collections in the country, are sanguine enough to hope, that the present work will contain the most complete and accurate body of natural science that has ever been published on this subject, and that the plates, by their beauty, finish, and truth of colouring, will be found to illustrate the descriptive part of the work, and to delight the taste, as well as to inform the understanding. The drawings and engravings will be made by the authors, and the plates will be carefully coloured, and finished from living specimens, wherever they can be obtained. Particular attention will be given to the general distinctions and peculiarities of structure, and it is hoped, from the unusual opportunities of information, which the contributors to this work unquestionably possess, that it will be considered a national undertaking. The work will be published in quarterly parts, and the first part will appear early in January, 1827. To be published on the 1st of February, with numerous engravings on wood, Dr. Arnott's work on General and Medical Physics. It is a system of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, with strictly scientific arrangement, but made easily intelligible to those who have never learned, or who have forgotten the mathematics. In addition to a great mass of illustrations from general nature and the arts, adapted to the present more comprehensive scale of a liberal education, it comprises many very interesting particulars furnished by examination of the animal body under health, disease, and medical treatment; and among these there are new disquisitions and suggestions. In the press, a new edition of the Meteorological Essays, by James Frederick Daniell, Esq. F. R. S. This edition, besides the former Essays, upon, I. The Constitution of the Atmosphere;-II. The Construction and Uses of a new Hygrometer ;— III. The Radiation of Heat in the Atmosphere;-IV. The Horary Oscil!ation of the Barometer ;-V. The Climate of London, with corrections and additions, will comprise Essays on the following subjects:-VI. Evaporation as connected with Atmospheric Phenomena ;-VII. Artificial Climate considered with regard to Horticulture ;-VIII. The Connexion between the Oscillations of the Barometer at distant places ;-IX The Insinuation of Air into the Toriccillian Vacuum, and the Means of preventing the gradual Deterioration of Barometers; it will also contain various Meteorological Observations and Remarks, and numerous Tables, Plates, and Diagrams. TROPICAL CLIMATES. The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions; to which is now added, an Essay on Morbid Sensibility of the Stomach and Bowels, as the proximate Cause or characteristic Condition of Indigestion, Nervous Irritability, Mental Despondency, Hypochondriasis, &c. &c.-preceded by Observations on the Diseases and Regimen of Invalids on their Return from Hot and Unhealthy Climates. By JAMES JOHNSON, M. D. of the Royal College of Physicians, and Physician to His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence. Fourth Ed. greatly enlarged and improved, 8vo, pp. 680, 1827. N. B. The Essay on MORBID SENSIBILITY OF THE STOMACH And Bowels, &c. is published separately, price 5s. for the benefit of those who may be in possession of the former Editions, or who may not desire to possess the work on Tropical Climates. ERRATUM.-In page 4 of the Advertisements, No. IX. for "Mr. Grainger, 30, Broad-street, Bloomsbury," read "Mr, Grainger, 30, Broad-street-Buildings." Additional Subscribers since last Quarter. Barry, Dr. David, Member of the &c. George Square, Edinburgh M'Andrew, Dr. Assistant Surgeon M Manus, Mr. Edinburgh Pretty, Mr. Surgeon, Mabledon Simpson, Mr. W. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of HOSPITAL REPORTS. Our readers are aware that, in almost all the public hospitals of Paris, some distinguished ELEVE INTERNE is deputed by each physician or surgeon, to draw up a quarterly report of the diseases, to be published in some of the various medical journals of the French metropolis. This procedure is productive of many advantages. In the first place, the public at large are incalculably benefited-in the second place, the medical officers of the hospitals are fairly represented, and their practice made widely known-in the third place, the pupil, who thus reports, is stimulated to acute and careful observation of the phenomena of disease, his mind is strengthened by exercise, his accuracy is guarranteed by the responsibility attached to the undertaking, and he is thus early introduced to public notice, and favourably so, if his reports are ably drawn up. We have, on many occasions, held up this example to the medical institutions of this country, metropolitan and provincial; but it has not yet been acted on, in the manner we have described. Wishing to encourage such an undertaking, by giving it a commencement, we hereby offer to devote about a sheet (16 to 24 pages) of closely printed letter press, in the EXTRA-LIMITES of each number, to the BEST quarterly report which may be transmitted to us, from a metropolitan or large provincial hospital, adjudging to the reporter a complete set of this Journal, and a continuation of the Journal, free of expense, for two years, with a perpetual registry of his name in a permanent list set apart for that purpose, and kept standing in a conspicuous part of the Journal. The prize is small, in pecuniary value; but the testimony of merit will be thus placed in a more conspicuous point of view than has ever yet been done. PROPOSITIONS, OR PRINCIPLES OF MEDICINE. We have often contended that Professor Broussais carried his theory rather too far, in placing the original seat of fever exclusively in the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels; though we believe that both the symptoms and dissections would shew the said structures more frequently implicated in fever, than any other part of the body. This was the conclusion to which the late Dr. Beddoes came, after examining the records of medicine in all countries respecting the post mortem appearances in fever. But, be that as it may, we consider the PROPOSITIONS, OF PRINCIPLES OF MEDICINE which M. Broussais has prefixed to his examination of "medical doctrines, and systems of nosciogy," as by far the best code of aphorisms or PRINCIPIA MEDICINE, which have ever been offered to the public in so concentrated a form. They are more in accordance with the advances which have been made in pathology and therapeutics, than any which have preceded them-and, in fine, we think them extremely well worthy of record in this Journal, and highly deserving the serious attention of the physiologist, pathologist, and practitioner. They are not indeed free from error, as we shall endeavour to shew, in occasional comments; but they contain a vast store of VOL. VI. No. 12. Y valuable principles adapted to practice, and serving as a safe guide between the extremes of dogmatism and empiricism. We now enter on our task without farther preface, only premising that we shall occasionally somewhat condense the language without altering the sense of the propositions of Broussais. This article may be considered, therefore, as a correct translation of the new physiological doctrine. SECT. I.-PHYSIOLOGY. 1. Animal life can only be supported by stimulation from without; and every thing which augments the vital phenomena is a stimulant. 2. Caloric is the primary and most important of all stimulants; and when it ceases to excite the animal economy, the others soon lose their action on the system. 3, 4, 5. (Relate to caloric.) 6. The composition of the solids and fluids is an ANIMAL CHEMISTRY; and the power which sets this chemistry in action, confers on the organs the faculties of feeling, and motion, by contraction. Sensibility and contractility, then, are the signs or proofs of life. 7. Certain substances in nature, besides caloric, augment the sensibility and contractility of those parts of the living body, with which they come in contact. This is stimulation or irritation, and the agents are stimulants. 8. Sensibility and contractility being augmented in one point, are soon augmented in several other points-this is sympathy. 9. Sympathy takes place through the medium of the nervous system. 10. All the phenomena of association take place through the medium of the nervous system, which transmits the stimulation from one part to several others-these also are sympathies. 11. The object and end of primary and sympathetic stimulation, are always NUTRITION, THE REMOVAL OF NOXIOUS CAUSES, AND REPRODUCTION. The movements by which these processes are accomplished are called FUNCTIONS:-but for the exercise of these functions the fluids must concur with the solids--in all stimulation there is an afflux or attraction of fluids to the part stimulated. 12. Sensibility and contractility are distributed in different degrees in the various tissues of the living body. Those which possess it in the highest degree, receive direct impressions from stimulants, and transmit the resulting action to the other parts: they are therefore the primary and natural movers of sympathies. 13. These tissues are particularly those on which the nervous matter is spread in the form of a pulp intermingled with the capillary vessels, sanguiferous and seriferous :-as the skin, the organs of sense, and the mucous membranes, which are the internal organs of sense. * 14. All the organs of sense, above-mentioned, are subjected naturally to the action of agents, both from without and from within ;-and the stimulation or impressions which they receive are transmitted to the brain, their common centre, as well as to various other tissues and parts, by which the functions are sustained. 15. All stimulation capable of exciting a perception in the brain, traverses first the nervous system of relation; it is then repeated in the mucous membranes, whence it is again transmitted to the brain, which judges according to the counsel of the viscus to which the mucous membrane belongs, and acts according to the pleasure or pain experienced. This action has always for object the duration or repetition of the impression, or the removal of its cause. 16. The action determined by the cerebral centre of relation is executed through the medium of the loco-motive musclesthe same nerves which transmitted the impression to the brain, serving for the conveyance of the will to the muscles.† 17. While an impression, or rather the stimulation which results from an impression, traverses the nervous system of the viscera, it determines certain movements in the fibrous structure, making part of the viscera; modifies the circulation of all the fluids passing through them; and produces also involuntary contractions of the loco-motive muscles (if any) belonging to the viscus. 18.. Whilst the stimulant influence of the brain is exercised, voluntarily or involuntarily, on the loco-motive muscles of the body, the stimulation is also communicated (but involuntarily) to the fibrous and vascular tissues of the viscera-because the Broussais is hardly justifiable in placing the highest degree of contractility as well as sensibility in the above tissues. Sensibility they undoubtedly possess but the highest degree of contractility resides in the muscular system, and which may be called into action sympathetically by the impressions on the said tissues.-Rev. ↑ Or rather a portion of the same nerve, as it is now pretty well ascertained, that each nerve is composed of two distinct parts, one for motion, and the other for sensation.-Rev. |