Ascites cured by injectious.

Improvement in lithotomy.

were long considered as incurable; and accordingly, whenever they appeared, the case was given up by surgeons as hopeless. About the year 1730, Mr. Rushworth, a surgeon, in Northampton, discovered that their progress was stopped by the copious administration of Peruvian bark. The truth of the discovery was confirmed by the numerous observations of Mr. Sergeant Amyand; and, in 1732, Mr. Douglas published an account of the method of treatment in this disease; accompanied by a variety of cases confirming the efficacy of bark, as a cure for mortification. An account of this treatise, by Dr. Douglas, is published in the Philosophical Transactions.* This remedy is now universally employed, and considered as a specific; except in one case of mortification, to which chimney-sweepers are liable, and which Mr. Pott discovered might be cured by the administration of opium.

XVII. There is an account in the Philosophical Transactions of a very ingenious attempt by Mr. Warwick, a surgeon at Truro, to cure ascites, by injecting warm astringent liquors into the cavity of the abdomen, after the dropsical liquid had been drawn off by tapping.† His experiment was made upon a woman near fifty years of age, who had been previously tapped, and 36 pints of liquid drawn from the abdomen. The cavity filled again with great rapidity, and he was called a second time to perform the same operation. After having drawn off part of the serum collected, he injected a mixture of warm claret and Bristol water, and repeated the injection twice. A syncope came on, but the woman gradually recovered her senses, and in a few days her health was restored, as completely as ever it had been; and though she was afterwards afflicted with a tertian fever, yet her dropsy did not return. There can be no doubt that such injections operate as complete cures in cases of partial dropsies. Thus the hydrocele is usually cured by a similar injection. But, in a confirmed ascites, the constitution is usually so much broken down, the cavity is so large, and the organs which it contains of so much importance, and so necessary for life, that such a practice could not be expected to be frequently attended with success. Mr. Warwick's case, however, and some others that have been since recorded, show us that the disease is not always incurable, and that it is, at least, worth while to try the efficacy of such injections.

XVIII. The gradual improvements in the operation of lithotomy constitute a very curious part of surgical history. The present improved state of the lateral operation, which is now almost the only one practised, except in very peculiar circumstances, was the gradual result of the successive improvements of various ingenious surgeons. One improvement of some importance, introduced by Dr. Mudge, a very ingenious surgeon and physician at Plymouth, is described in the Philosophical Transactions. After cutting into the bladder, + Phil. Trans. 1744. Vol. XLIII.

* Phil. Trans. Vol. XXXVII. p. 429.
Ibid. 1749. Vol. XLVI. p. 24.

P. 12.

and introducing the forceps, it was customary for operators to extract the stone
by force. If the calculus was large, this could not be done without forcibly
tearing the bladder; and Mr. Mudge shows that most of the violent and fatal
symptoms which follow the operation, are owing to this laceration, which is
much more injurious to the parts than cutting them. An attempt to cut the
bladder, upon the forceps, while in a flaccid state, could hardly succeed; and
if it did, the rectum was almost sure to be cut at the same time.
Mr. Mudge
remedied this defect, and put it in the power of the surgeon to dilate the
wound of the bladder, at pleasure, by leaving a staff in the bladder, on which
there was a groove cut; along his groove a proper knife was slid, and thus the
bladder dilated at pleasure.

eye.

XIX. The cataract is a well-known disease of the eye, in which the crys- Extraction of talline lens becomes opaque, and obstructs vision. The cure is the removal of the lens of the the lens; for the eye can perform its functions without this part of it, with tolerable accuracy. The method commonly practised is called couching. The lens is forced out of its place into the back part of the eye, where it is speedily absorbed and carried off. M. Daviel, a surgeon in Paris, about the year 1745, contrived a new mode of operating. He cut a considerable opening in the cornea, and through this opening, by gently pressing the eye, he forced out the lens, and thus removed it at once out of the eye. He employed three different instruments in succession; and, in consequence of the discharge of the aqueous humour, and the flaccidity of the cornea, it was difficult, and required a very steady hand, to dilate the cut in the cornea sufficiently, without cutting the iris, which would injure the eye materially. There is a description of Daviel's process, published in the Philosophical Transactions, by Dr. Hope.** The subject was taken up by Mr. Sharp, a celebrated surgeon in London, who improved the process, by employing a knife capable of performing the whole cutting at once, without employing successive instruments, which greatly facilitated the process. In two papers, which he published on the subject,† he has given an account of his method in detail; and has likewise related the cases of a variety of patients whom he successfully treated in this way. Notwithstanding the apparent superiority of this operation, the method of couching still continues to keep its ground; owing, probably, to its greater facility and seeming mildness; though in fact, it occasions greater uneasiness than the process of extracting the lens.

XX. Deafness is one of the diseases the least under the control of the Deafness physician. Unless it proceed from some obvious disorder in the external cured. meatus, or from swelled tonsils, it is usually given up as a hopeless case by

* Phil. Trans. 1751. Vol. XLVII. p. 530.

+ Phil. Trans. 1753. Vol. XLVIII. p. 161 and p. 322.

Regeneration of bones.

Wounds of

the intestines

healed.

medical men; and the patient left to shift for himself. Every additional means
suggested to alleviate this distressing disease acquires, on that account, con-
siderable importance. Hence it will be proper to mention a method suggested
by Mr. Wathen, which he tried in various instances with success.
He con-
ceived that deafness was sometimes occasioned by the obstruction of the Eusta-
chian tube, which prevented the external air from making its way into the
internal cavity of the tympanum. He proposed, therefore, to try injections of
warm liquids into that tube, by means of a silver tube introduced through the
nose. In six cases tried, this injection was attended with success. *

XXI. The power which the bones have to regenerate in the human body, after being partly exterminated, deserves the serious attention of the surgeon. In all probability, fewer amputations would take place if this renovating power in nature were sufficiently attended to by surgeons. Various cases are related in the Transactions, of the renovation of bone after being cut out, and the restoration of the limb to its original functions, or at least to a considerable. part of them. It may be worth while to mention some of the most remarkable of these examples: M. Le Cat, a surgeon, in Rouen, who has published a great many papers in the Philosophical Transactions, cut three inches, ten lines, out of the bone of the shoulder of a soldier. The arm was kept at its usual length by machinery. In a short time, a callous formed; and the arm recovered its energy completely. Mr. White, a celebrated surgeon, of Manchester, recommended the excision of the head of the os humeri, in certain cases; and affirmed, that the arm healed after the operation, and recovered its energy. He gives some cases, in his Surgical Essays, confirming the truth of this opinion. In the Philosophical Transactions there is a case given by Mr. Bent, surgeon, of the extirpation of the head of the os humeri, with success. The patient was able, after the cure, to lift the arm six inches from the side, and to perform every function that required no higher an elevation.‡

XXI. Wounds of the intestines are generally, and with reason, dreaded by surgeons; and, for the most part, they terminate fatally. There are not wanting instances, however, when such wounds have healed of themselves, without any disastrous symptoms intervening. Several examples of this kind occur in the Philosophical Transactions. We shall notice one related by Mr. Nourse, surgeon at Oxford. James Langford, a lad of twenty-one, was stabbed with a knife in the left side of the belly; the wound was about three inches long ; great part of the intestines were protruded; and it was found necessary to enlarge the wound in order to return them into the abdomen. The colon was wounded near that part which terminates in the rectum. For a considerable

Phil. Trans. 1755. Vol. XLIX. p. 213. ‡ Phil. Trans. 1774. Vol. LXIV. p. 353.

† Phil. Trans, 1766. Vol. LIV. p. 270.
§ Phil. Trans. 1776. Vol. LXVI. p. 426.

time, fæces were discharged by the wound in the belly, and blood by the anus; but, by degrees, all the bad symptoms were removed, and the wound healed in about three weeks, without any bad symptom whatever.

Such are a few of the most striking medical papers to be found in the Philosophical Transactions. It would be easy to extend our observations, on this important subject, almost to any length; but we have already, we fear, rather exceeded the bounds prescribed to us in this work. We, therefore, take leave of this interesting subject, inviting all medical men to consult this valuable repository of important medical knowledge.

CHAP. III.

OF MINERALOGY.

THE term mineral is at present applied to all the different substances of which this earth, which we inhabit, is composed; and Mineralogy is the science which treat of these minerals. Now, there are three different points in which minerals may be viewed: we may consider them as distinct substances, and arrange them into a system by dividing them into genera and species; we may consider the way in which they are deposited in the earth, the order in which they lie, and their connexion with each other; or, we may consider the best way of extracting from the earth such of them as can be applied to valuable purposes. The first of these views of the subject is, in this country, Division of usually distinguished by the name of Mineralogy; but, in Germany, it is called the subject. Oryctognosy; the second, is called Geognosy, or Geology; the third, Mining. We shall consider each of these branches of the science, as far as the papers in the Philosophical Transactions on these subjects are concerned, in the three following sections.

SECTION I-Of Oryctognosy.

vated by the ancients.

This branch of the science is quite recent; its real origin can hardly be dated Little cultifurther back than about 40 years ago. The ancients have left us little that is valuable on the subject. Theophrastus wrote a Treatise on Stones, which was translated into English by Sir John Hill, and first brought him into the notice of the public. This translation contains many valuable notes, most of which have been pillaged by more recent mineralogical writers, without acknowledgement. Pliny, in the last two books of his Natural History, has likewise given

Linnæus.

Cronstedt.

External

characters.

Wernerian method.

Haüyan ethod.

*

us a treatise on stones; but it is very difficult to determine many of the species. to which he refers. The Arabian philosophers turned some of their attention to this subject; and Avicenna has left us a Treatise on Minerals. After the revival of learning in Europe, mineralogy acquired a portion of the attention of naturalists, as well as botany and zoology; but much less progress was made in it, partly on account of the difficulty of the subject, and partly on account of the infant state of chemistry, on which mineralogy is obliged to depend for a good deal of her exact information, as far as the division of minerals into species is concerned.

Linnæus's mineralogy was far inferior to his arrangement of the two other kingdoms of nature; though he first brought into view the importance of crystallization, which has since been laid hold of by the French mineralogists with such happy success in determining the species of minerals. It is hardly worth while to notice the various systems of mineralogy which made their appearance in various countries in succession, after the publication of the Linnæan system. But the first system of sterling value was that of Cronstedt; who formed his arrangement according to the composition of the various stones. His method was adopted by Bergman, in his Sciagraphia; by Werner, and by almost all succeeding writers on the subject.

The manner of describing minerals, and the technical language by which the description is conveyed, were invented by Werner, of Freyberg, who published his treatise on the external characters, in 1773. His mode of describing minerals has been universally adopted. As to the arrangement of minerals into species, two different methods are followed by the German and French schools. According to Werner, the species of minerals are merely artificial associations, for the conveniency of description. Accordingly, he has made them to depend upon a certain agreement in all the external characters. Haüy, on the other hand, conceives that minerals have been divided into species by nature herself, as well as animals and vegetables. Identity of form constitutes, according to him, the specific character. Accordingly, all those minerals which have the same primitive form (with certain exceptions) are placed under the same species. This method of Haüy recommends itself at once by its simplicity, and the exact limits which it enables us to assign to every species; whereas the Wernerians are obliged to admit, that different species pass, by imperceptible shades, into each other, and that many minerals exist which cannot be referred to any well-defined species, but lie intermediate between two. This is a necessary consequence of the opinion which they entertain, that nature has not

*The late Dr. Walker, of the University of Edinburgh, understood Pliny's account of stones, better than most persons. His new Mineralogical Nomenclature consists chiefly of words taken from Pliny, and used in the same sense with that writer. In that point of view it deserves some notice.