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tation. Have the central junta announced the abolition? The climate of Valencia is said to be highly favourable to longevity; and the author tells us, that in traversing the whole tract of coast, you will

Every where find people of seventy or eighty, whom at first sight, you would not take to be much more than fifty; you will every where hear of persons who have attained the patriarchal age of one hundred and twenty, nay even of one hundred and forty, and who are still brisk, hearty, and active.'

All this may be very true, but we cannot forget what M. Fischer had previously intimated about the noxious effluvia and dangerous epidemics of marshy tracts. M. Fischer is a man of fervid conceptions and glowing imagination; and such writers are too apt to draw general conclusions from par- ticular instances; to found broad statements on narrow premises, and to make fancy supply the deficiencies of fact.

M. Fischer describes a specific for the bite of vipers which he says the inhabitants of the southern part of the province of Valencia, have used with success from a remote antiquity. It is composed of the

Sea-holly (Eryngium campestre), viper's bugloss (echium vulgare)mad-wort(alyssum spinosum), and cretan balm (melissa cretica), in the following manner :

The plants are taken when they are beginning to run to seed, and dried in the shade till all their humidity is evaporated. On this each is separately pounded, the powder is passed through a hair-sieve, mixed in equal parts, and put away in well-corked bottles. It is to be observed, that none of the roots must be employed, except those of the sea-holly, which possess very great strength.

With respect to the use of this remedy, it is indispensably necessary that it should be administered immediately after the infliction of the wound. The common dose for a man is one scruple, for a dog a drachm; and the vehicle used for both is wine or water. No particular diet need be observed, only the powder must be taken morning and evening for nine days successively."

We are informed that Cavanilles tried this remedy against the bites of mad dogs with complete success according to the report of our traveller. M. Fischer concludes his description of Valencia with the fallowing burst of rapture and extravagance :

We have treated of the south, where nature appears in her fairest form, and dispenses her choicest blessings. That pure atmosphere, that enchanting temperature, that abundance of the most delicate and nutritious aliments-do not all these contribute to the highest gratification of sense, to the most 1apid combina

tion of the ideas, to the greatest intensity of the sentiments, to the most buoyant sense of the value of existence? Would any one live the genuine life of the poet, of the artist, of enjoyment, let him repair to these happy climes !

'I wake and a fairy land tinged with the ruddy glow of Aurora is expanded to my view. The pure atmosphere is impreg nated with the perfumes of the orange, and the crowns of the majestic palm-trees tremble in the golden beams of the orb of day-Where am I?-Into what paradise has kind fate transported me?-O Valencia! Valencia! 'tis in thy flowery bosom that I have opened my eyes?'

Mr. Frederic Shoberl seems to have performed the task of a translator with considerable animation. We could have wished that he had altered one or two passages, which, however inoffensive they may sound to a German, are rather too indelicate for an English ear.

ART. V.-A Practical Dictionary of Domestic Medicine; comprising the latest Discoveries, relative to the Causes, Treatment, and Prevention of Diseases; with a popular Description of Anatomy, Casualties, Chemistry, Cloathing, Didetics, Pharmacy, Physiology, Surgery, Midwifery, Therapeutics, &c. &c. By Richard Reece, M.D. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, corresponding Member of the Medical Society at Paris, Physician to the Physical Dispensary, Author of the Domestic Medical Guide, &c. &c. 8vo. 18s. Longman. 1808.

THAT all men are interested in the preservation of health, is one of those truisms which, though universally known, is too often individually despised. From the modes of life, which are prevalent in society, we should suppose that health was a very subordinate object of consideration; and that men were at least as busy in contriving means to destroy as to preserve it. In their diurnal habits, in their food, their dress, their pleasures, and their toils, we find a wide deviation from those rules which nature prescribes for the practice of man. By unnatural and irrational modes of living, we create diseases, which would otherwise never exist. For however long, complicated, and frightful may be the catalogue of morbid ills, with which poor humanity is afflicted, yet the majority of that black and diretul list, are not so much the infliction of nature, as the product of man. Independent of casualties, which seem insepy other from a probationary world, there are few individualne ma

might not enjoy a constant exemption from disease, by the careful observance of a few simple laws, which justice. to ourselves as well as to others, seems to require us to to obey. The BENEVOLENT BEING, who organized the fine frame of man, never constructed it to be the lazarhouse of such numerous ills as physicians describe, and phiJanthropists deplore. Rheumatism, gout, asthma, scrophula, and consumption, have their primary origin in the folly or viciousness of man, or in the neglect of certain laws, which may be known without difficulty, but which are not to be violated with impunity. Many of those diseases, which are at present most rife among mankind, are probably the consummation of morbific tendencies, or deviations from the laws of nature, which have been going on for several generations. These tendencies are perhaps unperceived and unknown during several links in the genealogical descent, till they become palpable to sense, and seem to concentrate the whole force of their progressive agency in some particular individual. A man may acquire, or he may in herit, gout, asthma, scrophula, consumption, &c.; but even in those diseases, which seem acquired, something may commonly be ascribed to inheritance. He who is continually drunk, may escape the gout himself, but he may lay up a stock for his descendants. The full effects, however, of his intemperance, may not be disclosed at once, but may keep secretly and gradually accumulating, till the malady demands the most active opposition. What is called scrophulous habit, is often the bequest of anterior generations; and it is a property which keeps accumulating by transmission. This is particularly seen in those royal or high families, in which marriage is seldom permitted to improve the breed. The same stock, or a stock thoroughly vitiated with similar habits, is continually conjoined, till a radically diseased breed is produced, which no art can cure. Most of the great families of Europe have a scrophulous diathesis, which has been regularly transmitted with successive aggravations of taint, for several generations. The contamination at last becomes so general, as to produce imbecility, ideocy, or frenzy, till the family ceases to exist. Kings and queens may transgress the ordinances of po litical life, but they cannot violate the laws of nature, with impunity..

If health depend on the conformity of individual conduct to the laws of nature, and if there be, in the present mosph of life, a general deviation from those laws which most wroduced a diversified progeny of disease, mankind to the hi

cannot hope to recover the health which they might enjoy, and which the Creator designed as their portion in this world without retracing their steps from that labyrinth of errors, in which they are involved, to those simple modes of life, which are agreeable to the rules of health, to which the Deity has subjected the constitution of man. Most of the physical ills, which may be classed under the denomination of disease, originated in excess: this excess proceeds from the desire to accumulate more pleasurable sensation in the same instant, or to enjoy in succession, than the laws of nature permit. Nature has connected pleasure with eating and drinking, and the gratification of other appetites; but if we endeavour to carry this pleasure to a degree of intensity, beyond what is compatible with the design of nature in the organization of the human frame, we ultimately generate, instead of pleasure, the saddest varieties of pain. Man is really the author of most of his own ills: he does not, indeed, intentionally bring evil on himself, for this would be to suppose him malevolent towards himself, which is never the case; but he generates evil in the mistaken search of good. In the pursuit of present pleasure, he overlooks the more than probable contingency of future pain. He sacrifices greater and more durable, for present and fugitive enjoyments. He is not his own enemy so much as he mistakes the best and wisest way of being his own friend. Perhaps one half of the multiform diseases to which humanity is subject, might be removed by greater abstemiousness and simplicity in the common diurnal modes of life.

We were almost involuntarily led into these reflections, by turning over a few letters of this dictionary, and observing the numberless variety of maladies which infest the human race, and which, were they not, in a great measure, the spontaneous production of man, would form an argument of no small weight against the benevolence of the Deity. No race of animals is subject to such a multiplicity of diseases, as the human. Animals, in the gratification of their appetites, are under the safe guidance of instinct; and they do not err: but man, though he possesses a superior faculty, is not the creature of any thing like mechanical constraint. He possesses freedom of choice, and though he may make a right choice, yet passion, ignorance, presumption, or inadvertence, often compel him to make a wrong. A medical dictionary, attentively read, and reflec tively digested, would perhaps show better than any other book, the errors of the human understanding. The ma

jority of diseases are the product of error, or of false and erroneous estimates of pleasure and of happiness, which lead to a pernicious excess of animal gratification; but the modes of cure which are proposed for these diseases, are seldom any thing more than the result of vague hypothesis, fanciful conjecture, superficial information, or scanty and defective experiment. Hence, what is called the healing art, is little better than a system of quackery, or a congeries of assertions, which are destitute of proof. But can we won. der at the uncertainties of medicine, or at the fallacious pre. tensions of medical men, when we recollect that, notwithstanding the numerous nominal remedies, which we possess for every malady; we have, in fact only two or three specifics or remedies, which will cure the same disease in all constitutions. Of these specifics, one seems to evince the desire in nature to compensate the severity with which she often punishes one of the predominant infirmities of man.

The present Medical Dictionary of Dr. Reece, from which we have too long digressed, is not composed so much for professional men, as for those who wish to attain a competent knowledge of medicine, for the ordinary necessities of themselves, of their families, or for the benevolent purpose of alleviating the sufferings of their fellow creatures, It is therefore most particularly designed for the instruction of the clergy, who, in imitation of their great Master,. are anxious to comfort and invigorate the sick and weak bodies, as well as to purify and improve the prejudiced and vitiated minds of men. For this purpose of aiding the medical sagacity and skill of private, and particularly of clerical, benevolence, this work seems very judiciously adapted. It is a plain book, without any pretensions to superior medical illumination; but it is full of sober admonitions, and of sound knowledge. The description of diseases is not rendered scientifically intricate, nor tediously minute. The symptomatic appearances, or diagnostics of the diease, with the predisposing causes, are, in general, briefly, but per spicuously detailed; the newest, as well as the most approved modes of cure, are carefully narrated; and those are especially recommended, on which most reliance is to be placed. The articles on chemical, and other subjects, connected with medicine, are explained with brevity, but with sufficient distinctness. The observations on food, regimen, the preservation of health, and the prevention of disease, which are interspersed in different parts of the work, evince much discrimination and good sense. The directions of the author do not converge to extremes, and they may

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