the Ear, by Dr. Nottingham. At home, it is possible some works, as mariners speak of vessels, may be on the stocks. Nothing of scientific moment, however, has been launched for months, that could claim much originality. We consider the publications of the American Medical Association as exhibiting the best specimens of the medical mind in the United States. All articles in these volumes have been prepared with extreme care, and without receiving the approbation of a committee emi nently qualified to sit in judgment upon them, they could not appear under the sanction and patronage of the Association. THE MEDICAL WORLD. BOSTON, APRIL 22, 1857. THE GREAT SIN OF CITIES. - Such was the de mand for a number of the English Quarterly Review, some few years ago, on account of a paper of uncommon vigor, on Public Prostitution, that the article was reprinted in a pamphlet of more than fifty octavo pages, and extensively circulated, both in Europe and America. It was really nothing but a critical examination of the celebrated work, by Duchatelet, - De la The Boston market is certainly an inviting Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, - written with a one for publishers to send their issues to. It is boldness of expression that roused the moral sense of certainly quite bare, and strangers are aston-reflecting people, in the various ranks of society, who, ished that ordinary medical books are not to be had, always, in the city. did PROFESSIONAL PLEASANTRIES. A witty druggist, on a cold night, last winter, was awakened by a terrible rapping at the door. Going down he found a poor devil who wanted to purchase a dose of salts. The shop was entered, the dose prepared, and half a dime put into the drawer. "How much you make by that operation?" asked his wife, as he got into bed. "Four cents," was the reply. "A shame it is," returned the irritated dame," for a man to disturb your rest just for a dose of salts." "Recollect, my love," said the druggist, "that one dose of salts will disturb the man's rest more than it has mine; and reflect, that these little inconveniences always work well in time." MISCELLANEOUS MEMORANDA. There is very uniform good health throughout the United States. A fatal mistake has occurred at Providence, R. I., in giving a dose of medicine. Mrs. Brown administered Croton oil to her infant from a phial which she supposed to contain castor oil. Medical assistance was immediately procured, but it was of no avail. A paper entitled, What is Instinct- What is Mind? in the March number of the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, by Wm. Garwood, M. D., of that city, is exceedingly creditable to the author. That is what is wanted in the periodical medical literaturesomething fresh, earnest, and suitable for intellectual food. for the first time in their lives, discovered that the subject could be discussed without polluting their lips; and civilization and religion demanded some efforts to save the nations from the moral, to say nothing of a physical taint, diffused extensively over the habitable globe, through the universality of the vice of prosti "Miseries of Prostitution," by J.Beard Talbot; "Prostitution in London," and letters in the Morning Chronicle, on "the Metropolitan Poor," were brought into prominent notice, about the same period, and a spectator would have supposed, from the loud bursts of virtuous indignation which those publications called had already commenced, and all the brothels in Great forth, that a mighty regeneration of the whole earth Britain, certainly, were immediately to be converted into eleemosynary institutions for penitent Magdalens, while the other sex, to a man, would eschew the devil, and flee from the temptations and seductive influence he has devised for putting their consciences to sleep. Great calms invariably come after great storms. Any one who has been in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Dublin, Belfast, and other cities of Her Majesty's realms, would be satisfied that the excitement called into activity by the reviewer of M. Parent Duchatelet, has passed by, and this is the predicted calm. In other words, things go on in the old way, and prostitution still exists, with all its attendant miseries, degradations, and wicked appliances, as before the Quarterly sounded the tocsin of national alarm. Further: human beings have multiplied since that eventful epoch of literary fright, and prostitutes have multiplied, also, in a corresponding ratio. So much for Great Britain and her dependencies. the bone stays long in the flesh." It could no more be As for France, it may be truly said, "what is bred in suppressed, even by the government, if so disposed, than an edict of the sovereign would keep stars from shining in the firmament. This, then, is one of the penalties of civilization, in the crude philosophy of a savage; the imperfection of the religious system of the Christians, argues the dis ciple of Mahomet; and a visitation due to unhallowed criminalities, circumspect in their outward show of propensities and evil actions, wherever tolerated, it is hypocrisy, and deceptive at heart, in passing for what conceded by all who have a thought respecting the they cannot be, honest and industrious, prostitutes dignity of humanity, the weight of man's moral obliga- and those who court their company invariably fall from tions to God and his fellow-man, in whatever position one stage of disgrace to another, till at last, disease, he occupies in society. foul and cruel as the grave, seizes them with the grip It being conceded, long ago, that prostitution accom- of a voracious monster, and crushes them forever. panies commerce, and that neither moral suasion, ap- Where is the remedy? That is the anxious quespeals to the religious sentiment, tread-mills, jails, whip-tion. We are rapidly approaching the worst forms of ping-posts, bastinado or prisons, have abated the the old sin of Europe. Why, it is appalling to realize the nuisance in the slightest degree, the French abandoned vast number of females in the United States given up to this encroaching vice, which neither statesmen, the clergy, nor the legislature have ever even checked in the slightest degree. all these theoretical specifics for that particular crime against the moral sense, and regulated what they could not control. In short, France, Belgium and Holland, by their municipal authorities, actually license harlots, as they do ordinary shop-keepers, and from the revenue derived from that source, defray the expense of a sanitary supervision, — a kind of systematic medical police examination of the prostitutes, at short intervals, for the ostensible purpose of ascertaining whether they are free from disease. All this is very revolting to those who have not been in those countries, and become familiar with the working of the law. In England, however, the policy is entirely different, and parliament contemplates, with becoming horror, the dreadful character of this sin of cities, without lifting a finger, either to limit or suppress its influence. By winking at a demoralization beyond the reach of crown officers, and too formidable for parish beadles, prostitution runs riot wherever British commerce thrives. What can the medical profession do towards relieving society of this vice? is a grave inquiry. Those places where the municipal stringency confines prostitution within extremely narrow boundaries, and restrains every violation of decorum, even to dance halls, which are lairs where the lioness lies in waiting for prey, sailors positively dislike. Jack will not go where all the females are ladies, quite beyond his breathing atmosphere. When ships of war, on returning home from long cruises on distant seas, arrive in some particular ports, they flee from it by the first conveyance, to where things are more to their liking. To meet this emergency, a few years since, six hundred females, from various points of compass, were in waiting for a ship, to escort the crew, and present them with the freedom of a city, which was denied them where they disembarked. A shocking standard of morals this, but it is nevertheless the way of the world, and cannot be denied; yet it is not to be mentioned above a breath. Can physicians propose any remedy? How far are governments guilty of the violation of a fundamental law of morality, when they allow abandoned women to follow armies, and grant them rations for subsistenec in the depths of their infamy? What a book might be written on this one theme. Statesmen, however, have ready apology for the tolerance of customs. Mohammedan countries, embracing in their ample fold two hundred millions of human beings, have kept that monster curse of Christian cities under their feet. Whenever the vice peers out in Turkey, Syria, There are harbors where it is quite difficult to ship Egypt, Persia, and their dependencies, their faith sus-sailors enough to man a schooner; and the owners tains them against the seductions of prostitution. are actually obliged to send to those towns where there Polygamy, with which they are abundantly re- is a tolerance of easy virtue, to get their men. So true. proached, the very essence of barbarism, by which it is that the crows go where the carrion is. one sex is absolutely cheated out of the social advantages accorded to them by an advanced Christian civilization, is the theme of those who teach us what are believed to be the natural and inalienable rights of women; and, in their animadversions upon the domestic arrangements of the bigoted worshippers at the shrine of the false Prophet, seem to be unmindful of the enormous ulcer eating into the vitals of ourselves. With an increase of population in the United States unparalleled in the history of other nations, the vices of all the world have come in and mingled themselves, as tares among the wheat. All the focal points of American commerce, as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, &c., &c., beyond present recollection, are becoming excessively corrupt in the aggregation of the vice of prostitution. It is just what it ever was and will always remain the same. Where the police exactions are not remarkably rigid, thefts, robberies and murders are concealed in the dens and hiding-holes of these out-casts. Let them be ever so cautious in their a Thus we have fearlessly laid open a deep-seated ulcer, and exposed the destructive character of the gangrene within. Our correspondents are invited to propose a new and effectual method of treatment. PLEA OF INSANITY. For years, in all the great criminal cases, from murder, the most atrocious in the catalogue of crimes, down to simple larceny, the apology of insanity, set up by the counsel for the defendant, has been used to excite the sympathy of a jury, and sometimes, perhaps, successfully. Forgery could not be smuggled through a tribunal, so as to set the culprit free, in New York; but there was no weight of THE MEDICAL WORLD. medical testimony. wanting, to have accomplished the ble animal, and a familiar acquaintance with his phys- Every Man his own Horse Doctor, and perhaps some other vulgarly constructed treatises on the diseases of the common domestic animals; but nothing here at the East, that approached to the dignity of A murderer has been convicted, in Boston, for tak- accurate pathological advancement in veterinary pracing the life of an officer in the State Prison. From tice, till Dr. Dadd commenced his publications. Beearly youth, he appears to have been perverse, and his sides a splendid volume on the anatomy of the horse, villainies increased with his years. But, in this trial, with colored plates illustrating the myology, and a there was a reproduction of the convenient reason for beautiful lithographic drawing of the brain, he has excusing the prisoner, or, at least, for softening the given to the public another large sheet, containing penalty of a violated law, because he could not have the dentalogy of the lower jaw of the horse. The been in the possession of a sound mind. Experts main object is to show the appearance of the teeth, were called in, and from their conclusions, after hear- from the temporary set of the colt to the strongly ing others, seeing the unhappy wreteh, and listening developed incisors at eight years of age. All the to his conversation, Dr. Jarvis, for one, said he was intermediate conditions of the manducatory organs either laboring under a false impression, in regard to are shown, true to life, and by simply consulting the Cater, the plate, a mere tyro may determine the age of any the poisoning of his food, or he feigned it. prisoner, was permitted to make a statement. This horse between the age of one year and eight-and was an indulgence, on the part of the Court, highly possibly beyond. creditable to their humanity; it indicated entire willingness to elicit extenuating information, even from the criminal himself. His story was an irregular train of propositions, the leading one being this, that his prison food had been drugged. Before being in the State Prison, at Charlestown, he had been in the House of Correction, at South Boston. While there, he persisted in saying he was treated in the same unjustifiable manner. At Charlestown, repeated complaints of the condition of the food, was made by him, he said, to the officers; but, as no redress was found, he resolved to do something by which he might be brought before the people, so that he could reach the public ear, and thus remedy the abuses meted out to the inmates of that penal institution. MEDICAL REFORM.- An attentive reader of the periodical medical literature of England as well as of this country, must have observed the perpetual theme running through the journals, urging medical reforms. Now what is desired, which, if granted by competent authority, would be satisfactory to the dissatisfied? A principal feature discoverable in all the com- too much plaints, is this, that there is toleration which is not the boon required. No, the really clamorous advocates for medical reform are precisely like ordinary politicians, who proclaim that the panacea for political evils is the triumph of their particular Cater was convicted, and will be executed, beyond party. So it is with the noisy, uneasy, disturbing a doubt. Now, the question arises, is he insane upon efforts of those who are loudest and craziest for medithat one point, in regard to food, or on all sub-cal reforms. Put everything down which they dislike, jects? What ameliorating circumstances ought to be considered by the executive? are there any? It is as clear a case of moral insanity as that of Huntington, the forger. Medical experts in Massachusetts, however, are more cautious in giving opinions, than some others in the world. Had they sworn point blank that Cater was insane, the spectators would have looked upon them as lunatics themselves. But, admitting Cater, or any other offender against the laws, to be unsound on one point, or hallucinated, should it screen him from the pains and penalties of atoning to society for all and any crimes a vicious, unprincipled, wicked man may choose to commit ? and disfranchise men because they have the independence not to identify themselves with disorganizers, and then there would be peace, provided those very clear-sighted interpreters of the public will could have the control. Those who are the best prepared by education for the practice of the profession, will succeed, while those who are deficient, and make up in pretension what is actually wanting in knowledge, must necessarily pass for what they are worth, and no more, in any intelligent community. Let the mischief-making sticklers for reform first reform themselves. When that is accomplished, their views will have undergone a singular revolution in regard to others. No penal statutes can be enforced in the United States against persons practising any system of medicine which may differ from some other with which the THE HORSE'S AGE SHOWN BY THE TEETH. – Veterinary Surgery is certainly beginning to be re- majority are most familiar, or in which they repose the cognized among us as an important branch of busi-most confidence. If a novel kind of medication is patness. A complete knowledge of it depends upon an ronized, no law could be sustained an hour which should accurate scientific mastery of the anatomy of the no-forbid the sick from taking prescriptions from whom they choose; and yet impracticable, crotchety individ- this learned society should be in every medical library uals in this age of common sense, are urging the enact-in the United Stales. Each year gives increased imment of laws which shall recognize one kind of medical portance to the early labors of the members. Whopractice exclusively, and interdict all others under ever can should have the series complete. grevious penalties. That spirit of intolerance is too late in the day to command a hearing in halls of legistion. In fact, the determination of those who indiscreetly imagined they could keep themselves up, by putting all others down, not of their household of faith, broke down in the New England States years ago, and the few protective laws the profession had the influence to have passed, are quite obsolete. The known hospitality of the South will be nobly sustained by the profession at Nashville. Their ambition to serve their friends will not allow them to omit anything that promises to enhance the pleasure of a visit to the capitol city of Tennessee. President, MEDICAL SOCIETY OF ALABAMA. J. C. Nott, M.D.; W. G. Merriweather, M. D., G. W. An individual determination to be qualified by all Hills, M. D., and W. C. Ashe, M. D., Vice-Presidents; the appliances of modern science, to meet the emer-F. A. Ross, M. D., Cor. Sec.; R. Miller, M. D., and A. gencies and responsibilities of an elevated profession, H. Smith, M. D., Rec. Secs.; W. H. Anderson, M. D., is the only medical reform that would meet with une- Treas.; A. F. Alexander, M. D., Orator; and J. M. quivocal commendation, reconcile the various schools Williams, M. D., Alternate. with each other, and establish harmony where there has been anarchy and confusion to the injury of them all. SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS.A degree of perfection has been attained, in this country, in the manufacture of all instruments required by surgical operators, as gratifying to them as it is creditable to the mechanical ingenuity of American cutlers. Occasionally, some modification of an old principle is observed in French and English cases; but absolutely new things in the form of knives, hooks, tubes, saws, and the like, are extremely rare. Newly devised instruments are quite as frequently originated here as in Europe, although the foreign copiest rarely gives credit for the invention. The late Dr. Warren found a needle of his own devising, at Paris, which was claimed to have originated there, and yet it had been in use at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and in the private practice of the inventor, years before. Of all auxiliary surgical apparatus, more fortunes have been made by trusses and syringes, than by all other contrivances known to the craft from the days of Hippocrates to Anno Domini 1857. One presses in the obtruding viscera, and the other is for ejecting fluids drawn into a barrel. Nothing can be more simple, and yet both have been so variously altered as to secure new privileges from the Patent Office, and fortune-making is as prosperous and certain as ever with these primitive instruments. DEATHS. In Texas, Dr. John Sneed, formerly of Murfreesborough, Tenn. The "Southern Medical Journal ” says he was a man of superior talents, and many good qualities of heart. DEATHS REPORTED AT CITY Registrar's office, FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 11. Owen Douglas 7 days, Mary E. Nicholls 28 do., Margaret O'Brien 1 mo., Patrick Fitzgerald 13 mos., Charles H. Graham 19 do., Julia Donahoe 5 do., Mary Coleman 38 yrs., John Foley 4 do., Abigail Coffee 33 do., James Finnegan 11 do., Moody Abbott 51 do., Julius E. Stewart do., Collins Preston 48 do., Mary Griswold 5 do., Hannah Moffatt 50, Duffenia Anthony J. Hall 9 do., Thomas Cooper 25 do., Frank E. 40 do., Margaret Collins 5 do., Ann Brady 60 do., Deborah Chute 28 do., Harriet C. Lord 27 do., Wm. Flynn 8 mos., Mary Barrett 5 do., Sarah E. Cook 1 mo., Margaret Hayes 17 mos., Mary A. Spearman 26 years, James Messer 28 do., Serena L. West 5 do, Jacob H. Bowers 25 do., Mary O'Connell 28 do., Charlotte Regan 32 do., John Collins 49 do., Margaret Early 4 do., Walter Roberts 21 days, Daniel Foley 21 do., child of L. Bartlett 1 day, Mary A. McGue 13 mos., Jeremiah Norwood 2 do., Mary A. Grady 6 ys., John L. Miller 9 do., Hannah Quinlan 7 do., Birmingham 30 do., Mary Peterson, 23 do., Maria Mary C. Burrill 34 do., John Casey 32 do., Ellen Johnson 64 do., Rebecca Eaton 71 do., John Caldwell 41 do., James S. Phalen 18 do., Benj. W. Griffin 4 mos., Timothy Flynn 1 day, Mary Healy 7 years, Mary Murphy 28 do., Lucien Baldwin, 33 do., Charles H. Abbott 9 do., Grace Knowlton 4 do., Mary C. Ryan 2 do., Alice Chandler 60 do., Martha J. Turner, Mary Fleming 52 do., Joel J. Holden 8 mos., Henry J. Flood 19 do., Wm. Mahoney 27 do., John Curtis 19 mos., Edward K. Wise 16 do. AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. - A brilliant assemblage of medical gentlemen may be expected at DISEASES.-Accident 3, apoplexy 2, congestion of Nashville, Tennessee, the ensuing month. Communi- brain 2, consumption 14, croup 2, infantile diseases cations of exceeding value are to be presented, and 2, puerperal do. 2, unknown do. 3, scarlet fever 13, among them some, perhaps, that relate especially to hooping cough 2, disease of heart 3, intemperance 2, epidemic diseases. Medical statistics and medical toinflammation of lungs 4, marasmus 2, other diseases 1 each, 6. Total 65. 49 were born in United States, pography cannot fail of enriching the medical litera-11 in Ireland, and 5 in other foreign places. ture of the country. The published transactions of N. A. APOLLONIO, City Registrar. THE MEDICAL WORLD. VOLUME II. ANCIENT MEDICINE. BY W. T. GRANT, M. D. portion of his life, but was induced to remove thence by "the austere manner of his father, which becoming insupportable, he left him and went to Egina. In the first year of his resiIn the preparation of an article published dence at this place, he excelled the most skilduring the past summer in the Atlanta Medi- ful of the medical profession, without having cal and Surgical Journal, captioned Diseases had any regular education, and, indeed, withof the Bible, &c., I had frequent occasion to out the common instruments of the art. His refer to the ancient historians, Tacitus, Hero- reputation, however, was so great, that, in the dotus, Thucydides and Josephus, for the pur- second year, the inhabitants of Ægina, by genpose of substantiating certain conclusions at eral consent, engaged his services at the price of which I arrived in the course of my investiga- one talent (nearly one thousand dollars of our tions upon that subject. In examining those currency). In the third year, the Athenians works, I found a great deal of very interesting retained him at a salary of one hundred minæ medical matter, and I have since concluded to (about sixteen hundred dollars ;) and in the give a condensed account of it to the Profes- fourth year, Polycrates engaged to employ sion. I conceive that it presents many points him at two talents. His residence was then of very great interest, and also demonstrates fixed at Samos; and to this man the physicians most incontestably the antiquity of a number of of Crotona are considerably indebted for the our remedial appliances. I am not ignorant reputation which they enjoy; for at this periof the fact that works have been published od, in point of medical celebrity, the physicians upon this subject- ANCIENT MEDICINE; but of Crotona held the first, and those of Cyrene as such works possess but little interest for the next place." (Herodotus 3, 131.) the generality of medical men, they have but We have made the above quotation from a limited circulation, and a monograph upon Herodotus, not only for the purpose of sketchthe subject would therefore, from its very ing the character of Damocedes, but also to brevity, be far more interesting. add more evidence in demonstration of the fact that physicians were quite abundant in former times. The earlier lights of the profession were few in number, and with some of them we are sufficiently well acquainted to need no notice in Herodotus mentions two cases in which Dathis place. The practitioners of Medicine in mocedes was engaged with success, and which early times were undoubtedly as numerous, in are of much interesst. The first was in the proportion to the population, as they are now. person of Darius, who, in leaping from his Every great family, as well as every city, horse on one occasion, "twisted his foot with must needs (as Herodotus expresses it) swarm so much violence that the ankle bone was quite with the faculty." The medical men of Egypt dislocated." This was a dislocation of the were renowned in those early times; Cyrus ankle-joint, or, to be more surgical, it was a had a physician sent him from Egypt, and luxation of this joint. Darius had some EgypDarius always had Egyptian physicians with tian physicians with him at the time, who, him. But of all, I propose to give a sketch however, increased the evil by twisting and of one only-Damocedes. "He was a phy- otherwise violently handling the affected part. sician of Crotona, and the most skilful prac- He was in very great pain, which, indeed, was titioner of his time." Damocedes, it is pre- so extreme, that he "passed seven days and sumable, lived in Crotona during the earlier as many nights without sleep." And on the |