1822. [ 
261 ] 
MEDICAL REPORT. 
REPORT of DISEASES and CASUALTIES occurring in public and private Practice 
of the Physician who has the care of the Western District of the City Dispensary. 
T has always been a feeling with the 
author of these essays that to foster a 
precocious indication of superior intellect 
on the part of offspring, is to exercise pa- 
rental power with worse than no effect. 
Very young children ought to be mere 
existences; and it were much better that 
at the age of six years they should be ig- 
norant even of the letters of the alphabet 
than that they should be puffed out into the 
swell of Lilliputian learning—be made 
the wonder of the drawing-room, and the 
admiration, or more properly, perhaps, 
speaking, the annoyance of all mamma’s 
visitors. Intellectual, like animal and ve- 
getable growth, must have its seasons, and 
every thing that is preternaturally forced 
becomes ultimately feeble. The writer 
has just been present at the dissection of a 
child whose faculties of understanding had 
far outstripped the number of her years— 
she died of disease in the brain; and it 
was curious to observe that all the parts of 
that organ were so inordinately developed 
as to present the phenomena of adult por- 
tions with an infantine whole; and what is 
further worthy of remark, the bony invest- 
ments of the eucephalic mass were so in- 
jected with blood, as to prove that the de- 
mand of this fluid from the frame was be- 
yond the measure of supply that the frame 
could afford. Had this child survived the 
period of infancy, her youth would probably 
have been characterised by Bettyan for- 
wardness, and her more mature years 
marked by indications of prematurely ex- 
hausted excitability, with little of animal 
aud less of intellectual vigour. The fault 
and misfortune were here the works of na- 
ture, but the case is alluded to for the pur- 
pose of checking that disposition which 
some display to stretch out at once the 
young mind into more than due or durable 
extent. Dropsy of the brain is very often 
the disease of those children whose intel- 
lect runs before it can walk. 
Between an actually organic injury of 
the brain and a merely sympathetic dis- 
turbance of its healthy functions, it is oc- 
casionally difficult to discriminate. A 
youth is at present under the reporter’s 
care who has been afflicted with fits of a 
convulsive kind, who is for hours deprived 
of speech, and even of common comprehen- 
sion, but who is still, itis hoped, not the 
subject of positive disease in the brain ; 
siice the disturbance of functions is not 
continuous, but by fits, since there is a 
freedom from febrile irritation, since a 
swollen upper lip, anda large pupil of the 
eye are present; and, finally, because the 
boy has been benefited by those medicine 
that have been administered under the im- 
pression of worms ; true it is that none of 
these parasitic animals have as yet given 
demonstrative proof of their existence, 
but it is not seldom the case that vermi- 
fuge drugs do the good that is desired 
without their exhibition being followed by 
the immediate expulsion of worms. It is 
remarkable that the youth in question who 
had attempted in vain to speak during the 
whole of a day, very soon after swallowing 
a fluid ounce of the spirit of turpentine, 
exclaimed * Now you have bit it.” He 
has had a second dose of this medicine; 
subsequently a tobacco enema,* and is, at 
length, apparently conyalescent. The 
idea of deception on the part of the patient 
will perhaps present itself to the mind of 
the reader; but that must be a power of 
dissinulation indeed which would occasion 
the production and repetition of well- 
marked fits of epilepsy. In the next 
month’s report the termination of this 
curious case shall be recorded. 
Another instance has occurred of radical 
relief following the administration of small 
doses of tincture of lytia, where there was 
every reason to apprehend from the symp- 
toms, an actual oppression upon the brain 
from an effused fluid,—where, in other 
words, hydrocephalus appeared completely 
marked. 
It will be recollected that allusion has 
more than once been made in these papers 
to the utility of exciting pustular eruptions 
on the skin by the tartar-emetic ointment, 
as vicarious of, and critical to, several sorts 
of morbid irritation. Last evening the re- 
porter took up a pamphlet just published by 
the celebrated Dr. Jenner, in which this 
remediat process is recommended in seve- 
ral maladies that are manifested. especially 
through the sentient system—and the au- 
thority of Jenner’s name is such as to com- 
mand more attention than is ordinarily 
due to the laudatory accounts of enthu- 
siasts respecting the efficacy of medicinal 
novelties. 
Siuce penning the last report, the writer 
has also been fascinated (for it would be 
* The virtues of tobacco as an anthel- 
mintic, the writer thinks, are not appre- 
ciated equal to their deservings. Its ex- 
ternal application in the way of poultice 
to the abdomen, will at times dislodge 
worms that have resisted the influence of 
internal vermifuges. 
injustice 
