1820.] Royal Academy of Sciences. 6S 



missioners appointed by the Academy have verified this experi- 

 ment in many consumptive persons. 



The same phenomena take place when the instrument is 

 placed on the trachea, or larynx, of a healthy person. M. Laen- 

 nec, who has given the name of pectoriloquy to this effect, aris- 

 ing from the pulmonary alterations, distinguishes the varieties of 

 it, and shows the indications which result from it, by reason of 

 ulcers in the lungs, of their size, of their state whether empty or 

 full, and of the consistence of their substance. 



This instrument will also show in a distinct manner the 

 motion of respiration, and the beating of the heart, so that we 

 may easily form a judgment of their greater or less regularity; 

 information which cannot fail of affording useful indications in 

 the diseases of those two functions. 



The employment of gold in medicine, although long ago 

 praised by the alchemists, appears to have been forgot in modem 

 times ; but M. Chretien, a celebrated physician of Montpellier, 

 announces that he has discovered that this metal, even in a state 

 of purity, has very strongly marked medical properties, and that 

 he has been able to use it with success in scrofulous and syphi- 

 litic affections. He has addressed a voluminous work to the 

 Academy, which contains the history of the principal diseases 

 in which he used it, and a detailed account of the precautions 

 with which be employed it. The committee of the company 

 have also made in their turn numerous experiments in the 

 method pointed out, in order to be able to estimate the virtues 

 of gold. By means of rubbing gold, or the triple muriate of gold 

 and soda, upon the tongue, they have been able to cicatrise 

 scrofulous ulcers, to resolve syphihtic swellings, to destroy nodes 

 in part, to stop the progress of caries, to put an end to unsup- 

 portable pains in the bones, to dissipate ophthalmias of long 

 standing, obstinate disorders of the throat, and eruptions which 

 had withstood all other remedies. 



But there happened to them also other results which were 

 much less fortunate, and their want of success was not limited 

 by the disease being left in its primitive state ; for it was in 

 several instances exasperated by the action of the remedy. 

 Indolent tumours have become inflamed, fever, cholic, alarming 

 inflammations of the stomach have taken place ; a thickening of 

 the periosteum, which was without any pain, has degenerated 

 into a cancer. 



It is, therefore, very certain that gold is very far from being 

 such an inactive medicine as has been said ; but it is equally 

 certain that its use must be guided by certain rules and precau- 

 tions relative to the circumstances in which the patients who 

 are to use them are placed. Rules and precautions which 

 nothing but long experience, and a numerous set of observations 

 well weighed, can supply to the medical art. 



The late M.Ravrio, bronze manufacturer, whohad acquired cele- 



