indications of the case.

Harmonize by every possible means the actions and secretions. The lady, to whose case I have already alluded, seldom perspires. When she does so moderately, she is free from pain, and the tumour diminishes in size. When on the contrary she perspires profusely, the breast increases in size, and becomes more painful. You see then the advantage of a perfect harmony of the secretions in cases of cancer. In cases where the urine is scanty, you would be astonished to find how much improvement may sometimes take place in the tumor from the employment of squill and digitalis in combination with the chrono-thermal medicines. Gentlemen, you must not suppose, like most of the vulgar, and not a few of the members of the profession, that cancer of the breast any more than the decomposition of other external parts of the body is necessarily a mortal disease. So long as you can keep up the general health to a certain mark, how can there be danger? The breast is not a vital organ; it is not like the lungs or heart necessary to the individual life,— it is a part superadded for the benefit of another generation. Many women formerly remarkable for large bosoms have, in the course of years, lost every appearance of breast by the slow but imperceptible process of interstitial absorption ;-what inconvenience have these suffered in consequence? But for the paroxysms of pain, cancer would seldom terminate fatally at all; it is the pain that makes the danger, not the mere process of structural decomposition. Pain alone will wear out the strongest: relieve this, therefore, in every way you can, but avoid leeches and depletion, which I need not say are the readiest means, not only to exhaust the patient's strength, but to produce that extreme sensibility of nerve, or that intolerance of external impression, that converts the merest touch into the stab of a dagger. Strong people seldom complain of pain: weakly and emaciated persons only do so. Keep up your patient's health then by every means in your power, and they may live as many years with a cancer of the breast, as if they had never suffered from such a disease. Sir B. Brodie mentions the case of a lady who lived twenty years with Cancer, and died at last of an affection of the lungs, with which it had no necessary connexion.

What shall I say in regard to amputation of the breast? Will amputation harmonize the secretions? Will it improve the constitution in any way whatever? Those patients who, in the practice of others, have been induced to undergo operations have seldom had much cause to thank their surgeons,-the disease having, for the most part, reappeared at a future period in the cicatrix of the wounded part. Gentlemen, you have only to look at the pallid, bloated, or emaciated countenances of too many of the sufferers to be satisfied that something more must be done for them than a mere surgical operation,—a measure doubtful at the best in most cases, and fatal in not a few. Shiverings, heats and sweats, or diarrhœa, or dropsy, these are the constitutional signs that tell you you have something more to do than to dissect away a diseased structure, which structure, so far from being the cause, was in reality but one feature of a great totality of infirmity. Many and many a breast have I known to be condemned as cancerous which has nevertheless been cured. That the knife may sometimes be advantageously employed I do not deny, but it should be the exception, not the rule; for the honourable and enlightened surgeon will admit how little it has served him in most cases beyond the mere purpose of temporary palliation. When you hear a man now-a-days, speaking of the advantage of early operating, you may fairly accuse him of ignorance, with which I regret to say interest, in this instance, may occasionally go hand in hand. The price of amputating a breast enters into the calculation of some surgeons.

If you search the records of medicine upon the subject of tumors, you will find that the medicinal agents by which these have been cured or diminished, come at last to the substances of greatest acknowledged efficacy in the treatment of ague. One prac- ▾ titioner (Carmichael) lauds iron; another (Alibert) speaks favourably of the bark; the natives of India prefer ursenic while most practitioners have found iodine and mercury more or less serviceable in their treatment. Gentlemen, do you require to be told that these substances have all succeeded and failed in ague! Wonder not then that each has one day been lauded, another decried for every disease which has obtained a name, tumors of

all kinds among the number. We therefore conclude that tumor, like every other disease, is a development in the course of intermittent fever. That the false cartilages found in joints are the result of the ocasionally same disease I think the following case will be looked upon as a proof: -A soldier of the 30th foot, had a fit of ague every alternate day. Among his other complaints was a sudden occasional inability to use the elbow joint, an annoyance that came on and went off he knew not how. My assistant in the hospital supposed him to be shamming. One day, however, the patient directed my attention to a substance in the joint, which, upon examination, finding to be a false cartilage I immediately cut down upon and extracted. This was loose and unconnected ;-a second cartilaginous substance which adhered by a thread-like pedicle to the surface of one of the bones I also removed. The arm got well, but the man continued subject to occasional ague fits, and in about a year afterwards I had again to perform a similar operation for him. From the same joint I extracted another cartilaginous substance, which was attended with some difficulty in the removal, as it adhered by a considerable part of its surface to the capsular ligament.

Mr. Lawrence in his observations on "Loose Cartilages in the Joints," says: "They have been found after death both in the elbow and joint of the lower jaw; but I do not know that they have ever been extirpated by surgical operation, except from the knee joint." Mr. Lawrence's observations are to be found in the Medical Gazette for 1830; while my operations were performed in 1828-9, from which it would appear that I am the first medical man on record who extracted loose cartilages from the elbow. Has the operation been performed since ?

At our next meeting we shall speak of the Senses and Passions, and explain what are meant by Animal Magnetism and Homœopathy.

LECTURE VII. WILL BE PUBLISHED ON JUNE 1ST.

London: Schulze & Co. 13, Poland Street.

The CAUSES of DISEASE, we have already said and shown, can only affect the body through one or more of the various modifications of nervous perception. No disease can arise independent of this-no disease can be cured without it. Who ever heard of a corpse taking the Smallpox? or of a tumor or an ulcer being healed in a dead body? A dreamer or a German novelist might imagine such things. Even in the living subject; when nerves have been accidentally paralyzed, the most potent agents have not their usual influence over the parts which such nerves supply. If you divide the pneumo-gastric nerves of a living dog-nerves which, as their name imports, connect the brain with the lungs and stomach-arsenic will not produce its accustomed effect on either of these organs. Is not this one of many proofs that an external agent can only influence internal parts PREJUDICIALLY, at least, by means of its electric power over the nerves leading to them? Through the same medium, and in the same manner, do the greater number of REMEDIAL MEASURES exert their SALUTARY influence on the human frame. The brain and spinal column-the latter a prolongation of the former-are the grand centres upon which medicines act; and many are the avenues by which these centres may be approached. Through each of

THE FIVE SENSES

the brain may be either beneficially or banefully influenced. Indeed, take away these, where would be the joys, sorrows, and more than half the DISEASES of mankind?

We shall first speak of SIGHT. The view of a varied and pleasant country may, of itself, improve the condition of

R

many invalids-while a gloomy situation has too often had the reverse effect. There are cases, nevertheless, in which pleasant objects only pain and distract the patient by their multiplicity or brightness. Night and darkness, in such circumstances, have afforded both mental and bodily tranquillity. The presence of a strong light affects certain people with headache; and there are persons to whom the first burst of sunshine is troublesome, on account of the fit of sneezing it excites. A flash of lightning has caused and cured the palsy. Laennec mentions the case of a gentleman who, when pursuing a journey on horseback, suddenly arrived at an extensive plain. The view of this apparently interminable waste affected him with such a sense of suffocation that he was forced to turn back. Finding himself relieved, he again attempted to proceed; but the return of the suffocative feeling forced him to abandon his journey.

The common effects of gazing from a great height are giddiness, dimness of sight, with a sense of sickness and terror; yet there are individuals who experience a gloomy joy upon such occasions; and some become seized with a feeling like what we suppose inspiration to be—a prophetic feeling, that leads them to the utterance and prediction of extravagant and impossible things. Others, again, under such circumstances, have an involuntary disposition to hurl themselves from the precipice upon which they stand. Sir Walter Scott, in his Count Robert of Paris, makes Ursel say, "Guard me, then, from myself, and save me from the reeling and insane desire which I feel to plunge myself in the abyss, to the edge of which you have guided me." Every kind of motion upon the body may affect the brain for good or for evil; and through the medium of the eye novel motion acts upon it sometimes very curiously. You have all experienced giddiness from a few rapid gyrations. Everything in the room then appears to the eye to turn round. If you look from the window of a coach in rapid motion, for any length of time, you will become dizzy. The same thing produces sickness with some. Many people become giddy, and even epileptic,