condition of medicine there, and the consequent prevalence of various endemial and epidemic diseases which have thereby become almost hereditary among those enslaved nations, furnish again occasion to revert to the prouder epochs of their history in bygone ages, and which are vividly recalled to us in the magnificent and classic ruins which they have left as monuments of the elevated intellectual and social rank which they once had reached.

In the greater and concluding portion of this volume, therefore, which comprises Italy, Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Turkey, it will be found that professional subjects necessarily occupy but a very limited space, and that we have consequently dwelt upon those objects in that part of the world which so intensely absorb and captivate all who make a pilgrimage thither to mourn over the ruins of a land that was once adorned by the most powerful and polished nations that ever existed.

At every step some vast edifice, some shattered column or mouldering temple, some pointed obelisk or towering pyramid, furnishes a theme for fruitful meditation, and admonishes us of the transitory duration of human glory. They foretel that the same sceptre of power and of civilization which has passed from the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, from Cambyses and Xerxes, and Alexander and Titus, and the Cæsars and the Caliphs—which descended successively to the Egyptian, the Mede, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, and the Saracen, ultimately into the possession of Northern and Western Europe-will, in all probability, continue its onward

course to this other and American hemisphere, to whom, next to Western Europe, seems to be assigned the destiny to become the inheritors of the unextinguished and unextinguishable and Divine light of mental and of moral culture, but which may again depart from us to be revived once more in that benighted Eastern Asia, which was, perhaps, the first cradle of its existence.

When I left my country, the impaired state of my health too much occupied me to suppose that I should ever have it in my power to undergo the perils and fatigues, the severe personal sufferings, in fact, from climate, want of food, and every comfort, which I found myself, as I advanced in my travels, more and more capable of enduring. My nerves became strengthened and hardened, in truth, by these privations; and to this, therefore, am I indebted for being enabled now to present some of the fruits of the trials and dangers which I cheerfully and voluntarily submitted to, and which I hope may not prove unacceptable to my countrymen.

The following observations, which comprise the exordium of the introductory lecture to which I have alluded, will explain the object of my visit abroad, and the fortunate issue which it had in the restoration of my health.

INTRODUCTION.

THROUGH the favour of a Divine and Superintending Providence, which has protected me in my long absence, and restored me to health, am I indebted for this opportunity of addressing myself to my fellow-citizens.

To my countrymen, in truth, am I placed under lasting obligations for their very kind and flattering opinion of me; and to this, doubtless, am I greatly indebted for the many courtesies extended towards me during my residence abroad. Their sympathies for me, when my health and energies were overtasked by laborious professional duties, tended to cheer my darkest hours of despondency, in whatever land or clime I travelled or sojourned.

The efficacy of foreign travel, as a remedial measure, is felt in a particular manner in that distressing class of maladies commonly known as Nervous Diseases. They are, for the most part, imputable to exhausted excitability, from over exertion of the mental and corporeal faculties, undermining that primary source of life, of sensation, and motion-the brain. The pressure of unremitted and severe application had, in my own case, wrought a dangerous dilapidation of all the vital forces. The digestive organs partook largely of the general debility; and, as is usual in such cases, a train of alarming symptoms were produced, which closely counterfeited, by sympathetic influence, all the phenomena of radical organic disease. Though our medical judgment, under such circumstances, may come to the full conviction that no serious lesion or injury of an organic character exists, and that the symptoms may be legitimately deducible solely from those of an atonic or debilitated condition of the nervous functions, yet is the fac-simile to real disease so ex

act and perfect, and the sufferings of the patient, both in body and mind, so entirely in accordance with those of posi tive mutations of structure, that argument can but poorly contend with the fearful and depressing images with which our morbidly excited feelings and ideas are discoloured. In their effect, therefore, upon the mind, these idiopathic or purely nervous derangements of the functions only of the cerebral tissues, are as painful and distressing in their results as where actual organic alterations have become hopelessly ingrafted upon the system.

To pluck out these ideal sorrows from the mind, no other alternative remains but that of severing, for the time, all connexion with those associations, scenes, or pursuits which have been the fostering and insidious source of the mischief. In resorting to this expedient, my friends may be assured that the trial was one of intense suffering to me. But neither the pleasures nor attractions of foreign climes have had sufficient power to make me forget my native land, or to corrode or break that chain which must forever bind me to my country.

It

When the invalid, whose health has been broken down by the causes mentioned, bids adieu to his own shores, his mind clings with fond recollection only to the brightest side of the picture that he has left behind. It revels on all those endearing thoughts of home, of kindred, and of friends, that have from birth, and the joyous days of childhood, twined their treasured associations around the heart. finds a delightful solace in recurring to that valued esteem with which our name or usefulness is cherished in the memory of those from whom we are separated, and which, to me, has been my support and consolation throughout my wanderings. The darker side of the picture, the lacerated and wounded feelings, the humiliated pride, which our profession are doomed to encounter at the bedside of the sick and dying, when all our efforts to give relief prove vain; together with all other painful reminiscences, are

"In the deep bosom of the ocean buried."

In exchange for these, the mind is renovated and refreshed by the tonic influence of those ever-changing novel scenes, which the tableau of human life in the Old World is constantly unfolding to our observation. New ideas, and feelings, and impressions arise, upon the ruins of corroding thoughts, that have been suspended or crushed; and while the intellectual repast is thus constantly being offered to our acceptance, in some more and more grateful excitement, none are permitted to imprint themselves so deeply upon the mind as to fatigue or weary by their monotony or insipidity. The magic wand of health is in our own hands, and may be called to dissipate all morbid fancies, or summon to our aid whatever is most pleasing.

It is true that no American, with the sound and luminous conceptions of political rights in which he has been educated, breathing from birth the pure air of liberty, and nurtured under the sun of our own brilliant and transparent skies, that shine alike on all, can, in other countries, much as he beholds to astonish and delight him, feel otherwise than disappointed with their political and social abuses, and proud when he compares the population of the New World with that of the Old.

Beautiful as are "the solemn temples and gorgeous palaces," which cast the shadow of their ivy-mantled towers over widely-extended fields of flowery verdure; instructive as are these ancient monuments which we behold, of the glorious achievements of the past, the reflection involuntarily forces itself upon the judgment of every American who contemplates them, that these proud productions of human art and skill are but too often the chroniclers of human suffering, of the triumphs of overgrown monarchical power, and of the reign of dark superstition.

Even in that second Eden, England, that " imperial gem set in the silver sea," these evidences of the concentrated wealth and overshadowing dominion of Church and State, strike the observer with peculiar force. But even here, where every hamlet and hedge seems invested with the enchantment of poesy and of fable; where every le