appear to be females. It is another great mistake in the history oft his bird, that it has only become migratory since the plantation of rice in the United States, før it migrates many hundred miles beyond the rice plantations, Shetland Cure of Phthisis by Incantation. WHEN people are afflicted with consumptive complaints in Zetland, they imagine that the heart of the person so affected has been wasted away by enchantment. Old women, and sometimes men, profess to cure this disease by the following curious and very ridiculous operation:―The party is set upon the bottom of a large cooking pot, turned upon its mouth; a large pewter dish is placed, or held upon his head; and upon it a bason is set nearly full of cold water; into which, the operator pours melted lead through the teeth of a comb. All this is performed with many strange incantations and gesticulations. If the lead falls into a shapeless lump, they declare that the heart and the lungs of the patient are completely wasted away, that they will have infinite trouble, and perhaps, after all, will not be able to bring them back to their natural and healthful form. The lead is repeatedly melted, and poured through the comb into the water; and every time it is asserted to be more and more like the natural heart and lungs, and the bewitchment, of course, is rendered weaker and weaker. The patient undergoes this three times, with some days between each operation. When the last cast of the lead is over, the operator shews it round, and points out how exactly every part of the heart and the lungs are restored to their natural and proper shape; if the patient dies, (perhaps his death is hurried on by the fatigue and agitation occasioned by this mummery) his death is ascribed to some oversight in the strict performance of all the relative parts of this casting of the heart. The moon must be at a certain age, and it must be performed at a certain turning of the tide and hour of the night; and numberless other things must be attended to. The operator will take any thing they please to give, if it should be the half of all their goods and chattels, but he must not touch money, otherwise his trouble would come to nought, and the spell which bound the patient would be firmer than ever. The patient must wear the lead, which has been used, in his bosom, for sometime after the operation. Hibbert's Shetland Isles. and the Pirate, by the Author of Waverly. Spurzheimism. We copy the rollowing notice from a hand-bill, as a strong illustration of zeal for system: LECTURES on the Phrenology and the Anatomy of the Brain, by Dr Spurzheim. The system of Phrenology is founded in the immutable laws of nature. The silent, but steady progress which, for the last three or four years, it has been making in this country, has induced many of its supporters to conceive, that nothing more is wanting to secure the assent of every unprejudiced mind, than a fair and public demonstration of the facts upon which it is founded, In order, therefore, to the accomplishment of this object, it is proposed to invite Dr. Spurzheim over to this country, to deliver two Courses of Lectures upon Phrenology in London, one at each end of the town, and at the same time to demonstrate the Anatomy of the Brain. No direct application has yet been made to Dr. Spurzheim, nor is such an ap plication intended, unless a class can be formed sufficiently numerous to sanction such a request. It has been proposed, that the subscription be Two Guineas for each Course! and, accordingly, Tickets of Admission are prepared, and may be had of Mr. De Ville, 367, Strand; who, on the event of not obtaining an adequate number of Subscribers, or of Dr. Spurzheim not being able to leave his practice at Paris will return the money to every Subscriber, or to the bearer of his Ticket. The following Gentlemen have undertaken to correspond with Dr. Spurzheim on the subject, so soon as the Subscribers shall have become sufficiently numerous: Dr. Buchan, Pimlico Dr. Elliotson, Grafton-street, Bond-street; Dr. Powell, Bedford-place; Mr. Bramah, Pimlico; Mr. Donkin, Grange-road, Bermondsey." Mr. De Ville, we should suppose, has something more solid in view than obtaining from the Lectures a knowledge of the system; as it is to be noted that he sells Paris Plaster Heads, accurately numbered. Annals of Name-coining and Medical Style. We propose to give under this article a list of the new coined terms, and the very learned expressions which we meet with in our reading, and which we think are so injurious to the simplicity of genuine science, that they deserve the severest animadversion. One thing is certain, that they almost uniformly proceed from an inferior source. We can scarcely recollect an instance of any of the great men who have given celebrity and dignity to the profession, having set themselves to the finical task of compounding a multitude of new words from their Greek Lexicons. To avoid the appearance of invidiousness or severity, we shall not give the names of the authors, and we think it would be idle to explain the terms themselves, Aëroëidic Scotomata Necrosomatoscopy Dacryocystalgia caco- The French instrument for examining the state of the thorax by the sound, has been successively called sonometre, pectoriloque, thoraciloque, and stethoscope! The Arabians are said to have a hundred names for a horse: we think our scientific language bids fair, at this rate of innovation, to excel them far in the character of useless copiousness. We quote the following sentence, and a defence of it, and leave our readers to determine its force: "vision may be hemioptic, ateloptic, myosdesoptic, photoptic, photophobic, oxyopic, nephodic, diplopic, chruptic, strabismal, or luscitant." "We have not been betrayed," says the writer," into the use of these, and other appellatives [epithets] by the unworthy influence of affectation or pedantry: our paramount object at all times is, to diffuse the greatest proportion of useful know. ledge in the fewest words, and the smallest possible space.' An American Professor, writing on Medical Sympathy, says, " The words of the orator strike the ear, and electrify the heart; but have no affinity for the gross ness of the humours." "Nothing passes from the speaker to the hearer, but the Contagion of the soul.""It is in the magical web of mental sympathy, that Homer and Dante, and Milton and Byron, entangle so indissolubly the souls of their readers, and drag them in triumph at the chariot-wheels of their genius"!*Terror convulses and shatters the frame with the force of an earthquake." We add, in his own words-" Granted, if you please, for the sake of argument, but not as an offering at the shrine of truth."-What injury must such bombastic nonsense do to the pupils of Transylvania University, not only in corrupting their taste, but in obscuring the statement of medical facts, in the "lectures and teachings" of this romancing professor. VOL. IV. No. XIV. KK Critical Characteristics of Rew Books. I. Medico-Chirurgical Transactions. " Published by the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. Vol. II. pt. 2. 1821. IT has been whispered.-and the whisper has reached the press, (Med. Chír. Rev. II. 865.) that the value and interest of the Transactions of this Society are diminishing; and that while the Society itself is rising in numbers and in respectability, the communications are sinking to inferiority. Now, all this is indeed strange; and contrary, we should imagine, to every rule of sound logic and just inference. The deterioration is traced to a natural principle of decline-a lapsus senilis, towards which all human institutions have an irresistable bias to fall. It would indeed be unfair to imagine, that this society, useful as it is, and respectable as it is, should have any just claim to exemption from that impending destruction which terminates in "the wreck of nations and the crush of worlds." But granting for a moment, the fact of the inferiority of the more recent papers, we should scarcely be disposed to account for it, from so hypothetical and far-fetched a principle, as the natural decline of all things, particularly as the society is not of more than twenty years standing. Would it not be equally rational and true, to refer it to some ratio of decrease among diseases, or still more justly to the natural improvement of the art of medicine and surgery, and particularly to the improv ed knowledge of the members of this society; so that what a few years ago appeared in the transactions as ingenious and novel in treatment and in operation, is now well known to the youngest members. Since its establishment, indeed, recent as it is, the improvements of Medicine and Surgery have been so great, and so numerous, that in many cases we may safely affirm, they are as perfect as it is well possible for human skill to render them, and of course we ought not, perhaps, to expect so much novelty and interest as we could justly have done no long time ago. Such would be our account of the inferiority, did it unequivocally exist; but we may fairly question the fact, and call for the test by which we are to decide, even after we have made a careful comparison of the recent and the earlier numbers. If the celebrity of names is to decide the question, we cannot make a fair estimate of this celebrity; for many of the gentlemen who contributed papers to the earlier numbers, though they have now risen to merited distinction, were then but beginning to be known to fame; and we have every reason to believe that the present junior contributors, whose papers are under-valued, because they are in some measure juvenile, will occupy a very different rank in professional fame ten or twenty years hence, from what they do at present. Dr. Baillie and Sir Astley Cooper were once as little known as the last enrolled licentiate. If interest is to be made the test of the papers,-who is to measure the amount of this interest? We appeal from the judgment of the superiores of the profession, for to them little can be interesting or novel. The junior members are certainly the best judges of the quality of interest; while the senior members are indisputably the best judges of accuracy and truth. Balancing, then, the opinions of these two classes, so far as we have been able to ascertain them, and avoiding impracticable comparisons with former volumes, we conclude, that the papers in this volume are well worthy of perusal. Those who cannot go to the expense of the volume, will find a pretty full and useful abstract of it in Dr. Johnson's Journal, ut supra, to which we refer, as it is rather too far back for us to make an extended analysis of it. add the names of the several contributors-Mr. A. P. C. Gregory, Mr. D. Price, Mr. H, Coates, Mr. P. Breton, Dunn, Sir Astley Cooper, Mr. R. Welbank, Mr. M. A. Scott, Mr. E. Salmon, Mr. P. M. Martineau, Mr. W. Porter, Dr. W. Russel, and M. Breschet. We have only room to II. Lectures on the Structure and Physiology of the Male Urinary and Genital Organs of the Human Body; and on the Nature and Treatment of their Diseases. By James Wilson, F. R. S. &c. &c. 8vo. 1821. 14s. THIS work consists of fifteen lectures delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons iu the summer of 1821, on the properties of urine in health and disease, with remarks on the kidneys; on the semen, scrotum, spermatic chord, and testicies; on the vesiculæ seminales, the prostate and Cowpers glands; on the structure of the penis; on calculi; on gravel; on retention of urine; on strictures of the urethra ; on inflammation of the testicles; and on impotency. The information which Mr. Wilson has collected appears to be accurate and useful; and the style is much more perspicuous and logical than we should have been led to suppose from the inconsecutive arrangement of the subjects. The work is chiefly useful as a manual to the student; the experienced practitioner will not find in it much that he does not already know. Mr. Wilson was a very respectable lecturer and much esteemed. III. An Essay on the Medical Application of Electricity and Galvanism, with a concise Descriptive Account of Diseases. By James Price, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, 8vo. London, 1821. 6s. 6d. THE mention of electricity is now almost enough to bring upon a surgeon the suspicion of quackery; yet we pledge ourselves that there is no appearance of this in Mr. Price's little book, which is sensible, and very much to the purpose. Electricity has at present, indeed, fallen undeservedly into neglect. The truth is, that too much was at first expected from it; and because it did not quite come up to expectations extravagantly formed, it was all at once abandoned. (See page 125 above.) Mr. Price's book is well calculated to show what it can and what it can not do, and well deserves a perusal. IV. Advice to a Young Mother, &c. 12mo. 3s. 6d. The Parent's Medical and Surgical Assistant, by T. A. Bromhead, M.D., 12mo. 4s. Medicina Clerica, or Hints to the Clergy, post 8vo., 4s. Journal of Popular Medicine, by C. Haden, 2 vols. 8vo. THESE, and some other little works of the same sort, we shall take an early opportunity of noticing at some length, as we are persuaded they have, in more ways than one, a greater influence on professional avocations than many seem to be aware of. It will at least be useful to let our professional readers know what s in the books, should they, as they undoubtedly will, be sometimes asked their opinion of their merits. V. Outlines of Midwifery, developing its Principles and Practice; intended as a Text-book for Students and Junior Practitioners. By J. T. Conquest, M.D. F.L.S. &c. &c., 8vo, pp. 212, with 12 Plates, 2d Edition. London, 1821. 7s. 6d. WE give the character of this useful little work when we say it is strictly laconic. It is, indeed, a clear and comprehensive, though a very brief collection of every thing of moment which the young practitioner ought to know. The convenient size of the book, also, renders it a very portable companion in the earlier career of practice. The plates, which give a very just notion of the several positions of the fœtus` in natural and in difficult labours, seem to be accurate, and supply the want, which most students have felt, in some of the more expensive books on the subject. The rapid sale of the first edition proved most amply that such a manual was much wanted. We are happy to see the new edition so much improved. Several pages on the diseases of the puerperal state are added, and copper-plate engravings are substituted for the lithographic ones. Before, however, we part with Dr. Conquest, we wish to give him a few words of friendly advice. We hope he will, in future, avoid that affected style which per vades the work, (the ill-natured call it cant); and also that he will omit in his next edition those pages in which he exhibits what he is pleased to term his “mournful series of portraits, every one of which is drawn from a living character." (Outlines, pp. 76, and see.) Such personalities are often more injurious than when the individuals are openly named, for they may be applied to many individuals for whom they were never intended, and to whom they are not applicable. Dr. Conquest would certainly improve his useful little work by expunging this in future editions. VI. A Treatise on the Nature and Treatment of Scrophula, &c. &c. By E. A. Lloyd, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, &c. pp. 230, Svo. London, 1821. 9s. IN the article JOINTS, in the new edition of his Surgical Dictionary, Mr. Cooper says, that this work "deserves attentive perusal,” and we cordially agree with him. On the joints in particular, Mr. Lloyd displays a knowledge of his subject, which does great credit to his observation and his judgment as a surgeon. His treatise, however, though largely occupied in considering scrophulous diseases of the joints, is also full and comprehensive on all the phenomena of scrophula, in whatever part, or whatever tissue of the body they are met with. The subject of scrophula may by some be thought to be exhausted; it appears, on the contrary, to be only beginning to be studied on the inductive and philosophical principles, which Mr. Lloyd so successfully pursues. VII. The Medical Practitioner's Pocket Companion. 12mo. London, 1822. PP. 68. 2s. 6d. We should not have noticed this insignificant publication, did we not fear some of our young friends may be taken in by the alluring title with which it is baited. We subjoin two or three specimens of the work, and leave them to form their own judgment of its merits : Diarrhoea, coming on suddenly. D. [indicates] schirrhous testicle. "Eyes, sense of heat in. D. [indicates] eating muscles, or something injurious, "Face, flushed, [e. g. in blushing.] D. [indicates} yellow fever. "Skin, clammy, [e. g. on getting out of bed in a morning.] D. [indicates] abscess of the hip joint. "Yawnings, frequent, [e. g. in attending a tedious labour.] D. [indicates] nervous fever. "Sweating, breaking out on the temples, [e. g. after waltzing,] D. [indicates] hydrophobia."-Deus omen avertat!" We scarcely recollect of ever having before encountered so much nonsense in so short a compass. We could give a hundred instances from the work of similar absurdity and ignorance. We wonder as much at its having been published, as at its having been written. VIII.-An Essay on the Effects of the Fucus Helminthocorton upon Cancer, &c. By William Farr, M. R. C. S. &c. Pp. xii. 112, with a coloured engraving. 8vo. London, 1822. Price 5s. 6d. This medicine, well known on the continent as a vermifuge, Mr. Farr has tried |