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unusual quantity of water taken into the body, and not carried off by the excretory organs, may possibly give rise to such a condition of the blood, and accordingly it is said that suddenly drinking large draughts of very cold water has been immediately followed by dropsy, probably from the cold producing a constriction of the excretories; in consequence of which they are unable to carry off the water as it flows into the mass of blood and thus to maintain its proper constitution. A preternatural abundance of the more fluid parts of the blood may also accumulate in the circulating mass by a suppression or diminution of the ordinary aqueous excretions. Hence the influence of a cold and moist atmosphere in inducing dropsy; and the highly important influence of diseases of the kidneys in producing the disease. It is found that there are several different diseases of the kidneys of which dropsy is the ordinary result. It is the office of the kidney to remove from the blood a large proportion of its fluid parts; it is an excreting and depurating organ of the greatest importance. Any disorder of it which interferes with the performance of its function may therefore occasion an accumulation of the watery particles of the blood, and thus give rise to dropsy; and it is actually found that when the secretion of the urine is suppressed, the watery portion of the blood is often poured into some of the internal cavities. Moreover, large abstractions of blood are frequently followed by dropsy, because the albumen, the fibrin, and the red particles which constitute the solid parts of the blood are not so easily renewed as the serum, and the superabundant serum readily passes off by the exhalants preternaturally relaxed by the debilitated state of the system induced by the bleeding.

The parts of the body in which the dropsical effusions usually collect are the cavities of the cranium, chest and abdomen, and the interstices of the cellular tissue diffused over the whole body, and forming a constituent element of every organ.

The dropsical fluid itself consists for the most part of the serum of the blood; but its sensible properties and its chemical constitution vary exceedingly according to the form of the disease and the condition of the capillary vessels at the moment the effusion takes place. If the vascular action have been great, the fluid is yellow or straw coloured like whey, and is more or less turbid, and contains minute particles of albumen and fibrin. If, instead of excited vascular action, the effusion have been the consequence of an altered condition of the blood, the fluid is darkcoloured and turbid, probably from the admixture of the red particles of the blood. If the effusion have taken place very slowly in consequence of the operation of some cause progressively but not rapidly impeding the circulation more and more, the fluid is almost colourless and nearly destitute of animal matter. If the fluid have been long retained in the cavity containing it, it may be of all colours and consistence, and its sensible properties may be infinitely diversified, and these diversities are apparently increased by the admission of the external air to the cavity in consequence of the artificial removal of the fluid by the operation called tapping.

But another general cause of dropsy has been stated to be, interruption or diminution of the absorption which should take up the exhaled fluids from the several cavities and interstices of the body. It is obvious that absorption may be diminished, or may cease altogether, from a loss of tone in the proper absorbent vessels. Without doubt, a certain degree of tone or power is necessary in the absorbent extremities to enable them to perform their office; and it was justly observed by Cullen, that the same genera, debility which produces that laxity of the exhalant vessels which constitutes the hydropic diathesis, occasions at the same time a loss of tone in the absorbents; that therefore a laxity of the exhalants generally accompanies a loss of tone in the absorbents; that consequently a diminution of absorption must have a considerable share in the production of dropsy; and that this is rendered the more probable since dropsies are often cured by medicines which seem to operate by exciting the action of the absorbents.

There are many diseases of which dropsy is the sequent, and the dropsy induced in this indirect mode is called secondary, consecutive, symptomatic, or passive, in contradistinction to its primary acute and active forms. The diseases which precede dropsy as their ordinary consequent have their principal seat in the heart, and its great vessels, in the lungs, the liver, the spleen, the kidneys, the uterus,

and the ovaria. When dropsy is the consequence of disease of the heart, the signs of disease of the heart commonly long precede the appearance of the dropsy. The diseases of the heart which most commonly give rise to dropsy are passive dilatation of its muscular parietes and ossification of its valves, the existence of which may be ascertained with tolerable certainty both by certain signs which are pathognomonic of these organic changes, and by auscultation. When dropsy is the consequence of disease of the heart, the effusion is commonly indicated first by swelling of the face, especially beneath the eyelids, and next by swelling of the feet and ankles, and of the hands and arms, particularly of the left. As in the progress of the disease the effusion collects and accumulates in the cavity of the thorax, or in that of the pericardium, it is denoted by a peculiar train of symptoms hereafter to be described. [HYDROTHORAX and HYDROPS PERICARDII.] The respiration is always more or less embarrassed; the horizontal position uneasy, and often impossible; the pulse, which is seldom or never natural, is very variously affected. Whenever there is a watery swelling of the face, hands, arms, or ankles, with an impaired state of the constitution, the consequence of protracted ill health, and without manifest disease of the lungs, it may be certainly inferred that there is a disease of the heart. The dropsy which results from disease of the heart is very often completely removed by appropriate remedies. The effusion often recurs indeed, and is again removed, and this successive recurrence and removal of the affection takes place indefinitely until the cardiac disease, on which the effusion depends, reaches a point which is no longer compatible with life.

Diseases of the coats of the great blood-vessels constituting aneurism, concretions within their cavities, or tumors of neighbouring parts, pressing upon their trunks, and obstructing the passage of the blood through their canal, are frequent causes of consecutive dropsy. Inflammation of the pleura lining the cavities of the chest, inflammation and congestion of the lungs, the consolidation or hepatization of the substance of the lungs, and the obliteration of the air-vesicles by the deposition of tuberculous matter, may give rise to effusion either into the cavity of the chest, or into the cellular tissue forming the parenchyma of the lungs, or into the cellular tissue diffused over the whole body.

Inflammation of the liver, generally of a slow or chronic nature, leading to a deposition of adventitious matter in its substance, and the consequent enlargement of the organ and the consolidation of its tissue, is a common cause of dropsy, occasioned by the obstruction to the circulation through the vena portæ, the effusion being in this case often confined to the cavity of the abdomen.

The spleen, which consists of a congeries of blood-vessels, and which is very apt to be enlarged and obstructed, may occasion effusion into the abdomen in the same manner as disease of the liver.

The kidneys are subject both to functional and organic diseases, which are followed by effusions into all the cavities, in consequence of the failure of these organs to remove from the common mass of blood the superfluous and noxious principles which it is their office to eliminate.

Dropsical effusions are often poured into the uterus and ovaria, in consequence of primary disease in these organs; at other times tumors are formed within or attached to them, which press upon and compress the trunks of neighbouring blood-vessels, and thus occasion dropsy by a me chanical obstruction to the circulation of the blood.

It is an interesting and important fact, that while in this disease the thinner parts of the blood are thus poured out into the several cavities and interstices of the body, the kidneys often remove to a very large extent the more solid portions of the blood, more especially the albumen, and sometimes even the red particles. Hence there are several forms of dropsy in which the urine is loaded with a preternatural quantity of albumen, the presence of which may be detected by the application of heat, nitric or muriatic acids, alcohol, or corrosive sublimate, to the urine, all of which coagulate the albumen and thus render it visible. But albumen is not always contained in the urine of dropsical patients. It is of some importance in practice to discriminate the cases with albuminous urine from those without it, since there are remedies of great efficacy in the latter form of the disease, which are useless, if not injurious, in the former. This fact

would indicate that dropsy with albuminous urine has its seat in a particular set of organs, and is dependent on a peculiar morbid action of those organs; and although very much still remains to be ascertained in relation to these points, yet some progress has been made at least towards determining the seat of the malady, if not the nature of the affection when the urine is albuminous. The condition of the urine in this respect ought therefore always to be examined, because it may throw some light however small on the constitutional and local disorder, and may be some guide to the judgment in the selection of remedies.

Dropsy is always a formidable and often a highly dangerous disease. Its acute forms, though attended with the most urgent symptoms, are in general less unfavourable than most of its chronic forms, because in the former, though the disordered actions may be very intense and dangerous, yet they are more under the controul of remedial agents, and they often do not depend on any irreparable vice of the constitution, whereas the latter are the sign and the result of deep-seated and surely advancing disease. Of course the prognosis in any particular case must entirely depend on the seat and nature of the disease of which it is the sequent.

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There is no disease which requires a more varied treatment than dropsy, because, like fever, dropsy may exist in, and be essentially connected with, diametrically opposite morbid conditions of the system. Dropsy may depend on a state of the system, for the removal of which all other remedies will be tried in vain unless their application be preceded by a decided abstraction of blood: dropsy may depend on a state of the system in which the abstraction of the smallest quantity of blood may prove almost instantaneously fatal: in the former case stimulants and excitants invariably increase the intensity of the disease; in the latter they are indispensable to the preservation of life. On the clear discrimination of these two different states of the system, and the two different classes of disease to which they give rise, and on the sagacious detection of the different shades by which they may appear to be blended with and lost in each other, the successful treatment of dropsy mainly depends.

In the acute form of dropsy dependent on active inflammation, blood-letting is necessary, just as it is in ordinary inflammation, the quantity of blood which it is proper to abstract depending, of course, on the organ inflamed, on the intensity of the inflammation, and on the strength of the constitution. One full bleeding will commonly suffice; but there are many cases in which its repetition is indispensable. In the great majority of cases, however, after a full bleeding from the arm, the local will be preferable to a repetition of the general bleeding.

The next indication after blood-letting is to equalize the circulation and to promote the secretions. This is most effectually accomplished by bringing the system under the influence of mercury, by calomel combined with James's Powder or with opium, and this treatment may be conjoined with diuretics, of which digitalis is the best.

In the subacute form the same general plan of treatment is necessary, but it can by no means be carried to the same extent, and in each individual case the application of the remedies employed must of course be modified according to the circumstances peculiar to that case.

In the chronic, passive, or asthenic form, life would be destroyed by the employment of the remedies which alone are efficacious in the acute form. In this debilitated state of the system the abstraction of the smallest quantity of blood is highly pernicious. The safer and the most efficient remedies in this form of the disease are tonics, the laxatives called deobstruents, taraxacum, mild unirritating doses of mercury, and iodine, particularly in the form of the hydriodate of potass.

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sician saves, when the ignorant, careless, and routine practitioner destroys. [HYDROCEPHALUS, HYDROPS PERICARDII, HYDROTHORAX, &c.]

DROPWORT, a poisonous wild umbelliferous plant, with fleshy-fingered roots, inhabiting ditches and wet places. It has been sometimes sold fraudulently by itinerant gardeners as a new species of dahlia. Its botanical name is Enanthe crocata.

DROSERA'CEÆ, a natural order of albuminous exogenous plants, consisting of marsh herbs, whose leaves are usually covered with glands or glandular hairs, and whose flowers are arranged in circinate racemes. The calyx consists of five sepals: there are five petals, five or ten hypogynous stamens, a one-celled many-seeded capsular fruit, and minute seeds, having an embryo lying at the base of a large quantity of albumen. There are many species of the genus drosera, called in English sundews, more remarkable for the singular structure of their glandular hairiness than for the beauty of their flowers, and of no known use. A few other little-known genera are associated with it; and it is probable that dionæa [DIONEA], whose singular irritable leaves have much analogy with those of drosera, also forms a part of the order, notwithstanding its indehiscent fruit and erect vernation.

De Candolle having inexactly described the embryo as lying in the axis of the albumen, the true affinities of the order were overlooked; they have lately however been more correctly determined to be with Cephalotaces and Francoaceae rather than with Violacea, Polygalaceæ, or Frankeniaceæ.

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The only effectual treatment of consecutive dropsy is that DROWNING, the state of asphyxia [ASPHYXIA] prowhich is proper to the removal of the primary disease. But duced by the immersion of the body under water. When the detection of the true seat and nature of those organic a warm-blooded animal is immersed under water, and diseases which are antecedent to dropsy is often a matter forcibly retained there, he immediately begins to struggle of extreme difficulty, requiring patient and acute investiga- violently, and uses every effort to rise to the surface. These tion, and an extensive and precise acquaintance with patho- struggles are not at first the result of pain, but of fear. It logy. And the treatment of the disease when ascertained, is proved by direct experiment that the obstruction to the the selection of the appropriate remedies, and the employ- respiration which produces pain does not come on for some ment of these with due, and only with due, activity and time. The point of time when the painful impediment to vigour, is a delicate and difficult task, sometimes rewarded, respiration occurs is well ascertained. For the reason aswhen performed with sagacity and skill, with a degree of signed in the article ASPHYXIA, in the space of three quato success not to have been anticipated. It is pre-eminently ters of a minute a violent effort is made to inspire, ry in cases like these that the scientific and discerning phy-expand the lungs with air, but no air can enter. Every

effort to inspire is followed by a corresponding effort to no become sensibly darker, because it can only be com expire. At each expiration a small quantity of air is ex-pletely venous.

pelied from the lungs, and is seen under the surface of the Circumstances may make a few seconds difference in water in the form of bubbles; for although the water ex-regard to the point of time when these phenomena take cludes the air from entering the lungs, notwithstanding the place. If for example an animal be submersed at the inmost violent efforts to inspire, yet it cannot prevent some stant of expiration, the colour of the blood is lost somewhat portion of air from being expelled from the lungs by the sooner than when it is submersed at the instant of inspiraviolent efforts to expire. The ultimate result of these re- tion, and if the animal be much alarmed and struggle peated and violent expirations is greatly to diminish the violently, the change takes place with greater rapidity; but bulk of the lungs, and to bring them to the utmost degree the difference from any cause of this kind never amounts to of collapse to which it is possible to reduce them by any more than a few seconds. Age however is capable of effectvoluntary or instinctive efforts which the animal is capable ing a more remarkable difference. It is proved by numeof making. rous and accurate experiments that the younger the animal When a human being is drowned by accident, if the fall the longer it can live when deprived of air by submersion. has been from a considerable height and the water is not If, as is commonly the case, an adult warm-blooded animal of very great depth, the body is precipitated to the bottom be irrecoverably dead in the space of four minutes after of the water; it then quickly rises to the surface, partly complete and continuous submersion, an animal of the same because the specific gravity of the body, when the lungs species only a few days old will live twelve minutes. A are full of air, is less than that of water, and partly because pup will live considerably longer than a young dog, a young the body is rendered still lighter by the air, always amount-longer than a middle aged dog, and a middle aged longer ing to a considerable quantity, which is collected and re- than an old dog. tained in the clothes. If the person be not able to swim, he generally struggles violently, and probably screams; by these efforts the lungs are partly emptied of the air they contained, the comparative weight of the body is increased, and consequently it again sinks to the bottom, but it soon again rises, and this alternate rising and sinking may occur several times in succession. Whenever the body comes to the surface and the mouth is above water, the painful impediment to respiration produces an instinctive effort to inspire, and a hurried gasp is made to obtain air. But often the mouth is not sufficiently above the surface of the water to obtain air without respiring a quantity of water along with it; but the quantity of water received in this manner is never great, probably not more than is expelled by the cough excited by the irritation of the glottis in consequence of the contact of the water and by the subsequent expiration. Every instant the body remains in the water, for the reasons immediately to be assigned, the powers of sensation and of voluntary motion rapidly diminish, and at length, perfectly insensible and motionless, it remains at the bottom of the water, where, if wholly undisturbed, it continues until the disengagement of various gases in the progress of putrefaction renders it again specifically lighter than water, and brings it once more to the surface.

The change in the system produced by continued submersion, the consequent suspension of respiration, and the necessary extinction of life, are all referrible to one pathological condition, namely, a change in the nature of the blood. The water prevents any portion of air from entering by the trachea to the air vesicles of the lungs; consequently no air comes in contact with the venous blood contained in the capillary branches of the pulmonary artery which are spread out upon the walls of these air vesicles; the venous blood which flows to the lungs is therefore incapable of being converted into arterial blood, whence the lungs can deliver to the left side of the heart only venous blood to be sent out to the system. As the circulation goes on, all the arterial blood in the body is at length converted into venous, and flows into the great venous trunks of the system, by which it is returned to the right side of the heart, and thence to the lungs, where it undergoes no change, but remains venous. These currents of venous blood, and of venous blood only, are successively sent out to the system. But venous blood is incapable of maintaining the action and vitality of the brain and spinal cord of the heart, of the voluntary muscles, or of any organ of the body, and consequently, when nothing but venous blood circulates in the system, the death of all the organs is the sure and quick result, and the organs die in the order and mode already described. [ASPHYXIA.]

Taking the average of a great number of experiments, it is found that when an animal is forcibly and continuously held under water, the blood in the arteries loses its vermiion colour, and begins to grow venous in the space of three quarters of a minute. In one minute and a quarter it is obviously dark. In one minute and a half, no difference can be distinguished between the blood in the arteries and the blood in the veins; consequently, in an animal that is submersed and that never rises to the surface, the system is brought completely under the influence of venous blood in the space of one minute and a half, and though the body should remain under water half an hour, the blood does

Sensibility and the power of voluntary motion are diminished the moment the arterial blood begins to lose its vermilion colour; an animal is completely insensible, and has wholly lost all power of voluntary motion, that is, it is in a state of apparent death, as soon as the arterial blood is completely venous. In one minute and a half, then, after complete and continuous submersion, animal life is completely extinguished. But by the prompt and vigorous use of the appropriate remedies, recovery from this state is possible; because the organic functions go on for a considerable period after apparent death, and death is not real until the organic functions have wholly ceased. Neverthe less, though the organic functions may continue for an indefinite period after the animal functions are extinguished, from ten minutes to half an hour, or more, yet, in no instance in which the experiment has been fairly tried has any adult warm-blood animal that has been completely and continuously submersed for the space of four minutes been capable of resuscitation, though all the means of restoring animation may have been instantaneously and most actively and judiciously employed. Accordingly it is found in practice that the immediate and vigorous use of the best means for restoring animation often fail when the person has not been in the water more than four minutes. In general, however, if the body has not been in the water longer than from five to eight minutes, the prompt and persevering use of the proper means for restoring animation will succeed; no doubt, because in some one of or in all the times that the body has come to the surface air has been obtained and conveyed to the lungs in the hurried gasp instinctively made at these moments. Still it is exceedingly rare that persons are recovered who have been in the water fifteen minutes; occasionally however animation is restored after a submersion of twenty minutes, or even half an hour; and apparently authenticated cases are on record in which resuscitation was accomplished after the body had been in the water for three-fourths of an hour. In these cases, circumstances must have favoured the occasional inspiration of air; it is utterly impossible that life can have been maintained so long unless the individual had breathed at intervals during the time; and as none can tell what circumstances may have occurred favourable to the inspiration of air, it is an imperative duty in all cases to resort to the proper means for restoring animation with all the promptitude and energy possible.

When a person who has been drowned, who was previously in a state of sound health, is taken out of the water, the appearances presented by the body are the following:

The whole of the external surface is cold; the colour of the skin is pallid, excepting in the parts where it is livid rather than pallid, as in the face, which is always either entirely pale or slightly livid. The eyes are half open, and the pupils much dilated. The mouth and the nostrils contain a great deal of frothy fluid. A large quantity of the same kind of fluid is contained in the trachea, the bronchial tubes, and the air vesicles of the lungs. The tongue is protruded between the teeth, and approaches to the under edge of the lips. The whole head is sometimes much swollen, and the features occasionally present the appearance of those of a person who has died from apoplexy; and this is said to be particularly the case with those who have fallen

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into the water in a state of intoxication. It is usually con-
sidered as a sign that a person has been drowned while
living, and that the body has not been thrown into the
water after death, that the ends of the fingers are exco-
riated, and that there is a collection of dirt or sand under
the nails, appearances resulting from the efforts which the
drowning person has made to avert his impending fate;
but if the water be deep, no appearance of this kind is pre-
sent, because the power of struggling is over before the
body touches the ground, and a person in the state of in-
toxication, who falls into deep water, may expire without
the power to make a single effort to save himself.

With regard to the internal organs, the heart and its
great blood-vessels are always found preternaturally loaded
with dark-coloured blood, sometimes to such an extent that
the heart seems completely to fill the bag of the pericar-
dium. This accumulation of black blood is always on the
right side of the heart, which usually contains somewhat
more than double the quantity contained in the left ca-
vities.

the delay of a moment, and this should be assisted by elec tricity applied at first in the form of very gentle shocks. By the application of heat the capillary blood-vessels are stimulated to action, the determination of blood towards the external surface of the body is favoured, and the interna. organs are thus relieved of their oppressive load. By artifi cial respiration the cavity of the chest is enlarged, the collapsed state of the lungs is removed, and atmospheric air, the great agent needed for the decarbonization of the blood, and on the want of which all the dangerous phenomena of drowning depend, is transmitted to the lungs and brought into contact with the venalized blood. By electricity the organs which carry on the mechanical part of respiration, that is, those which alternately enlarge and diminish the capacity of the thorax are roused and excited to resume their natural action. There are some few other useful auxiliaries, but so important and efficacious are these three pow erful agents, when judiciously and perseveringly employed, that they may be considered as the only remedies worth regarding. But unfortunately they are as potent for evil as for good. A slight mismanagement of any of them may utterly destroy that life which the delicate and skilful use of it would have reanimated. It is impossible in this place to enter into a detail of the dangers with which the incautious emThe substance of the brain is of a darker colour than na-ployment of these powerful remedies is fraught, or minutely tural, and its vessels are commonly turgid with black blood; to detail the mode in which they ought to be applied in but sometimes the turgescence of the cerebral blood-vessels practice. It is a subject which deserves much greater atis not in proportion to the accumulation of blood in the tention than it has hitherto received. The apparatus for other organs. heating the bodies of the drowned, for the artificial inflation of the lungs, and for the application of electricity, are susceptible of vast improvement both with reference to the efficacy and the safety of these remedies; and there are few subjects to which mechanical genius and scientific knowledge could be applied with greater prospect of conferring signal service on mankind.

The lungs are invariably very much reduced in volume, and are exceedingly loaded with black blood. Both the pulmonary arteries and veins are likewise distended with black blood.

There is always a quantity of water mixed with frothy matter in the trachea and bronchi. Occasionally this frothy matter is mixed with blood. The quantity varies a good deal in different cases, but it is never very great. At one time it was thought to be so great as to be the cause of death in drowning. It was conceived that the water flows into the lungs by the trachea in such abundance as to occasion asphyxia. The controversy which was long agitated on this point is now set at rest by numerous and accurate experiments, which demonstrate that only a very inconsiderable quantity of water enters the trachea, and never sufficient to occasion death.

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DRUIDICAL BUILDINGS.
STONEHENGE.]

DRUIDS. [BRITANNIA.]

[AVEBURY; CARNAC;

DRUM, a pulsatile musical instrument, of which there are three kinds,-the Side Drum; the Base or Turkish Drum; and the Double Drum. The first is a cylinder, forA similar controversy prevailed on the question whether merly of wood, but now invariably of brass, on each end of water enters the stomach, which is now equally decided in which is a hoop covered with vellum or parchment. This is the negative. It is proved beyond all doubt that no water the ordinary regimental drum. The second is formed as the passes into the stomach, or at least that no quantity enters first, but of oak, on a much larger scale, and used, not in it capable of contributing in the slightest degree to the conjunction with the fifes, but as part of the regimental fatal event. The establishment of this point is important, band. It is likewise employed occasionally in the orchestra. because the contrary notion had led to the adoption of most The third is made of copper, nearly hemispherical, covered pernicious practices. With a view of evacuating the water with a strong head of calf's-skin, and stands on three iron supposed to be accumulated in the lungs and stomach, the legs. The Double Drums vary in dimensions, from nineteen bodies of the drowned, when taken out of the water, were inches to three feet in diameter. They are always in pairs, held up by the heels, rolled on barrels, and subjected to and are tuned, by means of many screws which tighten the other practices calculated rapidly to extinguish any remain-head, to the key-note and the fourth below. Very recently, ing spark of life; and though the notion which led to however, a most decided improvement has been effected in these absurd practices is exploded, the practices themselves the manner of tuning these instruments. By means of a continue. In a paper published in the Medical Reposi- lever operating on several hooks which act simultaneously tory' for July, 1824, Mr. D. Johnson, surgeon, Farringdon, on the head, or hoop on which the skin is strained, the in detailing a case of suspended animation in a seaman tuning is performed at once, and with such rapidity, that, who had fallen from a yard-arm into the sea when the ship in our presence, the melody of God save the King was perwas going at the rate of nine knots and a half per hour, formed on a single drum in a time not much slower than and was afterwards picked up in an insensible state, says, that usually adopted. A patent has been obtained by the 'When brought on board the ship he showed no signs of ingenious mechanist (Mr. Cornelius Ward) to whom we are life. I had him immediately suspended with his head indebted for this useful invention; and it is to be presumed downwards, and well shaken for a minute or two. He was that in future all double drums will be constructed on his then laid on the cabin-table, and rubbed all over by two or principle. three men with flannels, &c. Tartarized antimony was rubbed into the root of the tongue, and tobacco-smoke blown into the mouth and nostrils. Short of decapitation no experiments could be devised better calculated to destroy the smallest chance of resuscitation.

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The proper remedies for the recovery of the drowned are few and simple. The body, placed on a bed-chair, should be removed to the receiving house or any place where the conveniences required may be most easily obtained. The wet clothes should be stripped off as rapidly as possible, the body well dried and surrounded by warm air, if it can be readily procured, by the portable warm air bath, of which there ought to be one at every receiving house. At first the heated air should only be a few degrees above the temperature of the body, and the heat, which ought always to be ascertained by a thermometer, should be subsequently in creased with caution. The body being thus surrounded with warm air, artificial respiration should be performed without

DRUM. [DOME.]

DRUMMOND, WILLIAM, the son of Sir William Drummond of Hawthornden, was born December 13, 1585. He was educated at Edinburgh, and studied civil law in France. On his father's death, in 1610, he relinquished his profession and devoted himself to literary pursuits at his paternal mansion of Hawthornden. He did not, however, experience that freedom from trials which he had probably anticipated in his retirement. His betrothed bride died on the eve of their marriage; and in order to divert his thoughts from brooding over this deep and bitter affliction, he undertook a tour which lasted eight years, during which time he visited Germany, France, and Italy, and collected a library of great value, of which part is now in the possession of the university of Edinburgh. In bis 45ur year he married a lady whose fancied likeness to the former object of his affections is said to have constituted her chief attraction for him. When the civil war broke out, his

Southey has observed that he was the first Scotch poet who wrote well in English. A comparison of his works with those of his predecessors, Douglas and Dunbar, will show the progress made during the sixteenth century towards fixing and perfecting the language, as well in Scotland as in England. His sonnets, and indeed nearly all his poems, mark strongly that indulgence in sorrow which causes it to take the form of habit, and as such conveys a feeling of passive pleasure by its exercise. The resemblance which his versification presents to that of Milton's minor poems is so striking as only to require mention in order to be acknowledged; and few, we should think, could read his poem on the death of Prince Henry without being reminded of Lycidas.' Besides his poetical works, he wrote a history of the five Jameses, kings of Scotland, several pamphlets and tracts, which, with his letters, were published at Edinburgh in 1711. (Biogr. Brit. and Retrospective Review, vol. xi.)

political bias exposed him to grievous annoyances, particu- | the apartments of the palace are described as very handlarly that of being compelled to supply his quota of men somely furnished, paved with marble, and adorned with rich to serve against the king. This, and regret for Charles's folding draperies and divans, the walls inlaid with ivory and death, shortened and embittered his days, and he died at gilding, and adorned with passages of the Koran and ScripHawthornden, December 4, 1649. tures in Arabic, in large embossed gilt characters, enclosed in pannels of various size. The Reverend William Jowett (Christian Researches in Syria), who visited Bteddin in 1823, describes the palace as like a small town; 2000 persons are said to live in or about it, men of all trades, soldiers, scribes, carpenters, bricklayers, blacksmiths, breakers of horses, cooks, tobacconists, &c. Druses and Christians were intermixed together, and even Christian priests were among the attendants of the emir, who is said to have been christened in his youth, and had at one time a confessor, but of late showed no preference to any religion, and treated all his subjects, whether Druses or Christians, with the same impartiality. The emir Beshir, as he was called, was the same whom Captain Light had seen in 1814: he is described as an elderly man of an intelligent and prepossessing appearance, and said to be very regular and abstemious in his habits. He had come to the sovereignty by defeating several competitors, whom he imprisoned and put to death. (Light's Travels.) In 1822, having supported the rebellious Abdallah, pacha of Acre, he incurred the displeasure of the Porte, and took refuge in Egypt, but returned soon after by the mediation of Mehemet Ali, the pacha of Egypt. At the time of the occupation of Syria DRUPE, a closed, one-celled, one or two-seeded seed- by Ibrahim, Mehemet's son, the Druses joined him at first; vessel, whose shell is composed of three layers, the outer they afterwards quarrelled with him; but peace appears membranous or leathery, the inner hard and bony, the now to be restored. The emir has under him several subintermediate succulent or fibrous. A peach, a cherry, a ordinate emirs, or local chiefs, in various districts of the mango, are all fruits of this description. A cocoa-nut is a mountains, some of whom are Druses and others Maronites. compound drupe, being composed of three consolidated, As the whole population is armed and trained to the use of two of which are abortive; and a date is a spurious drupe, the gun, it is said that in case of need the emir can collect the hard inner shell being represented by a membrane. In in a very short time 30,000 men; but this must be only part theory the stone or inner bony layer of the shell is equiva- of the individuals capable of bearing arms, as the Maronite lent to the upper side of a carpellary leaf, the external mem-population alone is said to be more than 200,000, and the brane to the lower surface, and the intermediate pulp or Druses cannot be much less in number. Dr. Hogg, in his fibre to the parenchyma. 'Visit to Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Damascus,' London, 1835, has given the latest information concerning the Druses.

DRUPA'CEÆ, the name given by some botanists to that division of rosaceous plants which comprehends the peach, the cherry, the plum, and similar fruit-bearing trees. They are more generally called Amygdaleæ.

DRUSES, DOROU'Z, a people who inhabit the chain of Libanus, in Syria, are under the government of their own chiefs, and have a religion peculiar to themselves. The vernacular language of the Druses is Arabic. Although the mountaineers of Libanus in general obey the emir, or prince of the Druses, yet they are not all Druses, but a great part, perhaps the greater part, of them are Christians of the Maronite communion, and belong to the western, or Roman church. [MARONITES.] There are Syrian Greeks, or Melchites, who belong to the western church, the chief difference between whom and the Maronites is, that the Maronites have their ritual in Syriac, and the others in Arabic. The Druses live together with the Christians in the towns and villages in perfect harmony, but without intermarrying with them. The Druses live chiefly in the south part of Libanus, east and south-east of Beiroot, and as far south as the district of Hasbeya, about the sources of the Jordan. But the dominion of the emir of the Druses extends also over the north part of Libanus as far as the latitude of Tripoli, which part of the mountains is chiefly inhabited by Maronites, whose patriarch resides at Canobin, south-east of Tripoli. Towards the east the jurisdiction of the emir extends over part of the Bekaa, or plain intervening between the Libanus and the Antilibanus. North of the Bekaa is the Belad, or district of Balbek, which is inhabited chiefly by Musselmans, and is under a distinct emir of the sect of the Metwalis, subject to the pacha of Damascus; but the emir of the Druses appears to have gained a sort of authority over this district also since Burckhardt's time. The emir of the Druses is tributary to the pachalik of Acre, on condition that no Turk shall reside within his territories. (Burckhardt, Travels in Syria; Captain Light's Travels in Egypt, Nubia, the Holy Land, Lebanon, and Cyprus in 1814.) The capital of the emir of the Druses is Deir el Kamr, in a fine valley on the west slope of Libanus, about eight or nine hours' ride south-east of Beiroot: the town is said to have about 5000 inhabitants, partly Druses and partly Christians. There are two Maronite and two Melchite churches at Deir el Kamr. The town is built in the Italian fashion, and is said to resemble a second-rate country town of Italy. Captain Light saw about twenty silk looms at work round one of the squares. The emir resides at the palace or castle of Bteddin, about one hour's ride from Deir el Kamr some of

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The religion of the Druses has been a subject of much inquiry, being involved in a kind of mystery. The Rev. W. Jowett had the following information from the physician to the emir, which agrees with the accounts of former travellers. The Druses are divided into three classes: the Djahelin, or the ignorant,' the partially initiated, and the adepts, or fully initiated. The second class are admitted to a partial knowledge of the secret doctrine; they may, if they like, return to the class of Djahelin, but must never reveal what they know. The third class, or adepts, continue late together at their places of meeting on Thursday evenings, performing their rites, after all others have been excluded. Should they reveal what they know they would incur the penalty of death, which would also be incurred by any one who should turn Mussulman or Christian. They make no proselytes. As to the nature of their secret doctrine, we have an account of it in De Sacy's 'Chrestomathie Arabe,' vol. ii.; but how far it can be relied upon is still a question with some, as it depends upon the authenticity of the books from which de Sacy has extracted it. (See also Adler's Museum Cufico-Borgianum, Rome, 1782.) Mr. Jowett saw MSS. shown about secretly, purporting to be the sacred books of the Druses, and a set of them was offered to him for the price of no less than 5000 dollars. It appears however pretty certain that the Druses are, or were originally, disciples of Hakem biamr Illa, the sixth Fatemite caliph of Egypt, who in the eleventh century proclaimed himself to be an incarnation of the Divinity, and who established a secret lodge at Cairo, divided into nine degrees, the last of which taught the superfluousness of all religions, the indifference of human actions, &c. (Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, 1818.) The Assassins themselves were a derivation of Hakem's sect, which was itself an offshoot of the great schism of the Ismaelites, a remnant of whom still exists in Syria, in the mountains east of Tortosa, near their antient stronghold Maszyad. (J. F. Rousseau, Mémoire sur les Ismaelites et les Nosaïris de Syrie, with notes by de Sacy.) Hakem disappeared, probably by assassination, in one of his solitary walks near Cairo, but his disciples expect his return, when he is to reign over the world. The Druses are said to believe in transmigration. The story of their worshipping a calf's head is variously

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