured to present the facts in a modern, practical guise, stripped of the formal old Hunterian phraseology. Pyæmia and phlegmasia dolens are removed from the chapter on the Veins, and are treated of in their natural alliance with erysipelas and diffused inflammation. Due notice has been taken of the use and abuse of caustics in the treatment of cancer. The arrangement of the chapters on Injuries has been altered, so as to give due prominence to the comparative safety of subcutaneous injuries. The whole chapter on Gun-shot Wounds has been written afresh and very much enlarged, from materials kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. George Lawson. The chapter on the Eye has again been most kindly revised by Mr. Haynes Walton, whom I have, besides, to thank for the materials for a section on the Ophthalmoscope. The treatment of anchylosis by forcible extension, and of syphilis by fumigation, the recent improvements in ovariotomy, and in the treatment of vesicovaginal fistula, the radical cure of hernia, and the subject of chloroform and the too frequent deadly results of its administration, may be mentioned as having received special addition or improvement; whilst in the last chapter I have taken pains to bring into small compass the latest and best information on Excision of the Knee-joint. It will, indeed, be a reproach to surgeons, if this humane and rational operation shall be discontinued on the plea of want of success or large mortality resulting."

In this warlike age, much surgical interest necessarily attaches to all that relates to the treatment of wounds from projectiles, and it is an imperative duty of our young surgeons who join the public services, to be acquainted with the best writings on the subject, and we have pleasure in pointing here to the pith of what has been published; besides this, there are many new facts, useful rules, and valuable hints.

Of the operations in surgery it is impossible to speak too highly. The descriptions are so clear and concise, and the illustrations so accurate and numerous, that the student can have no difficulty, with instrument in hand, and book by his side, over the dead body, in obtaining a proper knowledge and sufficient tact in this much neglected department of the medical education.

Some knowledge of the diseases of the eye is now required by all students, not only for their examinations, but in after life in the exercise of their profession; for affections of this organ are no longer entrusted to the hands of the specialist alone, although here, as in general practical surgery, the more delicate operations, those requiring

for their best execution much practical skill, will ever be confined in each community to comparatively few men.

There is no modern treatment at all accredited, or any method of operating that has stood the test of practice, that has not been considered and dwelt on. Among others, we may allude to the section on the ophthalmoscope, a simple but wonderful appliance, that promises to render obsolete all that has been written on deep-seated diseases of the eye. Of course there is yet much to be made out in this department, but the rules for the use of the instrument, in ascertaining the healthy appearance of the interior of the eye, together with the chief morbid changes, may be specially recommended to the student.

ART. III. On the Nature, Causes, Statistics, and Treatment of Erysipelas. By PETER HINCKES BIRD, F.R.C.S., &c. &c., Author of the Jacksonian Prize Essay on Erysipelas.-London, 1858. 8vo, pp. 60.

THE exposition Mr. Bird has given of his subject is exceedingly elaborate and complete, though, by a singular anomaly of arrangement, he throws the most important part of his materials into an appendix which is nearly three times as long as the little essay to which it is added. In this appendix he condenses much information, statistical, etiological, and pathological, contained in the work of Fenger, De Erysipelate Ambulanti Disquisitio,' which he states, we believe correctly, to be little known in England, interspersing the results of his own experience, and various matters derived from other sources. It must not be inferred from the small dimensions of Mr. Bird's work that the information it contains is scanty or restricted to a few points. On the contrary, it brings together an immense accumulation of welldigested facts, and might, in truth, be expanded into a large volume. without subjecting the writer to the charge of too great diffuseness. The highly condensed and almost tabular character of the work precludes any attempt at analysis on our part; we need only say, therefore, that it records briefly, but distinctly, the observations of all the best writers on the subject, whether old or recent, British or foreign. Mr. Bird's own remarks are chiefly corroborative of or dissentient from these authorities, and are derived from 260 cases which have fallen under his notice.

With regard to the immediate seat of erysipelas, as developed in the common integument—a point on which difference of opinion exists -Mr. Bird has been led by his own post-mortem inquiries to the conclusion that,

"In the most superficial form it is seated in the papillary layer of the dermis, and that as the disease becomes more complicated, the more deeplysituated parts are involved; thus, beginning at the papillary layer of the dermis, it extends into the deep stratum or corium, then to the adipose or cellular tissue; it may thence involve fascia, muscles, and inter-muscular cellular tissue. In simple erysipelas there is merely serous effusion; in compli cated erysipelas, destruction of the capillaries and all the tissues it invades." (p. 12.)