his remarks would be more valuable; and we encourage him to supply the deficiency in a future report. It would be well if our Civil and Military Surgeons could be persuaded oftener to venture themselves in print. They would not have to complain of severe criticism. Dr. MacGregor's, Journal in the North West, meets with far too little support from the Profession, whether in the way of contributions of material, or money. Whether from personal or other causes we do not know, but some of the ablest men in India, in extensive European practice, contribute nothing.

Narratives of observations, and histories of epidemics are much wanted, and while India abounds in good Medical and Surgical practitioners, there is a great deficiency of every sort of Medical writers. This is possibly the effect of reaction and improved general education. A few years since, monographs on every disease under the sun, inundated the shops of the book-sellers in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. Infallible remedies were most numerous for those diseases which were well known to be the least curable, and the author who had seen the least of any given disease promised his patients the most success -remembering, we suppose, the hint of the Vicar of Wakefield, who told his daughters they were simpletons for giving their crown to the Gipsey who promised them only a Baronet and a Squire for husbands, whereas he would have promised them a Prince and a Nabob for the

same money.

But to return to the subject of Cholera-Mr. Hastings recommends the hot bath of 110° Fahrenheit, or hotter in the 1st stage of attack, in contra distinction to the warm bath, and with a view to arouse the system and render it susceptible to the medicinal agents afterwards to be administered. Perhaps the hot bath is worthy of further trial, though we must warn Mr. Hastings that it has been tried by many and not approved. Dr. J. Mouat tried baths at Berhampore in 1828, in H. M's. 14th Regt.

In the transactions of the Medical Society for that year, an able paper appeared from the pen of that Gentleman, now Surgeon of H. M's. 13th Hussars, one of the most distinguished medical veterans of the army. Dr. Mouat then remarked that he had little more satisfactory to say of the pathology and treatment of the Disease than when he first saw it soon after his arrival in India, in 1817. Thirty years have now elapsed, and in 1847, though many gloomy pages have been added to the History of this Scourge, we have the same melancholy confession to repeat regarding its treatment. Numberless specifics have started and died away, and, about two years ago, it was confidently proposed that Croton Oil in large doses with Hill Opium was so far worthy of confidence that a practitioner failing to employ it, and losing a patient, might tax himself with homicide.

The epidemic of 1845 at Subathu, Kussowli, Umballa, Ferozepore Lúdiana and Meerut, all stations for European troops, shewed the fallacy of the claims of Croton oil to any thing more, than an average place with other medicines. Dr. Dempster and Dr. Steel, two of our most skilful practitioners in the North West, gave the most careful trial

to it in the way laid down by Dr. MacGregor, and so did many others -while the statistics of mortality in the 1st Bengal Fusiliers shew that Dr. MacGregor's own practice with it, was not more successful than that of others, with other drugs. At Meerut the sporadic cases of Cholera are remarkably tractable, and so they used to be at Kurnaul-and when the epidemic reached Meerut, in 1845, it raged less virulently than at other places. It is worthy of note too, that natives are more easily cured than Europeans, and thus there is much encouragement both for the faculty and the laity, to hasten to the aid of poor natives.

Indeed the energy and promptitude and tact with which any given remedy is plied, have as much to do with successful practice as the choice of the remedy in the first instance. When a case appears, every adjunct at hand should be laid under contribution, with a view, as Mr. Hasting's explains, to rouse the nerves of organic life without delay, and before they refuse to respond. After a while the stomach becomes as insensible as a "Mussuk" or a dried bladder. That practitioner will be the most successful, who is most the man of

resources.

It is little to one's credit to plead, if I had had this or that the result would have been different. The man of resources will create means and appliances, if he does not find them, and in one sense will fulfil the proverbial impossibility of making silk purses out of sow's ears.-No head of a family should be without a packet of Cholera Medicines, or neglect to make himself acquainted with the way to administer them, and he should administer them then and there, avoiding to send the patient any distance, or sending any distance for a more eligible material. The following is a summary of what is believed by Dr. Copland, Professor of Medicine in the University College, London, to be the present sense of the profession, regarding Cholera. The passage occurs in a recent number of his Dictionary of medicine, and as it is endorsed by the leading Medical Journals in Great Britain, deserves transcribing in this place for the information of India.

"I conclude this part of the inquiry by stating the inferences which may be drawn from an extensive view of what is known of this pestilence, as it has appeared in Asia and in Europe, and from intimate observation of its phenomena, as they lead to various considerations calcu'lated to arrest its progress, and to remedy it when an attack has not proceeded too far in the destructive processes, in which it has been shewn to terminate. A. The pestilential cholera seems to have 'been propagated by an animal miasm or effluvium of a peculiar kind, emanating from the bodies of the affected; and this effluvium being inhaled with the air into the lungs paralyses their organs, and acts as a poison on the class of nerves which supplies the respiratory, the 'assimilating, the circulating and secreting viscera, vitiating also the whole mass of blood, and thereby occasioning a specific disease, which, in its turn gives rise to an effluvium similar to that, in which ⚫ itself originated; which also in like manner perpetuates its kind ' under the favourable circumstances of predisposition, aerial vicissi'tudes, &c., and thus a specific form of disease is propagated far

and wide, as long as predisposing, concurrent, and determining causes favour its propagation. B. The morbid impression of this effluvium is poison upon the nerves of organic life, and probably the effects of its introduction into the current of the circulation, are of a sedative kind, rapidly destroying the vital energy of the former, and vitiating the latter, and thereby giving rise to the charac⚫teristic phenomena of the malady. C. The impression of the effluvium on the organic class of nerves, and the vitiated state of the blood may be viewed as the proximate cause, not only of the ⚫ disturbance evinced by the respiratory, the secreting, the assimilating and the circulating functions, but also of the morbid actions of the • stomach and bowels, and the copious serous discharges from their organs as well as of the muscular spasms, the sinking of all the vital and ani'mal powers, of the shrunk and collapsed state of the surface of the body, of the black thick state of the blood and of the rapid depression of the animal temperature. D. The state of the perspiration and skin and the discharge of the serous portion of the blood by the stomach and bowels imparting the peculiar appearance of the evacuations, pro⚫ceed from the alteration primarily produced in the vitality of the frame, ⚫ and in the condition of the blood, and it is chiefly through the medium ⚫ of the cutaneous surface of the liver, of the kidneys, and of the mucous ⚫ membranes, assisted, perhaps, also by the other secreting viscera, that the morbid change of the blood is remedied, and impurities removed ⚫ from it. E. The advanced Stages, of the consecutive or febrile symptoms of the disease, whether those, chiefly depending upon the state of ⚫ the nervous functions, or of the circulation within the brain, or proceeding from the condition of the abdominal viscera, arise partly from the 'shock received by, and the depression of the vital energy of the frame in the early stage, and partly, if not chiefly, from the alterations which had taken place in the blood, during the early stages of the malady. F. The effluvium or siminium which propagates the distemper, is generated by the progress of the changes produced in the blood, and is emanated or discharged from the mucous surfaces of the lungs, and digestive canal, and from the cutaneous surface, along with their respective exhalations and secretions; and this siminium by contaminating the surrounding air, or woollen clothes and animal products, capable of attracting and retaining for a while animal effluvium, affects those of the healthy, who are predisposed, either constitutionally or by antecedent, concomitant, or determining influences, or on whom this efficient agent acts in an intense or concentrated form, or is aided by accessory or concurrent causes."

W. Hastings, in his little brochure on the subject, after indicating the general character of cholera, and directing attention to the Anatomy and Physiology of the sympathetic nervous system, proceeds with his deductions regarding the primary seat of the disease. His observations on this head may here be quoted as a favourable specimen of his mode of treating the general subject :

"The most striking feature of cholera, is its remarkably fatal rapidity, On seeing this, one cannot help putting the question,-To what is it owing?

Is the overwhelming prostration a part and parcel of the disease, in fact a symptom; or is it only the effect of other symptoms? e. g. the sickness and purging? Again, one may ask, would sickness and vomiting, however violent, arising from mere functional derangement of the mucous surfaces of the stomach and intestines, bring on this sudden and deadly collapse ? Moreover in many cases, the vomiting and purging are comparatively slight; while in the same instances, the prostration is as great, or even greater. Again how is it, that there is such a sudden and complete change in the secretion of the entire intestinal canal? Supposing, the function originally disordered, would it be likely to be suceeeded by such rapidly fatal annihilation? I think not. To what then can it be attributed? To a morbid impression upon the very source, upon which the integrity and maintenance of every vegetative function, and life itself, depends, viz., to a withdrawal (if I may use the expression) of the healthy amount of stimulus usually afforded by the sympathetic nervous system.

The liver, the stomach, the intestines, the kidneys, the bladder, are all largely supplied from this system of nerves, and we find them all, in this disease, in a state of partial death, and necessarily almost insensible to impressions from remedies however powerful. The heart too, which is also indebted to this system, becomes languid and feeble; succeeded by a torpid circulation, a cold skin, and still colder extremities. At length, the nervous system and the arterial reciprocally act upon each other; the insensibility of the former being increased by the feebleness of the latter, and vice versa. The lungs scarcely perform their office, either as organs of respiration or for purification of the blood, greatly to the detriment of the brain and entire nervous system, and the body generally.

I am not aware that any experiments could be performed to bear out the truth of my notion of the pathology of cholera. One can, I think, only, reason on the subject from a knowledge of the anatomy of the nervous system and its physiology, (as far as known) and from the symptoms of the disease. Examination of the bodies of persons who have died of cholera, gives us no assistance in our search for the primary cause; it shews us clearly enough the ravages committed; the effects produced by the disease; but we are as ignorant as ever, as to why the change from health to disease should be so sudden and so fatal.

The explanation I believe to be this. We have seen that every organ, the healthy and regular performance of whose function is necessary for the maintenance of life, is either altogether or largely indebted to the sympathetic nervous system for its nerves; and that this system, though in some respects distinct, is only partially independent of the brain and spinal cord, and that the latter are the main source whence the power of the former, (of the organic nerves,) is gradually renovated. We have seen that the nerve is charged, as it were with nervous power by the brain and spinal cord, and that, when once charged, it continues to emit this influence, in a manner peculiar to itself. This nervous system then, being predisposed, becomes suddenly morbidly impressed and excited; not absolutely and organically changed; but unable either to receive or to transmit the nervous power, I have above alluded to: the consequence of which is, (as might be expected) a sudden and almost complete destruction of the entire organization of the body. The above I believe to be the primary seat of the disease, though of course a rapid increase to the disorder is brought about by the effect on the entire nervous and arterial systems, the reciprocal action of which serves but to complete the revolution already set up in the entire system.

If this explanation be admitted, the rapidity and suddeness of the disease

the instantaneous and complete derangement of the chylopoetic functions is not to be wondered at; but if it be not admitted, I certainly cannot accord with an opinion, that the cause in the first instance can be merely a functional disturbance of other organs secondarily impressing, in so complete and active a manner, the source whence all the vegetative functions are maintained.

Although I apprehend that the primary morbid action is impressed upon the sympathetic nervous system, I must again remind the reader, that, secondarily, reciprocal action, more particularly that between the nervous and arterial systems, quickly ensues, and maintains and increases the disease. The vivifying influence of the blood is partially lost. It is only while in its arterial state, that the blood is capable of maintaining life. Venous blood interrupts the functions of the brain and nervous system. In cholera, how languid is the circulation, how in complete respiration, and necessarily, how venous the character of the blood. The functions of the body too, being suspended or perverted, the separation from the blood of certain matters which are afterwards eliminated from the animal economy, and which has a great share in preserving the normal composition of the circulating fluid, is at least very incomplete, if not altogether checked."

An Atlas of Anatomical Plates of the human Body, accompanied with descriptions in Hindustani, by Fred. J. Mouat, M. D., Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in England,—Assistant Surgeon Bengal Army, Member of, and Secretary to the Council of Education of Bengal, Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Jurisprudence in the Bengal Medical College, &c. &c. &c. Assisted by Múnshi Nussíradin Ahmud, late of the Calcutta Madrissa. The drawings in stone, by C. Grant, Esq. Calcutta Bishop's College Press, 1846. Part II.

THE Review of a work like this, where the Reviewer is compelled to express the highest admiration and bestow unqualified praise, is not perhaps so easy to him, and shall we say so, not so pleasant to the reader, as when some blemishes and rugged features present their salient angles for criticism and comment.

But whether this be so, or not, the purchasers and users of the book, will not complain of the rare degree of perfection and beauty attained in this Atlas of Anatomical Plates. As our readers know, every publication of Indian birth or extraction, may claim the attention of the Calcutta Review; provided authors and publishers shew us the ordinary courtesy of forwarding their works for timely notice. The professional details of a work like this do not however come strictly within our scope; and though we shall touch, we will not dwell on them. Such a book was greatly needed by the rising generation of educated native practitioners, and not less for the reference of the Medical Officers of the Services, whose volumes, endeared to them by College use and enriched by their own notes and memoranda, have long since been sold at auction, to some retired corporal for eight annas or haply a rupee,

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