of causes that induced to its postponement, we hazard a few cursory observations.

It is evident that in framing this Bill the Committee must have had many jarring interests to reconcile, arising even in the body to which it particularly applied; much external opposition to conciliate or to conquer, arising out of public opinion, or out of private apprehension. Some thought it too extended; others esteemed it too limited. Some asserted it did nothing if it did not annihilate the druggist. Some contended for the apothecaries' right to demand fees. One district had this, another had that, local interest to satisfy. Pressed by the multitude of claims, one often in direct opposition to another, and desirous, probably, to attend to every demand, and to gratify every wish, the Committee seems to have lost sight of, or to have mixed too much with other views, the main spring and principle of their project. To improve the school education, ab initio, of the apothecary and surgeon-apothecary; to perfect the students of that class in the elements of science; to prevent unqualified persons entering this department of the profession, by the barrier of a strict examination; seem to have been, and should continue to be, the vital principle animating and directing every view and motive of this application to the legislature. But embarrassed, probably, by intricacy of interests, and operated on by the influences above stated, the Committee suffered clauses, very loosely connected with this great principle, to be inserted in the Bill. The incongruity and inequitable extent of these hastily admitted clauses, a knowledge of the public opinion respecting them, and an ascertainment of the opposition to which they gave rise, determined the Committee to postpone the prosecution of the measure at that time.

That the objections to this Bill, founded on the clauses above alluded to, so far as those clauses went, were legitimate, will hardly be denied; but how they gave rise to another very formidable portion of opposition, will not easily be proved, but by that opposition being withdrawn with the objectionable clauses. That the privileges and rights of the College of Physicians and the Court of Assistants of the Col

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lege of Surgeons could be affected by this Bill in even its most objectionable form, we are not able to say; but we know that the public would have been largely, essentially, and permanently benefited by passing it into a law, even in its faulty state. Under its auspices and operation, a race of practitioners to whom the public health is principally entrusted, would have necessarily arisen, improved in every thing that is valuable. It would also have possessed the inestimable property of inducing progressive advancement towards perfection in an employment, the objects of which are of no less magnitude than the health and lives of the population.

That a measure of this public utility, (for who will say that improvement in medical knowledge, and an assurance that no person ignorant of the art could thereafter practise medicine, is not a measure of public utility?) should have an interest opposite to that of the Royal College of Physicians, and the Court of Assistants of the College of Surgeons, must be viewed as a serious misfortune. But how these bodies will justify their opposition to a measure demonstrably beneficial to society, upon the ground of its becoming, probably and eventually, injurious to their corporations, will be looked for with anxious curiosity. Our respect for these bodies will make us lament that the public should inquire if it be essential to the support of their preponderance, wealth, and influence, that the Apothecary and Surgeon-Apothecary, to whom the health of the community is entrusted in the proportion of ten to one, should be ignorant and depressed, debased by the intrusion of empiricism, and subjected to the proud man's contumely. We should be concerned to have it made a matter of notorious investigation whether the members of these colleges are positively wise and scientific, or relatively so only; whether their reputation must be supported by comparison with another branch of the profession, which, by their opposition, it will be inferred they labor to keep uneducated and ignorant; and whether their wealth and their influence must accumulate by an unavoidable consequence,-the accumulation of human misery.

To make the faculty acquainted with the proceedings in this great and even national question, was a promise formerly made to our readers. We have kept our word thus far, and shall from time to time pursue the same line. Of the probable termination of these proceedings, as to time, nothing determinate can be said; of their final success there is not, however, much doubt, because

1st, Experience has taught the Committee prudence and steady perseverance.

2d, Because the principle of the application to the legis lature is founded on a PUBLIC good.

Though the improvement of medical science be one of the most desirable of all things to society, that improvement becomes a dead letter and inefficient, if it is not generally understood and judiciously applied to practice; and unless the legislature provides, by proper laws, for the means of having it so understood and applied, industry vainly labors, and the light of genius becomes obscured by the surrounding gloom of ignorance. The reflection that in the present condition of medical police in this country, the advantages that arise from an improved state of the science are actually lost to society in a most extensive degree, might be expected to operate a concurrence of interests among the faculty, and to induce to the establishing of an efficient code of MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. That this concurrence does not at present exist is to be lamented, but it must not prevent our endeavor to promulgate such facts as come under our notice: it is a duty to make the best and the most of things as they are,

Since the publication of the preceding Report, in the month of January of this year, anatomy and physiology have received the additions of a work from Dr. Monro; au Essay on the Absorbents, by Mr. Pring; the Annual Oration at the Medical Society of London, by Mr. Saumarez, on the Principles of Physiological and Physical Science; and the first fasciculus of a work of considerable excellence on the Morbid Anatomy of the Liver, by Dr. Farre. The work of Dr. Monro, in three octavo volumes, and a volume of plates, is an abstract of the course of lectures on Anatomy

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and Physiology, long delivered at the university of Edinburgh, by the celebrated individuals of that family. It embraces a very extended view of the subject, both as regards the natural state and healthy functions of the animal frame, and its diseased alterations and morbid actions. The little volume of Mr. Pring professes to comprise a history of the discovery of the absorbent system, a cursory view of the anatomy and physiology of that system of vessels and glands, an account of its morbid condition, and some inquiry into the relation that exists between the absorbing and secreting systems. The physiological and physical opinions of Mr. Saumarez have been so far explained in the preceding Numbers of our Journal, that few of our readers will remain quite unacquainted with them. In the essay now before us, Mr. Saumarez defines MAN to be "a rational soul in an animated body, which it employs as its instrument;" and this gives the occasion for exercising a severe castigation upon M. Richerand, who, in his Elements of Physiology, twice translated into English, asserts, "that our physical holds our moral nature under a strict and necessary dependence; that our vices and our virtues, sometimes produced, and often modified by education, are frequently too the result of organization." This assertion, which strikes to the root all moral restraint, and the assumed data on which it is founded, Mr. Saumarez attacks with the feeling and ardent eloquence of a man who is himself convinced of the existence of moral

good and moral evil, and with the knowledge of an unprejudiced naturalist, who views a series of facts without being bound down by the confusion and bias of hypothesis. A principal dogma in the hypothesis of Richerand is, "that the measure of the understanding is according to the number and perfection of the organs of sense." The French physiologist having thus far committed himself, it seemed not very difficult to refute his hypothesis by the simple fact as it really stands in nature. So far from Richerand's assumption being true, it is demonstrable that the organs of sense are far more perfect in those animals that have the smallest than in those which have the greatest portion of understanding. Mr. Saumarez produces a number of instances to prove this fact,

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and we apprehend he is supported by general observation. As the friends of morality, of religion, and of social order, we become a party with this able advocate; and whatever may have been our opinion on some of his physical and physiological novelties, we believe him now placed on firm ground, and consider that we participate as auxiliaries in the credit of repelling the dangerous frivolities of a philosophy whose incessant object it is " to elevate and to humanize the brute, whilst it degrades and brutalizes the man.”

The first fasciculus, the only one which has yet appeared, of Dr. Farre's work on Morbid Alterations of Structure in the Liver, has considerably enriched this branch of the art, without, however, bringing with it the satisfaction of having suggested any remedial process: on the contrary, it shows that the two forms or species of disease of the liver, which this fasciculus describes under the terms Tubera circumscripta, and Tubera diffusa, are incurable. If we be considered as too fastidious when we object to the compound appellation Morbid-Anatomy, as designating with precision the investigation of diseases by anatomy, or as expressing unequivocally the anatomy of morbid parts, we are sure our readers will fully agree with us, as we do with the learned and ingenious author of this work, that inquiries thus prosecuted improve the diagnostic part of medicine, by connecting, as far as it can be done, the sign with the morbid change. It will not, however, be admitted, with Dr. Farre, that those two species of Tubera are absolutely incurable, but that investigations pursued with the candor, ingenuity, and science, manifested in this specimen of Morbid-Anatomy, (for we are still compelled to employ this equivocal term,) may eventually produce a degree of knowledge on this subject more favorable to the patient, and more honorable to the art.

Animal chemistry, closely connected with the preceding branch of natural science, has been much illustrated by Dr. Berzelius, professor of chemistry in the College of Medicine at Stockholm; and his labors have been rendered accessible to the English reader by a translation of his progress and present state of this art, by Dr. Brunnmark. In another

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