temperature of the atmosphere. The old field of conjecture appears to be over-run with weeds, and a fallow with fresh tillage is here certainly required. None of the causes mentioned by Mr. Robb strike me as approaching to the truth. It requires to my mind a more extended view than any of the authors seem to have possessed in order to discern the fact. Looking back so early as Homer, we hear that when the plague visited mankind, animals were first affected; and the remark then made has been rendered trite by the frequent corroboration it has received. How shall we account for this? Are animals naturally more susceptible? Is their mode of living more enervating, or are their habits such as predispose them to infection? The stimulating diet, artificial domestication and social excitements to which man subjects himself, best answer the inquiry. Then how is it that animals which appear to be placed in a condition not predisposing them to suffer from epidemics are found to fall the earliest victims ? If we regard the animal we shall be struck with the position of the body. The beast by day plucks its food from the earth, and at night reposes with its head upon the soil. The nose is, therefore, continually in contact with the ground, and by this circumstance alone can I account for man, who walks erect, being the last to suffer. There are in every mining district hundreds of widows who will testify to the noxious vapours found within the bowels of the earth. As the shaft is lowered so the miner finds the temperature to increase. Heat, then, the mightiest of the chemist's agents, is present in the centre, and the other, water, from the tendency of that fluid to gravitate, can hardly be imagined wanting. Of the decompositions which are hourly taking place within this great central laboratory we know nothing; volcanoes, earthquakes, poisonous caves, and infectious planes, only serve to convince us that the action is incessant. Some gaseous compound is set free, and through the porous crust of the earth it gradually escapes, breeding disease. It may be too widely distributed for chemical tests to detect it; nor can I admit there is any force in the non-existence of any proof of this description. The chemist may not be able to discover any difference in the atmosphere of two localities, yet an individual shall enjoy perfect health in the one, and be constantly subject to disease when inhaling the other. We shall best attain a knowledge of the composition of the subtle poison by carefully watching

its effects, and patiently studying its phenomena. In the mean time, by observing the facts with which it is connected, we may be enabled, in a great degree, to escape its influence. In Glasgow, it has been stated that those of the inhabitants who were compelled to inhabit cellars were the first victims to an epidemic which visited that city, and something analagous to this I noticed in a dairy situated close to London. On account of the expensiveness of the ground-rent, the building in which the cows were kept was divided into stories, and there were, consequently, cows living on the ground-floor, while others resided on the first floor of the premises. The animals which inhabited the lower region were the first attacked, while those living above them never suffered so severely.

[Press of other matter obliges us to withhold the continuance of the debate on this interesting subject-Influenza.]

REVIEW.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, CONSIDERED ANATOMICALLY, PHYSICALLY, AND PHILOSOPHICALLY. BY EMANUEL SWEDENBorg. Translated from the Latin, with Introductory Remarks, by JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON, M.R.C.S., 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 1258. London: Newbery, 6, King Street, Holborn; Baillière, 219, Regent Street. 1843 and 1844.

THE publication of these volumes is, in more points than one, no uninteresting occurrence. In fact, they admit of at least a twofold consideration. In the first place, the anatomical basis on which the views they contain are founded, is supplied directly from the works of the great anatomists of former times,-of those who were the fathers of the organic sciences, whose discoveries were our inheritance, and whose accumulated wealth, recast in the moulds of the present day, furnishes even yet the most passable and purest coin that we have in circulation in our schools of science. In the second place, they attempt a theory of organic nature, and specifically of the human body; and they aim to shew

the connexion of the natural sciences with each other, and afterwards with the human mind, and with human society; in fine, with a philosophy of causes.

It will be impossible in our limited space to give any thing like an analysis or digest of Swedenborg's theory; for this we must refer the reader to the Translator's "Introductory Remarks;" or, if he be desirous of a complete understanding, to the "Animal Kingdom" itself. We shall, therefore, content ourselves with throwing together a few remarks suggested by the perusal of the book, on the two headings into which we have distributed the consideration of the subject: and first we shall speak of the old anatomists.

It is not impossible that certain very scientific people, masters of terminology, profound in the microscope, and for these reasons claiming the high title of "practical men," may here exclaim, "Who are the old anatomists? Were there any worthy of the name until light and truth came in with the nineteenth century? Surely, no. For our Bell had not then discovered the distinct origins of the motor and sensorial nerves; nay, the theory of reflex action was unknown; no Kiernan had illustrated the liver, and no Bowman had cleared up the mystery of the kidneys; the cell-theory of Schwann had not then explained our bodily conglomeration; cytoblast and cytoblastema were not in all the pages of knowledge; and, worse than all, mankind had no achromatic microscope, nor, in fine, any better instrument for the discovery of fact or truth than comparatively rude knives and eye-glasses, and were constrained to draw, to a large extent, unlike us of the nineteenth century, upon those poorest, weakest, and most fallible means, the rational faculties."

To this we must reply, that notwithstanding these disabilities, and even in consequence of some of them, there were anatomists, and great anatomists too, in former times. Indeed, the names of such of them may be still remembered as have led the way in the discovery of particular parts or structures. The name of Vieussens is handed down to us in connexion with his valve: Winslow is not forgotten by the student when he mentions the foramen of Winslow Eustachius hangs in recollection by the slender pegs of the Eustachian tube and valve, and Fallopius is equally honoured and fortunate by having a Fallopian tube. Willis is known by a

circle, and Zinn by a zone: Brunn and Peyer, by little glands: Glisson, by his capsule: Morgagni, by his liquor: and Malpighi, by the corpora Malpighiana. This, truly, is the most infinitesimal amount of fame that ever was conceded to greatness: it is about as adequate as if the whole reign of Queen Anne should be set down in history as the period when three celebrated farthings were issued from the Royal Mint; or, as if the record of London should be perpetuated to posterity by a few isolated bricks preserved in some future museum; for these men were as industrious as ourselves in the collection of facts, and far surpassed us in that philosophical spirit without which the successful prosecution of physiology is impossible. Moreover, as the subject was comparatively new to the world, so its first cultivators laboured with a zeal, an energy, and a freshness of mind, such as belong almost exclusively to the youthful period of an experimental science; or such, at any rate, as hardly belong to a time like the present, when the field appears to be pretty well exhausted. If the old anatomists are to be characterised by what they did in a comprehensive sense, then we should say, that they were the authors of nearly the whole of the anatomy that is to be found in the anatomical manuals of this day, and that they themselves presented this knowledge to the world in a form that was admirably lucid and systematic. More than this, they eliminated views on physiology so connected as closely to approximate to a rational system, and which, although now extinguished and forgotten, must be reverted to with anxious inquiry whenever the spiral of scientific progress comes round again to that point where men desire to exercise the understanding, and to subordinate the microscope to the senses, and the senses to the higher faculties of the soul. Their views, we repeat it, the order of their treatises, their speculative suggestions, the accuracy of their descriptions, and their living style, strike us with profound respect and astonishment; and, judging them in their own walk, and by the ends they had in view, we feel how little modern science, with all its boasting, has added to the results to which they had already attained. We make this remark especially with regard to their physiology, meaning by the term, the exploration of the causes and uses of the effects and organs that are visible in the body; or, in other words, of the rationale of anatomical facts.

Many causes, doubtless, co-operated to bury the works of these great inquirers, and all these causes may, perhaps, be generalised into two divisions. 1. The defects of the old anatomists themselves. 2. The unworthiness of their successors. We shall not pursue this subject farther, but refer our readers to the short outline of it contained in Mr. Wilkinson's "Introductory Remarks." The work under review contains numerous extracts from these writers, prefixed, by way of foundation, to each chapter of Swedenborg's Theoretical Analysis or Induction. No modern book, to the best of our knowledge, exhibits so complete a catena of their opinions, or will so readily enable the student to form some opinion of their unshaken claims to the attention of the medical world. He may there be re-introduced, with due ceremony, to the venerable Eustachius; to Malpighi, the father of visceral anatomy; to Ruysch and Morgagni, the great purifiers of the anatomy of the schools; to Leeuwenhock, who first seized the microscope as an exclusive field, and devoted himself to it for fifty years with more than modern eagerness; to Vieussens and Lancisi, eminent alike for their systematic knowledge and philosophical genius; to Bartholin, Verheyen, Heister, and Winslow, whose methodical text-books maintained their ground in the European schools for more than a hundred years, and who supplied their successors with much of both the matter and the form that has been handed down to us from them in the various manuals which are now in use; and, finally, to Boerhave, "the common preceptor of Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century*," and the consulting physician of the world; who gathered up the experience and deductions of ages, in anatomy, physiology, and medicine, and gave it a new and most compact form in one little book, the Institutiones Medica." If the modern inquirer will submit to this re-introduction, he will be in no danger subsequently of thinking that these great writers are only to be remembered as names fixed up to mark out certain courts and lanes and alleys of the body. He will rather learn to regard them as master minds, who were well acquainted with the leading facts of things, and had no slight intuition into their principles and causes.

This part of the history of anatomy is of some interest in its connexion with veterinary literature. The fact is, that in the early Haller, Bibliotheca Anatomica, tom. i. p. 756; tom. ii. p. 444.