corporeal feeling, can be wholly concentrated on any subject of thought with which it is engaged; whereas, if the mind be conscious of corporeal suffering of any kind, as, for instance, if thought be accompanied with a sensation of fulness or uneasiness of the head, it is impossible that the abstraction can be so complete, or the concentration so perfect, as they would be in a state completely devoid of corporeal sensation. A state of health is, therefore, that condition of the body, in which the mind is most capable of exertion; and, consequently, that state best fitted for unfolding its capacities, and storing it with ideas, in boyhood and youth. Every description of food which is likely to disturb this state of corporeal equilibrium, if I may so speak, is calculated to prove injurious to the developement of intellect. A boy, therefore, who is fed luxuriously, and whose appetite is pampered, is ill calculated for study; for, independent of the seductive invitations which the pleasures of the table hold out to allure youth from the severity and dryness of elementary studies, the injurious effects of these indulgences on health deprive him of the power of application; and surely we cannot wonder that the inexperience of boyhood, when thus exposed to temptation, should hazard even the blessing of health for the enjoyment of an hour. Such is the result of the gratification of the palate, the most contemptible of human pleasures, on the developement of intellect. But it is not luxurious refinement in the quality of the food only which is to be dreaded; much mischief results from overindulgence in respect to quantity; and

It is remarkable to see parents indulging this detestable propensity in their children, and supplying them with the means of gratifying it to excess, in their visits at home from school, as if boys were intended to be fatted like pigs for a Smithfield show. It would, indeed, be a high exultation to the writer of this essay, if his remarks could induce even a tythe of his readers to impress on the rising generation a contempt for the sensual pleasure of eating; to instil into youth a conviction that the only use of food is to supply the. waste of the body, and contribute to the support of its strength; and to teach them that nothing is truly desirable which is not calculated to advance intellectual happiness. That such a state of society, however, should ever exist, is rather to be desired than expected; for whatever other changes may have taken place within the last century, men in this respect have remained stationary; and the following sentence, written fifty years ago, is applicable to the present moment :-"All assemblies of jollity, all places of public entertainment, exhibit examples of strength wasting in riot, and beauty withering in irregularity; nor is it easy to enter a house in which part of the family is not groaning in repentance of past intemperance, and part ad

* Shakspeare, Love's Labor Lost.

we regard the cooperation as salutary; but when the ptyalism is complicated with sloughing ulcers, the termination is often fatal. The use of cold water, then, by a patient who is taking mercury, may do either good or harm, it has done both; and, according to the experience of every physician, will be his estimate of the practice. In these circumstances the desideratum is the criterion by which we may decide, beforehand, on the effects which, in every case, are likely to result from the practice; and it is to this point that we respectfully invite the attention of our brethren.

For ourselves, we do not pretend to have made any new observations; but there are some classes of patients in whom the practice seems to us to be, in general, contraindicated.

1. Children, to whom it is often necessary to administer large and repeated doses of calomel, but to whom a salivation, connected as it generally is, with ulceration, sometimes proves mortal, and is always dangerous.

2. Women, who do not bear the application of cold water so well as men, but are apt to be come morbidly irritable under its use; and in this condition the effects of calomel are almost always prejudicial.

3. All persons, male or female, who have the pituitous or lymphatic temperament highly developed, and consequently, all those who are subject to, or labor under hysterical affections.

4. Patients affected with incurable chronic diseases of every kind.

5. Persons of all temperaments, ages and sexes, who are ill with typhous fever.

Those, on the other hand, who have seemed to us most safely and beneficially to use calomel and cold water, have been males after the age of puberty, of a sanguine or bilious temperament, and afflicted with such inflammatory maladies, as call for, or admit of the application of the latter remedy. In such cases, we hold the practice under consideration to be sound.

With these remarks, in which we have aimed at little more than to state the subject for inquiry, we leave it to those who may regard it as worthy of investigation.-West. Med. & Phys. J.

EXPERIMENTS ON PULMONARY

EXHALATION.

By Messrs. BRESCHET and H. MILNE EDWARDS.-Private Correspondence.

The great rapidity with which äeriform and certain volatile substances, when introduced into the veins of a living animal, are expelled by pulmonary exhalation, is a fact fully established by daily observations and by the researches of some French physiologists. In the paper read by Dr. Milne Edwards at the Academy of Medicine of Paris, the 26th of July, the authors relate the experiments they performed, in order to ascertain whether the suction which accompanies each dilatation of the thorax is not the principal cause of this exhalation being so much more rapid in the lungs, than in the other parts of the body; on the same principle as we find, by the interesting researches of Dr. Barry, that absorption is most materially influenced by pressure.

In one experiment, Messrs. Breschet and Milne Edwards injected some camphor, dissolved in alcohol, into the abdomen of a

dog, and, four minutes afterwards, found the breath of the animal strongly impregnated with both these substances. They next repeated the same experiment, but with this difference, they introduced a tube into the trachea, laid open the thoracic cavity, and kept up respiration by means of a bellows. The mechanism which makes the thoracic cavity resemble a suction pump, was then destroyed; and, though the artificial respiration was kept up during an hour, there was no smell of camphor or of alcohol in the air expired from the lungs; at the same time, however, a cuppingglass being applied to the exterior surface of the muscles of the abdomen, the smell of camphor soon became perceptible in this part. In a third experiment, essential oil of turpentine was thrown into the arteries of a dead animal, and, on opening the thorax, the abdomen, &c. the exudation of this substance was found to have taken place in all these parts. By injecting a small quantity of essence of turpentine into the femoral vein of a dog, the thorax of which had been previously laid open as in experiment No. 2, and the respiration carried on in the same manner, the exhalation of turpentine took place equally in the abdominal and pulmonary cavities. But when the same operation was performed on a dog of which the thoracic pump was left entire, the essence escaped with much greater rapidity by the pulmonary exhalation, and no trace of it could be detected on the surface of the peritoneum.

From these experiments, and from some others of the same tendency, the authors draw the following conclusions :—

1. Those substances which do not pass easily through animal tissues by imbibition, after having been introduced into the circulating medium are no longer exhaled by the lungs as soon as the action. of the thoracic pump is destroyed; whereas, these same substances would be soon completely expelled by this means if the suction produced by the dilatation of the thoracic cavity was allowed to continue as usual.

2. That when substances which pass through animal tissues with great facility, as is the case with essence of turpentine, are mixed with the blood, they are equally exhaled in all the parts of the body abundantly supplied with bloodvessels, provided the thoracic pump be destroyed; but that when, as in the usual state, the suction produced by the action of that organ is uninterrupted, the exhalation takes place only in the parts subject to the influence of that power.

3. That it is, consequently, the mechanical action above alluded to, which occasions the rapid exhalation by the pulmonary surface of water, alcohol, camphor, essence of turpentine, and Leven's gases introduced into the circulating medium.

In a subsequent paper, Messrs. Breschet and Milne Edwards, intend examining the influence of this action on the other phenomena of respiration. Med. Chir. Rev. for October 1826.

SURGICAL.

A distressing case occurred last week, in the family of Mr. Michael Metcalf, Jr. of this town. One of the children, two years old, was playing with some kidney beans, one of which, half an inch

in length, slipped into the trachea, or windpipe. This took place about 9 o'clock. The distress of the child increasing it became apparent in the afternoon, that suffocation would soon end the sufferings of the little innocent. The parents then consented that the operation of bronchotomy, cutting into the windpipe, should be performed. This operation, by Dr. Twitchell, seven hours after the accident, was completely successful and the child is now in perfect health.

Keene, N. H. Sentinel.

For the Medical Intelligencer.

Observations on the Zona or Shingles, and the Erythema of Vegetable Poisons. By JAMES FOUNTAIN, M. D. of West Chester Co. N.Y.

ZONA or shingles, and the poison ing from the application of vegetables, are both diseases of frequent occurrence in this country, and consequently demand the attention of the faculty, as guardians of health. By Dr. Cullen and most writers they are viewed as erysipelatous inflammations, and are merely noticed as being slight affections unworthy of much attention. Recently, however, the lunar caustic has been proclaimed as a certain remedy for the shingles, which strongly implies that all other means of cure were of doubtful efficacy.

From the fact that both these diseases are remediable by the same means I am led to believe that there exists between them, at least, some affinity of morbid process. They are not purely inflammatory diseases, for antiphlogistics will not, of themselves, cure them, though they frequently enable the powers of a good

constitution to effect this object. Neither are they diseases of debility, for they are generally aggravated by tonics. Hence if they are incurable both by stimulation and depletion, they must be classed among disease of irritation. This state is defined by Sir Astley Cooper to be "an altered action excited in the body by an unnatural impression." Mr. Travers speaking of irritation says it is demontstrated "by an alteration in the habitual and proper sensation or action of a part." Though irritation is supposed to be peculiar to the nervous system, Dr. Jackson of Philadelphia, with M. Begin, divides it into nervous, sanguine and lymphatic. Hence the opinion I advanced in the New York Med. and Phys. Journal, that irritation consisted of a changed action in a part, or the whole system, turns out to be well founded. Shingles and vegetable erythemas then being located in this class, their treatment must be that of sanguineous irritation in general. Let us now recur to the treatment of this kind of irritation.

This consists, curatively, in instituting a new action in the diseased part, and one, of course, more powerful than that which constitutes the disease. As aiding this view of the subject, antiphlogistics or tonics may be required as a preparatory, concomitant, or subsequent means; for the action constituting irritation may be accompanied either by an excess or deficiency of vital influence or natural action.

In adopting this plan of treatment it will be necessary to form some estimate of the power of the diseased process, and of the agents or counterirritants to be used; for if the strength of the