110 Mr. Mackinnon on Latin and Greek Medals. publication, will be that part of antiquity relating to the inscriptions on medals. The several languages which compose these inscriptions are according to the several countries in which they were coined: but those which I shall chiefly consider, are the Latin and Greek inscriptions. The Latin was always the reigning language in every country where the Romans were masters, and after it became a dead language by the destruction of the Roman monarchy, it was still preserved for all public monuments and considerable pieces of money, in all states of the Christian empire; while Greek inscriptions were most universally used for medals, the Romans having always a respect for that language, so much so, that they gloried in a right pronunciation and understanding of it, and thus they allowed those cities of the East, in which there existed any number of Greeks, to preserve the Greek lan guage upon their medals, which accounts for the several cities of Sicily and Italy, those also of Provence, and Magna Græcia, using the Greek tongue upon their medals. We might indeed mention as a third class of medals, those having Arabick inscriptions. But these not being so ancient as the two former, nor the language so generally understood, investigation on their part cannot be so interesting as those having the Grecian and Roman characters. Thus, upon referring back to the first ages, we shall find that the Greek and Latin inscriptions then appeared in all their beauty, both on account of the purity of their expression and the exactness of their character; and by tracing them down to the present period, we shall also observe, that as by degrees empires them selves declined, at the same time began to decline both their languages and characters Thus, in prosecuting these studies, we shall discover that history itself is indebted to the information af forded by inscriptions; for without the assistance of those we should never have known that the son of Antoninus, by Faustina, was called Marcus Annius Galerius Antoninus, had we not had a Greek medal of that Princess, QEA ATCTEINA, and on the reverse, M. ANNIOCIAAÉPIOC ANTONINOC ATTOKPATNFOC ANTONINOY TIoc. Nor should we ever have known that thereì ad been a tyrant named Pacatianus, if his medal had not informed us; or that Barbia Orbiana had been the wife of Alexander Severus. These things evidently prove [March 1, to us the necessity and use of cultivating that study which affords not only the greatest entertainment, but is at the same time a source of the most useful information. The most ancient nedals are those of Greece; for the Greeks, long before the foundation of Rome, coined money, and that with so much art, that the most flourishing state of the Roman republic could scarcely equal their perfection. The Greeks had medals both of their kings and cities: the most antient were those of the former, while the figures of the latter have a design, a posture, a force, and a delicacy, expressing the very muscles and veins, which infinitely surpass those of the Roman. The larger Greek character has preserved itself the same upon all medals, without any appearance of alteration or change in the form of the letters, though there was in the use and pronunciation. There is only the letter 00 that could not continue longer than Domitian's time; for after that period we always find it changed into C or, if it is either in the beginning, middle, or end of a word: z and ≈ is marked by; r by r; r by C; n by w; and by w. There is a mixture of Latin and Greek not only in the lower, but also in the colonies of the higher empire: the Latin S.R.F. is put for the Greek C.P.o. Again, E is often put for H, as in the word AOENALON; O for 2, as HPOC; H in the form of a pure aspiration, as HIMEPALON; z for 2, as ZMYPNAION; and z for Z, as ETC; or even ZAETC for EZETC; A for £ at the end of people's names, as APOAΛΩΝΙΑΤΑΝ ΚΥΛΩΝΙΑΤΑN for ΤΩΝ. Many other proofs of this sort might now be brought forward, to shew that one letter is frequently put for another. Though this change took place, the character retained its beauty till after the reign of Gallienus, who flourished A. D. 260; especially upon the medals coined in Egypt, where the Greek was the least cultivated. After the reign of Constan tine the Great to Michael Rhangabes, which was a period of almost 500 years, the Latin tongue alone appeared on medals. Though these medals were coined for the most part at Constantinople, there may indeed be seen some Greek characters on the reverses - but these were only the marks of the different Mint-masters, or Monogrammes, as we often see øk for Phocas, and AK for Leo Isauricus. In the medals of Michael Rhangabes, the word Baths is found, which the former emperors would never 1815.1 On Voluntary Perjury. take upon them. It was from this period MR. EDITOR, IN answer to an enquiry made by a correspondent in your last, (for Dec.) Whether there exist any law to punish the voluntary swearing a false oath? beg leave to quote the following from Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 137. "The law takes no notice of any perjury, but such as is committed in some court of justice having power to administer an oath; or before some magistrate, or proper officer invested with a similar authority, in some proceedings relative to a civil suit or a criminal prose cution: for it esteems all other oaths unnecessary at least, and therefore will not punish the breach of them; for which reason, it is much to be questioned, how far any magistrate is justifiable in taking a voluntary affidavit in an extrajudicial manner, as is now too frequent upon every petty occasion; since it is more than possible, that by such idle oaths a man may frequently in foro conscientie incur the guilt, and at the same time evade the temporal penalties of perjury." When, however, the guilt involves in it a civil injury, it is doubtless punishable in a judicial manner. London, Jan. 1815. MR. EDITOR, H.M. DR. JOHN BROWN, author of the Elementa Medicine, and founder of what is commonly called the Brunonian Doetrine, was a memorable example of neglected and oppressed genius. The na tural powers of his mind were sufficient to have raised him to eminence, in any department of intellectual distinction. He was a native of the village of Duns, the birth-place of the celebrated school man and metaphysician, Duns Scotus, and in the earlier part of his life, no less assiduous in the pursuit of knowledge than eminently successful in the acquisition of it; insomuch that, at a very juvenile period, he obtained a profound and comprehensive acquaintance with the classical literature and general science of his time. If there was any sphere of action, to which nature seemed in a peculiar manner to have directed his genius, it was unquestionably the study and improve ment of Medicine; in which, by the 111 force of an active and vigorous mind, which disdained the trammels of traditional prejudice, he made such important and original discoveries as cannot but put him on a level with the comparatively small number of eminent characters, who have hitherto distinguished themselves in the world, as genuine and inventive philosophers. After removing from the grammarschool of Duns, where he enjoyed the singular advantage of being placed under the immediate eve and patronage of Mr. Cruickshank,-the ablest scholar of whom Scotland had then to boast,-he became a teacher of languages in the metropolis of the North, where he soon attracted the notice, and acquired the friendship, of the celebrated Cullen; by whom he was some years employed as amanuensis, and from whom he received particular marks of favour and confidence. It has been long and truly observed, that the direction which genius takes in life is frequently determined by accident, rather than propelled by nature. Such, at any rate, appears to have been the case with respect to Dr. Brown, as is exemplified by himself in the masterly preface to his Elementa Medicine-a composition, the latinity of which, in point of purity and strength, is unrivalled by that of any medical production which has appeared since the days of Lommius. Happening, for a time, to labour under a severe fit of the gout, in which he was unsuccessfully attended by Dr. Cullen, he employed the occasional intervals from pain during his involuntary confinement, in the rigid examination of the system of medicine on which Dr. Cullen proceeded, which was at that time the prevalent and admired doctrine taught at the University of Edinburgh, and from which any deviation would have been regarded as little less than a species of heresy. After long and deliberate reasoning with himself, he came to the conclusion, That the practice in general adoption was founded in delusion and error. This disposed him to pursue a plan of his own, widely different from that enjoined him by his preceptor, which proving highly beneficial as to himself, and, consequently, of much importance in as far as it regarded general doctrine, he was thence induced to apply his faculties to the intense pursuit of medical knowledge. His abilities were so powerful, and his system so simple and luminous, that, 112 Biographical Sketch of Dr. John Brown. among the ingenious and independentminded students at the University, he was shortly followed by a numerous train of admirers and proselytes. The patural consequence was, that the professors as well as the private practitioners of the place, had good reason to become alarmed, foresecing, as they did, in the universal adoption of the Brunonian doctrine, the detection and downfall of their own erroneous system and practice. Accordingly, the torrent of prejudice against him and his followers at length rar so high, that the simple cir cumstance of a student being known to have attended his lectures, became generally understood to be sufficient ground for his exclusion from a medical diplomą. The consequence of this professional resentment, as he was without powerful connection or sufficient interest to withstand it, was that he ultimately, and when too late, became convinced of the necessity of retreating from Edinburgh to London, in hopes that his system would obtam more liberal encourage mept, and himself and numerous family cusur better protection among the more generous and unbiassed inhabitants of the south.. And here, while we feel anxious to commemorate the talents and ingenuity of this extraordinary man, we are compelled to lament that his genius was not seconded by those prudential maxims of life which alone could have procured it splendor and effect, The result of his discovery was the demonstration, that most of the diseases to which the animal economy is liable, especially thos of the chronic kind, which form the bulk of human diseases, owe their origin to no other cause than debiTity, or a deficiency of what he termed excitement; while the others, which are comparatively few in number, and constitute the opposite form, or that of acute diseases, depend on excess of excitement. He satisfactorily demonstrated that the first, or asthenic form of disease, is to be cured by stimulant means; and that the last, or sthenic form, as be appropriately styled it is to be removed by those of a debilitating nature; in other words, that the morbide causes of the one form of discases are the curative means of the other, and vice versa. Among the general positions of his doctrine, the leading one is that life is a forced state; that is to say, that it is every moment dependent for its support on a variety of exter2g agents, which he calls stimuli, the [March 1, subduction of which would be suddenly followed by death. Of those stimuli constantly exerting their action on the animal economy, he affirms and proves that the operation of all is the same in kind, and only different in degree. In a word, that the effect of them universally is stimulant, or exciting; and that there is not a substance in nature whose operation is of au opposite, or, as it has been falsely called, a sedative kind. The operation of poisons themselves, and that of certain deleterious gases and miasmata, he contends, forms no exception to this general law. He has shewn that the usual stimuli, or supports of life, from the very nature of the animal economy, according to the degree or intensity of their application during life, in the end are necessarily sooner or later productive of death. The above is a very imperfect view of this doctrine; but to enter farther into its exposition here, would much exceed the limits allowed by your miscellany. Suffice it to say, that, if it be faulty in aiming at a degree of sin plification of which the subject has hitherto been unsusceptible, and which, most likely, will never be attainable; and if, in cases of daily occurrence, its fallibility at the patient's bed-side must be admitted by its warmest advocates, it must still be confessed that, before the appearance of this splendid system, not a single phenomenon in the animal economy had been satisfactorily explained. It must be allowed, that, if much remains still to be cleared up, the veil, under which the explanation of numerous interesting facts relative to the human frame had from its creation lain concealed, has at length been removed: and that, before the discovery of this new light, nothing like an uniform principle had existed in any system of medicine, pointing out the intimate connection of every part of the animal economy with every other part of it, and the dependence of the whole on a single cause, namely, the excitability. In fine, it cannot be denied that, before the discovery of this comprehensive system, nothing like the reasoning or language of logic was discoverable in the works of any of the preceding systematies; and that, however liable at times the doctrine may be to fail in the averting of the hand of death, if its precepts were practically followed in the conduct of life, it would tend more to the amelioration of morals than any express system of morality which has ever yet been offered to the world. 1815.] Mr. Sepping's Improvement in Ship-building. Dr. Brown, in his lectures, which formerly, in Edinburgh, used to be delivered in extemporaneous Latin, and latterly, in London; in unprepared English, illus trated his system and practice with equal learning, acumen, and philosophical profundity. The same kind of sensation which was at first excited at the University of Edinburgh, on the ap earance of the Elementa Medicina, occasioning a vehement schism and uoroar between the older and younger practitioners, has been productive of similar effects and outrages among the medical men in the different parts of civilized Europe in which it has been diffused. But the original fer sent, having at length every where subsided, has left no other trace behind it than a well marked line, by which every rational practitioner may regulate his conduct in the treatment of diseases with a degree of precision and certainty heretofore unknown. 113 conclude; he was a man,-to use the MR. EDITOR, PHILOPATER. IN turning over the New Monthly Magazine for May, 1814, I read (in page 356) that "Mr. Sepping described an improvement, which he himself had made, which adds to the strength and duration of ships, &c.; (according to the old mode of building, the different timbers were made to act on each other at right angles; according to the new they act obl quely;)" and as in an article in the New Review, (understood to A fit of apoplexy proved fatal to him be written by the under-secretary of the at his house in Golden-square, London, Admiralty,) it is stated-" Mr. Sepping, on the morning of the 7th of October, the ingenious builder, of Chatham-yard, 1788. He left to bewail his loss a wife may be said to have established a new and eight children; four sons and the era in naval architecture :"-it were delike number of daughters. His oldest sirable that Mr. Sepp ng's method should son, whom he called after Cullen, and be described for general information, in whose name is not unknown in the lite-order that we might be able to judge rary world, is at present on the half pay list of surgeons in the royal navy, to which he has belonged between eight and nine years, His second, who is his name-son, is surgeon in the army, of considerable standing. The third son, Ford, called after a former pupil of his father, Dr. Ford, is a purser in the navy, in which he has continued for many years, And the youngest, Edward Stephens, named after Dr. Edward Stephens, well known by his ingenious experiments on the gastric juice, and who was formerly a warm espouser of the Brunonian doctrine, is a captain in the royal marines. Only two of the four daughters are at present living, Elizabeth and Henrietta; the former called after one of the daughters, and the latter after the late Dr. Henry Cullen, eldest son, of Dr. Cullen. In private life his sociable and companionable qualities were but too well calculated to procure him that reception, which frequently leads the soun lest judgment and the best of hearts from the proper boundaries of economy and For the New Monthly Magazine. discretion. He was not less remarkable, A POPULAR VIEW OF THE ORGANS OF RE for the unsullied integrity of his charac ter and the simplicity of his manners, than for the profundity of his learning and the originality of his genius. To between it and the principles of the diagonal trussing of M. Goubert, mentioned by M. Bouquer in 1746; and of crossplanting the sides and decks, to prevent logging, as suggested by Mr. M'Conoobie in 1805; and the transverse fraines, proposed by Mr. Boswell; as well as to ascertain whether the mode of filling in the frame, and coating it all with hot pitch, is different in principle from the mode pursued ia building a in ortar vessel a few years ago, which prove, when opened, to be ie a state of great rottenness in less than five years. If it should be proved that Mr. Sepping is really the inventor of a mode by which old timber can be effectually substituted for new, and 140 oak-trees saved in the building of a single 74-gun ship; it is presumed that the promoting of Mr. Sepping from a master-shipwright to be a surveyor of the navy, would be a very inadequate reward for so great a national object. • INVESTIGATOR. 114 Organs of Respiration in Animals: cells, upon which the small branches of the pulmonary arteries are spread. The lungs of such of these animals as pass the greater portion of their lives under the surface of the water, have a firmer texture than the others, and are not divided into lobes, but are elongated and flattened. The pleura of whales is of an elastic substance, and their larynx is pushed up into their nostrils. Birds. In birds the lungs are of a connected uniform substance, not reducible into lobes or lobules, as in the mammalia, though they contain numerous minute air-cells. They are situated on each side of the dorsal spine. A considerable portion of the thorax, as well as of the abdomen, is occupied by membraneous air cells, with which the lungs communicate. There are others situated amongst the muscles; and again others in the interior of the bones; the greater part of which have a regular communication with the lungs, and are of essential service to these animals in rendering their bodies lighter than they otherwise would be, and thus aiding their flight through the air. Birds have no diaphragm; neither are the muscular portions of the lungs sufficient for respiration: this, consequently, is performed by a lid-like motion of the whole thorax; which, being alternately raised and depressed, creates an alternate enlargement and diminution of the abdominal cavity. The barrels of the quills of birds also contain air, and can be filled and emptied at pleasure. In Reptiles and Serpents, the cells of the lungs are peculiarly large. They are merely membranous bags; more cellular and vascular at their upper than their lower extremity, which seems to serve as a reservoir for air. Toads, frogs, lizards, &c. perform respiration by means of their bag-like jaws, drawing the air through their nostrils, and swallowing it in the same manner as other animals do their food. In the turtles, however, the structure is more complicated; since they appear to possess organs of inspiration and expiration, and their lungs are uniform in texture throughout; but the vesicles are very large. The tadpoles, or immatured offspring of toads, frogs, and such lizards as breed in the water, are furnished with a kind of organ on each side of the head, which somewhat resembles the gills of a fish. Fishes.-The organs which supply the place of lungs in fishes are denominated gills. These are situated on the sides of the head, and consist of several rows of [March 1, soft, red, and comb-like filaments, attached above by means of a cartilage to the two rough or dentated bones of the palate, and below connected together by a cartilage in the skin of the throat. The surface of the gills in some species of fishes is surprisingly great: that of the gills of a skate was calculated by Dr. Monro to be equal to fifteen square feet, or to the surface of the whole human body. It is to be remarked that the most active fish have generally the largest surface of gills. Fishes in breathing draw water into the mouth, at the same time closing the apertures of the gills with the large external membrane or cover with which they are supplied; they then force the water through the gills, by which the air contained in it is separated and permitted to operate upon the blood; the membranes of the gills are then opened, and the water ejected through the apertures. Crustaceous Animals, as crabs and lobsters, have a kind of gills on each side of the body under the thorax, and a little above the upper joints of the legs. These gills are known by the common people in many parts of England by the name of dead mens' flesh; and are con sidered to be greatly injurious, if not poisonous, to people eating them. Insects.-The structure of insects is extremely curious. They have no discoverable blood-vessels, and even the highest magnifying powers exhibit nothing but ramifications of air-vessels. None of them breathe through the mouth, as in the warm-blooded tribes of ani mals; but in place of this, they are furnished usually along each side of the body, with several openings or tubes, which are denominated trachea, or spiracula These communicate with a lateral spiral vessel, which ramifies over and communicates with almost every part of their body. The trachea are much larger and more numerous in the larva or caterpillar state of such insects as undergo a metamorphosis, than after they attain their perfect form. The stigmata through which these communicate with the air, are particularly conspicuous along the sides of several of the larger kinds of caterpillars. Some species of beetles, which reside principally under the surface of the water, have the trachea covered by their elytra or wingcases: in order to respire, they rise to the surface of the water, open their elytra a little, and inclose a bubble of air underneath, which they force through the stigmata by compression in descend |