f 264 J 
[Oct. 1, 
MEDICAL REPORT. 
Report of Dist ses and Casuartres occurring inthe publie and private Practice 
of the Physician who has the care of the Western District of the City Dispensary. 
— 
TH AT convalescence from croupreqiires 
the most solicitous attention, both from 
parent and physician, in order to obviate 
the immediate recurrence of this cruel dis- 
order, has been painfully proved in the 
practice of the Reporter during the few 
preceding days. Of the last two cases that 
he has seen of croup, fairly and fully 
marked, the one was a beautiful child, that 
was in the morning under the immediate 
grasp of death, and in the evening appa- 
rently as well as it had ever been since 
birth. 
Grandmamma (the good ladies that go 
under this name are too often the deter- 
mined enemies, both to the physical and 
moral well-being of young people,) grand- 
mamma had ordered the child in question 
something ‘¢ comforting and supporting” in 
the shape of solid meat, of no inconsidera- 
ble quantity, just before bed-time : in the 
night the fearful noise and frightfal strug- 
gle were again heard and witnessed ; and 
death, on this second attempt, succeeded in 
the seizure of its victim at about the same 
period in the evening of the ensuing day 
that the ‘‘doctors” had been laughed at 
for their caution, and practically derided 
and opposed on the preceding. 
Tn the second case, the recuirence of the 
croupal inflammation was plainly caused by 
an injudicious exposure to cold air, Here 
powerful measures are again promising 
success, but the fate of the patient will 
probably be determined long before the 
present paper is put to press.* 
A remarkable instance of aphonia has 
recently presented itself to the writer, 
which has been most successfully treated 
by galvanism, in combination with the 
nitras argenti. The subject was a young 
and amiable female, who had been deprived 
of her voice for nearly four months, and 
had taken steel, with other medicinals, 
without effect. In the course of three 
days from the commencement of the galva- 
nism, and the drug just named, the voice 
began to return; and it has, at Jength, re- 
gained all its wonted clearness and energy. 
* There is now reason to hope that this 
Jast case will proclaim the triumph of me- 
dicine. 
Tt is not, perhaps, very easy to apportion 
the due share of respective credit to the 
two remedial agents thus simultaneously 
tried in this interesting case ; but the writer 
conceives, that the galvanic influence might, 
in many cases, be brought to bear with more 
decided and permanent efficacy, by com- 
bining its exhibition with @ substance, 
which we know is not only powerful, but 
often permanent in its effects. It is a re- 
markable fact, that the perception of a 
metallic impregnation of the frame from a 
particular taste is the same from gal- 
vanism as from the nitrate of silver. It 
ought to be mentioned, that Mr. La 
Beaume was the galvanic operator in the 
instance now referred to. 
Renal affections the Reporter often 
finds to have been treated, and he is con- 
scious of not having unfrequently treated 
them himself, as mere derangements of the 
stomach. This oversight and mistake 
may, in many instances, be partly as- 
cribable to that indolent disposition, to 
generalize which the ‘ digestive-organs” 
views of medicine are apt to engender. 
M. Majendie, a celebrated physiologist of 
France, expresses astonishment that so 
philosophical a nation as the English 
should rest in the empirical and delusive 
contentment arising out of this source. 
He, indeed, at least in the present writer’s 
opinion, denies the stomach even its due 
operation in the manufacturing of maladies, 
which develope themselves more especially 
through the medinm of the kidneys, giving 
to the latter organs their more than de- 
served share in the morbifie processes ; 
but, certain it is, that stomach ailments, 
even of a formidable cast and character, are 
often merely sympathetic sequels of renal 
derangement; and that, too, in cases 
where calculus is neither present nor in 
prospect, a circum8tance to which the 
Reporter has thought it proper to call the 
reader’s attention, in consequence of hav- 
ing lately had occasion to witness a more 
than ordinary proportion of lumbar and 
stomach complaints thus connected with, 
and closely simulating, each other. 
D. Uwins, M.D. 
Bedford Row, Sept. 20, 1822, 
REPORT OF CHEMISTRY AND EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 
—— 
Me. BABBAGE has made a very. extra- 
ordinary discovery on the application 
of machinery to the purpose of calculating 
and printing mathematical tables. He 
states that the intolerable labour and fa- 
tiguing monotony of a continued repetition 
of similar arithmetical catculations, first 
excited the desire, and afterwards suggest-_ 
ed the idea, of a machine, which, by the 
aid of gravity (weight), or any other mov- 
ing power, should become a substitute for 
one of the lowest operations of human in- 
tellect. The first engine of which draw- 
ings were made was one which is a 
4 o 
