minds of every soldier, as to cause him to execute his will without any intervening command, and if he himself possessed the knowledge and skill requsite not only to guide the general evolutions of the masses composing the army, but to direct the movements of every man, in the most advantageous manner, would he trouble himself with the intermediate machinery of subordinate generals, colonels, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals, in order to convey his will and direct the movements of the troops? Or if he should do so, still retaining his absolute power over every individual action, would the function of his officers be anything else than that of mere mouth-pieces? As an army is at present constituted, there is large room for the operation of intelligence in the subordinates or delegated powers; because it is upon them that the carrying-out of the will of the commander into its details entirely rests; and they have not only to choose the best means of doing this, but to modify and accommodate it to circumstances, sometimes adding to it, sometimes (it may be) even acting in opposition to it. But this is the necessary result of the imperfection of the human commander, whose knowledge and power are alike limited, and who is compelled to act through the medium of subordinates. To imagine that anything is gained by the interposition of "intelligent agents" between the Deity and the materials on which he operates, is either to set limits to his knowledge and his power, or to give to those agents an office purely nominal. For if they have any of that freedom of choice in their actions, which is possessed to a certain extent by the officers of an army, then the Almighty intelligence is not directing the operations of matter in their detail; whilst if that detailed direction has a real existence, they are merely like so many instruments through which the Creator acts, and there is no room for the operation of intelligence in them. Or if it should be argued that they are left free to choose, in ignorance of the will of the Creator, who has nevertheless predetermined what they shall choose (which seems to be the position of man,) we answer that this supposition is completely at variance with the fixity and determinateness of the phenomena of organization; which, when properly surveyed, give to us an idea of law, or in other words of being the working-out of a definite and uniform plan, fully as much as do those of physics and chemistry. Whereever we see the operations of a limited intelligence, as in man and some of the higher animals, there we witness an indefiniteness and want of fixity, to which the operations of the simplest organism could not be safely left. We shall refrain from urging any further objections to the doctrine in question; not, however, from want of argument, but for want of space; but we shall extract the two passages in which it is carried out to its fullest extent, and leave it to our readers to digest them, if they can. us they present the hypothesis in a form so utterly unphilosophical, as scarcely to require further disproof.

To

"Admitting then that the Deity acts through the intervention of delegated existences, and that neither matter nor material forces, nor any assumed vital forces can be supposed to possess intelligence; we are driven to the assumption, that this intelligence is vested in the immaterial conscious beings; in other words, that one or more agents possessing knowledge, will, and power, exist in every organized body, from the lowest to the highest. In its lowest grade, the knowledge and operations of such agent may be supposed to be confined to the properties of the material elements adapted for organization, which it has the knowledge to select and the power to form, into an apparatus enabling it to organize other matters, and effect ulterior purposes. Where the operations of this primary

organic agent terminate, those of another and higher organic agent may be supposed to begin; which by carrying the general process of organization a step further, adapts the organized material for the operations of a third and superior agent. Thus each new agent may be supposed to possess more or less control over all the agents below itself, and to have the power of appropriating their services, till at length in the combined operations of the whole series of agents at the top of the scale, we reach the perfection of organic existence. (p. 403.)

We cannot understand this passage in any other way, than as implying that there are numerous grades, and an almost infinite individual multiplication, of "organic agents," in every one of the higher organisms. For, as a single cell may be a living being in itself, and may maintain an independent existence, it must necessarily possess its own organic agent; and, by parity of reasoning, since every cell in a complex organism performs its functions in virtue of its own inherent powers, it must be alike furnished with its organic agent-consequently there must be as many distinct intelligent agents in the body of a man, as there are individual cells. This, indeed, we may infer to be Dr. Prout's view, from the following passage:

"The ranks and grades among organic agents are doubtless as numerous as the ranks and grades among organized beings; but organic agents have been, and as far as our present views are concerned, may be classed under three grades. Organic agents strictly so called, the immediate fabricators of plants and animals: animal organic agents; and the intellectual agent peculiar to man; which properly speaking ought not to be classed with organic agents; since it cannot be shown that the intellectual agent in man has anything to do with the structure of his corporeal frame. In man, as we have said, all these three agents coexist. The organic agent or agents strictly so called, the immediate fabricators of his body, whose intelligent agency consists in wielding material forces, and, by their aid, of organizing matter into the primary condition of irritable cells. Various agents of higher rank, having the capacity of controlling organic agents, and of modelling the primary irritable cells into masses and forms, suited to their purposes. And lastly, the intellectual agent, who, capable to a certain extent of influencing all below itself, employs the organized machinery constructed for its use, and suited to its exigences, by the inferior agents, and thus becomes the organized being, man." (p. 406.)

We must confess our inability to discern the essential difference between this figment, and the mythical notions of the ancients respecting their presiding deities or semi-deities, which we presume that Dr. Prout would condemn as absurd. And we think it would not be very difficult to erect just as good an argument in defence of their existence, as that which Dr. Prout has put forth as the foundation of his system of organic agents. Thus, why should we not suppose an "intelligent agent" concerned in the selection and arrangement of the particles of silver in a certain metallic solution, so as to develop the arbor diana; or why should not suppose that Mercury is exercising a choice in behalf of the particles of his metal, when they leave one combination and pass into another, by the exercise of what is commonly termed elective affinity?

It is but justice, however, to Dr. Prout that we should add-what, indeed our readers may have already inferred from the recent development of this doctrine-that it is essentially independent of the rest of the work, and in no way interferes with its philosophical or theological value, except as constituting an ugly excrescence, from which we should be very glad to see it freed.

ART. VIII.

1. Traité des Maladies des Articulations; accompagné d'un Atlas de 16 Planches. Par A. BONNET, Professeur de Clinique chirurgicale à l'Ecole de Médecine de Lyon, &c. Paris, 1845.

A Treatise on Diseases of the Joints; with an Atlas of 16 Plates. By A. BONNET, Professor of Clinical Surgery in the School of Medicine of Lyons, &c. Paris, 1845. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 1229.

2. Recherches pour servir à l'Histoire des Tumeurs Blanches. Par M. RICHET, Prosecteur de la Faculté, &c. (Annales de la Chirurg. Français et Etrangère, Mai, Juin, 1844.)

Researches intended to elucidate the History of White Swellings. By M. RICHET, Prosector to the Faculty of Medicine of Paris. Paris, 1844. pp. 146.

3. De la Résection de la Tête du Fémur. Par M. BONINO. (Ann. de Chirurg. Franç. et Etrang. Avril, Mai, 1844.)

On Resection of the Head of the Femur. By M. BONINO.

pp. 38.

4. De la Coxalgie. Par M. le Docteur J. G. MAISONNEUVE, Chirurgien du Bureau central des Hôspitaux civils de Paris. (Ann. de Chirurg. Franç. et Etrang. Dec. 1844. Janv. Fev. 1845.)

On Coralgia. By J. G. MAISONNEUVE, M.D., Surgeon to the Central Bureau of the Civil Hospitals of Paris.

5. Recherches sur le Mal Vertébral de Pott. Mémoire couronné par le Conseil des Hopitaux. Par le Docteur TAVIGNOT. (L'Expérience, Juin, Juillet, Août, 1844.)

Researches on Pott's Disease of the Spine. By Dr. TAVIGNOT; being a Memoir to which a Prize was awarded by the Council of the Hospitals of Paris.

6. Maladie des Articulations Costo-chondrales et Costo-vertébrales, avec ou sans Ramollissement Tuberculeux et Nécrose des Os du Rachis. Par A. TOULMOUCHE, D.M., Professor de Pathologie externe à l'Ecole préparatoire de Médecine à Rennes. (Gazette Médicale de Paris, Janvier, 1845.)

On Disease of the Articulations of the Ribs, with or without Tubercular Softening and Necrosis of the Vertebra. By Dr. A. TOULMOUCHE, Professor of External Pathology in the Preparatory School of Medicine at Rennes.

M. BONNET is already well known by numerous contributions to surgical literature in various journals, and by his work on Section of the Tendons and Muscles of the orbit; he now appears in a more ambitious character as the author of two large volumes on a most important class of diseases, the fruits-he informs us-of six years' diligent and special investigation, aided by the ample opportunities for observation which he enjoyed as surgeon-in-chief to the Hôtel-Dieu of Lyons. Both the character and position of the author, and the importance of some of the positions he advances, call for a somewhat extended notice of his work: but we shall not of course, attempt a systematic analysis of its entire contents. We shall limit our attention almost entirely to those points on which Bonnet's

views claim to be, or really are, more or less novel and peculiar; and we shall take occasion to advert to whatever seems most worthy of notice in the several memoirs whose titles are above transcribed.

Few authors now-a-days think it necessary to offer any excuse for adding to the already unwieldy bulk of medical literature, but M. Bonnet explains at great length his motives for writing the present work, and his explanation may be reduced simply to this:-That no complete treatise on diseases of the joints has hitherto appeared. It is true that Brodie has published what M. Bonnet rather superciliously describes as "a collection of memoirs on some very limited points of pathological anatomy, and of diagnosis, under the name of a treatise on Diseases of the Joints;" but we have no work " qui embrasse l'ensemble des arthropathies ;" and it is this deficiency which our author professes to supply. All preceding writers have, he maintains, taken a one-sided view of the subject. One set of authors, belonging to the school of vitalism, have chiefly investigated the relations of diseases of the joints with general affections of the system, and another, the pathological anatomists, have almost exclusively examined their local causes, lesions, and treatment. M. Bonnet's aim has been to combine the somewhat exclusive tendencies of those two schools, "to apply the idea so frequently spoken of, but so seldom followed out, of not separating medicine and surgery." (p. 197.)

With the view of considering diseases of the joints under every aspect, M. Bonnet divides the work into three parts. The first part is devoted to diseases of the joints in general, and is divided into four chapters :Pathological Anatomy, Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment. The second treats of the several kinds of diseases to which joints are liable. And in the third are considered the special characters and treatment of those several diseases as they occur in each particular joint. This arrangement, whatever may be its advantages, has the inconvenience of leading to frequent repetitions, and as frequently severing matter which would be much better continuously embodied.

We may here observe that M. Bonnet limits himself to the consideration of what he terms "vital disease," -"organic alterations of the joints." "Traumatic lesions," however, "such as sprains, contusions, and wounds, are studied, but chiefly in their relations to the pain, inflammation, and abcesses which they may cause." (vol. xi. p. 1.) The history of fractures and dislocations of the joints, and of those deformities which are not consecutive to diseases of the articulations, such as club-foot, congenital luxations and lateral curvature of the spine, is omitted to avoid extending the work to three volumes.

I. PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF THE JOINTS. M. Bonnet states that on this subject his dissections have not led him to the discovery of anything new: "If," he says, "I have added anything to the pathological anatomy of the joints, it is less by the ordinary means of dissection than by employing methods of research imperfectly or seldom applied with this view I have had recourse to the chemical analysis of the diseased products, to the artificial production on the dead body of various physical lesions, and to the comparative study

of diseases of the joints in men and in animals." (p. xi.) We shall therefore only notice those points on which M. Bonnet claims to have thrown new light, except when reference to other matters is necessary to introduce or explain our author's views.

Chemical analysis. The views to which M. Bonnet has been led by the chemical analysis of the products of disease may be thus stated: The elementary lesions which occur in the structures of the joints, whether in the bones or in the soft parts, are divisible into two classes: one comprising such products, e. g. pus and tubercle, as are completely insusceptible of organization, and which, being therefore only capable of cure by elimination, tend, in the vast majority of instances, to make their way to the surface, and determine the successive absorption of the textures in which they are deposited; the presence of these products is consequently unfavorable, and generally indicates an unmanageable state of disease. To this class we need not further allude. The second class includes those products that are capable of being organized: they are "fungosities," and lardaceous, fibrous, cartilaginous, and bony tissue, which all essentially consist of plastic lymph in one or other of the phases of its development. Under ordinary circumstances, plastic lymph, at first unorganized, is soon penetrated with vessels, and ultimately becomes cellular or fibrous, or even cartilaginous or bony; but it by no means uniformly runs through its regular periods of organization, which on the contrary may, under the influence of various disturbing causes, be more or less permanently arrested at an early stage of its development. Thus, plastic lymph, when once organized, is subject to the diseases of the natural textures; for example, it may become infiltrated with pus or with tubercle; its organization then sustains a true arrest of development, and it remains in a state of which the granulations of an ulcer, and "fungosities" of joints are examples; a similar effect may be produced by a purely local cause, as the presence of a foreign body; in illustration of which M. Bonnet refers to the granulations in necrosis or of an issue, which persist indefinitely until the dead bone or issue peas are removed, when they pass to their third stage of cicatrization or conversion into fibrous tissue. In proof of these views, M. Bonnet appeals to the chemical analysis of fungosities and of lardaceous tissue. Fungosities he has found by chemical analysis to "be formed of serum and of fibrin, permeated by vessels; in a word, they consist of plastic lymph at that stage which I have considered as the second period of its organization." (vol. ii, p. 19.) Lardaceous tissue, which, together with fungosities and pus, forms most of the alterations known as white swelling, including the disease described by Brodie as a "morbid change of structure of the synovial membrane" is proved by chemical examination to consist of fibrous and cellular tissue, infiltrated with serum and with fibrin; if the former preponderate, it is soft; if the latter, it is white and compact; occasionally it is permeated by an unusual number of vessels, and is then less dense, and more or less red. Lardaceous tissue may be considered as intermediate between fungosities and fibrous tissue, and thence, both in theory and in fact, its presence indicates a better state of the constitution than the existence of fungosities alone does, and when the tumour contains both, the more the former preponderates the more favorable is