on going to sea. To what cause are we to attri bute the fever in this case? Surely to a local origin, though perhaps not to one on shore, for there it was likely also to have prevailed amongst the inhabitants. The only circumstance I observed which might in the slightest degree be supposed to have contributed to the production of the disease, was the stench along the Line-wall, produced conjointly by the cffluvia from the sewers which empty there, and the gaseous emanations from the decomposition of seaweed, &c.; and, although I do not wish it to be inferred that sulphuretted hydrogen is the cause of yellow fever, I may here remark, that Major Tulloch observes, in his valuable Medical Statistical Report on Gibraltar, that the yellow fever prevailed as an epidemic, more in some situations than in others, particularly along the Line-wall facing the sea."- (Pp. 34—36.)

After a description of the town of Gibraltar, we come to its botany, at first generally descriptive, and afterwards more in detail, with a neat classification of the vegetable productions of the rock and its environs. This it would be foreign to our purpose to enter into; but we cannot close the volume without expressing our approbation of the able manner in which Dr. Kelaart has executed his task; and we have much pleasure in recommending his interesting work, both to the general and the professional reader.

Statistics on Longevity. By M. BENVISTON DE

CHATEAUNEUF (Annales d'Hygiène). M.Benviston deChateauneuf,founding his statements upon numerous documents, published in France, England, Germany, Italy, &c. &c., since the beginning of the nineteenth century, establishes the following results, which are at variance with many of the existing tables of mortality :-Of a thousand individuals of both sexes taken at their birth, 443 survive at the age of 30, 245 at 60, 180 at 70, 110 at 80, and 13 at 90.

If J. P. will conform to our rules, and favour us with his name (in confidence, if need be), we will publish his letter.

A Member. We do not suppose that the Apothecaries' Society can disturb the practice of any

gentleman, legitimately a medical practitioner, who so far lends a helping hand to sound views of legislation, as to support with his exertions and purse "the National Institute of Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery."

| lingness, for it has always been our conviction, that " every arrow shot at an inferior enemy dishonours the arm that pulls the bow"; and, in obedience to this belief, we are in reality as little disposed to break a lance with a set of rapacious cold-water-mongers, as to hurl a javelin at widow Welch, or fire a shot at Perry and Co. Apart from inducements of an exE. C. A.-We would recommend our correspondent traneous nature, we could certainly have no to apply to Dr. Cooke, Caroline-street, Bedford-motive in showing up, or putting down, hydrosquare, who will furnish him with the particulars he requires. Edinburgh is usually considered the pathic quackery; the world is quite welcome to • most eminent of the Scotch universities. it, if the said world fancy it a desirable comIf An Old Looker-on will give his name in con-modity; and as some foolery must always be in fidence, we will publish his letter. That a person should aim at public life-political and medicothe ascendant, for ignorant people to run after political-who, to omit other matters, got into the and talk about, why, for anything we know or Apothecaries' Society by a fraud, and pretends care, hydropathy may as well play the clown to even to this day to a physicianship he does not possess, is, if true, an odd sign of the times-and public caprice, as anything else. It may empty calls certainly both for inquiry and animadver- people's pockets, and shorten people's lives, to any extent they may choose to let it; the sacrifice is theirs, not ours; and if, in the face of legitimate warning, modestly given, the world will go wrong, we are happy in the conscious. ness of being no participators in its ruin.

sion.

The press would exist to little purpose if public interests are to be intrusted to such hands.

M.D., on the "Practical working on the pharma

ceutical public of such anomalous confederacies as that at Worcester," shall be inserted in our next number, if we can purvey space for it. Mr. W. Cory (of Arundel-street, Haymarket) forwards us a case of detention of urine, from

We should have continued silent, as we have

said, upon the subject in question, and willingly spasmodic stricture of the urethra, of long continuance; the novelty in the treatment of which, have left it to its fate, had the assumption not and the very satisfactory results thereof, he been put forth, that hydropathy is something thinks will be interesting: - "Henry Hill, new. That it is any such thing, except in so aged forty-two, a porter, in the employ of Messrs. Cox and Greenwood, army agents, Charing-cross, far as it is made a vehicle of imposture, and a had for some time been greatly distressed, and had cover for ignorance, we emphatically deny! been subjected to various kinds of treatment, both There is nothing worth having in it, that is not medical and surgical, without success I saw him frequently, and could at any time, with patience legitimately ours; its varied applications, its and perseverance, pass a No. 12 gum elastic excesses, its good results, and its bad ones, are catheter; and, although this was accomplished matters of history with us, and were familiar to every second or third week, for the space of a year, the scientific world long before the adoption of and from which he found much benefit, still he would be attacked with retention once, if not more the cold-water cure by the needy adventurers frequently, every week; rendering his life a bur- who considered it a good patent for draining the den to himself, and incapacitating him from fol- exchequer of the people. We will now proceed lowing his occupation; causing much anxiety of with our evidences in proof of the absence of all mind, as to the maintenance of a numerous increasing family, dependent entirely upon his exnovelty in empirical hydropathy. We shall ertions for support. On the 30th of September give only as many references as are necessary to last, seeing that myself and many others of my substantiate our position: very many more we brother practitioners had been baffled in our endeavours to relieve him, I inserted a seton nearly to allow us to throw any of it away. Our recould give, but our space is too much demanded two inches in length into the perineum, and the result is, that he has been perfectly free ever since search having been completed, we shall termifrom that distressing complaint, unaided by medi-nate these articles by a few plain inferences. cine of any kind; and that a No. 12 catheter will now pass without any constriction in any part of the urethra."

what a many!) whose heads, being only nominally such, are fain to borrow the services of other heads capable of doing their own work and something more, if they are paid for it; it is this many, we say, who trumpet forth the belief that, never since the days when Nebuchadnezzar ate grass, has there been anything to compare with doing a man service by scalding and starving him alternately. Talk of blowing hot and cold with the same mouth, it's child's play to necromancy like this. Such is the prattle of the unwashed tribe, who are fit offerings for the altar of Preissnitz!

Now, it so happens, that in all countries, and in all ages, the novelty of this German impostor has been a common practice with the people. It was a custom with the ancient Egyptians, to plunge themselves into cold water after immersion in hot; and this custom, remarked by Pythagoras during his travels in Egypt, was afterwards adopted by the Greeks. Pythagoras introduced it into Greece, and it became popu lar through his patronage.

The earlier bathing of the Romans was conthe sudatoria, the hot bath or the sweating ducted on this plan. From the caldarium, or the cold bath. Great benefit was said to result rooms, the bathers plunged immediately into from the practice, and it became especially Augustus of a severe disease by a frigid dippopular after Antoninus Musa had cured ping; but its celebrity was lessened by the cold Alexander caught, on plumping into the Cyd. Tarsus; and was altogether lost when Marnus, after the sweating process of rescuing cellus suffered martyrdom on trying the same experiment. After this, the tepidarium came into fashion amongst the Romans, though the

more effeminate of them used the hot bath alone.

In a very different quarter of the globe, and by a very different class of people, was this selfsame practice fashionable, in ages gone by. Missouri, describe a vapour bath of the savage Lewis and Clarke, in their voyage up the American tribes, in the Rocky Mountains. It was a hollow square, of six or eight feet deep, A great feature of wonderment in the prac- formed in the river bank, by damming up with tice of the hydropathic quacks, is the impunity mud the other three sides, and covering the with which they expose their patients to ex- whole completely, except an aperture about two tremes of heat and cold. Like quacks in gene-feet wide, at the top. The bathers descend by ral, they only direct their voice to the ear of the million; and it need be no matter of surprise that, when a multitude of ignoramuses are told they may play with fire and water without danger, they begin to think the world is very much wiser than in the days of their grandfathers and grandmothers, from whom they THE MEDICAL TIMES. received very different admonitions. To tell a

D. C. L. (Inner Temple) shall appear next week.
M. H. is sincerely thanked for his information. It
will be most useful.

The affidavits of Mr. J. W. E. Wilson and Mr.
Thomas Wakley are unavoidably postponed to

our next number.

Erratum. The paper recently published by us on
Physiology was written by Mr. P. A. Brady, not
Mr. H. Brady.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1846.

"Indoctus quid enim saperet, liberque laborum Rusticus urbano confusus, turpis honesto ?"-HORACE We promised, after having replied to a few of the exceptionable passages in Dr. Forbes' article on hydropathy, to investigate the practice of the quack Preissnitz, and his worthy followers, to discover what novelty might be found therein. We do this with some unwil

stupid fellow, who never heard of such a
thing before, that a bonâ-fide live man
can be plumped into a bath hot enough
to boil his blood, and then into another
cold enough to freeze it, and all without
killing him, is enough to make the clown's hair
stand on end, and himself wonder whether the
globe he inhabits is not turning into a large
lunatic asylum. We know nothing more likely
than this to create a fit of the grins amongst
the many who are always ready to be astonished
at anything. It is this unhappy many (mercy,

this hole, taking with them a number of heated stones and jugs of water; and, after being seated round the room, throw the water on the stones till the steam becomes of a temperature sufficiently high for their purposes. Almost universally these baths are in the neighbourhood of running water, into which the Indians plunge immediately on coming out of the vapour bath, and sometimes return again and subject themselves to a second perspiration: and this bathing is employed by them either for pleasure or health, being in esteem for all kinds of disease.

The Russians, as everybody knows, have been in the habit, from time immemorial, of subjecting themselves to vicissitudes of temperature. After enduring a vapour bath, of a heat of 44 deg. Réaumur, until they are perspiring excessively at every pore, they plunge themselves instantly into cold water, or roll

themselves in snow. This, according to Tooke,
they do, not only with impunity, but with ad-
vantage.
Albert de Mandesloes, in his "Travels in the
East Indies," says that the Japanese never bind
their children's loins, but strengthen them by
plunging them, when warm, into very cold

water.

Olearius tells us that the Muscovites, both male and female, come out of their hot stoves, reeking with perspiration, and immerse themselves in cold water; whilst in winter they loll themselves, thus heated, in beds of snow. In Livonia, he says, the Finlanders accustom themselves from childhood to these extremes of temperature, several times in succession, daily. Tavernier mentions that the Armenians are in the habit, about Christmas, of plunging their children, whilst hot, into rivers; and that the King of Persia is often a witness of this ceremony near Ispahan.

66

We could quote from personal experience about it with all the deliberation of a system. and from research, many parallel proofs Like a school-girl reciting a tragic passage, their of the ease or the advantage with which whole being is centred in the momentous per- vicissitudes of temperature may be en-formance. They have seized somehow a dured, We think, however, that we have wrong-headed beau idéal of dignified bearing, furnished enough to convince our readers and will, per fas et nefas, realize it with fidelity. that there is nothing at all extraordinary in the Alas! success-so inadequate to their aims→→→ matter, and that the marvellous statements of gives us at best but the New Zealander attemptthe hydropathists are merely echos of old ing, with fish-bone tools, Parisian jewellery! truths, gathered from history, and confirmed Good natural materials there may be, yet we by every-day experience. The practice of going have neither ornamental gold nor a good Mosaic hissing hot," like Falstaff, into cold water, is imitation; the aimed-at show is as little present surely no novelty. The Roman youths, we as the neglected reality. Not more astrayĝis. know, were accustomed to exercise themselves the footman in undress talking "the gentle on the Campus Martius, before plunging into man" in words of learned length and ponderous the Tiber; they were consequently immersed sound-length and sound both wrong. Worse whilst in a fever heat, and during excessive per- even than silence is the ambitious affectation in spiration; yet they affirmed, that the practice revealing that intrinsic vulgarity which, in the was beneficial and conducive to health, and words of Hazlitt, is thus striving to run away especially to tranquil sleep. Any one found from itself! afraid of the risk was even jeered upon it. Horace, after asking Lydia why her lover ne glects his exercises on the Campus Martius, pertinently inquires— 512

"Cur timet flavum Tiberim tangère"?

With regret we see and say it :" our registration of this unfortunate class would not be complete if we omitted to inscribe in our list-of course with due classification of grades the names of the learned writers who bear the In our own day, the safety, or rather the de- heavy pressure of the scientific management of sirableness, of taking a cold bath with the body the Provincial Association, and who have reheated instead of chilled, is as familiar as a cently favoured us with their very respectable household phrase. There is not a bathing-"opinions and ruminations." Although diis machine woman between John-o'-Groats' House aliter visum est, we could have well wished and the Land's-end, but is ready to tell you, that that our brother pressmen, having an honest to jump into the sea, cold, is to be starved for toil before them, had contented themselves with your trouble; whilst, as they quaintly express it, getting through the castigation they had to into go in hot, is "to take the chill off the flict on us in the plain, straightforward way water." Before Preissnitz was in embryo, or that became their office, without troubling his ancestors for generations before him, this themselves or overwhelming us with needless part of his marvellousness was a common fact assurances of their superior breeding, education, that everybody acknowledged and knew the and literary attainments! Dissertations on truth of. Strange enough, however, this oft- self-consequence by editorial gentlemen may told tale has only to be repeated with a different be pleasing, but are not relevant recreations. emphasis and a due pomposity, and forthwith A frank, unminced truth is worth a bushel-full there are dupes enough to be startled by its of them. It is, doubtless, genteel to escape coseeming newness. Wonderful, say the quacks, vertly a responsibility assumed practically-and and wonderful, say their gulls, that a man can there is some ingenuity in making "respectability” be put into a hot bath, and then put into a cold a cloak for malice, and virtue the best disguise one, without suffering death for his diversion! for wounded pride-but we don't like the sysHow pleasantly credulous the public is, to be tem. If there be malice, or if there be vulgarity, sure ! the least repulsive form they can assume is their own; the one hiding its sting under an affectation of moderation; and the other-disguising its nature under an extravagance of squeamishness-excite a doubled feeling of hostility, in which, to our hate of vice, is superadded our disgust at meanness. The double hypocrite, whose pharisaical homage to gentility and virtue involves an everlasting impeachment of the genuine article in other people who con ditionally hints a calumny he dare not word, and circuitously conjectures up a claim for personal superiority he cannot substantiate--may win a momentary triumph in the small intrigues of contemptible coteries, but will find himself at a considerable disadvantage whenever compelled, as now, to encounter honest opponents on a public stage.

Individual experiments, proving how easily excesses of heat and cold can be borne in succession, are numerous enough. In the "Transactions of the Royal Society," we believe, in the sixty-fifth volume, are some curious experiments in point, by Dr. Fordyce and Sir Charles Blagden. "During the whole day," says the latter," we passed out of the heated room (the temperature of the air being from 240 deg. to 260 deg.), after every experiment, immediately into the cold air, without any precaution; after exposing our naked bodies to the heat, and sweating most violently, we instantly went into a cold room and staid there, even some minutes before we began to dress; yet no one received the least injury." In the same volume, Dr. Dobson, of Liverpool, records similar experiments that were attended with like consequences, and particularly mentions that Mr. Park was for some time in a stove heated to 202 deg., and yet went into the external air, in his usual clothing, during a hard frost, and was in no wise burt by it. Dr. Currrie, in his celebrated work, tells us that he learnt at Glasgow, in the spring of 1780, that it was common for the workmen in the glass manufactory, after enduring for some time the consuming heat of their furnaces, to plunge into the Clyde; a practice which they found in no respect injurious. Ourselves have curiously visited several glass-works, in prosecuting this subject, and have found men habi- AMONG a small class of small people there is tually in the practice of enduring a "crucible- kept up, and very starchedly, a bastard kind of heat" (where the molten glass is ready for genteel morality, amusingly worth a quiet disposal) such as no ordinary mortal could bear study. It forms a property that keeps their for many minutes, and yet running from time small souls quits with a very adverse fortune. to time in the cold air, or plunging their hands Less substantial than the rent-paying pig of the and faces into cold water. Yet rarely do these poor Irish cotter, it is nursed with equal affecmen take cold, and “never," they say, from this tion, and stands in as near a relation to the seemingly hazardous practice. In particular, good people's happiness. Fed by the garbage we know a man in one of these manufactories, of daily falsehoods, it keeps over their heads who lives a sort of Cyclopian life, by having to the roof of a little social consequence, and be the frequent attendant, or superintendent, of makes them by so much better off in the world drying brimstone. The place in which this said of personal importance. We, who good-humaterial is desiccated has a temperature worthy mouredly smile over such domestic manufacof a salamander, yet, every half hour is the poor tures of sham respectability, have no just idea fellow in this oven for several minutes at a of its earnest consequence to the small gentry time, and thence back again into cold air-themselves. There is a solemnity in their vindiyet he rarely suffers for his exposuresi na przu cation of importance, which shows that they go

"Nam qui nimios poscebat honores To 28350
Et nimias poscebat opes, numerosa parabat
Excelsa turris tabulata, unde altior esset
Casus et impulsæ præceps immane ruinæ."-JUVENAL.

Our readers need not be told that we have recently yielded our columns to a clever, uns sparing, but just investigation into the policy and proceedings of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association. The subject was surely a

!

through the Association to provincial practitioners | the management of the Association, we have
in general, cannot but fail, and must overwhelm said not one word against the private or profes-
its authors with confusion and defeat."
sional worth of even the most active member
of the Council.

66

legitimate matter of public debate; if it be not,
medical journalism ought to be extinguished by
act of Parliament. Not a line that we have
admitted on that public question can be quoted
We have interposed the numerals to express
to show that the limit of fair, gentlemanly dis- the number of actual mistatements these
cussions has been coverstepped in a single in- "gentlemen of considerable attainments, of
stance. We are thus enabled to take high standing in their profession, and high moral cha-
ground. We first defy objection to the in-racter," have crowded into this short exordium
quiry we secondly defy proof, that in a singles of their reply. And first as to the facts:→→
instance it has been misconducted. We repeat. We have not found that our attacks on "a
most emphatically, that the question itself is contemporary" have failed in their object. We
not more public than the manner of its discus have aimed at no object yet which we have not
sione 94 publics Association has been adjudged attained a lesson to be learned by others as well
and condemned solely on public considerations. as by a contemporary." The affirmation, in
We say further, that some of the chiefs of the deed, that we have "found" a failure is con
Association owed us gratitude for the personal trary to many well-known facts, is as gratuitous
forbearance they shave been indulged with. as it is unfounded, and just shows that the
It is a forbearance by no means made gentlemen of “high moral character" possess
necessary by the canons of polemical war very considerable attainments" in hazarding
fare, or the rules of gentlemanly propriety. any abusive," "vituperative," and "per-
They were spared, though open to just accusa-sonal" statements, that may suit the purpose of
tion, because the public object we had in view the moment. To be sure, the word "pro-
did not require their immolation, Well, the bably" is introduced: "high moral character"
gentlemen, thus spared, and thus answerable only makes designed misstatements "probably."
for the public mismanagement we have thus There is a virtue about the "probably" which
publicly laid bare, have been compelled into a clothes a falsehood with so fine an air of mode-
defence. Let us mark how they have set about ration and fairness!
it. According to their own authority, they are,
(as the élite and rulers and writers and legis.
lators of the Association) "gentlemen of con-
siderable attainments, of standing in their pro-
fession, and of high moral, character." They
have for one object" or rather, that we may
write good English, they have for objects of
their public solicitude—the maintenance of pro-
fessional honour and respectability, and the
motion of professional good feeling." In ad-
dition to all these excellencies, antographically
claimed, they have another: a vast "distaste
of vituperation and abuse," and of "attacks di-
rected against individuals"! In what way,
then, do these moral, temperate, intellectual,
and gentlemanly persons meet the public in-
vestigation we have pressed on them? Let
them speak for themselves. Here is the open-
ing of their reply. We entreat those of our
readers who, like ourselves, do not go out of
their way to make people believe that they are
moral, temperate, intellectual, and gentlemanly,
to mark the truthful, unabusive, and unvitupe-
rative manner of their response.

pro

"A London medical journal (1), FINDING, probably, that its attacks on one of its contemporaries have failed in their object, and (2) that its own interests have been by no means advanced by the attempt to damage those of a metropolitan rival (3), is now engaged in the endeavour to divert some of the resources of the Provincial Association from their proper object (4)--the promotion of the interests of provincial practitioners (5). We cannot indulge our contemporary by entering into the lists with him (6). We are not skilled in the use of the coarse weapons which he so unsparingly would be even more distasteful to the members of the Provincial Association in the columns of their own journal than they are in those of the Medical Times. The members of the Association are, as a body, gentlemen of considerable attainments, of standing in their profession, and of high moral character, One of the objects of the Association is to maintain the honour and respectability of all its members, and to promote good feeling among them (7). Attacks directed against individuals are little likely to accomplish that object, while (8) the approvoked outrage offered to the Association, and

employs; and, if we were, vituperation and abuse

or w

2. Whether we have attempted to damage the character or circulation of a contemporary, whether " a contemporary" has attempted the easy task itself, we will not says but it is perfectly certain, that the Medical Times, from a comparatively contemptible origin, enjoys at this moment the largest circulation of any medical journal in the world. The mutations of shape, size, and price of "a contemporary, and its utter loss of influence on every subject of professional interest, indicate that we, at least, have by "no means been injured by the competition we have created. So much for misstatement No. 2-a misstatement, again, as gratuitous as unfounded.

3 and 4. We are not engaged in an endeavour to divert any resources from the promotion of the interests of provincial practitioners, nor is such promotion, at this moment, the "proper object" of the Provincial Association, as managed by its Council of Physicians and Surgical Fellows. Under this short heading, then, we have two misstatements from these gentlemen of “considerable attainments and high moral character,"―both, again, as gratuitous as unfounded.

It is one amusing fact, amid these droll accu-› sations, that they assume conflicting and contradictory shapes: so that while all may be, and indeed are, false, some of them are self-evidently so. Thus, though the tenor and character of our investigation is wholly public and on public grounds, and though there be abundance of materials to evidence that there is sufficient public cause for the strictures we have enunciated, yet these "moral," "intellectual," and "gentlemanly" writers must perforce attribute to usa

sufficientvariety of malicious, mean, and mercenary motives for our policy. On one side we are told that our "outrage must 'overwhelm us with confusion and defeat" (!), and that our "outrage" cannot but "fail"-terms which, in better English (these "gentlemen of considerable attainments" will pardon the correction), mean, that our attempt to bring the Council to book will prove a failure, and overwhelm us with defeat-id est, failure. On another side we are told, by the same class of gentlemen, that in thus ruining ourselves we have nothing better than a mercantile aim; that we hope to cause a stir, injure a contemporary, to "divert the re

sources of the Association"-in our own di

rection, we may suppose; and finally, there is the exquisite non-sequitur explanation of motives-that, seeing the uselessness of our attentions to a metropolitan contemporary, we have, as a matter of course, set about reforming a Provincial Association! And this is the sort of writing indulged in by anti-vituperation “gentlemen of considerable attainments, of standing and of high moral character," in answer to detailed accusations supported by elaborate proofs that they have frittered away great professional powers and agencies to serve the purposes policies of a small and dangerous grade! What 5. These gentlemen do "indulge us by enter- must be their opinion of the intelligence and ing the lists with us." The habit of misstate-spirit of their injured members, before whom

and

which a scandalous spinster or censorious The inuendo, very oblique, is a stage trick dowager is allowed, in their excessive puritanism, to display in our comedies, much to the amusement of the public. Let us hear the Provincial Mrs. Candour upholding her own purity, and scolding the naughty Medical Tim

Times:

6. We do not employ coarse weapons un sparingly; and these "gentlemen," if they do not use them "skilfully," at all events do use them unsparingly. We know on their side no coarser weapons than rash and convenient mis-7 statements used at will (eight of them in almost These are general principles, and are not palaas many lines); and we recognise, moreover, table perhaps to those who would legislate for class no more justifiable instruments of accusation interests; they may not suit, possibly, certain indithan fair and manly arguments on public acts viduals with very questionable qualifications for de and public documents, ciding on matters which concern the interests of: the medical profession, but they are those which will be generally recognised by provincial practitioners as tending to cement the different orders

7. Our attacks are not directed against persons but policies. Much as we have impugned