stand), was preceded by dragging pains in his extremities, which commenced 10 or 12 years ago. The power of moving them was gradually lost; but he had no pain in the head or back, nor any remarkable pain in the abdomen.

After Saurat had been examined, and had given the account of himself, from which the above is abstracted, in a very clear manner, his abnormal condition was more accurately inquired into.

His head is a little turned towards the right side: his eyes have a quiet dull expression; his complexion is pale and fixed; the left side of the face is thinner than the right; the mouth is large, and the right corner of it is remarkably drawn downwards.

His chest has a deep depression on the median line; the ribs, and especially those on the left side, are very much curved; the antero-posterior diameter of the chest is about 4 inches; the spine is very much curved to the left side, but the curvature alters according to the mode in which the trunk is supported. Percussion detects a fuller sound on the right than on the left side; and there is a slight dulness on the left side behind. With the stethoscope, the respiratory murmur can scarcely be heard on the anterior and right side of the chest; but on the left one hears even with the unassisted ear a distinct rubbing sound. The respiration is chiefly effected by the abdominal muscles, for the ribs scarcely move. He inspires 24 times in the minute; his radial artery beats from 80 to 84 times in the same period.

His abdomen presents nothing peculiar; it is yielding and tolerably normal in its developement and form.

In the genital organs, nothing marked is to be observed.

The extremities are incredibly emaciated, especially the hips, thighs, shoulders, and upper arms. His hands and feet are curved and swollen; the fingers are hook-like and almost immovable.

Saurat has got together a respectable property, and has a small estate in the district of Mans, where he takes care to pass the winter.

NECROLOGY.

Mr. Copland Hutchison.—This gentleman, who had furnished many valuable contributions to surgical science, died recently at Plymouth, England. He was the author of a letter on the operation for popliteal aneurism, London, 1811. Practical observations in Surgery, London, 1816. Practical cases in Surgery; particularly as regards the naval and military service, London, 1826; and also of various communications in the Medico-chirurgical Transactions.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From the Author.-Notice of the Daguerreotype. By William E. A. Aikin, M. D., Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacy in the University of Maryland. 8vo. pp. 16. Six wood engravings (from Maryland Med. and Surg. Journal, Vol. i. No. 2.) Baltimore, 1840.

From the Author.-Philosophy of Mind, developing new sources of ideas, designating their distinctive classes, and simplifying the faculties and operations of the whole mind. By John Stearns, M. D., of the city of New York. 8vo. pp. 25. New York, 1840.

THE

AMERICAN MEDICAL INTELLIGENCER.

Vol. IV.

June 15, 1840.

No. 6.

ART. I.-REPORT OF THE MINORITY OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, ON THOMSONIANISM.

(Concluded from page 75.)

Another of the leading principles of this class of physicians is, that the human body is composed of four elements, earth, air, fire and water. Now, as this class of physicians never dissect a human body, and are not chemists, how can they inform us of its component parts? If we wish to ascertain the component parts of any material thing, we submit it to the chemist; we analyze it, resolve it into its elementary principles. This theory was not arrived at in any such way; but to use the words of the founder of this system, he arrived at it by the "mature consideration."

Methinks, that if the qualities of a newly discovered ore were to be ascertained, its elements discovered and its value made known, the process would be something besides consideration. Were consideration the test of component parts and value, there would probably be as many opinions as men.

In this very instance, unfortunately for the theory, and the "mature consideration" on which it is founded, the very things called elements are falsely so called; earth, air, fire, or water, are not elements. The heat produced by combustion, may perhaps be denominated an element, but wha does not know that earth, air, and water are compounds? who is it that presumes to speak of elements and of compounds, unless a chemist himself, or adopting the opinions of chemists.

It will not be denied, that it is the duty of government to protect, by laws aptly fitted to the case, the people against the impositions which any trade, craft, occupation or profession may practise upon them. Custom or statute, or both, have established certain rates or toll for the miller. We test, by certain standards, the weights and measures which are in use; we establish the weight of a given measure of grain; we exact a license from the pedlar, auctioneer, and dealer in liquors; we establish an inspection over the productions of the butcher, the fisherman, the tanner, the lumberman, and the miller, to protect community against imposition, interposing the skill of the inspector as a shield for the ignorant. This we do in the arts. In the sciences we have laws for the protection of the people against peltifogging. In the ecclesiastical world, the state, out of regard for perfect religious freedom and perfect toleration in all matters of faith, abstains from intermeddling; but even here, the different societies of Christians, one and all, have their laws, as certain and as effectual too, as to the moral and literary qualifications of their spiritual guides. In medicine, too, the law has prescribed the moral character, the term of study, the examination and the age of the practitioner.

Are all these laws founded in folly? Are they deserving of being stigma

tized as monopolies; as interfering tyrannically and unnecessarily with common rights and constitutional privileges?

In whose behalf is it that we are called on to deviate from a course practised and sanctioned by the wisdom of ages? Who are they, who talk so much of inherent rights and constitutional privileges, and of monopoly, and of the ignorance and unskilfulness of others? They are men who claim to practise under a patent, who have the exclusive right to compound, vend and administer certain medicines; their existence is predicated on monopoly and exclusive chartered privileges.

Who are they who stigmatize others with the mystery thrown around their science; of their learned technical terms; terms known and understood alone by the medical world; and from their uniformity, affording a wonderful facility for the dissemination of learning, terms, of necessity, learned but always descriptive, and founded on a common language? Terms which any man may learn and understand, if he will just take the trouble to open the dictionary, and no patent lock interposed. They are men who practise under a patent, granting exclusive privileges; and who give the names of No. 1 and 2, as words to their medicines. Are numbers, digits, Arabic figures, more descriptive of the nature, power and properties of medicines, than the most abstruse word used in materia medica?

Physician heal thyself," was never more appropriately applied, than in this case. Render simple and plain your own vocabulary; call your medicines by plain English names, and then criticise, ad libitum, the mystery or pedantry of others.

The committee, with the view of discovering whether there was any thing real in the objection to the use of mineral medicines; whether the principle laid down by this class of physicians, that all metals and minerals, in their state of purity, and all compounds of them, whether natural or artificial, were poisonous, took some pains to ascertain into what substances metals and minerals entered and formed an essential component part, and found that there was scarcely an article of food or medicine but was composed in part of a metal or mineral. That the healthiest human being is composed, in part, of metallic and mineral substances. The colour of the blood is occasioned by a compound of iron it contains; the bones are a mineral substance, and these component parts are as necessary as any other which enter into the system.

Salt itself, so necessary to the enjoyment of life and the promotion of health, is a mineral, and has for its base a metal; one of these poisonous metals. The body of man being composed in part of both metals and minerals, it would seem that a constant supply of these materials in some form was necessary to the developement, and sustenance, and health of the animal system. The committee cannot come to the conclusion that metals or minerals, or their compounds are, as a general rule, poisonous: on the contrary, that both in sickness and in health, they are necessary to our existence.

The fancy, that because the metallic and mineral kingdom is in the ground, and the dead body of a man is deposited in the ground, and that the former has an affinity for the latter, and therefore has a tendency to drag down the body to the grave, is hardly worthy of comment. Water lies as deep in the ground as the metal; its tendency is as essentially downwards. Rum has no such downward tendency. Rum does not exist in the ground; the tendency of rum is upwards. If the theory were correct, the conclusion would seem to follow that water is poisonous and rum is healthy.

This class of physicians use roots, and their tendency is downwards. The committee have also taken some pains to examine the vegetables which this class of physicians use, and behold, there is not one but is composed, in part, both of metals and minerals. This is true of the whole animal and vegetable kingdom. Out of a great number of analytical experi

ments performed by Sir Humphrey Davy, the committee take leave to select the following: 100 parts [of the ashes] of wheat flour contain 43 parts of soluble salts, 13 of phosphates and carbonates, a part of metal, 32 parts of silica; so that [the ashes of] the material out of which our daily bread, the "staff of life" is made, is composed .98 of these poisonous metals and minerals which have such a tendency to drag down men to the grave.

The [ashes of] Indian corn, the native grain, and of which above all others, the American is proud, and of which the poet Barlow said, that half the bones of New-England's sons are made, is composed of .78 of metallic and mineral substances.

It would be a waste of time, to show the component parts of different vegetables. It is sufficient to say, that there is not a single vegetable in the world of plants which is not composed, in part, of metallic and mineral substances. Even the red pepper, which is the great stimulant used by this order of physicians, is found on analysis, to contain ten per cent. of metallic matter. The lobelia inflata is not more fortunate. This plant, vulgarly called Indian tobacco, and which occupies so high a rank in the materia medica of this class of physics, is thus described by Barton. It will be borne in mind, that Barton's Medical Botany is one of the few books which this class of physicians claim that it is useful to read. "Lobelia inflata,” says Barton, "is decidedly one of the most active of our native vegetables. It might, perhaps, be said with truth, that the United States does not yield a plant of more powerful and unequivocal operation on the human system; and since poisons are, generally, under judicious use, good medicines, the Indian tobacco seems to have an undoubted claim to a place in the materia medica; it is possessed of an emetic, sudorific and powerful expectorant effect. Not only horses and cattle have been supposed to be killed by eating it, but a remarkable instance of its deleterious effects on the human system is related in the report of a trial for murder, of a notorious empiric, in Massachusetts, who caused lobelia to be used to a pernicious extent as a nostrum. This daring and ignorant man (Samuel Thomson, by name,) is said to have usually prescribed it, and frequently with impunity, in the dose of a common teaspoonful of the powdered seeds or leaves, and often repeated. If the medicine does not puke or evacuate powerfully, it frequently destroys the patient, and sometimes in five or six hours."

How this author, who calls lobelia a poison, and the founder of this system of medicine a notorious empiric, and a daring and ignorant quack, should have found favour with his son, the president of the N. Y. S. M. T. B. S. who has so high a regard for his father as to think his equal is not to be found amongst 10,000,000 of men, seems inconsistent with a knowledge of the author. The committee have come to the conclusion that Barton's Medical Botany might, perhaps, have been read, as bills are in this house, by its title only.

The committee, with the view of showing that the sciences of anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, were useful to be studied by the practitioner of medicine, take leave to express an opinion, that disease consists in a change, either of structure or function, in the human system, and that the object of the physician is to bring the system back to its original healthy condition. Now anatomy teaches that the body consists of a great variety of tissues, and that the progress of disease in each is different. This is proved by an examination and comparison of symptoms, and it is the union of a certain number of symptoms which constitutes a particular disease.

It has been ascertained by long practice and experience, that certain medicines or remedies have removed such disease. If such medicines occasionally prove ineffectual, an examination of the dead body will show that such disease had advanced too far before the application of the remedy to be arrested by it.

A moment's reflection will satisfy all that the progress of medical knowledge, the science of treating disease with skill, must, of necessity, be slow,

and owing to the complex nature of the human body, to a certain extent, imperfect.

But if any truth has been established by the experience of ages, it would seem to be this, that there is a variety of disease, and that it cannot be successfully treated by a single class of medicines. A necessary inference from this is, that the physician needs all the light which can be derived from the study of the human system, when in a state of health. Taking this view of the subject, the committee come to the conclusion that an intimate knowledge of anatomy and physiology is absolutely necessary to the physician.

Chemistry teaches the nature and properties of all material bodies; of course of the nature of all medicines. Can it be doubted then that this science which teaches the nature, and the power of medicine is useful and necessary to a physician. As well might the mechanic doubt the utility of understanding the power and use of the tools of his trade, as the physician doubt the necessity of knowing the component parts, the nature and strength of the medicines he uses.

Had this class of physicians been chemists, they would not have levelled their sweeping denunciation on all metals and minerals, and compounds thereof, for that science would have taught them that every medicine which is prescribed by them contains both these substances.

One of the greatest discoveries which crowned the labour and research and learning of the medical world, is the discovery of the theory of the circulation of the blood, by Harvey. This great man, after going through the preparatory studies at the grammar school, studied five years in the University of Cambridge. As a traveller he performed the tour of Europe, and desirous of accomplishing himself as a physician, he pursued his studies some years in the medical school of Padua, then one of the most celebrated in Europe, and there he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine, in 1602. He afterwards became a fellow of the College of Physicians in London, and a professor of anatomy and surgery in that college, and in 1616 first disclosed his great discovery of the theory of the circulation of the blood. Harvey was at that time 38 years of age, and his whole life had been devoted to the cause of science, and the greater part of it to that particular science in which his great discovery was made.

Jenner, that great benefactor of mankind, who disarmed a disease more deadly than the plague of all its terrors, was the son of an English clergyman, received a most excellent classical education, and studied medicine the usual length of time with a country practitioner; not content with the education thus obtained, better probably than that usually allowed, he went to London to attend the hospitals there, and became a private pupil for two years of the celebrated John Hunter, a name dear to every medical student. He cultivated natural history with great ardour and success, and was, in the opinion of Hunter, the first scholar in Europe in the science of human and comparative anatomy.

The tendency of this last science was the discovery, which immortalized his name, and which has saved, and which will continue to save, to youth its beauty, and has prolonged, and will continue to prolong the lives of millions. This great discovery engaged the attention of Jenner for more than twenty years; and an acquaintance with his experiments would convince all that the occasional failure of vaccination was owing to a neglect of the rules which he prescribed.

The names and short biographical sketches of these great men are introduced merely to authorize the inquiry, whether these discoveries ever would have been made, by and with the aid of such an education as the Thomsonian physicians think is all sufficient. Science is always progressive, and it requires very little of the virtue of humility to say and believe that it is yet in its infancy. Sit Isaac Newton, the great, the intellectual, the almost pure intelligence, the connecting link between men and angels, if such a