Institute of France. 145 



Hiitlable; but happily they are of very rare occurrence; and the 

 remedies and preservatives belong to that class which medicine 

 adopts arainst contagion and venomous wounds. 



M. Ojfiia, a young- Spanish physician, has presented to the 

 Instituto an extensive work on poisons, considered with iespcct 

 to medicine and medical jurisprudence. We have only perused the 

 first volume, which treats of the poisons of mercury, arsenic, 

 antimony, and copper. The author hvis detailed many experi- 

 ments on the differences which the presence of various" aliments 

 acting as rea^ofcnts occasion : in the operation of poisons dif- 

 ferences which may, in certain cases, disguise their properties, 

 and prevent us from ascertaining them : he has pointed out all 

 the precautions necessary for coroners, lawyers, and medical 

 men, when the ends of justice are to be attained. He has par- 

 ticularly endeavoured, with the g -eatest care, to verify all the 

 known methods of arresting the deleterious effects of these poi- 

 sons, and to find new remedies where the old have failed. Thus, 

 according to M. Orfila, the only antidote against corrosive subli- 

 mate is albumen or white of eggs diluted in water ; and against 

 verdigrise, common lump sugar, a result to which theory never 

 would have led us. 



M. Pictet, faithful to the interests of science, has this year 

 communicated much valuable information connected with me- 

 dicine and surgery: one of the cases he has reported would 

 most assuredly have been regarded as a miracle, in those times 

 when pious credulity ascribed every event to the immediate in- 

 terposition of the Deity: this was the case of a man whose thorax 

 was comiiletely transfixed by the shaft of a gig"^ : another case 

 was one in which hydrophobia seems to have been completely 

 cured in India by repeated bleeding. The importance of thi^s 

 discovery was enhanced to us in France, by the circumstance of 

 Baron Percy's having, but a few days before we knew of it, 

 read to the Institute an account of a" most dreadful occurrence 

 at Bar sur Ornaine, where nearly twenty persons were bit by a 

 mad wolf, and upon whom it is proposed to try the above re- 

 medy. Another case which M, Pictet communicated from Ge- 

 neva did not terminate quite so happily as the first two. A 

 soldier who laboured under all the symptoms of croup under- 

 went tracheotomy without obtaining any relief. 



M. Pictet has also communicated to us an interesting account 

 of the plague which raged in the Russian port of Odessa, as 

 furnished him by his nephew M. Charles Pictet, who contributed 

 to stop its ravages. 



»«,* J'^'!.^'"'/'^^ ^^'^^ subsequently alluded to, must have been taken from 



the bniilish Journals; they are no doubt familiar to all our readers 



Thanslator. 



Vol. A'i. No. 196. August 1814. K M. Portal 



