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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

Report of the Pennsylvania Hospital.

We extract from the published report of this excellent charity, which since its first establishment has extended its benefits to nearly 35,000 persons, the following table of cases treated within the last twelve months.

Abstract of the Cases of 1186 Patients treated in the Pennsylvania Hospital in the year ending 4th mo. 27th, 1839.

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Professor Gross's Pathological Anatomy.

We are gratified to learn that Professor Gross, of Cincinnati, will issue, in the course of the summer, a work on pathological anatomy, with numerous illustrations. We have been favoured with a sight of the manuscript, and are much pleased with the plan and execution of the work. Professor Gross has ample talents; his experience has been. great, and his acquaintance with the labours of his brother pathologists at home and abroad is extensive. We have no doubt that such a production from so able a source will be highly appreciated by the profession.

Report of the Eastern State Penitentiary.1

We notice this report chiefly for the purpose of alluding to a misapprehension, which has arisen, in the minds of some, in regard to a term employed by Dr. Darrach-the medical attendant upon the establishment -and which has given rise to a correspondence in the last report of the Prison Discipline Society.

Dr. Darrach exhibits that cases of dementia-meaningthe acute dementia of Esquirol-are susceptible of cure, and are cured under his agency; whilst others, defining dementia to be a state of amentia, or mental defect, regard it to be incurable. The whole difference, as in many cases of more angry disputation, consists in definition.

1 Tenth Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Eastern State Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. Read in Senate and House of Representatives, Feb. 19, 1839.

2 Thirteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society. Boston, p. 236. Boston, 1833.

Dr. T. J. White on the Effects of Intemperance.

We have been favoured with a copy of this address which was recently delivered before the St. Louis Total Abstinence Society; and although we may not perhaps go so far as the author in his estimate of the physical evils induced by the use of alcoholic liquors; the mischiefs are so great that we are delighted at any effort to arrest them.

The address comes to us from an old acquaintance in the west-one of our earliest and most attentive pupils in the University of Virginia, of which noble institution he is a medical graduate; and it has afforded us no little satisfaction to learn that his professional qualifications have been duly estimated in the flourishing community in which he has settled.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES.

Malaria in Ireland.-[We have often referred in the pages of this journal, as well as elsewhere,' to the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, that vegetable decomposition is the source of malaria, and in this term we would include not simply the emanations which give rise to intermittent and remittent fever, but to pellagra, beriberi, elephantiasis, bronchocele, and other diseases that are unquestionably connected with 'locality. The following communication adds another to the many facts on record, of every circumstance connected with vegetable life and decomposition being apparently present to give rise to malaria; yet inasmuch as the locality itself was not malarious, the presence of the "fitful pest" was not evidenced.-Ed.]

To the Editor of The Lancet.2

Sir, I was not a little surprised that the interesting subject of malaria, so long and so ably discussed at the Westminster Medical Society, should come to a conclusion without once referring to Ireland and its extensive bogs. If decomposed vegetable matter, as it is usually supposed, be the cause of malaria, surely it is there we must look for it in the greatest abundance. But what is the fact? Why, that intermittent fevers are almost, if not wholly, unknown there. I allude most particularly to the bog of Allen. It must be admitted that the Irish peasantry are constantly exposed to miasma (if such existed), for they are obliged, for the sake of fuel, to live as near as possible to these bogs; and, indeed, in many instances, huts are built in the midst of them. Notwithstanding all such predisposing causes, ague is rarely, if ever, known there. One strong proof of its nonexistence is, that it is almost a proverb with the poor people who come over to England during harvest time, that they are sure to get the ague before they return. Still, typhus fever, in its severest form, is not an uncommon occurrence. So much for Ireland. Now for Wales, or, rather, the small town of Towyu, in Merionetshire, containing about 500 inhabitants, where I believe I shall not be far wrong if I say a third of the inhabitants are annually attacked with ague. To all external appearances the ground upon which this town is built and the borders of the bog of Allen are alike; certainly, the turfs dug from each, as far as I am capable of judging, are

1 See, especially, the editor's Elements of Hygiene. Philad. 1835.
2 Lancet, April 20, 1839, p. 111.

identical. The fifteen years that I lived in Towyu I suffered from six attacks of ague, and those within the last ten years; since I left I never had the slightest symptom of it. Here the first attack comes on, generally, about the age of five or six years, and, in spite of all treatment, continues, on an average, four months; during the three spring months the disease is by far the most prevalent: it rately proves fatal. The first attack I had, I understand, lasted nine months; afterwards three weeks or a month was the outside of its duration; and, in the majority of cases it got milder and milder every year, so that at last you got, as it were, acclimated, and, instead of an attack of ague, you merely felt a slight indisposition. Here typhus, or, indeed, any continued fevers, are of very rare occurrence.

Dr. Chowne, and many others, are of opinion that the causes of intermittent, remittent, and contínued fevers, are identical; the above facts, will, at all events, go some way towards dispelling such opinion. If you consider the above worthy of a place in your valuable journal, I shall feel obliged by its early insertion. I remain, Sir, your humble servant,

1, Dalston-terrace, Dalston,

March 20, 1839.

J. JONES.

Granville's Counter-irritant Applications.—A writer in a recent number of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal,' enquires whether any physicians of the United States are known to have made trial of Granville's plan of counter-irritation; and if so, what have been the results? In reply, we may say, that it has been extensively employed in Philadelphia, both in public and in private, and in many cases has been productive of that relief which a sudden and powerful revellent is capable of accomplishing in neuralgic and congenerous affections. To this subject we shall probably have to revert.

Medical Jurisprudence. The determination of the period since which a fire-arm may have been discharged is a point of much importance in medical jurisprudence, and evidently applicable to various cases of homicide, wounds, &c. The question has recently been examined with much care by M. Boutigny, who has ascertained by numerous experiments, that we can indicate very closely the period at which a fire-arm has been discharged. It may, however, be objected that as the barrel of a gun may be easily washed, all traces by which the medical jurist is guided may thus be obliterated. M. Boutigny has provided against this objection, or rather determined the characters by which it may be known whether a gun-barrel has been recently washed or not. The author has discovered that the iron of a gun-barrel does not become oxidised for a considerable time, whenever the interior of the barrel has been lined, as it were, with the residue of the combustion of powder; and even when oxidisation does take place, the traces escape the naked eye, because the oxide is gradually dissolved in the acid of the sulphate of potash, or in that resulting from the oxidation of the sulphuret of potassium. Hence it follows that the wadding of the gun will present certain differences, according as the gun may or may not have been washed before having been charged.

We must refer the reader to the original article ("Ann. d'Hyg. et de Méd. Legal.," January, 1839), for an account of the experiments of the author, whose conclusions only we here insert.

The wadding of a gun which has been reloaded without having been washed, presents a grayish-black tinge; but if the gun have been cleaned the

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