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coroner for Middlesex, Mr. Wakley, who is also the editor of the Lancet. The Inquest, according to the report in that paper, was held on the body of a man, who, in the act of disputing with his master about his wages, "turned suddenly pale, and fell speechless and insensible for a time, breathing heavily until his neckerchief was loosed. In falling, his head struck the edge of a door and received a deep wound three inches long, from which blood flowed enough to soak through a thick mat on the floor." Before being taken from his master's shop to his own house, he recovered sufficiently to complain of pain of his head; -and this fact I beg you will particularly mark. "His wife immediately sent for a doctor:" and what do you think was the first thing the doctor did,-what can you possibly imagine was the treatment which this wise man of Gotham put in practice the moment he was called to a person who had fallen down in a FAINT, and who, from the injury occasioned by the fall, had lost blood "enough to soak through a thick mat?" Why, to bleed him again! And what do you think was the quantity of blood he took from him? More than THREE PINTS! The landlady of the house, and she was corroborated by other witnesses, swore that "she thought that about Three and a fifth Pints of blood were taken besides what was spilt on the floor. The bleeding, she calculated, occupied twenty minutes. The bandage also got loose in bed, and some blood, not much, was lost there before its escape was discovered. He had CONVULSIONS On Saturday, after which he lay nearly still, occasionally moving his head. On Sunday he was more EXHAUSTED and quiet; in the evening he was still feebler, and on Monday afternoon, at ten minutes to one, without having once recovered his sensibility to surrounding objects, he died." Remember, Gentlemen, he did recover his sensibility AFTER he left his master's shop,-he even complained of headache; but after having been bled by the doctor he relapsed into his former state of unconsciousness. How could he possibly survive such repeated loss of blood? That he died from such loss of blood was the opinion of every person who heard the evidence, till

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Mr. Wakley the Coroner, luckily for "the doctor," had the corpse opened. Then sure enough, just as in the case of the dog that was bled to death, the internal veins were found to be turgid and CONGESTED throughout. ceived by this very constant result of any great and sudden loss of blood, Mr. Wakley and the jury were now convinced, not that the man had been bled, to death, but that he had not been bled enough! One of the strongest proofs of bad treatment was thus received as evidence of the best possible treatment under the circumstances—and a verdict pronounced accordingly! That an ignorant coroner and an ignorant jury should be imposed upon in this manner, is nothing very wonderful; but that the Editor of the Lancet, who publishes the case, and who from his position knows every thing going on at the present time in the medical world, should in his capacity of coroner pass over, without a word of reprobation, a mode of practice no conceivable circumstances could justify, only shows the lamentable state of darkness in which the profession are at this very moment on every thing connected with the proper treatment of disease! When St. John Long, or any other unlicensed quack, by an over-dose or awkward use of some of our common remedies, chances to kill only one out of some hundreds of his dupes, he is immediately hunted to death by the whole faculty; but when a member of the profession at one bleeding takes more blood by three times than is taken on any occasion by practitioners who kill their man every day with the lancet,— not from a strong powerful man, but from a person so weakly that during the excitement of a trifling dispute with his master, he fainted and fell, and in falling had already lost blood enough to soak through a thick mat,-not a word of blame is said! On the contrary, it was all right, or, if there was any error, it was on the safe side! If such things be permitted to be done in the heart of the metropolis, not only without censure, but with something like praise even, homicide may henceforth cease to be looked upon as a reproachable act. The only thing required of the perpetrator is, that he should do it under the sanction of a diploma and secundrum artem!

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perfect in its construction. Whatever suddenly arrests or puts into irregular motion the whole cerebral actions, must with equal celerity

But, Gentlemen, to return to Ague, and the other morbid motions which led to this digression. Some of you may be curious to know how so simple a thing as the Ligature can pro-influence the previous motive condition of every duce such a salutary effect in these disorders. I will tell you how it does this-and the explanation I offer, if received as just, will afford you an additional proof not only that these diseases have all their common origin in the BRAIN; but that they are all the natural consequences of an arrest or other irregularity of the ATOMIC MOVEMENTS of the different portions of that organ; for to the diversity of the cerebral parts, and the diversity of the parts of the body which they respectively influence, we ascribe the apparent difference of these diseases, according to the particular portion of the brain that shall be most affected by some outward agency. Thus, after a blow on the HEAD, or elbow even, one man shall become sick, and vomit; another fall into convulsions; a third shiver, fever, grow delirious, and become mentally insane. In all these diseases, the atomic movements of the Brain being no longer in healthy and harmonious action, the natural control which it exercised in health over every part of the body, must be then more or less withdrawn from the various nerves through which it influenced the entire economy. The consequence of all this is, that some organs are at once placed in a state of torpidity, while others act in a manner alike destructive to themselves, and the other parts of the body with which they are most nearly associated in function. We find palsy of one organ, and spasm or palpitation of another. In fact, if I may be permitted to use so bold a simile, the various organs of the body, when beyond the control of the Brain, resemble so many race-horses that have escaped from the control of their riders-one stands still altogether; another moves forward in the right course perhaps, but with vacillating and uncertain step; while a third endangers itself and everything near it, by the rapidity or eccentricity of its movements. When the atoms of the various parts of the Brain, on the contrary, act in harmony with each other, there is an equally harmonious action of every organ of the body-supposing of course, every organ to be

member and matter of the body-for evil in one case, for good in another. Were you suddenly and without any explanation to put a ligature round the arm of a healthy person, you would to a dead certainty excite his Alarm or Surprise. Now, as both of these are the effects of novel cerebral movements, would you not thereby influence in a novel manner every part of his economy? How should you expect to influence it? Would not most men in these circumstances, tremble or show some kind of muscular agitation ?—their hearts would probably palpitate-they would change colour, becoming pale and red by turns, according as the Brain alternately lost and recovered its controlling power over the vascular apparatus. If the alarm was very great, the pallor and tremor would be proportionally long. But in the case of a person already trembling and pale from another cause, the very natural effect of suddenly tying a ligature round the arm would be a reverse effect--for if the cerebral motive condition should be thereby changed at all, it could only be by a reverse movement; and such reverse cerebral movement would have the effect of reversing every previously existing movement of the body. The face that before was pale, would now become redder and more life-like; the trembling and spasmodic muscles would recover their tone; the heart's palpitations would become subdued into healthy beats; and a corresponding improvement would take place in every other organ and function of the body. The ligature, then, when its application is successful, acts like every other remedial agency; and a proper knowledge of its mode of action affords us an excellent clue to the mode of action of medicinal substances generally,—all of which, as you have already seen, and I shall still further show, are, like the ligature, capable of producing and curing the various morbid motions for which we respectively direct their administration. It is in this manner that every one of the various Passions may cause or cure every disease you can name always excepting, as I have said

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atoms of the brain. The only thing which may prevent some of you from doing your duty on such occasions, is the fear of offending an ignorant nurse or mother, who will think you a monster of cruelty for treating an infant so. Gentlemen, these persons do not know how difficult it is to get a child in convulsions to feel at all;-and in proof of this, I may tell you, that such slaps as in a perfectly healthy child would be followed by marks that should last a week, in cases of this description leave no mark whatever after the paroxysm has ceased. During the fit, the child is so perfectly insensible as to be literally all but half-dead.

before, the properly contagious disorders. The Brain, Gentlemen, is the principal organ to which, in most cases, you should direct your remedial means. When a person faints and falls, whatever be the cause of such faintblow, a purge, or loss of blood-the first thing to be done is, to rouse the Brain. You must throw cold water on his face, put hartshorn, snuff, or burnt feathers to his nose; and a little brandy, if you can get it, into his mouth. You may also slap or shake him strongly with your hand-if you can only make him feel, you will be almost sure to recal him to life: but to think of BLEEDING a person in such a state-ha! ha! After all, this is no laughing matter; for when we see such things done in the nineteenth century, we should rather blush for a profession that would endeavour to screen any of its members from the contempt they merit, when they have so far outraged everything like decency and common sense. The proper treatment of a fit of fainting or convulsion, should be in principle the same as you may have seen practised by any well-informed midwife, in the case of children that are still-peatedly! In addition, they were in the habit born-children all but dead. You may have seen the good lady place the child on her knee and beat it smartly and repeatedly with her open hand on the hips and shoulders, or suddenly plunge it into cold water: now while this is doing, the infant will often give a gasp or two and then cry—that is all the midwife wants. And if you will only follow her example in the case of

INFANTILE CONVULSIONS,

which, after all, are the very same thing as Epileptic fits in the adult,-you will often succeed in substituting a fit of crying,-which, I need hardly say, is attended with no danger at all, for a spasmodic fit, which, under the routine treatment, is never free from it. Only get the child to cry, and you need not trouble yourself more about it,-for no human creature can possibly weep and have a convulsion fit of the epileptic or fainting kind at the same moment. Convulsive sobbing is a phenomenon perfectly incompatible with these movements -for it depends upon a reverse action in the

What is the present routine treatment of an infant taken with convulsion fits? That I can scarcely tell you; but when I settled in London, some six years ago, the COURT doctors, who, of course, give the tone to the profession in the country, had no hesitation in applying all at once the Eight lancets of the cupping instrument behind the ear of infants under six months old,—and that, in some cases, re

of leeching, purging, and parboiling the poor little creatures to death in warm baths! If mothers will really suffer their children to be treated in this manner, surely they only deserve to lose them. The strongest and healthiest child in existence, far less a sick one, could scarcely survive the routine practice. And yet, whether you believe me or not, such fits are

seldom mortal,

Save when the doctor's sent for!

In my experience it is only when the muscles of the wind-pipe become spasmodically involved, that you have any occasion to be anxious-asphyxia and sudden death being sometimes the result of such cases. In adult epilepsy, especially at the commencement of the fit, a very little thing will often at once produce a counter-movement of the Brain sufficiently strong to influence the body in a manner incompatible with its further continuance. The application of so simple a means as the ligature may then very often do this at once; but, like every other remedy frequently resorted to, it will be sure to lose

its good effect when the patient has become || complex subjects to their elements-in diving accustomed to it; for in this and similar cases, everything depends upon the suddenness and unexpectedness of the particular measure put in practice, whether you influence the Brain of a patient in a novel manner or not. The sudden cry of "fire" or "murder," nay, the unexpected singing of some old song, in a situation, or under circumstances which surprised the person who heard it, has charmed away a paroxysm of the severest pain. the army, the unexpected order for a march or a battle will often empty an hospital. The mental excitement thereby produced, has cured diseases which had baffled all the efforts of the most experienced medical officers. In the words of Shakspeare, then, you may positively and literally

Fetter strong madness with a silken thread,
Cure ache with air, and agony with words!

LECTURE VII.

In

UNITY OF ALL THINGS DISEASES OF WOMEN

CANCER-TUMOUR-PREGNANCY-PARTURITION

ABORTION-TEETHING-HEREDITARY PERIODICITY.

GENTLEMEN, Many of you have doubtless read or heard of Dr. Channing, of Boston, one of the boldest and most eloquent of American writers. In a little Essay of his, entitled "Self-Culture," I find some observations bearing so strongly upon the subject of these lectures, that I cannot resist the temptation to read them at length. How far they go to strengthen the view I have thought it right to instil into your minds, you will now have an opportunity of judging for yourselves :-" Intellectual culture," says this justly eminent person, consists, not chiefly, as many are apt to think, in accumulating informationthough this is important; but in building up a force of thought which may be turned at will on any subjects on which we are forced to pass judgment. This force is manifested in the concentration of the attention-in accurate, penetrating observation-in reducing

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beneath the effect to the cause-in detecting the more subtle differences and resemblances of things-in reading the future in the present,—and especially in rising from particular facts to general laws or universal truths. This last exertion of the intellect-its rising to broad views and great principles, constitutes what is called the philosophical mind, and is especially worthy of culture. What it means, your own observation must have taught you. You must have taken note of two classes of men-the one always employed on details, on particular facts-and the other using these facts as foundations of higher, wider truths. The latter are philosophers. For example, men had for ages seen pieces of wood, stones, metals falling to the ground. NEWTON seized on these particular facts, and rose to the idea that all matter tends, or is attracted, towards all matter, and then defined the law according to which this attraction or force acts at different distances;-thus giving us a grand principle, which we have reason to think extends to, and controls, the WHOLE Outward CREATION. One man reads a history, and can tell you all its events, and there stops. Another combines these events, brings them under ONE VIEW, and learns the great causes which are at work on this or another nation, and what are its great tendencies-whether to freedom or despotism-to one or another form of civilisation. So one man talks continually about the particular actions of this or that neighbour,—while another looks beyond the acts to the inward principle from which they spring, and gathers from them larger views of human nature. In word, one man sees all things apart and in fragments, whilst another strives to discover the harmony, connexion, UNITY of ALL."

That such UNITY, Gentlemen, does actually and visibly pervade the whole subject of our own particular branch of science-the History of human diseases,-is a truth we have now, we hope, placed equally beyond the cavil of the captious and the interested. In this respect, indeed, we find it only harmonising with the history of every other thing in nature. But in making INTERMITTENT FEVER OR AGUE the type or emblem of this unity of disease, we

must beg of you, at the same time, to keep || passing in one case into a fever apparently constantly in view the innumerable diversities of shade and period, which different intermittent fevers may exhibit in their course.

has been said of Faces,

Facies non omnibus una,

Nec diversa tamen

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And the same may with equal truth be said of Fevers-all have resemblances, yet all have differences. For, betwixt the more subtle and slight thermal departures from Health,-those scarcely perceptible chills and heats, which barely deviate from that state, and the very intense cold and hot stages characteristic of an extreme fit of ague, you may have a thousand differences of scale or degree. Now as it is only in the question of scale that all things can possibly differ from each other, so also is it in this that all things are found to resemble each other. The same differences of shade remarkable in the case of temperature may be equally observed in the motive condition of the muscles of particular patients. One man, for example, may have a tremulous, spasmodic, or languid motion of one muscle or class of muscles simply-while another shall experience one or other of these morbid changes of action in every muscle of his body. The chills, heats, and sweats, instead of being in all cases universal, may in many instances be partial only. Nay, in place of any increase of perspiration outwards, there may be a vicarious superabundance of some other secretion within;

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continued-in another, reverting by successive changes of shade into those happier and more harmonious alternations of temperature, motion, and period, which Shakspeare, with his usual felicity, figured as the "fitful fever" of healthy life. If you take Health for the standard, everything above or beneath itwhether as regards time, temperature, motion, or rest, is Disease. When carefully and correctly analysed, the symptoms of such disease, to a physical certainty, will be found to resolve themselves into the symptoms or shades of symptom, of Intermittent Fever. Fever, instead of being a thing apart from man, as your school doctrines would almost induce you to believe, is only an abstract expression for a greater or less change in the various revolutions of the matter of the body. FEVER and DISEASE, then, are ONE and IDENTICAL. They are neither "essences" to extract, nor "entities" to combat-they are simply variations in the phenomena of the corporeal movements; and in most cases, happily for mankind, they may return to their normal state without the aid of physic or physicians. The same reparative power by which a cut or a bruise, in favourable circumstances, becomes healed, may equally enable every part of a disordered body to resume its wonted harmony of action. How often has nature in this way triumphed over physic, even in cases where the physician had been only too busy with his interference! It is in these cases of Escape that the general

credit of a Cure.

of this, you have evidence in the dropsicality of medical men arrogate to themselves the swellings, the diarrhœas, the bilious vomitings, and the diabetic flow of urine with which certain patients are afflicted. In such cases, and at such times, the skin is almost always dry. The same diversity of shade which you remark in the symptoms may be equally observed in the period. The degree of duration, completeness, and exactness of both paroxysm and remission, differs with every case. The cold stage, which in most instances takes the patient first-in individual cases may be preceded by the hot. Moreover, after one or more repetitions of the fit, the most perfect ague may become gradually less and less regular in its paroxysms and periods of return;

"It was a beautiful speculation of Parmenio," remarks Lord Bacon, "though but a speculation in him, that all things do by scale ascend to UNITY." Do I need to tell you, Gentlemen, that everything on this earth which can be weighed or measured, is MATTER -Matter in one mode or another? What is the difference betwixt a piece of gold and a piece of silver of equal shape and size? A mere difference of degree of the SAME qualities, -a different specific gravity, a different colour, a different ring, a different degree of malleability, a different lustre. But who in his senses would deny that these two substances

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