54 Notices respect if} g New Books. 



period of a hopeless disease. The medical niai) w!io reflects on 

 the distresses that such patients must be liable to during such a 

 journey, arrested perhaps in their progress by the increase of 

 some of those symptoms which attend the advanced stages of con- 

 sumption, — in very indifferent accnnimodations, probably, and 

 far from any metlical advice in which they can confide, — will 

 surelv long hesitaie ere he condemns the fated victim of this re- 

 morseless malady to the additional evils of expatriation : And his 

 motives for hesitation will be increased, when he considers how 

 often the unfortunate patient sinks a prey to his disease long be- 

 fore he reaches the place of his destination ; or, at best, arrives 

 at it in a much worse corlition than when he left England, and 

 doomed, shortly, to add another n'ame to the long and melan- 

 choly list of his countrymen that have sought out, with pain and 

 suffering, a distant country, only to gain in it an untimely grave ! 



" In the foregoing observations I have perhaps viewed mat- 

 ters in the worst light; but it is the duty ef the physician, in giv- 

 hig his advice in such cases, to keep in mind the possibility 

 of such occurrences. This is in a more peculiar manner neces- 

 sary with females, u])on whom all the inconveniences of travel- 

 ling fall with double severity. To those acquainted with travel- 

 ling in many parts of the continent, it is not necessary to enter 

 into particulars on this subject ; and those who are not, may rest 

 assured of the accuracy of what I state. That I do not exagge- 

 rate, and to show that these opinions were formed from actual 

 observation, I shall state a few of the cases that came to my 

 own knowledge in one season. 



" The first was that of a young man who was carried from 

 Bourdeaux the greater part of the way on men's shoulders. 

 When he reached Aix, al)()Ut eighteen miles fronr Marseilles, he 

 could be carried no further. An English physician, then at the 

 latter place, w-as immediately sent for, and arrived in time to see 

 him expire ! This is an extreme case, I grant, but shows how far 

 the eager hopes of relations will lead them in such case, if not 

 informed of their error. Several other patients came to my 

 knowledge, the same season, who never reached tlieir destina- 

 tion. One died nt Paris : another at Tours ; and a third on the 

 way down the Rhine.* One young man reached Hieres with 

 difficulty, and lived ten days. One jady left England in Decem- 

 ber, to linger a few .veeks under the cloudless skies of Nice, 

 where she died in the end of February or beginning of March. 

 What a recompense for such a journey over the roads of France, 



* It is no unfrequent thing to observe io the newspaper obituary re- 

 ports, the death of a person at Paris, or some other place, ' on his way to th^ 

 South of France.' This is some consumptive patient sent abroad probably 

 in the last stacje of his disease, to have the ..hort career he had to run 

 .•shortened, and to die long ere he reached the place of his destination. 



and 



