THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCES. No. XLV. November, 1838. Lea and Blanchard.

We cannot do better, in endeavoring to recommend this desirable book to the patronage of every medical man in the United States, than copy a portion of the Editor's Address to his readers and correspondents.

Our readers will perceive, from the present Number, that several changes, and we trust improvements, have been made in this Journal. The most important of these is the introduction of a new department-that of Monographs. In this department it is intended to insert a series of elaborate articles, of a similar character to those in the American Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine and Surgery; the publication of which, it is hoped, will lessen the regret generally expressed at the suspension of that work. A select Bibliography will in future be appended to each of these articles.

Among the minor improvements may be mentioned an enlargement of the page, and a more distinct type. This Journal originated under the influence of physicians belonging to different states, and most of the Medical Schools of the Union, and has been exclusively devoted to the honor and advancement of professional reputation and usefulness, unshackled by sectional, personal or party feelings. The object of its institution was to form a great National Work, one which should conduce to the improvement and elevation of the profestion at home, and tend to render it better known and more respected abroad. The complimentary manner in which this Journal has been everywhere received, and the frequency with which it is quoted by foreign writers the extensive patronage accorded to it-the respectability and number of the contributors to its pages, comprising a large portion of the most distinguished men in the various portions of the union, and professors in different schools-above all, the great extension and advancement of medical literature amongst us since its commencement, would seem to justify the conclusion that the objects of the Journal have not been wholly unattained.

Encouraged by this belief, and under the guidance of the same catholic and elevated views of duty by which he has hitherto been actuated, the editor (the original projector of this Journal) will undeviatingly continue the course thus far pursued. With renewed ardor in the cause-the advantage of eleven years experience, and the assistance of his numerous, able, and zealous collaborators, he trusts to be able still farther to promote the great interests of the profession, and the cause of truth and science.

The profession throughout the country are invited to sustain the work; in its success all who desire the real advancement of medical science, and the elevation of professional character, are deeply interested.

The number before us abounds with capital papers, far too numerous to notice. Dr. Jackson, of Philadelphia, has another excellent paper on the Diagnosis of Delirium Tremens, worthy the attention of the profession in general, and beneficial to the interest of the community at large. We have seen so many persons unexpectedly attacked by this ferocious complaint-persons whose outward habits of life denied the probability of their subjection to such calamity-and we have witnessed so many fatal results from the want of firmness in their medical advisers, that we earnestly intreat the attention of the faculty to the statements given in the above comprehensive detail. The singular case, lately reported in the public prints, and still more lately contradicted, of the discovery of the dental ligament, is here satisfactorily set at rest. We give the account verbatim.

DESCRIPTION OF THE LIGAMENTUM DENTIS.

BY PAUL B. GODDARD, M. D.

A few months since, an advertisement appeared in the Philadelphia newspapers, stating that a dentist, by the name of Humphreys, possessed the power of extracting teeth with very little force or pain, and by a mode peculiar to himself. Conceiving that he possessed merely an improved form of forceps, or some similar instrument, it excited but little attention on my part. But when I was informed, by Mr. Rorer, that another dentist, and the original discoverer of the new method, (Dr. Caldwell,) had taken out a very difficult tooth for him, without pain, and that the new method consisted in cutting with a penknife something which held the tooth in its place, I resolved to scrutinize the matter closely. Accordingly, I sought Dr. Caldwell's acquaintance, but found him determined to keep his discovery a secret. I then procured a jaw, and making a very careful dissection, satisfied myself of the existence of a ligament. This consists of short, strong, ligamentous fibres, existing on one side of the human tooth only, and unites the neck of the tooth to the edge of the alveolar process. The fibres arise from the edge of the alveolus between the teeth, and proceeding forwards in the case of the molars, and inwards in the case of the incisors, is inserted into the neck of the tooth, not quite the sixteenth of an inch from the edge of the enamel. Its size, (and of course, its strength,) varies with the class of teeth to which it belongs. In the incisores, it is a narrow, tape like band-in the cuspidati and bicuspidati, it is wider, and in the molares, it is as wide as the neck of the tooth and very strong. A few of its fibres are blended with the gum in its neighborhood, and thus we may account for its occasional laceration when a tooth is extracted. Its adhesion to the tooth is stronger than to the jaw, and, if not cut, it is commonly dragged out with the tooth. Its ligamentous character is very distinct, the fibres being white and shining, like tendon.

After making this dissection, I applied to Dr. Caldwell to remove a large molar, which had given me trouble for two or three years, and although my teeth had always yielded with difficulty, he removed the one in question with great ease and very little pain. I have seen several teeth which were extracted by him, and am convinced that he possesses a tast in severing the ligament and removing the tooth which will give him pre-eminent success.

THE LIFE OF HANNAH MORE, WITH NOTICES OF HER SISTERS. By Henry Thompson, M. A. Two Volumes. Carey and Hart.

A valuable addition to standard biography. We earnestly adjure some of the infuriated bigots of the day to peruse attentively this well-written life of the Christian dame, whose works have disseminated the purest morality in every guise, without recourse to fanatical display. Her novel of Colebs in Search of a Wife," ran through ten editions in one year; her dramas have ever been popular in the closet and on the stage; and her various religious and moral essays and poems deserve the celebrity they have attained.

Many interesting anecdotes and letters are interspersed throughout the biography, and we can assure our friends that it is well deserving their approval.

"In the September number of the Bentley's Miscellany, the editor seems to have drawn pretty fully on his American resources. He gives his readers, under the head of a Chapter on Gourmanderie-a chapter complete from the Passages of Foreign Travel of our countryman Isaac Appleton Jewett-without of course giving any intimation of the source from whence it is drawn, and with the precaution of leaving out two or three American allusions and reflections which are to be found in the chapter in Mr. Jewett's book. Then he has an article under the head of Uncle Sam's peculiarities, which is so very coarse and vulgar, that it must have been obtained from the cheapest of the Trollope or Fiddler travellers The number closes with a story called a Night on the Enchanted Mountains, the scene of which is laid in Tennessee. The motto is credited to a Yankee Rhymer, and the whole article bears the marks of having been quietly transferred from its place in some newspaper or Annual, on this side of the water, to its corner in the Bentley."

We have copied this paragraph from a Boston paper, because it corresponds with a statement made by us some few months since, relative to the free and unacknowledged use made in English periodicals of articles written in America-and exhibits the critical acumen of our paper Aristarchs, who are unable to discover merit in an essay or tale of home manufacture, unless from the pen of an acknowledged and successful writer, until the said article has been impudently copied into an English magazine, and puffed as original. Then, the same critics indulge in the usual stereotyped phrases of praise, and puff the foreign reprint as a marvellous affair. We have seen the same number of Bentley's Miscellany quoted above, noticed by several of our editors as a choice specimen of English literature. We have also perused various complacent articles on the popularity of American writers in London, as evinced by the presence of some of their most excellent papers in Bentley's work-but the writer of the paragraph copied above, is the only one who has detected the villany of the theft, and the meagreness of original material in this much lauded but insane periodical.

Our book table is covered with valuable works which we are unable to notice at present. In the review department of the January number, we hope to be able to discharge our critical arrears in full.

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

JAN 19 1918

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