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« U " o surgeon saw him before he expired . There was mucK confused testimony there generaUy is on such occasions , as to what the several persons present rt > posed , ° or hinted about medical advice . As to that Catherine herself , it was stated by Stewartthat 'he proposed to Mrs . Ogelvie that a surgeon should be called to his assistance ; to which she would not agree ^ statin g that he would be better f and , upon the witness renewing this proposal , she stated that she would not for any money tkat a surgeon should be called , as the . consequence of this would be to g ive" her a-bad name from what Miss Clark liad said of her . She at length , however , consented to a messenger being sent to a neighbouring suren ¦' . j , ut he arrived too late . There was little adduced in exculpation to meet fhsis 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 from 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 j 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 bur 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 , yf \\ q 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 . Parkcmn 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 . "
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CONSUMPTION AND TltAVEL . The Climate of Italy in relation to JPulnionaty Consumption ; with Remarks on the Influence of Foreign Climates tipon Invalids . By T . H . Burgess , M . D . Longman and Co . De , Bfkoess 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 man y dearly loved , that we cannot but listen to a wise councillor who bids us pause ero we hasten that calamity , by sending the patients abroad in the vain hope of curing them . He bids us nause , and wisely bids us ; for , looking mto this mystery with such dim aid as science can afford us , ho sees that foreign travel—and , notably , travel in Italy—is very positively injurious , rather than beneficial . First , because Consumption is hot a disease curablo by climate . Secondly , because the climate of Italy and the south of France does not offer the conditions favourable to delicate lungs . If , as laymen , wo may venture an opinion , we should say that Dr . ¦ "urgess somewhat exaggerates the dark shadows of his picture , and omits to take into account certain mental influences resulting from foreign travel , which influences may have a notablo share in such benefit as doos manifestl y accrue to consumptive patients visiting the Mediterranean . ¦ Jn speaking of the variability of the Italian climate , Dr . Burgess speaks Irom the authority of facts ; but is riot that of England variable and SF - an . wnion ° f the two is the least soP We indioato here certain reservations ; wo do not bring them forward as prominont objections to tho vorv admirable and scientific opposition given
° y ih \ Burgess . The topic is vital . Let our readers lose no time in sooing how Dr . Burgess treats it . That people are sont abroad undor the persuasion that a " warm climate , " a " southern climate , "„ Will certainly JttTeafc , iflt do not eradicate , the disease , arises from a superstition in itself « ot more respectable than that which formerly sent consumptive patients m I . Burgess remarks—to broathe the sulphuroous vapours of Mount J -abio , noar Yosuviua . But if wo reject all such talismanic conceptions , nip 5 dily ask ourselves—What is ' Consumption , and how can climate truti lt wo Blia 11 bo > at anyrat 0 ' tlx 0 p wliick mRylca ( i us to tuo But at the ? outset , our ignorance of what causes ConBumption , 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 organic deposits ; they are deposits from the blood , and have this peculiarity- — that they are insusceptible of any further development . The food which , converted into blood , is afterwards converted into tissues—that is to say , the ^ process of assimilation , upon wluch growth arid life depend , is arrested midway , 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 ? 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 ; 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 Eve and flourish in the jungles of Asia or the scorching deserts of Africa .
" Man , althoiigh 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 cachexies—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 his natural climate , as well in health as when his constitution is broken down by positive deseasc , or 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 j 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 his complaint . " In another passage , Dr . Burgess points to that very prevalent metaphysical idea of a vis onedicatrix naturce , 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 curative effects of climate , to say the least , seem quite as doubtful ns 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 enabled , 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 nover 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 aro
what they aro ); and it is our province to try and understand what precisely aro the conditions upon which tubercles depend ; having done that , wo may perhaps alter them , and cure consumption . lint Nature will not cure herself , for Nature is not sick / Warm climates will not cure , unless they afford conditions which prevent tubercular deposits ; and the examination of Dr . 13 urgcss goe 3 to show that not only are consumptive pationts frightfully numerous in thoso climates , but that the climates , so far aa science as gauged them , are essentially itmuited to consumptive patients . Readers who cannot appreciate the scientific aspect of this treatise , will bo novortheless very much interested and startled by its chapters on the climates of Madeira , Malta , South of France , and Italy .
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A BATCH OF NEW BOOKS . Tiie crowded state of our Library Table has for soxno time past been getting so oppressive , that we must attempt a clearance in a more summary dismissal of several works , than , did space permit us , wo should not unwillingly bestow on them . There is James Martiuoavi's Miscellanies ( 8 vo , John Chapman ) , for example , sotting forth the opinions of an eloquent , subtle , and remarkable writer , in a stylo rarely matched for clearness and beauty . How gladly could wo havo lingered with him over the life and worksi of Priestloy ^ and Arnold , ovor his roviowa of Parker and JSTowman , and ovor his powerful onslaught upon the Churches ! But tho volume is a reprint of articles , and wo can only afford to call attention to the fact uiu /
tnaij xno uiuiut'B jLuinm ^ v * . JBenwqer ' s Lyrical Poems , selected and translated by William Anderson ( 12 mo , Sutherland and Knox ) , might have furnished us with an illustration of how poems should not bo translated , and perhaps amused tiio reader by tho extracts necessary to " point that moral . " Jfazlitt ' s Life of Napoleon , revised by his son ( Vol . I ., 8 vo , Office of the " Illustrated London Library" ) , may stand ovor till completed : it was a
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MAYi ^> ^ 52 . g THE LEADER . 471
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 15, 1852, page 471, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1935/page/19/
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