218 Medical Topography of Upper Scinde. 



confident that the more recent formations in Scinde, in which 

 a slumbering volcanic action is supposed to go on, are equally 

 prolific sources of disease. 



We should not have been at the trouble of exposing the 

 fallacy of any theoretical views thrown out in an ordinary 

 topographical sketch, but as these views form the great 

 bulk of a memoir which has very properly been thought 

 worthy of being printed by Government, we think it right 

 to notice them : the more so, as Dr. Kirk appears to endea- 

 vour with most laudable zeal, to adapt to his purposes the 

 more recent chemical views of Europe. His is evidently a 

 mind that cannot rest satisfied without some explanation of 

 the phenomena of disease — explanations, which in its present 

 state, medical science is not far enough advanced to offer.* 

 The views of Liebig, on which our author pins his faith, are, 

 at least in his theories of diseased action, merely conjectural, 

 and find much less favour now than when they were first 

 propounded. 



Dr. Kirk seems long ago to have satisfied himself as to 

 the actively deleterious nature of hydro-sulphuric acid. In 

 1844f he wrote thus: "Physiologists and Chemists are 

 agreed, that it is the principle in malaria on which its poi- 

 sonous effects depend." " In damp and jungly localities 

 fever is often more or less complicated with head affections 

 and biliary derangement. Exposure to the sun's influence, 

 with that of malaria, is the cause of such accompaniments." 

 He also believed, that " hydro-sulphuric acid generated with- 

 in the body, does much harm." " The breath of a cachectic 

 person and of a glutton always smells more or less of this gas. 

 It appears to me that this is the poison which, when largely 



* We fear, however, that his case is nearly hopeless. When a man gets 

 the length of finding that when he has fever, the eating cruciferous plants, 

 such as cabbage, turnip, &c. hurts him, owing to the sulphur which they 

 contain, he must be indeed wedded to theory. 



+ See Transactions Med. and Phys. Society of Calcutta, Vol. ix. 



