uniform kindness and courtesy towards them; in this respect dividing the empire with his great master, M. Louis, and Velpeau. In testimony of M. Louis' great affection for his disciple, he (M. L.) requested that the remains should be deposited in the same tomb with that of his only child; thus adopting him as his second child, his son in the healing art, to whom he had transmitted his doctrines. At the interment, M. Louis, in endeavoring to pronounce a eulogy, was so overwhelmed with emotion, as to be unable to proceed. It is indeed rare that we are called upon to record the death of so distinguished a member of our profession; we are happy to add our feeble testimony as to his great acquirements and high moral worth. J. G. A. Bibliographical Notices. 1. Twelfth Annual Report of the Managers of the New York State Lunatic Asylum. Albany: 1855. Pp. 48. 2. Report of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, for the year 1854. By THOMAS S. KIRKBRIDE, M. D., Physician to the Institution. Philadelphia: 1855. Pp. 54. 3. The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Officers of the Retreat for the Insane at Hartford, Conn. April, 1855. Hartford: 1855. Pp. 38. 4. Report of the Trustees and Superintendents of the Butler Hospital for the Insane. Presented to the Corporation at their Annual Meeting, Jan 24, 1855. Pp. 29. 5. Second Report of the Trustees of the Michigan State Asylums for the Insane, and for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind. For the years 1853 and 1854. Lansing: 1855. Pp. 46. THE increasing attention paid to the comfort and recovery of the insane is one of the most gratifying features of the present age. The numerous well-established institutions for their reception are constantly receiving improvements, while new ones are springing up in different parts of our country to meet the wants of this unfortunate class of patients. We have only room for an abstract of the statistics of these whose reports have been received, and which are named above. The New York State Lunatic Asylum, at Utica, was opened for the admission of patients in January, 1843, and has consequently been in successful operation twelve years. The whole number of patients admitted within its walls up to Nov. 30, 1854, was 4,313; of which number 1,789 had been discharged recovered, 55 much improved, 640 improved, and 868 unimproved; and 511 had died; leaving 450 patients in the institution at the close of November, 1854. The whole number treated during the year ending that date was 836, of which 430 are males and 406 females, the daily average under treatment being 444. Of this number (836), 164 are discharged recovered, 42 improved, and 115 unimproved; and 65 died; the recoveries being 42.05 of the admissions. No one under ten nor over eighty years of age was admitted during the past year, the largest number being between 20 and 30 years. In the 390 admitted, the disease was hereditary in 113, and 29 others had insane relatives. A larger number inherited the disease from the father than from the mother, which is contrary to the general statistics of this point. Tables are given of the ages of those admitted and those discharged recovered during the year ending Nov. 30, 1854; also of the nativity and occupation of those admitted, the probable cause of derangement, the form of insanity, percentage of recoveries on the average number received into the Asylum for twelve years past, the percentage of deaths, &c., &c. The total number of patients in the Pennsylvania Hospital during the year 1854 was 413, the average number under treatment during the whole period having been 229. Of this number, 190 were discharged or died, 98 were cured, 32 much improved, 19 improved, 15 remained stationary, and 26 died. The whole number of patients admitted from the opening of the Hospital has been 2,576, of which 1,384 were males and 1,192 females. Of this number, 3 were under 10 years of age, and 2 between 80 and 85; the largest number, 418, between 25 and 30 years; the next largest number, 399, between 20 and 25 years. Of 1,384 male patients, farmers have furnished the largest number, 203; 29 were physicians, and 10 students of medicine. Of the 2,576 patients, 1,220 were single, 1,147 married, 152 widows, and 57 widowers. Tables are also introduced showing the occupation, nativity, residence, supposed cause of insanity, age at which it appeared, forms assumed by the disease, its duration, the number of the attacks, the state in which they were discharged, and the dates, in each month since the opening of the hospital, the whole forming a valuable mass of statistical information. The total number of the patients in the Retreat for the Insane, at Hartford, in the course of the year ending March 31, 1855, were 355. Of this number, 73 recovered, 23 were discharged much improved, 15 improved, 34 not improved, and 17 died; making the total number discharged 162. The whole number admitted into the Retreat from April 1, 1834, to April 1, 1855, was 2,804, of which number 2,611 had been discharged; of whom 1,404 recovered, 925 were improved, and 282 died. A singular fact to which Dr. Butler calls attention, is the large excess of female patients admitted into the Retreat for the past few years. For the twenty years from 1824 to 1844, there were admitted 692 males to 635 females, or an excess of 57 males. During the past ten years there have been admitted 587 males to 785 females, or an excess of 198 of the latter. Dr. Butler also gives a series of statistical tables of the institution from April, 1824 to April, 1855, similar to those given by Dr. Kirkbride. The total number of patients in the Butler Hospital, at Providence, in the year 1854, was 216; of which number 85 were discharged. Of those discharged, 40 had recovered, 20 were improved, 6 were unimproved, and 19 died. The whole number of patients during the seven years since the institution was opened, amounts to 663. Dr. Ray, the Superintendent and Physician, notes the same excess of females over males, as remarked by Butler at Hartford. The Michigan State Asylum for the Insane is now in process of erection at Kalamazoo, under the supervision of Dr. John P. Gray, of the New York State Asylum at Utica. The building is to consist of a center and two wings, presenting an entire length of about one thousand feet, and designed to accommodate two hundred and fifty patients, which number may be increased to two hundred and sixty-eight. A desirable site has been selected, and the buildings are in progress, and it is intended that the construction and arrangements shall be in strict conformity with the "propositions" relative to these points unanimously adopted by "The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane," at their meeting in May, 1851. The reports of these different institutions afford gratifying evidence of the interest felt in the health and welfare of their inmates, and of the zeal manifested in the use of means best calculated to secure those objects. Extracts from Journals. THE LATE DR. ELISHA BARTLETT. [THE obituary notice of Prof. Bartlett which was promised us for this No., having failed to reach us in season, we have substituted the following from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.] After a long illness, the issue of which has been but too plainly foreseen by all his friends, Dr. Elisha Bartlett has left us, regretted and honored throughout our whole land, His life has borne fruits to science, and done good service to his fellow men in various spheres of duty. While we trust that it may find a faithful chronicler in some one of those who have been near him in its more active periods, it will not be out of place to devote a brief space in our pages to his memory. Hardly any American physician was more widely known to his countrymen, or more favorably considered abroad where his writings had carried his His personal graces were known to a less extensive circle of admiring friends, and yet his image is familiar to very many who have received his kind attentions, or listened to his instructions, or been connected with him in the administration of public duties. name. To them it is easy to recall his ever welcome and gracious presence. On his expanded forehead no one could fail to trace the impress of a large and calm intelligence. In his most open and beaming smile none could help feeling the warmth of a heart which was the seat of all generous and kindly affections. When he spoke, his tones were of singular softness, his thoughts came in chosen words, scholarlike yet unpretending, often playful, always full of lively expression, giving the idea of one that could be dangerously keen in his judgments, had he not kept his fastidiousness to himself, and his charity to sheathe the weakness of others. In familiar intercourse--and the writer of these paragraphs was once under the same roof with him for some months-no one could be more companionable and winning in all his ways. The little trials of life he took kindly, and cheerily, turning into pleasantry the petty inconveniences which a less thoroughly good-natured man would have fretted over. Α man so full of life will rarely be found so gentle and quiet in all his ways. A man who could be so satirical must have been very kind-hearted to let the sharp edge of his intellect be turned towards his neighbors' weaknesses so seldom. None was less disposed to put on airs in any company; he was rather too modest in coming out than too forward, though a silver-tongued speaker, to whom multitudes were always ready to listen whenever he was forced or beguiled to open his lips in public. I have been told that a distinguished foreign visitor who went through the whole length and breadth of the land, said that of all the many welcomes he received, from statesmen renowned as orators, from men whose profession is eloquence, not one was so impressive and felicitous as that which was spoken by Dr. Bartlett, then Mayor of Lowell, our brother in the Silent Profession, which he graced with these unwonted accomplishments. All these are now but pleasant memories; many eyes will grow dim as they are recalled, and many hearts beat warmly over them; when these eyes are darkened, and these hearts are stilled, the image just feebly traced will be like the shadows of yesterday. * * * * * The same qualities which fitted him for a public speaker, naturally gave him signal success as a teacher. Had he possessed nothing but his remarkable clearness and eloquence of language and elocution, he could hardly have failed to find a popular welcome. Medical culture is often carried on among us by a light, easy system of top-dressing. The rake is a more frequent instrument than the spade in the hands of many who are thought successful in raising the great harvest of students, the results of which are every March threshed and winnowed and garnered in our various schools. Among these, by all the qualities that give currency to the popular lecturer, by a manner at once impressive and pleasing, a lucid order which kept the attention and intelligence of the slowest hearer, and the attractions of a personal character always esteemed and beloved by students, he might have been pre-eminent. With such he is not to be counted. To accumulate without assimilating, to re-produce without enriching, to use rhetorical ornament to cover up the want of facts, to declaim instead of demonstrating, and to make all this pass current by an agreeable voice and easy confidence of manner,-to do this is not difficult, and is both convenient and common. This was what Dr. Bartlett did not do. His courteous and guarded language hardly betrayed his estimate of the class of mental operatives that live by such services. But he has left the sharpest rebuke of the tribe to which they belong, in the sincerity and severe truth of his own writings. As an author, Dr. Bartlett is best known to the medical world by his Treatise on Fevers, and his Essay on Medical Philosophy. Few works not based upon long series of original observations, have obtained or merited the consideration of the first of these treatises. He had the art of sifting authorities and getting at their essential meaning, which belongs to the lawyer. He had the breadth and fairness of mind which enabled him to weigh and decide on the masses of evidence before him; the same qualities that find their fullest expression in the voice of an enlightened judiciary. All might not accept his conclusions, but all could see that he was thoroughly faithful and honest, as well as able. Thus, his work on Fevers remains not only a most valuable monograph on these diseases, but a model for all who would produce a digest, as the lawyers call it, of whatever authentic knowledge is acquired upon any great medical question. * * * * * * Everywhere through his writing prevails that easy flow of language, that felicity of expression, that florid warmth when occasion offers, which commonly marks the prose of those who are born poets. Yet few suspected him of giving utterance in rhythmical shape to his thoughts or feelings. It was only when his failing limbs could bear him no longer, as conscious existence slowly retreated from their palsied nerves, that be revealed himself freely in this truest and tenderest form of expression. We knew that he was dying by slow degrees, and we heard from him from time to time, or saw him, always serene and always hopeful while hope could have a place in his earthly future. His work was done, done nobly and gracefully, the work of an honest citizen, of a revered teacher, of a wise thinker. When to the friends he had loved, there came as a farewell gift not a last effort of the learning and wisdom they had been taught to expect from him, but a little book with a few songs in it, songs with his whole warm heart in them, they knew that his hour was come, and their tears fell fast as they read the loving thoughts that he had clothed in words of natural beauty and melody. The cluster of evening primroses had opened, and the night was close at hand. No brief tribute like this can do more than show the feelings which its subject inspired in those who knew him. He has left this earthly scene of his labors too early for friendship and for science, not for himself, ripe in every virtue, and ready for wider spheres of knowledge; one of the "pure in heart," who look on the unveiled face of truth during their earthly pilgrimage, and who have the promise that they shall 66 see God" himself when they have reached its close. Varia. O. W. H. DOMESTIC. College of Physicians and Snrgeons.-The new building on N. E. corner of 23d Street and 4th Avenue is already in a state of great forwardness, and presents a most imposing appearance, being 100 feet in front, |
