lost in the magnitude of the other. It is, however, of no small importance. It diverts a valuable trade carried on from the northern part of Vermont to Montreal, and opens a market for the country, lying on the banks of lake Champlain. The immense forests of the North, which never yet felt the axe of the husbandman, will soon bow before his arm, and exchange their gloomy shades for the clear sunshine of the open field. The revenue of this canal, it is said, will produce enough to pay the interest of the capital employed in its construction, and to establish a sinking fund for extinguishing the principal. Thus, after some years, the state will enjoy a new income, to be expended in objects of public utility.

Whatever may be the force of the considerations we have urged in favor of these canals, we think that they are merged and lost in one which is paramount and superior to all, which is intimately connected with the character and conservation of our civil institutions, and our freedom and happiness as a nation. The government under which we live is emphatically a government founded on public opinion; it is an association. which depends for its existence on the breath of the people. This constitutes one of its great distinguishing features; and though it is one of which we are justly proud, it is not without its perils. We cherish this pride, because it implies, nay more, requires an intelligent and patriotic population to support and defend such a system, to protect it from its own inherent weakness, to guard it against the attacks of an insidious lust of power, to maintain our fellow citizens in all the plenitude of legitimate and deputed command, but instantly to crush the man, like the reptile who crawls into our dwel lings, who dares to usurp the fasces of authority which were never delivered to him by the people. But we are not only republics, but federated republics. We are bound together by a common charter, 'to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' This association was voluntary, and dictated by an experience of benefits under a previous confederacy. This union then depends upon the affections of the people; and it would be found, if they were once subtracted from it, how weak and ineffectual were the laws which bound us together.

Whatever, therefore, in addition to the civil ligaments of our union, superinduces those physical bonds which are ever most tangible to the minds of ordinary men, confers an infiNew Series, No. 9.

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nite benefit on the country, and a new vigor upon those institutions whose great object is the maintenance of the right of self-government. It is in this view then that we consider the great western canal of paramount importance. It connects the east with the west by a reciprocal and advantageous commerce, it brings the citizens of widely extended communities into frequent and regular intercourse. By it, the commodities of the one are transferred in a just and equitable exchange into the limits of the other; and thus a strong but mutual interest will ultimately unite them with a chain, which neither the fervors of party nor the mutual jealousy of states will ever be able to destroy. We rejoice that the prayers of good men seem to have been heard, and that the prophecies of those ignorant of our laws and the character of the people, or those unable to appreciate the excellence of both, are already shown to be false. The union of the states is our only safety. It protects and defends us, it secures respectability at home and abroad, it has raised the American name to an honorable elevation, and affords its invisible but omnipotent shield to every citizen, whether he navigates his bark upon the billows of the trackless ocean, or prosecutes his adventurous way among the naked and ferocious savages of the Missouri or Columbia. Every where may it be felt, surrounding us with its magic influence, till we almost lose the perception of its invaluable favors, in the regular and ample flow of its varied blessings. Remove it,-give an absolute independence to every state, and the promise of our youth is blasted, and with it the world's best hope laid low.

Influenced by these views, the state of New York has carried on those great improvements, in which certainly she has far outstripped any other member of the union. They will be a monument of her talent and her vigor, when contemplated by other generations. They are the noblest objects of a people's ambition, and the most permanent sources of their glory. When those transitory interests, which animate opposition, shall have passed away, when those miserable jealousies, which too often separate good and honorable men, shall all have been forgotten, these noble canals will remain to bless the memory of their authors, and distribute their benefits upon their posterity. In all human probability we do not yet perceive the full and complete advantages, which they are ultimately to produce. The changes they may cause, the aspect

they may give to our country, and the character they may impress upon our people are concealed beneath the mantle of time. These subjects will hereafter afford room for the research of the historian; at this moment they are hidden even from those who almost witness the close of the experiment, and the animating recompense of a patriotic and intelligent people. It is the prerogative of great minds to strike out those improvements, whose excellence, though appreciated at the time, is destined to be fully enjoyed in another age. The cloaca maxima is to this day the common sewer of Rome, and the acqueducts of the Campagna still supply to the eternal city, as they did centuries ago, the luxuries and the comforts of life. Their founders have long since ceased to exist, but these proud memorials of their genius remain; and when the statesmen who conceived the project of the Erie and Champlain canals, and that generation who completed them, shall have passed away, the tides of the Hudson will meet in fraternal accord with the waves which wash the shores of Chicago, or beat against the cliffs of Mackinaw :-the most powerful testimony to the force of an enlightened government, supported by a free and educated people.*

ART. XIII.-Boylston Medical Prize Dissertations for the years 1819 and 1821. Experiments and observations on the communication between the stomach and urinary organs, and on the propriety of administering medicine by injection into the veins. By E. Hale, jun. M. D. M. M. Š. S. Boston, O. Everett and J. W. Ingraham, 1821. pp. 135.

DR HALE is already very favorably known to the public by a work, which he published some years since, containing a valuable account of the spotted fever, as it prevailed in the

Since this article was sent to the press, and of course too late to be of service to us, we have seen a pamphlet, entitled the Canal policy of New York.' It consists of a series of letters published sometime since in the Statesman, under the signature of Tacitus, and now republished, with an introduction. We observe, moreover, in the reports of the proceedings of congress, that the assembly of Illinois have applied for national assistance toward constructing a canal from the river Illinois to lake Michigan, an enterprize which we have intimated to be practicable..

town of Gardiner, and by some experiments on respiration, which were communicated to the public in his Inaugural Dissertation. The dissertations at present before us contain an experimental examination of two curious and interesting subjects-one physiological-the other relating more immediately to practical results-and in their design and execution do equal credit to the ingenuity, diligence, and fidelity of their author. These dissertations obtained the Boylston premiums for the years 1819 and 1821. These premiums are awarded by a committee appointed by the corporation of Harvard university, and are paid from funds appropriated by the individual whose name they bear, and to whose munificence, public spirit, and love of science, the college owes so many of its finest institutions. They have now been in operation for nearly twenty years, and have been eminently useful in exciting a spirit of emulation and a thirst for literary distinction among the younger members of the medical profession.

The first dissertation is upon a subject which has always excited some interest and much doubt among physiologists, the existence of a nearer passage for fluids from the stomach to the urinary bladder, than that through the circulation and kidneys. We have a thousand familiar examples, in which after taking liquids into the stomach, the quantity of urine is considerably increased within a very short period of time. Now, according to the ordinary course of substances received into the system, and the course which we should a priori suppose liquids as well as solids would take, they should be first acted upon by the stomach, if they were capable of undergoing any change from the influence of that organ, sent out into the intestines, absorbed by the lacteals, carried with the chyle into the circulation, and then separated from the circulating mass in the ordinary way by the kidneys. But this seems too long and indirect a process to be so completely effected in so short a time, that the odour or color of substances taken into the stomach shall be perceptible within from fifteen to thirty minutes in the urine and, accordingly, anatomists and physiologists have at various times been occupied in searching for some other way, by which this operation might be effected.

As has been usual in all inquiries of the kind, a thousand vague conjectures and hypotheses have been broached, some supported by observation, or experiment, others founded upon mere surmise. Of these different opinions, the first part of

the dissertation gives us a sufficient account; from which it appears that a great majority of the authors, who have noticed this subject, have believed in the existence of a communication between the stomach and the bladder more direct, than that through the circulation and kidneys, though they differ much in their opinion as to the mode, by which this communication is effected. Indeed, when we examine the facts, the experiments, and the reasoning, which have been applied to the investigation of this subject, it excites little wonder that the truth has not been sooner arrived at.

The first step towards determining, with any certainty, the course which fluids take from the stomach, when they pass with such rapidity into the bladder, seems to have been taken by sir Everard Home. In a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1808, he relates experiments performed on different animals, in which, after tying the pyloric orifice of the stomach, and injecting a fluid into it through the œsophagus, part of the fluid injected was found to have escaped, traces of it were discovered in the spleen, and chemical tests detected it in the urine. He believed, at this time, that the passage from the stomach was effected through the medium of the spleen, but subsequent observation convinced him to the contrary. In a paper published in 1811, he relates experiments, in which, after the extirpation of the spleen, and the tying of the thoracic duct, fluids injected into the stomach were detected in the bile and urine. And his conclusion of course is, that liquids, taken in large quantities into the stomach, do not pass the pylorus, but are taken up in the cardiac portion of that organ by some method, of which we are ignorant, and conveyed into the circulation.

These facts, supposing them sufficiently established by the experiments, tend clearly to show that the fluids taken into the stomach do pass into the circulation, and that the only point in which the course they take to the bladder is shortened, is in being absorbed into the circulation from the stomach, instead of going through the usual operations of that organ, and then being taken up from the intestines, as is the case with the other alimentary substances. Experiments of this kind, however, require to be frequently repeated before full faith can be reposed in the deductions made from them, and it would have been desirable that this should have been done with a view to the present investigation, but we cannot won