dle of the sternum, coming on at intervals, and by paroxysms. The patient complains of a painful sensation under the left pap. Sometimes the arm of the same side is be numbed, and the pulse is hard and irregular. These symptoms are followed by vertigo, dimness of sight, fainting, frequent efforts to cough, convulsive motions of the chest. The chest is compressed as if in a vice, the face is sometimes extremely pale, at others red and inflamed. The horizontal position is insupportable, the patient jumps from his bed, and discovers extraordinary agitation.”—P. 267.

Mr. Jurine, of Geneva, who has recently obtained the prize medal of the Medical Faculty of Paris, for the best dissertation on Angina Pectoris, very aptly compares its symptoms to those produced by ascending a high mountain, and persisting in this severe exercise until exhaustion ensues. M. Alibert does not notice the opinion of an American professor, that the disease is owing to an accumulation of blood about the centre of the circulation.

The inconvenience of this system is, that as it is necessary to treat very different diseases under the same head, many unfortunate alliances, and unnatural separations occur. Though the hand of a master is discoverable in every line, the reader is driven to the humiliating conclusion, that the ingenuity of man will never devise a perfect system of nosography, nor even the most perfect that is attainable, founded upon any one part of pathology. But that, on the contrary, the most unobjectionable classification will be the result of a discreet observation of the symptoms of diseases in some cases; of their causes and their seats in others.

Jussieu's arrangement of plants according to their natural orders and classes, was not founded upon their relations to each other, as regarded the different soils in which they grew, but upon some fundamental and constant characters of the plants themselves; and of genera, composed of individuals, having an affinity to each other. But what affinity is there between Bulimia and Gastritis? and

between either of these and schirrus of the pylorus. M. Alibert has admitted as essential diseases, affections which have long since been acknowledged to be mere symptoms, and this is unquestionably a capital error in a system of nosography. Yet in our opinion he has more than compensated for this, by the profound manner in which he has treated of them. Etiology has been so much neglected, that we are not displeased to see it find a place in a work avowedly devoted to a different object. The descriptions of individual diseases in M. Alibert's book, are drawn in an easy, pleasing style, abounding in important and apposite facts, which cannot fail to make it singularly valuable.

Observations on Febrile Contagion, and on the means of improving the Medical Police of the City of New-York. Delivered as an Introductory Discourse, in the Hall of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, on the Sixth day of November, 1820. By DAVID HOSACK, M. D. Resident Physician for the City of New-York; Professor of the Institutes and Practice of Medicine in the University, &c. &c. N. York, Bliss. pp. 51. With an Appendix. 1820.

Ir is not often that we have an opportunity of making introductory lectures the subject of our remarks. They are usually considered by the authors, rather in the light of required exercises, with which public teachers cannot with propriety dispense, although they may be often found inconvenient, than as regular philosophical essays, claiming public attention on account of the value of their subject matter. They were wont, when we were young, to be looked upon as bills of fare, which the professor thought it his duty to present to his hearers, who, for the most part, are students, in order that they might form some judgment of the kind and quality of the materials which they would Vol. 6.

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be required to digest from day to day during the course; they therefore could not possess, from their variety, either of incident or illustration, sufficient novelty to render their publication either profitable or proper. Believing, as we do, that their publication, if more generally adopted, would essentially serve the great purposes of medical science, by enabling the community to judge of the qualifications of public teachers, we cannot but regret the want of some authoritative rule in our colleges on this subject. They are the only occasions which the professor possesses of establishing his claims to public confidence; and they, in return, furnish the only opportunities to test his merits for the station which his talents, his acquirements, his friends, or peradventure accident, has permitted him to occupy. It is true, it would subject him to appear once in every year before the public; but feeling a necessity which he could not control, his genius and his industry would be put in requisition to satisfy expectation, however extravagant; his indolence, his self-sufficiency, and his vanity, if he has any, would occasionally receive a salutary check; and the collisions of opinion in matters purely speculative, would teach him that diffidence, or rather tempered confidence, which, although such necessary ingredients in the character of the man of science, his avocation as a teacher of youth, is continually calculated to destroy. After an opinion so decidedly expressed, it would be superfluous in us to confess our satisfaction with the conduct of the Professor of the Practice of Physic, who has fearlessly encountered public opinion, and challenged public scrutiny, by printing the lecture whose title stands at the head of this article; but lest we may be misunderstood, we mean to speak solely with reference to its publication, hoping that in future it may serve as a precedent-As for the spirit in which it is written, the soundness of the reasoning it contains, and the motives which influenced the writer, so far as they may be gathered from the pamphlet,

these, we think, are fairly the subjects of remark, to which we intend to devote some half dozen pages.

Yellow fever has so long been a topic of discussion among physicians, the facts are so numerous, and the arguments have been so frequently urged, that it appears at this day a thing next to impossible to create any other interest on this subject, than that which is in some way or other connected with the terror which the disease inspires, and the distress which it necessarily occasions. To an inquirer after truth, the only difficulty would seem to be in generalizing the facts, for when once arranged with their attending circumstances, the reasonings must be short and conclusive. Many of the advocates for its personal communicability, aware of this, have done all in their power to prevent the adoption of terms, upon which it would be impossible to mistake; and if not mistaken, it would be as impossible to reason long without arriving at a conclusion.

The author of the discourse, of which we are now about to speak, is of the number of those, who, to a pertinacity of opinion which is scarcely qualified by an awkward attempt at compromise, adds the affectation of a most superlative contempt for the doctrines of those who differ from him, and scarcely permits himself to believe, that any thing which they have seriously urged, is entitled to be seriously considered. How far his reasoning has succeeded in making the like impression on his readers, will best appear from the pamphlet itself.

After some general observations, inviting their attention, &c. to the remarks which are to follow, he states the differences of opinion which exist on the subject of yellow fever in the following manner:

"You are doubtless aware of the opposite opinions which have divided the physicians of the United States relative to the contagious nature of yellow fever, and of the controversies to which that question has given birth, relative to the domestic origin or foreign source of that disease. The same diversity of opinion, though in a less degree, exists among the physicians

of the West Indies, and of Europe; and, latterly, in this country, the same question has been agitated relative to the contagiousness of dysentery, the various forms of typhus, jail, ship, or hospital fever, and has been extended even to the plague itself: each too contends that his opinion is legitimately deduced from facts. Paradoxical as it may seem, this is truly the case; they are both right, and each reasons correctly from the premises he assumes: for example, he who contends that the yellow fever is contagious, under all circumstances, in the pure air of the country, as well as in the foul air of the city, certainly contradicts the facts which repeated observations has established. On the other hand, he who denies its contagiousness in a foul atmosphere, in the confined and crowded dwellings of the poor, in the impure air of our cities, in the vicinity of the water side, where the materials producing such impurities are most abundant, no less violates the truth."-pp. 4, 5.

Here we find our author asserting the consistency of those who hold opposing opinions, and maintaining that each reasons correctly from the premises which he assumes, though he leaves us to conjecture what these premises are. That this may be the fact with respect to yellow fever, as well as every other contested question, we have no doubt; but that we can judge of their correct reasoning, without a knowledge of the data upon which it is founded, appears to us rather difficult, particularly as in this case, the example which the writer adduces, in place of proving that they are both right, shows conclusively that they are both wrong.

But, taking it for granted that he believes what he has written, to wit, that they reasonably differ, we cannot but view the acknowledgment as most unfortunate for the Doctor; since, to the candid reader, the largest half of this lecture will appear to be, as it in reality is, an illiberal and libellous attack on a vast majority of the physicians of this country; and he has taken care that the scope of it should not be mistaken, by confessing also, that it is gratuitous and wanton. His reason for this (in this