drainage may obviously be sufficient for the purposes of agricul

ture, but ineffectual for the eradication of malaria.

The overflowing of rivers reverses the scene, and gives an increase to the production of malaria. And here our author offers a very ingenious and satisfactory reason for one mode of the said increase at the embouchures of rivers. It is this. All rivers bring down more or less materials from the mountains and countries through which they flow. These debris or alluvia are deposited at the mouths of the said rivers, and by raising the bed of the stream at this place, cause occasional inundations of the neighbouring grounds, and thus lead to the formation of embankments. But the bed of the river still continuing to rise, the adjacent grounds at length become considerably below the level of high water, and then drainage becomes more and more difficult, with a proportionate increase of malaria.

"Thus they tend to raise the water in its bed, and, consequently, to cause it, on any increase, to overflow, still more certainly, the lands around. And as this effect is the very consequence of the embankment, so, at any given point, the bank must be made to keep pace with the rise of the channel, that the restraint may be effectual and constant. Hence as the river becomes more elevated, the ultimate result is the same as if the surrounding lands had been depressed to the same amount and thus, while the stream which drained them once can drain them no longer, they become, first, meadows, and ultimately marshes. And if, in the former condition, they can still be drained by means of canals and flood gates, this process becomes in time inefficient, and recourse must be had, as in Holland, to lifting machinery." 199.

There are many causes of those revolutions which take place in the salubrity or insalubrity of countries or local districts. Changes in the mutual level of the sea and land, ascribed by geology to the subsidence or elevation of the latter, as connected with the cause of earthquakes, are a fruitful source of the said revolutions. But we need not dilate on these topics. The reader anxious to gain further information will consult the work itself.

This brings us to a natural division of the investigation, and to the middle of the volume under review. Our analysis could not be conveniently contained in one article, and, therefore, we shall defer our conclusion of it till our next number; when the propagation of malaria-the climates and seasons most favoura ble to its production-the geography--the nature of malaria-and, lastly, the general effects of this poison on the human constitution, will be fully considered.

We cannot close this article, however, without expressing our admiration of the industry and research by which Dr. Maccul

loch has collected together a most astonishing mass of information on minute points of medical topography. The manner in which the local descriptions and details are given, induced us to think, that a great proportion of them were collected on the spot, by our author in person; and we were not a little surprised to learn from a gentleman, while writing these lines, that Dr. M. has travelled very little indeed. little indeed. We verily believed that he had traversed half the globe in quest of the materials which he has collected, and that, in Italy, at least, (the emporium of malaria,) he had not left a foot of the Campagna di Roma unexplored. This does not derogate from his credit; and we will say, that Dr. M. has travelled round his library to some end. He has there seen more than we have seen in 20 years perambulations round this earth. In our next number, we shall present our readers with a summary of the remaining chapters in Dr. Macculloch's work, which we have no hesitation in recommending to the attentive perusal of the profession, as a volume abounding in matters equally curious and important.

II.

Rambling Notes and Reflections, suggested during a Visit to Paris in the Winter of 1826-1827. By Sir ARTHUR BROOKE FAULKNER. Octavo, pp. 348. London, August, 1827.

SOME time ago, we introduced to our readers the amusing rambles of Dr. Valentine, and regretted that he had not kept more closely to medical matters, leaving politics, general science, literature, and antiquities, to others who made those subjects their special study. Doubtless it is difficult for medical men of high classical education and general scientific attainments, to resist the temptation to remark on all subjects that come in their way, when journeying in foreign countries; and, as there is no rule against such indulgences, we cannot quarrel with either Dr. Valentine or Sir Arthur Faulkner for diverging into so many discussions totally unconnected with medicine. Neither can they find fault with us if, adhering to the precept "ne sutor ultra crepidam,"

we only take notice of those portions of their works which treat of professional subjects.

We are rejoiced to find so much religion among our provincial, and especially our fashionable physicians. Sir Arthur has occupied a considerable portion of his book with matters of the church, and wittily hopes, that this digression "will be considered, at least, a clergyable offence." As this is not a tribunal for such causes, we pass on to medical concerns. Sir Arthur's remarks are chiefly satirical, and levelled, of course, at the foibles, the intrigues, the arts, and, lastly, the delinquencies, of the disciples of Esculapius-including the various species and gradations, from the President of the College of Physicians down to "the Apothecaries' deputy." Satire, no doubt, has its advantange, when levelled against folly and knavery; but, if directed pretty generally against a whole profession, and especially the medical profession, we may well doubt whether considerable injury may not be done to the innocent, by prejudicing the non-professional part of the public. Satire of this kind too, is the more dangerous when dispensed in a work designed for general perusal. That the vices, the follies, and the knavery described by Sir Arthur, are to be found in the ranks of medical society, no one can deny; but the question is, are they so often and so abundantly found as to authorise the lash of satire being laid generally on the professional back? With every deference and respect for the learning, talents, and honorable character of Sir A. Faulkner, we find ourselves obliged to combat some of the inferences which he draws, and repel, or, at least, blunt some of the arrows of satire so plentifully discharged among the ranks of his brethren. Thus, comparing law with divinity and physic, Sir A. observes :--" The learned department of the Law differs from its sister-professions in one most paramount and essential respect; namely, that there is a direct and indissoluble connexion between ability and success; while, in the others, absolutely no more than between the value of the parsonage and the piety of its owner-the length of the doctor's bill and the modesty that drew it up." This evidently and literally means that there is no sort of connexion whatever between ability and success in the medical profession! Is Sir A. justified in this assertion? Have the many men who figured at the head of our profession during the last thirty or forty years, owed nothing of their success and reputation to ability? Or was it all mere chance-nay, was it all owing to artful manoeuvering? One of these must be the case, if there be not possible connexion between ability and success. That a crafty, unprincipled, but ignorant, medical man may occasionally rise to a certain extent of success and riches, we will not deny-and this, by the way, is the case in law as well as in physic;

but, that such a character can ever attain or maintain any of the higher grades of emolument or reputation, we venture to deny. We appeal to the living race of medical men in this and other countries, for unequivocal proof of this position:and if our position be correct, what becomes of the sweeping principle laid down by Sir Arthur? If, indeed, he had said, that there is no very necessary connexion between learning and success, he would have had some solid basis for his observation. There are numerous proofs among the living, as well as among the dead, that a man may be crammed brim full of literature and science, and yet he may not have the power of applying these acquisitions so as to obtain success. How often is the finest seed sown on a soil that never can render it prolific? Sir Arthur appears to us to have confounded education with talent--and to have thought (as will presently appear) that Oxford or Cambridge should "accomplish all things without grace"--that is, without native talent--but, in this, he is mistaken. An extensive and liberal education, wherever acquired, will undoubtedly give a man, in any of the three professions, a better chance of success; but it does not-and wisely is it ordained that it should not, command success, over superior native genius, which may happen to be destitute of the means of procuring this education through a particular and expensive channel. Suppose there was an ordinance that no man should practise as a physician unless he first expended five thousand pounds on a University education. In this case, is it not evident, that money and success would almost be synonymous terms? We should think that money has quite enough of power and influence in its train, without making it the exclusive depository of knowledge also! To us, indeed, it appears, that one of the most potent antagonists to aristocratic wealth will be found in the popular diffusion of knowledge. That this sentiment is secretly shared by the aristocracy themselves, is quite evident from the anathemas poured by them on the New London University. We shall presently see that Sir Arthur is horror-stricken at the contemplation of this cheap mart of literature and science, divested of religious creeds, though one of his main principles, laid down in the very same work, is, "that education is the only security upon which any reliance can be placed that this most useful of all arts (the medical) is not abused to the vilest purposes, and converted into a curse instead of a blessing." p. 154. p. 154. Sir Arthur is, to do him justice, a strenuous and eloquent advocate for education among all classes of society; but he is, like many others, terrified, because religion and religious creeds are not introduced into the new university. "How abominably horrible to contem

plate being left to the mercy of a man's philosophy, as the only check upon his passions; who may as well take it into his head to think cutting my throat as sound a piece of ethics as cutting his own." We would ask Sir Arthur if he ever met with any of these cut-throat ethics in his perusal of the ancient philosophers, who knew nothing of Christianity? His answer must be, no. Then why should philosophy now begin to teach the cutting of throats? Is Sir Arthur serious in preaching to us that it is the religious instruction imbibed at Oxford and Cambridge which makes the graduates of those universities so distinguished for their liberal conduct and moral ethics? We should think that he was laughing in his sleeve all the time that he is applying the flattering unction to the souls of the pious Christian and proud Aristocrat.

But we must leave generalities, and come to the professional portraits which our able, but too satirical, author has drawn. It has struck us, and we imagine it will also strike our readers, when perusing these portraits, that Sir Arthur either meant them to be complete caricatures--or that there is something in the air, the soil, or perhaps in the waters of Cheltenham, that has there congregated together a collection of quacks and demireps, such as no other part of this island could possibly produce. In either case, the propriety of handing up these pictures to society at large, who will not be slow in applying them generally to the profession, is at least very questionable. After giving some account of a medical character introduced on one of the Parisian stages, under the name of Le Medecin des Dames," Sir Arthur proceeds as follows:

"Alas! we need not travel far to find a match for this gentleman in our own honest land. It is humiliating to a profession, which deserves to be respectable, to name it, but I literally remember an M.D. in a good deal of business, fraught with one of the (ci-devant) 'Scotch licenses to slay,' who used to pay a certain number of hebdomadal visits, to perform the express service of catering gossip and mending the pens of a female patient; and she was amazingly taken with him. But why should we be surprised at this or any thing else of the kind, when we see the profession is so very frequently in the hands of the ignorant; and that any man who chooses to practice en docteur, gets credit for skill only because he has stood a certain number of years behind a counter, or trod the wards of an hospital? The doctor, when speaking of his triplicate function, styles himself a general practitioner; and the general's course, I believe to be, too generally, as follows. His first matriculation commences at the Galen's head, with little better preparation than a grocer's apprentice; and there he is doomed and indentured to remain for a certain number of years, pulverizing and extracting. Now, whatever he may claim for extraction, it will surely not be