We might select from the history of Dr. DoWLER many other passages of similar import, but enough has been presented to indicate the strong groundwork of his opinions upon the subject of quarantine. One more quotation from him in regard to the utter futility of some of the means adopted for the purpose of staying the march of the dreadful epidemic will close our notice of his paper.

"The practical method of attacking the ens epidemicum or epidemic entity, is no more satisfactory than the theoretical,-as the enfilading the streets with artillery, the combustion of tar, or the smoking of the enemy out of a place. Dr. RUSH and others enumerate such examples. The plague left London, they affirm, as soon as coal was introduced into the city as fuel. Now the part of New Orleans most affected by yellow fever in 1853, was the very part most afflicted by coal smoke, namely, near the St. Mary's market, where the foundries of the city are concentrated, as Leed's, McFee's McCan's, Armstrong's etc. The burning of gunpowder, and artillery firing in the streets and public squares have sometimes been followed by the retreat of the ens epidemicum-just as the eating of a salt herring was followed by the recovery of a Frenchman and the death of an Englishman, by fever. The patriotic Board of Health, of which the philanthropic Mayor was chairman, had done all that was possible to stay the march and to mitigate the evils of the epidemic-scraped, the streetslustrated the gutters-provided for the sick-buried the dead, and wisely quarantined the influx of the uninfected immigrants, they had done more; for they gave their personal attention to the sick and dying; in the midst of the crisis, the public mind swaying to and fro like the storm-stricken forest, they yielded to the prevailing opinion. At sun-set the epidemic was regularly, for a time, attacked with great guns. But gun powder failed. It did worse. Sleep to the sick is the turning point of life-the first glimmer along the dark horizon of the yet dubious morning-sleep was broken-the intellect vibrating between reason and delirium, shattered by the clangor of arms and fever, raved with redoubled violence, and was sometimes quenched at once by a horrid convulsion amid the roar of cannon."

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Among the numerous plans advocated by many, was that of tar-burning. This, too, was tried. But the epidemic raged the more. Terror was supreme."

L R.

1854.] ANTISELL on Metamorphosis and Metempsychosis. 379

ART. V.-Address introductory to the Course of Lectures in the Chemical Department of the Vermont Medical College, delivered before the Class of Session 1854. By. THOMAS ANTISELL, M. D., Professor of Chemistry to the College, and to the Berkshire Medical Institution. Published by the Class of the College. Woodstock; Press of the Vermont Temperance Standard; 1854.

The subject of this lecture is "Metamorphosis and Metempsychosis," and the author presents in a striking and beautiful light some of the curious and wonderful phenomena of chemical action. It is an address of rare excellence, abounding in facts, and impressed by the true spirit of philosophy and poetry. We cite a few passages in proof. The author takes, as an example of chemical action, or metamorphosis, a mineral spring, issuing from the crevices of the inner and heated part of the earth, and pursues the mutations of one of its constituents.

"These bubbles of fixed air, or carbonic acid, are made up of charcoal and the vivifying part of our atmosphere, oxygen. This gas, coy, aerial in its form, yet has earthly longings, and loves to creep close to the bosom of the earth, and twines within the deepest folds and wrinkles which Time has made upon her surface; bathes itself in the placid stream, and with it floats along, until it is carried to the sea, where it descends from its exalted position, and seats itself upon the billows of heaving ocean, and mingling in the foam and the waves, it pierces several fathoms deep, to the ocean bottom. There, on the dark slopes of a subaqueous hill, lie in wait myriads of beings, little sacs of membrane, invisible to the unaided eye; they twist their tiny arms about, and catch a bubble, with its coating of water, and greedily devour it; the water they return, the bubble is retained; presently a little limestone coat or shell is formed by the animal, and half the amount in weight is caused by this imprisonment and solidification of the gas. These little animalcules work and build together, and by numbers illimitable and succession continuous, they raise their limestone to the water level,—and behold, the coral reef. Trace it emerge steadily above the water, and the yam and the bread-fruit, the cocoa-nut and the screw-pine clothe its flat and whitened beaches with food and shelter for the wayfaring navigator or current-drifted Polyne

sian. Here is the restless activity of the atom. Vomited forth from the earth, it emerges into air-sinks down into the waterpasses into the body of an animal, and becomes an integrant part thereof; and when the latter dies, it remains behind to form the basis of a durable rock. It is the real proteus; with its change of place it has changed its form;-in the air a gas, in the water a liquid, in the animal and the reef it is imprisoned as a solid. Nor is this a new office to it. Ever since that period in our planet's history, when the waters were gathered together into one place, has this carbonic acid fulfilled the same office, and built up, in the slimy depths of the ocean, these numerous mountain masses of limestone, which, by the movements of time and elevation, become the dry rock of the valleys around us. The labors of man fall into insignificance when compared with that of a minute animalcule, and less enduring monuments of his existence remain, than that of one of the smallest of God's creation.

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'But some one will now say, your atom is now at rest. It is a solid rock, and has been so for ages. But are rocks eternal? Why does Nature's bosom throb and heave within continually, and seem almost ready to burst, until, as it were, no longer able to confine herself within the tight girdle that encircles her, she bursts the zone and raises up the land around us. What for? Because the limestone will not stay among us. It, too, has its office;-it yields itself to the rains of heaven, to the rivers of earth, and to the demands of growing vegetables, and the plant and tree draw it in for nutriment, and destroy its composition. The river yields it to the animals in drink, and the remainder is carried down and deposited as a fine chalk mud at the embouchure of the stream, again, in the cycle of change, to be raised to dry land, and again to be removed. Where, then, is the period of rest? Shall we call the quiescence of even a series of ages in the life of an indestructible and an immortal, a permanent condition? It is rather delay than rest. We must not measure the periods of creation upon the Procrustes bed of our short lives; nor dare to imagine the duration of even the life of our species as more than a dot of sand in the hour-glass of eternity."

Again:

"While nature thus performs her round of change in the great deeps, let me direct your attention to what is going on in the air. See yonder forest trees, with leaves glittering in the sunbeams, like the well polished armor of the serried ranks of infantry, busy drinking in illimitable volumes of this same fixed air, carrying it into its branches and meeting with the water sucked up by the roots, forming, by the union of this gas and water, the woody tissue, starch, and sugar. To accomplish it, the gas is decomposed, broken up into charcoal and oxygen; the oxygen is given off, the

1854.] ANTISELL on Metamorphosis and Metempsychosis. 381 charcoal retained, to unite with the water to form from these, substances in different proportions the solid wood, the gummy ferina, and the saccharine sap. Wonderful fecundity of nature? which can fashion from the same elements three different substances, and has power in addition to transmute them, one into another, with the least possible expenditure of force, as often as occasion demands the change.*

The following are among the closing thoughts of the address:

"This ever-acting mutation of the atom is due in part to our air, which, containing so much oxygen loosely mingled in, readily vields that element to the first petitioner which presents itself, and it, like a Circassian beauty in the market, seems waiting for the offer, and anxious for the union. The brightest plate of metal is soon tarnished by it, and where it cannot corrode, it will film. It is the trouble of the daguerreotypist to keep his plate clean; he washes, he rubs, he dissolves, and he coats anew the surface occasionally, to keep a pure metallic surface; and when gotten, he has to shut it up from the light, for strange to tell, every ray of light lays its image there, unseen by our coarser gaze, but then needing only the more sensitive surface to make it plain to us.

"The slightest article which we leave out of our hands leaves its image where it rests. A copper coin upon a silver one-a silver coin upon a mirror, leave images which even our breath can make evident to our eye; and it is possible for us to take upon a warm copper ptate an image or copy of a newspaper.

“ Nature does not merely condescend to paint the portrait or the landscape upon the coated plate in the atelier of the artist. She is no niggard in her pencil. Every where and at all times where there are rays of light wandering,-where there is a movement to be chronicled,-where there is, to speak technically, a ground to receive the painting, there the image is drawn, painted in an invisible ink. Wherever in crowds we gather within a building, wherever individuals may transact private business together, there is the angel of light tracing on the walls the images of the acts going on, whether they be good, or whether they be evil;-images invisible, ineffaceable; and, like as the manuscript of the middle ages, contain many works copied in one over the other, those underneath not effaced, but only covered over, so as suitably to receive the more modern thoughts; so like leaves in a book, on these walls are there depicted the successive acts of individuals.

"With this power of the sun to record passing events, may we not understand, in a holier sense, the office of this luminary, who was set for us, "to rule the day;" and how awfully does the suggestion flit through our minds, that against every one of us there

* Dumas Org. Bal.

is a handwriting of God recorded upon the wall, which it needs little more than the learning of Egypt to expound and explore."

We thank PROF. ANTISELL for the pleasure we have enjoyed in the perusal of his tasteful and elegant address. Such lectures are worthy of all praise, and the young men to whom Dr. ANTISELL addressed this have shown that they are capable of appreciating true literary excellence in causing it to be published.

Editorial Department.

AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION met at St. Louis on the first Tuesday in this month, and after transacting the usual business, adjourned to meet, next year, in Philadelphia. We have not yet seen a full account of the proceedings, but learn from members who were present, that the most exciting question at the late meeting was the motion to transfer, from Philadelphia to New York, the printing of the Association's Transactions. The motion prevailed, but it was at the same time resolved that after the present year the transactions shall be printed at the place of meeting, and consequently they will be printed in Philadelphia in 1855. Dr. C. A. POPE, of St. Louis, was elected President of the Association. The entertainment provided for the Association by the Physicians of St. Louis is described as having been sumptuous in the extreme, and the private hospitality to the members equal to anything yet exhibited in any city where the Association has met. We hope in our next number to be able to give all the particulars of this interesting meeting.