Latin translation, published after his death, under the title of Historia Saracenica,' Leyden, 1625, fol.; two original treatises on Arabie grammar, bearing the title, Grammatica Arabica, dicta Giarumia, et libellus centum Regentium, Leyden, 1617, 4to.; and a Hebrew Grammar, Grammatica Ebra generalis, Leyden, 1621, 8vo. ERPETOLOGY. [HERPETOLOGY.] ERPETON, Lacepède's name for a genus of serpents placed by Cuvier next to Eryr. The name should be written Herpeton. The genus is furnished with two soft prominences, covered with scales, on the muzzle. The head is protected by large plates; those beneath the belly are not large, and those beneath the tail scarcely differ from the other scales. The tail however is very long and pointed. Cuvier, who speaks of the priority of Lacepède, who first described the genus under the name of Erpeton, remarks that Merrem has changed the name to Rhinopirus. ERRATIC BLOCKS are those weather-worn and more er less rounded fragments of the harder rocks which are found very widely scattered over the surface of the earth, and at great distances from the places whence they are supposed to be derived. In size they vary from ten thousand cubical feet and upwards to a few inches. M. Brongniart has proposed to designate the several sizes by particular names, as gigantic, metric, cephallary, pugillary, &c. But in England we generally confine the term erratic blocks to the larger masses, calling those of middling size boulders, and arranging the smaller along with gravel: this is, however, too vague. The nature of erratic blocks is not less various than their size. Every species of rock seems to have contributed a portion of its substance towards the mass, though the harder, being better capable of resisting the disintegrating and corroding influence of atmospheric causes, are found in the greatest abundance, such as quartz, petrosilex, greenstone, granite, porphyry, syenite, gneiss, primitive and transition limestone, dolomite, serpentine, siliceous pudding-stones, siliceous sandstones, &c. The distribution and situation of these blocks are also very different. Seldom isolated, they are generally found in patches or groups, as in the environs of Geneva, the plains of Westphalia, in Sweden, &c.; or in long bands or trains, as in the north of Mecklenberg Strelitz, where they run in a direction west-north-west and east-south-east; or widely spread over considerable tracts, as between Warsaw and Grodno, between St. Petersburg and Moscow, in East Prussia, &c. Sometimes they cover horizontal plains, as in the north of Germany; sometimes they rest on the sloping sides of mountains, as in the Alps and the Jura, and occasionally on the very tops of lofty eminences, as on the summits of the calcareous mountains of Rettwick, of Radaberg, and of Osmund, about 6000 feet above the level of the sea. Sometimes they are seen in greatest abundance at the bottom of valleys where they open into the plains, and in other instances they are found collected in the largest quantity in the high and narrow parts of the valleys, as is observed at Detmold and east of Lemgo. At times they are so abundant as to be accumulated into hills of a particular form, as is the case in Smaland, in Sweden; and sometimes they form even mountains of considerable height, as may be seen near Quedle, in Norway; and what is remarkable, the larger blocks are at the top, the others diminishing gradually towards the bottom. Though generally superficially disposed, erratic blocks are however in some places found imbedded in a fine sand which has nothing in common with their nature or origin, as in the plains of Westphalia. Some blocks (and this may depend either on their own particular nature, or the greater or less friction to which they have been subjected, the length of time they have been exposed to atmospheric influence, or the nature of the climate,) have their angles and edges as sharp as though they were just detached from their native mountains, as is the case in the neighbourhood of Groningen. When the erratic blocks are not at any great distance from the spots whence they come, they may be easily traced up to their origin. Thus those which are in the basin of the Rhine come from the Grisons; those of the valley of the lake of Zürich and of the Limmat have been detached from the mountains of Glaris; those of the basin of the Reuss come from the rocks at the source of this river; and those of the Aar and the Jura from the lofty mountains in the canton of Berne. Even those which cover the widely extended tract from Holland on the west, to St. Petersburg and Tver on the east, are supposed by Von Buch, Hausmann, Brugmans, Alex. Brongniart, &c., to be traceable to Scandinavia. It is however remarkable that, contrary to what is generally observed of transported debris, the blocks are frequently largest as they are farthest removed from the place whence they came, diminishing gradually in size as they approach the parent rock; thus the blocks found in Mecklenberg and Seeland, which are ascertained to be derived from the Scandinavian peninsula, are larger than the blocks of the same rocks in Scania and East Gothland, and they disappear altogether close to the primordial mountains whence they were derived. In certain places the blocks are almost exclusively of a particular kind, while in others they vary greatly in their mineral character, proving, together with the ascertained situation of the same rocks in situ, that they must have been assembled from various quarters. This is the case with the erratic blocks of Yorkshire, and with those of Lithuania, for though the greater part, perhaps, of those in the latter locality may be similar to the rocks in Sweden and Norway, there are many evidently derived from other places. As for the direction in which the bands of erratic blocks seem to lie, and the quarter whence they seem to have come, they are very various. We have just seen that in the north of Mecklenberg the trains are in a line westnorth-west and east-south-east. Count Rasoumovski observes that, when many blocks are accumulated they form parallel lines with a direction from north-east to south-west. Brongniart says they have a general direction north and south. Sir James Hall speaks of those in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh as coming from the west. We have said that those on the north of the Alps come from the south. If any thing further were necessary to complicate the problem of erratic blocks, it is the immense distance at which they are sometimes found from the nearest rocks of similar composition; thus blocks of granite are found on the mountains of Potosi, while the nearest granite rocks are in Tucuman, about four hundred leagues off. Nor is distance all; the detached blocks are found separated from their parent rocks by intervening hills, broad and deep valleys, as that of the Aar, and even by straits and seas: thus in the north of Cumberland there are boulders which have been transported across the Solway Frith from Dumfries, and the blocks on the low plains of Germany are separated from their parent rocks by the Baltic. England, as well as the continent of Europe, has many spots covered with erratic rocks, some of which seem to be derived from Norway, while others are evidently the debris of our own mountains. For details we refer the reader to the observations and works of Sedgwick, Conybeare, Lyell, Buckland, Phillips, Hibbert, &c. ing organs, being supposed to influence the vessels of the eye, and even of the brain. Some affections of the eye, and also of the head, are certainly relieved by such means, and their occasional use may be permitted; but the habitual use of errhines is in most cases objectionable, and followed by hurtful consequences. The membrane of the nose becomes thickened, its sensibility impaired, and the power of discriminating odours greatly lessened; while, if the substance be possessed at the same time of narcotic qualities, such as snuff procured from tobacco, the palate, the stomach, and other organs concerned in digestion likewise suffer, and loss of appetite with other symptoms of indigestion result. ERRINA. [MILLEPORIDE.] Erratic blocks are also common in America and other | to give relief to the loaded vessels, by exciting them to in parts of the world. creased secretion. Hence they are used in various diseased From what has been already said, and from the circum-conditions of the organ of smell, and even of the neighbourstance of erratie blocks lying on some of the most modern formations, it will be easily conceived that they present one of the most inexplicable of geological phenomena. The blocks on the Jura, and from the Alps generally, having first attracted notice, have given rise to a great variety of hypotheses, the most remarkable of which are the following:-1. De Lue was of opinion that these blocks had been projected into the air by the same force which upheaved the Alps, and that they had fallen at greater or lesser distances, according to the strength and direction of that force. 2. Von Buch, Escher, &c., attribute their existence to an immense débacle which swept down the blocks from the Alps to the foot of the Jura, up the slope of which they were forced by the impulse they had received, in the same way as a ball rolled along with force rises up a hillock. 3. Others, as Daubuisson, have thought that these blocks, which are almost wholly of transition rocks, were the remains of a mantle of these rocks, of later formation than the limestone of the Jura, and consequently much more recent than is generally admitted, and which, having been destroyed, left nothing but these testimonials of their former existence. 4. Dolomieu supposed that the summits of the Alps were formerly connected with those of the Jura by an inclined plane, which has been destroyed by the same revolution that precipitated the blocks from the summit of the Alps to the plateau, and into the valleys of the Jura. 5. Venturi has attempted to explain the passage of the blocks from the Alps into the basin of the Po, by floating them down on rafts of ice. 6. Others have upheaved the Jura, which they suppose to have been formerly on a level with the base of the Alps, and with it the blocks which had rolled down upon this calcareous plain. 7. Finally, Von Buch, extending his general theory to the particular phenomenon, thinks that the dispersion of the blocks is the result of an upraising of the Alps posterior to the formation of the tertiary rocks. M. Brongniart very justly observes that these hypotheses leave many difficulties unexplained: he conceives that as the phenomenon of erratic blocks is a very general one, it is presumable that the cause also is general. Certain it is that even if it were possible satisfactorily to assign a cause for the erratic blocks found upon the Jura, the same reasoning would hardly be applicable to other cases; and in the utter impossibility of discovering any single cause competent to the production of such different effects, we must have recourse to the more probable conjecture of M. Larivière, that the dispersion and disposition of erratic blocks have been effected in different ways. The more powerful cause however he conceives to be the transporting power of iremeers and icebergs, in which opinion he is followed by Mr. Lyell and others. In some Erratic blocks, like other phenomena, are attended with their peculiar advantages: thus on hot and dry soils, and when not in too great abundance, they keep the soil cool and moist, sheltering it from the direct rays of the sun in the day, and thus diminishing the evaporation of its moisture. On cold soils they tend to maintain an equable warmth by diminishing radiation at night. countries they are the only building-stones, as in East Friesland and the neighbourhood of Groningen. In others they supply the necessary lime, as at Königsberg, Revel, &c. Those of a convenient size are used in Russia and Poland for paving the towns: when broken they are exceedingly well adapted for the repairs of roads. ERRHINES (from en (iv), and rhin (piv), 'the nose'), medicines which are applied to the nostrils, and which cause an increased flow of the secretion of the membrane which lines them, and often of the contiguous cavities and sinuses; frequently also occasioning sneezing, and an unusual secretion of tears. Snuffs of different kinds are familiar examples of this class of substances, and these generally cause sneezing, at least when first employed; but others, such as the turpeth mineral, merely produce increased secretion of the membrane. Where sneezing ensnes, a considerable shock is felt over the whole frame, and of this effect advantage is sometimes taken to change the action of the system, or to remove morbid impressions, as when certain fits are impending, or for more limited purposes, such as dislodging any foreign body from the nose. The secondary effect of errhines is more frequently desired ERROR (in law), a fault in the pleadings or in the process, or in the judgment, upon which a writ, called a writ of error (breve de errore corrigendo), is brought. It is the ordinary mode of appeal from a court of record, and is in the nature of a commission to the judges of a court superior to that in which the judgment was given, by which they are authorized to examine the record, and on such examination to affirm or reverse the judgment according to law. For the cases in which this writ is issued, and the courts to which it is directed, see Bao. Abr. tit. Error. ERSKINE, THOMAS LORD, was the third and youngest son of David earl of Buchan. He was born, according to some authorities, in January, 1748, and received the rudiments of his education partly in the high-school of Edinburgh, and partly at the University of St. Andrews. In 1764 he entered the navy as a midshipman, but not thinking his prospects of promotion in that service sufficiently good, he accepted a commission in the first regiment of foot in 1768. In 1770 he married Frances, daughter of Daniel Moore, M. P. for Marlow, and soon after went with his regiment to Minorca. Upon his return to England, in 1772, he appears to have become remarkable for the brilliancy of his conversational talents. (Wraxall's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 152, and Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. ii. p. 170, ed. 1799.) In 1775, at the pressing solicitation of his mother, but it is said against his own judgment, he commenced the study of the law, and entered himself a student of Lincoln's Inn, and also as a fellow commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge, but only for the purpose of obtaining a degree, and thereby saving the additional term of two years, during which his name must otherwise have remained on the books of Lincoln's Inn. He became the pupil of Mr. Buller, and afterwards of Mr. Wood, both of whom were subsequently raised to the Bench. In Trinity term, 1778, Mr. Erskine was called to the bar, where his success was as rapid as it was brilliant. In the same term he was employed as one of the counsel for Capt. Baillie, lieutenantgovernor of Greenwich Hospital, who was prosecuted for an alleged libel on the other officers of that establishment. The prosecution was in fact instituted by Lord Sandwich, then at the head of the admiralty, who, it appeared, had abused the charity by appointing landsmen as pensioners to serve his own electioneering purposes. Mr. Erskine's eloquent and indignant speech at once established his reputation; such indeed was its instantaneous effect, that thirty retainers were presented to him before he left the court. His practice and reputation increased so rapidly, that in 1783, when he had been scarcely five years at the bar, he received a patent of precedence at the suggestion of Lord Mansfield, who then presided in the court of King's Bench. In the same year Mr. Erskine was returned member for Portsmouth, through the interest of Mr. Fox, with the immediate view of supporting that minister's famous India Bill. In the House of Commons however his success by no means equalled the expectations which his friends had formed, though his parliamentary speeches would appear to have been far above mediocrity. In the same year also he was made attorney-general to the prince of Wales, an appointment which, to the disgrace of the advisers of the crown, he was called upon to resign in 1792, in consequence of his refusing to abandon the defence of Thos. Paine when he was prosecuted for his publication The Rights of Man.' In 1802 he was made chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall; and in 1806, on the formation of the Grenville ministry, he was appointed lord chancellor, and raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Erskine, of Restormel Castle, in Cornwall. His tenure of office was however brief, for on the dissolution of the ministry in 1807, he retired from public life. After this period Lord Erskine seldom appeared in his place in the House of Lords, but in 1820 he took a prominent part on the occasion of the trial of Queen Caroline. In the later years of his life he was harassed by pecuniary embarrassments, arising from the loss of his large professional income, and an unfortunate investment of the fruits of his industry in land. His first wife died in 1805, and an ill-assorted second marriage increased his domestic disquietudes, injured his reputation, and gave pain to his friends. He died Nov. 17, 1823. Lord Erskine's talents were peculiarly those of an accomplished and dexterous advocate: his eloquence formed an æra at the bar, and his addresses to juries captivated their understandings, their imaginations, and their passions; they were not marked by beauty of diction, richness of ornament, or felicity of illustration, but by strength, vigour, and simplicity, and a perfect freedom from colloquial vulgarisms. A remarkable feature in his speeches is an exact and sedulous adherence to some one great principle which he laid down, and to which all his efforts were referrible and subsidiary. As the principle thus proposed was founded on truth and justice, whatever might be his ingenuity in applying it to the particular case, it naturally gave to his address an air of honesty and sincerity which had great influence with the jury. ones have their lateral borders prolonged in angles, well M. Desmarest observes that this genus is entirely anomalous, and ought, in a natural classification, to form a section by itself. According to the method of Dr. Leach, it would belong, 1st, to the order Macroura; 2nd, to the second section, which includes those Macroura which are provided with a caudal flabelliform fin; 3rd, to the subsection B, which have the peduncles of the internal antennæ moderately elongated; 4th to the 5th division, which have the natatory blades of the extremity of the tail formed of a single piece, the second articulation of the abdomen not dilated, and rounded anteriorly and posteriorly on each side; and finally, feet to the number of ten. M. Desmarest goes on to say that it is to the Callianassæ, the Thalassina, the Gebiæ, and the Axii, that Eryon bears relation. Nevertheless it has not, he observes, the habit of any of them. Its short depressed carapace, and its little elongated abdomen approximate it to Scyllarus, but its internal antenna with short peduncles, its external setaceous antenna and its great anterior didactylous feet, widely separate it from that genus. It cannot be confounded with Palinurus, which has the external antennæ His extraordinary talent was developed by the times in and the peduncles of the internal ones so long, and whose which he lived; his indignant eloquence was called forth feet are all monodactylous; and, finally, it cannot be rein defence of those individuals in whose persons the court ferred to the crawfishes or lobsters (Astacus), whose shell and the government attacked the liberty of the press and is differently formed, and which have the external natatory constitutional freedora. The public mind was in a state of blades of the tail composed of two pieces; but Desmarest ferment from the recent events of the French revolution; thinks that it is to the last-named genus that Eryon most and the government, in their hatred of the great principles approximates, taking into consideration its general chaof liberty then being established, forgot that actions, not racter. He regrets that he has not been able to satisfy principles, are the proper subjects for prosecution. As himself whether the four antennæ are inserted on the counsel for the defendants in these political prosecutions, same horizontal line or not, a fact which would have asLord Erskine made his noblest and most successful efforts; sisted him in his comparison with other genera. fearless and zealous in the cause of his client, he spoke home truths without using unnecessary violence or low invective. Lord Erskine has left few productions in writing; the principal are the Preface to Fox's Speeches, the political romance called Armata,' and a pamphlet entitled ' View of the Causes and Consequences of the War with France,' which passed through 48 editions. His speeches have been published in 5 vols. 8vo. Lord Erskine is not to be considered as a literary man; but it is one of the many singularities in his history, that with a scanty stock of what is usually called literature, he should have been one of our purest classical speakers and writers. His study was confined to a few of the greatest models, and these he almost knew by heart. He greatly admired the writings of Burke, and frequently quoted them in his speeches. Scanty notices of the life of Lord Erskine are published in Lardner's Cyclopædia (Lives of British Lawyers') and the 3rd vol. of the Gallery of Portraits, from which this account has been taken. There are some remarks upon the style of his eloquence in Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 70. His statue is in Lincoln's Inn Hall. ERUCI'VORA. (Zoology.) [LANIADE.] ERUPTION. [VOLCANO.] ERWIN. [STRASBURG.] ERYCINA. [VENERIDE.] E'RYON, Desmarest's name for a macrourous crustacean, only known in a fossil state. External antennæ short (one-eighth of the total length of the body including the tail), setaceous, provided at their base with a rather large scale, which is ovoid and strongly notched on the internal side; intermediate antennæ setaceous, bifid, much shorter than the external ones, and having their filaments equal. Feet of the first pair nearly as long as the body, slender, linear, not spinous, terminated by very long and narrow chela, with fingers little bent, but slightly inflected inwards; carpus short; feet of the other pairs also slender, and those of the second and third pair terminated with pincers, like the feet of the crawfishes (écrevisses). Carapace very much depressed, wide, nearly square, but little advanced anteriorly, profoundly notched on its latero-anterior borders. Abdomen rather short, formed of six articulations, of which the four intermediate Example.-Eryon Cuvieri. Carapace finely granulated above, marked by two deep and narrow notches on the two latero-anterior borders, and finely crenilated on the lateroposterior borders. Length, four to five inches French. Eryon Cuvieri. The fossil was noticed by Richter, Knorr, and others, before M. Desmarest, as, indeed, he states. ERYSIPELAS (Ignis Sacer, the Rose, St. Anthony's Fire), an inflammation of the skin, occasioning a spreading redness, which occupies a broad surface, on which are formed vesicles or blisters, preceded by and accompanied with fever. The whole of the inflamed surface is painful, but the pain is not acute; it is rather a sensation of burning or stinging than of severe pain. The redness is not intense like that produced by phlegmon or boil, but is of a pale rose colour. There is always considerable tumefaction; the tumor is not surrounded by a definite boundary, but is diffuse, irregularly circumscribed, and unattended with a sensation of throbbing. The tumor is often soft and boggy. It is characterized by the vesications which form upon it. The proper seat of erysipelas is the skin, but the appearance of the disease is somewhat modified according to the part of the skin which is more especially inflamed. If the rete mucosum, or the part of the skin which is placed immediately beneath the cuticle [SKIN] be the principal seat of the inflammation, the vesication is remarkable; there is commonly a considerable discharge from the vesicles, and a free exfoliation of the cuticle: if, on the contrary, the inflammation be chiefly seated in the cutis vera, or the true skin, namely, that portion of the skin which lies immediately beneath the rete mucosum, the cellular tissue beneath the skin is always more or less involved in the inflammation, and then the tumefaction is considerable on account of the infiltration of the cellular tissue with serum poured out from the blood by the inflamed cuticle. Erysipelatous inflammation is characterized by its tendency to spread, and thereby to cover a considerable portion of the external surface of the body. It creeps on in succession from one part of the skin to another until it extends to a great distance from the part originally attacked, the inflammation often disappearing from the former as it becomes established in the latter. Sometimes the inflammation appears to pass from the external surface to the internal organs, and occasionally the disease quits the surface as it attacks the internal organs, although more commonly the external and internal inflammation go on simultaneously, greatly increasing the severity and danger of the attack. Erysipelas most commonly attacks the face, but it sometimes seizes on one of the extremities: the disease is always more severe when it attacks the head than when it is seated in any other part of the body. The inflammation which appears on the external surface of the body in erysipelas is not the primary and essential part of the disease, but a remote event depending on a preceding state of disease affecting the whole system. This is proved by the fact that constitutional disturbance always precedes, commonly for the space of two or three days, the appearance of the local affection. An attack of erysipelas comes on either with chills or a distinct cold shivering, attended with a sense of lassitude, aching in the limbs, restlessness, and that disordered state of the skin which has been expressively termed febrile uneasiness. There is from the beginning uneasiness or confusion in the head, which soon amounts to decided pain. This is accompanied with such a degree of drowsiness, that the attack may sometimes be predicted long before there is any appearance of redness or swelling in the face, from the inability of the patient to keep himself awake. The chilliness is soon succeeded by heat of skin; the appetite fails, the bowels are constipated, the tongue is dry and parched, there is sometimes nausea and vomiting; the pulse is always frequent, sometimes full, soft, and compressible, but occasionally hard and tense. After these symptoms have continued some time, always one, generally two, and sometimes three days, there appears on some part of the face a redness, attended with burning heat and tingling. Commonly a red spot appears on one cheek; after a short time a similar spot appears on the other cheek; often the redness spreads successively from one cheek to the other across the nose, which is completely involved in the affection: from the nose it extends to the forehead, and thence over the whole scalp. Soon after the redness appears the face begins to swell; and by the second night, or the morning of the third day from the commencement of the fever, the eyes are completely closed, the eyelids exceedingly prominent, the nose distended, and the ears tumid, red, shining, and burning. On the fourth or fifth day the vesications appear on the inflamed surface, which break on the fifth or sixth, when the redness changes to a yellowish hue. The whole face is now so turgid that the form and expression of the features are completely lost, and the patient could not possibly be recognized by his most intimate friend. The surface of the skin in the blistered places becomes covered with a brownish or dark coloured scab, which often gives a livid or blackish appearance to the part; but this livid colour seldom goes deeper than the surface, and does not proceed from any degree of gangrene affecting the skin. On the parts of the face not affected with blisters the cuticle is destroyed, and desquamates, a new cuticle being formed beneath it. Though the face, in general, however in teusely inflamed, seldom goes into suppuration, yet it is by no means uncommon for matter to form in the tumid eyelids. | Occasionally, though not often, when erysipelas attacks the face, it extends to the mouth and fauces, and even to the pharynx and larynx, at the same time that it covers the neck and chest externally. Dr. Copland mentions a case in which the enormous tumefaction of the neck and throat with the affection of the larynx and trachea, increased by the constriction produced by the integuments surrounding the neck and throat, caused suffocation in a few hours. When the inflammation extends to the fauces, throat, and larynx, it sometimes produces a species of croup. On whatever part of the body the inflammation appears in erysipelas, even when it is strictly confined to the skin, its appearance is not attended with any remission of the fever which preceded it: on the contrary, the fever generally increases with the augmentation and extension of the inflammation. The progress of the disease is more or less rapid, and its duration longer or shorter, according to the age, the temperament, and the vigour of the individual. In the young, the sanguine, and the robust, the tumefaction is sometimes fully formed on the second day, and the whole terminates on the sixth or seventh, while in the aged and the less vigorous it may be protracted to the tenth or twelfth, and the disquamation may not be completed before the fourteenth day. The average duration of the disease may be stated to be from eight to ten days. ease. When the fever and inflammation are intense, delirium comes on, which sometimes rapidly passes into coma. These are most alarming symptoms, indicating a severe and too often a mortal inflammation of the brain. In such cases death frequently takes place, with many of the symptoms of apoplexy on the seventh, ninth, or eleventh day of the dis'In such cases,' says Dr. Cullen, it has been commonly supposed that the disease is translated from the external to the internal parts. But I have not seen any instance in which it did not appear to me that the affection of the brain was merely a communication of the external affection, as this continued increasing at the same time with the internal. When the fatal event does not take place, the inflammation, after having affected a part, commonly the whole of the face, and perhaps the other external parts of the head, ceases. With the inflammation the fever also ceases; and, without any evident crisis, the patient returns to his ordinary state of health.' In the cases which prove fatal, on the examination of the body after death, the inflamed skin is found infiltrated with serum, which is sometimes mixed with pus, and occasionally portions of the skin are found disorganized, and in a state of gangrene. It is remarkable that the blood in the large vessels and in the cavities of the heart is semifluid, and that the veins which proceed from the inflamed parts are in a state of inflammation, and contain pus, more especially when the inflammation has extended from the skin to the cellular tissue and has passed into suppuration. In the cases attended with delirium and coma the membranes of the brain, and especially the arachnoid, are thickened and opaque with the effusion of serum between the membranes and into the ventricles. If the disease has been complicated with inflammation of the fauces, pharynx, œsophagus, trachea, and bronchi, these organs present the ordinary signs of inflammation; and the same is true with regard to the mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines; but in all these cases the signs of inflammation are much more closely allied to those which occur in fever than to those which are proper to pure inflammation. There is a peculiar condition of the skin which seems to predispose to erysipelas connected with the irritable or bilious temperament, and a plethoric habit of the body. The occurrence of the disease once renders the skin peculiarly susceptible to its recurrence. Unwholesome and indigestible food, the excessive use of spirituous liquors, the suppression of the excretions, and more especially the suppression of the perspiration, of the bile, and of the catamenial discharge, predispose to erysipelas. The exciting causes are exposure to cold and moist air after the body has been previously heated; exposure to sudden and great alternations of temperature; exposure to great heat however produced, whether by the direct rays of the sun or by a fire; intemperance; unwholesome articles of diet, as shell-fish, or stale and rancid fish; rich, oily, fat, or smoked meats; impure states of the atmosphere; an impure state of the body, arising from a morbid condition of the blood, in consequence of the suppression of its depurating | processes, whence the frequent occurrence of the disease in the advanced stages of fever, greatly complicating the state of fever and exhausting the little remaining strength of the patient. Violent emotion of mind has also been observed to be an exciting cause of erysipelas in those powerfully predisposed to the disease; in whom also local irritants often induce it, as wounds or punctures in the skin, the bites of leeches, the stings of insects, inoculation with variolous or vaccine matter. Instances are on record in which both variolous and vaccine matter have produced in children of irritable habits, two or three days after inoculation, an crysipelatous inflammation which has proved fatal. It is a point much disputed whether erysipelas be capable of being propagated by contagion. The disease,' says Dr. Bateman, has been noticed in several hospitals to prevail in certain wards, among patients admitted with different complaints; but has seldom been known to spread in private houses. Dr. Wells, indeed, has collected several examples of the apparent communication of erysipelas by contagion, which occurred in private families. But such are at all events extremely rare, and perhaps never happened in well ventilated and cleanly houses. From the Royal Infirmary, at Edinburgh, this disease, like the puerperal fever, was banished by ventilation, white-washing, and other means of purification; and it has not occurred in any hospital of late years, since a better system has been adopted in these respects. Other diseases, not infectious in themselves, appear to become united with typhus, or contagious fever, under similar circumstances, and thus to be propagated in their double form; the dysentery, for example, the peritonitis of women in child-bed, ulcerated sore throat, &c. The simple phlegmonous erysipelas, at all events, was never seen to spread like an infectious disease.' The danger of erysipelas is in proportion to the intensity of the inflammation, and the severity of the affection of the brain. The danger is also imminent when there is great tumefaction of the throat, or when the inflammation spreads to the respiratory passages and the respiratory organs. As long as the inflammation is confined to the external surface, and the fever remains moderate, the brain not much affected, and the heart's action not inordinate, a favourable termination of the malady may be expected. The different varieties or species of the disease are also attended with very different degrees of danger. Authors usually describe four species, namely, the phlegmonous, the oedematous, the gangrenous, and the erratic. The phlegmonous is that form of the disease in which the inflammatory state of the system is the most distinctly marked. In the cedematous the fever and inflammation are less intense; but the tumefaction is so great that the appearance of the face resembles that of a bladder distended with water. This form of the malady most commonly affects persons of debilitated constitutions, who have been previously attacked or are simultaneously affected with dropsy, or some other chronic disease, incident to a cachectic state of the system, and induced commonly by habitual intemperance. It is always attended with considerable danger, for the disorder of some internal function increases with the advancement of the external disease. Very frequently delirium and coma come on at the height of the disease, and terminate fatally on the seventh or eighth day; or, in other cases, the symptoms continue undiminished, and death occurs at a later period. When this form of the disease attacks one of the extremities, it is attended with but little danger. cedes to a greater distance from the part first affected, and this form of the disease commonly terminates favourably in a week or ten days. In the phlegmonous species, characterized by the presence of inflammatory fever, the method of treatment must be widely different from that proper to the dematous and gangrenous, in which there is the very opposite state of the system. In the young, the plethoric, the sanguine, and the robust, at the commencement of the attack, when there is much pain in the head, when the heat of the skin is intense, and the pulse is full and strong, the remedies proper in any other case of inflammatory fever are required; namely, bleeding to the extent of the subdual of the inflammatory condition of the system. In such a case there is danger that the disease will terminate in fatal inflammation of the brain, unless there be a free abstraction of blood. But it must be borne in mind that erysipelas does not ordinarily occur in the youthful and vigorous constitution; that it is not often accompanied with the signs of acute inflammation; that blood-letting is required only when acute inflammation is present, and that the extent of the bleeding must be strictly regulated by the degree of the inflammatory action. In an ordinary attack of phlegmonoid erysipelas, general bleeding is not necessary, at least in the constitutions commonly found in a crowded city. Moderate purging, diaphoretic and saline medicines, strict confinement to bed in a cool apartment, with the diet appropriate to febrile diseases, are all the remedies required. If local bleeding and blistering appear to be indicated, care must be taken not to apply the leeches or the blister near the inflamed surface. Various applications to the inflamed surface have been recommended, the most common of which is flour, or some other absorbent powder, to imbibe the fluid which oozes from the vesications. The utility of such applications is doubtful. The application of powdery substances,' says Dr. Bateman, has commonly, according to my own observation, augmented the heat and irritation in the commencement; and afterwards, when the fluid of the vesications oozes out, such substances produce additional irritation, by forming, with the concreting fluid, hard crusts upon the tender surface. In order to allay the irritation produced by the acrid discharge from the broken vesications, Dr. Willan recommends us to foment or wash the parts affected, from time to time, with milk, bran, and water, thin gruel, or a decoction of elder-flowers and poppyheads. In the early state of the inflammation, when the local heat and redness are great, moderate tepid washing, or the application of a cool but slightly stimulant lotion, such as the diluted liquor ammoniæ acetatis, has appeared to me to afford considerable relief.' In the oedematous species, when it occurs in broken-down constitutions, the result of habitual intemperance, even purgatives must be very cautiously administered; the strength must be sustained by mild nutritive diet, and tonics, as cinchona or quinine, and even stimulants, as camphor, wine, or the beverage to which the patient has been habituated, are required. The aperients employed should be mild alterative mercurials, with equal parts of castor-oil and the spirit of turpentine administered perhaps every alternate morning. In the gangrenous species, quinine in considerable doses through the whole course of the disease, opium, camphor, the mineral acids, wine, brandy, and the general regimen adapted to gangrenous affections occurring under other circumstances, must be freely employed. The remedies indispensable in the phlegmonoid species would be fatal in this In the gangrenous form of the disease the colour of the form of the disease, while the remedies which afford the affected part is of a dark red, and scattered vesicles with a only chance of saving life in the latter would produce fatal livid base appear upon the surface, which frequently termi-inflammation of the brain if administered in the former. nate in gangrenous ulcerations. Suppuration and gangrene of the muscles, tendons, and cellular tissue often take place, producing little caverns and sinuses, which contain an illconditioned pus, together with sloughs of the mortified parts, which are ultimately evacuated from the ulcers. It is accompanied with symptoms of low fever, in the progress of which delirium comes on, soon followed by coma. It is always a tedious and precarious and often a fatal form of the disease. In the erratic species the inflamed patches appear one after another in different parts of the body, thus travelling in succession from the face to the neck and trunk, and from the trunk to the extremities. It often happens that each accession of the complaint is less and less severe as it re ERY THACA (Zoology). [BLUE BIRD, vol. v. p. 17; SYLVIADE.] ERYTHE MA, a superficial redness of some portion of the skin, varying in extent and form, attended with disorder of the constitution, without vesications, and uninfectious. It is distinguished from erysipelas by the slight degree of constitutional disorder, by the slight degree of local pain, by the more uniformly favourable termination of the disease, and by the absence of tumefaction and vesication. Authors describe several species of this affection, namely, 1. The fugacious (Erythema fugax), consisting of red patches of an irregular form, resembling the redness produced by pressure. These patches appear successively on the arms, neck, breast, and face. This affection is gene |