are invaluable, and, without them, the anatomical part is useless. Mr. Curtis, it is true, has a frontispiece of "Acoustic Instruments,"-some which, we conceive, would be very likely to obstruct the passage of sound into the natural ear.

Nouveaux Elemens de Therapeutique et de Matiere Medicale,

c. &c.-New Elements of Therapeutics and Materia Medica, &c.; bv S. L. ALIBERT, Knight of several Orders, Consulting Physician to the King, &c. &c. 2 vols. 8vo.

It will hardly be believed that the French are still with out a regular Pharmacopoeia and Materia Medica. It is now nearly eighty years since the codex was framed, since which period medicine has risen from an art to a science, and chemistry only resembles what it was eighty years ago in the name. Much praise is, therefore, due to the Colleges of London and Edinburgh, in revising, from time to time, the formulæ according to the progress of the physical sciences; for want of this in France, legal prescriptions are unknown, and medical men can invent and change them at their pleaAuthors, who had required, or fancied they merited, reputation, have, from time to time, given treatises on the Materia Medica and (l'Art de Formula) the Art of compounding Medicines. In the greater part of them, the profoundest ignorance is observable. Every man had a few nostrums of his own, invented he knew not why, and which operated he scarcely knew how. In this state was therapeutics in France, when M. Alibert, a man of genius and application, undertook to remedy the defect. To succeed entirely, perhaps, he would have done well to have consulted the British Pharmacopoeias; but the study of medicine in England and in France is entirely different; and duly to appreciate the superiority of a foreign medicine over the prescriptions in ordinary use, the physician must have resided in that country and practised physic with success for years on the principles there adopted. M. Alibert commences with prolegomena as an introduction to the study of therapeuties and materia medica. In these he announces his design.

"When the celebrated Stahl changed the face of practical medicine, he offered up the most ardent prayers that therapeutics might be freed from those dark and false theories which diverted the art of healing from its sublime destinies. I should like, (said he,) with a bold hand, to cleanse this Augean stable." He confesses that he only submitted in murmuring to the yoke of Sylvius.

M. Alibert

M. Alibert adds, "I have now dared to essay the task. indicated by this great man,-I have dared to penetrate this, science, peopled with errors, in which the language is as de fective as the ideas, where all is to be reorganized, the principles and the matter. It is true, that a happy concurrence, of circumstances has favoured my zeal and sustained my. efforts. I write at a period of the science, when anatomy, physiology, chemistry, mineralogy, and botany, have been illustrated by immense progress, and in which philosophical methods have prepared this branch of our art for the numerous reforms it ought to undergo.'

Such is the object of M. Alibert, and he has adopted the best method of accomplishing it, by following a regular sys tem of analysis of all the medical agents: he first gives the French or Latin names, next the natural history of the substance, and then follow, in regular order, its physical properties, its chemical properties, its medical properties, and, lastly, the mode of administering it. This method is attended with several advantages: the student sees at one' view all he can desire to know as to the nature of the ingredients of which he composes his medicines.

But the work has another important property; it contains a French Pharmacopoeia, which the English student would do well to study. The French system of medicine is, in some respects, far more simple than ours, that is, it makes greater use of diets, ptisans, simple decoctions, and infusions of indigenous herbs or flowers; and, if the French physician relies too much on them, probably the English are too inattentive in their instructions to nurses. We, therefore, strongly recommend this work to the English student as a part of his library of reference.

De la Goutte et des Maladies Goutteuses.-On the Gout and Gouty Disorders, &c. Par M. GUILBERT, M.D. &c. &c. &c. 1 vol. 8vo. 1817.

THE volume before us contains a copious history of the Gout; the authors who have treated the subject; and the remedies that have been, from time to time, recommended; with an analysis of the latter, and judicious remarks on their merits..

The gout, like many other disorders, requires, if not a new appellation, at least an abandonment of the old one. M. Guilbert informs us, that the gout has apparently been so called, because it was supposed to be a catarrhal disorder; and that the gouty matter fell goutte à goutte (drop by

drop) on the place affected. The English have adopted the term without any reference to the meaning, and, consequently, had it expressed a just idea, that idea would have been lost to us, as has really happened in words imported. into our language; we need only adduce the plant leontodon, or dens leonis: the French have named it by translating the term dent de lion; whereas, in our language, dandelion is merely a word without either sense or meaning.-Why, in the name of science, we will ask, is not the name consecrated by Hippocrates restored (Arthritis, pain in the joints)? it may be objected that it only describes the effect and not the cause of the disorder; but fever, and, in fact, two-thirds of the medical nomenclature, are under the same predicament; and, until we have a scientific name exactly appropriate, let us for ever banish the ridiculous unmeaning term, or, if it do mean any thing, the false term Gout for that of Arthritis. To return, M. Guilbert has bestowed great pains on the compilation of this volume, which is a separate impression of the article in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, of which he is one of the compilers. He has given. a fair and candid review of the various theories and prescriptions for the gout, which was probably better than if he had attempted to explore the nature of a disorder which he conceives has hitherto defied the skill of all physicians, ancient and modern. Palliatives may be administered, and occasional cures obtained, and rules prescribed as to regimen, which are better than medicine; but certain it is, that to this hour no general remedy has been discovered. Considerable light has, indeed, been recently thrown on the subject by the English, and, it is greatly to be regretted, that M. Guilbert did not avail himself of the free intercourse with. England to procure the best and latest works on the subject, which necessarily leaves his work imperfect. We were much disappointed in finding no notice taken of Dr. King. lake, Mr. Want, Dr. Scudamore, and some others, who have given their opinions on the late improvements in the treatment of gout : but most of all, that our illustrious Sydenham should be so ill understood, since whose time nothing has been added to the history of the disease. Our improved pathology has, indeed, instructed in the proximate cause of the pain and other symptoms, whilst the boldness of some late remedies has given us courage in the treatment of a complaint with which our immediate predecessors were fear. ful of interfering.

333

MEDICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE.

Analysis of the Labours of the Royal Academy of Sciences of the. Institute of France during the Year 1816.

Physical Part; by M. LE CHEV. CUVIER, Perpetual Secretary. BOTANY and Vegetable Physics.--One of the most important botanical considerations, and which connects it more than any Other branch of natural history with the physical sciences in general, is vegetable geography, or the science of the laws of the distribution of plants according to the height of the pole, the elevation of the soil, the temperature, and the dryness or moisture of the climate.

M. de Humboldt, whose travels have advanced so remarkably this branch of knowledge, as well as several others, has just published a kind of complete treatise of it, under the title of Prolegomena de Distributione Geographica Plantarum secundum Cœli Temperiem et Altitudine Montium, a work in which he gives at the same time profound researches on the distribution of heat, whether relative to the position of places, or to the seasons of the year. For not only the lines under which the mean annual temperature is the same are far from being parallel to the equator; but the places which have their whole mean heat equal are far from having their summers and winters similar. This mean heat may be more or less unequally spread through the whole of the year, and it is obvious that all these differences ought to have considerable influence on the propagation of plants. The author then passes to the differences which result from the elevations, which vary considerably, and follow different laws in different places. Finally, M. de Humboldt comes to a consideration quite new, on which he had likewise pub lished a dissertation in French; viz. that of the distribution of vegetable forms. On comparing in each country the number of plants of cer tain well-determined families with the whole number of vegetables, we discover numerical ratios of a striking regularity. Certain forms become more common as we advance towards the pole; while others, on the contrary, augment towards the equator. Others acquire their maximum in the temperate zones, and diminish equally by too much heat and cold; and, what is remarkable, this distribution remains the same round the whole globe, following not the geographical parallels, but those which M. de Humboldt calls isothermic; that is, lines of the same mean temperature. These laws are so constant, that if we know in a country the number of species of one of the families, of which M. de H. has given a table, we may nearly conclude from it the total number of plants, and that of the species of each of the other families.

Even at present, M. de Humboldt is publishing in London, along with Mr. Horner, a quarto volume, which will exhibit 300 species of mosses, lichens, and other cryptogamous plants. He has presented one of the plates to the Academy.

M. de Beauvois, whose perseverance is equally deserving of praise in publishing the plants and insects collected in his travels, has given

this year the fourteenth and fifteenth parts of his Flora of Owara and Benin; and, not satisfied with these ancient collections, he has taken advantage of the remarkable and disagreeable wetness of this year to prosecute the study of the fungous family of plants. The constant raius brought so many of them forward, that several presented themselves which had escaped preceding botanists, even the most successful in that kind of study. For example, a variety of sclerotium, which reduced the crop of kidney beans without branches to nearly a third of the usual quantity; a new species of spheria, which injured the onions very much; a new species of uredo, which was still more pernicious to them; and, what is remarkable, and offers few examples in the vegetable kingdom, a new species of parasitical plant, which grows upon another parasitical plant, and injures the vegetable considerably, which is obliged to nourish them both. It is a species of tubercle, which fixes itself above the root of the orobanche racemosa, which is known to grow parasitically upon hemp. This tubercle possesses characters which makes it approach to truffes and to sclerotium; but with distinctions, which constitute it a new and intermediate genus. As M. de Beauvois proposes next year to repeat his observations on this very remarkable plaut, he has deferred assigning it a name till he has more accurately determined its manner of growing, and all the details of its organization.

We announced last year the opinion of M. de Candolle respecting that injurious substance called ergot (the spur), and which shows itself upon the spike of rye, and of some other corns, especially in moist countries and seasons. The year 1816, unfortunately, produced a great deal of it; and M. Virey has made some researches on it, which lead him to consider the ergot, according to the old opinion, as a degeneracy in the grain, and not as a fungus of the ge nus sclerotium, as is the opinion of M. de Candolle. He says that he has observed grains infected with the spur, which not only preserved their natural form, but which still continued to display the remaius of stigmata; and he mentions the assertion of M. Tessier, that we often observe grains one half of which only is infected, and sometimes the half towards the summit, sometimes towards the base.

M. Vauquelin has made a comparative analysis of healthy rye, infected rye, and of a sclerotium well defined as such.

In the infected grain we find neither starch nor gluten in their natural state, though it contains a mucous matter, and abundance of vegeto animal matter disposed to putrefaction. It contains a fixed oil quite formed. The principles of sclerotium are very different. These experiments, without being decisive, have induced some persons, as well as M. Virey, to hesitate whether the ergot be a fungus. [We cannot help repeating our wish for some information on this subject from our botanical correspondents.]

Zoology, Anatomy, and Animal Physiology.-Animals have likewise their geography; for nature confines each species within: certain limits, by ties more or less analogous to those which confine vegetables. Zimmerman formerly published a work on the distribution of animals, which was not destitute of celebrity. Latreille

has