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 cesophagus, 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

Ar that Dr Hale should have been deterred from their repetition, by their excessive barbarity; and besides, from the experience and character of sir E. Home in this kind of investigation, they can be relied upon with as much confidence, as any single series of experiments ever can be.

The question then to be determined is, whether, having once got the fluids in this summary way into the circulation, they may not in the ordinary course of the functions be found in the bladder after the short period of time in which this is known to take place, without the necessity of supposing any more direct passage. The object of Dr Hale is to show that they may, and in this we conceive he has perfectly succeeded. With this view it was first necessary to ascertain what length of time it would require, for fluids to be carried from the stomach to the bladder, through the medium of the circulation. This can never be ascertained with any degree of precision; yet some approach to the knowledge desired may be made by estimating the rapidity and force of the blood in circulation.' p. 39. Supposing the whole quantity of blood in the body to be thirty pounds, and that thrown out at each contraction of the ventricle, which happens at least seventy times in a minute, to be two ounces; the complete circulation of any one definite portion of blood would be accomplished, according to Dr Hale, in three minutes and twenty-five seconds; and calculating the quantity thrown out at each contraction at only one ounce and a half, the period would be only extended to five minutes and one second. Now, 'the distance from the stomach to the kidneys, through the circulation, is that from the stomach to the heart, through the lungs, back to the left side of the heart, and from the mouth of the aorta to the mouth of the emulgent arteries. This at the most, cannot be supposed to exceed one half of an entire revolution; and is probably less than one fourth. The time requisite, therefore, as far as the circulation is concerned, for fluids to pass from the stomach to the kidneys, is not more than from two to three and a half minutes, leaving the remainder of the time which actually intervenes between their being taken in drink, and ejected in urine for their absorption in the stomach, and their secretion and excretion in the kidneys and bladder.' pp. 40, 41.

This calculation, which is certainly within bounds, shows sufficiently that there is nothing at all improbable in supposing

the passage of fluids to be effected through the circulation and kidneys. And this being the natural course, the burden of proof clearly lies upon the other side; and had no question ever existed upon the subject, no further investigation would have been esteemed necessary. Dr Hale has, however, by a few well designed experiments, added new certainty to these conclusions. It is unnecessary to enter into any detail of these experiments; the results to which they lead we shall state in his own words.

1. The speedy discharge of watery urine after taking a large quantity of liquid in drink, is not occasioned by sympathetic excitement of the urinary organs, but by the actual excretion of the fluid received.

2. The same portions of fluid, which are received into the stomach, begin, under certain circumstances at least, to be collected in the bladder within twenty minutes from the time when they are taken.

3. When a large quantity of fluid is taken, the excretion of urine is greatly increased; but the increase does not bear any very exact proportion to the quantity of drink. The increased discharge begins in about twenty minutes, is at its height in about an hour, and terminates, generally, in less than two hours.

4. When a liquid, which is colored with rhubarb, is taken, the color of the rhubarb appears in the urine; and its appearance in that excretion is not at all confined to the time of the increased discharge, which is occasioned by the quantity of fluids received.

5. When a liquid, which is of such a nature as to admit of ready detection in the animal fluids, is taken into the stomach, if the quantity is sufficiently large to affect the whole mass of blood, it will be found in the blood drawn from the veins, as soon as in the urine; although it will continue to appear in the urine after it has disappeared from the blood.

6. When a quantity of coloring matter, sufficient to affect the whole mass of blood is taken, mixed with a large quantity of liquid, the color appears in the urine, as soon, at least, as the excretion begins to be increased, and is at the deepest before the increase of urine is at its height; but if the quantity of coloring matter be only a little more than sufficient to tinge the amount of liquids taken, it does not appear in the urine until after a considerable quantity of watery urine has been passed, and does not give its deepest color until some time after the excretion has diminished." PP: 56-58.

7. The rapidity, with which fluids pass from the stomach to the bladder, is not increased by increasing their quantity.'

8. It results from the whole, that the only mode by which