migrated to Ajaccio. In fact, like Captain Macheath in the play, he appears ready to exclaim

"How happy could I be with either,

Were t'other dear charmer away!"

The only drawback to the almost Elysian delights which Corsica holds out to the health-seeking traveller is the extreme prevalence in it, especially during the summer and autumn seasons, and on the eastern coast, of malaria. If, however, there is any foundation for the views which have been promulgated by M. Boudin and others, as to a natural antagonism between phthisis and ague, in favour of which, to say the least of it, some very forcible arguments have been adduced, it may be worth while considering whether consumptive patients might not find in the prevalence of intermittent fever to a certain degree an element of safety. At any rate, the objection which it presents does not appear to our minds nearly so grave as it apparently does to that of Dr. Bennet, whom we must congratulate upon his activity in opening out to the weather-bound poitrinaire yet new havens of retreat. If the man who makes two blades of wheat grow where only one grew before is a benefactor to his species, surely he who enlarges the resources of medical art, whether by the addition of new diagnostics for the discovery of disease, of new medicaments for its cure, or of new combinations of hygienic agencies for its prevention or arrest, is also entitled in no small degree to the gratitude of his fellow-men.

We will only say in conclusion, that Dr. Bennet has also appended to this edition a short account of Biarritz, and that it is supplied with a good map of Corsica, and an exceedingly attractive frontispiece representing a view of Mentone.

ART. VI.-Chemistry. By W. T. BRANDE, D.C.L., F.R.S.L. and E., and A. S. TAYLOR, M.D., F.R.S.--London, 1863. pp. 892. THIS solid volume is, in some respects, a dictionary of chemical facts. The arrangement, indeed, is not alphabetical, yet the work will serve for reference, since a description of their most salient properties will be found appended to all the substances, the names of which are recorded therein. The volume has been prepared with some care, and embraces a notice of some of the important new additions to chemical science. Mr. Graham's discovery of the dialytic process, Professor Bunsen's detection, by means of spectrum analysis, of two new metals, cœsium and rubidium, followed, in March, 1861, by the announcement by Mr. W. Crookes of his discovery of a new metallic element, thallium, more remarkable in some of its properties than either cæsium or rubidium; all these, and many other fresh facts of interest and importance, are duly chronicled by Drs. Brande and Taylor. As might have been anticipated from the special reputations of its authors, this manual is full of valuable and interesting information regarding metallurgy, toxicology, and the properties of inorganic and organic substances used in medicine. Nevertheless, we are compelled to admit that there is a sad lack of system in the compilation; that facts of

great moment, such as those of homologous and heterologous series, and of substitution, are scarcely recognised; that the formulæ assigned to many important bodies are inconsistent with their known relations to the substances whence they have been derived; that several compounds of high theoretical interest, whose existence hypothesis predicted and experiment verified, are either omitted or merely named; and lastly, that an unreasonable outcry is raised against all attempts to bring into order the chaos of chemical phenomena. We might support all the foregoing objections by very many instances, but the task would not be pleasant or profitable, and so we prefer to adduce but a single illustration to corroborate our criticism, while any of our readers who may desire further proof of its justness need not search long in the volume before they find it. According to Drs. Brande and Taylor

5

(p. 316), olefiant gas is C,H,, while its chloride is C2HCl (p. 318).
By the retention of these obsolete formulæ not only is the connexion
of olefiant gas with alcohol lost, but violence is done to the chemical
and physical relations of the whole system of its own derivatives.
According to the old notation even, the related formulæ are intel-
ligible enough-C,H,O, HO for alcohol, C,H,O,C,H,O for ether, and
CH, for olefiant gas; but the formula CH, disarranges everything.
Again, though from marsh gas the hydride of methyle, C,H,,H, and there-
fore other compounds of methyle are readily made, yet our authors
assign to this body (p. 309) the formula CH,, thus dooming it to an
unhappy isolation from its methylic brethren. Drs. Brande and Taylor,
in fact, prefer empirical to rational formulæ, unless the latter are at
least five-and-twenty years old. We commend to Dr. Hofmann's
attention their remarks on 66
Ammonia," pp. 663, 664. They seem to
have excluded triethyl-phosphine from their work on account of its
unwarrantable assumption of the rank of an ammonia, though places
have been found for barley-sugar and pink saucers.

ART. VII.-Medicinskt Archiv utgifoet af Lävarne vid Carolinska
Institutet i Stockholm. Redigeradt af E. A. KEY, C. J. ROSSANDER,
och S. G. TROILIUS. Första Bandet, första häftet.-Stockholm, 1863.
Svo, pp. 264.

Archives of Medicine, published by the Physicians to the Carolinean
Institute in Stockholm. Edited by E. A. KEY, Professor of Patho-
logical Anatomy; C. J. ROSSANDER, Adjunct in Surgery; and
S. G. TROILIUS, Adjunct in Medicine.

THE new journal whose title is quoted above is intended to supply a
want long felt in Swedish medical literature-viz., that of a medium
for the communication of papers and essays too long for publication in
the Hygiea,' without division among several numbers-a plan "dis-
advantageous to the reader, but particularly so to the author." The
'Medicinskt Archiv' will not appear at any fixed periods, but it is
intended that two or three numbers shall be published every year, and
that each number shall contain two or three essays, presenting as great.

a variety of subjects as possible. The first issue contains two essays: one by Oskar Th. Sandahl, "On the Effects of Condensed Air on the Human Organism in a Physiological and in a Therapeutic Point of View;" the other by Carl J. Rossander, "A Critique upon the Method of Operating for Cataract." These papers we hope to notice at length on some future occasion.

ART. VIII-A Practical Treatise on Dental Medicine; being a Compendium of Medical Science as connected with the Study of Dental Surgery. By THOS. E. BOND, A.M., M.D., Professor of Special Pathology and Therapeutics in the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. Third Edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged.-Philadelphia, 1863.

WE embraced the opportunity on a former occasion, while reviewing a work on the teeth, to notice the position of the dental profession in this country, and the efforts then being made for its organization. We are now enabled to record a settlement of the differences that prevailed at that time, and also to record the fact that the College of Dentists, which was commenced on the principle of absolute separation from the established medical corporations, has been dissolved. The only special qualification now to be obtained by dentists in this country is that of Dental Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons. The public in this have a guarantee that the dental practitioner is qualified for the exercise of his art, and can easily guard against falling into the hands of the ignorant and incompetent. We have ever considered that the practice of dentistry should be associated with the breadth-giving studies of surgery, physiology, and pathology. This view of the subject is expressed by the author of the present work, who says:

The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery was organized with the design of teaching dentistry as a regular branch of medicine, in which relation only it can be regarded as a scientific pursuit, and the practice of it esteemed a profession. The study of particular parts as isolated from the rest, with a view to treat certain local affections as independent phenomena, has long since fallen into disuse, and every physician and surgeon is expected to become conversant with all of medicine as necessary to the proper care of any one of the organs of the body."

The author's object has been "to present to the reader a digest of information prepared with particular reference to the morbid connexions certainly existing between the teeth and the rest of the body," and he has succeeded in producing a work containing a large amount of well-arranged surgical as well as medical knowledge bearing on the special subject, all of which is of practical applicability. Though we were well aware that the microscope was not a favourite study with many of the American dental writers, we were scarcely prepared for the following on such a subject as the teeth:

"Unfortunately it has now become the fashion to study pathology in the corpse-house rather than by the bed-side, to make microscopical inquisitions of disease upon the dead rather than to observe its phenomena in the living.

From the very necessity of the case, this necrological research falls into the hands of the young and inexperienced, and these become writers and teachers before they have been to the only sure school of medicine-the chamber of the sick. As the teeth may be seen by the naked eye, they are not likely to be considered of much importance. Had they been discernible only by the microscope, they doubtless would have received due consideration. It is said that the celebrated Pennant, by the use of the microscope, lost the use of his eyes; I fear that this is too commonly the fate of his successors."

The result of such ideas is apparent in the book, as the following example will show:-"The enamel is a crystalline mineral substance, and possesses no vital organization." Independently, however, of such extreme views, or extremely expressed views, we are of opinion that the student, or young practitioner of dental surgery, will gain much by the careful reading of this work.

ART. IX.-A Clinical Report on Cancer of the Female Sexual Organs. By THOMAS HAWKES TANNER, M.D., F.L.S., &c.-London, 1863. pp. 60.

THE nature of this essay is what its title intimates-a tabulated clinical report of cases of cancer of the female sexual organs which have fallen under the author's own observation. The three principal sections are on "Cancer of the Breast," "Cancer of the Labia, Vagina, and Ovaries," and "Cancer of the Uterus;" and the whole is preceded by some introductory remarks on the prevalence of cancer in the population, and relatively to the two sexes, on its constitutional and hereditary nature and on its curability by operations. Dr. Tanner quotes approvingly the researches and opinions of Van der Kolk, as given in this Review (vol. xv. 1855), on the formation and extension of cancer, and from this circumstance and some other remarks, observes that though he looks upon cancer as being sooner or later a constitutional malady, he is ready to admit its origin as a local disease.

So far as the Registrar-General's returns are of value in determining the question of the prevalence of cancer and its relative frequency in the two sexes, they represent the deaths from cancer in 1860 to have been 6827, or 2100 males and 4727 females, and therein indicate a very much greater proclivity to the malady on the part of the latter. Dr. Tanner has compiled a table to show the age at which cancer is most fatal, from which one prominent fact is deducible :"that up to the age of fifteen the deaths from cancer are pretty equal in both sexes. But when the female sexual organs get into full activity, and this activity has had time to tell, then the mortality from cancer in women begins to rise, until it becomes greatly in excess of that in men." On the question of surgical operation, he remarks, "If any good is to be looked for from the excision of a cancerous growth, it can only be expected when the disease is in an early stage, when it is merely of a few months' duration. The importance of removing every trace of the morbid tissue, as well as the difficulty of doing so, are points which have already been dwelt upon." (p. 9.) To carry out Van der Kolk's

deductions into practice, Dr. Tanner advocates it as “essentially necessary after the operation (by extirpation) is over, to examine microscopically the edges of the portion removed, in order to ascertain whether granular matter, nuclei, or cells exist in any part of the tissue. Should this be found to be the case, we must conclude that the disease has not been wholly and completely removed; and the wound being still open, a further portion should be cut off in the situation where the cancer-cells and nuclei were seen." This practical deduction would be very valuable, were it a little more practicable in its nature; for as matters stand-as it is generally thought by the patient, if not by the operator, desirable to have an operation as speedily as possible brought to a close-and as cancer-cells are frequently not so well characterized as might be wished, few surgeons will, we fear, be prepared to adopt the above-mentioned procedure.

The author quotes a "Fell" case of removal by caustics of a mammary tumour, which he satisfactorily diagnosed to be not cancerous, but which the American adventurer pronounced to be so, and treated as such by his plan, the patient, however, succumbing under it, instead of living on as a standing advertisement for him of cancer cured without the use of the knife.

Dr. Tanner tabulates the history of seventeen cases of cancer of the breast which have fallen under his own care. One case of removal by the knife is entered as cured, the disease not having reappeared in any part for a period of twelve years after the operation. The woman was fifty-two years old, and the scirrhus was only of seven months' duration. Erysipelas followed after the operation, and Dr. Tanner is inclined to attribute the successful issue in this case in some measure to this incident. In support of this idea he quotes other cases, particularly those recorded by Velpeau, and remarks on the larger proportion of cures obtained by this eminent surgeon, that the only difference he can discover "between M. Velpeau's cases and those of other surgeons is this, that a much larger number of them suffered from erysipelas after the operation of excision than commonly happens." However, he does not purpose to go so far as M. Rigal, and advocate the introduction of the erysipelatous poison, but moots the question: "Is it as advisable to procure union by the first intention, after the excision of a cancerous breast, as is generally believed?" This question he answers in the negative by implying that it would be much more advantageous to have suppuration of the wound go on for many days after the operation.

Eleven cases of cancer of the labia, vagina, and ovaries are tabulated, and as many as ninety-two of the uterus. In these terrible affections he has found no good follow the various vaunted specific remedies, "and the same disappointment follows excision of the neck of the womb, whether this operation be performed with the écraseur, the knife, or the ligature."

Of the 92 cases of carcinoma uteri recorded, " 80 were married, and 10 were widows or separated from their husbands." One single woman had seven years previously to the appearance of malignant disease had a child, and therefore only one of the 92 was unmarried and a virgin.