fate. Thousands of experienced nurses, male and female, were in the hospitals, trustworthy bearers removed the wounded from the field, and there is universal testimony to the promptitude with which help for the sick and wounded was at hand. After the battle of Chattanoga all the wounded were in hospital, with their wounds dressed, by midnight of the same day, a circumstance before unheard of in the annals of war. After the battle of Chancellorsville, when General Hooker changed his plan of operations, the Commission was informed that 8,000 sick and wounded were immediately to be removed to Washington from the field-hospitals of Potomac, Acquia Creek, and Falmouth. The transport began the same night, and in spite of the shortness of the time, bread, biscuit, coffee, and everything necessary, were provided, and in two days and three nights all were removed into the various hospitals. During and after the battle of Gettysburg a vast quantity of materials, clothes, linen, shoes, food, drink, and cordials, to the value of £15,000, were !distributed among the troops. As the value of its labours, and its non-interference with military administration was recognised, the influence of the Commission with the Government increased. As an instance it may be mentioned that when it was necessary to make a re-appointment to the office of chief of the medical department, on the recommendation of the Sanitary Commission, Lincoln proposed to the Congress Dr. Hammond, a young assistant-surgeon, who in consequence rose from the rank of first-lieutenant to that of a general of brigade. The choice has been fully justified. Thus the Commission, instead of being a fifth wheel to the car of military administration, became its axletree. Although the advantage from these comprehensive labours to the life and health of the soldier is indisputable, we must not omit, in conclusion, to show that the benefit can actually be calculated, and the result set down in figures. It is an admitted fact in modern warfare, that on an average the loss of men by sickness is about three times as great as that in the battle-field and by wounds. In campaigns, however, carried on under unfavourable circumstances, whether avoidable or not, the proportion is far greater. It is, therefore, upon sanitary provision and arrangement that the reduction to the lowest possible rate of the losses in hospital during war in great measure depends. It is quite as essential that the healthy soldier should be well cared for, as that the best arrangements should be made for the sick and wounded. It was at this that the Sanitary Commission aimed, and it ought to be kept in view by every military administration. The sanitary prospects of the American soldier were not very promising, for the arrangements at first were very imperfect; knowledge and experience were wanting. In the year 1861 Dr. Hammond placed the condition of the hospitals in Maryland VIII-29 below those of the Crimea, though they were not so bad in many districts. Investigations in the year 1862 resulted in showing that on the borders of New England the regiments had 74 sick in 1,000, in the centre of the country only 56, and in the Western States 104. The direct influence of neglect is plainly seen in the hospitals at Richmond, in the fate of the Unionist prisoners. During the first three months of 1864, 2,279 were received into the hospitals, of whom more than one half died. In the first years of the war, when no averages had yet been made, the loss from sickness alone, in some divisions of the army, exceeded 8 per cent. The mortality during eighteen years of peace had been on an average 2 per cent. During the Mexican war it reached 10.3 per cent.; that of the British army in the Crimea 20 per cent. After accurate investigation, the mortality of the Union army from wounds and sickness is reckoned at 6 per cent. If, on a moderate calculation, it is estimated that during the four years of war the United States had a million soldiers in the field, at the rate of 6 per cent. 60,000 died. At the rate during the Mexican war, 100,000 would have died; at that of the Crimea, 200,000. As it was clearly owing to the exertions of the Sanitary Commission that improved circumstances were brought about, we may safely say that it saved the country the lives of at least 40,000 men, and according to the Crimean rate it would have been 140,000. Besides this diminished mortality, it is equally clear that by prevention and speedy cure of sickness a much larger number of men were fit for service, and that therefore the army was spared much temporary, as well as absolute loss. Success like this was worth the labour and the sacrifice. In reviewing these events, the impression they make is much deeper than that made by them at the time of their occurrence, or even a few months ago. Then all these surprising performances were on the other side of the Atlantic, and our admiration did not excite us to imitate them, or to make comparisons with them. But now we regard them in a different light. We have since experienced, in our immediate neighbourhood, that notwithstanding the contrast between Europe and America, and the much more favourable conditions of the Old World, the military administration is not capable of fulfilling all the duties of the sanitary department, nor will it be found to be so anywhere. It was the same conviction which, in the interests of humanity, called forth the international treaty of Geneva, by which all nations were called upon to unite in rendering aid. The Relief Associations have been extremely useful in the short, but sanguinary, war of last year; and in this short space of time, if we have not gained all the required experience, we have seen what is wanted, have acquired a knowledge of the work, and how it is to be carried out. The American precedent, which may be regarded as a practical solution of the great questions before us, is therefore worthy of the most attentive consideration. R. VOLZ. LIFE AND DEATH. We are all so familiar with the thought of life and its counter-part death, and see both in such constant action around us, that we seldom or never stop to contemplate their nature or endeavour to fathom their mystery. We call one thing “living," and another "dead," and we are content with the vague idea thus conveyed. We do not try to look below the surface, to discover if possible what is life and wherein it differs from death. Here truly lies the great secret of the universe. From the moment that God, in his third great act of creation, made grass and herb and tree to grow and yield seed and fruit, never for one moment has the succession failed, but wave after wave of teeming life has passed over our globe and sunk again into her bosom, to regenerate and reproduce a succeeding generation. Man and animals, endowed with the same mysterious "force," have come and gone in similar endless variety and succession, marching ever on, coming we know not whence and vanishing again we know not whither. It is not then to be wondered at that philosophers and sages in all ages have tried to fathom the mystery of this animating principle, and have but too often lost themselves in groundless hypothesis and useless conjecture, supposing they were explaining it when at best they were but noting its manifestations and modes of acting. Life and death are the closest links of the "golden chain" which binds us and "the whole round earth" to the feet of God; and are far more noble than any mere material thing, be it sun or star. To study reverently the great enigma of life and death is well worthy of our highest powers. "If the knowledge of things becoming and honourable," says old Aristotle, "be held deservedly in high estimation, and if there be any species of knowledge more exquisite than another, either on account of its accuracy or the objects to which it relates being more excellent or more wonderful, we should not hesitate to pronounce the history of the animating principle justly entitled to hold the first rank." That such has been a common opinion the universal interest which thinking men have taken in the study is the best evidence. What is life? What is the nature of that force or principle in virtue of which I am a sentient, thinking, active being? What is it which moves my heart, stirs my brain, and supports the ceaseless activity of my many functions? What again is death? How does it come about? How is it caused? These questions, so interesting, arrest the thoughts of only a few occupied in the great turmoil of life. Many avoid them from their difficulty; some from fear; many more never think of them at all. Yet is there any change or contrast so striking as that which on all sides we see wrought by the action of this same life and death! In man himself what a change! The restless activity of every part rendered silent and still for ever. Heart and pulse, nerves and brain without a throb or quiver, and yet scalpel and microscope and chemical test may fail to detect any change or want from their former composition or arrangement, yet on a sigh or breath that impalpable, imponderable, ungraspable something has gone which constituted "the being" before us; which rendered "him" capable of loving and being loved; which gave light and intelligence to the eye, the warm grasp to the now shrunken hand; which marked the forehead with the lines of thought, gave high resolves, tender fancies and noble purposes to the brain, and accents of holy praise or cheering hope to the now silent tongue. That mysterious power has gone as inexplicably as it came. For a term of years, perhaps, it has pervaded that now aged form, it has given to what is now but an inert mass a place in the world, by the very activity it engendered it has worn out the machinery by which it worked, and after being cribbed and fettered more and more from the growing imperfection of its instruments, it at last fled, and has left us but this husk, which dissolves so soon as it is so abandoned! How remarkable, too, is the instinctive difference of feeling both man and the lower animals entertain towards their living and dead fellow-creatures. Abraham's desire to bury "out of his sight" his dead and much-loved wife was but the natural revulsion which we all feel when decay begins to efface the cherished features. Not only the tent in which a person died, but he who touched the body, were by the Jews accounted unclean. On the other hand, we have a regard for that which lives or even appears to live. We love the spring, which calls up vege table nature from the sleep of winter and fills our woods with song. We love the restless tide and rippling sea-the driving wind, the "living stream," and the falling torrent. We call them all "lively," and we connect the idea of mirth and gladness with that activity in which they imitate one of the most common manifestations of life. Scenes that are uninteresting and still again we designate as "dead.” It is the presence or recollection of human activity, be it in courage, or endurance, or benevolence, which sanctifies to us some places above others. Further, think how great is the value we put upon life. How much of the sore travail which men undertake is to guard and cherish this divine gift! How will not a man abandon all to retain this, and that too not unfrequently when apparently all its objects and purposes and aims have been annihilated. When | this priceless gem is at stake, be it with ourselves or those dear to us, what can comfort us? The tiny spark which animates the feeble infant may alone sustain the courage of that strong man who has turned the tide of battle or subdued the lion. It is the slender but holy and precious link which binds husband and wife, parent and child together, and how tenaciously they all cling to it! If it is broken, 1 all is lost. How many devices and shifts have men not tried in order to save and prolong it! Amidst storm and hurricane, in battle and sickness, in arctie wilds and tropic deserts, the preservation of this one secret thing has been man's main aim and regard. To shield it from destruction, and heal the dents in its protecting armour, has been the great object of medical science, accumulating from age to age, and studied with a persevering constancy unequalled in any other pursuit. In days gone by it was the dream of science to discover some infallible means of restoring and prolonging it; while in modern times, taking a truer road, that end has been in a considerable measure attained by a study of all those causes which tend to shorten the tenure of it allowed to man. With all this, how curiously inconsistent appears the bonds of union between this principle and the human body. Sometimes the most trifling accident-a slip or fall, the wrench of a fibre, or the giving way of a minute blood-vessel-severs the tie for ever; while at other times no hardship, or suffering, or cruel mutilation, seems to affect it. The brain may be carried away in masses, and the very heart pierced -the frame may be shivered and torn, and the "living" blood poured out in torrents, and yet the citadel is not scaled, nor the royal occupant dethroned. A feeble infant may kill a giant, and he who has circumnavigated the globe, or ruled a hundred fights, may die by a paltry casualty at his own threshold. Again, no human being, however ingenious, has ever been able to endow anything with a semblance of life ❘ as seen even in the lowliest forms of creation. The most ingenious automaton can at best but in a feeble and clumsy way, and for a very limited space, assume the appearance of life. "Eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths." The Promethean fire does not obey man, and no one can even say in what particular part of the frame it resides. It is certainly not to be found in any special speck of grey cerebral matter, nor in the heart (as modern and ancient speculators thought), as life may continue after both are removed. By the action of certain poisons we can make the heart cease to beat, and we can arrest the respiration, and annul muscular power by others, so as to present the extraordinary condition of a dead heart in a living frame, or the contrary, and yet the being is not "dead." We cannot handle it, or see it, or touch it. The chemist cannot produce it, nor the sculptor or painter call it forth; and no man, however powerful, can recall it to the meanest flower or animal when it has once fled. Again, think of the astonishing diffusion of life throughout the universe! In the tiny atom which ur own world presents in the spheres, what a marvellous overflow of living organisms have existed! In the rocks which form the mountains and gird the seas-in the dust which flies before the gale-deep in the soil beneath our feet-in the very air we breathe in the waters which hem in our globe,--everywhere, do we find endless forms of living organisms, or we encounter the graves of millions who have enjoyed life and passed away. It is well known that much of the outer crust of our earth has been formed of the remains of past existences-that great mountains and continents, islands and reefs, have been built of their bodies; so that every square inch of many of its rocks contains millions of bodies, showing that all that now live are but a trifle to those that have already fretted their short span on the stage of life, and passed away even before man himself appeared the remains of the departed often serving to construct the abode of man, and in their decay producing much of the beauty and fertility of our globe.* The ocean flashes from pole to pole with the light emitted by living organisms, or is in some places covered by almost solid masses of their bodies. There is not a space, however solitary, of the burning desert, which is not instinct with life. On the summit of the loftiest mountain, high above the clouds-deep in the "sabbath-depths" of the sea, where no eye but God's ever penetrated-on lonely reef and polar ice-in caves and the most solitary places of the earth-in the very dew-drop which trembles on the leaf, and in the rain and snow which falls on the meadow, we find countless varieties of living beings. In places the most unlikely they occur. Vomited forth from volcanoes-in strong chemical solutions-in the mould on our walls, and in the midst of the tissues and organs of our own bodies, unknown and unheeded forms of existence reside. The whole earth seems too small to contain them, so that as far as the telescope reaches, and as much as the most powerful microscope can discover, does not bring us to the confines of creation; thus the human intellect is baffled in attempting to comprehend the number and variety of their formations. More powerful appliances may yet open up to us realms of being as yet undreamed of, which in beauty may excel all we at present know. Every hour of the day and night calls into activity special multitudes of plants and animals-every variation of temperature replaces one set with another-the summer solstice and the winter's frost have each their own dependants. Further, consider for a moment how all this profusion of life demands for its continuance the abidance of all those physical conditions which the Almighty has established on our globe. If any of these were to fail, even for a short time, if each did not receive the constant upholding care of its Maker, then life on our globe would be no longer possible. If the sun were not to afford light and heat-if the law of gravitation was no longer obeyed-if the electric condition of our globe was seriously disturbed, the whole drama would come to a stand, and life pass away as a vapour.† *The stone of which Paris is built, no less than the materials of the Great Pyramid, is composed for the most part of organic remains. Let me mention a few facts in illustration. Many more could be added. An ounce of sand from the An dred thousand foraminiferous shells. Ehrenberg found in tilles was calculated to contain three million eight hun two cubic feet of the Tripoli slate of Billin, 140 billions of infusorial animalcules. Mountain ranges extend for " It was most natural for those who observed the marvellous influence of the sun's rays, especially in those lands where they are most powerful, in developing life on the earth-how when they were withheld animals and plants languished and died-to suppose that the sun was the source of life. They saw how heat animated and cold killed, and they could trace from pole to equator the continuous augmentation of the sun's power in producing life. But it is not to be found there. The sun's heat but hastens dissolution when life is absent. It cannot beget it, though it can quicken its energies, and give it strength and vigour. So great did Hippocrates suppose the influence of heat in the economy of the world, that he did not scruple to ascribe to it both immortality and omniscience. Light, so helpful to life, and water, which forms so large a bulk of the tissues of both animals and plants, and electricity, which is so largely evolved in the actions of the body, and which can effect such The opinion held by the ancients as to the nature of life was very different from what modern physiologists entertain. They believed it to be an entity which when united or separated from the body caused that body to live or die. Now life is spoken of as the result of organisation-that it results from a certain structure and the action of certain external stimuli on that structure, and that in itself it is the phenomena which arises from their mutual action. It is "a series of effects of which organisation is the origin and cause," and departing when that organisation decays and no longer responds to the stimuli which act upon it. Life was in the olden time ascribed to many sources; to the "elements," as fire, air, earth, and water were erroneously called before they were separated into more simple combinations. Each of these in turn and in union were supposed to originate life. So too light, and heat, and vapour, electricity and motion, also harmony and numbers, was in some obscure way supposed to produce life. The very exhalations from the body-marvels, were, as might be expected, credited with dryness and moisture and other such absurdities, satis- the production of life. Those who on the banks of fied the mystics as explaining life. The materialists the Nile saw, as Humboldt afterwards did in America, thought it more consistent with reason to ascribe its the vast tracts of desiccated mud start into riotous life! production to "a fortuitous concourse of atoms," or to on the periodic return of the waters, might be excused a union of "organic molecules," or to the blind impulse for supposing that heat, mud, and water could in of what they designated "monads or corpuscles, combination beget life. Paracelsus professed to which were the figments of their own imaginations, create his" Homunculus" from the same source. The and which they represented as being acted on by great Napoleon thought that the experiments of a mysterious occult power which they variously called Volta had solved the mystery. The alchymists pro"nature," the "anima mundi," "natura naturans," fessed to have learned the secret, when in their "vis essentialis," "anima vegetativa," "mens de- chemical affinities they confused their brains. The vina," "rerum natura creatrix," &c., &c. This they "Elixor Vita" did not prolong, even to middle life, thought more "philosophical" than recognising an the existence of its discoverer. Chemical affinities ¦¦ all-powerful, omnipresent, moral Governor, and they are but the handmaids of the living principle, and in unhesitatingly explained much by the operation of the organism obey its behests When life is with"laws," while they ignored the lawgiver. In our drawn they are destructive, and not constructive. own day, life, like everything else, is sometimes rc- Many have held that the life of each animal and plant solved into "force," that power which in steam- was but a portion of that one great central animating engine and furnace, in whirlwind and telegraph, is principle which filled the universe and constituted the supposed to pervade and govern the universe, and being of God; "that spirit which rounds the pillars though ever changing its mode of development and of the forest and arches the vaults of the avenue; action, is never lost or annihilated. But no! We which gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, may vary the terms of the problem as we please, and and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organi call it this or that, but our supposed explanations are sation;"-that from one great reservoir of life, from mere words, and are but feeble attempts to express one" who is over all, and works through all, and dwells the modes in which life manifests itself-they do not in all," all animated existences drew their supply touch the real essence, or isolate the underlying during their days or years upon the earth, and that "quid." into it again at death their portion was absorbed. 1,140 geographical miles in one direction, and 840 in another, in Europe alone, composed of white chalk which consists mainly of organic remains. Beneath the Atlantic, for a space of 1,300 miles by a breath of 600, nine-tenths of the mud consists of organic remains, and that at a depth of from 12 to 14,000 feet. Every drop of the great ocean within wide limits is tenanted by a living, sparkling animal, which gives to its waves their wonderful brilliancy. The common aphis, weighing 1-1,000th of a grain, has been calculated to give existence, in one warm season, to no fewer than a quintillion of descendants! Then think of the vast shoals of herring and other fish, of the flights of locusts which darken the air in many countries, and try and calculate the multitudes of living creatures that live or have lived on the earth. In the Scriptures, no less than in the writings of several philosophers, the breath is spoken of as the seat of life, and the breath of the Almighty is, in the former, said to be the animating force. "God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," and he became a living soul. He gathered into him his spirit and his breath." "Thou takest away their breath, they die." "He giveth unto all life, and breath, and all things." ." "Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter unto you, and you shall live.": "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live," and "the breath came unto them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet organisation, and their textures possess peculiar proan exceeding great army; " and so on. The very word animal means breather. Shakespeare often represents life and breath as being synonymous, "Lend me a glass. If that her breath would moist or stain the stone, It is true that respiration is a very necessary function to all animals, but it is not life. In many cases of catalepsy it is in abeyance, so far, at least, as any test can determine, and it is at best but a condition of life in some organisations. Again, Harvey and the great Hunter placed the life in the blood. "The blood," said the former, "is the animating principle, or the substance of which the anima or life is only the act." He, however, at one time makes the life the blood, and at another the blood but the instrument of the life. The Scriptures employ expressions which imply the same thing:"The life thereof which is the blood thereof;" "Ye shall not eat anything with the blood, which is the life," &c.; and Homer represents this idea when he speaks of the life of his heroes escaping with their blood. But however essential the blood may be to the life of animals (and the sap to plants), yet it is not the life. It is, like the respiration, but a condition and not a universal one to its exercise. But enough: such speculations are but gropings in the dark. We are content now-a-days to study the modes of life's manifestations the laws by which it is exercised, and the effects it produces-as these we can expect to find and determine by careful observation directed to the whole field of animated creation; and we no longer try the hopeless task of seizing the central power-the residual element-which remains as much as ever a mystery. It may be a legitimate hope that in "the elder time," when all knowledge is ripe and about to fall, some great master-mind may arise, who, disentangling and combining the scattered threads, may weave them into a beautiful whole, and who, with "a testdrop from the divine fountain," may separate the essential from the unimportant, and, generalising all the facts so laboriously collected, will formulise a law as grand and simple as gravitation or attraction, pervading all animated creation, and regulating health and disease, life and death. It is said that when Newton made his great discovery, and reached the end of his laborious search, he felt inconceivably awe-struck, as if he had suddenly penetrated into the immediate presence of the Almighty. And if such was the sentiment of one who discovered a purely physical law, what will be the feelings of him who shall be permitted to find out the mightier secret, and solve the greatest mystery of the universe? Living beings, as we will see, possess a certain perties. Some of these are purely physical, i.e. they are due to the laws which regulate physical forces; while others, which cannot as yet be so explained, but which appear to depend on something essential and peculiar to living organisms, we term "vital.” In our present ignorance we are content to refer these latter to this unknown source. When these vital functions cease the body is "dead;" but while they continue to act they resist the dissolution of the organism in which they dwell. These physical and vital forces are closely united in organised living bodies. The "functions' are the contributions which each organ makes to the wellbeing of the whole, and their combined activity gives rise to the phenomena of life. These functions are divided into organic or The vegetative," and "animal." former are common to plants and animals, and consist of nutrition, by which the individual grows and is upheld, and reproduction, by which the species is renewed in infinite succession. These are independent of the will. The "animal" functions, again, are peculiar to animals, and acquire a greater complexity and a more perfect development, as they are seen in the higher grades of the animal kingdom. They presuppose a nervous system, and are, in man, in a great measure subject to the will. The animal functions include consciousness, and the power of originating motion. Their possessor thus comes to know that he lives, and he establishes relations between himself and the external world. It is thus that we think, and move, and speak, and see and handle, and so come out of our individual husks and mix with our kind. It is in virtue of these functions that we enjoy that apparent perfectness of the senses by which we encompass so much by the eye and ear. Yet the horizon of our knowledge, and the action of our minds so dependent thereon, is, after all, very contracted by the imperfection of these instruments. But we look for their infinite improvement in that "spiritual body" which, framed to subserve the higher development of the renewed man, will enable him to "see into the life of things;" to hear all the harmonies, and enjoy those things which "it hath not entered into the heart of man even to conceive. By the vegetative functions the body grows, and is supported; while by the exercise of the animal functions it is constantly wasted. Not a thought courses through the brain, or a motion is communicated to the hand, or an image is impressed on the eye, but is attended by a certain waste; and it is to supply this that the vegetative functions labour. Without these organic functions the animal would soon fail, and so finely are our parts adjusted that in another sense the vegetative are dependent on the animal, as it is only by their exercise that food-the pabulum of the vegetative-can be sought for and transmitted along the alimentary canal. The food, however, being got and introduced, is digested and assimilated by the vegetative functions into blood, and from this bounteous current each tissue and |