It

many rest, monotony also is often combined with anxiety. "Begone, dull care, I pray thee, from me," can never be expected by the afflicted amongst the afflicted. There is always something in progress, some cry, some groan, some cough, some restless movement, some expression, some sight, that adds to the personal infliction, and which, as it adds, is wont to attach itself to some fixed object looked at at the same moment. The knowledge of facts like these is suggestive. suggests frequent and reasonable change of scene, one might almost say scenery, in the sick-chamber. Flowers are always a source of pleasure, and when fresh flowers cannot be obtained good artificial flowers, such as the rich place on their dinner-tables in days of frost and snow, are better than none, for colour alone brightens up the mind. But flowers should often be changed, both in form and in position. Pictures are good in the sick-chamber when they are bright and cheerful; but they too become very monotonous when they are to be seen for weeks at a time in one spot on which the sick eye must ever be resting. Furniture itself may be quietly moved about around the sick with advantage. The change is indicative of something done, and has hope in it of still further approach towards recovery.

STYPTIC COLLOID WITH CALOMEL OR WITH
MERCURY BICHLORIDE.

N cases of phagedænic ulceration and of syphilitic sore styptic colloid as an application goes excellently with calomel. The combination can be made in one of two ways. The calomel can be lightly dusted over the ulcerated surface in an even layer, and the styptic can

then be painted over the surface with a camel's-hair pencil; or the calomel can be well admixed with the colloid in the proportion of three grains to the fluid drachm of colloid, and a portion of the mixture can be painted over the affected part. In examples of ulcerated fauces from specific disease the application of calomel in this manner performs a double service: it acts locally and, by absorption, generally.

Mercury bichloride can, in like manner, be used in combination with styptic colloid in the proportion of one grain of the sublimate to two fluid ounces of the styptic. In the solution so formed there is sufficient alcohol to take up the sublimate, and there is no action on the tannin or collodion to cause precipitation. A few minims of this solution can be laid over an ulcerating or suppurating surface with a brush, or the solution can be applied on thin layers of cotton wool as a dressing that can be removed and renewed as required.

AN ANTI-CHOLERAIC MIXTURE.

HE most useful anti-choleraic mixture I have ever employed is one in which creasote is combined with opium, on the method first suggested by the late Mr. H. Stephens, and, quite independently, by Mr. Spinks, of Warrington. The formula I prescribe runs as follows:

R Creasoti Puri, mxij; Tinct. Camph. Co., 3vi; Spirit. Ether. Chlor. ziv; Syrup. Rhodos, 3ij. Fiat Mistura. The mixture-twelve doses. One fluid drachm, or a teaspoonful to be taken every hour, or as may be directed, in half a tumbler of water.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, M.D., AND THE

"RELIGIO MEDICI."

FTER the publication of the last ASCLEPIAD
I discovered in the life of Sir Kenelme
Digby a somewhat important omission. I

failed there to state that whilst Sir Kenelme was confined in Winchester House he received a letter from Edward, Earl of Dorset, recommending him to read a book which was at the time (1642) the talk of the town-namely, the Religio Medici of Sir Thomas Browne. The famous work had not at that time been published authoritatively, but Digby after a hasty perusal of a copy of it-for which he sent a special messenger to St. Paul's Churchyard, where the publisher, Andrew Crooke, resided-wrote offhand a criticism or review of it, completing his notice within twenty-four hours, to the apparent annoyance of its author, who pleaded that the review should not be published until the work itself was complete.

I was annoyed at first at this omission, but have appeased my mind by selecting the author of the Religio Medici himself for notice in the present number. The one life naturally leads up to the other, and affords grounds of contrast which it may be instructive to rest upon. Both men, Digby and Browne, are remarkable

characters, and have more than once been held up together, with the questioning of Hamlet, "Look thou on that picture and on this," as if the picture of Kenelme Digby paled before that of his gifted cotemporary; as if Digby were a pretender, Browne a philosopher; as if Digby were a casual and loose observer, Browne a philosophical investigator; as if Digby had a mere show of mental quality, Browne true genius; as if Digby were an actor inspired by popular adulation and approved only by the vulgar, and as if Browne were the man inspired by nature.

When in the year 1864 I was in Norwich, engaged in writing for the Medical Times and Gazette the medical history of that famous city, I was shown in the museum connected with the hospital there what purports to be the skull of Sir Thomas Browne. The skull was in an excellent state of preservation, and I then reported on it that, although it was rather above the ordinary size, it was not altogether Jovian. The forehead is very retreating, and the animal part, if the phrenologists are right, is rather too much developed for so good a man. I added that independently of the balance of power theory, a theory as useful to the disciples of Gall as to those of Machiavel, the skull conveyed to the mind the idea that its owner "was a perceptive rather than a reflective man," a view which was sustained by the readings of the skull made by the learned antiquarian Fitch, who unearthed it, with the other parts of the skeleton of Browne, from the chancel of the church of St. Peter's, Mancroft, Norwich, in the year 1847. In addition to these notes on the skull of Sir Thomas Browne, I offered a few observations on his life and life's work after a study of his magnum opus, the Religio Medici, and drew from that study and from

that of his other works the inference "that the true character of Sir Thomas Browne has yet to be written."

Since that time, twenty-eight years agone, much has been published respecting this remarkable figure in medicine. Dr. Greenhill's splendid edition of the Religio Medici has appeared adorned with the beauty of faithfulness and fidelity that distinguishes every page falling from the pen of our greatest living scholar and critic; and, quite recently, two new editions of the work have appeared in cheap form, with short details of the life of their author, for popular reading. The time, therefore, is in joint for the review in this place of a chapter in medical biography that has a true national history connected with it as well as a philosophic. In this review I shall treat on the works rather than the man, but, according to custom, I shall venture first to present, in simple outline, the man to my readers as he was known and appreciated in his day and generation.

BIOGRAPHICAL ABSTRACT.

It is probable that no physician has received so much attention from eminent biographers as Sir Thomas Browne. Something about him of fascination has led to his fame as a classic, and it is as a classic rather than as a physician he lives. He wrote a brief autobiography for Anthony Wood. A volume of Minutes relating to him was written soon after his death, at the request of his widow, by the Rev. John Whitefoot, with some additional information communicated to Bishop Kennet by his daughter, Mrs. Lyttleton. A distinct Life was published in 1712, with his posthumous works. In 1736 another Life appeared in combination with a new edition of the Religio Medici, and in