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    yt&m *S52Q TH E tEADIR. 471

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    CONSUMPTION AND TRAVEL. The Climate of I...

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    a Hatch of new books. Tnis crowded state...

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    Scottish Ceiminal Trials. Narratives Fro...

    «< No surgeon saw him before he expired . There was much confused testimony , there generally is on such occasions , as to what the several persons present ** nosed , or hinted about medical advice . As to that Catherine herself , it was S tated by Stewart that 'he proposed to Mrs . Ogelvie that a surgeon should be * lied to hisassistance , to which she would not agree , stating that he would be tetter ; ' and , upon the witness renewing this proposal , she stated that she would ot for any money that a surgeon should be called , as the consequence of this would he tx > give her a had name from what Miss Clark had said of her . She t length , however * consented to a messenger being sent to a neighbouring sureeen ; but he arrived too late . There was little adduced in exculpation to meet this evidence , such as it was . It was proved that the deceased was often subject to bad health ; and he had , on an occasion recently before his death , complained of internal pain , and had gone to a ^ neighbour to get heated chaff applied to the pit of the stomach for its relief . "

    There is considerable mystery in the case , and Mr . Burton ' s remarks on the want of legal evidence adduced on the trial are worth reading . Indeed / it is as critic and lawyer rather than as narrator that he fixes attention in these volumes . What stories he has to tell are well told , but as pure narratives they are not in general interesting ; . The interest arises worn the skilful way in which he manages so to group the details , that a moral , legal , or historical lesson shall unforced appear . There are some excellent remarks in the chapter on " Spectral and Dream Testimony , " which may be recommended to the consideration of those persons whose facile credulity is imposed upon by any " authentic" narrative of the supernatural kind ; and in his introduction to the trials for poisoning he takes occasion to soothe the alarm of those who fancy that the advance of science will increase the number of poisonings by spreading wider the knowledge

    of poisons , " One of the most observable things in the history of crime is the slowness ¦ with which it adopts , when it adopts at all , the aids of advancing science . While the efforts that do good to mankind are ever triumphing in new lights , wickedness lurks in old barbaric darkness . It is surely one of the most cheering tokens of a superior wisdom in the guidance of the universe , that science can control its powers for good ends , and that the intellectual capacities of men are the servants and not the masters Of the moral . All our great discoveries , from printing down to the electric telegraph , have aided in the detection rather than the accomplishment of crime , and every new surrender of physical difficulties to scientific skill , gives the supporters of order and morality new checks on licentiousness and vice .

    ' ••* Yet well-meaning people , who have seen with admiring joy the order and beauty of creation in inanimate objects , have been loth to follow it into these deeper and more sublime recesses . -Thus pious heads have vibrated at every invention or discovery increasing the command of man over the physical world , as if it also increased the command of evil over good . At one time it appears that crime is to flee before justice on the wings of steam—at another it is proclaimed that forgery and fraudulent imitation of every kind can be pursued on a bountiful

    scale without the possibility of detection . This world would be , indeed , a darker abiding place than it is , if every scientific discovery were only to strengthen the destructive powers of a race of Brinvilliers and Borgias . Science , when it rises in the midst of a state of society where the other elements of civilization keep pace with its progress , rarely lends itself to crime ; and in the midst of its brightest achievements we generally find the darker crimes perpetrated with the narrow knowledge , and the clumsy materials that have been inherited from distant ages of ignorance and ruffianism . "

    Mr . Burton adds in a note : — " It is curious that , in the only great crime lately known to be committed by a man of noted scientific attainments , the murder of Dr . Parkman by Professor Webster , the chemical adept , instead of drawing on the resources of his science , perpetrated his crime with the rude brutality of a savage . '

    Yt&M *S52q Th E Teadir. 471

    yt & m * S 52 Q TH E tEADIR . 471

    Consumption And Travel. The Climate Of I...

    CONSUMPTION AND TRAVEL . The Climate of Italy in relation to ' Pulmonary Consumption ; with Remarks on the Influence of Foreign Climates \ vpon Invalids . By T . H . Burgess , M . D . Longman and Co . Db . Bukgess has presented here a very valuable and suggestive book , on a subject of near and intimate importance to us all . Consumption—the socalled English disease—has carried , and threatens to carry , away from us so many dearly loved , that wo cannot but listen to a wise councillor who nida ua pause ere we hasten that calamity , by sending the patients abroad in the vain hope of curing thorn . He bids us pause , and wisely bids us ; for , looking into this mystery with such dim aid as science can afford us , he se es that foreign , travel—and , notably , travel in Italy—is very positively injurious , rather than beneficial . First , because Conflumption i 8 nofc a disease curable by climate . Secondly , because the climate of Italy and the south of France does not offer the conditions favourable to delicate kings . it , as la ymen , wo may venturo an opinion , we should say that Dr . J ^ urgosa somewhat exaggerates the dark shadows of his picture , and omits to take into account certain mentalinfluences resulting from foreign travel , which influences may have a notable share in such benefit as does Manifestly accrue to consumptive patients visiting the Meditorrauean . ¦ £ » apoalcing of the variability of the Italian climate , Dr . Burgess speaks irom tho authority of facts ; but is not that of England variable and clamp P and which of tho two is tho loast soP W o indicate hero certain reservations ; wo do not bring thorn forward as prommont objections to the very admirable and scientific exposition given Dy Dr . Burgess , Tho topic is vital . Let our readers lose no time in °° emg how th \ Buriross treats it . That pooplo are sent abroad under tho

    persuasion that u " warm climate , " a " southern climate , " will certainly arrest , if it d 0 not cmdicato , the disease , arises from a superstition in itself not mo ^ respectable than that which formerly sont consumptive patients ; ra 8 Vv . Burgess remarks— to broatho tho sulphureous vapours of Mount am ? ' * * osuvius . But if wo reject all such tnliBmame conceptions , afp J' ^ H y ask ourselves—What is Consumption , and how can climate trut ? lt p wo Bjla 11 be > at anyrate > OIX tho patk wlxiol ) i may lea < 1 UB to tne ¦ But at the outset , our ignorance of what causes Consumption , must

    make us cautious . Dr . Burgess has not laid down the general principles ( such , at least , as they are known ) on this subject , to enable us to reason from them . The tubercles which the microscope reveals to us are jorganic deposits ; they are deposits from the blood , and have this peculiarity- — that they are insusceptible of any further developments The food which , converted into blood , is afterwards converted into tissues— -that is to say , the process of assimilation , upon which growth and life depend , is arrested midvyay , and instead of forming lungs , it forms . tubercular material , which admits of no capillary circulation , in its interior ; and being , therefore , bloodless , is incapable of development into tissue . How are we to attack this diathesis- —this hereditary tendency , as it mostly is , to tubercular formation P How are we to arrest the formation of tubercles in cases not hereditary ? The idea of arresting it through any change of climate does not seem acceptable to us j and , as Dr . Burgess remarks : — __ \

    " If we contemplate the climate theory through the appropriate medium of the natural history of creation , we shall find that the argument is also in our favour . We may seek in vain along the entire range of organized existence for an example of diseased animals being benefited by removal from a warm to a cold , or from a cold to a warm country . There appears nothing in the book of nature so violently inconsistent . The fishes which inhabit the waters of the British islands will not thrive in the Arctic seas , nor those of the latter in the ocean of the tropics . The birds of the primeval forests of America generally die in this country , unless reared like hot-house plants ; and so with the wild animals which live and flourish in the jungles of Asia or the scorching deserts of Africa .

    " Man , although endowed in a remarkable degree , and more so than any other animal , with the faculty of enduring such unnatural transitions , nevertheless becomes sensible of their injurious results . For familiar illustrations of this influence , we have only to look to the broken-down constitutions of our Indian officers , or to the emaciated frame of the shivering Hindoo who sweeps the crossings of the streets of London . The child of the European , although born in India , must be sent home in early life to the climate of his ancestors , or to one closely resembling it , in order to escape incurable disease , if not premature death . Again , the offspring of Asiatics born in this country pine and dwindle into one or other of the twin cachexiae—scrofula and consumption , and if the individual survives , lives in

    a state of passive existence , stunted in growth , and incapable of enduring fatigue . If such extreme changes of climate prove obnoxious to the health of individuals having naturally a sound constitution , how are we to expect persons in a state of organic disease to be thereby benefited ? In fact , view the subject in whatever light we may , we must eventually arrive at the natural and rational conclusion , that nature has adapted the constitution of man to the climate of his ancestors . The accident of birth does not constitute the title to any given climate . The natural climate of man is that in which not only he himself was born , but likewise his blood relations for several generations . This is Ms natural climate , as well in health as when his constitution is broken down by positive desease , of unhinged by long-continued neglect of the common rules of hygiene . "

    Further" If a phthisical patient derives benefit from a . foreign climate , he should never leave it ; for it is obvious , if he returns to his native climate , his constitution will be again changed or remodelled , and he is then rendered obnoxious to the same physical causes which originally produced Ins complaint . " In another passage , Dr . Burgess points to that very prevalent metaphysical idea of a vis medicatrix nature , which attributes to Nature the intention , the desire , and the foresight of an intelligent physician—he does not say so , but read this , especially the sentence we have marked in italics : —

    " The curativo effects of climate , to say the least , seem quite as doubtful as those reported of medicinal agents . The vulgar opinion is , that in migrating from a cold or temperate to a warm climate , the phthisical patient is thus euabled , by breathing a mild and soothing atmosphere , to give nature time and opportunity to heal the tuberculous ulcer , to arrest any further progress of the malady , and , lastly , even to revolutionize the system . " Nature has no intention whatever to heal the ulcer , give her never so much time and opportunity ; on the contrary , it is Nature who has set up this tubercular deposit , and will continue to do so , as long as her paths of action lie in that direction ( i . e * as long as the properties of matter are what thev aro ); and it is our province to try and understand what

    precisely are the conditions upon which tubercles depend ; having done that , wo may perhaps alter them , and cure consumption . But Nature will not cure herself , for Nature is not sick I " Warm climates will not cure , unless they afford conditions which prevont tubercular deposits ; and tho examination of Dr . Burgess gooa to show that not only are consumptive patients frightfully numerous in those climates , but that the climates , so far as science as gauged them , are essentially unsuited to consumptive patients . Headers who cannot appreciate tho scientific aspect of this treatise , will bo nevertheless very much interested and startled by its chapters on tha climates of Madeira , Malta , South of Franco , and Italy .

    A Hatch Of New Books. Tnis Crowded State...

    a Hatch of new books . Tnis crowded state of our Library Table has for some time past been getting so opprossivo , that we must attempt a clearance in a more nummary dismissal of several works , than , did space permit us , we should nofs unwillingly bestow on them . Thore is Jiimcs Martineau's Miscellanies ( 8 vo , John Chapman ) , for example , setting forth the opinions of an eloquent , subtio , and remarkable writer , m a stylo rarely xnatohod for clearness and beauty . How gladly could wo have lingered with him over tho life and works ' of Priestley and Arnold , over his roviows of Parker and Newman , and over his powerful onslaught upon tho Churches ! But the volume is a reprint of articles , and wo can only afford to call attontion to the fact that tho articles aro reprinted . Beranqers Lyrical Poems , selooted and translated by William Anderson ( 12 mo , Sutherland and ICnox ) , might have furnished us with an illustra ^ tion of how poems should not be translated , and perhaps amtised the , 1 t il . _ . i . «_ n n 4 * rm Mn / innnnitn 4 "f \ * ' W * rtl % » 4- 4 ' \\ n 4 " 1 V 1 AV 111 I nisiJUDnuJL uuiuii Jiiiii

    rOtttlCr Dy I / IIO Ua MHUIB jr «< v wan '" . Maslitt ' s Ia / o of Napoleon , revised by his son ( Vol . I ., 8 vo , Office of the" Illustrated £ onaon Library" ) , way stand over till completed ; it was o »

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 15, 1852, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_15051852/page/19/