Monthly Review of Literature. 85 



ply his remedial measures, thereby fortifying his own proceedings with con- 

 fidence and ensuring instantaneous and certain comfort to his patient. 



We would strongly recommend this work to clergymen and benevolent in- 

 dividuals in the country, who are occasionally required in the absence of the 

 surgeon to afford assistance in cases of severe accident. With these plates at 

 hand, they will be enabled at least to give ease to the sufferer, till the surgeon 

 can be obtained. 



The descriptive matter which accompanies the plates is well and clearly 

 written. The arrangement which the author has adopted also deserves no- 

 tice : his first enquiry is into the cause of the fracture, next into the appear- 

 ances that the limb assumes, then as to the cause of the displacement. In 

 the latter question is particularly involved the application of the plates, which 

 display the moving powers that distort the broken ends of the bones, and 

 therefore point to the means necessary to restrain those actions. Lastly, follows 

 the treatment, which is simple and efficient. 



The new edition is enriched by a number of vignette wood-cuts, which de- 

 lineate the external form of the limb in the various accidents. We conclude 

 our notice by recommending this work to the attention of our readers, assuring 

 them that it is entitled to a conspicuous place on their select shelves by the 

 side of Dr. Quain's anatomical plates. 



Magazine of Health. By W. H. Robertson, M. D. No. 11. Tilt. 

 The practising physician, having completed his first volume of " Health" and 

 recovered from a violent attack of the " gout," has at length thrown off the veil 

 of incognito, that he might reap the blushing honours of an unblushing author- 

 ship. We suspect, that we are not wholly unacquainted with the author, 

 and if we mistake not the Doctor is one of those useful practising physicians 

 of modern Athens, with whom embryo graduates so much interest themselves, 

 before they venture upon the fiery ordeal of the dread examiners. 



We could have wished, that Dr. Robertson had confined himself to the 

 professed object of his magazine, " the enlightenment of men's minds on a 

 subject which is only second in importance to that of religion, to oppose 

 quackery and its parent, ignorance," &c. But in the very number, in which 

 these fine-sounding intentions are trumpeted forth, we see the learned Doctor 

 most indecorously flirting with the young folks of the self-same " parent ig- 

 norance," of which he so speaks above. From the very top of the pigmy pin- 

 nacle of his magazine he is handing round to the wondering crowd, like the 

 Charlatan of a Venetian carnival, his marvellous pills pills No. 1. strongest, 

 pills No. 2. milder, pills No. 3. excessively mild all for nothing (their full value 

 by the way), " if you only buy my book." This the prudent author may call 

 " enlightening me'n's minds," but we can see no distinction between such 

 " practising" and bare-faced quackery, which provides one medicine for all 

 diseases and all conditions of disease. 



Does Dr. Robertson contend, that one hat must fit all mankind ; or that 

 the same wine shall be always palatable, the same food always healthful ? 

 We hope to see the Doctor rally from so disagreeable a malady as that from 

 which his late effusions spring. Is the philosophy of medicine so barren, that 

 he must expose the secrets of his pill-factory ? Oh Doctor ! swallow this 

 little pill No. 3. We assure you, and we are certain ourselves, that your strength 

 and solid substance will be improved. 



Dr. Robertson, moreover, owes some feelings of delicacy to his profession. 

 He is a member of a cultivated class of men, and has no right to risk their 

 credit in a frolicsome game of pills with the public, to infringe the bounds of 

 reason and integrity, by persuading simple credulous folks, that disease is so 

 little important as to admit of being trifled with by excessively mild pills 

 Does he forget that physical disease brings mental weakness, that the sick are 

 not capable of judging for themselves, that their anxious relatives are no more 

 capable than are they, that the whole resource in the hour of pain and suffer- 



