The mortality still appeared considerable, and the more so as the majority of the sufferers were in the prime of life. This may be accounted for by the circumstance, that their service was, on the whole, tolerably heavy, and that they were, for the most part, not in barracks, and were obliged to provide themselves with food.

The military, it seems, had their own cholera-lazaretto, in which the patients were treated according to the method of Dr. Hope, slightly modified by the regimental physician, Sinogowitz. The first civil hospital erected was situated on the island of Holm in the Vistula, and contained 150 beds. It was soon found, however, that in consequence of its great distance from most parts of the city, and the tedious conveyance across the river, great loss of time was incurred; and the sick, on their reception into the hospital, were generally in a condition which precluded all hope of recovery. The mortality at Holm would have been tremendous. Two institutions were therefore established in the city, one of which was seated in the old town. A gloomy building, the old jail, as it was called, was employed for the purpose: it was placed under the direction of Dr. Dann. The other, which lay in the tower town, and contained twenty beds, was superintended by Dr. Dann. These thirty-two beds were, during the whole period of the epidemic, no more than once completely occupied, and then only for a few hours.

The lazaretto on Holm was afterwards used as a quarantine establishment for convalescents and mariners. These several institutions were neither conducted in a pleasing way, nor with any particular liberality; but the number of servants was very considerable. In one of the lazarettos there were, besides the physician and surgeon, twelve male and four female attendants, four porters, two messengers, two women cooks, and one steward.

The principal reason for employing so many officers was, that the porters and messengers were not permitted to enter the infirmary; but this regulation was daily infringed upon. Dr. Dann, who resided in the hospital, was never, during the whole period, prevented from going out, and was far from being always purified by fumigation before making a visit into the city. The treatment in both hospitals consisted, generally, in the administration of opium and stimulants in the stage of evacuations, and of local and genera! abstraction of blood, in the stage of congestion, together with acids or calomel. The external treatment was, for the most part, confined to the use of sinapisms and frictions: water or vapour baths were scarcely ever employed. The results were tolerably alike in both hospitals.

On the 30th of August, a hundred and thirty-four patients had been admitted into one of the lazarettos, and forty-one were cured; in another, one hundred and thirty-two were admitted, and fortyfive recovered. It must, however, be observed, that of the number stated in each hospital, thirty patients were either dead at the time

of their admission, or died within three hours afterwards; a proof how much the system of house-closing delayed the announcement of the cases. How little this practice availed to prevent the spreading of the cholera we learn not merely from the number of sick, which amounted to 1183, but also from the circumstance that 891 houses were closed. There were only seventy houses in which several persons were affected; and from a report of the Commission of Health, with reference to this subject, it appears, that in most of these instances a considerable disposition to the malady had existed. Thus, in the house opposite the author's abode, three individuals died; the first was a drunken publican, the second a prostitute, who used to expose herself late at night at the window, and the third a man aged 70. A remarkable fact, which shews the little danger that was capable of being produced by personal communication, was noticed in the city infirmary. Seven cases of cholera occurred, each in a different ward; of these three died and four got well, without any of the other patients, labouring under different disorders in these wards, becoming attacked. As soon as the symptoms of cholera were clearly developed, these sufferers were immediately removed to a separate apartment. The public at Dantzic, as well as in all the infected places, were entirely of opinion that the cholera was not contagious, which at all events had the good effect of diminishing the general anxiety.

Autumnal fruits, vegetables, beer, and exposure to cold, were, however, pretty generally avoided. The majority of the practising physicians also were anti-contagionists, and they supported their opinions on the usual grounds. There were only a few medical men appointed by the state, who defended the notion that the disease was contagious; and their names were known to every inhabitant of Dantzic. As the public attributed to them, in a great measure, the severity of the enclosing system, they were just as unpopular as their opponents were beloved. This will not surprise any one who considers what a sacrifice the city sustained by the shutting up of the houses. During the existence of this rigorous system for twenty days, which was altered, shortly before the arrival of Dr. Stromeyer at Dantzic, to a period of ten days, 400 houses were thus shut up at the same time for a considerable interval. It was therefore necessary to keep in pay 800 day-thieves (idlers) as watchmen. The poor, when confined in their houses, were supported at the general expense; and, in many instances, on account of one person being affected with cholera, twenty were made house prisoners, who having spent three weeks in doing nothing, no longer felt any inclication to work.

The city contained about 2000 male Jews, and 1500 of these supported themselves by hawking; but since they were compelled to discontinue their industrious wanderings, they were also maintained at the public cost. A whole troop of comedians, who were not permitted to go out, were supported in like manner. If we con

sider, moreover, what a shock commerce sustained in consequence of the fear of the contagious nature of the cholera, we see ample grounds to induce the public to represent it as the effect of miasma. Besides, the whole system of house-barring was looked upon by the citizens as a stupid farce, for almost every house had a back entrance, which was easily accessible to any comer. In some of the houses merely the back door was barred, that trade might not be interrupted. Where back doors were wanting, a way was found over the roofs, on all occasions when the guard would not yield to the influence of a trifling douceur. Persons who had had no communication with the infected, were occasionally shut up by mistake, while the proper subjects for imprisonment escaped. The little fear which prevailed generally respecting contagion, is shown by the circumstance, that two young clerks, during Dr. Stromeyer's stay in Dantzic, were condemned to a quarantine of twenty days, because they had, as a satirical joke, taken a nap after dinner in a couple of baskets used for the purpose of transporting the sick. The same fate awaited a young fellow, who, under the pretence of being a physician, entered the house of his mistress, in which a cholera patient had died. In spite of his regrets and complaints, he was obliged to hold out three weeks with his beloved, to the amusement of the whole city, the real physician having taken him by surprise.

On the 19th of August,' says our author, I visited some of the neighbouring villages. The houses in thein were not barred. At most a piece of rope, or a wisp of straw, was affixed to those doors through which cholera patients had come. The attempts made at first to shut the houses, were soon abandoned, partly because of the total inefficacy of such a measure, especially during the harvest, when all were obliged to be at work, and partly because the country people were exceedingly displeased with the practice. In the village of Grosskatz, for example, men and women attacked Dr. Q. with scythes and pitchforks on his first visit to some cholera patients; afterwards, however, when six of the parishioners were dead, the Doctor's return was entreated with tears. Dr. P. took the resolution to make his escape through a window, because the boors were ready to exterminate him. This enmity towards the doctors arose in part from a generally diffused opinion among the lower orders, that the government paid them to send the poor out of the world, or to poison the first person attacked, so that the malady should not extend itself. In general the more wealthy inhabitants of the villages escaped unhurt. I constantly had occasion to observe, that where the streets of a place were spacious, the disease made slow progress, but where, on the contrary, they were confined, a number of persons were soon carried off, and the disease then disappeared. Every where the parish doctors complained of the distrust of the poor, and the length of time they suffered to elapse before they called in medical assistance.'

The remaining portion of Stromeyer's book is of too technical a nature to admit of our dwelling upon any of its details. Although we have noticed the work principally for the amusing manner in

which the author has completed his descriptions, still we think that some important instruction for our guidance may be derived from the facts and observations contained in his pages. We see, in the first place, that cholera has proceeded in its career throughout Prussia in a course very curiously resembling that which it has taken in this kingdom-a circumstance which tends much to prove the identity of the complaint in both countries. The rich, and those who could command wholesome food who knew and experienced the value of good air, exercise, and moderation of habits

were uniformly free from the disease. Dr. Hope, one of the first physicians of Berlin, and whose practice has chiefly lain amongst the higher classes, had not a single case of cholera in private under his care. This disease uniformly affected the indigent, and indeed all those who were not able to procure a sufficiency of sustenance, or who lived upon food that was bad, or which contained a very small proportion of nutriment. This we find to be the case amongst ourselves. The cholera has fixed universally on the lower orders, or rather that portion of them which is distinguished by their inattention to cleanliness, to moderate diet, and to temperance in drink. For instance, in Scotland the disease may be said to have passed, without mischief, through several villages that were inhabited by an innocent and simple population, unacquainted with the excesses of indulgence, which unfortunately prevail in towns where manufacturing establishments have concentrated an unusual amount of human beings. In Musselburgh, where cholera has been most violent, and where the number of deaths has been greater in proportion to the cases than in any part of the globe hitherto attacked by that distemper, the victims chiefly consisted of colliers, who, having been for some weeks out of work, gave themselves up to unbridled licentiousness. With respect to such persons there can be no doubt that the cholera is extremely contagious; indeed it confines its ravages to such subjects, and as it seems to have a predilection for them, so does it in general prove fatal to them. All that we have read and heard of cholera is confirmatory of these observations. The institution of boards of health in every city and great town in this kingdom, is a subject of much congratulation. Although their powers may, in some instances, be arbitrarily and oppressively exercised, yet, from all that we can learn of the exertions of boards of health, we regard the immediate cause of their general establishment as in some measure entitled to be considered a blessing. Filthy streets, in a great number of towns, have been cleansed; districts, from which fatal disease was never absent, have been made the subjects of investigation; there has been an impulse given to the respective authorities in every part of the country, to look after the welfare of the poorer classes, such as never before perhaps existed, and which, in its general results, cannot fail to be very extensively beneficial. The descriptions to which we have had access, of the labours of the

boards of health in the northern parts of the country, and particularly in Scotland, are sufficient to satisfy us, that even the mortality which cholera has produced in these dominions, has been nearly compensated by the measures of cleanliness and general precaution which the apprehension of that dreadful disease has forced upon our population. The visitation of the distemper has produced a lasting impression in this country, as to the inestimable value of maintaining habits of temperance, and of carefully removing every possible cause of adulteration to which the air we breathe is liable.

ART. II.-The Private Correspondence of David Garrick with the most celebrated men of his time: now first published from the Originals, and illustrated with Notes, and a new Biographical Memoir of Garrick. 4to, Vol. ii. London: Colburn and Bentley. 1832.

WE fear that our report of the contents of this second volume of Garrick's Correspondence will in no respect vary from the terms in which we were compelled to speak of its predecessor. We find the same proportion as before, of great names subscribed to various epistles, and very nearly the same rate of merit in their respective productions. An additional gloom is diffused over this volume, in consequence of the immense number of its pages which is given up to the foreign correspondents of Garrick; and though they be men of reputation throughout Europe, they nevertheless appear to be under the spell of the same chilling influence that appears to have bound the faculties of almost all the eminent persons whose letters are preserved in the present work. Here and there one may meet with a passage, a sentence, or a thought, which may be capable of arresting one's attention, but such happy encounters are as "few and far between," as the oases in the desert, which, at such long and protracted intervals, present themselves to the longing eyes of the wearied traveller.

Amongst the most persevering, and evidently the most attached, of Garrick's correspondents, is certainly the great Earl Camden, who always writes to the celebrated actor with a degree of familiarity that exhibits the greatest mutual confidence. At the date of the correspondence to which we are now alluding, this nobleman had given himself up entirely to literary ease :-all his letters to Garrick turn upon the merits of some poet or distinguished dramatist, on whose peculiarities or faults he dwells with an acuteness of criticism which marks a very great degree of attention to the subject he writes upon. The following remarks upon Ben Jonson appear to us to be very neatly expressed, and to be extremely just besides :

'I am beyond expression charmed with the dramatic powers of that author, and, in my opinion, the genius of the writer is equal to his art: nay, so far is he from being deficient in the first, that his own fund would have supplied him with every faculty of wit, humour, and nature, though