260 



ease t " by Dr. Kneeland, is tlic title of a Boylston prize essay, here 

 published without any allusion to its laureate honours. The key to 

 the author's position is found in the following sentence: "Iiistc.nl of 

 leading man back to the forsaken paths of nature, physicians have 

 preferred the easier plan of ministering to this altered condition by 

 the ingenious and stupendous system of modern therapeutics." He 

 appears to believe, and as the committee think, very justly, that 

 much indirect benefit may result even from the experiments of the 

 hydropathist and homoeopathist, notwithstanding the illusions and 

 impositions that surround the fountain of the Silesian boor and the 

 laboratory of the Saxon necromancer. The interest of Dr. Brown's 

 account of his visit to the Cretins, in the institution on the Abend- 

 berg, is owing not merely to the novelty of the subject, which is just 

 beginning to attract the attention of philanthropists, but to the 

 agreeable style of the narrative. In a country which has done as 

 much as our own for the insane, the blind and the deaf and dumb, 

 it cannot be long before the improvement of the condition of the 

 unfortunate idiot will be felt to be a public duty. Dr. Mettauer, 

 whose name is familiar to the records of operating surgery, reports 

 two cases of vesico-vaginal fistula, with the operations for their relief, 

 one of which was perfectly successful, and the other, though repeated 

 again and again, was but partially so. But this, as Dr. Mettauer 

 thinks, was owing to the patient's amiable indiscretions, and he is 

 decidedly of opinion that every case of vesico-vaginal fistula can be 

 cured. Dr. Harris relates a case of doubtful sex. in connection with 

 which the editor quotes that described by Dr. Barry, in the New- 

 York Journal of Medicine for January, 1S47. Dr. Boling'a new 

 sign of pneumonia of the apex of the hings, needs confirmation by 

 other observers. The committee can affirm, at least, that it is not 



constant. It was extraordinary if, as Dr. Boling asserts, the chest 



remained still resonant on percussion over the apex of the lung in a 

 state of hepatization. This number contains a long notice of Dr. 

 Wood's Practice of Medicine, by one of the most searching and 

 skilful reviewers our periodicals have ever enlisted in their service. 

 It may be hinted, that one epithet, however judicious, must not be 

 repeated too often; the accomplished reviewer remembers Gryas and 

 Cloanthus. 



The number for October, 1 S 17. has for its leading article a con- 

 tinuation of Dr. Metcalfe Statistics in Midwifery, containing the 

 results of '.'-7 oases observed in private practice. It is a most 



ditable production to the author and the friends by whom he was 



