DISSECTION AT THE THEATRES OF ANATOMY.

231 The remainder of the treatment consisted in the occasional application of a blister to the nape of the neck,, ’

sesquicarbonate of soda with cinchona, a scruple, three a day, and a scammony purge every alternate night. On December 29th his vision was as good as ever. The! iris had resumed its former brilliancy and power ofi times

and there remained no inflammation either of the! sclerotic or conjunctiva. CASE 2.-William Richards, a watchmaker, Eetat. 38, became an out-patient under Mr. Scott, August 1, )8t3. The conjunctiva of the right eye was slightly inflamed, and presented also several irregular large vessels, apparently in the submucous tissue. The sclerotic zone was partially observed, the radiated vessels at the lower and outer part of the eye alone being obvious. Iris dull and inactive; pupil contracted and irregular, with a slight quantity of flaky lymph occupying its centre. Great supra-orbital and frontal pain, of an intermittent nature,

action,

instances,

the inflammation may be subdued without any salivation being produced. It is to be remarked, also, that when the inflammation is thus arrested, the lymph that had been deposited on the surface of the iris, altering its brilliancy, and on its pupillary margin, which had thus become thickened, is absorbed quite as rapidly as in those cases in which the free administration of mercury has been employed to arrest the disease.

DISSECTION

AT THE THEATRES OF ANATOMY.

To the Editor

0/’ THE LANCET. SIR,-In your leading article of last week, on the Anatomy Act, you state your belief that the general charge to students for the entire body is a little more than 3l. At our school, for an uninjected subject, we have to pay 3l.

14s., and for

an

injected one, 4l.

I Os. ;

and

frequently these are so much higgled and haggled" at occurring only night-time ; throbbing sensation, also, before they come to us, that parts are destroyed of the referred to the interior of the globe. Tongue tremulous utmost importance to the surgical anatomist; or, from neglect in other quarters, the subject comes in so far deand furred; skin cool; pulse soft. The eye became affected about two months previous; composed that the injection runs en masse into the cavithe primary symptoms were a smarting sensation and ties, and the arteries cannot be injected. No matter, we dimness of vision. Ordered, scammony, eight grains, have still to pay the above exorbitant sum. I am sure with protochloride of mercury, two grains every night. the high price of subjects has these consequences entailed :Cupping on the right temple to six ounces. First. The students really desirous of learning anatomy, On the 8th the pain had entirely disappeared ; the weeks over a limb which has pupil, however, was irregular, and there existed a small have to ponder weeks and the consistence, and even the portion of adherent uvea at the lower part. Under the long since lost the colour, position of nerves, muscles, and arteries. Why? Are influence of belladonna vision is much improved. On the 25th the pupil was observed to be fixed except there no subjects to be had ? Oh no. It is the high price at the upper part, where the iris acted slightly. In a which the teachers put on, to support the school. Second. From one end of the session to the other, not month from this period, and under the above treatment, with the occasional addition of one or two leeches to a single subject is employed by the student for operathe eyelids, the iris had regained its power of action, and tions solely. Is this from idleness ? The same high price there existed only slight dimness of objects, owing appa- forbids such extravagant waste ; the students cannot the cuts which a few rently to the partial obstruction of the rays of light from throw away ll. 2s. 6d., in practising years afterwards they can do for nothing on the living the presence of the uveal membrane. CASE 3.-George Kirk, setat. 50, subject to rheuma- subject, -somewhat, perhaps, to his danger. Third. The excess of putrid over fresh subjects for detism, became an out-patient Sept. 29, 18-13. The right eye was affected. Several tortuous vessels appeared monstration causes our lecturers to be absent a great deal ramifying irregularly over the ocular and palpebral con- too much from the dissecting-room ; what forbids their junctiva, from which, however, no unhealthy secretion presence I do not know, but there are three substitutes, appeared to flow. The radiated rose-coloured vessels and these three substitutes are the whole and sole authorities from which we can acquire information. were remarked only at the inner two-thirds of the eye, in Let the legislature take from individuals the source of which situation were observed several transparent vesicles on the conjunctiva. The pupil was contracted, and the deriving emolument from dissection ; let them make the iris inactive, of a dull green tint, having its internal ring supply constant throughout the year, without reference elevated and convex. He complained of obscurity of to heat and cold; let the frame that has lost vitality, vision, objects appearing dusky and ill-defined, and without a friend to follow it to the grave, be looked after smaller than usual. He was annoyed also with supra- more sedulously, and brought at the slightest possible exorbital pain, commencing about two or three o’clock in pense to the licensed theatre, and there disposed of at a the morning, and which gave rise to a sensation of pres- remunerating price only, and you will soon have a different vision in the dissecting-room. Old faces will be seen sure on the forehead, and of tension in the globe itself. Skin dry, tongue white. The disease commenced about returning to the scene of their former and forgotten three weeks ago, and supervened on incautious exposure labours, to brush up their anatomical knowledge and to damp during a wet evening. practise new modes of operating. The tyro will lay aside Ordered, cupping on the right temple to twelve the miniature dissecting for the more formidable operating Powder of scammony and protochloride of case. The public will no longer be the persons to feel the ounces. mercury (as in case 2), ten grains every night. Blister to untaught direction of a surgeon’s knife, for he will be skilled now from practice on the dead subject. A new the nape of the neck. In the course of four days, under this treatment, vision tone will be given to the health of those engaged in the became much improved, objects appearing of their natu- present uncongenial pursuit of dissecting, for who can ral size, and much clearer in outline. The tortuous con- fail to ascribe the prevalence of a delicate frame in its dejunctival vessels appeared less congested, and the frontal votees, generally, to long poring over a decomposed extremity. One can exist for twenty years in a dead-house, pain had materially abated. Remarks.—These cases show the advantage of active with the ceaseless change of bodies going on, whilst as purging in the treatment of sclero-iritis, which seems to many days in the dissecting-room would be fatal. And be connected with, if it do not depend upon, an un- why should not a regular succession of bodies pass healthy condition of the mucous membrane of the through every metropolitan dissecting-room on the way alimentary canal, as evidenced by the state of the to the grave? In the thousand deaths which occur tongue, &c., and is thus speedily relieved. It generally weekly throughout the year, can there not be found half occurs, also, in persons of feeble power, in whom, a hundred, unknown, fi iendless, and without a tear to although the loss of blood is necessary to unload the dis- mourn their loss, or raise a voice to say " you shall be Is there not a spirit of opposition to the tended vessels, this remedy must be employed with cau- buried ?" tion ; and on this account, also, the administration of Anatomy Act rife in the bosoms of the poor-law guardians, bark is usually followed by decided benefit. For the masters of workhouses, &c., which makes them hold back the information which ought to be immediately, -given in same reason the exhibition of mercury to affect the system is not desirable, and, except in some protracted the proper quarters ; and does not this very circumstance cases, is usually unnecessary ; for in general, as in these cause the loss of many hundred bodies to the schools, if

232 very

ON THE TESTS FOR ARSENIC.

freely thrown open to

receive them ? In this is not a subject to be seen from the end of ,April till the lst of October, without we club 4l. los. for -it, which is rather too much, seeing that we do not yet know how to operale, and that nobody will be here to shoi4. us ; and, if so, we have no instruments but a common scalpel case, and the lecturers do not seem inclined to lend us any. I believe they use their private cases, in the event of their becoming extravagant, towards the end of a session .(operating on a whole body), which Savigny rubs up

they

were room there

afterwards. I wish, Sir,

that you would tell our anatomical lecturers to pay’more regard to our instruction next session; and, if it please them, to demonstrate in the dissectingroom, instead of the young men now there, who nwy be Jtrery talented and clever, but for that we hnve no guarantee, and you will conter a great benefit upon your flippant ’correspondent and others. Yours very respectfully, A. E. P. Kinnerton-street, Wilton-place, May 7, 1844.

To the Editor of THE LANCET. for Saturday last, the 27th inst., under the head of"Tests for Arsenic," I perceive that a reference has been made in the " Provincial Journal" by Dr. Shearman to a means for obtaining arseniuretted hydrogen gas in cases of suspected poisoning, to which publicity was first given by me in your Journal for 1840— 1, vol. i., p. 585. You afterwards remark, « it should be remembered that sulphuric acid is not always free from arsenic." This objection, too, was met by me in a subsequent communication (see LANCET, 1840, vol. ii., p. 394.) The only object I have in view in this note is to show that hoth the objections that have been raised to the very ingenious test proposed by Mr. Marsh, have been obviated by the well-known method of decomposing water by galvanism, the application of which is, I believe, new. W. J. MORTON. Iam, Sir, yours respectfully,

SiR,—In your number

Royal Veterinary College, April 29,

MEDICAL REFORM.

THE WANT OF CLINICAL LECTURES AT THE LONDON HOSPITALS. To the Editor of THE LANCET. SIR,—Is it not really disgraceful that the physicians and surgeons of the metropolitan hospitals so seldom take the trouble to deliver clinical lectures, which are in themselves so important and beneficial to us students. I can safely say that at the hospital I am attending the surgeons have not delivered half a dozen clinical lectures between them, from the Ist October to the I st April. If the notices of the hospital surgeons of Paris are correct, a clinical lecture of one hour’s duration is delivered daily after visiting the wards, and why the same thing should not done in London is to me a subject of surprise. I can only say that if these lectures were regularly delivered, even once a week, by each physician and surgeon of our hospitals that we should derive much more benefit than we do at present from "walking the hospitals " Your most obedient qprvf4ntA MEDICAL STUDENT. April, 1844.

DR. POWER THE AUTHOR OF THE NEW THEORY OF MENSTRUATION. To the Editol’ of THE LANCET. SiR,—In THE LANCET of the 20th instant, the honour of 41 the discovery of the true theory of menstruation" has been, more courteously than correctly, conceded to Dr. Robert Lee, by Dr. William Jones. To this honour, however, I shall at once prove that Dr. Lee is assuredly not entitled. Dr. John Power, eldest

son of Dr. Power, formerly of Market-Bosworth, in the county of Leicester, afterwards of Lichfield, and now living in retirement at Atherstone, published, some twenty-four years ago, a volume upon obstetrics, wherein that most specious theory is clearly set forth. The precise title of the volume in question I do not recollect, but the fact is distinctly impressed upon my memory, inasmuch as I was unjustly suspected, by Dr. John Power and his friends, to be the author of a very humorous and sarcastic notice of his work which appeared in one of the Leicester journals of that day. Whether the theory in question originally emanated from the luminous and powerful mind of Dr. John Power, I am unable to decide. In the long and not very limited acquaintance which I have cultivated with medical literature, British and foreign, no trace of the existence of such a doctrine, previously to the publication of Dr. Power’s work, has ever met my eye. And I rejoice in the opportunity thus afforded me of exposing an error upon which, if it were suffered to remain, the future historian of our science might, peradventure, stumble ; and rendering an act of justice to the son of the most highly-gifted and formidable rival with whom, in the earlier years of my practice, as physician at Tamworth, I had to contend. I am, Sir, obediently yours, SHIRLEY PALMER, M.D.

1844.

To the Editor of THE LANCET. have frequently endeavoured to convince physicians and surgeons that the members of the Medical Protection Assembly are not the destructives they take us for ; that we have no notion of setting ourselves up as rivals to Dr. Paris, Dr. Roots, Dr. James Johnson, Sir B. Brodie, Mr. Lawrence, or Mr. Liston ; that we acknowledge the claims of all such gentlemen to rewards and distinctions, and are only sorry the honours they can reap in our profession are not as great as those of the other two learned professions. Our ambition is to see the entire body of the medical profession working harmoniin the same way as lawyers do. General ously practitioners have as little objection to take the opinions of men of greater experience as solicitors have in placing briefs before barristers ; but solicitors have the privilege of selecting their counsel; men of mediocre talent cannot be foisted on them and the public by interested friends and relatives ; the opinion of counsel is sought for in a regular manner, given in a gentlemanly spirit, and acted on without a murmur. This is not the case in the medical profession, where the physician is often called in to gratify the caprice of relatives, and not to alter the treatment of disease. This practice must necessarily be, and if a proper understanding existed it would be more frequently done, as general practitioners can have no interest in saving the money of faithless and thankless patients, but, on the contrary, would feel pleasure in giving a brother a turn whenever it was the wish of the patient; at present they resist it to the last, and very often treat the idea of calling in a physician as an indignity upon their own skill. These gentlemen are quite wrong in supposing that we have nothing else to do but to give ourselves up to malice, envy, and other uncharitable feelings. We are generally pretty busy in other matters, and it would have been as well had the natural feelings of independence and self-respect of country practitioners not been trifled with, as no doubt there are numbers of village Hampdens" like Mr. Davis, of Hampstead, who may yet make the council of the College of Surgeons, and other bodies politic, feel " the might that slumbers in a peasant’s arm." Should the present distance, reserve, and haughtiness, on the part of the great men of the profession continue much longer, I can foresee no other alternative but that of general practitioners taking the lccec into their own hands,setting their faces against a spurious aristocracy in medicine and surgery,-consulting with each other and assisting each other in performing operations. This question, I apprehend, will naturally come before the council of the Medical Protection Assembly, and as such it will not be one of our creating, but an accompaniment of what is called "the progress of events" and «great facts" of the age in which we live, and, like every other adjustment in the social world, will be accompanied by benefit, not only to the profession, but also to the public at large. I am, W. SIMPSON. your obedient servant,

SIR,-I

together

I Sir,

High-street, Bloomsbury, April 22, 1$44.