fectant gases is not sufficiently appreciated in the present day on board ship, in barracks, and so forth, wherever numbers of the sick are apt to be accumulated. While recognising the importance, nay the necessity, of such measures as these, we need scarcely say that much of the present system of Quarantine restraint, in reference to yellow fever, &c., is very needlessly vexatious and oppressive. The truth is, that the whole regime requires revision and remodelling. It should form a part of a general code of sanitary discipline; and the quarantine board should be but a branch of a general board of health. There has been a vast deal of most exaggerated and foolish alarm about the introduction of foreign pestilential diseases, while, all the time, we have been overlooking the more formidable pestilences that are continually at our very doors.* Much of this extravagant fear has arisen from keeping the subject of quarantine laws and enact. ments apart and distinct from the consideration of those measures, that should be had recourse to against the diffusion of our own home-bred fevers. The general plan of prevention, in both cases, is the same; nor need there be any great difference in the particular measures to be adopted. To impose a fixed period of 20, 30, or 40 days upon suspected, or even up. on infected, vessels, &c., without regard to the particular circumstances of each individual case, is manifestly absurd. No medical man would recommend such a practice in reference to the worst forms of European petechial fever. As to the yellow fever being ever imported by the sound cargoes of vessels coming from infected ports, there is scarcely an atom of evidence to shew that such has ever been the case; and, even with respect to the bed or body-clothes of passengers, the risk of its introduction in this way seems to be indeed but very small. Nevertheless it will always be prudent to avoid this risk, especially as it can be so very easily done with little trouble or expense. Much more attention ought to be paid to the condition of ships' holds than is usually the case. That a foul hold is a not unfrequent cause of bad fever on board, a fever that may eventually acquire an infectious character, is much more than probable. If masters and owners knew that the duration of their quarantine would in a material degree depend upon the state of their vessels, a great deal of the expense and delay to which they are at present subjected might, with perfect safety to the public, be avoided. How strikingly is this exemplified in the New York Report. The number of deaths, in the Marine hospital on the quarantine ground, is ten-fold and upwards greater from small-pox than it usually is from yellow fever; and yet, during most of the year, there is no quarantine whatsoever against the former disease. 1817] Green's Mental Dynamics. 235 MENTAL DYNAMIC3, OR GROUNDWORK OF A PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. THE HUNTERIAN ORATION BEFORE THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND, 15th FEBRUARY, 1847. By Joseph Henry Green, F.R.S. late Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to the College: Professor of Anatomy to the Royal Academy: one of the Surgeons to St. Thomas's Hospital. Octavo, pp. 65. Pickering, London, 1847. No one present in the Theatre of the College of Surgeons on the 15th of February last will soon forget the discourse to which they listened on that day. For one hour and three quarters Mr. Green commanded the earnest attention of a densely crowded audience, by a display of learning and eloquence, in an address delivered with consummate skill and brilliant effect. But on calmly reading this oration in the closet, we could not but be impressed, how greatly its success was due to the happy and effective delivery of the orator. It contains, indeed, metaphors and passages of great beauty, but at the same time much that is impracticable, unintelligible, and in the obscure style of Coleridge. Mr. Green, after paying a brief but graceful tribute to the distinguished services of John Hunter, states that his present purpose is not that of dwelling on his merit as a physiologist and surgeon; but of considering how far his excellence may be deemed a pattern for the formation of a scientific character in unison with the requirements of our profession. "We are here indeed, on the very threshold of our enquiry, met by a difficulty, which can neither be overlooked nor disregarded; it is this, that the predominant and characteristic trait of Hunter's mind was Genius. Now if, in accordance with almost universal belief, we admit without qualification that this attribute implies a perfection unattainable by human effort that it is absolutely a special gift of Providence imparting to the mind of its possessor somewhat of the power originative and creative of the Divine Giver-we must humbly confess that Genius is not an imitable acquirement, and we shall be constrained to abandon as hopeless any search for the means of emulating Hunter's peculiar excellence by mental culture and self-exertion. Nevertheless, who will deny, that by educing and cultivating the powers, which any fairly endowed individual may possess, we may preserve the freshness, improve the vigour, and favor the originative faculties of the mind? And if, as cannot be doubted, the art and science of healing eminently require a mind relying on its own resources, it cannot be unworthy of our study how the mind may be best trained in order to elicit its inherent powers and native energies, and to render that calculable and regular, which otherwise would be but a happy accident." P. 8. Hunter unquestionably possessed genius in its truest and highest sense, but in that sense we can scarcely regard this attribute as an "imitable acquirement;" nor should we exactly select him as a pattern for the rising generation except for his " unceasing application and marvellous industry,' without which, as Mr. Green states, "we should find original power elanquesce, and exhaust itself in immature and abortive productions." Much as Hunter has accomplished, we can come to no other conclusion than that this self-taught genius might have achieved still more, and at least have done fuller justice to the productions of his own intellect, had his powers been cultivated and his mind disciplined in early life; in fact, had he enjoyed the advantages of the training so forcibly inculcated in this dis course. The object of the Oration is an attempt to define the intellectual discipline" which may best prepare the mind for the scientific cultivation of a profession, and aid the individual in forming his character in the light of a final aim." We cannot follow Mr. Green in the learned arguments by which he shows the value of a knowledge of letters, natural history, the history of man, mathematics, logic, &c. We must be content with the selection of a few passages which will enable our readers to form some notion of the style of the author, and of the elevated character of his sentiments. Mr. Green describes Natural History as "A study, which offers food for every digestion, knowledge for every capacity, and which tends more perhaps than any other to people, to enlarge, and to tranquillize the mind. But where begin, or where end, in the vast living panorama of God's works, in which earth, air, sky and ocean, teeming with the multitudinous assemblage of their countless myriads of products and inhabitants. form the mighty canvass, and rise upon the overwhelmed sense of the youthful student, as they may have burst upon the view of our first progenitor, and still as fresh as in the morning of creation? The majestical roof of heaven fretted with golden fire;'-ocean and the watery world, as the workshop where the busy artist Nature prepares the first rude sketches of the living forms, which she afterwards brings to view in a higher and more perfected character;-mid-air, with its shifting scenery of light and clouds, its meteors and changeful variety of atmospheric phoenomena;-and earth, with its hidden treasures of metal, chrystal, and precious gem; its surface, diversified by river, lake and mountain, adorned with all the forms of living growth from the lofty forest tree to the lowly and lovely flower, and peopled by the animated tribes, that form the graduated scale of organic life. Here Curiosity is ever excited, Attention rivetted, and Memory bribed, by perpetual novelty, variety and beauty :-the Comparing power is ever kept alive by an endless succession of similitudes and contrasts, that now sustain the interest by inducing the pupil to note the like in the different and the different in the like, and now re-awaken the flagging attention by renewed excitement and gratification of the senses;-and the Reasoning Power is finally evoked in order to trace and explain the varying adaptation of means to proximate ends, displayed in Instincts which anticipatively rehearse the functions of that faculty, which when enlightened by Reason, and directed to ultimate ends, becomes Human Understanding. Thus, as the student watches the ascension of nature into mind, he shall learn that, up the whole ascent, nature is a prophetic-hymn, heralding the advent of man, and proclaiming the wisdom and goodness of the Creator." P. 19. We may quote the following remarks on a subject much neglected in the education of medical men, viz. Logic. Its proper province is "Reasoning or Discourse-the process by which we deduce from known truths all that they legitimately comprehend, by which we apply general rules to particular cases, by which we infer from some less comprehensive truth one of more comprehensive generality;-it is the process by which we weigh evidence, infer and prove by argument, and draw universal and necessary conclusions; --while in every judgment the presence of Reason is attested by the claim, which it asserts and vindicates to the unavoidable conviction of all rational beings. 1847] Swan on the Sympathetic Nerve. 237 And the results are the Rules, Maxims and Judgments, which constitute our generalized Experience. It is not therefore the art of one 'Profoundly skill'd in analytic ; A hair 'twixt south and south-west side; BUTLER. "Reasoning is the daily and hourly business of our lives, and, whatever our worldly calling-in the pulpit, at the bar, or at the bedside of the patient-we are unceasingly occupied in inferring or proving a something from what is already ascertained or taken for granted. And in the words of an eminent writer on Logic, To learn to do that well, which every one will and must do, whether well or ill, may surely be considered as an essential part of a liberal education." P. 31. We shall conclude this notice with an extract expressive of Mr. Green's approval of the institution of collegiate establishments at some of the principal medical schools. "I have only to express my unaltered conviction, strengthened indeed by the success with which the trial has been already attended,-that it is in Universities and Colleges that a medical education may be best grounded on those universal elements of science, which are the essential constituents of every liberal profession. I hold it indeed scarcely possible that any professional education can be fully accomplished except in such Institutions ;-where discipline both intellectual and moral, and a pledged direction and supervision of the studies, give the requisite security for its progress and completion;-and where the Alumni are induced habitually to regard themselves as members of one body, and to form among themselves a correspondent law of honor, of self-respect, and of respect for each other as fellow-collegians-with the cognate habit of despising the hollow, the tricky, and the ostentatious,-in short, to form that sentiment of honor and gentlemanly feeling, in which the moral life of the individual breathes as in its natural atmosphere, with an unconsciousness, which gives the charm of unaffected manners and conduct." P. 42. THE NATURE AND FACULTIES OF THE SYMPATHETIC NERVE. By Joseph Swan. 8vo. pp. 55. London, 1847. In a former Number of this Review, we called the attention of our readers to a Pamphlet on the Nerves of the Uterus, by Mr. Swan-(Med.-Chir. Rev., April 1846.) In the present and somewhat larger publication, the author takes a more general view of the anatomy and physiology of the ganglionic nervous system; and, in connexion with it, of the par vagum. It need scarcely be remarked that the sympathetic nerve is that part of the nervous system concerning which, both as respects its anatomy and physiology, the greatest uncertainty prevails. In late years, however, much light has been thrown upon this subject; or rather it may be said on the anatomical structure; for although there has been no lack of theories, it can scarcely be affirmed that any positive and unquestioned fact has been established with respect to the peculiar functions of the ganglia and their nerves. The following are the principal points which may be regarded as proved :—1. That in its ganglions the sympathetic offers the same elementary structures, especially gray corpuscles or vesicles, which are considered to constitute, in the case of the brain and spinal cord, an active nervous centre; 2, that it contains fibres proper to itself, the so-called gelatinous, gray, or organic nervous filaments, originating from, or at all events connected with, the above-named vesicles; 3, that it receives into its system tubular fibres from the cerebro-spinal system, these being derived from both sentient and motor nerves, as is seen in the case of the scattered cephalic ganglia, and also in that of the common spinal nerves where tubules come off from both the anterior and the posterior roots; 4, That these two classes of fibres, the gelatinous and the tubular, however much they may appear to be mixed up and confused together, constitute no exception to the one great law of the nervous system-the non-intercommunication of the primitive fibrillæ, that is to say, whether traced in the interior of the ganglia or in the branches, they are always observed to maintain an independent course; 5, that the various branches and nerves belonging to the sympathetic contain the gray and tubular fibrils in different but determinate numbers. These are the anatomical facts, and of course they offer much suggestive evidence as to the physiological actions, upon which moreover there are some few positive but subordinate facts that have been ascertained, either by observation or by experiment. Thus it is certain that, although ordinarily the organs supplied by the sympathetic perform their functions without any known participation therein by the brain, yet occasionally impressions do traverse to and fro, sensation being excited, as for example, from irritation of the intestinal mucous membrane, and emotion, not volition, affecting the heart and other motorial organs. It is also further ascertained that impressions are mutually transmitted between the sympathetic and the true spinal system; if, for example, in a recently decapitated kitten, the spinal cord be irritated in the neck, the heart's action is immediately quickened; and, again, if irritation of an organ exclusively supplied by the sympathetic, as the intestine, be morbidly excited, convulsions may be induced. These few facts comprise almost all that is positively ascertained; and it is clear that, relating to the mutual connexions of the ganglionic and cerebro-spinal system, they throw little or no light on the special or true functions of the ganglionic system. Mr. Swan's brief exposition consists of an interesting sketch of the structure of the sympathetic, as ascertained by the aid of comparative anatomy and of its physiology. The following passage will convey to the reader the general views entertained by the author. "The great object of the sympathetic nerve is to furnish the parts it supplies with an appropriate nervous excitement of such a quality as will insure their functions without disturbing any other portion of the nervous system. It connects in different degrees all the parts of the nervous system as an harmonious whole, but brings them in so slight a degree in communion with the sensory as to allow only a perceptibility that can appreciate and respond to impulses without permitting them to proceed beyond the viscera. By preventing sensation, it becomes favourable to the production of involuntary |