9. On the Moral and Physical Character (Cerebral Developement) of Burk 10. Helleborus Albus used for producing Artificial Cardiac Disease 11. Corporation Monopolies in Ireland 12. Charge of Murder-Knife found in the Abdomen of a Female 14. Dr. Gordon on Clinical Medicine 28. Italian Practice, by Antimony, anticipated by Dr. Marryatt 29. Dr. Thomson's New Theory of Digestion 30. Ligature of the Spermatic Artery for Varicocele 31. Experiments on the Operation of Morphine in the Human Body 33. Case of Amnesia, or loss of Language 1. Medical Report of the House of Recovery and Fever Hospital, for the Year 1827. 1. Cases in which the Blood was found fluid after Death 2. Curious Morbid condition of the Arachnoid Membrane of the Brain 1. Injuries of the Head 1. Treatment of Imperforate Rectum MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 1. Plan of Amelioration of the Medical Profession, &c. By Alexipharmacus 2. Trial of Martin the Incendiary 3. Mr. Guthrie's Lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons Miscellanies. 1. Defeat of the Anatomy-bill, with reflexions 2. Curious Illustrations of St. John Long's Cures of Consumption, with obituary at 189 221 225 285 287 288 INTELLIGENCE, CORRESPONDENCE, &c. GIBRALTAR EPIDEMIC. We hardly regret to learn that we laboured under a mistake when we adverted to the inaetivity of our own Government, and the Industry of that of France, in the investigation of the late Epidemic which ravaged Gibraltar. We have the best reason to believe that both the local Government of the Rock, and the general government at home, have taken as prompt measures as were compatible with existing circumstances to inquire into the causes, nature, and probable prevention of the Gibraltar Fever. APOTHECARIES' HALL. It gives us great satisfaction to be able to state publicly, what indeed we have been able to state privately for some time past, that the Court of Examiners, of the above-mentioned Company, do admit of Lectures attended by pupils during their apprenticeship, as proofs apparent of professional education-thus in fact, doing away with much of the inconvenience attendant on the apprenticeship Act. Mr. Wakley has seized on a misrepresentation (for misrepresentations are his only props) in order to give a little excitement to a stale story. But the day of medical calumny, like the "no popery," cry, is past! Literary Intelligence. Dr. KENNEDY has, in a state of readiness for the press, a work which will form three volames in 8vo. and be entitled, A History of the Medical Sciences, Biographical and Philosophical, containing an account of the Persons and Writings that have conduced to the improvement of Physic, from its origin in BRITAIN to the End of the Eighteenth Century. This Work naturally admits of a twofold arrangement-PART 1. consists of more than One Thousand Articles, each of which, is subdivided into two sections; a Biographical, wherein the circumstances of its subject, both personal and professional, are concisely represented; and a Philosophical, which describes the most important Discoveries, Principles and Doctrines, propounded in the same Individual's Writings;-into these Sections, Disquisitive and Analytical Illustrations are occasionally introduced. PART II. includes an Alphabetical List of all Cases, Essays, and Books having relation to the Progress or Applications of Medical Knowledge; it also comprehends anonymous Treatises, Translations, and Papers contributed to Periodical Journals and the Transactions of Societies, by Writers, whose History could not be obtained. Each volume will be provided with a minute and copious Index, so as to make the Work a complete system of reference to the elements of our British Medical Literature and Philosophy. In answer to MEDICUS and several other inquirers, we have to observe, that all accepted articles, in the Review department, are paid for at a reasonable rate; but we cannot foreclose. We prefer the articles being sent with a sealed name and motto. N. B. An article (in the shape of a review) on TEMPERAMENT, and its influence on health, disease, and remedial treatment, is wanted. The author will have the option of being paid for the article in the usual manner, in which case, the name of the writer, must of course, remain concealed-or the successful candidate will be awarded a prize of a complete set of this Journal bound, in eleven volumes, and the name of the author will be pub. lished three months after the insertion of the article. The paper is to be sent with sealed name and motto, as above-mentioned. THE Medico-Chirurgical Review, No. XXI. APRIL 1, TO JULY 1, 1829. I. PATHOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL RESEARCHES ON DISEASES OF THE STOMACH, THE INTESTINAL CANAL, THE LIVER, and other VISCERA OF THE ABDOMEN. By John Abercrombie, M. D. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, &c. and first Physician to His Majesty in Scotland. Octavo, pp. 396. 1828. IN resuming our review of Dr. Abercrombie's Pathological Labours, affections of the Intestinal Canal are to occupy our attention; and, although the: variety of topics embraced by our first article presented more novelty, the subject of the present is not less important. The diversity of functions allotted to the alimentary tube, and the necessity of their due and daily performance; their effects when disordered, upon the general health, and their influence when healthy upon the progress of disease, have given to this organ a character and a rank which entitle it to much attention. Before the observations of Dr, Hamilton upon Purgatives were made public, the distant sympathies and numerous connexions of the primæ viæ were understood but little, and valued less. Regarded chiefly as an excretory duct, their states and sympathies were carelessly observed, and unless they became troublesome through relaxation, or uneasy from confinement, spasm or inflammation was required to gain for them a proper share of the Physician's notice. But since the appearance of that work, medicine has sustained an important change, and diseases, which were ascribed to the nervous system as their seat, and pointed to nervous remedies as their cure, are now studied in connexion with intestinal derangement, and subjected to a course of purgative medicines. That this therapeutic innovation has done good cannot be denied; that it is grounded upon principles more reasonable in themselves and better known to us is not to be disputed; and that the attention which we paid, or rather the negligence with which we attended to the important functions of an important organ was highly culpable, none are more ready to admit : but we have for some time suspected that we are now sinning on the other side, and that the anxiety, with which we now examine every stool, and look forward to every evacuation, resembles much more devotion to an idol than sensible and enlightened knowledge. In France, this à posteriori system is still more popular than with us, and no one can witness, without some feeling either of ridicule or contempt, the devotion which is paid to Cloacina in the schools of Broussais. In them it seems to be a point not yet decided, whether the physician was made for the night-table, or the night-table for VOL. XI. No. 21. 2 the physician; but sure it is, that, between mucous inflammation as the disease, and leeches and purgatives as its cure, his skill is mainly, if not wholly occupied, In this remark we restrict ourselves to the adherents of Broussais-the followers of Laennec, perhaps ride another hobby—and, whether the complaint be referred to the head or the toe, whether the ostensible symptoms be cerebral or thoracic, mucous action must explain all, and all must be treated by fundamental remedies. It were unnecessary to observe that, like the stomach, the intestines are composed of three coats, did not their different textures and functions render them obnoxious to different forms of disease; but the symptoms of each are very much alike, and the treatment of all generally similar. From the peculiar situation of the mucous coat it is most frequently exposed to the causes of disease, and when diseased, is characterized by phenomena peculiar to itself, the most palpable of which are merely functional. It may, however, as we shall see hereafter, be very extensively disorganized without betraying any symptoms; and if we have any data pathognomonic of peritoneal and muscular inflammations of the fæcal tube, they are exceedingly equivocal, and require an extensive experience to render them available. Like inflammation of all other contiguous textures, the action of the one is easily transferable to the other, many of the signs of each are common to both, and a diagnosis between them must be more appreciated for nosological than practical purposes. It is, perhaps, true, as our author insists, that muscular fibre, when inflamed, often ends in gangrene, that serous texture frequently forms false membrane, and mucous tissue is disposed to end in ulceration; but it is also true that all of these terminations may be variously modified, and that each of these tissues may pass into any of these states. Thus. Dr. Pemberton observes that inflammation of the mucous coat generally ends by throwing out coagulable lymph, which may be discovered in the stools, resembling shreds of boiled macaroni; and it is daily seen in enteritis, dysentery, consumption and fever, that the muscular and peritoneal coats are by no means exempt, either from gangrene, or ulcerative disease. To decide, therefore, with precision upon the texture deranged, even by the nature of the post-mortem appearances, might frequently be hazardous, and if so in cases which have run their course, and in which our diagnosis is enlightened by seeing the effects of disease after death, is it not more strikingly certain in cases which are still in progress, and which furnish nothing in aid of our investigations but equivocal symptoms very imperfectly pronounced? We fear that the Dr. has on this point refined too much, when he observes that muscular inflammation is marked by obstructed bowels, and that an unaffected state of the intestinal functions characterises an inflammatory state of the peritoneal coat. Admitting with the Dr. that inflammation of the mucous coat is always marked by diarrhoea, in opposition to the authority of our best writers, our own experience, and the testimony of Broussais himself, we apprehend it will be generally allowed that peritonitis is nearly as often accompanied with constipation as enteritis, that the alvine functions may remain undisturbed in either, and that, if there be no diagnostic character between them better marked than obstruction during the disease and gangrene after death, it will prove a very fallible criterion. "But, besides the various forms of inflammatory affections of the intestinal canal, there is a class of diseases entirely distinct, namely, that which affects it simply as a |