a 1 2 French National Institute. 



sidercd mountains under another point of view, in a me- 

 xnoir on the climate of Liguria, in which he shows, by va- 

 rious examples, that this country, protected against the 

 north winds by the Apennines, is more favourable to the 

 plants of warm countries than any other of the same lati- 

 tude, because the winter there is milder, although of longer 

 duration, while the summer is cooler on account of the 

 vicinity of the sea and the snow. 



The natural history of the department of Doubs hasbeen 

 embraced in all its parts by M. Girod-Chantrans, in a 

 work submitted to the judgment of the class, and in which 

 he gives the catalogue of all the species of plants and ani- 

 mals which he could find, with descriptions of the moun- 

 tains, mineralogv, springs, and other phenomena. It is 

 much to be desired that all the departments of the empire 

 were described with the same precision. 



Every person knows that dropsy, generally considered as 

 the efi'ect of an obstruction, is treated by aperients and sharp 

 purgatives, given under every different form. A memoir 

 from the pen of M. Depart z has treated this regimen as 

 rather too much followed. He has cited a number of obser- 

 vations which, in his opinion, prove that many cases of 

 dropsy, particularly those produced by mental anxiety, de- 

 pend on a too great contraction in the vessels, and require 

 mild evacuants. He even asserts, that this kind of dropsy 

 is more cvimmon than is generally supposed, and that it 

 deserves all the attention which practitioners can bestow. 



M- Leguin, who, without being a medical man, has been 

 occupied by a praiseworthy zeal of furnishing new agents 

 to medicine, seems to have particularly attached himself to 

 combat intermitting fevers, which are so common and so 

 direful in all countries. He has long treated them with 

 gelatine, and assures us he has obtained the most decided 

 success. This year he tried albumen, and found it very 

 successful also. He has already cured forty-one patients, 

 by giving them, at the time of the fit, the whites of three 

 eggs diluted in warm water with a little sugar. In his 

 opinion this remedy, as well as gelatine, is the more con- 

 venient because we may lay it aside if the first fits which 

 succeed its exhibition are not milder. 



M. Portal has this year read an account of a patient who 

 laboured under the various symptoms of P lU lusts puimo- 

 nalis, added to some others, the cause of which v^-as un- 

 known. On opening the body, there was an abscess in the 

 liver as well as in the lungs, and both abscesses com- 

 inunicatcd through an opening in the diaphragm. 



M. Pelletau 



