preserved in perpetuo. In ancient Britain, the Druids were the depositaries of these secrets.

Amongst the early Britons, the ranks of the priests were recruited from the noblest families: their education, which often extended over a period of twenty years, comprehended the whole of the sciences of the age; and besides their sacred calling, they were invested with power to decide their civil disputes. Their dwellings and temples were situated in the thickest oak-groves, which were sacred to the Supreme Deity. The acorn, and above all, the parasitical mistleto, were held in high veneration: the latter was sought on the sixth day of the moon, and when found was only cut by a priest of the highest rank, for it was accounted a sovereign remedy for all diseases. The practice of the healing art has ever commanded the esteem of the rudest nations: hence it was the obvious policy of the priests, or Druids, to study the properties of plants. Of their progress we have no record; but who knows from what a far antiquity come the traditionary virtues of many of our native plants?

Their famous Mistleto, or all-heal, was considered a certain cure in many diseases, an antidote to poison, and a preventive of infection. And, we have, in the present day, a very old nostrum, named Heal-all, the universal virtues of which are described as equalling the mistleto of our ancestors.

Remedies for Cancer.

A multitude of strange remedies are prescribed for Cancer. When Lord Metcalfe, the Governor of Canada, was beset with this cruel disease, Mr. Kaye, his biographer, tells us: “One correspondent recommended Mesmerism, which had cured Miss Martineau; another Hydropathy, at the pure springs of Malvern; a third, an application of the common dock-leaf; a fourth, an infusion of couch-grass; a fifth, the baths of Docherte, near Vienna; a sixth, the volcanic hot-springs of Karlsbad; a seventh, a wonderful plaster made of rose-leaves, olive-oil, and turnip-juice; an eighth, a plaster and powder, in which some part of a young frog was a principal ingredient; a ninth, a mixture of copperas and vinegar; a tenth, an application of pure ox-gall; an eleventh, a mixture of Florence oil and red precipitate; whilst a twelfth was certain of the good effects of Homœopathy, which cured Charlotte Elizabeth. Besides these varied remedies, many men and women with infallible recipes, or certain modes of treatment, were recommended by themselves and others. Learned Italian professors, mysterious American women, erudite Germans, and obscure Irish quacks—all had cured cancers of twenty years’ standing, and all were pressing, or pressed forward, to operate on Lord Metcalfe.”

Improved Surgery.

Restoration of a Fractured Leg.

The original “Dr. Sangrado.”

False Arts advancing true.

After the death of Galen, Medicine ceased to make progress. Amidst the Gothic invasions the medical sects “dwindled down to individuals, who achieved for medicine what the monastics effected for ancient classic literature: they maintained it in the condition of a small but continuous stream, in the midst of so much charlatanism that no man could talk nonsense so gross, or profess supernatural powers so incredible, but that the ignorance of the community would give credit to his assertions.” All through the dark and the Middle Ages astrology, alchemy, magic, and cabalistic arts predominated; all physical phenomena were ascribed to occult causes; in short, as Sir John Herschel remarks, “If the logic of that gloomy period could be justly described as ‘the art of talking unintelligibly on matters of which we are ignorant,’ its physics might, with equal truth, be summed up in a deliberate preference of ignorance to knowledge in matters of every day’s experience and use.” Sometimes, however, the false arts served indirectly to advance the true. Alchemy led the way to chemistry, and enriched medicine with new remedies, and at least one crotchet of scholastic divinity may be supposed to have done something for the progress of anatomy; for “the skeleton received, perhaps, an adventitious attention in consequence of the popular belief that, in man, some one particular bone existed of an imponderable, incombustible, and indestructible nature, around which, as a nucleus, all other tissues and organs would collect and re-assume their vital actions at the resurrection. Accordingly, every bone was tested by fire, for the purpose of discovering the hypothetical one.”—Dr. Meryon’s History of Medicine.

Brief History of Medicine.

Great honour is, unquestionably, due to those medical men who by their learning, counsel, and experience, have contributed so many and great things to the improvement of their profession. The art of healing may be considered as a legacy left to us by former ages and enriched by ancient writers, and no doubt ordained by a benevolent Creator for the benefit of His creatures, who, being endowed with reason, are enabled to prosecute Medicine and the collateral sciences with wonderful sagacity. The impossibility of learning medicine properly by experience alone, implies the necessity of studying both ancient and modern writers; but, in the words of Harvey, “men were not to swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity, as openly and in sight of all to deny and desert their friend Truth.” Medical history unfortunately affords many examples of despisers of the mighty dead and of eminent living authorities. Paracelsus burnt the writings of Galen and Avicenna before his pupils, and proclaimed himself the king of medicine. Hahnemann much resembled Paracelsus, for he despised the inspection of dead bodies, and preferred the homœopathic doctrine to pathology; but both had dared to do “aliquid Gyaris vel carcere dignum.” Hahnemann’s doctrine, that numerous chronic diseases originated in the itch, was neither new, safe, nor true. Dr. C. G. Zieger had many years before promulgated the same idea in a dissertation published at Leipsic in 1758, without boasting, as the other did, that he was engaged twelve years in the discovery. False theories, however, with scientific pretensions, have flourished through many ages. Hence arose homœopathy, kinesipathy, table-turning, and various despicable “isms” of the present day. But, happily for the poor, at least, such lies could not exist in the schools of Harvey, Baillie, and Hunter. The low condition of medicine at the time of Linacre, and the improvement with the aid of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey, may next be mentioned. Linacre, the founder of the College, and Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul’s School, of grateful memory to the orator, were among the first to restore ancient learning to this island. The College of Physicians having been established, its members were separated from vulgar empirics; but by a new law homœo-empirics may be registered, which was nothing less than legal homicide, and strongly to be protested against.—Harveian Oration, 1863.

What has Science done for Medicine?

A further difficulty in medical practice has been less noticed than it deserves to be. All that is known of the effect of remedies is the general or average result of a large number of cases in which they have been applied. But no two men are exactly alike in the manner of action of their various organs. When the chemist who has once tried an experiment brings the same substances together under similar conditions, he is absolutely certain that they will act on each other as they did before. Not so is it with the living organism. The idiosyncracy of each patient is more or less unknown to the physician; and till the experiment has been tried, he can have no certainty as to the result of his treatment. It is quite true that the exceptional cases that sometimes arise present apparent rather than real anomalies. There is no reason to suppose that the laws of physics have been suspended by an independent disturbing power when a drug produces on a particular patient an unusual effect. The conditions of the experiment have doubtless been changed by some peculiarity in his organization, which the present means of science are powerless to detect.

The main cause why medicine is still so little advanced is to be found in the backward condition of the science on which it mainly rests. Physiology, including pathology—the first taking cognizance of all the vital functions of organized beings, the second of the disturbance of those functions by disease—is far from maintaining its place in the general march of physical science.—Saturday Review.

The Element of Physic in Medical Practice.

The Element of Physic in Medical Practice becomes constantly more simple. Our drugs are fewer and less complicated.[20] Of course it is all otherwise in pseudo-medicine. Here “specifics” are as rank as weeds. Here little account is taken of natural provisions for the cure of disease. Here physic is everything, and nature and the physician are unimportant. Given the symptoms of a disease and a book of “testings,” every old lady thinks herself as competent a physician as Hahnemann. Every disease and symptom of disease has its corresponding remedy, or rather we should say two remedies, for it will nearly always be found that homœopathic patients take two medicines, in equal doses and with equal frequency. Homœopathy abounds in principles. Its great principle is that of “specifics”—that certain medicines have the most definite and designed relation to certain ailments—are the thing and the only thing. Then there is what we may call the alternating principle, in virtue of which two medicines—each, we suppose, a specific!—are so much better than one. Upon these two principles the enlightened patron of homœopathy is made the receptacle of a most unprincipled amount of physic. We conclude by impressing upon our brethren who are studying medicine in the light of reason and science, the urgency of the duty that devolves upon them of so using the element of physic in medical practice as to make more and more apparent the great gulf that is fixed between their practice and the rival quackeries of the day. Let them use medicine so that the most undiscerning patient will perceive that it is only one of many means to an end, auxiliary only to great provisions in the body itself, and for the most part acting, not mysteriously, like quinine, but sensibly or chemically. Let the form of their drugs be unpretentious and inexpensive, so that whatever the cost to the patient may be, he may understand that he pays, not for physic, but for the attention, the skill, and the judgment, of the physician.—Lancet.

Physicians’ Fees.

Prevention of Pitting in Small-pox.

This desirable end is stated to have been attained in the clinical wards of the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh. The application consists of a solution of india-rubber in chloroform, which is painted over the face (and neck in women) when the eruption has become fully developed. When the chloroform has evaporated, which it very readily does, there is left a thin elastic film of india-rubber over the face. This the patient feels to be rather comfortable than otherwise, inasmuch as the disagreeable itchiness, so generally complained of, is almost entirely removed, and, what is more important, “pitting” once so common, and even now far from rare, is thoroughly prevented wherever the solution has been applied. It may be as well to state that india-rubber is far from being very soluble in chloroform; so that, in making the solution, the india-rubber must be cut into small pieces, and chloroform added till it is dissolved. The medical gentleman who has introduced this treatment has tried several other substances, but found none so generally useful. For instance, gutta-percha was tried. It has the advantage of being very soluble in chloroform, and would have been a very admirable application but for the tendency it has to tear into ribands whenever the mouth is used, or even when the features play. India-rubber, on the other hand, is pliable and elastic, allowing free use of the mouth without any danger (as a rule) of its tearing off. If, however, from some cause or other, a portion is torn off, a fresh application of the solution by means of a large hair-pencil remedies the defect, and the mask is once more complete. Several patients who have had this india-rubber mask applied concur in stating that they found it agreeable to wear, and their faces were perfectly free from “pitting,” although other parts of the body, such as the arms, were covered. The credit of this valuable invention and application belongs to Dr. Smart, house physician to the Infirmary.

Underneath the Skin.

All over the surface of our bodies there are scattered millions of minute orifices, which open into the delicate convoluted tubes lying underneath the Skin, and are called by anatomists sudoriparous glands. Each of these tubes, when straightened, measures about a quarter of an inch; and as, according to Erasmus Wilson, whose figures we follow, there are 3528 of these tubes on every square inch of the palm of the hand, there must be no less than 882 inches of tubing on such a square inch. In some parts of the body the number of tubes is even greater: in most parts it is less. Erasmus Wilson estimates that there are 2800 on every square inch, on the average; and, as the total number of such inches is 2500, we arrive at the astounding result that, spread over the surface of the body, there are not less than twenty-eight miles of tubing, by means of which liquid may be secreted, and given off as vapour in insensible perspiration, or as water in sensible perspiration. In the ordinary circumstances of daily life the amount of fluid which is thus given off from the skin (and lungs) during the twenty-four hours varies from 1⅔ lb. to 5 lb.; under extraordinary circumstances the amount will, of course, rise enormously. Dr. Southwood Smith found that the workmen in the gasworks employed in making up the fires, and other occupations which subjected them to great heat, lost on an average 3 lb. 6 oz. in forty-five minutes; and when working for seventy minutes in an unusually hot place their loss was 5 lb. 2 oz., and 4 lb. 14 oz.—Blackwood’s Magazine.

Relations of Mind and Organization.

Experimental physiology, joined with the observation of the changes produced by disease, has thrown some light on this mysterious subject. There is reason to believe that, whatever it may do besides, one office of the cerebellum is to combine the action of the voluntary muscles for the purpose of locomotion. The corpora quadrigemina are four tubercles which connect the cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata to each other. If one of the uppermost of these bodies be removed, blindness of the eye of the opposite side is the consequence. If the upper part of the cerebrum be removed, the animal becomes blind, and apparently stupified, but not so much so but that he can walk with steadiness and precision. The most important part of the whole brain seems to be one particular part of the central organ, or medulla oblongata. While this remains entire, the animal retains its sensibility, breathes, and performs instinctive motions. But if this very minute portion of the nervous system be injured, there is an end of these several functions, and death immediately ensues.

These facts, and some others of the same kind, for a knowledge of which we are indebted to modern physiologists, and more especially to M. Magendie and M. Flourens, are satisfactory as far as they go; and warrant the conclusion that there are various other organs in the brain, designed for other purposes, and that if we cannot point out their locality, it is not because such organs do not exist, but because our means of research into so intricate a matter are very limited.—Sir B. Brodie’s Psychological Inquiries.

Deville, the Phrenologist.

In 1817 a Mr. Deville, a lamp-manufacturer of London, was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He had been originally a pot-boy, then a journeyman plasterer, and afterwards kept a shop for the sale of plaster figures, which he cast. He had risen to a respectable position simply by the force of his natural powers. Mr. Bryan Donkin, a civil engineer, was an early auditor of Gall at Vienna, and subsequently a friend of Spurzheim. He was also, like Mr. Deville, a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers; and when, in 1817, he with others determined to make a collection of casts as records of phrenological facts, Mr. Deville was applied to for his assistance, which he rendered as a matter of business for three or four years. In 1821 he became interested in phrenology, and began to form a collection of casts on his own account. Already, in 1826, Spurzheim said it was finer than any he had seen elsewhere. At Mr. Deville’s death, in 1846, this collection consisted of about 5450 pieces; of these 3000 were crania of animals, and the remainder (2450) illustrations of human phrenology. There were 200 human crania, and 300 casts of crania; amongst the latter, those which Baron Cuvier permitted Mr. Deville to take from all the authenticated human skulls in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy of Paris. Mr. Deville was a practical observer, and possessed the large number of 1500 casts of heads taken by himself from persons while living. Amongst these were 50 casts of persons remarkably devoted to religion: 40 of distinguished painters, sculptors, architects, &c.; 30 of eminent navigators and travellers; 80 of poets, authors, and writers; 70 of musicians, amateurs, and composers of music; 25 of pugilists; 150 of criminals; 120 pathological casts illustrative of insanity, &c. Perhaps the most interesting of all are 170 casts which illustrate the changes caused in the cranial conformation of from 60 to 70 individuals by age, special devotion to one pursuit, and the like. Mr. Deville’s account of some of these has been published.

“Seeing is believing.”

The object of the foregoing remarks is to show how easily an inference may be mistaken for a fact, and how habitually men declare they have seen what they have only inferred. Seeing is, in all cases, believing; but in all cases we must assure ourselves of what we have seen, carefully discriminating it from what we have not seen but only imagined, and carefully ascertaining whether the facts seen by us are all the facts then present. It is by no means easy to see accurately any series of events; nor, when under any strong emotion, is it easy to prevent the imagination from usurping the place of vision. “Many individuals,” says Liebig, “overlook half the event through carelessness; another adds to what he observes the creation of his own imagination; whilst a third, who sees sufficiently distinctly the different parts of the whole, confounds together things which ought to be kept separate. In the Gorlitz trial, in Darmstadt, the female attendants who washed and clothed the body, observed on it neither arms nor head; another witness saw one arm, and a head the size of a man’s fist; a third, a physician, saw both arms and head of the usual size.”[21]

There is no popular adage less understood than that “Seeing is believing.” With an ill-suppressed irritation at any expression of scepticism respecting things said to have been seen, a narrator asks whether or not he may believe the evidence of his own senses? That argument seems to him final; and it often happens that his opponent, evading instead of meeting it, retorts:—“No; the evidence of the senses is not to be trusted, when they report anything so absurd as that. I would not believe such a thing if I were to see it—the absurdity is too glaring.”

Both are wrong. Seeing is believing; and he that distrusts the evidence of his own sight, will find a difficulty in bringing forward evidence more convincing. The fallacy lies in confounding vision with inference—in supposing that facts are seen which are only inferred. There can be no mistake in trusting to the evidence of sense, as far as that goes. The mistake is supposing it to go much further than it does. It is one thing to believe what you have seen, and another to believe that you have seen all there was to be seen.—Blackwood’s Magazine.

Causes of Insanity.

From an interesting Report on Lunatic Asylums in Ireland, issued in 1862, we find that the moral Causes of Insanity predominate in females, the physical causes to a larger extent in males, particularly intemperance and irregularity of life. The cause of disease was ascertained in 2186 cases: in 323 it was intemperance and irregularity; in 183, religious excitement; in 115, love, jealousy, and seduction. Thirty-seven per cent. of the cases were ascribable to hereditary transmission and intemperance combined. With regard to the hereditary character of insanity, it is observed that mental, like bodily affections, gradually wear out from the intermixture of blood. There was no case found in Ireland in unbroken descent to the fourth generation. On the important question whether insanity is on the increase, there is no certain proof furnished. We know that, with fresh accommodation for the insane, fresh, though long-existing cases, are presented for admission into asylums, creating an apparent increase of lunacy; and we know that improved treatment and care have tended materially to the prolongation of life among lunatics, and to their consequent accumulation. We know also that science, and even public opinion, now accept as indicative of lunacy affections formerly classed under a different category. Lunacy, also, is now less concealed as a discreditable visitation. Emigration has not taken its proportion of lunatics. But, insanity being in great measure a disease of intellect—one connected with the development of the human mind—it is highly presumable that, in this age of excitement and rapid advancement in arts and sciences, mental affections may be more prevalent than before. In a northern district of Ireland, during the two months of religious revivalism, there were more cases of insanity than in the whole preceding year.

Brain-Disease.

Dr. Forbes Winslow, whose professional life has been devoted to the study of Insanity, in his work On Obscure Diseases of the Brain, and Disorders of the Mind, attaches much importance to premonitory ailments, as indicative not only of the fatal mischief which will inevitably succeed them if neglected, but of the only period when remedies can be applied with a fair chance of cure. This period it is difficult even to the medical expert to detect, for the aversion to own any affection of the mind or weakness of the head is so strong, that both patient and friends will often repudiate and ignore it altogether; yet there are unmistakeable signs, such as “headache attributed to derangement of the stomach, vacillation of temper, feebleness of purpose, flightiness of manner, irritability, inaptitude for business, depression and exaltation of spirits; and even weakness of sight, when the optician has been consulted rather than the physician.” None of these signs, if caused by Brain Disease, can exist, says Dr. Winslow, for any length of time without seriously perilling the reason and endangering life: yet “it is a well-established fact that seventy, if not eighty, per cent. of cases of insanity admit of easy and speedy cure if treated in the early stage, provided there be no strong constitutional predisposition to cerebral and mental affections, or existing cranial malformation. And, even when an hereditary taint exists, derangement of mind generally yields to the steady and persevering administration of remedies, combined with judicious moral measures, provided the first inclinations of the malady are fully recognised, and without loss of time grappled with. A vast and frightful amount of chronic and incurable insanity exists at this moment in our county and private asylums, which can be clearly traced to the criminal neglect of the disease in the first or incipient stage.”

Dr. Winslow insists upon the great importance of self-control as a preventive. He says: “This power is in many instances weakened or altogether lost by a voluntary and criminal indulgence in a train of thought which it was the duty of the individual in the first instance resolutely to battle with, control, and subdue. Nervous disorders, as well as insane, delusive thoughts, are thus often self-created. The morbid soon becomes a deranged mind—the insanity manifesting itself in an exaggerated, extravagant, and perverted conception of a notion which had originally some semblance of truth for its foundation. The self-created, delusive idea may thus obtain a fearful influence over the mind, and eventually lead to the commission of criminal acts.” The forced education of youth frequently leads to mental alienation. “It is,” says Dr. Winslow, “undoubtedly an important element in education to carefully, steadily invigorate and discipline the memory in early life; but, in effecting this most desirable object, it is our duty to avoid mistaking natural mental dulness for culpable idleness, and organic cerebral incapacity for criminal indifference to intellectual culture and educational advancement.” Again, the tremendous strain that now taxes the brain-power of society in every direction, is an additional reason why the voice of this minister to the mind diseased should be listened to in time: in the statistics of insanity the terrible fact is admitted, that there is an absolute increase of madness throughout Europe and America.

Dr. Winslow has assembled some very interesting instances of retention of the vigour of the mind in old age, and arrived at, inter alia, these conclusions: “1. That an active and vigorous condition of the mental faculties is compatible with old age. 2. That a continuous and often laborious exercise of the mind is not only consistent with a state of mental health, but is apparently productive of longevity.” It is indeed particularly satisfactory to be told that even in the worst types of mental disease there are some salient and bright spots upon which the physician may act; and that formidable and apparently hopeless and incurable cases of derangement admit, if not of cure, at least of considerable alleviation and mitigation.

The Half-mad.

Motives for Suicide.

Remedy for Poisoning.

Pouring cold water on the face and head appears to be a good remedy in case of poisoning by narcotics. A young woman accidentally swallowed six drachms of a mixture of laudanum and chloroform with some hydrocyanic acid in it. She immediately vomited a portion of the liquid, and then fell down in a state of coma. Professor Harley being called in, he administered hot coffee and nitric ether, and proceeded to effect artificial respiration. No great improvement was perceptible, but on the application of cold water to the forehead the effect was magical. The patient began to breathe more freely, and she lost some blood from the nose. As soon as the affusion of cold water ceased, the coma returned, and was again removed by renewing the affusion; the patient soon moved her arms and legs, and seemed anxious to avoid the stream of water, as if it caused her pain. This treatment was renewed at intervals until the following day, and after the lapse of sixty hours all distressing symptoms disappeared completely.

New Remedy for Wounds.

Compensation for Wounds.

The Best Physician.

What chiefly characterizes the most eminent physicians, and gives them their real superiority, is not so much the extent of their theoretical knowledge—though that, too, is often considerable—but it is that fine and delicate perception which they owe, partly to experience, and partly to a natural quickness in detecting analogies and differences which escape ordinary observers. The process which they follow, is one of rapid, and, in some degree, unconscious, induction. And this is the reason why the greatest physiologists and chemists, which the medical profession possesses, are not, as a matter of course, the best curers of disease. If medicine were a science, they would always be the best. But medicine being still essentially an art, depends mainly upon qualities which each practitioner has to acquire for himself, and which no scientific theory can teach. The time for a general theory has not yet come, and probably many generations will have to elapse before it does come. To suppose, therefore, that a theory of disease should, as a matter of education, precede the treatment of disease, is not only practically dangerous but logically false.—Buckle’s History of Civilization, vol. ii.

In 1857, Sir John Forbes, M.D., after fifty years of professional experience, left, as a legacy to his successors, the emphatic avowal, that Nature is, after all, the real physician—since, however human ingenuity may devise means of alleviation and acceleration, it is Nature and not Art which cures all curable diseases. Sir John is, however, far from implying that the art of medicine is without its use and importance, especially in preventing disease; but he wishes attention to be more sedulously fixed upon the degree to which nature can be left entirely to herself, in order that we might know how, and to what extent, art may with advantage interfere. There are many cases in which nature, left to herself, will infallibly kill her patient—say, for instance, in a case of poisoning—whereas the application of a stomach-pump, or a chemical reagent, arrests the evil at once.

Sir John Forbes invites his brethren to collect and classify the evidence which shows how nature cures disease; and the prejudices which hamper the physician, he indicates in the following enumeration of current delusions:

The sick man is impatient to be well. Ignorant of nature’s slow processes, “the strongest and most effective powers of art,” says Sir John, “are usually employed for the very purpose of setting aside or counteracting, or modifying in some way or other, the powers of nature. Generally speaking, we may even say that all the heroic arms of physic are invoked purposely to disturb, and obstruct, and overwhelm the normal order of the natural processes.”

The Uncertainty of Human Life.

In Lord Cockburn’s Memorials, we read of these three remarkable deaths. At the close of 1809, Dr. Adam, of the High School, Edinburgh, died, after a few days’ illness. His ruling passion was for teaching. He was in his bedchamber: finding that he could not see, he uttered a few words, which have been variously given, but all the accounts of which mean—“It is getting dark, boys; we must put off the rest till to-morrow.” It was the darkness of death. On May 20, 1811, President Blair had been in court that day, apparently in good health, and had gone to take his usual walk from his house in George-square round by Bruntfield Links and the Grange, when he was struck with sudden illness, staggered home, and died. The day before his funeral, another unlooked-for occurrence deepened the solemnity. The first Lord Melville had retired to rest in his usual health, but was found dead in bed next morning. These two early, attached, and illustrious friends were thus lying suddenly dead, with but a wall between them; their houses, on the northeast side of George-square, Edinburgh, being next each other.

It has always been said, and never, so far as the writer knows, contradicted, and he is inclined to believe it, that a letter written by Lord Melville was found on his table or in a writing-case, giving a feeling account of his emotions at President Blair’s funeral. It was a fancy-piece, addressed to a member of the Government, with a view to obtain some public provision for Blair’s family; the writer had not reckoned on the possibility of his own demise before his friend’s funeral took place.

Dr. Granville, in his work on Sudden Death, has related a number of instances of the uncertainty of life, which came to his knowledge between the years 1849 and 1854, from which we select the following:

Mr. Horace Twiss, whose stout frame and laborious habits seemed to promise long life, while sitting in the board-room of one of the Companies of which he was a Director, and in the act of addressing the members, ceased to live, early in May, 1849.

Not long after, at Florence, Harriett Lady Pellew suddenly expired in her carriage, on the drive at the Cascine; and at Paris, the Countess of Blessington, returning home from dinner at the Duchess de Grammont’s, was seized with apoplexy, and died next morning, June 4.

In the same year, on September 9, the Grand Duke Michael, brother of Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, a prince of gigantic frame, while reviewing his troops at Warsaw, fell from his horse, and expired a few hours after.

At Rome, Richard Wyatt, the sculptor, was suddenly carried off by apoplexy, May 27, 1851; and on June 7, at Fontainebleau, Reynolds, the author of Miserrimus, died suddenly.

“I must rise instantly, or I shall be suffocated,” said the wife of a banker, on July 8, at Trent Park: she rose, rushed to a window, which she threw open to inhale fresh air: it was the last breath she took in, for she fell a corpse!

In the same year, Audin, the well-known publisher, died suddenly in his carriage, while travelling from Marseilles to Avignon; and Herr Carl Sander, the celebrated German surgeon, expired while seated at his desk, writing a treatise on anatomy.

On New Year’s Day, 1852, Sir Charles Wager Watson, of Westwratting Park, while riding briskly to meet the Suffolk foxhounds, fell from his horse, and on his friends coming up, they found him dead. On April 5, Prince Schwartzenberg was holding a Cabinet council, when he suddenly appeared to gasp for breath, and withdrew: he rallied, and retired to dress for dinner, during which he fell senseless on the floor, and died within an hour from his first seizure.

Mr. Frank Forster, the engineer, on April 13, while writing a letter, was struck with apoplexy, and almost immediately expired. A. N. Welby Pugin, the architect, scarcely of mature age, died suddenly at Ramsgate, September 14; and on the same day, the Duke of Wellington, who had retired to rest apparently quite well on the previous night, died, it is stated of apoplexy, within the brief space of six or seven hours. Dr. Granville states, from the testimony of medical and other near attendants, that, from the very first seizure, when the duke ordered distinctly the apothecary to be fetched immediately, down to the last moment of his existence, paralysis of the brain had been complete, for no other comprehensible word could he utter after that direction. On the day before, Dr. Stokoe, the appointed medical attendant to Napoleon I., during the last years of his exile, died suddenly in a public room at York, as he was preparing to continue his journey to London.

On March 12, 1853, Marshal Haynau, having supped with the prime minister, Buol, retired to rest, when, just after midnight, he rang for a glass of water; when the servant returned, his master was gasping for breath, and soon after died. On the same night, the gallant Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Kerrison was found dead in his bed. And, not many days after, Vice-Admiral Zarthmann, while walking in the streets of Copenhagen, complained of vertigo, sank to the ground, and expired in an hour. On April 30, Dr. Butler, Dean of Peterborough, while seated at table with his family, suddenly became insensible, and in ten minutes passed away, almost without a struggle. Maurice O’Connell, the eldest son of “the Liberator,” appeared in his usual health in the House of Commons; on the morrow, at midnight, he breathed his last. On December 12, 1853, Dr. Harrington, Principal of Brazenose College, Oxford, having retired to rest in his usual health and spirits, was shortly after seized with spasms, and died before eight o’clock next morning, in his fifty-third year. On the 5th of the same month, Captain Warner, of the “long range,” expired suddenly. On a Sunday evening in the same month, a stout middle-aged yeoman was crossing Ovington Park, near Southampton, on his way to the church, which he never reached: the park-keeper found him seated with his back to a tree, his hat on, his umbrella under his arm—dead—with no appearance of convulsion or previous struggle. Visconti, the architect, on December 29, had attended the first meeting of the Imperial Commission for the Exposition building at Paris, and was returning home in his carriage: on the door being opened, he was found dead.

One of the most awfully sudden visitations recorded in our time was the death of Mr. Justice Talfourd, in his fifty-eighth year, March 13, 1845, at Stafford, while delivering his charge to the grand jury. He was speaking of the increase of crime—of the neglects of the rich, the ignorance of the poor—of the want of a closer knowledge and more vital sympathy between class and class—and of the thousand social evils which arise from that unhappy and unnatural estrangement of human interests—when his face flushed and he bent forward on his desk, almost as if the Judge were bowed in prayer by some sharp and overpowering emotion. A moment more, and the bystanders saw him swerve, as if he were already senseless. He was dying, calmly and happily. In a few seconds he was gone—and all that was mortal of the poet was carried to the Judges’ Chambers and there laid down in breathless awe. “The people were trembling at the thought of coming before him; but in a minute his function was over, and he was gone to his own account.”

Respecting the frequency of these fatal occurrences, Dr. Granville remarks: “Where is the friend, where the acquaintance, or the passing associate at a club, who has not some sad story of the sort, or many of them, to tell you, if you once enter on the dismal subject? From every quarter of the country, from families whom you knew to be in the full bloom of youth, of individuals who were deemed vigorous and in the flower of manhood, we hear as we meet in our daily intercourse, of some one of them having suddenly disappeared from among the living!” Our newspapers abound with such records as the following.

In 1837, a communication to a Bristol journal recorded