necessary on the present occasion, as we have often spoken of Mrs R.'s poetical merits. The following Sonnet will be a farther specimen of these compositions: O! How can Love exulting Reason quell! Who fear not sorrow, and who know not guile, A pretty engraved bust of Sappho, by Bovi, decorates this elegant little volume. ART. V. A Guide to Health; being Cautions and Directions in the Treatment of Diseases. Designed chiefly for the Use of Students. By the Rev. Joseph Townsend, Rector of Pewsey, Author of the Physician's Vade Mecum. Vol. II. 8vo. pp. 570. 75. Boards. Johnson, &c. 1796. T HE character which we gave some time ago* of the first volume of this work may be transferred, without modification, to the present. However short the whole publication may fall of a well-digested system of medical philosophy, the author's cultivation of medicine does him honour, and affords an useful example to his brethren. Both volumes abound with notices, which Mr. T. seems to have picked up in conversation with various physicians at home and abroad. From some of these, we think that useful hints may be taken. Others are egregiously trifling, and are apparently introduced for the purpose of paying some friend a swinging compliment en passant. As examples of the former kind, we lay the two following passages before our readers:-Speaking of dropsy of the spine, Mr. T. observes, Aamidst multitudes, who have lived for a few days only in this terrible disease, my friend M. GIMBERNAT attended one, a lovely youth, who completed his fifteenth year, before he died. The tumour, which was on the superior part of the sacrum, was at his birth no bigger than a hazel nut, but by degrees it grew to the size * See Rev. N. S. yol. xviii. p. 299. of a hen's egg, when it became difficult to avoid compression. At this period he applied to Mr. Gimbernat, who observing that when the tumour was compressed, whether by accident or by design, the boy first complained of head-ach, then felt vertigo, after that became lethargic, and so continued till the pressure was removed; he contrived an instrument, which at once protected the tumour from external injury, and by means of a spring made such pressure on the part as the boy was able to bear without either pain or lethargy. The design of this pressure was, to promote absorption, which effect it produced to such a degree, that the tumour decreased in size, and the fixed pain in the centre of his head, of which he before complained, had left him. Thus relieved, the boy neglected to call from time to time upon his surgeon till the leather covering of the instrument was worn out, and the iron circle had ulcerated the tumour; in consequence of which, the lymph was suddenly discharged. M. GIMBERNAT and his son, from whom I have this relation, were instantly called in. They found him senseless, with a very quick pulse, and violent convulsions, particularly in his lower extremities. They observed likewise, that a very considerable quantity of a limpid fluid, exceedingly saline, had been discharged, and was then flowing to a most astonishing degree. They applied strong sticking plaster to the opening of the tumour, and no sooner was the communication with the external air cut off, than the patient began gradually to regain his senses; butthe convulsions, chiefly of the lower extremities, still continued, and he complained incessantly of excruciating pain in the interior of his head. In a few hours the quantity of lymph collected in the tumour was so great, that the sticking plaster, although assisted by fomentations with calcined alum, was carried off. No sooner was the communication renewed between the atmospheric air and the brain through the vertebral canal, than lethargy returned and continued, till fresh plasters were applied, when, as before, the excruciating pain in the interior of his head produced incessant lamentation, till at the end of two days he died.' M. Ginesta, professor of the college of surgery at Madrid, has happily discovered, that opium internally taken and externally applied in strong fomentations to the contracted muscles, in duces such a degree of relaxation, as greatly facilitates reduction. In a memoir presented to the infant college, and which will be published, he mentions several cases of long standing, restored in this way by him, after having wearied the patience and frustrated the hopes of other practitioners. 6 When the head of the dislocated bone has ruptured the capsular ligament and passed through the opening, the reduction is attended with much greater difficulty, because it is scarcely possible to make the projected bone return by the same channel. This situation of things being discerned by the more limited and impeded motion of the dislocated bone, the skilful surgeon must lay open the parts concerned, and dilate the perforation of the capsular ligament, that he may may be enabled to reduce the joint. In this operation the difficulty and danger will arise from the high inflammation of these parts, when exposed to the access of atmospheric air. M. Ginesta has devised a new method of performing this operation, which I may perhaps hereafter have an opportunity of communicating to the English student.' My friend Mr. Gimbernat, of Madrid, has contrived an instru ment by which he has cured many deplorable cases of aneurism in the popliteal artery. It is composed of a steel plate perforated in the middle by a screw to regulate the pressure, and kept in its place by two steel rings, the superior ring to grasp the thigh immediately above, and the inferior ring to embrace the leg just below the knee. Each ring consists of five pieces, of which one, rivetted to the steel plate, is connected with two others by horizontal joints to admit of bending the knee, either in sitting or in walking. From these proceed two other pieces, with which they are connected by perpendicular joints, and which being opened, admit the limb. These might clasp together in a variety of ways, but for the sake of neatness, and that the same instrument may be adapted to a leg of any size, one piece enters into the other and catches by a spring. The end of the screw which perforates the plate is rivetted to a small plate, which supports the pad or compress, and thus the patient can give that degree of pressure which is needful to support the weakened part. By similar contrivances he relieves other cases of aneurism, even that of the carotid arteries. In recent cases this method has made perfect cures, and in cases of long standing it has prevented rupture of the artery. When this however fails, relief may be procured by double ligatures above the aneurism, in the manner first practised by John Hunter." The two cases of scrophulous ulceration (p. 521.) in which the application of bruised sorrel is reported as so signally beneficial, deserve to be quoted: but they would take up too much of our room. Among the trifling articles of information, we reckon a prescription of tartar emetic and soluble tartar with some other ingredients by Dr. Willis, which our author found with a patient, whom he visited after that celebrated practitioner. The prescription,' we are informed, is certainly a good one: but, as it was continued only for three days, there was no opportunity in that case to judge of its effects.' Into the merit of the prescription we will not inquire: but we fear that there was a de-. gree of indelicacy in ushering it into print, as the writer's consent does not appear to have been asked, and probably would not have been granted. We shall only add that Medical Memorandums would, in our judgment, have been the sort of title more suitable to the con tents of the work before us than that which it bears. 8vo. ART. VI. Sketches and Observations made on a Tour through various Parts of Europe, in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794. pp. 387. 6s. Boards. Johnson. 1797. THE first excursion of this good humoured traveller was performed in the autumn of 1792, when he visited the principal cities of Holland. Proceeding afterward into Germany, he gives us an account of Cologne, Coblentz, Frankfort, and Leipzic. Our readers must not expect any very profound observations from a traveller whose device seems to be that of young Rapid in Mr. Morton's play, "Push on, push on, demme, keep moving:" but they will find a natural representation of the state of the country, when the republican arms first threatened the independence of Germany, in the following passages: This morning, in passing from Frankfort on the Maine to Wis. baden, I had a complete view of the cannonading of Mayence. We were so very near as to hear the bells in the churches with the utmost distinctness. They were all ringing to call the unfortunate inhabitants to mass, to pray for the safety of the town. The cannonading from the French army appeared to be heavy and constantly kept up, the return from the town was only at distant intervals. Í think I never felt an equal interest in any thing in my whole life; whilst at the same moment, and on the very same eminence where we stood, were several German peasants engaged in ploughing and other field work, with as much sang froid as if nothing in the world was going forward, although the cannons were roaring all around them. Our journey from Frankfort until we reached Coblentz was very distressing. We overtook not less than two hundred officers and gentlemen of the aristocratic party, who were flying for their lives. They were in troops of about ten or twelve each, attended by their servants; they were most of them very genteel men, and many, I doubt not, persons of rank. They had, some of them, been one and two nights on horseback, and themselves and horses appeared quite exhausted with fatigue. They would every now and then stop our carriage, and inquire with the utmost solicitude, what we knew of the French army, and would sometimes ask us where we would recommend their flight.' The author's last and more extensive circuit commenced in September 1793; when, setting off from Rotterdam a second time, he visited Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussels; reluctantly remarking that both towns and people had been as well treated by the French, as they would have been by any other conquering nation. This admission, from a person who was capable of writing the passage which we shall now extract, is of some importance. * A Cure for the Heart Ache; see Rev. for June last, p. 213. On On Monday noon I arrived at Liege: as I drove down into the city, crowds of beggars ran after the carriage crying out, “Vive PEmpereur! Vive l'Empereur !" Not three months before, these very wretches had vociferated with equal animation, "Vive la republique Françoise! Vive la republique Françoise!" Behold, my friend, a true picture of le peuple of every state.' From this passage, we cannot withhold our unqualified censure. If the humbler classes in Germany suffer the laborious misery and the complicated hardships described by our author, it must be indifferent to them whether their oppressors be Germans or French, for they can experience no change for the worse-but will this description apply to the people of every state? Will it apply to the people of England? Forbid it, Heaven! From Liege we are again carried to Frankfort and Leipzic; whence, in prosecution of his tour, the author visited the capitals of Saxony, Bohemia, and Austria, and after having rendered justice to the ornamented environs of Dresden and Vienna, reached the Adriatic sea through the provinces of Stiria and Carinthia. His reflections on quitting Germany, had he made them sooner, might have prevented his blaming the populace of Liege for the faults of their governors and their government. We insert them, though possessing no novelty : but if it were true in the days of Terence that "nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius," how much more must this truth be exemplified in our days! This city (Trieste) brings me nearly to the close of my tour in Germany; an immense country, composed of a little magnificence and a wide extent of misery; a country where you travel a hundred miles without finding a town in which a person of any taste or spirit could bear to reside, or a single villa like those which so much abound in England. When you do meet with any thing that betokens either taste or comfort, it is not the pleasant country house of the wealthy merchant, who has retired to elegance and ease, to enjoy the just reward of his exertions; or the rural retreat of the country squire; but it is the immense edifice of a tyrant, who is shut up in solitary magnificence, surrounded by his guards: while his people are fleeced to the very last sous, in order to support this uncomfortable grandeur. This, however, might be more tolerable, if the tyranny extended no farther than his palace walls: but, alas! a despotic government is but a regular system of tyranny, influencing and operating from the first prince of the empire, from the very emperor himself, down to his meanest postillion; and unlike the stream, which weakens as it widens, this, the further it extends, the more powerfully it too often operates.' From Trieste, on his passage to Venice, the author touched at Furina, a small town on the coast of Dalmatia; where he met with an English gentleman, whose affecting story is related |