11 



ABDCCTK'X. 



ABERRATION- 



which M always a aga not only of disease, but of exceedingly severe 



Diminished temperature, which arise* from diminished action in the 

 arterie*. and an overloaded state of the veins, is no less important as a 

 sign of disease. U always denotes a most dangerous condition of the 

 system, the danger being hi proportion to the coldness. It is the con- 

 comitant of the worst forms of fever which are ever witnessed in this 

 country ; fever with a cold skin being incomparably more alarming 

 than fever with even a ptmgently hot kin. In the cholera, the first, 

 th moat sure, and the mart alarming sign of the invasion of the 

 malady, is coldness of the. system, and especially of the abdomen, the 

 main seat of the malady ; and it is uniformly found that there is no 

 oae sign which affords a better criterion of the extent of the danger, 

 in any case, than the degree of coldness of the system in general, and 

 of the abdomen in particular. 



3. That mode of external examination of the body termed percussion 

 namely, the mode of eliciting sounds from the surface, the nature of 

 the sound produced affording a knowledge of the condition of the parti 

 beneath has opened to the modern practitioner a new source of 

 information, the careful and skilful employment of which has afforded 

 practical results of far greater precision and importance than could 

 possibly have been anticipated. This mode of examination has been 

 applied principally, and with the most valuable results, to the detection 

 of the itiSBauM of the chest ; but its application is just as necessary to 

 diseases of the abdomen. The size of the liver, the part of the intes- 

 tinal tube distended with air, and a variety of other particulars, may 

 be obtained by the aid of percunion. 



An account of the various diseases to which the abdominal viscera 

 are subject, and their treatment, will be found in this work, either 

 under the head of the diseases of the various organs, or the special 

 terms by which such diseases are designated. [KIDNEYS, DISEASES OF ; 

 LIVER, DISEASES or ; ENTERITIS; PERITONITIS ; DROPSY.] 



ABDUCTION (from the Latin word abdartlo, which ia from the 

 verb aUnetre, to lead or carry off) is an unlawful taking away of the 

 person of another, whether of child, wife, ward, heiress, or women 

 generally. 



Abduction of Child. [KiDXAPPlxo.] 



Abdntiion of Wife may be either by open violence, or by fraud and 

 persuasion. The law in both cases supposes force and constraint, the 

 wife being unable to give a valid consent. The remedy of the husband 

 in such a case w an action, by which he may recover, not the possession 

 of his wife, but damages for taking her away; and by statute 

 8 Edward L c. 19, the offender shall be imprisoned for two years, and 

 fined at the pleasure of the king, that U, of the court. The husband is 

 also entitled to recover damages against such as persuade and entice the 

 wife to lire separate from him without sufficient cause. 



AMnftion of Ward. A guardian is said to be entitled to an action if 

 his ward be taken from him, but it is added that, for the damages 

 recovered in such action, he must account to bin ward when the 

 ward comes of age. But it is very doubtful if such an action will now 

 lie. It was grounded originally on the interest which the guardian, 

 according to feudal notions, had in his ward's marriage ; but since the 

 abolition, in the reign of Charles II., of all the feudal tenures except 

 socage, the ward's marriage has been of no value to the lord or guar- 

 dian. An action would lie for loss of services, if the ward really 

 rendered any to the guardian. 



It may be added, that all questions between guardians and wards 

 are now in general inquired into and determined by the Court of 

 Chancery. 



AMxriiix of Iffiretf. By 9 George IV. c. 31, when any woman shall 

 have any interest in any estate real or personal, or shall be heiress 

 presumptive or next of kin to any one having such interest, any person 

 who from motives of lucre shall take or detain her against her will for 

 the purpose of her being married or defiled, and all counsellors, aidere, 

 and abettors of such offences are declared guilty of felony, and punish- 

 abb by transportation for life, or not lees than seven years, or 

 imprisonment with or without hard Ubour. The taking of any 

 unmarried girl under sixteen out of the possession of a parent or 

 guardian is declared a mi-demeanour, and is punishable by fine and 

 imprisonment The marriage, when obtained by means of force, may 

 be set aside on that ground. In this case, as in many others, fraud U 

 hwally considered as equivalent to force ; and, consequently, in a case 

 where both the abduction and marriage were voluntary in fact, they 

 wars held in law to be forcible, the consent to both having been 

 obtained by fraud 



AbHurtiam of Women generally. The forcible abduction and marriage 

 of women Is a felony. Here, and in the case of stealing an heiress, the 

 usual role that a wife shall not give evidence for or against her husband 



departed from, for in such case the woman can with no propriety be 

 reckoned a wife where a main ingredient, her consent, was wanting to 

 the contract of marriage ; beaides which, there U another rule of law, 

 that " a man shall not take advantage of his own wrong," which would 

 ously be dooe hsre, if he who carries off a woman could, by forcibly 

 marrying her, pivieul her from being evidence against him, when flic 

 was perhap. the only whoso* to the fact. 



ABERRATION (or Liutm, an astronomical phenomenon, lieing an 

 Apparent alteration in the place of a star, arWng from the combined 

 motion of the spectator, and the light which brings the impression of 



the star to bis eye. We should however premise, iu -order that the 

 reader may not form too Urge a notion of aberration, that it is never so 

 much as 21 *, that is, the apparent place of the star differs from iU real 

 place less than the ninetieth part of the apparent diameter of the sun. 

 It is no wonder, therefore, that practical astronomy was considerably 

 advanced before this discovery was made. If our sense of vision were 

 pet feet, or if light moved no faster than a rain-drop we should have 

 Irrratrial aberration, that is, objects would change their relative places 

 when we begin to move, and if we went as fast as a ray of light 

 moved, the utmost confusion would be the consequence. When we 

 ride in a carriage into which the rain is beating, we inUt. 

 direction of the rain : for the cause of which phenomenon, see MOTION. 

 But as light moves with a velocity which imagination cannot on 

 about 193,000 miles in a second, its motion is so great compared with 

 any we can give to ourselves, that its passage from any one terrestrial 

 object to another may be considered as instantaneous. The motion 

 of a spectator on the earth, which goes round the sun at the average 

 rate of about nineteen miles in one second, though leas than the ten 

 thousandth part of that of light, U nevertheless sufficient to cause a 

 small variation in the place of the star, perceptible by tin- aid of good 

 astronomical instruments. 



We know [ MOTION ] that if a body A be struck in two different 

 directions at the same instant, with im- 

 pulses which would separately carry it 

 through AB and AC in one second of time, 

 the result of the combined impulses is that 

 it moves in one second through AD, the dia- 

 gonal of the parallelogram, whose sides are 

 AB, AC. Again, if the spectator and the object 

 at which he is looking are both in motion, 

 the appearances presented by the motion 

 will be preserved, if we render the spectator 

 stationary, provided we give to the object a 

 velocity equal and contrary to that which the 

 spectator Aorf, in addition to its own. Hence, if the spectator move 

 from r to 4 in one second, while in the same time the object moves 

 from A to c, and if AB be equal to po., the spectator, -who does not 

 perceive his own motion, will imagine that the object moves through 

 AD in one second, he himself remaining at p. Hence, if rays of light 

 move parallel to AC, and he can distinguish them, they will appear to him 

 to move parallel to AD. Though he cannot see the light itself, he will 

 mistake the direction of the object from which it comes ; and if asked to 

 ]>oint it out, will place his finger in the direction PX instead of PM. The 

 following illustration will place this in a clearer light. 



Let us suppose the rays to move so slowly, that a spectator can be 

 furnished with a tube long enough for light to take some perceptible 

 time in passing from one end of it to the other. This will do for our 

 purpose, since, though by such a supposition the aberration will ! 

 very much increased, yet the effect, and the reason of it, will be of the 

 same kind as if light were supposed to have its real velocity. The Btar 

 being at an immense distance, the rays which reach the spect. 

 different parts of the second may be called parallel, without sensible 

 error. Thus, while in one second the spectator moves from A to B, he 

 receives rays of light in the direction indicated by the dotted lines. 

 The question now is, in what direction must he hold the tube, so as to 

 nee the star through it T If he were at rest, that direction would 

 evidently be AC. 



tig. 2. 



Let AB be the line described by the spectator in one second, during 

 which time let a ray of light move from a to B, or from c to A. Join 

 AO, and let An be the length and direction of the tube. Divide the 

 second into any number of equal parts, say six, and carry the tube into 

 the various positions which it will successively occupy. Consider a ray 

 of light u a succession of little particles moving one after another in a 

 straight line. Then when the eye has come to r, the particle a will 

 have come to p ; when the eye is at Q, the particle will be at q, and o 

 on. We have then so placed the tube, that iU motion will nut 

 interfere with that, of the ray, which moves as freely in the moving 

 tube as it would do if there were no tube. To the spectator, who doc* 

 not perceive his own motion, the tube is stationary, and the ray of 

 light appears to come down it ; therefore AH will be the direction in which 

 he sees the star, instead of AC. The angle CAO, contained between t)>< 

 real and apparent directions, in what is called the nlterration. Here OA 

 is the diagonal of the parallelogram BOCA, in which ac is equal and 

 opposite to A B, as before noticed. To apply this, we must remark, 



1. That the above figure is much distorted, since ABU not the 

 ten thousandth of a B ; whence the aberration will be very small. 



2. That the aberration is in the plane passing through A B, the line 

 of the earth's course for the moment, and through the real direction 



