tion, a Correspondent, under the signature of " A Pupil," inquires, if, in case of twins, any circumstance can render it advisable to postpone the delivery of the second child, for twenty-four hours, and if a practitioner is justified in leaving a woman for many hours after delivering her of one child, knowing that one was left behind. As the object of the inquiry is information, I take up my pen to reply to his letter.-I have been in the practice of midwifery twenty-five years, and, I believe, have attended to the principle and practice of midwifery, as much as any of my contemporaries, and after reflecting, for some time, on all the circumstances that have or can occur during labour, I cannot discover, or fancy one that could render the practice, which was adopted by a Worcester surgeon, necessary, and, I think, it behoves that practitioner to assign some reason for his conduct, in leaving a woman with a child in the uterus, after delivering her of one, and his reasons for postponing the delivery, especially as the patient died so soon after the second delivery. The os externus et internus, I conceive, must have contracted considerably in the course of twenty-four hours, and the poor woman in consequence have experienced much more pain on the second delivery, than she would have done, had the child been brought away in proper time. The fact is, midwives, male and female, pretend to be very knowing, and when any thing occurs of this kind, they always assert that they knew it, and that the delay was absolutely necessary for the safety and advantage of the patient.

I am, Sirs, your constant reader and friend,

J. R. C., Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. London, May 30th, 1821.

PYROLIGNATE OF SODA.-About ten or fifteen years ago, a neutral salt, advertised under the name of " Brazil Salts," and much recommended as a pleasant, mild, and efficacious aperient, by the late Dr. Hunter, of York, was in considerable demand. This salt we find to be the acetate of soda. It is of a brown colour in consequence of being made with common vinegar. The salt made with the pure pyrolignic acid and soda, is white and in small crystals, and of a peculiarly pleasant sweetish taste. It is grateful to the stomach, and operates very mildly on the intestines, never occasioning griping pains. It powerfully allays thirst, abates fever, and improves the digestive organs. The dose is from two to four drachms, dissolved in two or four ounces of water. It is also slightly diuretic. It is a very excellent aperient during warm weather.

PYROLIGNIC ACID.-The scientific Dr. Stanley of Whitehaven has published the results of some experiments he made with this acid in preserving meat. The meat, after a voyage to tropical climates, was found to be in a perfectly sweet state. The Doctor employed the pure pyrolignic acid (deprived of petroleum), which we consider much too powerful to preserve meat for eating. The impure acid is the best for preserving meat for use, the acid being weak, and the petroleum, which possesses a fine fragrant smoky odour, is a powerful auxiliary to the acid in resisting putrefaction. The impure acid, for the purpose of preserving meat, may now be obtained at the price of two shillings a gallon, a quantity sufficient for four pigs. The smoky flavour it gives to meat is more grateful than that it receives from the smoke of wood.

THIS institution is a branch of a Catholic government, and notwithstanding the revolutions that have taken place in the other department of the legislature, in consequence of the ascendency of protestantism, the spirit of monkerism still predominates in it. Like the Catholic establishments of other countries, they admit only those to a participation of the loaves and fishes, &c. that were educated at the same universities as themselves, and consequently co-operate with them in supporting their pretensions to superior education and exclusive right to the fee-trade. A person, therefore, possessing a residentiary degree of M. D. from Oxford or Cambridge, is admitted as a matter of right a Fellow of the College of London, although, during his residence at the university, he paid no attention to medicine. He is, however, according to the College charter, a regular physician, and takes precedence of the physicians of all other universities.

Although the universities of Scotland were placed on an equal footing with those of England, by the Articles of Union, the members of the College exclude their graduates from their body, but by way of appeasing them, they grant them licences to practise physic within their jurisdiction, in common cases of disease, and with the true spirit of catholicism, they demand a sum of money for the licence, and bind them by oath not to interfere with or oppose their measures. With the same spirit they make by-laws for the government of the licentiates, and, notwithstanding they are ignorant of them, they are subjected to their censure or punishment, if they act contrary to them. With the same liberal spirit, they subject a candidate of any other university, when he applies for a licence, to an examination, although he received his education at a proper school of medicine, and possesses a diploma, after passing the fiery ordeal. The examination at the college was for many years conducted by the Bishop of London and Dean of St. Paul's, and although it has been transferred to the censors of the College, it does not vary in its object. It is conducted in the language of Rome, and according to Roman custom, in a room with closed doors, no person being allowed to be present, except the examiners and the candidate, a practice contrary to the spirit of the British constitution, and which, we believe, has been abolished in every country in Europe, even in those where Catholic tyranny most prevails.

Do these enlightened philosophers continue the practice in opposition to the constitution of their country and common justice, for the purpose of subjecting candidates, who are not friendly to their institution, to stricter examination than those they may be desirous to favour? or, are they 4 L

VOL. VI.

ashamed of the examination their university education enables them to make, or desirous to avoid an exposure of their profound medical knowledge which a controversy might occasion? Certain it is, that the examination is not secretly conducted out of delicacy to the candidate, for, when one is rejected, the circumstance is known to all the physicians of London in a few days!! The practice of examining candidates in the ancient language of Rome, we believe, is confined to our College of Physicians. In France, Spain, and Portugal, we know it has been long abandoned; candidates for a diploma being, in those countries, examined in their respective native language. Why, then, is such an absurdity continued in this country, which professes to be, and very justly so, the most enlightened in Europe? Is this Catholic practice necessary to support College or English university medicine? Does the fee-trade, or what some enlightened members of the College have modestly termed legitimate medicine, require the cloak of a dead language, to secure the respect and confidence of the public?

It is unquestionably to the ignorance and prejudices of the public, that the legitimate physicians, (physicians of the old school, unacquainted with modern medicine, and particularly the important branches, chemistry and surgery), are indebted for the rank they hold in society, viz. that of regular physicians. Hence, their violent opposition to all attempts to diffuse a knowledge of medicine among the bulk of mankind. Those who presume to publish a work on domestic medicine, or any work calculated to enable the public to form an estimate of their professional abilities, are declared to be out of the pale of the regular profession, and are branded with the most insulting epithets, as quacks of the worst description, to prejudice the public against their productions and their practice. They are deemed a more dangerous, or more culpable set than those mischievous heretics were by the church of Rome, who dared to translate the Bible into their vernacular tongue, and divest the Catholic religion of mystery and superstition. In their opinion the public has nothing to do with medicine, but to swallow it under their direction. They are well aware that the knowledge of medicine, which has already been diffused throughout every class of society, has already shaken the confidence of the thinking part of the community in their professional abilities; and some seem convinced that the man who is acquainted with every department of medicine, and independent of attending lectures, has obtained a knowledge of diseases at the bedside of patients, is more entitled to the denomination of a regular physician than the man who is acquainted only with the writings of the ancients, and we may venture to predict, from the ardour and success with which medicine has been and still is cultivated by surgeon-apothecaries, (Licentiates of the Company of Apothecaries) that the time is not far distant when some legitimate physicians will be denominated, as they have impudently termed others, a set of Quacks.

If the Members of the College of Physicians will take the trouble to read a small work lately published by Surgeon Syder, under the title of "A Series of Questions and Answers for the use of Gentlemen pre paring for Examination at Apothecaries' Hall," they will find that the caudidates for a licence to practise every branch of medicine, are subjected to a very strict examination in Chemistry, Pharmacy, Anatomy, and

the practice of Physic, and if they were required by the legislature to pass the same ordeal, how inany among them would be found competent to practise the art? By means of this book, a person may ascertain the qualifications of a medical practitioner, and were it to be purchased by invalids, for the purpose of interrogating their medical attendants, legitimate medicine, or the farce of the fee-trade, would be exposed, to the great disgrace of its supporters.

To the researches and industry of Surgeon-Apothecaries, the public is indebted for all the discoveries that have been made in the healing art, for the last two hundred years, and in consequence of the salutary operation of the Apothecaries' Act, we have no hesitation in saying, that the licentiates of the Society of Apothecaries, are more entitled to the implicit confidence of patients, let their maladies be ever so intricate or obscure, than the graduates of the English Universities. We beg to ask those sticklers for legitimate medicine, in what state the healing art would have been at this period, had it been entirely under the control of the College of Physicians? If lectures had not been given in London, on the different branches, and the hospitals not opened to students, should we not at this time have been administering wine and Peruvian bark in typhus fever, a practice which evidently destroyed forty out of fifty, for it is clear, by the result of an opposite treatment, that those who survived the stimulating treatment, possessed constitutions. capable of resisting even the combined influence of the fever and excessive stimulation; yet did the ancient legitimate physicians take the credit of curing those whom their injudicious treatment could not kill. Should we not be employing the most absurd compositions and ptisans, like the legitimate physicians in France, keeping children warm under the influence of Small-Pox; in fact, should we not have been five hundred years behind the Apothecaries of the present day, in medical knowledge?

As to surgery, it would have continued in the hands of barbers, and for one operation, which is now performed, we should have had fifty. As to the syphilitic poison, which produced such horrid ravages, and, in consequence of the union of surgery and pharmacy, has totally disappeared among us, it would have fair play, and faces without noses, and skulls like cullen dishes, would be viewed, from their frequent occurrence, with indifference. The College would themselves be at a loss for an excuse to publish a new Pharmacopoeia, a speculation which brought to their coffer some thousand pounds; for not one of the discoveries which have rendered a new Pharmacopoeia necessary, originated with them, or a member of their body!! These are facts, which the members of the College will not dare to deny, however disreputable they are to a chartered body of medical philosophers, for the express purposes of promoting medical science, and suppressing Quackery.

This Catholic limb of the legislature has been for many years in a decaying state. It is now approaching to mortification, and will no doubt soon be consigned by surgery to the knife, as perfectly useless, if not injurious to the body corporate of medicine. In our next number, we shall bring this subject to a conclusion. The College of Physicians having lately granted a licence to Dr. Goode, to practise physic within their jurisdiction, without passing through the forms required by their

statutes, and nearly the majority consisting of men of great scientific attainments, and, of course, liberality, we are encouraged to hope we shall soon hear of their discarding the sordid and selfish views, by which their conduct has been so long governed; and regulating their proceedings on the principles of a manly, fair, and liberal policy; opening their doors to all who shall be found qualified to enter, and no longer insulting their brethren, their country, and common sense, by denying to a class of men, who will not yield to them in point of learning, talent, or zeal for the honor of the profession, the enjoyment of those privileges to which, in reason and justice, they are entitled. When we see them do all this, and not till then, we shall believe, that they have the promotion of medical science, and, consequently, the good of mankind, at heart. They should be aware, as the public is, that neither a diploma, nor their licence, can make a physician; and that patients presume, in these enlightened days, to expect a physician to pay at least as much attention to their maladies as to his own interest.

The leading members of the College have said, with a degree of triumph, that of all the Medical Journals published in the United Kingdom, the Editor of the Gazette of Health alone, has "found fault with the by-laws and conduct of the College and other institutions, and commented with freedom on the state of medicine in this kingdom, and on medical works." The reason why we have so freely stated our opinions of medical institutions and books, is, because our work is independent of the medical profession. One of the chief objects of our undertaking is to acquaint the public with the state of medicine, and the pretensions of those physicians to a superior knowledge, who claim an exclusive right to the practice of physic; and in the execution of this part, which to us is the most unpleasant, we have stated facts, without any other view than to discharge our duty faithfully to the public, and we are happy to find, that the opinions we have given, and the manner in which we have conducted our Journal, havé met with the approbation of members of the profession esteemed for their love of science and profound erudition.

The editors of some Journals, whose circulation is confined to the medical world, dare not deliver their sentiments freely, either of publications or the conduct of medical institutions, and they are often under the necessity of speaking favourably of the most contemptible productions, to oblige certain subscribers or their employers. The accusation some scribblers have laid to our charge, that we wish to establish domestic medicine on the ruins of regular medicine, is too ridiculous to notice. To our medical readers, we flatter ourselves, it is evident that we are labouring to advance the science of medicine; and that in exposing the absurdities of the hepatic and other theories, and regular and irregular quackery, our wish is to prevent its retrograding. By the history of medicine from the time of Hippocrates, it is evident, it has been sometimes advanced, and at other times retrograded, and the cause of the latter has been absurd theories. By pointing out the ridiculous ideas of wild theorists or prolific dreamers, we, therefore, conceive that we are doing much towards the advancement of sound medical knowledge, and by enabling the public to distinguish the man of science from the impostor, we are very materially serving those members of the profes