although perhaps not quite rising to such an ideal as is represented by Leigh Hunt in the following passages, with which we shall take leave of Sir H. Holland-" We know not indeed who is calculated to excite a liberal enthusiasm, if a liberal physician is not. There is not a fine corner of the mind and heart to which he does not appeal; and in relieving the frame he is too often the only means of making virtue itself comfortable. The physician is well educated, well-bred, has been accustomed to the infirmities of his fellow-creatures, therefore understands how much there is in them to be excused as well as relieved; his manners are rendered soft by the gentleness required in sick-rooms; he learns a Shakesperean value for a smile and a jest, by knowing how grateful to suffering is the smallest drop of balm; the whole circle of his feelings and his knowledge (generally of his success too, but that is not necessary) gives him a sort of divine superiority to the mercenary disgraces of his profession. *** The ordinary jests on the profession are never echoed with greater good-will than by those who do not deserve them; and to complete the merit of the true physician-of the man whose heart and behaviour do good as well as his prescriptions-he possesses that humility in his knowledge which candidly owns the limit of it, and which is at once the proudest, most modest, and most engaging proof of his attainments, because it shows that what he does know he knows truly, and that he holds brotherhood with the least instructed of his fellow-creatures."* Of this representation we

may say "Se non è vero è ben trovato."

Medical Reform; being an Examination into the nature of the prevailing Systems of Medicine, and an Exposition of some of its chief Evils, with Allopathic Revelations. A Remedy for the Evil, by SAMUEL COCKBURN, M.D.

WE recommend this little book as one of the most readable and reliable exposés of the allopathic and homoeopathic systems we have yet met with of a popular kind. It contains a good summary of the evidence recently accumulated by statistics in

* Men, women, and books, &c., by Leigh Hunt, vol. 2, p. 43.

favour of homoeopathy; and an unsparing revelation of the contradictions of the writers and teachers of old physic, as well as some well selected specimens of the virulence of the tone of the medical press in its reference to homœopathy. The style is clear and pleasant; and we have no doubt it will command an extensive circulation among a large class of the public who are eagerly enquiring into all the medical novelties of the day.

Surgery, and its Adaptation to Homœopathic Practice, by WILLIAM T. HELMUTH, M.D. Philadelphia, Mass. 1855.

WITHOUT much pretension to originality, this is an excellent compilation of surgical practice, and will be found very useful to the general homœopathic practitioner. The best surgical authorities have been ransacked to supply the most approved modes of treating surgical diseases; and the homœopathic character of the work is maintained by the medical directions for the treatment of every possible case of external disease, whether the result of accident, or depending on internal dyscrasia. The volume is illustrated by woodcuts illustrative of many of the operations, of fractures, dislocations, bandaging, &c., copied from the best manuals. On the whole, the homœopathic surgeon will find this a useful book. The medical treatment recommended will in many instances, no doubt, enable him to forego the operations, which are so graphically described, as to facilitate to the practitioner their performance.

Magazin fur Physiologische und Klinische Arzneimittellehre und Toxicologie, von J. FRANK, M.D. Vols. I., II., III., IV. Leipzig, Baumgärtner, 1845-1855.

Magazine of Physiological and Clinical Materia Medica and Toxicology, by J. FRANK, M.D. Vols. I., II., III., IV. Leipzic, Baumgärtner, 1845-1855.

THE Completion of this laborious compilation must not be passed over unnoticed by us. Dr. Frank has richly merited the grate

ful thanks of every practitioner interested in the advancement of our knowledge of the pure effects, whether physiological or therapeutical, of medicinal substances. For ten long years has he laboured silently and unostentatiously at his weary work, and the four volumes before us are the result of his toil.

Many of our readers have no doubt some idea of the character of Dr. Frank's Magazine; but to those who have not, we shall give a sketch of its plan.

Holding with Hahnemann, and all the partisans of the homœopathic school, that the only reliable knowledge of the therapeutic action of remedial agents, ab usu in morbis, was obtained when these substances were administered to the patient singly and alone; and that the only positive knowledge of their physiological effects was to be derived from experiments made on man and animals, and from cases of intentional or accidental poisoning, Dr. Frank undertook the gigantic task of searching through all the modern allopathic literature to which he could gain access, in order to collect facts of this nature. In the course of his labours, this busy bee has ransacked the therapeutic sweets of no less than 1,727 volumes, and stored them up in this hive his Magazine. Here the physiological and therapeutical facts are arranged in a convenient order, and the last volume finished off with a minute general index to all the volumes. This index enables us at once to ascertain the diseases which have been cured by a particular remedy, and also the remedies that have cured particular diseases, together with all the cases of poisoning and experimentation with any medicinal substance. In fact, Dr. Frank's Magazine is a grand cyclopædia of all the real useful therapeutic facts contained in these 1700 allopathic volumes.

Dr. Frank has very judiciously omitted all reference to the therapeutic opinions of the thousands of medical authors who have recorded their theories in these volumes. He gives what may be considered a dry history of each case, shaving off all the superfluous ornamentation and French polish of the narrators, and giving the barest possible abstract of the cases cured, and of the symptoms caused by the different remedies.

Dr. Frank has not confined himself to mere drugs, but he

has recorded also the effects, physiological and therapeutical, of various other remedial agents, such as water, cold and warm, acupuncture, dry cupping, the actual and potential cautery, galvanism, frictions, inunctions, &c.

Dr. Frank's researches have not been limited to the literature of his own country, but he has consulted some of the chief periodical and other medical works of France and England. In fact, his work is as nearly as possible a universal therapeutic cyclopædia of allopathic literature. He has skimmed off the therapeutic cream of pure observations and experiments from all these allopathic works, and left the skim-milk of hap-hazard trials of compound prescriptions.

These four volumes are the epitome of all that is useful to the homœopathic practitioner in the vast library of allopathic literature examined by Dr. Frank. They are an indispensable work to all engaged in the investigation of the pathogenetic and therapeutic virtues of medicines.

It is remarkable how strikingly the curative effects of the drugs mentioned in these allopathic records illustrate the great therapeutic law discovered by Hahnemann. Indeed, many of the cases might have originally appeared in homoeopathic works without exciting particular remark.

We should very much like to see a similar work to this of Dr. Frank's carried out with regard to the allopathic periodical and other literature of this country and America, which he has not examined.

OBITUARY.

Dr. William R. Beilby.

(Communicated by Dr. Scott.)

By the death of Dr. Beilby, the British school of Homœopathic practitioners has lost one of its most promising members. The following brief notice may, therefore, not be unwelcome.

He was the son of Dr. Beilby of Edinburgh, a man well known and highly esteemed as a physician and a christian. After the usual course of school education at the new Academy of Edinburgh, he comVOL. XIV, NO. LVI.-APRIL, 1856.

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menced the study of medicine, which he continued for six years, availing himself of the best means of instruction, and residing for some time in the Infirmary for that purpose.

His prospects on graduation were favourable, owing to the position of his father, which might have afforded him an introduction to home practice, and also to his having at his option a colonial appointment, with a definite salary. These prospects he resigned, having adopted conscientiously that view of the principles of medical practice, which is supposed to be inconsistent with their attainment. Perhaps the relinquishment of his own prospects was a less difficult effort than it was to communicate his purpose to his father, who had looked forward to him as the assistant of his declining years, and who could not participate in the theoretical views of his son. His convictions, however, outweighed all other considerations, and constrained him to follow a path in which he was unsupported except by his self-reliance. Into that path he had been led by his own reflections and experiments, having, while performing the duties of a physician at a public dispensary, instituted experiments with a view to test the truth of the theory, some results of which, enlarged from independent sources, he afterwards communicated to the Homœopathic Times, in one of the most important papers of that journal, a paper more likely to produce intelligent conviction than most of those which have been written with the express view of making converts.

After some hesitation he resolved to settle in Glasgow, to which city he repaired in 1847, with few advantages, the introductions he brought with him being, as usually is the case, of very little use in promoting his advancement.

Yet his course in that city was eminently successful, for in a few years he was in the receipt of a respectable income, all the more promising, because not so disproportioned to that of medical practitioners generally in the early part of their career as to imply that it was due to temporary interest in a comparatively new method of practice. He established a dispensary which he conducted unaided in labour, and so slightly aided in purse as to oblige him to render it in some degree self-supporting. But to gain a moderate income in Glasgow, involves so great an amount of labour, that Dr. Beilby was induced by this and other urgent motives, to remove to Birmingham in 1853, where unhappily his health, which was never robust, completely gave way. He was able to continue his practice with various interruptions till the spring of 1855, when he was no longer able to contend against