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tended by any other appearance of delirium: an erect posture now never fails to produce vomiting and syncope, notwithstanding which, the muscular strength seems unimpaired; the pulse becomes slower, more full, and more irregular; the skin continues cool, but also remains dry and husky; the thirst at this period has become intense, although the tongue continues moist, but it has now assumed a livid, hue; the quantity thrown up in vomiting is increased to such a degree, as to exceed what has been received into the stomach, in so much as to astonish the bye-standers, and every hour it becomes more dark, and deposits a larger quantity of the brown sediment; at this stage of the disease, the countenance betrays the greatest degree of despondency and horror, frequently assuming that unmeaning smile before noticed; the stools become frequent, and correspond in appearance with that which is thrown up by vomiting, and the urine exhibits a dark coffee-coloured tinge which stains linen with the same hue: in this manner the disease continues advancing, until the true black vomit supervenes, (which evidently is mixed with streaks of blood,) until the patient's stools are black and bloody like his vomit, and until his urine darkens in proportion: now sometimes hemorrhages are seen from the nose and mouth, but invariably the countenance puts on unusual horror and despondency, and the face becomes convulsed; soon afterwards convulsion affects the whole frame, and the patient makes astonishing muscular exertions to rise from bed, and to extricate himself from the hands of his attendants, who with difficulty confine him to his situation: at the end of one of these convulsions, he is carried off by death.'

Our author admits, however, that a variety of fever did prevail in Jamaica, which resembled the yellow fever in many symptoms, and which was contagious :-but he asserts that, so far as it was infectious, it varied in its appearance from the tropical or yellow fever. He seems to think that this infectious fever was the disease which cut off so many of our troops in St. Domingo. Here is authority against authority! for the physicians, who saw the epidemic in St. Domingo, assure us that it was not infectious.

The preventive plan consists chiefly, according to our author, in bleeding, and repeated purging, before the men land in the West Indies. We have been told that the debility produced by -course of mercury, during the voyage, has been found a protection against the epidemic.

With regard to the practice, Mr. L. advises that the patient should be put into the warm bath, and should remain in it as long as there is no danger of syncopé; jalap, calomel, and antimonial powder are afterward to be given, in small but repeated doses, that they may operate both as diaphoretics and purgatives. Glysters are to be thrown up at the same time; these, with the warm bath, are to be repeated, if no relief be procured; and a blister is to be applied to the abdomen, where the patient complains most of pain. He prohibits emetics.

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When these first attempts do not succeed, Mr. Lempriere recommends the exhibition of the eighth of a grain of the Hydrargyrus Muriatus, every hour, till some affection of the mouth shall come on. The bark must be given, as soon as the first violence of the symptoms is abated.

Emetic tartar is said to be extremely injurious, in all fevers incident to the inhabitants of the West-India islands.

The remaining observations on the diseases of the army, though very judicious, contain nothing sufficiently novel to require particular notice.

In speaking of the cure of ulcers, we are surprised that the author has not mentioned the success attending the use of Mr. Baynton's plaister-bandage; one of the greatest improvements of modern surgery:-especially as, we believe, it has been introduced in the military hospitals in the West Indies. Probably, this valuable method was not known in the islands during Mr. Lempriere's residence in Jamaica.

ART. VIII. A Detection of the Fallacy of Dr. Hull's Defence of the Cesarean Operation. By W. Simmons, Member of the Corporation of Surgeons in London, and Senior Surgeon to the Manchester Infirmary. 8vo. pp. 103. 2s. 6d. Vernor and Hood. IT is with great reluctance that we proceed in our review of this controversy, which becomes in its progress more personal, and consequently less interesting to the public. Even though we should admit that the severity of the performance before us had been provoked by Dr. Hull's work, which was reviewed in May last, yet we cannot perceive that any public utility can arise from this species of warfare. It is more unnecessary in the present instance, because the arguments and authorities produced by Mr. Simmons appear to be decisive of the question in his favour. Of these authorities, that of Dr. Osborne is the most remarkable; and a case of extreme distortion, in which his skill delivered the patient successfully by the common practice, authorizes Mr. Simmons's general conclusion that the Cesarean operation is now superseded by safer means. We have hitherto declined to state our opinion concerning the propriety of performing this operation, in the hope that some new facts would be brought forwards by its defenders: but, as the result of all the cafes in which it has been performed, in this country, is that the mother has died, we hope that it will never again be attempted, while the parent is alive. The catalogue of ill success is already too long.

We shall quote from this pamphlet some remarks on a point of English history: the question is, whether Edward VI. was extracted

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extracted from the womb by the Cesarean operation.-Dr. Hull had remarked, on some citations which he had produced to establish this point, "if you admit the authorities brought forwards, as proving satisfactorily the operation to have been performed upon Queen Jane Seymour, it will follow by your own concession, that it has been performed once, at least, without endangering the life of the mother, even in England.”

It seems then,' says Mr. Simmons, that if a patient dies two days after an operation, it is sufficient proof to the Doctor that her life was not endangered by it. It is rather unfortunate for gentlemen, who reason in this way, that the law of the land might draw a different conclusion; unless indeed the satire of Pliny be applicable to professional men in this country;

"Nulla præterea lex, quæ puniat inscitiam capitalem, nullum exemplum vindictæ: discunt periculis rostris, et experimenta per mortes agunt."*

I will not venture to provoke the indignation of this extraordinary scholar, by attempting a translation of the above sentence. But I hope that he will permit me to introduce a satire of a lighter character in our own language, which it might be convenient to insert in the Diploma of a Cæsarean operator.

"And we do further charge all mayors, justices, aldermen, sheriffs, bailiffs, headboroughs. constables, and coroners, not to molest or intermeddle with the said doctor, if any party whom he shall so pill, bolus, lotion, potion, draught, dose, drench, purge, bleed, blister, clister, cup, scarify, syringe, salivate, couch, flux, sweat, diet, dilute, tap, plaister, and poultice, should happen to die, but to deem that the said party died a natural death, any thing appearing to the contrary notwithstanding."+

As I have not studied English history in French books of midwifery, I shall favour the Doctor with an extract from an authentic English historian, that will probably correct his opinion, which is certainly of no consequence to the point in question. Indeed if the Doctor's book had not given me a just idea of the character of his mind. I should have been somewhat surprised at an avowed advocate for the Cæsarean operation expressing so inconsistent an anxiety to prove, that the operation had been performed in a case, where the consequences were fatal according to his own acknowledgment."

Burnet, speaking of the birth of Edward VI. and of the death of Queen Jane Seymour, his mother, says" He was born at Hampton Court, on the 12th of October, being St. Edward's Eve, in the year 1537, and lost his mother the day after he was born; who died, not by the cruelty of the Chyrurgeons ripping up her belly to make way for the Prince's birth, (as some writers gave out, to represent King Henry barbarous and cruel in all his actions; whose report has been since too casily followed,) but as the original letters that are yet extant, shew, she was well delivered of him, and the

* Plinii Secund. vol. 3. lib. xxix. cap. I. p. 190. Ed. Elsevir.' ft Foote, Devil upon Two Sticks, Act 3.'

day

day following was taken with a distemper incident to women in that condition, of which she died.” *

We should not have conceived that any farther controversy could have taken place, after the arguments and facts contained in the present pamphlet; unless some information, absolutely new and unexpected, could have been afforded. Dr. Hull, however, has published a rejoinder, which we shall speedily notice but we shall not be disposed to bestow much more of our own time, and that of our readers, on this subject. Fer?

ART. IX. The Natural Son; a Novel. Translated from the French of M. Diderot, Author of the Nun, James the Fatalist, &c. 12mo. 2 Vols. 75. Boards. Longman. 1799.

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LTHOUGH the productions of this writer are all eccentric, they yet bear a strong resemblance to each other. They display, in an equal degree, eloquence, facility, and knowlege of the heart: but they also betray the same turn for licentious description, and for tedious dialogues: with a metaphysical subtlety, in tracing the operation of the passions, which puzzles instead of interesting the reader. It is another charac teristic mark of these novels, that Diderot has not taken the trouble of inventing a plot for any of them. Careless of the general result, he seizes a few favourite ideas, connects them together by the first story that occurs to his memory, finishes a scene or two with spirit, and then all evaporates to dry narration. They are the offspring of a genius, fertile and happy, but changeable and fastidious. A tendency to depravity pervades them all. The author loves to dilate on those passages from which every reader of delicacy would shrink; he is fond of describing low life, not for its simplicity, but for its vulgarity; and he never fails to attack some principle of morality, under the title of prejudice. Such is the singular result of this writer's labours as a novelist: we shall now attend, more particularly, to the work before us.

The plot of this novel is taken from the celebrated story in the books of casuistry, in which a young man ignorantly marries his natural sister, of whom he had likewise ignorantly been the father +. In this novel, the horror of the original incidents is mitigated, by representing the unfortunate couple as the offspring of an indiscreet mother, who had separated them in their infancy; they meet again, by a series of adventures not

* History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 1.'

The same story serves as the foundation of Kotzebue's AdeLaide of Wulfingen.

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extremely probable, after each of them has embraced a religious life: they conceive a passion for each other; and, forgetting themselves in one of their interviews, in the garden of the monastery, day surprises them, and Sophia takes refuge in the cell of her lover. Their relation is recognized too late, and Sophia becomes a mother. In this cell, we are told, the ill-fated family resided during several years! Detection and imprisonment at length take place: but a period is put to their sufferings, by the intervention of powerful influence.-The translator, however, represents his hero and heroine as so unable to endure the consciousness of the crime which they had unknowingly committed, that Sophia becomes a lunatic, and Julius destroys himself. For this deviation from the original, he has pleaded public utility:

A crime is ignorantly committed, and the moral of the tale requires, that it should meet, if not with punishment, at least with some attendant misfortune. This, surely, is necessary, if an amiable prejudice, ought rather to be confirmed than overthrown, or the English moralist to prevail over the French philosopher. For, though every opinion that is admitted without investigation, may be deemed a prejudice, yet such opinions are often founded in philosophical truth, and general utility.'

We think, however, that a work thus altered ought not to be announced simply as a translation. It is, in part, a new production. A translator is expected to adhere, as rigidly as the nature of language will permit, to the work of which he undertakes a version; if he should correct and alter his original, he ventures beyond his task, and the public judgment must be exercised anew. The opposition to then prevailing opinions, manifested in Diderot's lighter works, may be explained from his history. He was one of the compilers of the Encyclopédie ; and he had seen the whole of the first impression, the fruit of many laborious years, carried prisoner to the Bastile, in consequence of the outcries of religious enthusiasts. He therefore looked with a prejudiced eye on established doctrines; and he may be regarded as one of the chief teachers of the libertine philosophy, which excuses all actions to which natural temptations can be assigned. In the ardour of hostility against oppression, Diderot became the defender of crimes.-Even while, however, we disapprove the principles, we must admire the execution of many parts of the work. We shall present our readers with the picture of a man of the world, by this masterly

artist:

Figure to yourself a veteran colonel, full of arrogance and ambition, whose thoughts are constantly employed on the great offices he pants for, the intrigues of the court, and the pleasures of the capital,

and

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