66 do not appear, says M. de Rémusat, to have sufficiently recognised this truth. Hippocrates knew osteology in nearly the whole of its details. He names and describes the bones of the skull and almost all those of the skeleton. . . . Every moment we are meeting in the Collection' with comparisons between the human anatomy and that of the lower animals, the distinctions or analogies between them being pointed out. M. Daremberg has proved beyond a doubt, by means of ingenious experiments, that Galen dissected apes only; but it would be difficult to prove the same thing of Hippocrates. "It may be objected that if the ancients had been in the habit of dissecting, they would never have disfigured what there are of correct ideas in their works, with such an innumerable throng of conjectures and hypotheses. If the ancients had ever opened a dead body, how could they have spent the time they did in discussing whether the arteries contained air or blood? Hippocrates believes that the nerves, like the tendons, serve to fasten the muscles to the bones. His profession sometimes assigned the origin of the blood-vessels to the liver, as did Galen ; sometimes, with Aristotle, to the brain; sometimes to the lungs, the abdomen, &c. There were some who thought that these vessels form a circuit and have no one starting-point; but until the time of Harvey their theory had been triumphantly refuted. It might appear that the simplest amount of observation must have rectified all these errors; nevertheless, a brief acquaintance with dissection will suffice to show how difficult it is to form a correct idea of the situation of the organs and their reciprocal action. All seems intermingled and confused, especially when the vessels are not injected, and injection was only discovered by Graaf and Ruysch. . . . The lymphatic vessels have only been discovered in the seventeenth century by Aselli. Every day there is a discovery of some new veins, or new glands, and then the wonder is they were not observed long before." Even in our own day, we are further reminded, there are plenty of details in a state of uncertainty, and many are the discussions raised on points which to persons unversed in the science might appear easy to verify. As regards physiology, which is closely allied to anatomy, the ancients were also considerably in the dark. Rémusat, on this topic, remarks, that all that portion of physiology which relates to the organs and their functions rests on an exact acquaintance with the situation of the parts of the body, and of their real character, such as the microscope alone can ensure. No microscope, no science of physiology. Accordingly, all sorts of mistakes were made, about this, that, and the other organ. Nerves were confounded with tendons. What organ secreted the bile was unknown, or what other made the blood. The salivary glands, the pancreas, the tonsils, the lachrymal glands, &c., are nowhere described; nor does Galen himself, who composed a treatise on the use of the various parts, make mention of them. So true it is, that in a matter of this kind, reasoning goes for nothing, and experience is all in all hence, the experiments of the ancients being inevitably limited and imperfect, their knowledge on the subject was almost negative. "It is impossible to divine à priori why the liver secretes bile and not saliva, or why the pancreas secretes pancreatic juice and not blood. Observation alone, and that observation founded upon accurate anatomical knowledge, can throw light on this science, which Haller might well have styled anatome Dec.-VOL. CXI. NO. CCCCXLIV. : 2 E animata. There is, however, another physiology, wherein experience is no longer dominant, and where speculations and hypotheses are of more importance. It treats of life generally, of intelligence and its seat. This physiology it is which alone occupied the attention of the ancients, and upon which they formed opinions that, if not admitted, are at least debated largely at the present time." Physiology, under this aspect, was by the ancients confounded with philosophy-not, however, "after the manner of Broussais, who accepted physiology alone, whereas they introduced metaphysics into their science of life. For them, LIFE, that principle which animates plants and animals, was not a result of the functional organs, nor, as Bichat has said, the ensemble of these functions; it was a cause, a principle which is united to the body, and which at death is separated from it. This principle is independent of organisation. This or that organ may be wanting without prejudice to it. It is, as Hippocrates said, an unknown agent, working on behalf of the whole and of the component parts. Matter is inert, and in order to form together with matter a living essence, there must be something added thereto, an animating principle, in a wordlife; mens agitat molem. "Although this principle animates the entire body, it yet resides more particularly in some one organ." In the heart, some allege; others, in the diaphragm; in the brain, says Hippocrates. But at any rate life is, for Hippocrates, a something positive, over and above the material substance, to which it is superadded, and which it literally enlivens. And this theory of his has survived under various transformations and modifications, now known as animism, now as naturism, now as the system of Van Helmont, anon as that of Stahl, and at present professed by certain schools under the title of vitalism. It makes no distinction between life and soul, between the principle of life and that of thought. There is a commonly-received opinion, M. de Rémusat observes, in his review of this section of the subject, that the ancients lived much more simply than we do, and must, therefore, have found success in the use of far simpler and fewer remedies. All men, we sometimes hear it said, then lived pretty nearly alike; their food was more healthy and less varied, and there must have been fewer diseases accordingly. But just as Lemontey has shown that the recherches of the toilet in those days were far more refined than amongst ourselves, so it might be proved that both their food and medicaments were of a far more composite order than our own. They knew all our domestic animals, and all the game that is brought to table in the nineteenth century; and, in addition, they also made free with a number of creatures from the use of which we (without any colourable reason, M. de Rémusat submits) nationally and individually and punctiliously abstain.. "Besides beef, mutton, veal, poultry, &c., they turned to account the flesh of goats, hedgehogs, dogs, cats, asses, and horses--the use of which last pabulum has been recently recommended by a distinguished naturalist, M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who extols its nutritious qualities. They made use of fermented drinks, of vegetables of all kinds, of a variety of sauces, of mixtures of wine and cheese, of honey," &c. So that disease, in as far as it resulted from diet, was not so simple an affair in ancient times as many suppose, nor would the remedies employed be otherwise than complicated. The materia medica of Hippocrates includes a host of drugs that continued far too long in use-of useless remedies, and compounds as heterogeneous and detestable as the wash, or gruel rather, thick and slab, made up by the Witches in Macbeth. But if we are to wonder in the matter at all, it will be, with Rémusat, much more at the therapeutic successes than failures of the old-world faculty. How did it come to pass, he asks, that without any acquaintance with the specifics we employ, quinine, mercury, opium, and so on, these medici managed to cure organs the functions and exact situation of which were to them unknown? How was it, that with such a deficiency of exact science, they could venture on those frightful operations at which modern surgeons are dismayed? How came it about, that they cured fever without a notion of feeling the pulse, or consumption without being aware of the mechanism of respiration, or gastric disorders without insight into the working of the digestive organs? And yet, when we look at the present state of medicine, we find a not dissimilar anomaly. For our own doctors manage to cure diseases of the spleen and the liver, without being agreed as to the functions of those organs; intermittent fever is cured, without the producing causes being ascertained; and so are cholera and small-pox, without our knowing what virus produces them, or even if there be a virus at all. It is on his pathology that the real and abiding renown of Hippocrates is now commonly allowed to rest. On this subject, says the critic whom we have mainly followed in these rambling notes, " his ideas were veritably original and important; in every other respect, he has done little beyond following his precursors, though with more of discrimination and reason." He makes the fundamental science of medicine to be a science of signs, or the observation of the periods of maladies, of their days of advance and of decline. All diseases he holds to be analogous, all have the same march and the same periods. For all there are certain salient days, or crises, which are generally the fourth, seventh, eleventh, &c. The thing of importance is, to aid nature in expelling from the system the morbific principle: for a man is not sick because such or such an organ is "out of sorts," much less because this or that function is badly discharged; but because a morbific principle has found its way into the general organism, to extrude which is the one thing needful, without preoccupying the attention with secondary and accidental, not essential, matters. Indeed, the whole Hippocratic pathology lies in the doctrine, that there are no local affections, no accidental derangements of the functions: that disease is not a succession of separate phenomena, each requiring a particular cure; but a logical concatenation, a sort of drama in three acts, which is played in the physical economy, the duration of which, and, if we are intelligent, the termination also, may be accurately foreseen and foretold.* The rival schools in medicine of Cnidus (headed by Euryphon) and Cos (by Hippocrates) are represented in Christendom by those of Montpellier and Paris. For, whatever the value of Hippocrates' system, twenty centuries, as M. de Rémusat says, have passed over it, and it is still discussed. "In a word, in this province as in every other, the Greeks may have had equals, but superiors they have had none; and boldly it may be asserted that Hippocrates has done as much for medicine as Plato for philosophy, Phidias for sculpture, Homer for poetry, Eschines and Demosthenes for eloquence." * Cf. Les Sciences Naturelles, pp. 113-182, passim. THE PRESS IN AMERICA.* THE History of the Press in the United States is very different from that of our own country. It has not had to undergo any long and painful struggles for existence, but assumed its place at once in the national manners. Hence we find in the newest of countries the oldest newspapers, many of them being able to boast a centenary existence. Across the Atlantic the press found no other obstacles than material difficulties, inevitable in a new country. In 1704 the newspaper was still a novelty in England, and hence it is not surprising that the "plantations" were innocent of the benefits of free intercommunication of ideas. In 1671, Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, returned thanks to Heaven because his colony contained no free-schools or printing-office, for thus the propagation of heresies would be prevented. He also hoped that things might go on in this happy manner for the next hundred years; and his vow was almost fulfilled, for it was not till sixty years later that Virginia, the richest and most populous of the colonies, had a single printing-office. But printing is not the sole indispensable condition for a paper: a postal service is equally necessary. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were only three places deserving the name of towns in America-Boston, New York, and Philadelphia-and there was no communication between them. They only interchanged news by means of the Boston ships, which went to the Bermudas or Jamaica for rum or sugar, and called at Philadelphia and New York. During the winter no communication took place by sea, and was not possible by land. This collection of unfavourable circumstances, however, did not prevent newspapers from springing into light on the American continent; still these facts will serve to show that the history of the press cannot be separated from those of the printing-press and the postal service. In 1638, the Rev. John Glover, an English dissenting minister, sent the newly-founded University of Cambridge an assortment of type. The Amsterdam merchants, through charity and a hope of assisting the Protestant faith, gave forty pounds to purchase a press, and subscriptions did the rest. The first printer was a John Green, whose descendants have stuck to the press ever since. In 1691, a certain Thomas Mole received authority to establish the first post-office, but his speculation was very unsuccessful. In Massachusetts, so late as 1703, the postmaster, John Campbell, was obliged to ask for a law to prevent his rights being interfered with, as well as an annual salary. Not succeeding in his wish, he was obliged, in self-defence, to establish the first newspaper. The celebrated divine, John Cotton, was in the habit of giving a weekly Thursday lecture, to which the country people flocked in. This affluence of news-seeking persons furnished Campbell with the idea of his novel undertaking. As postmaster he received the first European news; and on market-day his house was thronged with visitors, coming with or for Histoire de la Presse en Angleterre et aux Etats-Unis. Par Cucheval Clarigny. Paris: Amyot. their letters. He therefore started the Boston News Letter, the first number of which appeared on the 24th of April, 1704. For nearly sixteen years it was the only American paper, but in 1719 Andrew Bradford published the first paper in Pennsylvania, the American Weekly Mercury. The example was soon followed, and in the next year a rival to the Boston News Letter made its appearance in the Boston Gazette. The proprietor of the former expressed his regret for the readers of the new paper, which he said smelt rather of beer than of the midnight oil. But both were soon to be eclipsed by the appearance of what may be regarded as the first real American paper, the New England Courant, founded by James Franklin on the 17th of July, 1721. Before long the editor of the new paper was at daggers drawn with the Assembly, and Increase Mather fulminated an excommunication against it in the Gazette. James Franklin was committed to prison, and his place as editor taken by young Benjamin. Fresh attacks produced fresh punishment, and although the American Mercury, published at Philadelphia, stood up boldly in defence of the liberty of the press, James Franklin was forced to give up the paper in 1727, and retire to Rhode Island, where he established the Rhode Island Gazette. On the 27th of March, 1727, the New England Journal was commenced at Boston, as the organ of the extraordinary religious movement commenced by Whitfield and Edwards. This was followed soon after by the Evening Post, which was carefully edited, and bade fair to become the best of American papers, when Benjamin Franklin returned from England and inaugurated a new system. No sooner had Franklin established himself in Philadelphia, than he looked round him to realise his favourite idea of working on the people by means of the press. His first effort had an astonishing title to recommend it: it was called "The Universal Instructor in all the Arts and Sciences; or, Pennsylvanian Gazette." The former part of the title disappeared with his partner, and the first number of the Pennsylvanian Gazette was published on the 25th of September, 1729. Franklin took the popular side in a dispute between the governor and the assembly, and his paper obtained such an accession of subscribers, that Bradford, proprietor of the American Mercury, and postmaster, took umbrage, and tried to stop the circulation of the rival paper. Two years later the postmastership was given to Franklin, who accepted it on behalf of his paper, but was too generous to requite his opponent by the same system, as he richly deserved. For many years Franklin devoted his attention to the Gazette, which became an event in American literature; and the success he met with encouraged imitators. By 1740, there were fourteen The most papers published in America; five of them in Boston alone. curious circumstance is, that a German paper was published at Germantown so early as 1739. In fact, of six printing-offices working at that period in Pennsylvania, two printed only German, two German and English, and two only English. This proves at what an early period the German immigration commenced, which has ended by rendering the population of Pennsylvania more than half German. Having arrived at this epoch, and in the presence of fourteen papers, we may regard the periodical press as firmly established in America. Before long every colony, every important town, possessed its special paper; but we cannot |