I directed her to use an opium suppository nightly, which she did for a month, and she was thus enabled to carry her child to the full time. She has had two children since, and all three are now well and thriving. I have succeeded in similar cases with the internal exhibition of quinine, iron, hydrocyanic acid, &c. But opium, where the drug does not decidedly disagree, will be found the most generally useful of our medicines in checking the habit of miscarriage. Need I tell you that in no case should it be continued where it excites vomiting?

The tendency to return of any action which has once taken place in the constitution, is a law even in some effects of accidents. A lady who, from fright during a storm, miscarried of her first child, a Boy, never afterwards, when pregnant with boys, could carry them beyond the time at which she miscarried of the first. On the other hand, she has done well with every one of her daughters, five in number, all of whom grew to womanhood.

To mothers and nurses, next to Pregnancy and Parturition, there is no subject so interesting as

TEETHING.

By both the birth of the first Tooth, like the birth of a first Child, is commonly expected with a certain degree of anxiety, if not of fear. Why is this? Why, but because, as in the case of Pregnancy, before the dormant germ can be called into action-before the embryo tooth can be developed-there must be a complete corporeal REVOLUTION, an intermittent FEVER of more or less intensity, varying according to the varying conditions of particular constitutions? And what a curious unity runs through all creation, producing those wonderful anaFogies that alone can lead us to the proper study of nature! The embryo tooth, like the embryo infant, is the offspring of a wombtiny indeed, but still rightly enough termed by the profession matrix-that being only another Latin word for uterus or womb. Both also are ushered into the world by Fever. healthy and vigorous the child, the more subdued will the Teething Fever for the most part be, and the Teething itself will consequently

The more

be less painfully accomplished; just as under the same circumstances the parturient mother will more surely bring forth her young in safety. In those cases, on the contrary, where the child is weakly or out of health, the Fever will be proportionally severe. The generality of teething children, after having been comparatively well during the day, become feverish at a particular hour in the night. Now, the newlydeveloped tooth, though in the first instance itself a mere effect of the fever, very soon contributes, by the painful tension which its increasing growth produces in the gum, to aggravate and prolong the constitutional disorder. It is first an effect, and then a superadded cause, or aggravant. Gentlemen, in this Fever we have a fresh illustration of the Unity of Disease-a fresh proof that Intermittent Fever, in some of its many shades, is the constitutional revolution which ushers in every kind of corporeal disorder. How many varieties of local disease may be produced during the Intermittent Fever of Teething! Every spasmodic and paralytic distemper you can name-convulsions, apoplexy, lock-jaw, squint, curved spine, with all the family of structural disorders, from cutaneous rash and eruption to mesenteric disorganisation and dysentery. Should the gum be lanced in these cases? Who can doubt it? If you found the painful tension produced by the matter of an abscess keeping up a great constitutional disorder, would you not be justified in letting out the matter with a lancet? The cases are similar. In many instances of Teething, then, the gum-lancet may be used with very great advantage-but with greater advantage still may direct attention to the temperature your of the child's body. When that is hot and burning, when its little head feels like fire to your hand, pour cold water over it, and when you have sufficiently cooled it throughout, it will in most cases go to sleep in its nurse's arms. During the chill-fit, on the contrary, you may give it an occasional tea-spoonful of weak brandy-and-water, with a little dill or aniseed to comfort and warm it having recourse also to friction with hot flannel, or to the warm bath. During the period of remission, the exhibition of small doses of calomel, quinine,

you

or opium, with prussic acid occasionally, will often anticipate the subsequent fits, or render them trifling in comparison with those that preceded them.

But, Gentlemen, I should explain to you that you may sometimes be met with considerable opposition on the part of the wiseacres of the profession, when you propose Quinine or Prussic Acid in infantile disease,in the cases of infants suffering from convulsions and flatulence. You remember what I told you of this disease—that infantile convulsion depends in every instance upon cerebral exhaustion. It is often the effect of cold, and frequently follows upon a purge; I have known the disease come on after the application of a leech. "No fact," says Dr. Trotter, "is better known to the medical observer, than that frequent convulsions are a common consequence of the large loss of blood." And you may recollect that in the experiment of the animal bled to death by Dr. Seeds, flatulence and convulsions were among the symptoms produced by the evacuation. Some years ago, I was requested to visit a child affected with convulsions; before I saw it, the poor little thing had been the subject of thirteen distinct fits, with an interval of remission of longer or shorter duration between each. What do you think was the treatment to which this infant had been in the first instance subjected by the practitioner, then and previously in attendance? Though its age was under six months, and the disease clearly and obviously remittent, he had ordered it to be cupped behind the ear,-afraid, as he explained to me, of the old mechanical bugbear, PRESSURE on the brain. How compatible this doctrine, permanency of cause, with remission of symptom! The quantity of blood taken was about an ounce, but the convulsions recurred as before. This was the reason why I was called in. The child at that particular moment had no fit-so after taking the trouble to explain the nature of the symptoms to the attending Sangrado, I suggested Quinine as a possible preventive. The man of cups and lancets stared, but acceded. The quinine, however, upon trial, proving abortive in this instance, I changed it, according to my cus

tom, for prussic acid-after taking which, the infant was free from fits for a period of at least five or six weeks,-when the convulsive paroxysm recurred-from what cause, I know not, unless it might be from a Purge which its mother injudiciously gave it on the morning of recurrence. The flatulence, too, with which the child was all along troubled, began to diminish from the moment it took the prussic acid. You may perhaps ask me in what dose I prescribed the acid here. I ordered one drop to be mixed with three ounces of cinnamon water, and a tea-spoonful of the mixture to be given every two hours all that day—so that there is no earthly agent, however powerful, even in a small quantity, that may not, by farther diminution, be adapted to any state and strength-to any age or condition of life for which you may be desirous of prescribing it. In this respect, medicine resembles every thing in nature. In the case of colours, for example,-the most intense blue and the deepest crimson, by the art of the painter, may each be so managed that the eye shall not detect, in his design, a trace of either one or the other. In the case of the infant just mentioned, the dose of prussic acid was about the twenty-fourth part of a drop, and its good effects were very immediate and very obvious. Nevertheless, when the attending practitioner came in the morning to see the little patient, then completely out of danger, he was so horrified by the medicine which had produced the improvement, that he stated to the family he could not, in conscience, attend with me any longer. He accordingly took his leave of the child he himself had brought into the world, and all because he, -a man-midwife!-could not approve of the treatment that saved its life. Yet this very person, without hesitation, let loose all at once the Eight lancets of the cupping instrument on the head of the same infant, whose age, be it remembered, was under six months! Gentlemen, though I will not condescend to name the individual who, having so heroically, in this instance, swallowed the camel, found such a difficulty afterwards in approaching the gnat, I may state for your diversion that he is a very great little man in his way-being no

LECTURE VIII.

THE SENSES-ANIMAL MAGNETISM-THE PASSIONS

BATHS-EXERCISE-HOMOEOPATHY.

GENTLEMEN,

The CAUSES of DISEASE, we have seen, can only affect the body through one or more of the various modifications of nervous perception. No disease can arise independent of this-no disease can be cured without it. Who ever heard of a corpse taking the Small-pox? or of a tumour or a sore being healed in a dead body? A dreamer or a German novelist might imagine such things. Even in the living subject, when nerves have been accidentally paralysed, the most potent agents have not their usual influence over the parts which such nerves supply. If you divide the pneumo-gastric nerves of a living dog nerves which, as their name imports, connect the BRAIN with the Lungs and Stomacharsenic will not produce its accustomed effect on either of these organs. Is not this one of many proofs that an external agent can only influence internal parts BANEFULLY, at least, by means of its Electric power over the nerves leading to them? Through the same medium, and in the same manner, do the greater number of our Remedial Forces exert their saluTARY influence on the human frame. But whether applied for good or for evil, all the forces of nature act simply by Attraction or Repulsion. The Brain and Spinal Columnthe latter a prolongation of the former-are the grand centres upon which every medicine sooner or later tells, and many are the avenues by which these centres may be approached. Through each of

THE FIVE SENSES,

the Brain may be either beneficially or banefully influenced. Take away these, and where would be the joys, sorrows, or the DISEASES of mankind?

We shall first speak of SIGHT. The view of a varied and pleasant country may, of itself, improve the condition of many invalids-while

a gloomy situation has too often had the reverse effect. There are cases, nevertheless, in which pleasant objects only pain and distract the patient by their multiplicity or brightness. Night and darkness, in such circumstances, have afforded both mental and bodily tranquillity. The presence of a strong light affects certain people with headache; and there are persons to whom the first burst of sunshine is troublesome, on account of the fit of sneezing it excites. A flash of lightning has caused and cured the palsy. Laennec mentions the case of a gentleman who, when pursuing a journey on horseback, suddenly arrived at an extensive plain. The view of this apparently interminable waste affected him with such a sense of suffocation that he was forced to turn back. Finding himself relieved, he again attempted to proceed; but the return of the suffocative feeling forced him to abandon his journey. The common effects of gazing from a great height are giddiness, dimness of sight, with a sense of sickness and terror; yet there are individuals who experience a gloomy joy upon such occasions; and some become seized with a feeling like what we suppose inspiration to be a prophetic feeling, that leads them to the utterance and prediction of extravagant and impossible things. Others again, under such circumstances, have an involuntary disposition to hurl themselves from the precipice upon which they stand. Sir Walter Scott, in his Count Robert of Paris, makes Ursel say, "Guard me, then, from myself, and save me from the reeling and insane desire which I feel to plunge myself in the abyss, to the edge of which you have guided me." Any kind of motion upon the body may affect the Brain for good or for evil; and through the medium of the Eye novel motion acts upon it sometimes very curiously. Who of you has not experienced giddiness from a few rapid gyrations? Everything in the room then appears to the eye to turn round. If for a length of time you look from the window of a coach in rapid. motion, you will become dizzy; the same thing produces sickness with some. Many people become giddy, and even epileptic, from looking for a length of time on a running stream; with others, this very stream-gazing

You must, of course, assume a very imperturbable gravity, and keep your eye firmly fixed upon the patient, in order to maintain your mental ascendency. On no account must you allow your features to relax into a smile. If you perform your tricks slowly and silently in a dimly-lit chamber, you will be sure to make an impression. What impression?-Oh! as in the case of the streamgazer, one person will become dreamy and entranced; another, sleepy; a third, fidgetty, or convulsed. Who are the persons that, for the most part, submit themselves to this mummery? Dyspeptic men, and hysteric women -weak, curious, credulous persons, whom you may move at any time by a straw or a feather. Hold up your finger to them, and they will laugh; depress it, and they will cry! So far from being astonished at anything I hear of these people, I only wonder it has not killed some of them outright-poor fragile things! A few years ago I took it into my head to try this kind of pawing in a case of epilepsy. It certainly had the effect of keeping off the fit; but what hocus-pocus has not done that? I have often done the same thing with a stamp of my foot. In a case of cancer upon which I tried the "passes," as these manipulations are called, the lady got so fidgetty, I verily believe, if I had continued them longer, she would have become hysterical or convulsed! That effects remedial and the reverse, however, may be obtained from them, I am perfectly satisfied. Nor do I mean to deny that in a few-a very few instances, these, or any other monotonous motions, may produce some extraordinary effects effects which, however, are the rare exception instead of the general rule. Whatever any other cause of Disease may produce on the human body,

please. There is no more difficulty in believing this than there is difficulty in believing that the odour of a rose, or the sight of a cat, will make certain people swoon away. This much, then, I am disposed to admit.—But when the animal magnetisers assert that the senses may be transposed,-that the stomach may take the office of the eye, and render that beautiful organ, with all the complete but complex machinery by which it conveys light and shadow to the Brain, a work of supererogation on the part of the Creator, I turn from the subject with feelings of invincible disgust. If it be objected that the magnetisers have produced persons of both sexes who with their eyes closed and bandaged read a book placed upon their stomach by means of that organ, through waistcoat, boddice, and heaven knows what all!-I reply, that the charlatans of all countries every day perform their tricks with a swiftness that altogether eludes the unpractised eye. Thousands of persons have seen the Indian juggler plant a mango-stone in the ground, and in the course of a few minutes do what nature can only do in the course of years, make it successively produce a plant with leaves, blossoms, and lastly, fruit! How this trick is done, the witnesses who describe it know no more than you or I do how the magnetisers perform their juggleries; but few who have seen the Indian trick believe in the reality of any one of the various transformations with which their eyes have been cheated. Gentlemen, the transposition of the senses, is only an old whimsy, newly dressed up under the name of "clairvoyance." We read in Hudibras of

Rosicrucian virtuosis

Who see with Ears and hear with Noses!

The greater part of the influence of external impressions upon the eye, as upon other organs, depends upon novelty solely, for pomp and pageantry affect the actors and the spectators in exactly opposite ways. With what different feelings, for example, the courtier approaches his Sovereign, from a person newly "presented!" The one, all coolness, looks