rare biped than the bald eagle. Many poor persons among us, from ignorance, pride, prejudice, and the habit of wastefulness, would reject with disdain the offer of certain articles for food, which might easily be converted into grateful and wholesome nutriment, if they possessed only a little humility and gratitude, and the capacity for plain cookery. Here the materials for food are far more readily obtained than a cook to prepare them. Whoever shall introduce into these States the requisite skill and the general practice of making the proper use of our materia alimentaria will render this na building are warmed by a furnace tn the basement, and water is conveyed to all the rooms from a reservoir at the top of the house, as in the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. The various apartments are labeled, and the patients generally average six to a room. This building was erected by the surplus funds collected in this State, all seamen in employ paying 20 cents a month of their wages for the support of hospitals, where, when sick or disabled," they can receive gratuitous attention. There are seve 66 ral acres of land connected with the establishment. The expenditures of the institution are regulated so as to come within the receipts in this State. Seamen are permitted to stay four months, and if not then restored are sent home. They re tion as great a service as he who shall improve the practice of culti-ceive the best attention, and are afvating our millions of acres, or of manufacturing our wool, iron and cotton. When the science of the cook is made to turn cheap materials into savory and salutary food, it then becomes one of the most useful arts of life, and which to us would prove a real blessing. Marine Hospital.-The inmates of the U. S. Marine Hospital, in Charlestown, were removed some months since to the new edifice at Chelsea. This building is in an elegant and healthful situation, in view of the north part of the city, on the Chelsea shore. It is a handsome edifice of hewn granite; two stories in height, with a basement and an attic; the main building is 105 by 50 feet, with two wings, projecting three feet on each side of the building, being 22 feet by 56. These are occupied, that on the west end by Dr. Townsend, the physician, and that on the east, by Charles Turner, the steward of the Hospital. All the apartments of the main forded every convenience which their situation may require. There were last week thirtyseven patients in the institution. The average number in each quarter is about 100, though some of them probably do not stay more than two or three days, or as many weeks. The deaths turns of the name, age, disease, nagenerally average from 1 to 20. Retive place, time of entering and leaving, &c. are made quarterly to the Secretary of the Navy. The salary of the physician is $1000, and of the steward $500. The institution is certainly a very humane and valuable one, and is, emphatically, the "Sailor's Snug Harbor.”—B. H. Aurora. Mr. Daniel, the director of the great continental gas company, has succeeded in manufacturing gas from resinous substances, which is represented to be vastly superior to that frotn oil or coal, as respects its brilliancy and smell. The Vermont Academy of Medicine, at Castleton, has 110 students. The Grammar School and Female Seminary, in the same town, has 78. ADVERTISEMENTS. tic, Blue Pill, and Calcined Maguesia, imported from Apothecaries' Hall, London, expressly for physicians' prescriptions; as he confines himself principally to SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS, &c. ERS have just received a large invoice of Surgical Instruments, which they will sell on the most favorable terms at their Store,-Sign of the Good Samaritan, 90 and 92, Washington St., where is also for sale a large assortment of Drugs, Medicines, Chemical and Electrical Apparatus, and other articles that are usually kept in Druggists' stores. A few pounds of the genuine Lirerwort, Hepatica triloba, for consumptive complaints, for sale as above. laft6t. RETAIL APOTHECARY SHOP. ICHARD A Druggist, R'Summer Street, respectfully informs his friends and customers, that he confines himself wholly to the retail business, and has on hand a complete assortment of genuine Medicines, which will be sold as low as can be purchased in the city. R. A. N. keeps constantly for sale, Dr. Moore's Essence of Life; Anderson's Cough Drops; Spring's Pulmonic Elixir, a new and valuable medicine, prepared from the original recipe; with a variety of Patent Medicines. Also, genuine French and German Cologne Water, &c. N. B. Physicians and Families who may please to send their orders to this Shop, may rely on the personal attendance of Mr. N. tion is given to the preparation of all compound medicines, and no articles delivered but of the first quality. Physicians and families may depend on the most strict and personal attention to their orders. Black Currant Wine of superior quality, constantly for sale.-Also, Swain's Panacea. Medicine chests for ships and families, put up and replenished at short notice, with directions suitable for their contents. CHARLES WHITE, Corner of Washington and Winter Sts., HAS received, by the late amivals from France and England, his fall supply of DRUGS, MEDICINES, and SUR GEONS' INSTRUMENTS; among them are, delphine, brucine, emetine, strychnine, morphine, veratrine, narcotine, sulphate of quinine, sulphate of rhubarb, drop glasses, stomach tubes, needles for acupuncture, &c. &c. RETAIL DRUG STORE. ENRY WHITE would inform hu H friends and the public, that he has now established himself as a retail druggist, at No. 188, Washington Street, opposite the Marlboro' Hotel, where Physi cians and Families may depend on the most strict and personal attention to their orders.-No Medicines will be put up ur less of the first quality. N. B. Medicines delivered at any hour of the night. SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS, AVID & JOHN HENSHAW & CO., Published weekly, by John Cotton, 184, Washington St. corner of Franklin St. -The price of this paper will vary with the time of payment. If paid on subscribing, or within 3 months after, the price will be 3 dollars per annum; if paid after 3 months but within the year, it will be $ 3,50; but if not paid within the year, it will be 4 dollars. No paper to be discontinued till arrearages are paid.-All communications relating to the present or future concerns of this paper, to be addressed, always postpaid, to John G. Coffin.-Advertisements, 1 dollar a square. MEDICAL INTELLIGENCER. JOHN G. COFFIN, M. D., EDITOR. DEVOTED TO THE CAUSE OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, AND TO VOL. 5. TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1828. UWINS ON INDIGESTION. A Treatise on those Diseases which are either directly or indirectly connected with Indigestion; comprising a Commentary on the principal Ailments of Children. BY DAVID UWINS, M.D. 8vo. pp. 274. London, 1827. THIS is another publication on indigestion, a subject which, of late years, has obtained much popularity in this country. Were this of the same stamp with many other works of a similar description which have recently issued from the press, we should not hail its appearance with much pleasure. We do not like to see books on dyspepsia a marketable commodity. They but too clearly mark that our national energies are on the decline, and that vaporish sentiment and sickly sensibilities are becoming current among a people whose ancestors were signally distinguished by a sturdy contempt for everything bordering on effeminacy of character, whether developed in mind or body. That the disorder, or rather complication of disorders, known by the name of indigestion really exists, we are far from denying, nor would be slow in appreciating the labors of such medical men as may think proper to apply their talent to the removal of the evil: but we think the disease of much less extent than is generally ima THE MEANS OF PRE NO. 33. gined; and, in the next place, do enter our protest against the utility of a great majority of those publications which pretend to prescribe its corrective. For how stands the case? Some miserable victim of hypochondriasis takes up a book on dyspepsia with all the feverish anxiety of sanguine hope, and finding its precepts incapable of application to his own case, completes the perusal in disappointment, and is overwhelmed with despair; or, building on a fanciful theory or insulated fact, establishes a new regimen for himself, at utter variance with all former habits of life, and, in the end, pernicious to the constitution. It is with much satisfaction, therefore, that we see before us a work which the dyspeptic may consult, not only without injury, but even with considerable advantage. The first part treats of the stomachic affections of children as connected with indigestion; the latter is addressed more particularly to those who have passed the prime of life. We are glad to find a man of Dr. Uwins' judgment and experience reprobate the absurdity of either fixing any given quantum of food as an invariable standard, or of starving men out of their disorders. He shows that "the twelve ounces a day system" may be productive of most calamitous consequences, and relates a curious case in which the patient positively died from the injudicious treatment of his medical attendants in refusing, with the obstinacy of barbarous ignorance, to administer to him that sustenance which every one but themselves saw that nature imperatively demanded. We are convinced that, at least among intelligent men, the present publication will go far to put an end to a theory which manifestly acts in direct opposition to the plainest dictates of nature and common sense. The idea that any system or principle is in medical matters of invariable application, can only emanate from minds of very feeble structure, or unaccustomed to an extensive survey of man, modified as his character and condition are by the thousand changes incidental to a never stationary existence. Dr. Uwins endeavors to philosophise us out of the first approaches of melancholy; but we believe this moral evil is beyond the physician's art in fine, we may say of this volume, that, with sound scientific views, it combines a polished diction, which, to us, of course, is not its least recommendation, and is evidently the production of a discerning as well as classical and accomplished mind.-London Literary Gazette. USE OF THE DEAD TO THE LIVING. An Appeal to the Public and to the Legislature, on the Necessity of affording dead Bodies to the Schools of Anatomy by Legislative Enactment. By WILLIAM MACKENZIE. Glasgow, 1824. EVERY one desires to live as long as he can. Every one values health" above all gold and trea sure." Every one knows that so far as his own individual good is concerned, protracted life and a frame of body sound and strong, free from the thousand pains which flesh is heir to, are unspeakably more important than all other objects, because life and health must be secured before any possible result of any possible circumstance can be of consequence to him. In the improvement of the art which has for its object the preservation of health and life, every individual is, therefore, deeply interested. An enlightened physician and a skilful surgeon, are in the daily habit of administering to their fellow men more real and unquestionable good, than is communicated, or communicable by any other clas of human beings to another. norant physicians and surgeons ar the most deadly enemies of the community the plague itself is not so destructive; its ravages are at distant intervals, and are accompanied with open and alarming ravages of its purpose and power; theirs are constant, silent. secret; and it is while they are looked up to as saviors, that they give speed to the progress of disease and certainty to the stroke of death. It is deeply to be lamented that the community, in general, are so entirely ignorant of all that relates to the art and the science of medicine. An explanation of the functions of the animal economy, of their most common and important deviations from a healthy state; of the remedies best adapted to restore them to a sound condition, and of the mode in which they operate, so far as this is known, ought to form a part of every course of liberal education. The profound ignorance of the people on all these subjects is attended with many disadvantages to themselves, and operates unfavorably on the medical character. In consequence of this want of information, persons neither know what are the attainments of the man in whose hands they place their life, nor what they ought to be; they can neither form an opinion of the course of education which it is incumbent on him to follow, nor judge of the success with which he has availed himself of the means of knowledge which have been afforded him. There is one branch of medical education in particular, the foundation, in fact, on which the whole superstructure must be raised, the necessity of which is not commonly understood, but which requires only to be stated to be perceived. Perhaps it is impossible to name any one subject which it is of more importance that the community should understand. It is one in which every man's life is deeply implicated: it is one on which every man's ignorance or information will have a considerable influence. We shall, therefore, enter into it with some detail: we shall show the kind of knowledge which it is indispensable that the physician and the surgeon should possess: we shall illustrate, by a reference to particular cases, the reason why this kind of knowledge cannot be dispensed with and we shall explain, by a statement of facts, the nature and extent of the obstacles which at present oppose the acquisition of this knowledge. We repeat, there is no subject in which every reader can be so immediately and deeply interested, and we trust that he will give us his calm and unprejudiced attention. The basis of all medical and surgical knowledge is anatomy. Not a single step can be made either in medicine or surgery, considered either as an art or a science, without it. This should seem selfevident, and to need neither proof nor illustration: nevertheless as it is useful occasionally to contemplate the evidence of important truth, we shall show why it is that there can be no rational medicine, and no safe surgery, without a thorough knowledge of anatomy. Disease, which it is the object of these arts to prevent and to cure, is denoted by disordered function: disordered function cannot be understood without a knowledge of healthy function; healthy function cannot be understood without a knowledge of structure; structure cannot be understood unless it be examined. The organs on which all the important functions of the human body depend are concealed from the view. There is no possibility of ascertaining their situation and connections, much less their nature and operation, without inspecting the interior of this curious and complicated machine. The results of the mechanism are visible; the mechanism itself is concealed, and must be investigated to be perceived. The important operations of nature are seldom entirely hidden from the human eye; still less are they obtruded on it, but over the most curious and wonderful operations of the animal economy so thick a veil is drawn, that they never could have been perceived without the most patient and minute research. The circulation of the |