<«« C -' c <■< «- Cc " £5C C ' <5 C O V< C CC ■ «< c. c ~:cc c ' c ^T C ( <-<:c c c < . ( c CC : u c ^ C may feel, may be awakened by cold air o? water and yet hear nothing, not even the firing of a pistol; and that on the *ther hand, he may bear pinching and pricking without sensa ion, andy'e° hea? and converse with you, perhaps hear far more acutely than when awake " short, that, the sleep bemg partial.-affecting some nerves ansomTcerebrd 21 organ or organs, and not others, and affecting in various degrees those it does affect, there is an endless variety of phenomena. In common coma, of the deeper kind and fatal, the patient may feel acutely, though otherwise completely insensible. I was sent for a short time ago to a patient who was a medical man and in this very condition. Unfortunately it was the afternoon and I was out, so that I did not see him; but. Dr. Barnes, who kindly supplied me with the facts of the convicts, has furnished me with the par- ticulars. The patient was thirty-two years of age, was accidently knocked down on the head with a bar of iron in Regent Street while returning from a surgeon who had passed an instrument up the urethra, which operation was followed as he went home by a flow of blood. Ischuria ensued, and coma, which after twenty- four hours terminated his existence. "The pulse ceased to be felt at the wrist twenty hours before death; at that time and continuously till he died, a very copious perspiration bedewed the whole body—the hands and feet were icy cold. About two hours before dissolution the temperature of these parts rose conside- rably; the pupil was now slightly dilated and the tunica conjunctiva became infilt/ated with a dark fluid, giving a peculiar carbonaceous appearance to the white part of the eyes: there was no urine in the bladder. The most remarka- ble feature in this case was the extraordinary sensibility of the entire surface of the body to very slight external impressions; the parts most so were the lower extremities. Now, although the patient toas perfectly unconscious of passing events, he could not be roused in the slightest degree by speaking loud or by bawling in the ears, he was unable to swallow the. smallest particle of food, he had stertorous breathing ; yet, if the hand was placed over his thigh, (even on the outside of the bed-clothes,) and the part gently squeezed, the muscles of the countenance would immediately contract and betray intense agony, and a most piteous groan would escape his lips at the same time. This condition continued to increase until he died. The sensibility was seemingly as great a few minutes before he died as it was some hours before: so extraordinary was this morbid sensibility, that to attempt to turn the individual in bed,—to elevate his head on the pillow, or to touch the surface of the body on any part, appeared to excite the greatest possible torture. I remained with this individual twelve hours before his demise, and continued to witness this phenomenon at least fifty times." Mr. Carstairs of Sheffield informs me that, in several instances of deep mes- meric coma induced by him, the person has heard the slightest whisper, inau- dible to the bystanders, and some of the other senses, particularly that of smell, have also been rendered more acute than in the natural state. Dr. Hall should have known that mesmerism produces no phenomenon that does not occur in nervous affections without mesmerism, as I often stated in the theatre of University College Hospital, but that it does produce all the most wonderful phenomena of all affections of every portion of the nervous system; and that the torpor or somnambulism or sleep-waking, which it produces, is that which occurs in trances, as the deepest form of singular sleep, with very mode- rate cerebral activity, at one extreme, and that of persons in extatic delirium at the other, in which most of the faculties are very active, many perhaps far more active than when in the natural state, and only some faculties torpid, and these perhaps but partially torpid, so that, while the patient may be very talkative, clever, and facetious, he may be divested of his usual proper reserve and even of all sense of propriety and really be in a new waking state. I shall in the next chapter detail cases of surgical operations in which the patients, in this peculiar sleep felt nothing, and conversed all the time with the operator. I purpose to enter more fully upon the curious subject of sleep-waking when controverting Sir Benjamin Brodie. Dr. George Burrows expressed his doubts of the reality of the case because of the man saying he fancied he heard something in his sleep. He would not have found any difficulty had he made himself acquainted with the subject of sleep-waking, whether spontaneous or mesmeric, as he and every other teacher should have done long ago. 22 Another surgeon now rose,—Sir Benjamin Brodie,—whom I never saw in the society before except during his period of presidency, and who, soon after he had spoken what he came to say, seemed to consider that he had settled the matter, and left before the close of the meeting and before I could reply to him. Like all the opponents of the evening he entirely passed over the comfortable nights, the return of the appetite, and the improved appearance of the poor man by mesmerism. He used the argument of the other surgeons, Messrs. Coulson, Blake, and Alcock. My answer to it I need not repeat. But he did more: he supplied a defect of which I have complained,—the want of reference to a case in which, as in this, a nerve was probed; for he described a case brought up in that respect to an equality with the present, and he at the same time most sin- gularly supplied a strong argument against himself and his coadjutors. He related an instance of operation for hernia,—an operation not to be compared for pain to the amputation of a thigh,—in which his patient evinced no sign of feel- ing, though I have no doubt a minute observer, not engaged in operating, would have discovered some;* the surgeon was therefore tempted to test him, and touched the divided end of a small nerve which happened to be exposed,—a nerve probably at the most but one-eighth of the size of the great sciatic nerve touched so freely in the man whose leg was amputated. Of course I expected to hear that, like the man at Wellow, this patient still gave no signs of feeling. But he did,—he instantly gave signs of acute pain ! This was not the hit of a sagacious opponent. Sir Benjamin Brodie deserves and has my best thanks for making this case known, and arguing so well for the insensibility of the poor man at Wellow.- His next argument was, that some people really do not seem susceptible of pain;—cannot in fact be made, or scarcely be made, to understand what pain is. Sir Thomas Hardy, he added, was one of these. I hear it doubted whether Sir B. Brodie has sufficient ground for this assertion. But this is altogether unim- portant, for the poor man at Wellow ivas susceptible of pain. He could bear his pain in no other than a sitting posture ; had slept before he was mesmerised but two hours in seventy from his pain; would shed tears from his pain; could not bear except in the mesmeric state the slightest covering on his knee for his pain ; and was awakened, even from mesmeric coma when this was not deepened by the fingers held on the eyes, by the slightest movement of the extremity. This. argument was therefore good for nothing. But it told, as well as the preceding, for the insensibility of the man in his mesmeric state. He further urged that patients worn down with suffering (so that he now re- membered that the poor man knew what pain was) sometimes became hysterical and more or less insensible. But this patient was not hysterical; and suffered acutely to the last, even while being moved for the operation. This argument therefore falls with the rest. He allowed after all that the man was in a peculiar state. Of what he meant I have no idea, except that the man was in an hysterical insensible state, which was not the fact. That he was in a peculiar and insensible state when under the agency of mesmerism is very true and for what we contend. When he had seen Mr. Chenevix, fourteen years ago, mesmerise a little girl into coma, and was asked by that gentleman, " Do you think this girl really and truly slept]" he replied, "I do, and very soundly too:" and when asked, "Do you think she went to sleep of herself out of pleasure or desire, or by means of what you saw me do?" he replied, " Certainly by means of what you did." These means he compared to rocking.} Now, if he allowed this, he might, though stationary in his knowledge for fourteen years, allow that the poor man at Wel- low was asleep by Mr. Topham's means. His explanation of the mesmeric sleep reminds me of the explanation given by some people of the shocks of the elec- * It is said on very good authority that this patient was Dr. Holland, and that he declares he did feel pretty acutely, but concealed it as much as possible by not crying out. Whether or not this is true is unimportant. t London Medical and Physical Journal. Sept. 1829. p. 214. 23 trical fish, the torpedo. The facts were at first denied, and, when they could be denied no longer, some would not allow there was any electricity in the matter, but explained them by the animal giving a sudden blow with its broad back, first drawn flat and then suddenly restored to its usual convexity. This explanation was so clear—"hinc clarum est," that Marrher says* that Reaumur, the explainer. "arcanum deprehendil." And now we obtain electric sparks from electric fish, and the sceptics exist no longer. He said that the case before the society was the companion of one, equally an imposture, which occurred 149 years ago, and was published by the Royal So- ciety in the 24th vol. of their Philosophical Transaction?, in 1706. He informed the meeting that a man at Tinsbury, near Bath, pretended to sleep for weeks and even months; and once on waking could not be persuaded he had slept so long, " till going into the Fields he found every body busy in getting in their Harvest, and he remembered very well when he went to sleep they were sowing of Barley and Oats, which he then saw ripe and fit to be cut down." This, told with a smirk, as an impudent trick, raised a roar of laughter in the room, and was with- out hesitation received by the meeting on Sir Benjamin's authority as a case of imposture; the members not appearing sufficiently learned in the Philosophical Transactions to know the case which, however, I related in my Physiology, and not as an imposture, many years ago. He proceeded to state that in this pre- tended sleep the man was bled, blistered, cupped and scarified, but all in vain : —the impostor still slept, bore it all unmoved, and gave no sign of pain. Nay, the man was so barefaced that, though bread and cheese and beer placed by his bedside regularly disappeared, and evacuations regularly appeared in the utensil, nobody ever saw him eat or evacuate. He was therefore decidedly an impostor; and, as he was an impostor, the patient at Wellow was an impostor, and all mes- merism is false. A rogue shams an epileptic fit in the streets, therefore all epi- leptic people are impostors, and there is no such disease as epilepsy. Soldiers and sailors sham rheumatic pains and palsied limbs, therefore there are no such diseases as palsy or rheumatism. But Sir Benjamin Brodie gave an entirely false colouring to the case. The man was indeed, for periods, not seen eating, probably because he ate all his food at once, possibly when he employed the utensil, and because he might, being no doubt aware of the presence of others, like most sleep-wakers, though ignorant on awaking of every thing that had passed, have an antipathy to eat as well as to evacuate when others were present or stirring about the house; just as often occurs in insanity, for in the sleep-waking state the aptivity-of brain that does occur is generally attended with some peculiarity of the feelings: and, indeed, if the acts of eating and employing the utensil were continuous with him, there would be a sufficient reason for his selecting periods for eating when he was un- disturbed. But, nevertheless, he was sometimes found taking his victuals and relieving himself in his sleep. The narration runs thus:—" Sometimes they have found him fast asleep with the Pot in his Hand in Bed. and sometimes with his Mouth full of Meat." Again,—"In this manner he lay till the 19th of Nov., when his Mother hearing him make a noise ran immediately up to him, and found him Eating." Again, he did not always eat and evacuate with regularity, as Sir Benjamin ^Brodie'represented:—"In this manner he lay for about ten weeks, and then could eat nothing at all, for his Jaws seemed to be set, and his teeth clenched so close, that with all the art they had with their Instruments they could not open his Mouth, to put anything into it to support him. At last, observing a hole made in his Teeth, by holding a Pipe in his Mouth, as most. great Smokers usually have, they through a Quill, poured some Tent, into his Throat now and then, and this icas all he took for six weeks and four days, and of that not above three pints or two quarts, some of which was spilt too; he made water but once and never had a stool all that time." * Prcelecliones in Hcrmanni Boerhaavii Institutions, torn. iii. p. TG. 24 The narrator, Dr. Oliver, F.R.S., a physician of high standing, an F.R.S. in days when the fellowship was not so common as at present, did not pronounce the man an impostor as Sir Benjamin Brodie so fearlessly does. " I have no room," he says, " to suspect this to be any Cheat, because I never heard of any gain to the family by it, though so near the Bath, and so many people went thither out of curiosity to see the Sleeper, who, when awake, was a support to his old mother by his labour, but now a certain charge to her. Besides, there was seldom any body in the house to attend any profit that might be made by it, he being left alone in the house and every body at liberty to go up to his bedside." Indeed, the old mother was so far from deserving the charge of collusion with her son that, being as ignorant of his disease as Sir B. Brodie, she at first believed his sleep was only sulkiness or " sullen humour," and placed food at his bedside lest he should be starved. How, indeed, could Dr. Oliver for a moment have thought the man an impostor! For to pass over the scarifyings and various ex- ternal irritations, hollowing his name in his ears repeatedly and as loudly as pos- sible ; pulling him by his shoulders; pinching his nose; and stopping his nose and mouth till Dr. Oliver feared he might choke the man; running " a large pin into his arm to the very bone, but all to no purpose, for in all this time he gave (me) not the least signal of his being sensible," Dr. Oliver held a. phial of solution of ammonia under one of the man's nostrils a considerable time, so strong that he himself" could not bear it under his own nose a moment without making his eyes ivater; but he felt it not at all. Then," continues Dr. Oliver, "I threw it, at several times, up that same nostril, it made his nose run and gleet, and his Eyelids shiver and tremble a very little, and this was all the effect I found, though I poured up into one nostril about half an ounce bottle of this fiery spirit, which was as strong almost as fire itself. Finding no success with this neither, 1 crammed that nostril with powder of white hellebore," " but he never gave any token that he felt what I had done, nor discovered any manner of uneasiness by moving or stirring any one part of his body." " Yet, the next day his nose was inflamed and swelled very much, and his lips and the inside of his right nostril blistered and scabby with my spirit and hellebore." Nay, wish- ing to remove him to another house, they carried him "down stairs, which were somewhat narrow, and struck his head against a stone, and gave him a severe knock, which broke his head, but he never moved any more at it than a dead man would." This accident was an equally strong test with the applications of ammonia and hellebore, for it was violent and unexpected; and they, altogether, were tests which Sir B. Brodie never saw an impostor bear, and which he°passed over in silence. Educated as he was for surgery, and occupied as he all his life has been with the mechanical matters of the profession, Sir Benjamin Brodie must be pardoned for not appreciating and understanding this case; but, I do not pardon him for omitting some of its most decisive proofs of insensibility, nor for declaring that the man was never seen to eat and was therefore a cheat, nor for presuming to understand a form of disease of which he knows nothing. What deception did the man attempt when his food "very regularly" disappeared, once daily or every two days, and evacuations appeared "very regularly" in the utensil? Did the man intend his mother to believe that the latter were supplied by any one but himself] If he had meditated something wonderful in this way, he would have prevented all signs of such matters ; and that he could easily have done, as he was generally left alone in the house, while his mother worked out of doors. But, as these circumstances were not calculated to impose, so impos- ture was not suspected from them. The food at his bedside, in his first paroxysm of sleep, " was spent every day, and, supposed, by him;" in the second paroxysm, victuals stood by him as before, which ho ate of now and then, " but nobody ever saw him eat or evacuate, though he did both very regularly as he had occasion." In fact, all suspicion of imposition is preposterous. We have a simple, artless, natural narration of a case of sleep-waking, bearing upon itself the very stamp of truth to the eyes of every well informed physician. 25 The changes which occurred at different times were highly characteristic of these more rare affections. After his first paroxysm of sleep he was dumb for a whole month. During the first fortnight of his second paroxysm of sleep he would open his eyes, but afterwards he did not;—a likely thing that a man feigning sleep would ever lie with his eyes open, or open them from time to lime ! At one period he ceased to eat and evacuate: his jaws closed, and neither food put at his bedside disappeared, nor did an alvine evacuation appear in his utensil for six weeks and four days, though once he made water. At another period, when he was called on by his name " he seemed to hear them and be somewhat sensible, though he could not make them any answer;"—was this likely in a man feigning absolute sleep] His eyes were not now shut so close, and he had frequent great tremblings of his eyelids:—a probable thing this, that he would have kept his eyes constantly in this irksome state of movement when sleep would have been better shammed by keeping them closed! The country- man could never have devised all these little circumstances which practitioners, who have seen as many cases of this description as I now have, recognise at once as striking peculiarities of such affections. It is worthy of notice that the man was so inveterate a smoker as to have "a hole made in his teeth, by holding his pipe in his mouth," yet, by sleeping thus, first in 1694 for a month, then in 1696 for seventeen weeks, and then in 1697 for six months with the exception of a few minutes once, he deprived himself of what must have been an indispensable pleasure. On waking from his sleep of seventeen weeks, so far from wishing it to be be- lieved, he could not easily be brought to believe it himself till he saw the oats and barley ripe which were sowing when he saw the fields last. 1 should say that a more beautifully genuine case of sleep-waking in which coma predominated never occurred. When Sir Benjamin Brodie sat down, Mr. Symes pointed out to him and the meeting the true nature of the case—that it was an instance of sleep-waking, with double consciousness, the man being in a sleep, generally profound, but sometimes with sufficient activity of the sleeping brain to enable him to do certain things—eat, drink, and evacuate, in all these actions voluntarily administering to himself, but not remembering one of them on awaking. In some instances of this peculiar sleep, there is from time to time more activity than he showed, so that persons walk, talk, write and work, nay, they may do some things better than when awake, though the sleep continues and they be insensible to mechanical injury, and snore; and in most instances, as in the present case, nothing is afterwards remembered, and the period passed in this sleep-waking state is as a separate existence. Sometimes the coma is profound and little or no activity of brain is discernible; sometimes there is no coma but great activity of the mind, as a separate period of existence, the cha- racter or ways of the person being more or less different from those habitual, and entirely forgotten when the brain passes again into its natural state: and between these two extremes are endless gradations of activity in the various cerebral faculties. Sleep-waking is the most appropriate title, as it comprehends all ac- tions that may be performed : though the word somnambulism is often loosely employed, which strictly applies to those cases in which the patient walks. When the coma is profound the second term waking is hardly appropriate; and when there is no coma the first term sleep is hardly appropriate, and extatic de- lirium should rather be the designation. But, as a generic denomination, the expression sleep-waking is very convenient and characteristic. Extatic deli- rium was the wild, and^ to a philosophic observer, deeply interesting, state in which the Okeys were usually seen when not in a profound coma or in their na- tural condition. This class of affections are most wonderful and absolutely rivet the attention of a thouo-htful man ; and their varieties are great and beautiful, though beauti- fully similar to each other. But too often medical men are lamentably ignorant of them, and, when they have an interesting case of this kind, regard it only as 26 a strange piece of business, and are at a loss what to do, and so torment and physic the patient without mercy, and think no more about it; or perhaps, to save meditation, declare it was all imposition. The records of medicine supply a suf- ficient number: and, now that by mesmerism we know how to produce them artificially, no medical man is pardonable who does not make himself well ac- quainted with them. Ignorance of these wonderful spontaneous cases has caused much false and cruel accusation. I have known young children treated as liars, as naughty, as odd children, and youth and grown up persons vilified as impos- tors, by their families and instructors, and chiefly by medical attendants, because they fell occasionally into a state of sleep-waking, of the modification termed ex- tatic delirium, during which, though not strong enough to strike every one as delirium, their conduct differed from what was habitual and proper; or because after an unsuspected paroxysm, one in which no extravagance had been commit- ted, they denied all knowledge of what they were told they had said or done. An instance occurred of a gentleman so seized while in a box at the theatre, and losing all knowledge of his situation and preparing to perform a private act, nothing of which he remembered when taken before a magistrate. A striking case of this kind has lately been seen by me in the Middlesex Hospital. Dr. Wilson, under whose care the patient was and who to his honour knows and boldly declares the truth of mesmerism, was from this knowledge able to recog- nise the case: but some uninformed and spiteful person about the Hospital wrote to the lady who kindly interests herself in the poor boy that his only complaint was temper, and a medical whisper has reached me that the case is an imposition. The boy, who, in his natural state, is very respectful and particular in his be- haviour, is very regardless of both persons and places in his delirium, sings with great feeling, and recites with capital power of imitation, and eats most vora- ciously, and his writing is a great curiosity,—quite different from his habitual writing, and blotted all over. I unhesitatingly declare the case to be as real as the boy's existence, and should never have been tired of studying it. The case was drawn up and sent to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society by Dr. Wilson, in November, under the title of a case of double consciousness, and a notice affixed in the library that it would be read. But, when the members, having declared that the history of the amputation, being mesmeric, had disgraced them, learned that this case was analogous to mesmeric cases, they actually took down the notice, gave half a hint to Dr. Wilson that he might withdraw the paper, a report went about that the boy shammed, and the paper was not read till three hours before March. I am told that Mr. Bransby Cooper would not believe the occurrence of such cases, arid therefore said that the boy should have had a good thrashing, which would soon have cured him. Such a state of things is really lamentable. Let Mr. Bransby Cooper study the diseases of the nervous system before he condemns his fellow-creatures thus. Let him read a similar case of a girl sixteen'years old, in the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions, for 1822, and detailed in my Physiology, p. 365, who, because she recollected in her natural state nothing that occurred in the diseased, was treated in the most depraved manner; and one still more remarkable that occurred in a little girl in America, and is printed by Dr. Belden, under the title of An Account of Jane Rider, the Springfield Somnambulist, a copy of which I deposited in the Library of the Society. His flogging of the poor afflicted boy would be the counterpart of the tearing the hand of the poor girl in the Edinburgh Infirmary with the other surgeon's nails. Thrash the poor boy ! The conduct and manners of the two Okeys in their preternatural state were perfectly different from all that was ob- served in them when not in this state. They were totally ignorant of all persons, things, names, and circumstances, with which they had become acquainted pre- viously: they knew neither their father nor mother, nor the meaning of the words father and mother: forgetting the meaning of almost every term, they learnt all the improper language so constantly used in the wards of hospitals, and irreverently swore and called bad names, and misapplied words, and were readily 27 taught to misapply them, without being aware of impropriety,—and the ignorant portion of the medical periodical press cruelly made fun of this : they had to learn every thing afresh: they would have enormous muscular power: they mimicked exquisitely, and had a strong propensity to mimickry and humour, so that they were absurdly thought by those ignorant of particular cerebral faculties being often highly "augmented "in such cases, whether spontaneously or mesmerically induced, by Mr. Wakley for example, to have been trained and practised impos- tors, whereas not a single mesmeric phenomenon ever witnessed by any person in them was unreal. The cases of both sisters were genuine throughout, similar but very differently modified, and it was ignorance only which led any one to doubt them, and it was heartless cruelty to slander two perfectly virtuous and afflicted female children, who had been carefully brought up and had lived only with their parents and afterwards in a respectable family till they were seized with epilepsy. Not merely the Editor of the Lancet knew no better, but the Editors of other Medical Journals; and the display of disreputable unacquaintance with this kind of case, and the composition of vulgar tirades by so many profes- sional men pretending to medical knowledge, was precisely the conduct which we witness in the streets when a deranged or imbecile person is pursued and hooted by boys and rabble, as though he were master of his own condition and conduct, and not the subject of an affliction profoundly interesting to the philoso- pher and to the man who can feel for others. Every thing stated or ever printed to their disadvantage was an absolute falsehood; Lrepeat these words emphati- cally, an absolute falsehood. They are both cured of the violent fits for which they had been long in the hospital, and the reality of which no one had doubted, and for which I at length mesmerised them. One is already respectably married to a young man in her own station of life, and a mother; the other lives with her parents and supports herself by doing needlework for a neighbouring estab- lishment. Like the boy in the Middlesex Hospital, the sleep-waker at Tinsbury, from whose case I have digressed, was at first supposed, and that by his mother, to be only in a "sullen humour:" though at last she saw the truth and for some time would suffer no one to come near to him for fear of more experiments upon her son,—a likely thing if the case had been shammed for profit! But the sagacious physician saw it was no imposture. The Royal Society were equally rational, and the president, Sir Isaac Newton, October 27, 1721, put his imprimatur to the volume of the Abridgement of the Philosophical Transactions, containing the narrative at full length, by Sir Hans Sloane, which would not have been the case had there been any suspicion of imposition. Indeed, I never heard before ot the case being suspected by any one. I have given a pretty full account of the wonders of sleep-waking in my Human Physiology. Beginning with natural sleep, I pass to dreams, and then to that higher activity of the sleeping brain, termed Somnambulism or Sleep-walking, or more correctly sleep-waking; trorn p. 598 to 660 inclusively ; and I likewise devote 66 pages to Mesmerism, and print the leading features of the cases of the Okeys. I will now extract the whole narrative of the case near Bath :— " A Relation of an extraordinary Sleepy Person, at Tinsbury near Bath. By Dr William Oliver, F.R.S., May the 13th, anno 1694. One Samuel Chilton, of Tinsbury near Bath, a Labourer, about 25 years ot ajre, of a robust habit of body, not fat, but fleshy, and a dark brown hair happened, without any visible cause or evident sign, to fall into a very profound s eep, out of which no art used by those that were near him could rouse him, till after a month's time; then rose of himself, put on his clothes, and went about his busi- ness of Husbandry as usual; slept, could eat and drink as before, but spake not one word till about a month after. All the time he slept Victuals stood by him, his Mother fearing he would be starved in that sullen humour, as she thought it put bread and cheese and small beer before him, which was spent every day, and supposed by him, though no one ever saw him eat or drink all that time. 28 From this time he remained free of any drowsiness or sleepiness till about the 9th of April, 1696, and then fell into his Sleeping Fit again just as he did before. After some days, they were prevailed with to try what effect medicines might have on him, and accordingly one Mr. Gibs, a very able Apothecary of Bath went to him, bled, blistered, cupped and scarified him, and used all the external irritating medicines he could think on, but all to no purpose, —nothing of all these making any manner of impression on him; and after the first fortnight he was never observed to open his eyes. Victuals stood by him as before, which he eat of now and then, but nobody ever saw him eat or evacuate, though he did both very regularly as he had occasion; and sometimes they have found him fast asleep with the pot in his hand in bed, and sometimes with his mouth full of meat. In this manner he lay for about ten weeks, and then could eat nothing at all, for his jaws seemed to be set, and his teeth clenched so close, that with all the art they had with their instruments they could not open his mouth to put any thing into it to support him. At last, observing a hole made in his teeth, by holding his pipe in his Mouth, as most great Smoakers usu- ally have, they through a quill poured some Tent into his Throat now and then. And this was all he took for six weeks and four days, and of that not above three pints or two quarts, some of which was spilt too; he had made water but once, and never had a stool all that time. August the 7th, which is seventeen weeks from the 9th of April (when he began to sleep), he awaked, put on his Clothes, and walked about the Room, not knowing he had slept above a night; nor could he be persuaded he had lain so long, till going out into the fields he found everybody busy in getting in their Harvest, and he remembered very well when he fell asleep they were sowing of Barley and Oats, which he then saw ripe and fit to be cut down. There was one thing observable, that though his Flesh was somewhat wasted with so long lying in Bed, and fasting for above six weeks, yet a worthy Gentle- man his Neighbour assured me, when he saw him, which was the first day of his coming abroad, he looked brisker than he ever saw him in his life before; and asking him whether the Bed had not made him sore, he assured him and every body, that he neither found that, nor any other inconveniency at all; and that he had not the least remembrance of any thing that passed or was done to him all that while. So he fell again to his husbandry as he used to do, and remained well from that time till August the 17th, Anno 1697, when in the morning he complained of a shivering and coldness in his Back, vomited once or twice, and that same day fell into his Sleeping fit again. Being then at Bath, and hearing of it, I took horse on the 23d, to inform my- self of a matter-of-fact I thought so strange. When I came to the House, I was by the Neighbours (for there was nobody at home at that time besides the sick man) brought to his Bedside, when I found him asleep, as I had been told before. with a Cup of Beer and a piece of Bread and Cheese upon a Stool by his Bed within his reach. I took him by the Hand, felt his Pulse, which was at that time very regular; I put my Hand on his Breast, and found his Heart beat very re- gular too, and his breathing was easie and free; and all the fault I found was, that I thought his Pulse beat a little too strong. He was in a breathing Sweat, and had an agreeable warmth all over his Body. I then put my Mouth to his Ear, and as loud as I could called him by his name several times, pulled him by the Shoulders, pinched his Nose, stopped his Mouth and Nose together, as long as I durst for fear of Choaking him, but all to no purpose, for in all this time he gave me not the least signal of being sensible. I lifted up his Eye-lids, and found his Eye-balls drawn up under his Eye-brows, and fixt without any motion at all. Being baffled with all these tryals, I was resolved to see what effects * Spirit of Sal Armoniac would have, which I had brought with me, to discover the Cheat, if it had been one; so I held my vial under one Nostril a considerable time, which being drawn from Quick-lime, was a very piercing Spirit, and so strong, I could not bear it under my own Nose a moment without making my Eyes water; but he felt it not at all. Then, I threw it at several times up that 29 Bame Nostril, it made his Nose run and gleet, and his Eye-lids shiver and tremble a very little, and this was all the effect I found, though I poured up into one Nostril about a half-ounce Bottle of this fiery Spirit, which was as strong almost as Fire itself. Finding no success with this neither, I crammed that Nostril with Powder of White Hellebore, which I had by me, in order to make my farther tryals; and I can hardly think any Impostor could ever be insensible of what I did. I tarried some time afterwards in the Room to see what effects all together might have upon him ; but he never gave any token that he felt what I had done, nor discovered any manner of uneasiness, by moving or stirring any one part of his Body that I could observe. Having made these my Experiments I left him, being pretty well satisfied he was really asleep, and no sullen counterfeit, as some people thought him. Upon my return to Bath, and relating what I had observed, and what proofs this Fellow had given me of his Sleeping, a great many Gentlemen went out to see him, as I had done, to satisfy their Curiosity, in a Rarity of that Nature, who found him in the same condition I had left him in the day before, only his Nose was inflamed and swelled very much, and his Lips and the inside of his Right Nostril blistered and scabby with my Spirit and Hellebore, which I had plentifully dosed him with the day before. His Mother upon this for some time after would suffer nobody to come near him, for fear of more Experiments upon her Son.' About ten days after I had been with him, Mr. Woolmer, an experienced Apo- thecary at Bath, called at the House, being near Tinsbury, went up into the Room, finding his Pulse pretty high, as I had done, takes out his Launcet, lets him Blood about fourteen ounces in the Arm, tyes his Arm up again, nobody being in the House, and leaves him as he found him; and he assured me he never made the least motion in the world when he prickt him, nor all the while his Arm was bleeding. Several other Experiments were made by those that went to see him every day from the Bath, but all to no purpose, as they told me on their return; I saw him myself again the latter end of September, and found him just in the same posture, lying in his Bed, but removed from the House where he was before about a furlong or more: and they told me, when they removed him, by accident, car- rying him down Stairs which were somewhat narrow they struck his Head against a Stone, and gave him a severe Knock, which broke his Head, but he never moved any more at it than a dead man would. I found now his Pulse was not quite so strong, nor haM he any Sweats as when I saw him before. I tryed him again the second time, by stopping his Nose and Mouth, but to no purpose ; and a Gentleman then with me ran a large Pin into his Arm to the very Bone, but he gave us no manner of tokens of his being sensible of any thing we did to him. In all this time they assured me nobody had seen him either eat or drink, though they endeavoured it all they could, but it always stood by him, and they observed sometimes once a day, sometimes once in two days, all was gone. 'Tis farther observable, he never fouled his Bed, but did his necessary occasions always in the Pot. In this manner he lay till the 19th of November, when his mother hearing him make a noise, ran immediately up to him, and found him Eating; she ask'd him how he did ? He said, Very well, thank God. She ask'd him again, Which he liked best, Bread and Butter, or Bread and Cheese] He answered, Bread and Cheese. Upon this the poor Woman overjoyed left him to acquaint his Brother with it, and they came straight up into the Chamber to discourse him, but found him as fast asleep again as ever, and all the Art they had could not wake him. From this time to the end of January or the beginning of February (for I could not learn from any body the very day) he slept not so profoundly as before, for when they called him by his name, he seemed to hear them and be somewhat sensible, though he could not make them any answer. His Eyes were not now shut so close, and he had frequently great tremblings of his Eye-lids, upon which they expected every day when he would wake, which happened not till about the 30 time just now mention'd, and then he wak'd perfectly well, not remembering anything that happened all this while. 'Twas observed he was very little altered in his Flesh; only complained the Cold pincht him more than usually, and so presently fell to Husbandry as at other times. I have no reason to suspect this to be any Cheat, because I never heard of any gain to the Family by it, though so near the Bath, and so many People went thither out of Curiosity to see the Sleeper, who when awake was a support to his old Mother by his Labour, but now a certain charge to her. Besides, there was seldom any body in the House to attend any profit might be made by it; he being left alone in the House, and every body at liberty to go up to his Bedside." The case at Wellow was, I allow with Sir Benjamin Brodie, a companion to this case; not however a companion in imposture, but in the condition of the nervous system. I will now present another companion, seen by myself: since the occurrence of any similar morbid phenomena—just as of the phenomena of mesmerism—at different periods, in different places, in persons of different ranks, and in persons who could never have heard of each other, is alone a very strong confirmation of the reality of those morbid phenomena—a reality, however, which ordinary sagacity, unclouded by prejudice and temper, cannot fail of discovering. On the 9th of August, 1840, I was requested by Dr. Arnott, who, unlike men of far inferior intellect and attainment, has witnessed my mesmeric phenomena fifty times and is as satisfied as myself of the truth of mesmerism, to visit, with him, a Spanish lady of consideration, about 40 years of age, who had married at 14, miscarried every three months for two years, and then had a child, and after- wards a second. Soon after the birth of the second and up to the time I saw her —a period of above twenty years, she was subject to fits of sleep, which often lasted three weeks, during the whole of which she would swallow nothing but a little water. The fits of sleep would come on suddenly, and she was once seized at the opera. They would cease as suddenly, so that she often on waking went to the opera. In them she was insensible to light and all noise but the voice of her infant. Dr. Gregory the second, of Edinburgh, habitually mentioned in his lectures, when I was his pupil, the case of a cataleptic lady whom he attended, and whose disease had. been induced by misfortunes very similar to the history of Isabella in the Fatal Marriage; and in her paroxysms of insensibility she ap- peared perfectly blind, except when her baby was brought near her, and then she gave slight signs of recognising it. Had the peculiar conditions of these ladies been induced artificially by mesmerism, the doctors would have pronounced them at once most shameless impostors, feigning insensibility, but not able to carry it on where maternal feelings were too strong for them. The same phe- nomenon is often witnessed in mesmerism. I have had several cases, in persons of both sexes, and of high and humble rank, of perfect deafness in the mesmeric state, except to the voice of the mesmeriser or a noise made by him. Like the boy stigmatised by Sir Benjamin Brodie as an impostor, the Spanish lady, in her fits of sleep, would relieve her bowels, and she rose out of bed for this purpose, and even performed the usual subsequent act: though in one pa- roxysm the call of nature was unheeded by her, and an immense collection of hardened matters took place. She was insensible to mechanical injury—pinching, pricking, &c, but not to cold; and this again is a common fact in mesmerism. I have patients at this moment who give no sign of feeling, however you pinch them, but withdraw the hand instantly that a cold body touches or even is brought near to it. The lady was, on the other hand, fond of cold, for, if ice were given her, she would sit up in bed, smell at it, and appear to like it. When I visited her, she was in an attack. I found her eyes firmly closed and her upper extremities rigid, not yielding to an attempt to "move them, and her hands placed up against her face. I blew in her face, and her eyelids corru- gated the first time, but did not upon repetition. I understand that at 11 P. M. the rigidity regularly ceased and she sunk completely relaxed into a deep sleep. 31 How analogous, how identical, will not every one, familiar with the state arti- ficially induced by mesmerism, recognise these phenomena to be with those of mesmeric patients! The attacks had become less frequent of late and shorter, continuing a week only: but the present had lasted ten days, and Dr. Arnott informed me that when he called the next day she was still asleep. Headache preceded the first attack, and often continued and tormented her. The present attack was ascribed to improper food. The afflicted lady was tired of her disease, and wished for death. I recommended mesmerism as an almost certain cure, if properly and persever- ingly employed; but did not visit her again as she was about to leave England immediately. It was lucky for her character that she was not a patient in the University College, or, as it was formerly called, North London, Hospital; that neither Mr. Wakley, nor the Edinburgh surgical experimenter of whom he writes, was allowed to see her; and that her case was not described to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. Sir Benjamin Brodie, after agreeing with Dr. Marshall Hall that according to the laws of physiology the man's sound leg ought to have moved during the operation on the other, concluded by declaring himself perfectly satisfied with the old report of the French Royal Commission in 1784, and the more recent de- termination of the French Academy against the truth of mesmerism. The self- ish, insincere, and ambitious Bishop Watson—the writer of The Apology for the Bible, used to profess himself, in his days of wealth and importance, perfectly satisfied with Chemistry as it was when he was nobody and published his Chemi- cal Essays:—" for his part he never troubled himself with the new-fangled dis- coveries and doctrines of Sir Humphry Davy."* I was once summoned to an old man near his death with the influenza, who had been forty years check-taker at Covent Garden or Drury Lane Theatre, and, though at his post every night, had been so occupied in the money department that he actually had never once in his life seen a play, but had been for forty years contented with sitting at the receipt of custom and never felt any desire to step three yards farther into the house and learn what a play was like. I have heard that Sir Benjamin Brodie, when I demonstrated mesmerism at University College Hospital, used to say that he disliked turning his horses' heads towards Russell Square to see a patient, lest people should think he was going to that scene of humbug, University Col- lege Hospital. From his total want of curiosity while I have demonstrated mes- merism at my own house for the last four years to any respectable person who requested me, and from this declaration at the Society, I can believe the anec- dote. Sir Benjamin Brodie is to be pitied : but he is also to be condemned. He ouo-ht to know that the French investigation was most superficial and incom- plete, conducted in the most random way; that the commission allowed that the effects were not imposture, and only ascribed them to imagination, imitation, and touch; that the results were varied, and the report says—"Nothing can be more astonishing than the convulsions;" " he who has not beheld them can have no idea of them ; and even, in beholding them, one is equally surprised at the pro- found repose in which some of the patients are placed, and at the agitation which animates others. It is impossible not to recognise in these effects, which are constant, a great power which agitates the patients, which ever masters them, and of which the person who magnetises them seems to be the depositary;" __that one of the French Commissioners, truly virtuous, highly distinguished in Science, and well accustomed to investigate nature—the celebrated Jussieu, who had pursued the investigation with the greatest attention, firmly refused to sign the report of the rest, though threatened by the minister, Baron Breteuil, and made one separately, favourable to mesmerism, and setting forth the solid reasons of his convictions, after having made separate experiments; that, in 1825, on a suggestion that the Royal French Academy of Medicine should in- * Tait's Magazine. 32 vestigate the subject anew, a powerful report in favour of the investigation was made by the Commissioners, Drs. Adelon, Pariset, Marc, Burdin, senior, and Husson; that nearly one-half of its members confessed that they had seen, and that they believed, mesmeric phenomena most marvellous and important: that, after the investigation, a powerful, and in every respect admirable, report in fa- vour of the truth of mesmerism was made in 1831, by the Commissioners, Drs. Bourdois De La Motte, Fotiquier, Gueneau de Mussy, Guersent, Itard, J. J. Le Roux, Marc, Thillaye, and Husson, and received by the Academy with the live- liest interest; that some of the adversaries of mesmerism in vain attempted to disturb the religious silence of the assembly by murmurs of disapprobation, but that the immense majority instantly repressed their attempt, and testified by loud applause to the honourable reporter, M. Husson, how highly they appreciated his zeal, talents, and courage;* that great discoveries, great progress, have been made in the subject since the old report—that the science has been enriched since that time as much as Chemistry since the days of the Alchymists; that many men, his equals in education, information, ability, strength of mind, disinterest- edness, and industry, have not contented themselves with an antiquated report, and a modern superficial and unfair report of careless and prejudiced men, but boldly asked nature to report whether mesmerism is true, and have received from her one plain, uniform, and often repeated answer—Yes. Sir Astley Cooper, who, though really distinguished in mechanical surgery, was otherwise but scantily informed, and was endowed with a moderate degree of the higher intellectual faculties, always refused to witness mesmerism, "be- cause he had a character to lose." A low estimate must he have formed of his own character if it could have been lost thus! How sad an absence of moral courage and dignity ! And so poor Sir Astley died as Sir Benjamin Brodie at present intends to die, without a sight of the mesmeric phenomena!—just as many astrouomers in Newton's time died in perfect ignorance of Newton's dis- coveries, and at his death, forty years after the publication of his Principia, he had not, as Voltaire remarks, twenty followers out of England: and just as the Professor of Philosophy at Padua refused to walk into Galileo's house and look through his telescope to see whether the satellites of Jupiter really existed, and the Professor at Pisa made speeches to show that the facts could not be facts. In Kepler's correspondence (Kepleri Epistolae) is a letter from Galileo, in which he writes:—" Oh my dear Kepler, how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh together. Here, at Padua, is the principal professor of philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and" planets through my glass, which he pertinaciously refuses to do—why are you not here] What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly ! and to hear the philosopher of Pisa labouring before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations to draw the new planets out of the sky." When the assertion that the blood circulated first attracted public attention, not only were those who believed the fact vilified as visionary, credulous, and ignorant, by the medical profession, and therefore by the mass of the public who thought the doctors must be proper judges of the matter, giving them credit for more knowledge, sense, and honesty than they possessed; and lampooned both here and on the Continent, and nicknamed circulators; Harvey himself losing his practice, while his loquacious and shallow opponents, now forgotten, flourished; no doctor beyond the age of forty, at the time, ever believing the circulation to the day of his death: but books were written to prove by reasoning that the facts of the circulation could not be facts. Among the rest was one entitled:—Ergo motus sanguinis non circularis. Candidate, Simon Boullot:—a thesis read in the University of Paris before the President, Hugo Chasles, 1482. Another, Ergo sanguinis motus circularis impossibilis, 1472. Candidate, Francis Bazin; * Rapports et Discussions de VAcadinie Royale de Midecin, sur le Masnitisme Animal Par M. P Foissac, M. D.( Paris, 1833, p. 208_an historical work which all interested in the subject should possess. 33 President, Philip Hardouin de St. Jaques.* But if Galileo and Harvey, the phi- losophers of facts, were pronounced visionary and credulous, so was Bacon, who urged men to avoid fancying and to busy themselves with observation, experiment, and induction. When Elizabeth thought of making him her attorney-general, Cecil represented him to her " as a man of mere speculation, as one wholly given up to philosophical enquiries, new indeed and amusing, but fanciful and absurd and therefore more likely to distract her affairs than to serve her with proper judgement," in short, as an inferior practitioner, though at length Lord Chan- cellor.! Sir Benjamin Brodie need not fear his company if he cease to scorn mesmerism, for he will find himself with Cuvier and La Place. Cuvier thus writes:]:—" The effects produced upon persons who, before the operation (of mesmerising) was begun, were in a state of insensibility; those which have taken place upon other persons, after the operation itself had reduced them to that state; and, also, the effects produced upon brutes; no longer permit it to be doubted that the proximity of two animated bodies, in a certain position, and with the help of certain motions, do produce a real effect, wholly indepen- dent of the imagination of either. It is also evident that these effects are owing to a communication which takes place between the nervous systems of the two parties." La Place thus writes :\—" The extraordinary phenomena which result from the extreme sensibility of the nervous system in some persons have given birth to a variety of opinions, on the existence of a new agent, denominated animal magnetism. It is natural to suppose that the influence of those causes is very weak, and that it can easily be disturbed by accidental circumstances, but it would be unfair to conclude that it never exists, merely because, in many cases, it does not manifest itself. We are so far from being acquainted with all the agencies of nature, and with their different modes of action, that it would be unphilosophical to deny their existence, because in the present state of our knowledge they are unexplainable to us." M. Chenevix states that he had more than one conversation with La Place upon the subject, about 1816 and 1817, and that the expression of that great phi- losopher constantly was: " tha t the testimony in favour of the truth of mesmerism, coming with such uniformity from enlightened men of many nations, who had no interest to deceive and possessed no possible means of collusion, was such that, applying to it his own principles and formulas respecting human evidence, he could not withhold his assent to what ivas so strongly supported."^ Sir Benjamin Brodie joins the ranks of Mr. Wakley, and id genus onrne of in- tellect, and information, and character, rather than of La Place ! Although it would disgrace Sir Benjamin Brodie to listen to mesmerists for a moment or to withhold his sneers, " it would not," I quote Mr. Chenevix, "dis- grace the greatest man whom England ever has produced to attempt an experi- ment or two upon a doctrine which Hufeland, Jussieu, Cuvier, Ampere, and La Place believed. Nay, would it not disgrace him more to condemn, without knowing any thing about it, what they kneio and credited 1 Is supercilious ignorance the weapon with which Bacon would have repelled a new branch of knowledge, however extraordinary it might have appeared to him." " Surely what great men believe, ordinary men may try." Mr. Bransby Cooper, now began, by asking the advocates of mesmerism to give him " the rationale of the facts." The point first to be ascertained was * In 1723, a thesis was printed against inoculation:—Ergo variolas inoculare nefas; and in 1691, a thesis declaring the enormous wigs of that day to be healthier than our own hair i Ergo coma adscititia nativa salubrior. 1691, Candidate, H. Petr. Mattot; President, Pet. Paul Guyard. Authors, and presidents, and doctrines, have all vanished into thin air. t See the Life, prefixed to his works. I Anatomie Comparee. Tom. ii. p. 117. $ Trade" Analatioue du Calcul des Probabilities, p. 158. || London Medical and Physical Journal. June 1829, p. 500 34 evidently whether the statements of mesmerism were facts: and the author had opened his paper with these words. "I shall abstain entirely from any prelimi- nary remarks upon the supposed cause of the effects I have produced; I shall still call the state ' mesmerism,' because the name involves no principle; it regards the phenomena only ; and not the specific cause of them." " The generality of men, when they he'ar of some novel phenomenon, instead of testing the truth by experiment alone, endeavour to ascertain the cause by their own powers of rea- soning; and belief or disbelief is made to follow the result. The startling phe- nomena of mesmerism have but too frequently illustrated this remark. To facts I shall therefore confine myself; and to such only as T can personally vouch for !" He then found a difficulty in admitting the facts, because the man seemed to hear the sawing of the bone; and contended that if the man could not feel he could not hear,—that "hearing and feeling were the same." Therefore no deaf man can feel a pinch; nor men with palsied legs hear! I presume he meant that in coma all the senses must be equally dull. His companion, Mr. Liston, who saw the case of coma with exquisite sensibility of the surface which I have described, could enlighten him on this point, were it not too philosophical a point for Mr. Liston's notice. If Mr. Cooper were not a surgeon only, but well acquainted with the more remarkable nervous diseases and with the phenomena of mesmerism, he would know that a person may be asleep and snore, and yet hear and talk; and that touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, may each be suspended or active, while the others are, one, or more, or all, active or suspended. However, this ignorance was very excusable in him, after the speeches which others had made. He sat down calling upon the gentlemen present acquainted with mesmerism not to let their opponents have it all their own way, and to come forward with their facts in a manly manner. Now nothing could be a greater treat than to see their opponents have their way, and rush headlong violently down the steep, like another set of obstinate beings in olden time who had more legs to stand upon. As to coming forward with facts, there were strong facts, and facts only, given; and given in as manly a manner as any thing could be given to the Society; and more facts than the Society knew what to do with : and yet he asked the supporters of mesmerism to come forward with more facts than were related in the paper; and he had begun by asking for the rationale of the facts, as if he ad- mitted the facts and there were not facts enough. This gentlemau is a teacher at Guy's Hospital. Mr. Liston now rose, and, leaning forward, wished to " know if the interest- ing patient had sufficiently advanced in his education since the operation to be able to read with the back of his neck or with his belly." He said no more, and, if he had a friend in the room, that friend must have wished he had not said so much. His little speech fell flat and did not excite even a smile, except one of pity from myself. However, Mr. Symes assured him, as I could have done on my own part, that he had witnessed vision when the eyes were indisputably bandaged, so that the patients in their ordinary state could not have discerned the faintest glimmer of light. Mr. Liston made no allusion to the case of the poor cataleptic girl in the Edin- burgh Infirmary, from whose hand, according to Mr. Wakley, he tore a piece with his nails; nor of the gentleman from whose insensible foot he cut away a bone, and whose whole foot he might have dissected without causing the least sensation. Mr. Arnott found some difficulties in the case ; but observed that the state- ment was highly interesting, and the subject deserving of attention, for he had seen operations performed without the knowledge of the patient when insensible through opium or great loss of blood. There is therefore some reason to hope that Mr. Arnott will feel it his duty to ascertain by experience whether patients can be rendered comatose through mesmerism and unconscious of? surgical ope- rations. 35 Dr. Mayo considered that the subject was of great importance, and should not be treated with ridicule, or at once rejected because it was startling. He de- clared Sir Benjamin Brodie's suggestion that the man was hysterical to be totally unsupported; and stated that he suddenly ran a pin deeply into the elder Okey when her back was turned, and that she manifested not the slightest sensibility. Many who had witnessed the wonderful phenomena in the Okeys, and not ventured to believe there was not some undiscoverable collusion, became firm converts to the truth by making a pass behind the bick of one of the sisters after the demonstration was over, on meeting with her accidentally in the passages or on the stairs when her back was turned and it was absolutely impossible for her to see or suspect any thing. Dr. Mayo pointed out the difficulty of supposing that all the persons of different countries and ages who exhibited mesmeric phenomena were impostors. Capt. Valiant related the case of his own nurse who had a very severe opera- tion successfully performed upon her in the mesmeric state without any sensation. Dr. James Johnson sneered at the poor woman's truth, and wished to know if she did not beg her mistress to be present at the time. To this Captain Valiant immediately replied in the affirmative. Dr. Johnson then sneeringly wished to know what that was for. To which the Captain replied that it was surely natural for her to desire a female to be present, and that no one could be more proper than her own mistress under whose protection she was living. Dr. Johnson, as a father, should have been contented with viewing the poor man whose leg was amputated as an impostor, without attempting to insinuate that this poor female also had acted disreputably. The authors of the paper, Mr. Topham and Mr. Ward, heard all the speeches without a single observation; and it was my intention, before I left home, to follow the same course of absolute silence, and amuse myself by seeing to what length the meeting would go. Indeed I should not have attended the meeting at all, but that several friends wished to be admitted as visiters. However, I did rise, after being repeatedly called for, and pointed out the striking facts of the narration which bad been entirely unnoticed by any of the speakers: I read from the Lancet the case of the Ediriburgh surgeon, tearing the hand of the poor girl in the infirmary with his nails, Mr. Liston sitting on the bench next to me and saying nothing: and I advised them not to reason or rely upon others, but to act as I had done,—to go to nature and ascertain for themselves from her whether mesmerism was true. As soon as I sat down thanks were voted, without a dissentient voice, for the paper, and the society adjourned, disbelieving and ignorant of the most common and elementary effects of mesmerism, and having afforded a fine illustration of the remark of Mr. Chenevix, made fourteen years ago,—" The ignorance of the medical world in this country is as great as the precipitancy with which the case is prejudged." As soon as the society had adjourned, Mr. Topham went up to the president, and in my hearing formally withdrew the paper from the society, saying that he wished to withdraw it on the spot; and he took his leave with the words,—" it must accordingly be considered as withdrawn." The authors advertised it as a pamphlet on the following day, and published it on the next. SECTION III. resolution of the royal medical and chirurgical society not to leave a trace in their records that this fact had been presented to them. " Galileo, Newton, Salomon de Caus, Volta, Fulton, Winser, Arkwright, Gall, and all who have presented themselves with a truth in their hand at the door of this great bedlam, called the world, have been received with stones or hisses."—Jobard. On the evening of the next meeting of the Society, December 13th, before the 36 chair was taken, Dr. Copland, the eminent compiler, goodnaturedly told me that he was going to oppose the confirmation of the minutes of the proceedings of the last meeting. 1 as goodnaturedly replied that I was very glad of it; and hoped he would not stop there, but propose a strong vote of censure upon the authors, the council, and all concerned in its presentation to the last meeting. He imme- diately looked grave and astonished. But I laughed on, and assured him I was in earnest,—and desired nothing more for the sake of mesmerism than that the society would distinguish itself to the very utmost in its dire hostility. He evidently considered the society an important body. But I hold no society or college higher than a common club, except so far as it acts rationally and with the simple" love of truth and of the happiness of man and other animals. An M.D. standing by, named Evans, living at the western extremity of Hill Street, on the left, with two very large brass plates, immediately that Dr. Copland had announced his intention to me,'volunteered to second the motion: but Dr. Copland looked as if he was not ambitious of such distinguished support, and scarcely noticed him. He now said that he believed the patient an impostor, for that he had taken or seen taken off a leg from a man who gave no sign of pain; and he had published the case. I asked, "and was a nerve handled roughly with an instrument as in the case of the man at Wellow." He turned perfectly white, and said "Yes, it was." "Of course," I remarked, "you published this striking fact in your narration of the case]" "No, I did not," he replied. When the chair was taken, a secretary read as minutes of the preceding meeting merely that such a paper had been read; no abstract being given accord- ing to the established custom of the society. The authorities thus disdained to possess the particulars on their books. The president then put the usual motion for the confirmation of the minutes, when Dr. Gregory, known in connection with small pox and cow pox, rose to express his disapprobation of the authors having published the paper immediately that it was read. Dr. Copland rose to oppose the motion on two grounds,—the character of the paper, and the publication of it by the authors without the1 permission of the society. He would allow no trace to remain that such a paper had been read. The president stopped his arguments on the first point, as the paper had been discussed at a previous meeting and thanks been voted for it. The deadly hos- tility of Dr. Copland to mesmerism is well known. But to-night he was particu- larly unwise. He protested that the paper ought not to have been read, because the author was not a medical man!—As though knowledge was ever to be despised from any source. Why one of the authors was a surgeon, though neither was a fellow of the society. I have beard papers read at the meetings of the College of Physicians (of which he rejoices to be a fellow) by persons not medical, once by the very reverend Dean of Westminster; and the society has of course no law as to who may be authors of papers: and several members of the society are not medical men. On this point he was set right by more than one member. He then contended that, if the account of the man experiencing no agony during the operation were true, the fact was univorthy of their consideration, because pain is a wise provision of nature, and patients ought to suffer pain while their surgeon is operating; they are all the better for it, and recover belter ! Will the world believe that such folly was gravely uttered] This will be remembered as a doctor's speech in 1842, when the doctor himself shall be forgotten. In due consistency, Dr. Copland, when he is about to have a tooth extracted, of course goes to a clumsy dentist and begs the man to give him all the pain he can. In due consistency, he of course gives his patients that physic which he thinks most likely to pinch them well, because they must be all the better for being twisted with sharp pain while it is operating; the agony must do them good, and make them anxious to take his physic again. He then confined his motion to the erasure of the minutes, on the ground of the publication of the paper by the authors when they had no right. Dr. Evans fulfilled his promise of seconding Dr. Copland, but made no speech. I There was now a mighty, virtuous indignation expressed by several at the publication of the paper by the authors. Dr. James Johnson said it had been printed before it was read in the society. Dr. Merriman, known as an accoucheur and examiner at Apothecaries' Hall, said it had been published before it was read in the society; which statement was incorrect, unless Dr. Merriman confounded printing with publishing. "Common sense should have told the authors not to publish it,—the publication was a gross insult to the society." Dr. Gregory was so shocked that he proposed the affair should be promulgated by advertisement in three newspapers. Dr. Copland declared the authors had broken faith with the society in publish- ing it, and had made a semblance of its being published under the society's sanc- tion. Dr. Moore protested thatVhe authors had violated the laws of the society; and, at the same time that he was so indignant at its publication having been taken out of the hands of the society, declared, most consistently, that it was unworthy of a place in their minutes. " How would the character," he exclaimed, "of that medical society be affected, on whose records it should appear that it had received and discussed a subject like mesmerism, when no proof existed as to its truth]" Dr. Copland rose again, and asked if the society would pocket such an affront as the publication] Mr. Symes begged the president to inform the meeting, whether the authors had not formally withdrawn the paper as soon as it was read. The president made no reply: and at this I must express my regret. His conduct had in the whole affair been most sensible and impartial. He is in truth in all respects a gentleman; but he seemed distressed and confused at the hubbub of the meeting, and did not reply, though he evidently ought, and in the affirmative. Mr. Wood, who was present as a visiter, hearing such remarks made upon Mr. Topham behind his back, rose and was requesting permission, as the friend of the absent gentleman so accused, to say that Mr. Topham was not aware that he had been violating any rules of the society in publishing the paper after he had withdrawn it, when he was suddenly interrupted by one of a number who humbly live, and move, and have their being in Sir Benjamin Brodie,— Mr. Cjesar Hawkins, who objected to his speaking, because he was not a member of the society: and Mr. Wood was not allowed to say another word. Here was a body of men censuring an absent gentleman in strong language, and, when his friend rose craving permission to explain for him, that friend was in- stantly compelled to hold his peace. This was conduct unworthy of a society of men of the very humblest class. No law of the society forbad Mr. Wood to speak; and, had there been such a law, the laws of justice, and of that charity without which Mr. Hawkins is as "sounding brass," would have^been superior to it under these circumstances. Ungenerous man ! I envy you not your heart. You little thought what you caused to pass in Mr. Wood's recollection when you acted thus. You caused him to remember that but five days before (December 8th) he saw you standing near a table, while the leg of a poor young woman was cut off in the midst of agonizing shrieks, she being evidently in the last stage of consumption, and with which, as well as her scrofulous knee, she had been under the same surgical care for four months. On this very day she had died (December the 13th); and, on being opened, it was seen that at the time of the operation she had been very far advanced in consumption. Not only was the upper part of the rio-lit lung extensively disorganised, but the whole left lung was studded with tubercles, which in the upper part had suppurated and formed several large ab- scesses; one abscess was very large, and had burst into the cavity of the chest. It is a surgical rule not to'operate for even a fistula, unless the lungs are ex- amined and found healthy. Here the operation could only agonise the poor creature and shorten the wretched remnant of her days; and the reflection that she might probably have been spared the useless agony of the operation by mes- 38 merism,—a blessing in the eyes of every one but Dr. Copland,—drew a sigh from Mr. Wood as Mr. Hawkins vented forth his hostility. Had indeed the stetho- scope been employed the state of things would have been known, and she spared the operation altogether,—the stethoscope, without being conversant with which no man can treat diseases of the chest without daily blunders, but which has been despised in the building where the unfortunate woman died, is spoken of now by one there as a folly reminding him of a fishing line with a fool at one end and a fish at the other, and was spoken of formerly with equal contempt by one who now uses it hourly, but who, when I first defended its importance years ago, per- secuted me with his tongue, and said it was just the thing for Elliotson to rave about and he had never met with a single sensible man who advocated it.—So Mr. Wood sat down, amidst loud cries of "Chair!" " Chair!" even from an old practitioner, not a member of the society, who Jives near University College, and is as violently, as he is ignorantly, antimesmeric: and, though I have been above thirty years a member of the society,—had been its president when it obtained its charter, which has no other living name in it than my own,—had procured for it myself the epithet Royal, and for its members the title of Felloios,—had al- lowed the society to hold its general evening meetings and the afternoon meet- ings of the council at my house when it had no house of its own, and given the members numerous conversazioni during the two years of my presidency, and afforded not merely my house but the proper trifling hospitality on all these three kinds of occasions,—and had furnished many papers to the Society's Transactions; —I thought that 1 could not consent to continue a member of it. The substitu- tion of perverse prejudice for scientific and candid spirit was discreditable enough, but the want of common justice and feeling was too disgusting: and, after much calm reflection upon my opinion, I sent my resignation. Mr. Perry, a secretary, condemned the publication of the paper, and so did— Dr. Mayo, and Dr. Webster of Brook Street, and I think Dr. Addison of Spring Gardens, and Mr. Da vies of Highgate. This virtuous indignation at its publication was truly laughable. The speakers all knew that the society would not have published this paper, and they would have risen in arms at the bare suspicion that the council contemplated such a thing; and yet as much clamour was made as if the society had been deprived of a treasure. I resolved to take no share in the discussion, as I knew that neither the authors nor the public would care whether the minutes were con- firmed or not. 1 never enjoyed a farce of Foote's more than the acting of this evening; for, by a little effort, as I sat silently observing the speakers, 1 repre- sented to myself that they were enacting all their parts for my amusement. I am clearly of opinion that the society had no right to complain. This society by its laws (ch. xii. 5), cannot publish a paper without the consent of the author. Had the paper not been formally withdrawn, the publication would have been unjustifiable. As to the printing of the paper in readiness for the withdrawal, surely if the authors had a right to withdraw it and publish it immediately, they had a rio-fit Jo be ready with the printing. Indeed had they not done all this, they would have shown no spirit. For they had learnt, on the best authority, from various quarters, that a fierce attack would be made upon thern in the society; that this member by name would demolish them and mesmerism and all concerned in mesmerism, and that member by name would teach people to send papers on mesmerism to the society ; that " a rod was in pickle for them, and for the impostor of a patient," &c. &c. Their resolution therefore was wise to hold their peace at the meeting, and to withdraw the paper and publish it themselves, instead of allowing it to be locked up for ever in a dark closet with the other valuables of the society. A little debate arose about the effect of confirmation of minutes. Dr. Roots, of Russel Square, thought that, if they were not confirmed, the vote of thanks 39 passed at the la6t meeting would drop; as though the business of a meeting was not valid till minutes of it were confirmed at another. Mr. Quain, of University College, and Mr. Drew, jun., of Gower Street, urged that the non-confirmation of the minutes could not affect the proceedings of the previous meeting; that they were merely records, and their confirmation a mere assertion that they were correct. This I apprehend is perfectly true; and the society had a full right, as the president said, to preserve no record of the previous meeting. What is done at one meeting, if it is not a prospective resolution, is complete. When a person is elected a member or officer of a body, he is fully elected; the minutes record merely the fact. But minutes may affect a prospective measure. If a meeting resolves that a certain thing shall be done at another meeting or any time subse- quent to it, and the second meeting does not confirm the minutes, they are erased; and, as then no such resolution can be shown, the measure previously resolved upon cannot be taken, unless by another resolution. For want of noticing this distinction of the two cases, the confusion about the confirmation of minutes affecting or not affecting measures, I presume, arises. The idea of the non-con- firmation of the minutes affecting the vote of thanks, when the persons thanked had received the thanks, and gratefully gone off with thern, never probably to come near the society again, was very amusing. So the virtuous indignation of a large majority condemned the minutes to non- confirmation,—a most ridiculous proceeding, since, from reporters being admitted, the wholt proceedings of the previous meeting were already published in the various journals, and recorded more publicly than they would have been in the minute-book of the society, which nobody sees but the secretary when he writes in it and the president when he signs his name. I forgot to mention that Mr. Bransby Cooper joined with the rest, and was not contented with virtuously disapproving of the publication, but informed us that the society ought to be grateful to us for coming forward to be so defeated, and that no men had ever had a more complete beating than had been given us. It was hardly noble in a victor not to be satisfied with seeing his foes at his feet, but thus to jeer and tell them, as they lay prostrate, they were beaten. And yet again it was very good of him, because we should otherwise not have known that we were beaten. CHAPTER II. NUMEROUS OTHER CASES. " Mesmerism is too gross a humbug to admit of any farther serious notice. We regard its abettors as quacks and impostors. They ought to be hooted out of professional society.— Any practitioner who sends a patient afflicted with any disease to consult a mesmeric quack, oueht to be without patients for the rest of his days." S Mr. Thomas Wakley, Lancet, Oct. 29,1842. 1. It is a great happiness to me that, before Mr. Ward undertook to operate as he did in the case which has been described, I was originally consulted upon the possibility and safety of operating in the mesmeric state without pain and gave a decided opinion that to induce such a state and perform the most painful ope- ration in it, both without pain and with a successful result, was very practicable. I had myself witnessed five years previously the introduction of a seton into the back of the neck of Elizabeth Okey without sensation in the mesmeric state. " For a length of time she had perfect loss of the sense of touch,—anaesthesia, in her ecstatic delirium. She could hold nothing unless she saw it; nor, till she acquired the habit, could she walk without looking at her feet. She used to take 40 red-hot coals out of the fire and wonder, as she held them, why other people cried out and desired her to put them down; and why her hands became blis- tered." As she suffered excruciating neuralgic pain in her head, I prescribed a seton. She was not apprised at all of it; and was standing before me and several others chattering wittily and deliriously, when Mr. Wood, who was behind her, suddenly took up the flesh of the back of her neck, run a large seton needle with a skein of silk into it, and put on the plaster, without a moment's check to her chattering and fun, or any sign of her noticing it, though I watched her most minutely. On dissipating the state, and bringing her to her natural condition, she soon found there was something wrong at the part, and put her hand to it, saying some one must have pinched the back of her neck. In her deep coma, and in that of her sister, there was always insensibility of touch, and cupping and the severest blistering were perfectly unnoticed. 2. Soon afterwards I met with a beautiful case of mesmeric susceptibility and the permanent cure of severe and obstinate epilepsy by mesmerism, in a little boy, Master Salmon, of Red Lion Street, Holborn, whose case I shall send to the Zoist. I threw him into sleep-waking daily for the cure of his fits. In this state, though he saw, and heard, and whispered, he had no feeling. He had an eruption in the head, which was dressed every day, but with great pain. His mother dreaded this daily business; and I advised her to mesmerise him always before she began. She did ; and the removal of the old dressings, the washing, and the fresh dressing, were regularly from that time done by her in his mesmeric state, and he never suffered in the least, and she then always awoke* him by a few transverse passes. His head got well. 3. I have at this moment a beautiful case of mesmeric susceptibility and the cure of severe hereditary and long-standing epilepsy by mesmerism, in the per- son of a young female whose phrenological phenomena are mentioned in my letter to Dr. Engledue appended to his celebrated address. In her sleep she con- verses, after having been in a profound coma, with her jaws locked, for more or less time : but has insensibility of touch except in the skin of the face, though exquisitely sensible, throughout her frame, to temperature, whether hot or cold,— a fact I have noticed in several other instances of sleep-waking. She had suffered severely from a decayed great molar tooth. I took her to Mr. Nicholles in Bruton Street, and threw her in a few minutes into the mesmeric state. I then relaxed her firmly locked jaw by laying my fingers upon it, and the tooth was extracted without her knowledge, though it had three fangs and was firmly fixed. Yet, what is as remarkable as the exquisite sensibility to heat or cold in parts that are not sensible to any mechanical injury, although the extraction of the tooth gave no sensation, the presence of the blood in her mouth ivas felt unpleasantly*. She continued for some time longer in the deep and silent stage of her coma, in which she has no muscular power to raise her hand, or her head, or to spit. She soon began working her lips uneasily; and her jaw had, as usual, soon closed again. I relaxed it again, and she worked both it and her lips with increasing uneasiness. She at length awoke, immediately spit out a dessert-spoonful of blood which had lain in the front of her mouth and annoyed her; and was delighted to find her troublesome tooth had been extracted "without her know- ledge. She is one of a large family at Islington, admirably brought up, and with a most beautiful cerebral conformation, of the finest moral feelings and strength of mind, and as incapable of deception or affectation as those, who in their un- feeling ignorance, accuse the most innocent mesmeric patients of deception, are destitute of common sense and common charity. I shall send her case to the Zoist next year. 4. " March 10, 1841, at the house of M. Talbot-Descourty, in presence of M. M. Raisin, M. D., Dean of the Faculty,—Perrin, M. D.—Feuguerolles, Advo- cate,—Bertrand, member of the Academy,—Courty, Journalist,—Augot, sen. and Augot jun , merchants, M. La Fontaine threw G. Louis Eugene thanal into mesmeric coma with complete insensibility. Dr. Perrin, after having satisfied 41 himself of this by pricking him repeatedly, stated that the pulse was 100. M. Talbot, surgeon-dentist, then proceeded to extract the last lower left molar tooth. As it was broken, M. Talbot was obliged to cut away the gum from it, and the patient gave no sign of sensation. M. Talbot then introduced the instrument into the mouth—the instrument with which he had first attempted to extract the tooth; pushed back the head of the young man, who made a sort of grunt which was unusual to him in the mesmeric sleep, fixed the instrument, extracted the tooth, which was barred, and therefore more calculated to give pain. Dr. Perrin found the pulse at this time 76. M. Talbot discerned no trembling of the hands, such as is common during an effort to disguise the signs of sensibility. The patient rinsed his mouth and was awakened. The moment he awoke, he en- treated M. La Fontaine not to allow his tooth to be taken out, because he had no longer any pain; but, finding the blood in his mouth, he applied his hand to it, and discovered that the tooth had been extracted. Dr. Perrin found the pulse now to be 88. Every one present testified that he had not shown any sign of sensibility. This report being a faithful detail of the facts which passed before our eyes, we have signed it. March 10, 1841. La Fontaine, Talbot-Descourty, Chir. Dentisle." The pulse was only 76 while the tooth was extracting in his placid sleep, AND 88 AT THE MOMENT WHEN HE LEARNT THE CIRCUMSTANCE. 5. In the summer of 1841, I exhibited such mesmeric facts to Dr. Engledue, Mr. Gardiner, and Mr. Prideaux, of Hampshire, as to convince them of the reality of mesmerism. They have all become powerful and practical supporters of the truth. Mr. Gardiner, by its means soon afterwards cured a young lady in the Isle of Wight of the most distressing nervous symptoms, which had long inca- pacitated her from either occupation or amusement and resisted all medical treat- ment. Besides being cured, she exhibited many of the most powerful mesmeric phenomena, which I went over to the Island to witness. In her state of sleep- waking she felt no mechanical injury, and therefore suffered nothing when a tooth was extracted. I will give the particulars of the extraction in the words of Mr. Gardiner:— " To the Editor of the Hampshire Telegraph. " Sir,—Some erroneous reports having been recently circulated on the subject of an important and interesting experiment, in which Mr. Martin the dentist, of Portsmouth, removed two teeth during the mesmeric trance, without the know- ledge or suffering on the part of the patient, I beg you will favour me by inserting the following simple statement of the case. Having been interrupted in the course of certain mesmeric experiments by a violent toothache in one of my patients (whom I had exhibited to Drs. Elliotson and Engledue), it occurred to me that the insensibility, which is an invariable concomitant of the true sleep-waking state, would afford me an admirable opportunity of benefiting the sufferer, and of extending the application of mesmerism. My friend, Dr. Engledue, obtained the assistance of Mr. Martin, a gentleman1 who knew little, and believed less, about mesmerism, and who decidedly questioned the practicability of the pro- posed operation. He came. In two minutes the patient (a young lady) was in the perfect mesmeric trance, and therefore insensible. Mr. Martin seized the tooth (a molar or jaw tooth) with the forceps—purposely prolonged the wrench (as agreed upon by Dr. Engledue prior to his visit, in order to test thoroughly the insensibility of the patient), and drew forth the tooth. Not a pang or symptom of suffering! In a short time I restored the patient to her natural state in the usual manner. Upon being told that the tooth had been extracted, she exclaimed, ' Did 1 feel it?'—a singular greeting to a dentist's ears! Mr. Martin then pro- ceeded to examine her mouth, and suggessted the removal of another tooth. The 42 patient laughingly consented, and sat again. In one minute and a half I again entranced her, and she became of course insensible as before. The tooth being in an advanced stage of decay, was crushed under the instrument, and the rem- nants were with much trouble extracted. "During the whole of this trying operation not a groan or complaint escaped the patient. Shortly afterwards I again restored her, upon which she turned to the glass to ascertain whether or not she had really lost the second tooth! It would be difficult to determine which party evinced the greater degree of delight and astonishment,—the one having witnessed a novel and most astounding phe- nomenon,—the other having been unconsciously, almost magically, freed from her tormentors. " I have confined myself to a simple narration of facts, and shall not trespass on your columns by detailing the general phenomena of mesmerism, which are nevertheless of the highest importance and interest. Whenever a new truth is advanced, short-sighted individuals immediately ask 'Cuibono?'—There is an answer. " I remain, Sir, " Your obedient Servant, " John B. W. S. Gardiner." " Portsmouth, Dec. 9lh, 1841." 6. Mr. Prideaux, who practises at Southampton, has had extraordinary expe- rience in this way, and obliged me with the following letter:— " My dear Sir, "In compliance with your wishes I have great pleasure in furnishing you with a few brief particulars of the cases in which I have operated on the teeth of patients when in a state of magnetic sleep. My first information of the operation of tooth extraction having been performed during this state, and without pain to the patient, was derived from Teste's " Manuel pratique du Magnetisme Ani- mal," published in Paris in 1840; a work not known in this country so much as it deserves to be. Upon becoming myself a magnetiser, I naturally became desirous of trying an experiment so applicable in my own profession, and an opportunity soon presented itself. A patient I was then in the habit of frequently entrancing, and who when in this state had always shown insensibility to the ordinary tests of feeling, such as pricking, pinching, &c, had a great number of decayed teeth and stumps, from which she suffered so much, without being able to summon resolution to undergo their extraction, as gladly to embrace my pro- posal of being operated upon in the mesmeric state. During the next magnetic sitting, I took the opportunity of removing two of the most troublesome teeth, and with the most perfect success. The patient sat with the hands quietly folded in the lap,—the countenance was placid and serene,—and the whole attitude that of repose; in short, not the slightest trace of mental emotion was perceptible, and upon being awakened, it was not till she had examined her mouth that she could credit the reality of her painless release from her tormentors. " I should have proceeded in the task of extraction on this occasion, but it appeared to me a pity that a phenomenon so interesting in its results to every friend of humanity, from the new era it promised to introduce inoperative surgery, and withal so calculated to carry conviction to the minds of sceptics, should be shrouded in comparative privacy, (only one friend was present,) and I accordingly resolved to defer the extraction of the remainder, and invite a party of medical men to be eye-witnesses of the operation. I took an early opportunity of doing so, and on this occasion extracted two teeth and three stumps from the patient, who, to their great amazement, manifested the same insensibility and indifference to the operation as before. " I have since extracted from the same patient seven teeth and eight stumps, at three different sittings, (making in the whole, eleven teeth and eleven stumps,) 43 with equally satisfactory results, and I may remark that the patient being com- paratively a young person, no absorption of the alveolar process and gum had taken place, but all the teeth were firmly rooted. "On the last occasion, five teeth and two stumps were extracted preparatory to her being supplied with a set of artificial teeth. Several were from the front of the mouth, and as tooth after tooth was extracted, the patient was excessively diverted at the alteration in her appearance; in fact she could with difficulty control her laughter; and as soon as the operation was over she called for a looking-glass, and holding it up before her closed eyes examined her mouth atten- tively, drawing back the lips on either side with her fingers to get a better view, and finishing by a hearty fit of laughter at the droll figure she presented with her mouth almost toothless. This sitting was witnessed by a friend of mine, Mr. Henry Goode, B. A. of Pembroke College, Cambridge, who chanced to be spend- ing a few days with me at the time, and who will be happy on all occasions to corroborate the account I have just given, as well as to produce the teeth extracted if required. "I have extracted single teeth from three other patients during mesmeric sleep, with equally satisfactory results, the insensibility being evidently perfect. In fact in two of these cases, the patients were utterly unconscious during their mesmeric state that any operation had been performed on them, being engaged in a conversation on another subject at the time, which suffered no interruption, beyond a slight indistinctness in articulation during the few seconds the instru- ment was in the mouth. "A fifth patient on whom I have operated during the mesmeric state, is a young lady who required to have several of her molares separated with a file on account of the commencement of decay, and one stopped. I found her a most troublesome and restless patient, in her natural state, shrinking when the cavity in her tooth was touched, and complaining greatly of the unpleasantness of the sensation of filing. I succeeded in entrancing her at the first trial in about five minutes, and in this state she allowed me to operate for two hours with the most passive indifference, assuring me she felt nothing, except a slight sensation of heat, when the file was used rapidly and continuously for some time together. "This case is I think interesting and valuable, and affords some evidence in favour of an opinion I brought forward on analogical grounds, in my pamphlet on the Mental Functions, viz.: that there are distinct sets of nerves for feeling and temperature, an idea which you have since informed me suggested itself to Dar- win, from seeing a case of paralysis, in which the sense of temperature remained after feeling was lost. "The subject is certainly one of importance, and I have made several attempts since to isolate these two senses, and in one patient with perfect success. The means I employ are, the application to the skin of a glass stopper heated to a temperature just below what would suffice to raise a blister, to test the sensibility to temperature, and pricking with a common needle, to test that of ordinary sen- sation, and I possess the power of rendering the patient sensible to the heated stopper and insensible to the needle, or insensible to the heated stopper and sensi- ble to the pricking, or insensible or sensible to both, at pleasure. " Believe me, my dear Sir, " Yours, very sincerely, " J. S. Prideaux." " Southampton, Nov. 20lh, 1842." I fear that those members of the Medical Society, who were puzzled by the man's low moaning will be more puzzled by the lady who was fast asleep and felt not. the severest mechanical violence, and yet walked, and talked, and saw. And puzzled thev will be till they have studied, as they ought long ago, the history of somnambulism, catalepsy, and the whole of that family of nervous affection. When the ignorance of medical men ceases, the character of innocent patients will no longer be traduced. 44 7. The following is from the Jamaica Morning Journal, October, 1842:— " To the Editor of the Morning Journal. "Sir, . . " I have deemed fit to forward for your consideration, the following unvarnished fact. If after 'perusal you are disposed to publish it, my consent is freely given. First, however, I must apprise you, that the science of mesmerism has ever been viewed by me with much prejudice, and I do not think I should have troubled myself to see the effect of its operation, had it not been for the occurrence which called my profession into action. As a person perfectly disinterested—who had never seen mesmerism practised, I was asked to remove a tooth for a lady while under its influence. I readily acceded, not only from the novelty of the situation, but to enable me to form my own opinion on this (latterly) all-engrossing subject. Previously to the arrival of Mr. Garrison of mesmeric celebrity, I examined the tooth on which I was to operate, and found it to be the dens sapiential on the right upper jaw. The tooth was carious; and although the patient had suffered much pain, yet at this moment, from my appearance, she stated herself perfectly free from toothache. Satisfied in what manner, and what instrument I should use for the operation, I prepared myself accordingly. Mr. Garrison shortly after arrived, and I think I may say, without fear of contradiction,-that this singular operation was performed before sixty or seventy gentlemen, most of whom are known to possess high intellectual powers, and the respectability of whom cannot be questioned. During the few moments which Mr. Garrison occupied in placing the lady under mesmeric influence, I kept myself aloof from the patient, and not until I was informed all was ready, would I approach her. In doing so, such part of the room was selected to enable all the bystanders to witness this very singular exhibition. Mr. Garrison then manipulated, to produce a relaxation of those muscles which kept the mouth shut, and gradually effected extension—the head was somewhat elevated—the eyes perfectly closed. I immediately applied the scarificator, and not the slightest wince—not a movement of the most minute description could I detect! In the act of introducing the forceps, the mouth partly closed, and (forgetting the situation of the patient) I requested her to extend the mouth, with which she immediately complied. The tooth was instan- taneously removed—the mouth remained extended—the eyes were closed, not a shrink did I observe—not a muscle did I see move, and myself and all present were left to form our own opinion. The tooth has three fangs connected together, forming one large root in a somewhat conical form—the length a little better than three quarters of an inch. As regards my opinion, when asked, at the con- clusion of this singular operation, I expressed myself by no means satisfied, because at my bidding the mouth, the second time, extended, but I was immedi- ately informed that on my desiring the extension, Mr. Garrison (who was at the back of the lady) had again acted on the muscles, and thereby had caused com- pliance. " What appeared to me, however, the most inexplicable, was the circumstance of the mouth retaining its original position, still extended after the removal of the tooth, which is perfectly unnatural, and which has never been witnessed by me during a practice of twenty-one years, and not until the mesmeric operator manipulated the jaws, to cause contraction, did the patient attempt to eject the blood from her mouth. One of two points—the patient must have been totally ■insensible to pain, or she exhibited an extreme firmness of purpose, and deter- mination unparalleled. " Mesmerism is a subject 1 do not comprehend, and consequently offer no opinion. Did I understand its art, I might perhaps be foremost in the field to uphold its doctrines. As it is, I can only reveal that to which I am a witness, regretting that I do not possess mesmeric influence for the benefit of those who consult me professionally. " I am, your obedient Servant, "J. Thomas Dias, Surgeon Dentist. " 92, Orange Street." 45 P.S. I forgot to add, that on the patient being restored to a state of sensibility, she assured those present that, she was totally unconscious of the. operation, and felt no pain. " J. T. D." 8. I received the following letter from Mr. Carstairs, of Sheffield :— "Devonshire Street, Sheffield, Nov. 17th, 1842. " Sir, "I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your favour of the 16th, and proceed at once to comply with your request. Although my experiments have not been so numerous nor so important, per se, they are drops in the bucket of truth, which, united with others, tend to prove that operations may be performed without pain through mesmerism. "In two cases I have extracted teeth: one in one case and two in the other. The patients were females, and neither of them was aware on being roused from the state of mesmeric coma, that the teeth had been extracted. In another case of a lad about twelve years of age, I opened a large abscess behind the ear and dis- charged about a table-spoonful of pus, inserted a dossil of lint, and dressed the wound without, the patient being sensible of pain. He had not been previously mesmerised, and was not aware of my intention, when I began to make the passes, which were effectual in producing sleep in about five minutes. In an- other case I cut a large wart from the back of a female's hand, who had been mesmerised by me several times before. I had aroused her, and then produced catalepsy in the arm and hand, so that she saw what I was doing, but suffered no pain nor inconvenience from the operation, although an extremely nervous, irritable person. The only other case I have had was inserting a seton, which was accomplished without the slightest pain. " I remain, " Yours faithfully, " Thomas Carstairs." 9. The following is from Dr. Engledue:— " Southsea, December 1st, 1842. " My dear Doctor, " I forward you the result of an operation performed during the mesmeric trance. " Miss K. set. 17, had suffered for two years from a variety of symptoms, the result of spinal irritation. The right knee was slightly contracted from the com- mencement of her illness, but for twelve months preceding the operation, the contraction was so complete that it was quite impossible to separate the heel from the back part of the thigh. " For nearly three months she was regularly mesmerised by Mr. Gardiner; all the symptoms were very much relieved, and some altogether removed by this treatment. The knee-joint, however, continued firmly contracted. I shall not now enter into a description of the reasons which prompted me to perform the operation of division of the tendons at the back of the knee-joint, my only ob- ject is to report that the operation was performed during the mesmeric trance and without any manifestation of feeling. Some hours after the operation, the patient was demesmerized; there was no expression of astonishment and no re- mark made, till some spots of blood on the sheet of the bed attracted her attention. The proceedings were then explained to her, and the effect can be more easily imagined than described. " I remain, "My dear Doctor, " Sincerely yours, " W. C Engledue." 46 10. I will now furnish an account, from the Jamaica Dispatch, of August 20th, 1842. " A mesmeric experiment was made at the private residence of a gentleman of this city on Thursday last, at which several physicians and gentlemen of high respectability were present, and which, we are informed by a gentleman who witnessed it, was in every respect successful. The patient, a lady, was put into the magnetic sleep by Professor Garrison; and, while in this state, the painful surgical operation of removing a large excrescence from the upper eyelid, or brow, was performed by Dr. Arnold, assisted by two other physicians, toithout the movement of a muscle on the part of the patient, or the least sign of pain. The patient had long desired the operation to be performed, but had not possessed the fortitude to submit to it, and she was in utter ignorance of the design of the physicians to remove the excrescence on this occasion, and knew nothing of it until the whole had been done and the toound dressed, and she had been awakened from her sleep; indeed we are told, that while the wound was being dressed, Professor Garrison willed her to sing a favourite air, which she immediately did." J 11. The following case I have in the handwriting of the surgeon and Captain Valiant. I have seen the woman and mesmerised her frequently ; and have the honour of knowing General Sir Thomas Wiltshire and Captain Valiant. " Mrs. Gregory, nursery-woman to Mrs. Valiant, the lady of Captain Valiant, 40th Regiment, for a long time suffering from decayed teeth, which caused much constitutional irritation, applied to me early in May, complaining of headache and pain in the upper jaw, of the most excruciating kind. On examination, the gums were found ulcerated, the alveolar processes carious on the right side, and pre- senting numerous spicula of bone projecting through the gums, which were ex- quisitively painful on the slightest pressure with the finger. Filing off the spi- cula of bone was advised and consented to. The performance of the operation, having been proposed while she was under the influence of mesmeric sleep, was undertaken on the 25th of May, in the presence of Sir Thomas Willshire and Captain Valiant of this garrison. Sleep was speedily induced by Sir Thomas and she was pronounced in a fit state to bear the operation in half an hour. " An incision was made on either side of the alveolar processes extending from the incisor to the molar teeth, dividing the gums, which were turned back so as to expose the diseased bone. The spicula being considered the principal source of annoyance were filed off smooth with the jaw, the gums approximated, and creosote applied to the carious points. The filing occupied fully five minutes. The patient, however, to my great astonishment, evinced not the slightest feeling from the operation, and continued undisturbed in the enjoyment of profound sleep for one hour, at the expiration of which time she was awaked by Sir Thomas, appearing as if aroused from a dream. Some minutes elapsed before perfect con- sciousness became restored, when she expressed herself incredulous that any operation had been performed on her jaw, being quite free from all pain. " The phenomena evinced could only be elicited by Sir Thomas Willshire, who so kindly afforded his services to the poor woman: they appeared to be com- pletely under his control. By his request her mouth opened to admit my instru- ments, which she did not feel. His taking wine and cake produced in her cor- responding actions and sensations of mastication and deglutition. The pulse rose to 120, and some excitement and spasmodic action supervened on Sir Thomas withdrawing himself for a little. But his approach and contact quieted, and eventually restored, the patient to perfect composure during her slumber. " I had hitherto been in the habit of ridiculing, and; indeed, disbelieving, every statement connected with mesmerism; but find it impossible to reject the facts of this case, brought home by the evidences of so many senses. " John Charlton, M.D. « Melville Hospital, Chatham, " Assistant-S^eon, Royal Marines." " June 9th, 1842." 47 The following statement, was drawn up and given to me by Captain Valiant:— " Elizabeth Gregory, nursery-maid to Mrs. Valiant, usually called Anne, mes- merised by Sir Thomas Willshire, May 25th, 1842, Brompton, Kent—Sir Thomas commenced at six minutes past one o'clock to mesmerise the patient for a painful operation, to be performed by Dr. Charlton on her jaw and gum, during her sleep. Anne had previously suffered very much from the fracture of the jaw, in conse- quence of having had five teeth taken out, perhaps unskilfully, at one time. Matter and proud flesh had formed, and caustic had been employed in reducing them. She had also been mesmerised before, for experiment, three times, by Sir Thomas, and the same number of times by Captain Valiant. "In six minutes Anne was asleep. Soon afterwards Captain Valiant called loudly, without her hearing him ; but when Sir Thomas took her hand, and spoke in a low tone, she heard, and answered that she was asleep and comfortable. " At half-past one o'clock Dr. Charlton lanced Anne's gum down to the jaw from one end to the other, and made it bleed considerably, which the patient did not appear to feel at all. Dr. C. then filed her jaw-bone for the space of five minutes and a half WW what he desired was accomplished, which also she did not feel in the least—not a muscle nor nerve either twitched or moved. She opened her mouth for the operation to be performed at the command of her mesmeriser, who held her hand, and she constantly opened it wider at his direction. Dr. Charlton mentioned that a few days ago, when he merely touched the patient's jaw with a probe, she felt the pain so severely as very nearly to faint. While waiting for some creosote, Sir Thomas took some wine, when Anne went through the form of tasting and drinking, and on being questioned said, she tasted wine. The same experiment was tried with a piece of biscuit, and she said she tasted biscuit. Sir Thomas held a watch over her head, and asked her what it was. She replied—' I don't see it, but I know what it is.' It was then held to her waistband ; and she said it was a watch. Captain Valiant pinched Sir Thomas's hand, which she immediately felt too, and said somebody was pinching her hand, and she did not like it. Dr. Charlton applied some creosote to the patient's jaw. " At twenty minutes to three o'clock Sir Thomas awoke her, when she was not conscious of having had any thing done to her, and was very thankful to find the operation was over, and wished very much that what had been done to her during her mesmeric sleep might be published, for the good of the world in general." 12. I shall now detail a case which occurred many years ago in Paris;—the mesmeric operator in which—Dr. Chapelain, and the surgical operator—M. Jules Cloquet, are now both alive in that city. " Madame Plantin, aged 64, living at No. 151, Rue Saint Denis, consulted M. Cloquet, April 8th, 1829, respecting an open cancer which had existed for several years in her breast, and which was complicated with a considerable enlargement of the right axillary ganglions. M. Chapelain, her physician, who had mesmerised her for some months, with the view of dissipating the disease, could effect only a profound sleep, in which sensation appeared suspended, but intellect remained perfect. He suggested to M. Cloquet to operate upon her in the mesmeric sleep- waking. M. Cloquet, having judged the operation indispensable, consented, and it was fixed for the following Sunday, April 1st. The previous two days, she was mesmerised several times by Dr. Chapelain, who prevailed upon her when in the state of sleep-waking to bear the operation without fear, and brought her even to converse about it calmly; although, when she was awake, she could not listen to the proposal for horror. " On the day fixed, M. Cloquet arrived at half-past ten in the morning, and found the lady dressed in an arm-chair, in the attitude of a person calmly asleep. She had returned about an hour from mass, which she habitually attended at that time of the day. Dr. Chapelain had thrown her into the mesmeric sleep on her return She spoke with perfect calmness of the operation which she was about to undergo. All being ready she undressed herself, and sat upon a common chair. 48 " Dr. Chapelain supported her right arm. The left was allowed to hang at her side. M. Pailloux, internal student of the Hospital Saint Louis, had the charge of presenting the instruments and applying the ligatures. The first in- cision was begun at the arm-pit. and carried above the breast as far as the inner side of the nipple. The second was begun at the same point, and carried under the breast till it met the first. M. Cloquet dissected out the enlarged ganglions with care, on account of their proximity to the axillary arteries, and removed the breast. The operation lasted ten or twelve minutes. " During all this time, the patient conversed calmly with the operator, and gave not the least sign of sensibility;* no movement occurred in the limbs or features, no change in the respiration or voice, no emotion even in the pulse, was discernible ;f this patient remained uninterruptedly in the same state of automatic indifference and passiveness, {Stat d'abandon el d'impassibilite aulo- miques, or, as Mr. Topham says of his patient, 'uncontrolled, in perfect stillness and repose,' ' like a statue !') in which she was some minutes before the operation. There was no necessity to restrain her, we had only to support her. A ligature was applied to the lateral thoracic artery, which was opened in removing the ganglions. The wound was closed with sticking plaster and dressed, and the patient was put to bed, still in the same state of sleep-waking; and was left in this state for eight and forty hours. An hour after the operation a slight haemor- rhage occurred, which proved of no importance. The first dressing was removed on Tuesday the 14th; the wound was washed and dressed afresh ;wthe patient showed no sign of pain; the pulse was undisturbed. After this dressing, Dr. Chapelain awoke the patient whose sleep-waking had lasted from one hour before the operation, i. e. two days. The lady seemed to have no idea, no conception of what had passed; but, on learning that she had been operated upon, and seeing her children around her, she experienced a very strong emotion, to which the mesmeriser put an end by immediately sending her to sleep again." Some of the surgeons of Paris scouted this case just as the London Medical Society, in imitation, scouted that of the amputation. Lisfranc explained it some- how or other, and Baron Larrey accused the poor lady of being an " accomplice of mesmerisers." The latter should have remembered that there was once a soldier named Blanchard, who refused all his advice to part with his right leg on account of fistulous ulcers of the foot, tumefaction of the cellular membrane, a white swelling of the inner ankle, disease of the ligaments, and caries of the tarsal bones, and who was pronounced incurable by the certificates of six physi- cians and surgeons; that, when the Marquis de Puysegur mentioned to him that by means of mesmerism the poor man was greatly relieved, he burst into a laugh, said the patient would never be cured because the bones were diseased and the periosteum gone, and that amputation would be indispensable. By mesmerism the poor soldier was completely cured.\ 1 have extracted the case of the lady from the highly-favourable report, in 1831, of the Committee appointed by the French Academy of Medicine to report upon mesmerism, and to be found in Dr. Foissac's excellent work.J The committee continues thus:— " The committee sees in this case the most evident proof of the suspension of * She was "not a physiologist," or she would have " enacted the reflex motions" t This ought to convince Dr. Marshall Hall, who is represented by the Lancet to have said in the society, and I hear he did, though I do not remember it,—" Could the man keep his heart quiet as he did the muscles of his face and leg? Why was not the action of the heart, the number of the pulse, carefully noted? We should then have had positive proof of the supposed loss of consciousness in the actual absence of all emotion." He may be re- ferred to the case of the boy mentioned at p. 40. X Rapports el Discussions de I'Acadimie Royale de Midecin sur le Magnilisme Animal. 1833. p. 156. $ Same book, p. 400. 49 sensibility during sleep-waking, and declares that, though it did not witness the case, they find it so stamped with the character of truth, it has been attested and reported to them by so good an observer who had communicated it to the surgical section, that they do not fear to present it to you as a most unquestionable proof of the state of torpor and stupefaction produced by mesmerism." I may mention that the case is related as perfectly genuine in the Penny Cyclopaedia, published by our Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, article Somnambulism, in which the truth of mesmerism is admitted to the ex- tent even of clairvoyance; Lord Brougham being president of the society, and the Bishop of Durham, several peers, several Fellows of the Royal Society, men of the first distinction in science and literature, and several professors of Univer- sity College, where a general stand was made against mesmerism, being my col- leagues on this committee. In the Hermes* it is stated likewise, that M. Cloquet attests not only that there was complete absence of pain, but that, while he was washing the surface around the wound with a sponge, the patient felt tickled, and several times said merrily, "Come, leave off",—don't tickle me." Her laughter, thus occasioned, was heard by M. Plantin—the patient's son, and by Madame Granier, who were outside the door. This remarkable circumstance must be viewed side by side with the uneasi- ness felt from the blood in the mouth of my patient who had no sensation from the extraction of her tooth, and whose case I have related at p. 40; and with the exquisite sensation she always had both of heat and cold in parts perfectly insen- sible to pinching, &c.—a fact noticed by me in several other cases, and by Mr. Prideaux in regard to heat in one of his patients, spoken of at p. 43; and in re- gard to cold inlthe Spanish Lady mentioned at p. 30, who was comatose without mesmerism. No man who has a heart can read the narration without being affected, and earnestly hoping it is true. But, though its truth is equally certain as that there is such a surgeon as M. Cloquet, it has lately been denied in England and the parties have been vilely traduced. In the London Medical Gazette for the 2d of last December, immediately af- ter an imperfect and incorrect account of the discussion in the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society on the paper which detailed the case of amputation in the mesmeric state, is an anonymous letter of three paragraphs—signed "a member of the Medical and Chirurgical Society," who is ashamed to give his name, and therefore does the deed in darkness—the first styling the account "very silly" and unfit for the society, the second heartlessly accusing the poor patient of deception, and the third as follows: "It is rather remarkable that it should have occurred to no one present to mention the case of a woman whose breast was amputated, some years ago in Paris, by M. Cloquet, while she was (as it is supposed) in a state of mesmeric stupor. This woman was believed to have been insensible to pain during the operation ; and was a better actor than the man mesmerised by Mr. Topham, as she did not even moan. Some considerable time afterwards, however, while dying of an internal complaint in another hospital, she confessed to the nurse that the whole had been a cheat; that she had experienced pain like other per- sons, but had sufficient command over herself not to show it" The Nottingham surgeon, to whose letters I have already twice referred, writes,—" some years ago in France the breast of a female was removed while she was professedly in a mesmeric sleep. She died a few days aftenoards; an operation which in other cases rarely indeed proves fatal. Is it not too probable that the attempt to bury the anguish in her own bosom proved too much for na- ture to sustain 1 Another mesmeric operation case succeeded better, but the pa- tient!'subsequently confessed that her insensibility was all feigned. "Many similar cases have occurred, &c." * L Hermes, Journal du Magnitisme Animal. Paris, 1829, torn. iv. 4 50 Now the statements of both writers are altogether untrue. Madame Plantin was never in an hospital, but the wife of a wealthy merchant of Paris; resided in a country house which she could hardly be prevailed upon to leave in the fine season of spring to take up her abode in Paris for the pur- pose of being mesmerised, for she disliked mesmerism because it had been tried upon her at different times unsuccessfully, and she was unwilling to submit to the restraint of mesmeric treatment; and she was terrified at the thought of a surgical operation under any •circumstances, and declared she would rather die, and had indeed suffered severely from refusing even to be bled in one of her pregnancies. M. Cloquet testified to the Academy that she was pious, modest, and incapa- ble of any collusion; and Dr. Caldwell of America, hearing a rumour in London that this surgeon confessed he had operated upon other patients in an ordinary state who bore the pain as unmoved, called upon M. Cloquet, in Paris, to ask the question, and told me that he received for answer, "Jamais ! jamais ! jamais !" However, Dr. Davison, a friend of mine, -called upon M. Cloquet at my request in January, to make inquiries respecting the ease ; and the following is an ex- tract from his reply:— " The letter to which you allude in the Medical Gazette is false in every par- ticular, save the death of the patient. The lady was never the inmate of an hospital. She was the wife of a rich negociant, an excellent person, respected by all who fcnew her. She died above a fortnight after the operation, of a pleu- risy ;* the wound having done well, and she having taken a drive some days previously. Cloquet saw her and is quite sure that she never made the confes- sion alluded to." As to the other ease, spoken of by the Nottingham surgeon, Dr. Davison has made every inquiry in Paris, and cannot learn that it ever occurred. " Many similar cases have occurred f" I call upon him to make good all his assertions. He knows that Mr. Wood flatly contradicted him in The Nottingham Journal in regard to the one, and pointed out that he gave no authority whatever for the others : yet, though two months have elapsed, this candid person has never re- plied or ventured to recur to the subject. It was most improper in the Medical Gazette to insert a serious anonymous charge against a person now no more—and that person a female, a foreigner, and whose family are now all resident in Paris and of great respectability; and shameful in the Nottingham surgeon to make these wholesale accusations, not one of which he has been able to prove. The iinscrupulousness of so many medical men lo blacken the characters of "their fellow-creatures, already one would think sufficiently afflicted, by accusing them, without any other reason than their own ignorance, of imposture, is a foul spot upon the profession. Wherever a person displays mesmeric phenomena, or is cured or even relieved by mesmerism, he is at onee impudently called an im- postor, and any sort of thing fabricated to support the cruel eharge. "L'homme est de glace aux verites; II est de feu pour le mensonge." La Fontaine. The Okeys not only were impostors, but confessed the imposition ! In a letter, paid for as an advertisement, in the Newry Telegraph for last February 9, signed— J. Morison, M.D. J. Woods, Surgeon, W. Starkey, M.D. G. H. Kidds, L.R C.S. are these words,—"If we except Dr. Elliotson—whose mind always exhibited a * The appearance of the inflamed pleura and lung after death are fully detailed in the Merm.it. ' 51 tendency to wild and extravagant theories, and who in consequence of his attach- ment to the marvellous lost his chair in the London University, as also his stand- ing as a practitioner—all the others, as Mesmer, Dupotet, La Fontaine, preached the mesmeric doctrines to some advantage, if not to the public, at least to them- selves." I never knew even the names of these four gentlemen before, but they ought to be aware that the character of my mind is the opposite of what they aver. I have never speculated, but have always devoted myself to the observa- tion of facts; so that, whatever I have advanced, I have 6een ultimately esta- blished. I appeal to my writings on Quinine, Hydrocyanic Acid, Iron, Creosote, Glanders, the Use of the Ear in ascertaining the State of the Heart, my Human Physiology, and my Lectures on the Practice of Medicine and my Clinical Lectures. I came into practice solely from ihe devotion to facts evinced in my Clinical Lectures. Phrenology I have lived to see established, though it had not twenty advocates in this country when I first wrote in its favour; and in it I have adhered so closely to facts that I have not yet admitted an amount of state- ment which is current among eminent phrenologists. However, let this pass. "The Okeys," these gentlemen further say, "were proved to be impostors,* * I make the following extract from the letter which I addressed to my pupils on resigning gpiy chair in University College, and which is to be had at M. Bailliere's:— " In an evil hour, I consented to show some experiments to the Editor of the Lancet, after repeated entreaties conveyed by his assistant, Mr. Mills, who had witnessed the phenomena at the hospital, reported many in the Lancet, been enraptured with them, and declared them over and over again to be so satisfactory that to doubt or to suspect the two Okeys of impo- sition would be the height of absurdity. I exhibited to the Editor the production of the singular delirium, and a variety of the most beautiful and satisfactory experiments which he has entirely suppressed. But I presently feared what would be the result. He said he was pestered with letters upon the subject; but that nineteen out of twenty were unfavourable. .Nineteen persons, of course, purchase more Lancets than one; and I fancied I already saw his rejection of the evidence. The mental phenomena were such as no person capable of sound and refined observation, and fitted for philosophical investigation, could for an instant have imagined to be feigned. The physical phenomena with the hand, the eye, metals, and water, were as striking and conclusive, with the exception of some with lead and nickel; and those I have "since proved to large numbers of able judges to be equally conclusive. Mesmerised nickel produces upon the elder sister the most violent effects, which none but a very ignorant person could consider pretended. Now, when this, or gold or silver, has been rubbed upon a part, and the friction has been desisted from before the effects come, or the effects have come and have ceased, they may be at once excited in the former case, or re-excited in the latter, by friction of the part with any thing—a piece of wood or a piece of lead; and this excitement may be produced again and again. Friction was performed with lead upon parts to which nickel had been applied either with or without effect as it might be, and the effects took place violently. This explanation I gave to the Editor, but he was either too dull to understand, or had his reasons for not understanding. In another set of experiments lead produced effects, though nickel had not been applied to the parts; and yet I never had been able to mesmerise lead by holding it in my hand and to produce effects by then applying it. Those effects I candidly said I could not explain, since I had not com- menced experiments with lead or nickel for more than two or three days; but, as there was no more deception in the cases, nor less certainty of the various facts which I had observed, than in chemistry or any other natural science, I added that these results showed only that they required farther investigation, and that I had no doubt I should, by perseverance, dis- cover their cause. The Editor knew that I was about to leave London that same day for an absence of six weeks on the continent, and yet he could not wait for my return and give me an opportunity of farther research, but, with that gentlemanly delicacy for which he and his friends are so remarkable, published, almost immediately, what professed to be an account of what he had seen,—a most imperfect and worthless account, however; in his plenitude of scientific importance, he declared that not one more experiment on magnetism would ever be required; and answers which were sent he never published. He omitted to state a 6ircutm=tance in his experiments with lead, which had never been allowed to happen in mine, but which, when reflecting upon them on my tour, I thought might have influenced the results. In employing the lead, I had noticed that he applied it against a piece of nickel held in his other hand, before he applied it to the patient. On my return, I applied lead to her as before, and, indeed, copper also; yet never obtained an effect. I then applied the lead or the copper, as it might be, against a piece of mesmerised nickel or gold, before applying it to her; and its application to her was then alwavs productive of effects. I dis- covered that the surface of the lead or copper had become nickelized or aunfied by the 52 and afterwards acknowledged the tricks which they had practised on the credu- lity of Elliotson." The only reply to be made is, that this is totally untrue. One of them was said by Mr. Wakley to have been reported to have figured at Ir- ving's chapel. The report was not only totally untrue, but I cannot find that it existed before it appeared in the Lancet. Mr. Wakley, like Dr. Johnson, is a father, and he should have some feeling for innocent young females, who, though in the humbler walks of life, are not his inferiors in respectability. He even ad- vertised in the morning papers " An editorial article on the tricks and deceptions practised by performers and patients under the stale name of animal magnetism, showing the total failure of the patients to fulfil the promises of the magnetisers, when the signals which pass between them are effectually disallowed." However, his day of triumph has passed, and his chief business now must be to consider how he can best extricate himself from the sad position into which he has fallen from having so overcunningly, hastily, and violently committed him- self. Some say he is ready to hang himself. But I implore him for the sake of science and humanity not to think of such a folly, nor to imitate the dignified exit of the Tartar General, who, according to the dispatch of Sir H. Pottinger, " retired to his house when he saw that all was lost, made his servants set it on fire, and sat in his chair till he was burnt to death." Not only the occurrence of mesmeric phenomena, but even improvement from mesmerism is sufficient to subject an innocent person to the charge of imposition. Above a year ago I was first requested to visit a patient whom I found labour- ing under a very sevfcre form of St. Vitus's dance of nine years' duration. The disease is very common; but I have seen only a few instances of so long a dura- tion of it, and never one of such violence as it generally exerted on the organs of respiration at night. We meet daily with persons who have constant twitchings of the features and workings of the head, arms, or trunk ; but this was general, as well as constant, and often most frightful. To suppose the case as one of imposition would have been as ridiculous as to suppose a case'of confluent small pox to be an imposition. Such movements night and- day for nine years,—nay, such movements for a day, I defy any human being to make voluntarily. The patient, though shut out from society, except that of intimate friends, and from all public amusement, bore this sad affliction so patiently as to increase one's pity. Dr. Marshall Hall had attended, and given the following opinion of the case:—" Chronic inflammation of the membranes in which the spinal marrow is inclosed, with the effusion of lymph or serum, and consequent irritation of the spinal marrow itself, with the spasmodic actions which such irritation is calcu- lated to induce. The essential character is its chronic form." So real and severe did he consider the case, that he prescribed mustard cataplasms to the spine, cupping on the back of the neck every fifth day, and mercury to such an extent that not one sound tooth is left in the patient's head: and declared he contact; and thus the difficulty was solved. These experiments I have repeated a<*ain and again before numbers of gentlemen, taking the greatest care that the patient should not know when I applied lead or copper which had not been in contact with nickel or gold, and when I applied lead or copper which had been in contact with either of them; and the results have been uniform. I was obliged to leave the poor little girl in an intense coma, with occasional violent tetanic spasms, at the Editor's house, little imagining that any farther experiments would be attempted, especially in my absence, by a person ignorant of the sub- ject and altogether incapable of making experiments. I had seen sufficient of the extreme carelessness, and want of information and philosophic power, of the Editor, during the experiments conducted by myself, and which he frequently altogether deranged, not to be convinced that in my absence no experiment could be made in a manner to justify conclu- sions. In his ignorance, he acted as though mesmeric susceptibility is always present and always the same: whereas the reverse is the fact; and experiments with water and metals frequently repeated so derange the susceptibility that we are often obliged to desist. "During the five months which have elapsed since my return, I have repeated all my experiments and continued my observations, not only on the two Okeys, but on other patients; and all the results of my former enquiries have been confirmed and all difficulties solved." 53 would have treated his own child in the same manner. He treated the case for three months, and wished to continue his plan for a twelvemonth. But, though the poor patient submitted patiently to be thus disfigured, the family medical attendant and friends could not allow it, and Sir Benjamin Brodie was consulted, who condemned the treatment in the most unqualified manner, declined to pre- scribe medicines or to see the patient again, and stated that nothing more could be done than to endeavour by every means to strengthen the debilitated frame. Dr. Hall, however, wrote a letter, still in possession of the family, maintaining his opinion, and treating Sir Benjamin Brodie's opinion most contemptuously. Some months since, when asked my opinion of mesmerism in the case, I replied that, though I had never failed in curing the disease with oxyd of iron in chil- dren and youth, when it had not lasted more than some months, I had never succeeded with iron or any other medicine when it had lasted some years and in adults: that I had never known mesmerism to fail any more than iron in the former cases: but that, as iron failed in the latter, I could not venture to hope that mesmerism would succeed. I advised that, as mesmerism had been begun, it should be continued rather than the case be abandoned; though I entreated them not to be disappointed if no good resulted. For the last four months mes- merism has been daily persevered with; and the gradual but steady improvement in the strength, the sleep, and looks of the patient, and the decline of the disease, astonishes every one. Now that Dr. Hall has learnt the improvement by mes- merism, he says that he all along (while cupping every five days, and giving mercury freely, and proposing to do all this for twelve months!) suspected, and is now (mesmerism having done great good,) perfectly certain, that the case was feigned .'! I should like to observe his countenance when he says so. Of all persons Dr. Hall should be careful. Because, in his introductory lec- ture,* he is at great pains to impress upon his pupils the duty of being careful in investigating cases so as not to accuse a sick person of imposition. He quotes the following passage from a physician of a Parisian hospital, as " candid and touching."—" How frequently does it happen that individuals labouring under inflammation of the cerebral membranes, have been treated as malingerers, or as being of lazy disposition. A young girl is brought to the hospital without any apparent functional disease: she is morose and stupid, and answers only by mono- syllables after having been frequently and earnestly interrogated. The physician mistakes this for caprice or dissimulation, but she dies." " I shall never forgive myself for having committed a similar error with regard to a schoolboy." "The expression of this boy's countenance was perfectly natural; the pulse not accele- rated; he lay in bed, with the knees drawn up to the chin, making no complaint of suffering, and merely anxious to be amused by entertaining stories. I made the child get up: he did so, but remained moping about the chimney corner. I compelled him to walk up and down the room; his steps were uncertain, like those of a drunken man. This poor child was forcibly dressed, and even beaten by his parents" (the treatment prescribed with a promise of certain success for Dr. Wilson's poor boy by Mr. Bransby Cooper),t "who thought he affected to be ill. I was soon, however, painfully convinced of the error into which we had fallen; the poor boy died of hydrocephalus." It was but in the same way that those naval men acted who were tried in December last for killing a poor man of colour, whom they chose to fancy an impostor. He was cook, and had been unwell for some days. Being in his berth, he was ordered to prepare breakfast, but said he was very ill. ^ " You skulking ----, there is nothing the matter with you," was the chief mate's reply. To that the sick creature answers, "Really, sir, you do not know my feelings:" and the reply was, " You lazy fellow, if you don't attend to my orders I will send down some tackle and heave you up." As he lay in his bed in the forecastle he was heard to groan, and that caused another to say, "If you don't hold your noise, I'll * Lancet, Oct. 7th, 1837, p. 40. t Lancet, March 11th, 1843, p. 876. 54 put a rope's end round your neck." The threat was executed; the rope was drawn tightly round his neck, and he was pulled forcibly from his berth. As he seemed strangling, the rope was shifted to his chest, and he was hauled upon deck, and his head as he went up struck against the scuttle. Shortly afterwards he was found dead.—The impostor. To accuse patients of imposition is very easy. But it is a very vulgar, as well as cruel, habit, founded on ignorance, presumption, and heartlessness. We should never prefer such an accusation on light grounds: and, to be assured of the grounds, we should be well acquainted with the subject. He who is igno- rant of a subject is surely not justified in giving an opinion : and yet, medical men and others, because they are ignorant of the phenomena of the more won- derful and uncommon diseases of the nervous system, and of mesmerism, prepos- terously pronounce the subjects of them impostors, and those who know the truth, to be fools, or rogues, or in league with the devil. It was the same cause which made the people pronounce Democritus mad, when he looked for the source of insanity in the brain; to pronounce Roger Bacon a sorcerer, who knew physical facts of which they were ignorant; to ascribe epilepsy to St. Vitus's dance, and numerous other diseases, to demoniacal possession ;* to ascribe the phenomena of electrical and galvanic apparatus to the agency of spirits, as the savage supposed there must be a spirit inside the watch. Of peasants better things could not be expected: but the whole of education is so unsound that gross ignorance and superstition exist among those who presume to teach, and have been judged fit for instructing others, and believe they have received the Creator of the Universe, or the Holy Spirit, into their persons at the ceremony of episcopal ordination, but should be compelled " To cast their orders at their bishop's feet, Take their dishonoured gown to Monmouth-street." Cowper. The Abbe Wurts of Lyons, in a work on the Superstitions of Philosophers, wrote, at the beginning of this century, that, although all belief in the devil was apparently given up, he was really the chief personage, though disguised, in the lodges of freemasons, mansions, and palaces, and acted sometimes under the form of a wonderful man, a physical philosopher, a mesmeriser, &c. Another Catholic author, in a book published not many years ago in France, wrote thus:—" The effects of mesmerism are not explicable by any natural causes. No natural means are employed to produce them. Mesmerism is a stratagem invented by the devil to seduce souls, to increase the number of his adherents, and oppose the works of Jesus Christ and his ministers. No Christian can em- ploy mesmerism for himself or others without mortal sin. Mesmerism under- mines faith and morals. Government ought to proscribe it. In order to be initiated into its mysteries, Jesus Christ must be denied, and the cross trampled upon. All mesmerisers are disciples of Lucifer."f How slavishly does the alleged Protestant writer of a disgraceful English ser- mon, of which not a copy would have sold but for the wretched state of our edu- cation, adopt the thoughts and words of the Roman Catholics, against whom he is so fierce. Thus vaccination was discovered to be Antichrist, and sermons were furiously preached against it when I was a boy, as they had been previously against the inoculation of small pox. Thus we read that the miraculous cures of Christ when he was thought " beside himself "by " his friends," were attributed to the devil.f as though this were so benevolent an individual. Ignorance mistaken for knowledge, is a frightful perpetrator of injustice and cruelty. Were I a preacher, there is one sin,—a daily, hourly sin—one produc- tive, unheeded, of immense mischief,—against which I would lift my voice in * See the Rev. Hugh Farmer's Essay on the Demoniacs. t Foissac, pp. 251, 394. j Mark iii., 21, 22. season and out of season, but which I never once in my whole life heard preached against, though I find it treated of in one of the late Dr. Arnold's sermons. It is the sin of presuming to hold opinions upon which we have not qualified ourselves to have any opinion at all. Men and women, young and old, educated and un- educated, rich and poor, equally commit this from morning to night, committing it not only in word but in action : and yet they, in superficial routine, pray to ' God to keep them from presumptuous sins,—"Keep thy servant also from pre- sumptuous sins."* Of all classes, the medical profession should conduct themselves the most ra- tionally. They profess to be very scientific, liberal, and humane. It is the character of a scientific man to acknowledge that he is only an observer of the universe, and of a minute fraction of it; that he comes into existence with his peculiar nature and is placed here, without his own interference, and has had no share in constructing the universe; that he must admit all that he finds, and could never have imagined what he does find; that be can explain nothing, and what he calls explanation is merely the placing of various facts under the same head. Medical men constantly refuse to admit facts, because they presump- tuously suppose beforehand that such facts are not; thus creating the world ac- cording to their poor narrow conceptions, and forgetting that it is their duty to be " humble, teachable and mild." Those who declare they would not believe the facts of mesmerism if they saw them, could not have believed the miracles had they lived in the days of Christ, and cannot in reason now, because they must believe on the reported evidence of other men's senses instead of their own. An exemplary clergyman once said to me, " How can I refuse to believe the facts of mesmerism and say that \ be- lieve the miracles'!" A friend of mine on coming up to town this spring, en- quired earnestly if the case of amputation had occurred at all, since the existence of Wombell, Mr. Ward, and Mr. Topham, was altogether denied in his part of the country. It is the character of a liberal man to give others credit for sincerity, a love of truth, industry, and sense equal with his own ; yet they are puffed up, thanking God that they are not such fools as some other men are,—even as this mesmeriser. "Plagiarist! liar! impostor! heretic! were among the expressions of malig- nant hatred lavished upon Galileo," in 1609. f Deleuze proved in 1819 that our " adversaries do not know mesmerism, give its partizans credit for absurd opinions, pass over in silence the most convincing proofs, while they refute facts which nobody maintains, and, when forced to con- fess incontestable phenomena, ascribe them to something inadequate to produce them."t Foissac, in 1833, complained that "able men write daily against mesmerism without knowing any thing about it, or having studied it, and do not hesitate to insult and defame those who feel it a duty to do homage to truth, in receiving the testimony of their senses and obeying their conscience/'^ The conduct of many up to 1843 shows that they have not advanced in wisdom. A friend told me he had sent a copy of Mr. Topham's pamphlet to a Fellow of the College of Physicians, who returned it unopened. It is the character of a humane man to be anxious that all promises of benefit to his fellow-creatures maybe fulfilled; that every alleged means of curing disease may turn out, not a fallacy, but a reality,—to " hope all things." Medical men should be the humblest of all practitioners of art. Highly as I estimate the powers of my art, when carefully and earnestly employed, and invaluable as is a skilful, laborious, and conscientious medical man, we know in our hearts that we have yet but an insufficient insight into disease; that the investigation of cases is too difficult and too laborious to be carried on efficiently, in the greater number t IJfZf XGa'liJeo, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knoyiedge, p. 20. t Foissac, p. 241. $ Ibid. p. 551. 56 of them, by persons who see many in the day, whether in charities or in a profit- able round; th*at well established measures require more pains for their perfect administration than are generally given; that for a very large number of cases our means are very inadequate, for many all but useless; and that medical men are receiving money every day for doing little or no good. Were not their art so imperfect, they would not have to complain, as they do everlastingly, of the prosperity of quacks and persons altogether, and not, like themselves, in part, pretenders. They should each feel it a duty strenuously to be looking out for improvements of their art; and satisfied that it may be as greatly improved as any other art, they, instead of hugging themselves on their receipts and sneering lazily at the disinterestedly industrious, when a new fact or remedy is mentioned, should hopefully listen, and determine to ascertain what amount of good it con- tains, ashamed of the errors and vices of their predecessors, who violently op- posed the truths of the circulation,—the lacteals, and then of the lymphatics,— the physiology of the brain,—inoculation, and then of vaccination,—bark,—anti- mony, &c;—remembering that our College of Physiciuns imprisoned one physi- cian for employing cantharides, and another for differing from Galen; that Am- brose Pare was " hooted" for tying wounded arteries instead of applying boiling pitch, the pain of which they thought nothing of, and which Dr. Copland would have admired ; that just as the course of the earth taught by Pythagoras had to be taught afresh by Copernicus, at the end of two thousand years, after being re- viled, and then again required all the powers of Newton for its demonstration, so the truth of nerves of sense and motion being distinct fell into contempt in the last century, and no preparation of that ancient and powerful remedy, colchicum, was in the London Pharmacopoeia when I was student at St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals, in 1808. The happiness of a scientific, liberal, and humane course they would find great beyond all expectation. They would feel raised as men, and be enabled not to view their poor coterie, or college, or profession, as their world, fashioning their opinions, and habits, and whole nature by its cramping influence; but, regarding themselves as a part of universal nature, would find themselves always moving freely in it, would keep their regards constantly upon its truths only, and, walking happily onwards, bestow no more attention upon the sayings and doings of the coteries and prosperous men of the moment, than upon the noisy sparrows which flutter and chirp outside their window to-day and will not be heard of to-morrow. If I have expressed myself strongly in this pamphlet, it is what I intended. The adversaries of mesmerism and of mesmerists have had their full sway hitherto, and they must be thankful for a change. Our turn is now come. Their conduct has shown that patience, sincerity, disinterestedness, and mild persuasion are lost upon them. Our objects are of incalculable importance,—the establishment of means to cure diseases at present more or less troublesome, difficult or impossible to cure,—the prevention of pain in surgical operations,—and possibly other advances on which I will not venture at present to say anything. This must require a great effort, for it will form an era in the history of man; and those who are willing to assist must be in earnest. I feel no hostility to our opponents. They merely act the part of puppets;—not knowing why they so act, and blindly obeying the general laws by which a supply of opponents to every truth and improvement is always provided. The statistics of opposition to good things would show that their course obeys fixed laws; and they are to be pitied for being destined to the parts which they so eagerly perform. FINIS. WORKS ON MEDICINE, SURGERY, ANATOMY, MIDWIFERY, AND THE COLLATERAL SCIENCES, PUBLISHED BY LEA & BLANCHARD, PHILADELPHIA, AND FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. MIDWIFERY ILLUSTRATED. THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF OBSTETRIC MEDICINE AND SURGERY, IN REFERENCE TO THE PROCESS OF PARTURITION; ILLUSTRATED BY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO FIGURES. BY FRANCIS H. RAMSBOTHAM, M.D., Physician to the Royal Maternity Charity, and Lecturer on Midwifery at the London Hospital, &c. Second American edition, revised, in one large octavo volume. " Among the many literary undertakings with which the Medical press at present teems, there are few that deserve a warmer recommendation at our hands than the work—we might almost say the obstetrical library, comprised in a single volume—which is now before us. Few works surpass Dr. Ramshotlium's in beauty and elegance of getting up, and in the abundant and excellent Engravings with which it is illus- trated. 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DUNGLISON'S PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE; OR A TREATISE ON SPECIAL PATHOLOGY AND THERAPEUTICS; BY ROBLEY DUNGLISON, M.D., Professor of the Institutes of Medicine, &c, in the Jefferson Medical College, Phila- delphia; Lecturer on Clinical Medicine, and attending Physician at the Philadelphia Hospital, &c.; containing, the Diseases of the Alimentary Canal—the Diseases of the Circulatory Apparatus—Diseases of the Glandular Organs—Diseases of the Organs of the Senses—Diseases of the Respiratory Organs—Diseases of the Glandiform Gan- glions—Diseases of the Nervous System—Diseases of the Organs of Reproduction— Diseases involving various Organs, &c, &c. In two volumes, octavo. The object of this work is to place before the Practitioner and Student a Treatise on the various Dig. eases of the Human Organism, which shall comprise the Symptoms, Causes, Prognostics and Treatment, in such form as to be easy of reference, and a trustworthy guide in practice. It contains not only the Views of the Author, on all those points, derived from extensive opportunities for observation, but those of the distinguished observers of the day in every part of the world ; and treats of a greater number of Diseases than perhaps any other " Practice of Medicine." ANATOMY-SPECIAL AND GENERAL. A TREATISE ON SPECIAL AND GENERAL ANATOMY, BY W. E. HOR- NER, M. D., Professor of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, &c. &c. Fifth edition, revised and much improved. In two volumes octavo. This work is exten- sively used as a text-book throughout the Union. _______LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS._______ A MEDICAL LIBRARY FOR THE PRACTITIONER AND STUDENT. A SYSTEM OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE, Comprised in a Series of Original Dissertations, arranged and edited by ALEXANDER TWEEDIE, M.D, F.R.S., &c, &c. The whole revised, with Notes and Additions, by W. W. GERHARD, M.D, Lecturer on Clinical Medicine to the University of Pennsylvania. The second American Edition, now complete in Three large Volumes. The desien of this work is to supply the want, generally admitted to exist in the Medical Literature of Great Britain, of a comprehensive System of Medicine, embodying a condensed, yet ample view of the Piesent State of the Science. The desideratum is more especially felt by the Medical Student, and by many Members of the Profession, who, from their avocations and other circumstances, have not the opportunity of keeping pace with the more recent improvements in the most interesting and useful branch of human knowledge. To supply this deficiency is the object of the LIBRARY OF MEDICINE; and the Editor expresses the hope, that with the assistance with which he has been favoured by contri- butors, (many of great eminence, and all favourably known to the Public), he has been able to produce a work, which will form a Library of General Reference on Theoretical and Practical Medicine, as well as a Series of Text-Books for the Medical Student. Advertisement of the American Publishers to their New Edition in Three Volumes. The matter embraced in the Three Volumes now presented, was published in London in Five separate volumes, and at intervals republished in this country. The rapid sale of these volumes, embracing as they do, a History of Practical Medicine, is the best evidence of the favour with which it has been re- ceived by the Physicians of the United States. Embodying as it does the most recent information on nearly every Disease, and written by men who have specially devoted themselves to the study of the Disorders which form the subject of their Articles, the work is the most valuable for Reference within the reach of a Practitioner. The arrangement of the Library into Classes of Diseases, grouped accord- ing to the cavities of the body, is much more agreeable to the reader than the alphabetical order, and nearly as convenient for reference. DISEASES OF CHILDREN. A TREATISE ON THE PHYSICAL AND MEDICAL TREATMENT OF CHILDREN, BY WILLIAM P. DEWEES, M.D., late Professor of Midwifery in the University of Pennsylvania, &c. &e. The Eighth Edition, brought up to 1843, in 1 vol. 8vo. This edition embodies the notes and additions prepared by Dr. Dewees before his death, and will be found much improved. The objects of this work are, 1st, to teach those who have the charge of children, either as parent or guardian, the most approved methods of securing and improving their physical powers. This is attempted by pointing out the duties which the parent or the guardian owes for this purpose, to this interesting but helpless class of beings, and the manner by which their duties shall he fulfilled. And 2d, to render avail- able a long experience to those objects of our affection when they become diseased. In attempting this, the author has avoided as much as possible, " technicality;" and has given, if he does not flatter himself too much, to each disease of which he treats, its appropriate and designating characters, with a fidelity .that will prevent any two being confounded together, with the best mode of treating them, that either his own experience or that of others has suggested. Physicians cannot too slrongly recommend the use of this book in all families. A NEW WORK,—DUNGLISON'S THERAPEUTICS AND MATERIA MEDICA. GENERAL THERAPEUTICS AND MATERIA MEDICA, ADAPTED FOR A MEDICAL TEXT-BOOK, BY ROBLEY DUNGLISON, M.D., Professor of Institutes of Medicine, &c, in 2 vols. 8vo.—Just ready. A second edition of the work on General Therapeutics, being called for by the publishers, the author has deemed it advisable to incorporate with it an account of the different articles of the Materia Medica. To this he has been led by the circumstance, that the departments of General Therapeutics and Materia Medica are always associated in the Medical Schools. The author's great object has been to prepare a work which may aid the Medical Student in acquiring the main results of modern observation and reflec- tion ; and, at the same time, be to the Medical Practitioner a trustworthy book of reference. Throughout, he has adopted the Nomenclature of the last edition of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States, a work which ought to be in the hands of every practitioner as a guide in the preparation of medicines; and he has endeavoured to arrange the articles in each division, as nearly as he could, in the order of their efficacy as Therapeutical agents. DEWEES' MIDWIFERY. A COMPENDIOUS SYSTEM OF MIDWIFERY, chiefly designed to facilitate the inquiries of those who may be pursuing this branch of study. Illustrated by occa- sional cases, with many plates. The tenth edition, with additions and improvements, by W. P. DEWEES, M.D., late Professor of Midwifery in the University of Penn- sylvania, in one volume 8vo. LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. A NEW WORK ON ANATOMY, WITH ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY ILLUSTRATIONS. A SYSTEM OF HUMAN ANATOMY, GENERAL AND SPECIAL, BY ERASMUS WILSON, M.D., Lecturer on Anatomy, London. The American edi- tion, edited by Paul B. Goddard, A.M., M.D., Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, &c.; with one hundred and seventy illustrations on wood, by Gilbert, from designs prepared expressly for this work, by Bagg, printed from the second London edition, in 1 vol. 8vo.—Just ready. " An elegant edition of one of the most useful and accurate Systems of Anatomical Science, which has been issued from the press. The illustrations are really beautiful, and their execution reflects the highest credit on the able American artist who copied them for this edition of the work. In its style the work is extremely concise and intelligible. Dr. Goddard has added a number of valuable notes, and has made *ome judicious alterations of names. No one can possibly take up this volume without being struck with the great beauty of its mechanical execution, and the clearness of the descriptions which it contains is equally evident. Let Students, by all means, examine the claims of this work on theu notice, before they purchase a text-book of the vitally important science which this volume bo fully and easily unfolds."—Lancet. HOPE ON THE HEART-WITH PLATES. A TREATISE ON THE DISEASES OF THE HEART AND GREAT VES- SELS, AND ON THE AFFECTIONS WHICH MAY BE MISTAKEN FOR THEM, COMPRISING THE AUTHOR'S VIEW OF THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HEART'S ACTION AND SOUNDS, AS DEMONSTRATED BY HIS EXPERIMENTS ON THE MOTIONS AND SOUNDS IN 1830, AND ON THE SOUNDS IN 1834-5, BY J. HOPE, M.D., F.R.S., of St. George's Hospital; formerly Senior Physician to the Marylebone Infirmary; Extraordinary Member, and formerly President, of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, &c. First American from the Third London Edition, with Notes and a detail of recent Experiments, by C. W. Pennock, M.D., Attending Physician to the Philadelphia Hospital, Blockley. In 1 vol. 8vo. " The addition of one-third of new matter to the present volume, and the care with which the whole has been revised and corrected, will, I trust, sufficiently prove my respect for the favourable opinion ot my professional brethren, as evinced, not in this country only, but also on the European and American continents, by the sale of no less than six or seven editions and translations in as many,years. — Ex- tract from Preface. MEDICAL REMEDIES. NEW REMEDIES. THE METHOD OF PREPARING AND ADMINIS- TERING THEM; THEIR EFFECTS UPON THE HEALTH AND DISEASED ECONOMY, &c. &c, BY PROFESSOR ROBLEY DUNGLISON. Fourth edi- tion, brought up to 1843. In one volume octavo. This work contain* articles that have been recently introduced into the Materia Medica; or old articles- that have received new applications, some of these are in the general works on Materia Medica, bu their nronerUes are only briefly referred to. In Uiis work, the experience of individuals is extensively riven withPreference to the original papers. Under Iodine, for example, all the informat.on-phanna- EcaTand therapTut cal-up to the time of the publication of the work, is afforded, with the prescrip- tions that havebc^ proposed by various observers; each successive edition has incorporated with it the result of recent experience, and is therefore " new." MIDWIFERY WITH CUTS, A LATE WORK. A SYSTEM OF MIDWIFERY, WITH NUMEROUS WOOD CUTS, BY EDWARD RIGBY, M.D, Physician to the General Lying-in Hospital, Lecturer on MidwifeVy at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, &c, with notes and additional Illustrations, by an American Practitioner. In one volume. ,..,„,■„ should commend it to general favour. DISEASES OF FEMALES. A TRFATISE ON THE DISEASES OF FEMALES, WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS, BYTHE LATE PROFESSOR W. P. DEWEES, in one volume 8vo—the Seventh Edition, revised and corrected.________________________ LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. DISEASES OF FEMALES, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBED. THE PRINCIPAL DISEASES OF FEMALES, TOGETHER WITH THE DISEASES INCIDENT TO PREGNANCY AND CHILDBED, CHIEFLY FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS, BY FLEETWOOD CHURCHILL, M.D, Lecturer on Midwifery and Diseases of Women and Children, in the Richmond Hospital, School of Medicine, &c. &c, with Notes and Additions by R. M. Huston, M.D., Professor, &c. in the Jefferson Medical College. Second American Edition, in 1 vol. 8vo.—Just ready. sw\s\J\r\s\j^%. DUNGLISON'S PHYSIOLOGY - WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, ILLUSTRATED WITH OVER TWO HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD; BY PROFESSOR ROBLEY DUNGLISON; the fourth edition with numerous additions and modifications, in 2 vols. 8vo. This work is occupied with the functions executed by healthy man. It embraces a general exposition of the functions; the new views entertained in regard to the formation of the tissues; hut is especially intended to give an accurate view of the actions of the different organs, as an introduction to the study of pathology, hygiene and therapeutics. It treats moreover, of the"anatomy of the organs so far as is necessary for a full understanding of the functions ; and is largely illustrated by appropriate eneravings The last edition contains several additional illustrations to elucidate either topics that have been already touched upon in the work, or such as are new. Every effort has been made to place the work in all respects, on a level with the existing state of the science. THE DISEASES OF THE EYE. A TREATISE ON THE DISEASES OF THE EYE, BY W. LAWRENCE, Surgeon Extraordinary to the Queen, &c, from the last London Edition, with numerous additions, and sixty-seven Illustrations, many of which are from original drawings By Isaac Hats, M.D., Surgeon to the Wills Hospital, &c, &c, in 1 vol. 8vo.— Just ready. The character of this work is too well established to require a word of commendation-it is justly considered the best on the subject. The present is a reprint of the last London Edition, which appeared in le41, completely revised and greatly enlarged by the author-and to it considerable additions have been made by the editor. Several subjects omitted in the original are treated of ir ths edhio no which THE URINARY ORGANS, &c. LECTURES ON THE DISEASES OF THE URINARY ORGANS BY SIR BC. BRODIE, BART. F.RS. From the Third London Edition, wTth alterations and additions, a small 8vo. volume.—ISow ready. The work has throughout been entirely revised, some of the author's views have been modified and a Lithotomy.6 P''°POrUO" °f MW """^ "" bee" 8dded' am0n»" which is a ^«™ oTth™ oSraiionof RICORD ON VENEREAL. A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON VENEREAL DISEASES- OR CRTTTPAT AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES ON INOCULATION APPUTO TO THE STUDY OF THESE AFFECTIONS; WITH A THERAPEUT^cI? SUMMARY AND SPECIAL FORMULARY,'BY PH. rIcSrDM ESo of the Venereal Hospital of Pans, Clinical Professor of Special Pathology. "&c -Not ready™ ' * * Pllkington Drummond, M.D, in one volume! LAWRENCE ON RUPTURES. A TREATISE ON RUPTURES, BY W. LAWRENCE, F.R.S., Author of a Treatise on the Diseases of the Eyr, &c. &c, from the Fifth London^Edition consf derably enlarged. In 1 vol. 8vo —Now ready ^umon, consi- The peculiar advantage of the treatise of Mr. Lawrence U th-it ho ov«i,:„„ i • • of hernia, and the different varieties of the d"ase Yn«min'nlrwl,,,h? "S ',S Vu'ews on the ""atomy to the student. It must be superfluous 11rpre^ o,r 0^^ u tt h " b°°k- »"*II,li,r,y ,,Sef,i> As a treatise on hernia, presenting a comple e v?ew of the teraturof> « ^°'!lefsur?'cal practitioner. rank—Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal »terat«re °f the subject, it stands in the first LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. MEDICAL LEXICON, BROUGHT UP TO 1842. A NEW DICTIONARY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE; Containing a concise account of the various Subjects and Terms, with the French and other Synonymes, and Formulas for various Officinal and Empirical Preparations, &c. Third Edition, brought up to 1842. BY ROBLEY DUNGLISON, M.D., Professor in the Jefferson Medical College, &c. In One Volume, royal 8vo. " The present undertaking was suggested by the frequent complaints, made by the author's pupils, that they were unable to meet with information on numerous topics of Professional Inquiry,—especially of recent introduction,—in the medical dictionaries accessible to them. " It may, indeed, be correctly affirmed, that we have no dictionary of medical subjects and terms which can be looked upon as adapted to the state of the science. In proof of this the author need but to remark, that he has found occasion to add several thousand Medical Terms, which are not to be met with in the only medical lexicon at this time in circulation in this country. " The present edition will be found to contain many hundred Terms more than the first, and to have experienced numerous Additions and Modifications. " The author's object has not been to make the work a mere lexicon or dictionary of terms, but to afford, under each, a condensed view of its various medical relations, and thus to render the work an epitome of the existing condition of Medical Science." This New Edition includes, in the body of the work, the Index or Vocabulary of Synonymes that was in the former Editions printed at the end of the Volume, arid embraces many Corrections, with the addi- tion of many New Words. PEREIRA'S MATERIA MEDICA, * EDITED BY DR. CARSON, WITH NEAR THREE HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD. ELEMENTS OF MATERIA MED'-CA AND THERAPEUTICS; COMPRE- HENDING THE NATURAL HISTORY, PREPARATION, PROPERTIES, COMPOSITION, EFFECTS, AND USES OF MEDICINES, BY JONATHAN PEREIRA, M.D., F.R.S., Assistant Physician to the London Hospital, &c. Part I, contains the General Action and Classification of Medicines, and the Mineral Materia Medica. Part II, the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms, and including diagrams explanatory of the Processes of the Pharmacopoeias, a Tabular view of the History of the Materia Medica, from the earliest times to the present day, and a very copious index. From the Second London Edition, which has been thoroughly revised, with the Introduction of the Processes of the New Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia, and containing additional articles on Mental Remedies, Light, Heat, Cold, Electricity, Magnetism, Exercise, Dietetics, and Climate, and many additional Wood Cuts, illustrative of Pharmaceutical Operations, Crystallogra- phy, Shape and Organization of the Feculns of Commerce, and the Natural History of the Materia Medica. The object of the author has been to supply the Medical Student with a Chiss Ilook on Materia Medica, containing a faithful outline of this Department of Medicine, which should embrace a concise account of the most important modern discoveries in Natural History, Chemistry, Physiology, and Therapeutics in so far as they pertain to Pharmacology, and treat the subjects in the order of their natural historical relations. ... , This great Library or Cyclopedia of Materia Medica has been fully revised, the errors corrected, and numerous additions made, by DR. JOSEPH CARSON, Professor of Materia Medica and Pharmacy in the "College of Pharmacy," and forms Two Volumes, octavo, of near 1600 large and closely-printed pages; and it may be fully relied upon as a permanent and standard work for the country,—embodying, as it does, full references to the U. S. Pharmacopea and an account of the Medicinal Plants indige- nous to the United States. PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF SURGERY, WITH CUTS. THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF MODERN SURGERY, BY RO- BERT DRUITT. From the Second London Edition, illustrated with fifty wood en- gravings, with notes and comments by Joshua B. Flint, M.D., in one volume 8vo., at a low price. EXTRACT FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. " The arrangement of a work of this kind ought not, as I conceive, to be regarded as a matter of mere indifference or almost of convenience, but it ought to embody in it something of a principle; and I "five that' the arrangement of this work may be useful to the student, by showing h.m in what order hP mnv best nrosecute his researches into the principles of his profession. ,.>.■■, » Of^thffiNX parts into which it is divided, the first two are more especially devoted to the principle.., ^V. Vhroi nfh/™ tn thP nrartice of surgery. The first part treats of the disturbances of the constitu- ?"onnU«pe tha\ may he p^duTed by in ur/or disease of a part; beginning with the simple faintness tion at-iaige, iniu iiaj v proceeding to consider the varieties of fever and tetanus. °^Tie^ ca,,e,i the elementS °flOCal d^ease; that is to say. those morbid chTnK«. 7.tS o, function" which are produced either immediately by external causes, or ries; the^? ?rSllT/to ui etticU of chemical agents, and lastly, consider.ng the effects of animal ^•The fourth part considers the various tissues, organs, and regions of the body in order, and describe* th2 ^^^ni^tiZBZhaXo^r'.tiom as were not included in the former parts. &c. "rSthe wCi.TP^deTaMllUo£ of formula, the number of which is very much ...creased ,n this edition."________________--------------------------------------- LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. FEVERS OF THE UNITED STATES. THE HISTORY, DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF TYPHOID AND TYPHUS FEVER, WITH AN ESSAY ON THE DIAGNOSIS OF BILIOUS REMITTENT AND OF YELLOW FEVER, BY ELISHA BARTLETT, M.D., Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Transylvania University. In one volume 8vo; a new work. Notice has already been given of the appearance of this work : we have become satisfied of its sterling value, and, therefore, without hesitation, feel justified in again recommending it to the immediate no- tice of practitioners.—Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. MULLER'S PHYSIOLOGY. ELEMENTS OF PHYSIOLOGY; BY J. MULLER, M.D., Professor of Ana- tomy and Physiology in the University of Berlin, &c. Translated from the German by William Baly, M.D., Graduate in Medicine of the University of Berlin. Ar- ranged from the Second London Edition by John Bell, M.D., Lecturer on Materia Medica and Therapeutics, &c, &c. In One Volume, 8vo.—Just ready. In arranging the Volume now offered to American readers, from the materials furnished in Miller's Elements o!f*PHYsioLOGY, the Editor has endeavoured to procure reduction in size, of this latter, with- out any abstraction of its vitality and mind. With this view he has omitted, for the most part, mere disquisitions, many details of experiments, matters of physics and natural philosophy, including mechan- ics under the head of locomotion, acoustics and the theories of music under voice and hearing, and of optics under vision,—much of the minutiffi of comparative physiology, and metaphysics or metaphysico- physiology. But, while excluding details on collateral topics, the Editor has been particularly careful to preserve Physiology Proper, which, resting on the basis of Histogeny and General Anatomy, derives important aid from Organic Chemistry and Microscopical Observations,,and in its turn serves to illus- trate Hygiene, Pathology and Therapeutics. Thus aided and thus applied, in the manner exhibited by Miiller himself, Physiology will invite the attention of the Student in these pages. It will soon be discovered that, although this volume is an abridgement of the large work of Miiller, it may rightfully claim to be considered a complete system of Physiology, exceeding in copiousness and comprehensive details, any other work on the same subject which has yet emanated from the London press. ELEMENTS OF PHYSICS-WITH WOOD-CUTS. ELEMENTS OF PHYSICS, OR NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, GENERAL AND MEDICAL. A New Edition, complete in One Volume, written for universal use, in plain and non-technical language, and containing New Disquisitions and Prac- tical Suggestions; comprised in Five Parts: 1. Somatology, Statics and Dynamics. 2. Mechanics. 3. Pneumatics, Hydraulics and Acoustics. 4. Heat and Light. 5. Animal and Medical Physics. By NEIL ARNOTT, M.D., of the Royal College of Physicians. A New Edition, revised and corrected from the last English Edition ; with additions by Isaac Hays, M.D., and numerous Wood-cuts. PRACTICAL MINERALOGY AND GEOLOGY-WITH CUTS. A TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY, WITH INSTRUC- TIONS FOR THE QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF MINERALS. BY JOSHUA TRIMMER, F.G.S.H with Two Hundred and Twelve Wood-cuts. A handsome Octavo Volume, bound in embossed cloth. This is a Systematic Introduction to Mineralogy and Geology, admirably calculated to instruct the Student in those sciences. The Organic Remains of the various Formations are well illustrated by numerous Figures, which are drawn with great accuracy. ELLIS'S MEDICAL FORMULARY IMPROVED. THE MEDICAL FORMULARY OF DR. ELLIS; being a COLLECTION OF PRESCRIPTIONS, derived from the Writings and Practice of many of the most eminent Physicians in America and Europe. To which is added an Appendix, con- taining the usual Dietetic Preparations and Antidotes for Poisons ; the whole accom- panied with a-few brief Pharmaceutic and Medical Observations. By BENJAMIN ELLIS, M.D. The Sixth Edition, completely revised, with many Additions and Modifications, and brought up to the present improved state of the Science; by Samuel George Morton, M.D., Professor in the Pennsylvania College of Medicine, &c.j &c. In One Octavo Volume. LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS PRINCIPLES OF MEDICINE. THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MEDICINE, BY ARCHIBALD BILLING, M.D., A.M., Member of the Senate of the University of London, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, &c, &c. In One Volume, 8vo. First American from the Fourth London Edition. " We know of no book which contains within the same space so much valuable information, the result not of fanciful theory, nor of idle hypothesis, but of clorse, persevering Clinical Observation, accompanied with much soundness of judgment, and extraordinary clinical tact."—Medico- Chirurgical Review. A TREATISE ON FEVER. By Southwood Smith, M.D., Physician to the Lon- don Fever Hospital, fourth American edition. In one volume octavo. COATES'S POPULAR MEDICINE, OR FAMILY ADVISER, consisting of Outlines of Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene, with such Hints on the Practice of Physic, Surgery, and the Diseases of Women and Children, as may prove useful in families when regular Physicians cannot be procured: being a Companion and Guide for intelligent Principals of Manufactories, Plantations, and Boarding Schools; Heads of Families, Masters of Vessels, Missionaries, or Travellers; and a useful Sketch for Young men about commencing the Study of Medicine. By Reynell Coates, M.D. This work is designed to supply the place of Ewella' Medical Companion, which is now entirely out of print. OUTLINES OF A COURSE OF LECTURES ON MEDICAL JURISPRU- DENCE. By Thomas Stewart Traill, M.D., with notes and additions. A small volume. A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE, with so much of Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, and the Practice of Medicine and Surgery, as are Essential to be known by Members of the Bar and Private Gentlemen; and all the Laws relating to Medical Practitioners ; with Explanatory Plates. By J. Chitty, Esq., second American edition, with notes and additions adapted to American Works and Judicial Decisions. In One Volume Octavo. A TREATISE ON PULMONARY CONSUMPTION, comprehending an In- quiry into the Nature, Causes, Prevention and Treatment of Tuberculous and Scro- fulous Diseases in General. By James Clark, M.D., F.R.S. A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE HUMAN TEETH, showing the causes of their destruction and the means of their preservation, by William Robertson. With plates. First American from the second London Edition. In one volume octavo. ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, AND DISEASES OF THE TEETH. By Thomas Bell, F.R.S., F.L.S., &c. Third American edition. In one volume octavo, with numerous plates. DISSERTATIONS ON NERVOUS DISEASES. By Drs. James Hope, J. C. Prichard, John Hughes Bennett, Robert H. Taylor and Theophilus Thomson. In one volume octavo. DISSERTATIONS ON DISEASES OF THE ORGANS OF RESPIRATION. By Drs. Williams, Theophilus Thomson, W. B. Carpenter, and W. Bruce Joy. In one volume octavo. DISSERTATIONS ON FEVERS, GENERAL, PATHOLOGY, INFLAMMA- TION, AND DISEASES OF THE SKIN. By Drs. Symonds, Allison, Christison, &c. &c. In one volume octavo. DISSERTATIONS ON DISEASES OF THE DIGESTIVE, URINARY AND UTERINE ORGANS. By Drs. Joy, Symonds, Thomson, Ferguson, &c. &c. In one volume octavo. DISSERTATIONS ON HEMORRHAGES, DROPSY, RHEUMATISM, GOUT, SCROFULA, &c. &c. By Drs. Burrows, Watson, Shapter, Joy, &c. &c. In one volume octavo. . . The above five volumes are from the Library of Practical Medicine, edited by Dr. Tweedie, with notes by Dr. Gerhard. Each volume is complete within itself, and is for sale separately. THE MEDICAL STUDENT; OR AIDS TO THE STUDY OF MEDICINE. Including a Glossary of the Terms of the Science, and of the Mode of Prescribing; Bibliographical Notices of Medical Works; the Regulations of the different Medical Colleges of the Union, &c. By Robley Dunglison, M.D., &c. &c. In one vol. 8vo. LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS, ESSAYS ON ASTHMA, APHTHA, ASPHYXIA, APOPLEXY, ARSENIC, ATROPA, AIR, ABORTION, ANGINA PECTORIS, and other subjects, embraced in the Articles from A to Azote, prepared for the Cyclopoedia of Practical Medicine by Dr. Chapman and others. Each article is complete within itself, and embraces the practical experience of its author, and as they are only to be had in this collection, will be found of great value to the profession. The two volumes are rtow offered at a price so low, as to place them within the reach of every practitioner and student. OUTLINES OF PHYSIOLOGY; with an Appendix on Phrenology. By P. M. Roget, M.D., Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institute of Great Britain, &c. First American edition revised, with numerous Notes. In one volume octavo. GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY, considered with reference to Natural Theology. By the Rev. William Buckland, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, and Reader in Geo- logy and Mineralogy in the University of Oxford. With nearly one hundred copper- plates and large coloured maps. A new edition from the late London edition, with supplementary notes and additional plates. THE BRIDGEWATER TREATISES, complete in seven volumes octavo, em- bracing: I. The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man. By the Rev. Thomas Chalmers. IT. The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man. By John Kidd, M.D.F.R.S. III. Astronomy and General Physics, considered with reference to Natural Theology. By the Rev. William Whewell. IV. The Hand; its Mechanism and vital Endowments as evincing Design. By Sir Charles Bell, K.H., F.R.S. With numerous woodcuts. V. Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion. By William Prout, M.D.F.R.S. VI. The History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals. By the Rev. William Kiroy, M.A.F.R.S. Illus- trated by numerous engravings on copper. VII. Animal and Vegetable Physiology, considered with reference to Natural Theology. By Peter Mark Roget, M.D. Illustrated with nearly five hundred wood-cuts. Vin. Geology and Mineralogy, considered with reference to Natural Theology. By the Rev. William Buckland, D.D. With numerous engravings on copper, and a large coloured map. The works of Buckland, Kirby and Roget, may be had separate. A POPULAR TREATISE ON VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY, by W. P. Car- penter, Author of Principles of Human Physiology, &c, published under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Popular Instruction. With numerous wood-cuts, in one volume 12mo. A POPULAR TREATISE ON AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY; intended for the use of the practical farmer, by Charles Squarry, Chemist. In one vol. 12mo. ROGET'S ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY, with nearly five hundred wood-cuts, in two volumes, second American edition. THE HISTORY, HABITS, AND INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS, by the Rev. William Kirby, M.A.F.R.S. Illustrated by numerous copperplate engravino-s. The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. A FRAGMENT, by Charles Babbage, Esq. From the second London edition. In one volume octavo. A PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. Comprising most of the diseases not treated of in Diseases of Females and Diseases of Children, second edition. By W. P. Dewees M.D., formerly Adjunct Professor in the University of Pennsylvania. In one vol 8vo' . constituting Elements of Hygiene. By Robley Dunglison, M.D. In one volume 8vo. ABERCROMBIE ON THE STOMACH. Pathological and Practical Researches on Diseases of the Stomach, the Intestinal Canal, the Liver, and other Viscera of the Abdomen By John Abercrombie, M.D. Third American, from the second London edition, enlarged. In one volume 8vo. diseasesTFthe skin. A NEW WORK. A PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL TREATISE ON THE DIAGNOSIS PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF DISEASES OF THE SKI^anged according to a Natural System of Classification, and preceded by an Outhn- of the Anatomy and Physiology of the Skin. By Erasmus Wilson, M. D., author of a System of Human Anatomy, &c., in 1 vol. 8vo. LEA & BLANCHARD HAVE JUST PUBLISHED A TREATISE ON THE DENTAL ART, FOUNDED ON ACTUAL EXPERIENCE. ILLUSTRATED BY TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE FIGURES IN LITHOGRAPHY, AND FIFTY-FOUR WOOD CUTS. BY F. MAURY, DENTIST OF THE ROYAL POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL. ^translate* from the jFtencf), WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS, BY J. B. SAVIER, DOCTOR OF DENTAL SURGERY. One vol. 8vo. This work is designed as a Text Book in the Baltimore College of D< ntal Surgery, and commends itself to the Profession from the great reputation of the author, and as embra- cing the latest information on the subject. From the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. "The above is the title of an interesting, highly valuable, and well written treatise on Dental Surgery, embracing a broader and more extended view of the subject than is usually given by writers on this branch of the curative art. The work is divided into three parts: the first is devoted to the ' Anatomy and Physiology of the Mouth and its Appendages,' as for example—the tongue, maxillary bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins and glands; the teeth, together with a description of the manner of their formation, development, structure, and eruption of both the temporary and permanent sets; also a description of the dental pulps and enamel, and the varieties of ' form,' ' number,' ' posi- tion,' 'structure,' and the 'consistency of the teeth.' " " In the second part of the work, he treats of ' Dental Hygiene and Therapeutics,' embracing a description of the means for the preservation of the teeth and all the other parts of the mouth." . . "The third part of the work is devoted to ' Mechanical Dentistry,' or a description of the various methods for the insertion of artificial teeth; every one of which is illustrated by one or more wood-cut engravings and lithographic plates." " The original work, we believe, is held in high estimation in France by the medical, as well as the dental profession, and that it is one of merit is proved by the fact that it has passed through six or seven editions, and Dr. Savier, the translator, has done him- self much credit by the very correct English version he has given of it." " The information contained in the first and second parts of the work should be possessed not only by every dental, but by every medical practitioner, and more especially by those residing in the country and small villages where the services of scientific and skiltul dentists can rarely be had." L & B. would particularly call the attention of the Profession to the series of works written by Professor Dunglison, and published by them. They are now extensively used as Text Books throughout the Union, and great care is taken by the author that each successive edition embodies the improvements and new information up to its publica- tion. Persons who may order these works may rely upon having the last editions. 1 hey are THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE; or a TREATISE ON SPECIAL PATHOLOGY AND THERAPEUTICS, in 2 vols. 8vo. GENERAL THERAPEUTICS AND MATERIA MEDICA, in 2 vols. 8vo. NEW REMEDIES PHARMACEUTICALLY AND THERAPEUTICALLY CON- SIDERED, a New Edition, the fourth, is just ready, 1 vol. 8vo. A NEW DICTIONARY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE, the third edition, in 1 vol. 8vo. HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, with Illustrations, the fourth edition, in 2 vols. 8vo. O" See a more detailed description of them on other pages. A NEW WORK ON PRACTICAL SURGERY, WITH OVER TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS, AT A VERY LOW PRICE. NOW READY: A SYSTEM OF PRACTICAL SURGERY, by PROFESSOR WILLIAM FERGUSSON, OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. ILLUSTRATED BY OYER TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY SPLENDID CUTS, EXECUTED BY GILBERT, FROM DESIGNS BY BAGG, WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS Br GEORGE W. NORRIS, M. D., ONE OF THE SURGEONS TO THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL. In One Volume 8vo. The object and nature of this volume are thus described by the author:—"The present work has not been produced to compete with any already before the Profession; the ar- rangement, the manner in which the subjects have been treated, and the illustrations, are all different from any of the kind in the English language. It is not intended to be placed in comparison with the elementary systems of Cooper, Burns, Liston, Symes, Li- zars, and that excellent epitome by Mr. Druitt. It may with more propriety be likened to the Operative Surgery of Sir C. Bell, and that of Mr. Averill, both excellent in their day, or the more modern production of Mr. Hargrave, and the Practical Surgery of Mr. Liston. There are subjects treated of in this volume, however, which none of these gen- tlemen have noticed, and the author is sufficiently sanguine to entertain the idea that this work may in some degree assume that relative position in British Surgery which the classical volumes of Velpeau and Malgaigne occupy on the Continent." The publishers commend this work to the attention of the Profession as one combining cheapness and elegance, with a clear, sound, and practical treatment of every subject in surgical science. No pains or expense has been spared to present it in a style equal, if not superior to the London edition, and to match the edition of " Wilson's Anatomy," lately published, and "Churchill's System of Midwifery" and "Carpenter's Human Phy- siology" now preparing. BT A more beautiful volume of the kind has never been presented in this country to the Medical Profession, and the price is so low as to bring it within the reach of all. It has been introduced as a Text Book in several Colleges, and at the approaching fell will be added to the list of several others. Sorae^pecimens of the illustrations and recommendations are annexed. Fig. 103. Fig. 113. Fig. 107. Fig. 106. y M ^ w> :■■■■■■:.'.'''-^ u 96 Notices of Fergusson's Practical Surgery. "The object of this work, is to present 'a manual of the details of Practical Surgery, which shall, in some degree, meet the wishes and wants of the student, as well as ot the surgeon already engaged in practice;' and the author has proved that he well knows what those wants and wishes are, and that he is fully competent to the task of supplying them. Indeed, we know of no volume in which the young surgeon will find so clearly and concisely described, as in the present, the various duties which he is called upon to execute, and the simplest and mosi efficient means of performing them; and we feel sure that Us publication will greatly contribute to the advancement of the art of surgery, by rendering the student familiar with its elements and details. " We must not close this notice without stating that, the editor has contributed some valu- able additious, and that the getting up of the work—the printing, paper, and illustrations, which last are very numerous, are superior to any thing of the kind which has issued from the medical press of this country."—Amer. Journal of the Medical Sciences. " If we were to say that this volume by Mr. Fergusson, is one excellently adapted to the student, and the yet inexperienced practitioner of surgery, we should restrict unduly its range. It is of the kind which every medical man ought to have by him for ready refer- ence, as a guide to the prompt treatment of many accidents and injuries, which whilst he hesitates, may be followed by inculpable defects, and deformities of structure, if not by death itself." "In drawing to a close our notice of Mr. Fergusson's Practical Surgery, we cannot re- frain from again adverting to the numerous and beautiful illustrations by wood-cuts, which contribute so admirably to elucidate the descriptions in the text. Dr. Norris has, as usual, acquitted himself judiciously in his office of annotator. His additions are strictly practical, and to the point."—Bulletin of Medical Science. " We know not how generally Mr. Fergusson's system of Practical Surgery may be known to practitioners, but those who are strangers to it, ought not to be so any longer, since it is obvious, that it is destined to work its way into public favour. George W. Nor- ris, M. D., one of the surgeons of the Pennsylvania Hospital, who has added notes and additional illustrations, says, in a short preface, that it ' is so well adapted to the wants of the American student and practitioner, that no apology is necessary for introducing it to their notice. The work is at once clear and concise in style, strictly practical in its con- tents, and the wood-cuts, admirably executed by Mr. Gilbert, are remarkable for their spirit and accuracy.' Dr. Norris is good authority; he is not a man to bestow commenda- tion where it is not deserved, nor would he hazard a growing reputation by recommending to the notice of surgeons anything that would not bear the most critical examination." " The two hundred and fifty-four engravings are as correct and beautiful as can be found anywhere. We bespeak for such a book, the countenance and patronage of a liberal-minded faculty."—Boston Med. & Surg. Journal. "We can only add our testimony that, in following this course, the author has fully suc- ceeded in making an original and strictly practical work, and one which we are confident will be considered a standard book for the surgeon. In its style it is concise, easy, and agreeable; the matter it contains is well arranged, and what is more important, admirably digested; the directions for the use of instruments, for the performance of operations, for the diagnosis of diseased conditions, and for the proper treatment tor their relief, are all clearly laid down and illustrated by excellent wood cuts, which speak more intelligibly oculis fdelibus, than would the most laboured explanations."—JY. York American. " This new work, just issued from the house of Messrs. Lea & Blanchard, is remarkable in many respects for the value of the information it contains, the number of admirable illus- trations, and, withal, for the style in which it has been brought out, taking a place, in this respect, alongside the 'System of Human Anatomy,'recently published by the same en- terprising house. The object of the author throughout the whole of the work, has been ' to produce a manual of the details of practical surgery, which shall, in some degree, meet the wishes of the student, as well as of the surgeon already engaged in practice.' And in this, every one must admit, he has fully succeeded. The American editor, (one of our best in- formed surgeons,) has added matter having reference, principally, to the treatment of some of the more common surgical affections, or to operations, done by his own countrymen, which have been deemed worthy of notice." "A friend, who is well acquainted with all that has been done in this department of sci- ence, is prepared to say, that no surgical work has emanated from the press of this, or any other country, which is, in all respects, more creditable to the author and editor; and it appears to him, that every library ought to possess it. It will be found a faithful guide, with no obscurity to lead to hesitation, and with illustrations such as to guard completely against error."— U. S. Gazette. It is with unfeigned satisfaction that we call the attention of the profession in this country to this excellent work. It richly deserves the reputation conceded to it, of being the best practical surgery extant, at least in the English language. The matter added by the American editor, is both interesting and useful, and bears the impress of his cautious and discriminating mind.—Medical Examiner. ELEMENTS OF MATERIA MEDICA AND THERAPEUTICS, Wliil NEAR 300 ILLUSTRATIONS. ELEMENTS OF MATERIA MEDICA AND THERAPEUTICS; COMPREHENDING THE NATURAL HISTORY, PREPARATION, PROPERTIES, COMPOSITION, EFFECTS, AND USES OF MEDICINES, By JONATHAN PEREIRA, M.D., F.R.S., ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN TO THE LONDON HOSPITAL, ETC. Witli numerous Illustrations! FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. ENLARGED AND IMPROVED, WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS, BY JOSEPH CARSON, M.D. PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA AND PHARMACY IN THE PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHARMACY, ETC. Part I., contains the General Action and Classification of Medicines,and the Mineral Ma- teria Medica. Part 11., the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms, and including diagrams ex- planatory of the Processes of the Pharmacopoeias, a tabular view of the History of the Materia Medica, from the earliest times to the present day, and a very copious index. From the Second London Edition, which has been thoroughly revised, with the Introduction of the Processes of the New Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia, and containing additional articles on Mental Remedies, Light, Heat, Cold, Electricity, Magnetism, Exercise, Dietetics, and Climate, and many additional Wood Cuts, illustrative of Pharmaceutical Operations, Crys- tallography, Shape and Organization of the Feculas of Commerce, and the Natural History of the Materia Medica. The object of the author has been to supply the Medical Student with a Class Book on Materia Medica, containing a faithful outline of this Department of Medicine, which should embrace a concise account of the most important modern discoveries in Natural History, Chemistry, Physiology, and Therapeutics, in so far as they pertain to Pharmacology, and treat the "subjects in the order of their natural historical relations. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. The very great merit of Pereira's Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics,having attracted the attention of the Profession in the United States, it is believed that an important service is performed in rendering it accessible, by the publication of an American edition. It is bv far the most comprehensive treatise upon the subject in the English language. Re- plete with erudition and at the same time most satisfactory with respect to references; it is admirably suited to the wants of the advanced student and the practitioner; while from tlie distinctness of the facts, their methodical arrangement, and the clear philosophical expla- nations connected with them, it meets the wants of the student who is in search of the first lessons in the science. It may, therefore, with equal benefit be employed as a work of re- ference, or as an elementary text book, in which two-fold character it occupies an unusual position. . ,,...., More completely to adapt it to the demands of this country, such additions have been made , as are deemed to be essential. Thus, the portion devoted to pharmaceutical information, is in the original work too strictly local, as it is confined almost exclusively to the peculiarities of the three British Colleges; to obviate tlm, the nomenclature of the last edition of the United States Pharmacopoeia has been introduced, by inserting the name of each article adopted by that standard, in connexion with those assumed by the authorities uniformly cited by the author, or by expressing a correspondence of name with one or more of them by the symbols (U. S.) in'union with similar symbols used by him to indicate the authority. The formula of the United States Pharmacopoeia have also been set forth with the formulae of the standards previously mentioned, and where a formula has been adopted, or a medicinal preparation assumed by our own work, entirely differing from those found in the text, it has been presented, with all the details necessary for its employment. Succinct histories of the most important indigenous medicines of the United States, of which no account had been given, have been introduced in their appropriate places, as Cassia Mwilandica, Chenapodium, CimicifVcra, Cornus Florida, Eupatonum, Gtlleida, expedient. .„ PEREIRA CONTINUED. It forms Two Volumes, of about 1600 large and well-printed pages, with near 300 illus- trations on wood. Great expense has been incurred in getting it up, and the editor has been most careful in its revision, so that it may be relied upon as a standard and permanent work. It will be used asa Text Book in various sections of the country. Numerous testimonials from Journals, Professors, and others, could be given, but the Publishers preter exhibiting this explanation of its contents, and submitting an extract from the work. Extract from the Article—Lobelia. Chemical Characteristics.—A strong; decoction of lobelia dropped into recti- fied spirit deposits a precipitate {gum). Acetate, and especially diacetate of lead, form yellow precipitates with the decoction. Protonitrate of mercury also forms a copious precipitate. (For other chemical characteristics, see above.) Physiological Effects.—An accurate account of the effects of this plant on man and animals is yet wanting;-. But from the observations hitherto made its operation appears to be very similar to that of tobacco (see p. 317); and from this circumstance, indeed, it has been called the Indian Tobacco. I have before re- marked, that both in its taste and in the sensation of acridity which it excites in the throat, it resembles common tobacco. This analogy between nicotiana and lobelia, originally noticed by the American practitioners, is confirmed by Dr. El- liotson. (Lancet, April 15', 1837, p. 144.) a. On Animals generally.—Horses and cattle have been supposed to be killed by eating it accidentally. (Thacher, American New Dispensatory, p. 2.) An ex- traordinary flow of saliva is said to be produced by it on cattle. {Lancet, May 13, 1837, p. 299.) [Mr. Procter administered a grain of lobelina in solution to a cat. In less than two minutes it produced violent emesis, and much prostration, from which the animal fully recovered in three hours. Again, one grain of the substance in an ounce of water was administered directly into the stomach of the animal by an elastic tube. Immediate and total prostration was the consequence, which in half an hour rendered the animal almost motionless; the pupils of the eyes were much dilated. The animal gradually recovered its strength, but the effects of the pros- tration were evident for fifteen hours afterwards. No emetic or cathartic effects resulted. (Am. Journ. of Pharm. vol. xiii. p. 10.)—J. C] 0. On Man.—a.%. In small doses it operates as a diaphoretic and expectorant. Mr. Andrews, (Lond. Med. Gaz. vol; iii. p. 260,) who speaks from its effects on him- self, says, it has "the peculiar soothing quality of exciting expectoration without the pain of coughing." B3. In full medicinal doses (as 9j. of the powder) it acts as a powerful, nauseat- ing emetic. Hence it has been called the emetic weed. It cau«es severe and speedy vomiting, attended with continued and distressing nausea, sometimes purg- ing, copious sweating, and great general relaxation. These symptoms are usually preceded by giddiness, headache, and general tremors. The Rev. Dr. M. Cutler, (Thacher, op. cit.,) in his account of the effects on himself, says, that taken during a severe paroxysm of asthma, it caused sickness and vomiting, and a kind of prickly sensation through the whole system, even to the extremities of the fingers and toes. The urinary passage was perceptibly affected, by producing a smarting sensation in passing urine, which was probably provoked by stimulus on the bladder. It sometimes, as in the Rev. Dr. Cutler's case, gives almost instanta- neous relief in an attack of spasmodic asthma. Intermittent pulse was caused by it in a case mentioned by Dr. Elliotson. Administered by the rectum, it produces the same distressing sickness of stomach, profuse perspiration, and universal re- laxation, which result from a similar use of tobacco. yy. In excessive doses, or in full doses too frequently repealed, its effects are those of a powerful acro-narcoticpoison. "The melancholy consequences resulting from the use of Lobelia inflata," says Dr. Thacher, (op. cit.) "as lately administered by the adventurous hands of a noted empiric, have justly excited considerable interest, and furnished alarming examples of its deleterious properties and fatal effects. The dose in which he is said usually to prescribe it, and frequently with impunity, is a common teaspoonful of the powdered seeds or leaves, and often repeated. If the medicine does not puke or evacuate powerfully, it frequently destroys the pa- PEREIRA CONTINUED. tient, and sometimes in five or six hours." Its effects, according to Dr. Wood, (United States Dispensatory,) are, " extreme prostration, great anxiety and distress, and ultimately death, preceded by convulsions." He also tells us that fatal results (in America) have been experienced from its empirical use. These are the more apt to occur when the poison, as is sometimes the case, is not rejected by vomiting. Uses.—Lobelia is probably applicable to all the purposes for which tobacco has been used (see p. 319). From my own observation of its effects, its principal value is as an antispasmodic. 1. In asthma (especially the spasmodic kind) and other disorders of the organs of respiration.—Given in full doses, so as to excite nausea and vomiting, at the com- mencement of, or shortly before, an attack of spasmodic asthma, it sometimes suc- ceeds in cutting short the paroxysm, or in greatly mitigating its violence; at other times, however, it completely fails. Occasionally it has proved serviceable in a few attacks, and, by repetition, has lost its influence over the disease. To obtain the beneficial influence in asthma, it is not necessary, however, to give it in doses sufficient to excite vomiting. Dr. Elliotson (Lancet, April 15, 1837, p. 144,) recommends the use of small doses at the commencement, and says that these should be gradually increased, if neither headache nor vomiting, occur; but immediately when these symptoms come on, the use of the remedy is to be omitted. Given in this way, I can testify to its good effects in spasmodic asthma. It has also been used in croup, hooping-cough, and catarrhal asthma, but with no very encouraging effects. 2. In strangulated hernia, Dr. Eberle, (Treat, of the Mat. Med. vol. i. p. 48, 2d ed.) employed it effectually, instead of tobacco, in the form of enema. 3. As an emetic, it has been employed by Dr. Eberle (op. cit.) in croup; but its operation is too distressing and dangerous for ordinary use. Administration.—It may be given inpowder, infusion, or tincture (alcoholic or ethereal.) Dr. Reece employed an oxymel. The dose of the powder a3 an emetic, is from grs. x. to J}j.; as an expectorant, from gr. j. to grs. v. It deserves especial notice that the effects of lobelia are very unequal on different persons, and that some are exceedingly susceptible of its influence. (Elliotson, Lancet, June 1832; and April 15, 1837.) 1. TINCTURALOBELLE,E. (U. S.): Tincture of Lobelia.—Lobelia, dried, and in moderately fine powder, gv.; Proof Spirit, Oij. This tincture is best prepared by the process of percolation, as directed for the tincture of capsicum; but it may also be made in the usual way by digestion.)—[The U. S. P. directs Lobelia, four ounces; Diluted Alcohol, two pints. Macerate for fourteen days and filter, or proceed by displacement.]—Dose, as an emetic and antispasmodic, from f£j. to f^ij. repeated every two or three hours until vomiting occur; as an expectorant TTJx. to f^j. For children of one or two years old, the dose is Tfjx. TTjxx. I TINCTURA LOBELLE 1TIIEREA, E.; Ethereal Tincture of Lobelia.—(Lo- belia, dried, and in moderately fine powder, 3jv.; Spirit of Sulphuric Ether, Oij. This tincture is best prepared by percolation, as directed for tincture of capsicum; but it may be also obtained by digestion in a well-closed vessel for seven days.) This may be used in the same doses as the alcoholic tincture. With some persons the ether is apt to disagree, and for such the alcoholic tinc- ture is preferred. Wliitlaw's ethereal tincture, used by Dr. Elliotson, consisted of Lobelia, lb. j.; rectified spirit, Oiv.; spirit of nitric ether, Oiv.; spirit of sulphuric ether, ^iv. Macerate for fourteen days, in a dark place. (Lancet, June 3, 1837.) [As'has been stated, page 385, heat injures the activity of lobelia, when its active principle is in a free state, and though combined with a weak acid in the plant, boiling is found to impair the activity of the decoction, hence in making preparations which require heat, some acid, as the acetic, should be associated with it. A Vinegar of Lobelia may be prepared by treating four ounces of lobe- lia by displacement, with two pints of diluted acetic acid. VVith vinegar of lobe- lia, a syrup may be made in the same manner as syrup of squills. By treating the powdered seeds with eight parts of diluted alcohol, containing 1 per cent, of acetic acid, a preparation is obtained possessing the activity of lobe- lia in a concentrated form (Procter).—J. C] MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS PUBLISHED BY LEA & BLANCHARD. Brougham, Henry Lord, His Speeches with Historical Introductions, in 2 vols. 8vo. Do do. do. Historical Sketches of the Times of George IV., in 2 vols, royal 12mo. Do. do. do. Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, in 2 vols, royal 12mo Butler's Alias of Ancient Geography, wilh a complete Index, 1 vol. 8vo. Do. Gengraphia Clas^ica, fourth edition, 1 vol. 8vo. to accompany the Atlas. Bob's Works complete, fine edition, with numerous illustrations, 6 vols, royal dvo. 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Indeed, it is difficult to say to what class of readers such a book would not prove useful, nay, al- most indispensable, since it combines a great amount of valuable matter in small compass, and at moderate expense, and is in every respect well suited to aug- ment the reader's stock of ideas, and powers of con- versation, without severely taxing time or fatiguing attention."—Am. Daily Advertiser. " According to the plan of Dr. Lieber, a desidera- tum will be supplied; the substance of contemporary knowledge will be brought within a small compass; and the character and uses of a manual will be im- parted to a kind of publication heretofore reserved, on strong shelves, for occasional reference. By those who understand the German language, the Conversa tion-Lexicon is consulted ten times for one applica tion to any English Encyclopedia."—JVat. Gazette. "The editors and publishers should receive the thanks of the present generation, and the gratitude of posterity, for being the first to prepare in this lan- guage what deserves to be entitled not the F.ncyclo- panlia Americana, but the PEOPLE'S LIBRARY." —JV. Y. Courier and Enquirer. " To supersede cumbrous Encyclopaedias, and put within ,the reach of the poorest,man a complete libra- ry dquftl to about forty or fifty' goooSsized octavos embracing every possible subject of interest to the number of 20,000 in all—provided he can spare oither from his earnings or his extravagancies twenty-jive cents a week, a library so contrived, as to be equally suited to the learned and unlearned, the mechanic, the merchant, and the professional man."—JV*. Y. Courier and Enquirer. "The high reputation of the contributors to this work, will not fail to insure it a favourable reception. and its own merits will do the rest." — SiUintm't Journal. X ^3 ^ ' NUMEROUS CASES SURGICAL OPERATIONS WITHOUT PAIN IN THE MESMERIC STATE WITH REMARKS UPON THE OPPOSITION OF MANY MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY AND OTHERS TO THE RECEPTION OF THE INESTIMABLE BLESSINGS OF MESMERISM. " In the whole domain of human argument?, no art or science rests upon experiments more numerous, more positive, or more easily ascertained." " To me (and before many years the opinion must be universal) the most extraordinary event in the whole history of human science is, that Mesmerism ever could be doubted." Chenevix. BY JOHN ELLIOTSON, M.D., Cantab. F.R.S. PHILADELPHIA: LEA AND BLANCHARD. 1843. NOW PUBLISHING, < w Q W a PQ THE COMPLETE WORKS CHARLES°FDICKENS, (BOZ.) CONTAINING OLIVER TWIST; Price 25 cents. NICHOLAS nickleby; Double Number — Price 50 cents. THE CURIOSITY SHOP WITH WOOD CUTS; Double Number — Price 50 cents. THE PICKWICK PAPERS; Double Numbei---Price 50 cents. SKETCHES OF EVERY-DAY LIFE; Price 37^ cents. AND BARNABY RUDGE, WITH WOOD CUTS; Double Number — Price 50 cents. THIS EDITION WILL BE WELL PRINTED IN A UNIFORM STYLE TO MATCH, AND SOLD AT THE VERY LOW PRICE OF SOES&HS &HB FIFT! WHEN THE WHOLE IS TAKEN AT ONE TIME. PHILADELPHIA: LEA & BLANCHARD, FOR ALL BOOKSELLERS AND NEWS AGENTS IN THE UNITED STATES. 1843. -S^33 CHEAP EDITION OF SMOLLETT.—$1 50. {■ in Pi < Ph WITH A MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS, BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, CONTAINING THE ADVENTURES OF RODERICK RANDOM; Price 25 cents. THE ADVENTURES OF PEREGRINE PICKLE; Double Number — Price 50 cents. THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHRY CLINKER; Price 25 cents. THE ADVENTURES OF FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM ; Price 25 cents. THE ADVENTURES OF SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES;—THE HISTORY AND ADVEN- TURES OF AN ATOM, AND SELECT POEMS; In one part; Price 25 cents. The whole to be printed in a uniform style to match, and with the last part will be given Title Pages and. Table of Contents, that the work may be bouud up in one or two volumes. SELECT WORKS OF HENRY FIELDING, WITH A MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS, BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, AND AN ESSAY ON HIS LIFE AND GENIUS, BT ARTHUR MURPHY, ESQ. CONTAININO TOM JONES, or THE HISTORY OF A FOUND- LING ; Double Number — Price 50 cents. THE ADVENTURES OF JOSEPH ANDREWS AND HIS FRIEND MR. ABRAHAM ADAMS; Price 25 cents. AMELIA; Price 25 cents. THE LIFE OF JONATHAN WILD, WITH THE LIFE OF FIELDING, ESSAY ON HIS GENIUS, &c; In one Part; Price 25 cents. The whole to be printed in a uniform style to match, and with the last part will be given Titles and Table of Contents, that the work may be bound up in one or two volumes. PHILADELPHIA: LEA & BLANCHARD, FOR ALL BOOKSELLERS AND NEWS AGENTS IN THE UNITED STATES. 1843. CHEAP EDITION OF FIELDING.—$1 25. 8087 Now ready, in One Volume, with Illustrations. THE HORSE, BY WILLIAM YOUATT. A NEW EDITI'ON, WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. GENERAL HISTORY OF THE HORSE; A DISSERTATION ON THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE, HOW TRAINED AND JOCKEYED, AN ACCOUNT OF HIS REMARKABLE PERFORMANCES; AND AN ESSAY ON THE ASS AND THE MULE, BY J. S. SKINNER, ASSISTANT POST MASTER GENERAL, AND EDITOR OF THE TURF REGISTER. PHILADELPHIA: LEA AND BLANCHARD. 1843. REPUBLISHED FROM THE NEW EDITION JUST ISSUED IN LONDON. BY THE SOCIETY FOR DIFFUSING USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. % . . »> - >> > ; J J>> > > .. > > » >JL ^) v>* > ));> x> j > ■»>' »^ m ^ >|£ >>3> >>£ *> »» > 5»I2> ' L>> XV > .J » lip ^> ^te j-V i K> X> >"> * ' 7s3!, . is- ?> > > —*->■ i ^. < *^ > > ■-> > > ■ j> > ^ ^ > > > ^ -^r^ :B>^ > > > >:>■' ■ >>>^ > >3>