in the dispersion of cancerous tumours. He gives it in decoction or infusion,-beginning in the proportion of half an ounce to a pint of boiling water,—a winęglassful to be taken thrice a-day,-increasing or diminishing the dose as the case indicates. He occasionally combines it with rhubarb and other aperients. From the success which he has met with in the cases in which he has tried it, he is very sanguine that it will prove a valuable medicine in cancer. Whether his expectations will be fulfilled, it is not for us to decide; for it will require additional testimony in its favour before its efficacy can be permanently established. Prussic acid, and croton oil, although they have been already tried to considerable extent, by many able practitioners, and often with success, are still far from being established medicines. Mr. Farr has not, that we observe, given any case of failure with the helminthocorton; though such must, without doubt, sometimes occur with this, as with all other medicines. XI. Reflections on Gall and Spurzheim's System of Physiology and Phrenology; addressed to the Court of Assistants of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, in June, 1821. By John Abernethy, F. R, S. &c. Pp. 75. 8vo. London, 1821. Price 3s. We need not expatiate on Mr. Abernethy's super-eminent talents as a surgeon, and, we might add, as a physician, although he has not the title. The improvements which his genius has introduced, will always illustrate the annals of English medicine. His success as a teacher has also been very distinguished, and seems, if we may judge from the annual increase of his pupils, to be progressively increasing, in proportion as he advances in years. On all these considerations, we are rather sorry to find him venturing somewhat out of his line of study, and deciding questions of theory and abstruse speculation as if they were plain and palpable facts. In a word, he is a convert to what we take the liberty to call Spurzheimism, rather than adopt the Greek coinages of its advocates; for surely Dr. Spurzheim has as good a right to have his name incorporated with his peculiar researches as Galvani or Volta; and though Dr. Gall was the founder of the theory, Spurzheim has clearly done the most to build it up into a system. In the truth of Dr. Spurzheim's views we do not believe, 1. Because all his organs, or faculties, are placed on the surface or external part of the brain, and none of them in the interior. What, therefore, is the use of the inner parts of the brain? 2. Because there are no inequalities, such as he describes, on the surface of any brain when dissected, and the inequalities are uniformly contined to the cranium. 3. The brain is not only uniform in level, if we dare use this expression for a convex surface, but it is uniform in structure,---which ought not surely to be the case in the different organs; for the organs of destruction, and of veneration, and of music, ought, we think, to differ as much in structure as the hand, the eye, and the ear. Dr. Spurzheim ought, on his principles, to be able to point out the different organs, from their structure alone, were they all cut out of the brain and laid on a table. This he could not do, though he could, in this case, at once distinguish an øye from an ear. 4. A faculty, such as that of destruction, when subdued, and rendered dormant, by the efforts of other faculties, is not accompanied, we believe, by any diminution of the protuberance of the organ. 5. The supposed protuberances could not be formed from corresponding protuberances of the brain in numbers 20, 23, and 29, as they are quite disjointed from it by intervening bone, &c. 6. The inductions of the theorists are too scanty; for, like a quack medicine, that cures one and kills a thousand, the successful examples are brought forward, and the unsuccessful overlooked, or kept in the back-ground. 7. When a puzzling case occurs, such as the organ of destructiveness being strong in a man of gentle disposition, the theorists evade the objection by shuffling off to some counteracting organ, which they would never have thought of but for the objection. 8. The system, notwithstanding the express denial of its advocates, is clearly built upon materialism, for it identifies the dispositions of the mind with animal appetites. Dr. Spurzheim, for example, gives the case of a woman who declared on oath, that she had an illegitimate child for the sole purpose of gratifying her brain appetite of destruction, by murdering it as soon as it was born. If this be human nature, we renounce all fellowship with it. 9. The system, (though this also its advocates deny), supports the most diabolical features of fatalism, and the immoral doctrines of the German novelists,---exemplified so strongly in Werter, the Robbers, and the Stranger,---that the passion sare natural and heaven-born, and ought to be obeyed at the expense of all consequences to social order. 10. Even if the system were true, it is most justly remarked by Mr. Abernethy, and it is the best thing in his book, that its prevalence would be most injurious to society. We have seen, ourselves, some of these bad effects. We once knew a lad accused of a theft, of which he was innocent, because he happened to have a cer tain bump on his head; and we know several families who will not hire a servant before the head has undergone the scrutiny of the mistress; and several merchants who look sharply after the heads of those with whom they have transactions. If this was to go on, and spread through the land, universal distrust would be the consequence, and the system would have to be suppressed by law, as was, at its origin, wisely done at Vienna. We are exceedingly surprised to meet with the following sentence from Mr. Abernethy :-"The researches of science seem to have confirmed the conjectures of Hartley relative to the functions of the nervous system, and shewn that there is a subtile substance, which he called æther, occasioning vibrations in the nervous fibrils, and thus exciting sensation and communicating volition. These vibra tions may recur as miniature vibrations in the brain, and reproduce sensations, and also imagination and thought."-(Page 62.) Now, to say nothing of the gross materialism here declared of a substance occasioning thought, we ask Mr. Abernethy by what researches of science the existence of this conjectured subtile substance has been shewn or proved? If it has been proved, it is more than we can learn, except from this passage, and we will neither take Hartley's conjecture nor Mr. Abernethy's assertion for the proof of it. We must have a description of its specific gravity, or of its tangibility, or some such quality, before we can allow its existence, much less its effects of producing thought and volition. Every body, indeed, who has studied the subject, knows that Hartley's æther, as well as his vibratiuncles, have been long exploded from science; and what grounds Mr. Abernethy can have for saying they are proved, we cannot divine The only part of Hartley's doctrine, which is now looked upon to be correct, is his account of association, so far as it is not involved in his unproved and improbable vibrations and vibratiuncles of the nerves. Were it proved that the nerves vibrate, which it is not, we would be as far from accounting for the phenomena as before. We repeat, that we are sorry this very distinguished author and eminent surgeon should have undertaken to advocate doetrines so untenable, and, according to his own express confession, so dangerous to virtue and social order. Were this confession not most clear aud unequivocal,, we could scarcely have credited that it could have proceeded from an advocate of Spurzheimism. ON SANGUINEOUS, ADIPOSE, AND HETEROGENEOUS As this volume is of the highest practical utility, we shall beg leave to encroach a little on the space which we usually allot for variety, in order to give as full a detail as we can of the practice of this distinguished physician in the important diseases which he has classed under RETENTIONS. This part of the work embraces amenorrhea; retention of the lochia; ischemia nasalis and hæmorrhoidalis; corpulence; worms; hepatic retentions, jaundice, gall stones; and urinary calculi. We shall begin our abstract with a disease which so often baffles the most skilful practice, and which Frank has very fully investigated. As we go on, we shall add illustrations from our own resources, and references to authors, which Frank usually omits, for what reason we do not know. Amenorrhea. This is the first disease in his order of sanguineous retentions, and is made to comprehend not only total suppression of the menstrual discharge, but delay in its appearance, diminution of its quantity, or morbid alteration of its colour. The menses, though almost universally the sign of puberty and capability of conception, are not always so; for many cases are De Curandis Hominum Morbis Epitome, prælectionibus Academicis dicata. Auctore Joanne Petro Frank, &c. &c. Tom. VI. Lib. vi. De Retentionibus, Pars. III. 8vo. pp. 430. Vienna, 1821. Price 16s. NO.XV. YOL. IV. LL on record, of females in which the discharge has never appeared, and yet they became happy mothers. Frank had under his own care, a woman who had three healthy children, and yet had never had either catamenia or lochia. The usual absence of the menses during pregnancy and lactation, he does not consider as a diseased retention; and caused in the former case not by the transference of blood to the foetus, but by the occupation and compression of the inner surface of the uterus; and in the latter, by the substituted secretion of milk. To the first species, which we should call AMENORRHŒA VIRGINUM, he gives the uncouth name of amenorrhea tiruncularum, perhaps from the appellation given by Columella (De Re Rustica, VII. 12.) to a young bitch which has not had whelps! The first symptoms of the appearance of the menses, are pains in the loins and pelvis ; feebleness of the limbs; head-ache; glistening of the eyes; pimples about the face, breast, and houlders; quick pulse; enlargement and tension of the breasts; lassitude; greater sensibility of mind; sometimes colic pains; and the discharge of a whitish serum from the vagina. In some cases, the skin assumes a waxy look; the face, and particularly the eyelids in the morning, appear swoln and turbid; difficulty of breathing from, slight exertion; love of solitude; sadness; tendency to weep; incubus; watery, or turbid urine; coldness of the extremities; vertigo; ringing in the ears; epistaxis; painful tension of the ligamentum nucha; and tendency to syncope and sinking in churches and other public places, particularly in the erect position, In some cases of suppressed menstruation, tumours arise periodically in the arm, and either burst and discharge blood, or gradually subside and disappear. In some girls, long before the menses appear, the vena saphæna in one foot only, near the malleolus, swells, and becomes red and very painful every month, and quietly subsides again to its natural size and colour. Not rarely, periodical hæmorrhage takes place from the eyes, the nose, the ears, the lungs, the stomach, the intestines, the nipples, the tips of the fingers, &c. without any apparent rupture of the vessels; or periodical secretions of the mucous or serous kind, occur in various places of the system. As these symptoms become more aggravated, they assume the form of a serious disease, which, from the usual greenish yellow tinge of the skin, has been long known under the name of chlorosis; but this, as well as the names of the white fever, and the love fever, are no less inappropriate and apt to mislead, than referring it, as is often done, to the class of cachectic diseases. The truth is, that this colour of the skin, and many of the other symptoms, are often found quite unconnected with uterine affections, in young girls, and even infants, as well as in men of sedentary habits. The same correct views are given by Dr. M. Hall, in his Essay on the Mimoses. The uniform cachectic nature of the disease is also › disproved, by its occurring in those of plethoric and robust habits. with firm fibres and florid complexion,-which shews, that in such cases, it originates in oppression, rather than suppression, of the vital energies. In amenorrhoea, as in all other diseases, the first step towards the cure is the discovery of the true CAUSE, and its prompt removal. As in reasoning on other phenomena of nature, we are apt to confound effects with causes, so also in accounting for the phenomena of menstruation from the superabundance of blood, the tortuous course of the uterine arteries, the strength of the veins, local plethora, and the like. We make the same confusion of cause and effect, when we say, that the menses cease in old age from the increasing rigidity or callosity of the uterus. From the earliest period of Grecian medicine, it has been known, that hæmorrhage, venæsection, copious perspiration, ptyalism, vomiting, diarrhoea, or any other discharge; or cutaneous eruptions, and all violent diseases, are often attended with amenorrhoea. This has been accounted for by debility, or by the vicarious consumption of superfluous blood; but Frank is inclined to ascribe it to the less mechanical cause of a change thus induced in the periodic condition of the uterus, though his ideas of the nature of this change seem to be far from perspicuous. Among other CAUSES of the disease, he mentions sudden emotions of anger, fear, terror, grief,-perhaps he might also have added joy. The shame and blushing attending the first discovery of the discharge, when the mother has not been careful to mention it, and when it is unfeelingly pointed out with scorn by others, not unfrequently tend to check and suppress it, and produce serious consequences. He gives the CASE of a noble virgin, who was on this account rudely assailed on going down stairs from a ball, and who was, in consequence, siezed with inflammation of the uterus, which proved fatal in a few days. He justly ascribes the frequent occurrence of amenorrhea in cities, to the prevalence of sedentary effeminate habits; fine sentiment; novel reading; the use of acids, to give a delicate tint to the skin, and diminish corpulence and ruddiness; to the indulging in large quantities of food, and debilitating beverage; and to the absurdities of tight thin dresses. He mentions in detail, the evils arising from the use of CLOTHS, napkins, and bands, to receive and conceal the discharge. It is a European practice, originating in the abolition of the super |