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this more pliable doctrine cannot be reconciled. Of conges tion, as existing in fever, Dr. C. has expressed his doubts; and he has even gone so far as to assert, that he considers venous congestion as an imaginary state resting on no proof.' (P. 147.) But, in another passage, he admits that in fever the brain suffers more from oppression than from irritation, though,' he adds, in some degree from both;' (p. 202.) an assertion which we think approaches very considerably to the doctrine of congestion. Not satisfied, however, with stating his dissent from the doctrine of congestion, particularly when supposed to be combined with feeble action of the heart and arteries, he thus attempts to set the question at rest:

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• An unusual quantity of blood in the veins of any part, during life, can only arise from increased arterial action, or from some cause impeding the return of blood to the heart; the arteries, at the same time, continuing to urge onwards their contents. If, as is here supposed, the action of the heart and arteries were feeble and oppressed, the blood would be carried into the veins with less force, and therefore in less quantity. The reverse of a state of congestion would ensue. And with respect to obstruction to the return of venous blood to the heart, (by which, indeed, congestion might take place in the veins,) no such cause is alleged, or can be supposed to exist, in regard to other organs than the brain; and therefore the phenomena referred to such a source must have a different origin.

With respect to the brain, the case is somewhat different. An impediment to the return of blood by the veins may take place here; but it can only be from the pressure occasioned by the distended state of the arteries, the consequence of their increased action, as already explained.'

On both of these points we are completely at issue with Dr. C.; for we hold that venous congestion is the natural effect of a feeble circulation, which sufficiently appears from the state of the blood-vessels on the approach of dissolution, and after its occurrence. As to any obstruction which distended arteries can cause to the passage of blood through the veins of the encephalon, we can form no conception of it; on the contrary, the effect of such distension would be to give a new support to the venous ramifications, and to hasten the flow of their contents into the sinuses of the dura mater.

The cases detailed by Dr. C. amount to 35; several of which occurred so far back as the year 1805, and the remainder in 1815 and subsequent years. At page 269, we have a very interesting case detailed by the patient himself, shewing very distinctly the benefits of depletion in fever; and in p. 254. we have a not less striking instance of the injurious REV. SEPT. 1822. effects

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effects of the too early employment of wine and other stimulants in this disease. To so great an extent was the practice carried, that the patient (before the author saw him) had been ordered wine ad libitum from the commencement of the illness, and had actually taken from a pint and a half to a bottle of Madeira daily. Among the peculiarities of Dr. C.'s practice in fever, we may mention his dislike to the use of blisters, and his partiality to the employment of digitalis and eluterium. Calomel he considers as valuable chiefly in lingering undecided cases; and he then prescribes it in small repeated doses. Blood-letting is recommended with much caution, particularly in the advanced stages of fever; for he remarks, the loss of even two or three ounces 'will then produce a great effect.' The experience of the Queensberry House Hospital would warrant a much bolder use of the lancet, under the pressure of urgent symptoms, at almost any period of the disease. Of leeches, the Doctor seems to entertain no high opinion, but to prefer the same quantity of blood drawn rapidly from a large vein. Derivation and revulsion are with him antiquated terms. For ourselves, however, we may say that we have yet seen no cause for withdrawing our confidence from this and other modes of topical depletion.

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Notwithstanding the particulars in which we have now felt it our duty to dissent from Dr. C., his work affords evidence of no small share of talent, and well merits a careful perusal. His chapter on contagion, and on the means of preventing the propagation of fever, afforded us particular pleasure, from the very perspicuous and complete, though succinct, account which it gives of these interesting subjects.

ART. VI. A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, on the Subject of the Greeks. By Thomas Lord Erskine. 8vo. 3s. Murray.

1822.

ART. VII. The Policy of England and France at the present Crisis, with respect to the Greeks; reprinted from the Letters of Viator in the Morning Chronicle; with a Preface and Appendix, explaining the Origin of the Greek Insurrection. 8vo. 2s. 6d. Ridgway.

ART. VIII.

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Thoughts on the Greek Revolution. By Charles Brinsley Sheridan, Esq. 8vo. 3s. Murray.

N our Number for July, we noticed with warm commendation Mr. Hughes's animated Address to the People of England in behalf of the Greeks. At the same time, we permitted ourselves to cherish the ardent but hitherto unavailing hope, that the sympathies of a nation, which has habitually arro

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gated to herself and rightfully deserved from others the praise of being foremost in the hallowed cause of humanity and virtue, would not long remain dead to his exhortations.

66 Ω πλεῖστ ̓ ἐπαίνοις εὐλογῶμενον πέδον,

Νῦν σοι τὰ λαμπρὰ ταῦτα δει φαίνειν ἔπη.”

SOPH. Edip. Col. 720.

If these wishes have not been gratified by any act of interference or remonstrance on the part of Great Britain, it is consoling to observe, from the share of public attention which has been dedicated to the sufferings of Greece, the most unambiguous omens of an awakening interest in the conflict which she is sustaining against her spoilers and oppressors. Advocates, clothed in the strength of reason, and wielding the weapons of eloquence, are almost hourly rising in her vindication; and when a strong sentiment, which has truth and justice for its basis, is excited in England, it does not usually exhaust itself merely in splendid discourse and polished declamation.

Among those who have thus endeavored to rouse the dormant sensibilities of the country, it was with great satisfaction, or rather delight, that we saw the venerable name of Lord Erskine. The characters of our great men are the most valuable of our inheritances; and it is pleasing to remark them preserving, to the last season of their lives, the same unity of purpose and consistency of principle which distinguished their early efforts in support of the civil rights and the social happiness of mankind. If age has in some degree dimmed the lustre and vivacity of the noble Lord's eloquence, it has not abated the characteristic ardor of his mind. He is still qualis ab incepto.

Lord Erskine laments that his Majesty has not long since been addressed by both branches of the legislature, to fulfil the duty of a Christian sovereign by an instant endeavour to terminate the perpetration of those unutterable crimes which have so long been suffered to disgrace the Turkish domination.' He maintains that our not exerting ourselves to deliver the Greeks from the tyrannous dominion which afflicts them is not only the breach of a moral duty, but a dereliction of the sacred object of spreading the Gospel.' He builds the right of interference, however, for which he contends, not on the Antichristian faith of the Mohammedan conquerors, (a cause of interference which he expressly disclaims,) but on the peculiar and unsocial policy which they have uniformly pursued. "It is their casting off all the restraints which characterize the social world, that can alone give a right to other nations

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nations to controul them? In a nation, so zealously pledged to the extirpation of the African slave-trade as Great Britain, the following appeal cannot, we should presume, be inefficacious:

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What, my Lord, are the sufferings, dreadful and detestable as they were, of almost a savage in the state of nature, like the unhappy African, when made the victim of this mercenary traffic, what were his sufferings when compared with those which are notoriously passing every day throughout the East? The simple abduction of women, and the separation of parents from their children, by carrying them into captivity of any description, are inhuman outrages in the lowest conditions of existence, but how much more dreadfully do they act upon families in cultivated life? How inexpressible must be their pangs, when with all the more refined feelings inspired by civilization brutal ravishment is the almost certain consequence of abduction; the blood of unhappy infants often pouring out before their mother, who suckled them at her breasts, too soon, perhaps, to be forcibly exposed to the assassin of her husband and her children.

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Such abominations seldom or never occurred in the African slave-trade, detestable as it was. The plea of necessity was for some time also so plausibly on its side, from the existence of British property in equatorial latitudes, where no other labour could be so readily obtained, that even a British parliament for a long time continued to sanction it, until the glorious spring-tide of humanity broke in, at last, like a torrent, sweeping away before it whatever interrupted its course. But the slavery of the East, my Lord, never had any thing to cover the nakedness of its iniquity. The bulk of her slaves were not for labour under suns which Europeans could not endure, but principally for the odious purposes of voluptuousness and lust, and aggravated as they now are, amidst the rage and bitterness of war, are attended with such brutal and undescribable crimes, as, putting aside all Christian sympathies, might make us blush that we are men. I feel, whilst I am writing, that the ink must first have become blood, to enable me fitly to express my detestation and abhorrence. - It appears to me, indeed, that the abolition of the slave-trade, which raised this nation above all created beings since the beginning of the world, cannot be said to be complete not only whilst such monstrous abuses of slavery are predominant, but whilst any traffic in human beings whatsoever is suffered to exist. When found among savages, we can do no more than attempt to humanize them, as we have always endeavoured to do, but when encouraged or publicly tolerated by any civilized nation, though I do not mean to assert it to be a cause of war, yet all such nations ought to be rejected as allies.

When we abolished the African slave-trade by act of parliament, it could, in strictness, only apply to prohibit that traffic by our own subjects; but did we stop there on that account? Did we consider our duty could not extend beyond our own jurisdic

tion, as the utmost limit of positive law? No, my Lord, to our immortal honour we did not; on the contrary, we have ever since been exerting ourselves, with other nations, to extinguish it throughout the world; and that able and excellent man, Lord Lansdowne, when he moved an address to his Majesty on the subject, only a few weeks ago, did not limit his views to the promotion of amicable arrangements with friendly states, but even extended them to the consideration of compelling, by the common consent of those governments that had abandoned it, any others which should continue to give it sanction and support.'

The noble letter-writer considers the contention in which the Greeks and the Turks are at present involved, to be for the soil itself which they inhabit, and that they cannot remain together, except in such a state of murderous interminable hostility, as ought to be considered a public nuisance to all mankind.' He maintains (and on this head there cannot be a dissentient voice) the title of the Greeks to a free and undisturbed territory, their own by descent and national inheritance, commensurate at least with their present population; a territory, he observes, unjustly violated by Turkish usurpation; and he argues that in such a case nations have a right, and are obliged by duty, to overthrow the spoiler, if he resists just accommodation, and to restore possession to the oppressed. Lord Erskine, however, does not stop here. He asserts that the alliance with the Porte is unworthy of the British government and people, and that it became us to withdraw our ambassador from Constantinople, and reject such banditti as our allies.' The King of Great Britain, he says, ought not to be styled the brother of the Sultan, while the desolation of Scio and the butchery of the hostages are unexpiated. He avows it as his opinion that the Turks should be thrust forth at once from Europe by its united force; and he ridicules the idea of difficulty and danger in the undertaking, from the estimate which he forms of the Greek strength to effect their own redemption. He urges this course of policy with the additional argument, that it is the only effectual mode of interposing a barrier to the ambitious designs of Russia, and to that preponderance in the Mediterranean which her occupation of Constantinople would infallibly give to her.

This is the substance of Lord Erskine's reasoning in the little tract before us. For ourselves, we are far indeed from disowning our share in the indignation which the atrocities of the Turks have kindled in every feeling bosom; or from being unmoved by the enthusiasm which Mr. Hughes, and other writers, have endeavored to excite in the hearts of their countrymen for the oppressed and persecuted Greeks. All

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