Chapter M: BEGIN has produced his promised work on surgery, according to the

principles of the new school. We have not seen the volume, but have read a review of it in the Revue Medicale, by M. BELLANGER. The latter describes it as a cursory work, having for its object the adaptation of surgery to a set of general principles, rather than a detailed system of instructions how to proceed in each individual case. It contains only what is easy to be remembered, and omits those matters for which it is usual to refer to books. Thus two pages only are appropriated to fractures of the body and neck of the femur! and twenty-six for the whole subject of fractures, wounds, and six or eight of the most important diseases, of bones! Yet all this criticism is not without a compliment, well-merited at least by the former productions of the same author, to his talents and ingenuity.

19. _Whooping-cough._--"There is no disease of children, in which the resources of medicine are more manifestly serviceable than in an obstinate whooping-cough." Such, in amount, was the opinion of Dr. UNDERWOOD, and Dr. WATT uses language almost equally strong. Certainly, we are not at all times equally successful or equally sanguine in America.

Dr. A. CAVENNE considers whooping-cough a true bronchitis, a pulmonary catarrh; accompanied with greatly heightened nervous symptoms, owing to the irritable period of life at which it occurs, and particularly to its frequent existence in nervous constitutions. Professor TOURTELLE calls it a pneumo-gastric, pituitous catarrh; and certainly, the pupils of a modern school will find no difficulty in recognizing symptoms of gastritis in its severer forms. The further inferences drawn by Dr. CAVENNE, are as follows:

1. That the whooping-cough, in an individual of a sanguine temperament, requires, in general, the use of bleeding, and a debilitating regimen.

2. That bleeding and a debilitating treatment are equally necessary, whatever be the temperament, in whooping-cough of the chronic form.

3. The antispasmodics are necessary in nervous constitutions.

4. That blood-letting and the debilitating treatment should be rejected, when the subject is endowed with a lymphatic temperament. This observation, says our author, is equally applicable to early infancy, in which lymph predominates over the red blood, and the fluids are more diluted.

Finally, if the disease be obstinate and there be disturbance in several functions, there is certainly reason to believe that a lung, a viscus of the abdomen, or the brain, is in an unfavourable condition; (the author means of the inflammatory kind;) and this is ground for the moderate abstraction of blood.--_Journ. Univ. Feb._

20. _Antiperistaltic globus. Globus hystericus._--Dr. TROLLIET, of Lyons, observes that hysteria cannot, with propriety, be said to exist in the male sex; that it arises, as its name imports, from derangement of the uterus, and that CULLEN and SYDENHAM have done wrong, and stand alone, in teaching the contrary. When there exists a real hysteria, the contractions are not confined to the intestinal regions, but invade the neighbouring parts; (quere, which of them contract?) they are always accompanied, when existing in a high degree, with convulsions and loss of the mental powers. In the intervals, the patients affected can satisfy their appetite.

Antiperistaltic globus may occur from various causes; and either in the intestines or the oesophagus.

That of the intestines is met with chiefly in advancing age; and is generally produced by daily and often-repeated pressure on the abdomen, as practised in various professions. Hard labour and bad diet also greatly aggravate it. At first pain in the intestines occurs, aggravated by labour; together with derangement of digestion.

The sensation of a globe then appears on the lower and left side of the abdomen; and, after performing various circuits, finally reaches the stomach; from which is soon after discharged, with great relief, a quantity of gas, issuing from the mouth. Vomiting of an acid and burning fluid, as also of the food, is not uncommon as an accompaniment. This ball is about the size of a man's fist, and is sensible to the external touch, and even to the sight. The patients possess the power, to a certain extent, of controlling its motions, and relieving the pain, which is often extremely violent, by pressure.

Indigestible food always aggravated the disease. Some could only tolerate milk, broth, and other fluids. A weaver was obliged to quit his profession, from the pressure on the abdomen which it required, occasioning the paroxysms.

The treatment consisted in

1. Avoiding the original causes.

2. The use of a species of corslet, (plastron,) to prevent future pressure on the abdomen.

3. A rigid diet. We do not understand why, firstly, articles containing a great deal of fecula, and, as it is said, "requiring a great action of the intestines," are forbidden, while, in the second place, rice is recommended. "Bouillon aux herbes," (a laxative decoction,) rice-cream, and milk, were found the best. Wine was injurious. Assafoetida and camphor were useful, and were administered in boluses. Purgatives were injurious. Emolient enemas were useful.

Of antiperistaltic globus in the oesophagus our author saw only two cases, which were not complicated with hysteria. The patients had both been subject to rheumatism; and, in one of them, this had been supplanted by an eruption Of tetter: on the disappearance of which last the globus appeared. These cases were cured, the latter by a severe, light diet, and some antispasmodics, the names of which are not mentioned; the other by curing the rheumatism.

Dissections are somewhat difficult to obtain; unless where some other more mortal disease exists. In one, scirrhus of the pylorus was found; the stomach greatly enlarged; the small intestines contracted, _red outside and gray within_. (Where was the redness situated; in the peritoneal or the muscular coat? We must _guess_ the latter.) The stomach was pale gray, and thickened. The large intestines were dilated, and gray.--_Journ. Univ._

21. _Non-contagion of Yellow Fever._--Dr. VALENTINE, of Nancy, has printed a pamphlet of a single sheet, in which he finds himself involved in all the turmoil, through which American physicians passed during the period which intervened between 1793 and 1805. Dr. V. gives his authority decidedly in favour of the non-existence of a contagion in this disease; and grounds his opinion upon the innumerable cases of patients affected with the disease and otherwise, who have escaped from infected districts, without communicating the malady in any instance, to the persons with whom they lived; upon the healthiness of ports, from which it has been said to have been introduced, &c. Dr. V. is not, as some of his countrymen have been, unwilling, from some unimaginable cause, to make use of the immense mass of American evidence; though he observes, and with justice, that experiments should be repeated in France, in order to set the public mind at rest in that kingdom. He proposes the employment of criminals for this purpose; and recommends every mode of the most close contact which his imagination could suggest. He mentions experiments of this kind having been made in the United States; and by M. GUYON, of Martinique, on his own person.

He quotes Dr. CHERVIN's labours, with great and just applause. This indefatigable and daring physician has now spent upwards of ten years in accumulating proofs upon this single question.

At the commencement of the pamphlet, the arrangement of which does not seem to us to be quite clear and easy, Dr. V. gives a sketch of the situation and localities of Leghorn. He traces the fevers of that place to putrid matters, perceptible by the sense of smell; and principally to obstructed drains. He does not give the exact degree of heat, but merely states that it was excessive, and followed by heavy rains.