ice lock up the miasmata of marshes, and where the sequestered abodes of the sick forbid the entrance of contagion, ought to be illuminated by the torch of science. It is deemed essential to trace the operation of animal food, and of ardent spirits, upon constitutions thus invaded.

Should the Pneumonia Typhoides, so fatal to our armies during the late war, break out once more, every memorable fact concerning it ought to be recorded. A disease attacking the vital organs with so much fury, merits the most particular notice. There will be no small satisfaction in discovering the morbid predisposition and cause; in ascertaining the injury done to the bodily organs, and the value or inefficacy of prescriptions. The writings of Mann, Heustis, and Waterhouse, will afford you encouragement and direction on these and similar inquiries.

The Influenza, or General Catarrh, has had an extensive prevalence during the present autumn. Additions are wanted to complete its rational history. The prevalence of such wide-spreading disorders, their forerunners, their concomitants, and their consequences, are all of high moment to medicine and to mankind.

Dysenteries merit the most particular attention. Connected with the food and drink received into the alimentary canal, they rage with a distressful, and frequently, a destructive sway. The amount of disorder in the stomach and intestines; the degree and type of the fever; the connexion of both with the air respired, invite the most careful inquiry; as also do the circumstances relative to their origin and communication.

Who are more capable than you, to observe every thing that relates to the Remitting and Intermitting Fevers, which almost every season prevail to some degree and extent over certain districts? Whether they assume the solemn aspect of the Bilious, Malignant, Autumnal, or Yellow, or the milder complexion of Quotidian, Tertian, or Quartan; there are circumstances that often solicit the regard of the medical philosopher. It must be owned, we are at

this moment in want of a satisfactory theory of Fever, notwithstanding the labours of Boerhaave, Cullen, Darwin, and Rush. You are called upon to furnish information in this exigency. Perhaps from some quarter whence it is least expected, the long-sought light may shine. I should exult with a joy greater than I can express, if, in my day, the phenomena upon this momentous, but abstruse subject, could be generalized into a science.

It would be useful to make correct entries in a book, of all the memorable events, medical, surgical, or collateral, that come within your observation. From this they may be copied from time to time, and forwarded for insertion in one of the respectable journals published quarter-yearly in New-York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

It is suggested as a steady rule of conduct, in all important cases, to inquire, by actual inspection, into the morbid alterations wrought by disease.

The situation and employment of many of you is favourable to a knowledge of our indigenous simples, and an acquaintance with their virtues. The forests and fields are rich with vegetable productions of almost every sort. The Physician, as he rides through the woods, beholds sanative plants on the right and the left; and the Surgeon, as he journeys along the highway, may be said to pass through an avenue of vulnerary herbs. In ascertaining their names, localities, and uses, you will not only act worthily for yourselves and your patients, but advantageously for the whole profession, and the human race.

The residence of some of those whom I address, is favourable to a more minute acquaintance with the distemper in rabid brutes, which, by their bites, excites hydrophobia in man. Your attention is particularly invited to mad foxes and mad wolves, as well as to mad dogs. The gazettes, for several years, have contained shocking recitals of attacks made in their paroxysms of fury, upon man and domestic animals. It is hoped we shall obtain an embodied his

tory of those mournful occurrences, written at full length by competent members of the staff, instead of being left to the authors of casual paragraphs, soon to be forgotten and lost.

From men so happily located as you are, we naturally expect intelligence concerning the topography of the country. After the excellent descriptions of New-York County, by Akerly; of Jefferson County, by Henderson; and of Saratoga, by Steel; more may be expected. Would the sons of Esculapius really perform as much as they are capacitated to achieve, a shower of information would descend upon us. For such exercises, yourselves are better qualified, by reason of your scientific education, and your enlarged opportunities for survey, than any other persons. The former prepares you to understand, and the latter enables you to arrange and narrate. In examining the soil you tread, you will not fail to note the composition of the strata, of the issuing waters, and of the incumbent air. I exhort you to collect and preserve those monuments of the former generations of created beings, the remains of antediluvian vegetables and animals, which are distributed in many places through the ground and the rocks.

It cannot be considered foreign to my purpose, to invite your attention to the effects of certain deleterious agents upon ourselves and other creatures. The poisonous operation of the Sumachs, for example, by their effluvia and juices, has not been thoroughly investigated. The slabbering disease of horses, deserves a more profound inquiry than has been bestowed upon it. If it arises from the acrid juice of succulent plants, in the pasture, it becomes us to know, by a series of well-conducted experiments and observations, what those productions are. When detected, it may, perhaps, be possible to eradicate them from the meadows. The facts concerning the death of oxen, after eating the leaves and twigs of the wild cherry-tree, ought to be properly stated.

The effects of the venom of the rattle-snake and of the black adder, deserve a more minute and careful inquiry, from the citizens of a country infested by those serpents. Their history, their seasons of greatest virulence, and an account of the best remedies among the great number recommended, ought to be given in a form worthy of the age, and the society in which we live.

Spurred rye has become a fashionable remedy. Yet injurious effects are ascribed to ergoted bread-corn, when used in diet, by the inhabitants of France and of some other parts of Europe. Its action upon the health of our citizens ought to be fully investigated, and to you I commit the inquiry. Such diseased grain, or a fungus sprouting up in the place of grain, is at best suspicious. There is no doubt, in my mind, that all the spurred rye and wheat, ought to be separated from the grist, before it is carried to the mill. But if careless persons omit this precaution, and eat bread containing such an improper ingredient, the operation ought to be traced by Physicians. Its alleged noxious action upon domestic animals, cannot fail to attract your attention.

For the present, I shall content myself with the hints contained in the preceding paragraphs; while I request that your liberality and patriotism may receive them in the same spirit that they are written. You are young, with the world of business and usefulness in broad display before you. Act as becomes yourselves and your stations, and you will receive the reward due to excellent deeds.

I congratulate you on the completion of the National Pharmacopoeia, which may be shortly expected from the

press.

Every order to me from the Commander in Chief, touching the Medical Staff, shall be immediately communicated to you.

I beg you to remember, that on all occasions, in peace and war, I shall labour to promote our country's welfare,

and to discern and appreciate merit in the individuals belonging to my department.

State of New-York, Nov. 18, 1820.

On the Fascia Iliaca. By A. H. STEVENS, M. D.

The medical public in this country has been much interested during the last and present years, in the discussions that have taken place respecting the anatomy of the bladder, in reference particularly to the operation of lithotomy. Several very minute descriptions of this organ, and its connexions, have been recently given by foreign authors, and by writers in the Medical Recorder, published at Philadelphia; and although some of these statements appear to be inaccurate, and others to afford imperfect views of the relations of this viscus, too much credit cannot be given to the very distinguished anatomist who has directed the attention of surgeons to this important subject.

The design of the present paper is to communicate the result of several dissections, made by my friend, Mr. William Anderson, Surgeon, of Nova-Scotia, and myself, in order to ascertain the origin, connexions, and extent of the membranous partition between the pelvis and the perineum. For this purpose, we dissected from the perineum its superficial fascia, removed the adipose substance, and with the handle of the scalpel, separated the levator ani muscle from the fascia covering the obturator internus. If there were any fascia continuous with that covering the obturator internus muscle inserted into the base of the prostate,*

*The prostate fascia, when superficially looked at, would appear to take its origin from the inner rami of the ischiom and pubis. If, however, we come to examine it more attentively, we may remark, that although it has here a connexion with the bone, that it does not terminate here, but that in fact it is continuous with the aponeurosis, which covers the obturator inter