a little above and behind the great trochanter: a seton was then passed between the two wounds. The amount of discharge gradually decreased, first from the anterior, and afterwards from the posterior opening; the patient eventually was restored to health. In the following case, related by M. Fournier, the purulent deposit seems to have been owing to a Rheumatic Cause. A middle-aged man, after exposure to wet and cold, became affected with arthritic pains in various parts of the body: they gradually subsided under the use of antiphlogistic remedies. There remained, however, an almost constant heavy pain in the left groin and hip; the movements of the corresponding thigh upon the pelvis being at the same time difficult and uneasy. Subsequently a swelling appeared in this groin. When admitted into the Hôtel Dieu, there was a considerable tumefaction not only in the outer part of the left iliac fossa, and in the upper and inner part of the thigh, but also over the buttock and around the great trochanter. On a careful examination of the parts, M. Dupuytren formed the opinion that he had to do with an immense abscess, caused by an acute rheumatic affection: he thought that, if the bones were not already diseased, the tendons and muscular aponeuroses were certainly so. An incision was made at the lowest part of the swelling behind; and a vast quantity of tolerably healthy pus discharged. The wound was closed, before the entire quantity flowed out. In the course of a few days, the matter re-collected, and was again evacuated by a puncture: on this occasion it was sanguinolent and somewhat offensive. Gaseous matter, too, had begun to collect within the sac, and was with difficulty discharged by the wound. About ten days later, a counter-opening was made in the crural region; and some dark-coloured pus, with a quantity of gas, made its escape. Irritative fever came on; and then the patient quickly sank. On dissection, two immense purulent sacs were found; one being situated between the vastus externus and the back part of the thigh: and the other on the inside of the limb, under the crural vessels, and the deep layer of the fascia lata. When the abdomen was opened, a purulent sac was found at the side of the sigmoid flexure: it was full of matter, gas, and detritus. Downwards, the matter readily flowed under the crural arch; and upwards, the swelling extended above the psoas, the substance of which, as well as of the iliacus internus, was in a great measure destroyed. There was no disease of the vertebræ, or of any of the bones of the pelvis. We need scarcely say that Intra-pelvic Suppuration may be induced by various diseases and injuries of the urinary passages and the rectum, as well as by gun-shot wounds, severe contusions, surgical operations about the pelvis, and such like causes. But we have neither space nor inclination to pursue this subject at the present time. Our remaining page we shall devote to a brief notice of those "celebres" (as our author calls them) abscesses, which occasionally form in the right iliac fossa, in connexion with some morbid state of the Cæcum and Vermiform Appendage. This variety of intra-pelvic abscess is much more frequently observed in men than in women. Out of 36 cases, alluded to by our author, not more than four occurred in the female sex. It seems to be more common between the 20th and 30th years of life, than at any other age. With respect to the occasional or inducing causes of the complaint, we find that, sometimes, it follows an attack of Enteritis or Entero-Colitis; and, at other times, it seems to be the result of excessive constipation, and lodgment of hard, fæculent, and other matters in the cæcum; more especially if drastic medicines have been used for a length of time. It has been observed more than once in persons who have suffered from colica pictonum, and also in those who have been subject to tape-worms. But even in both these cases it is doubtful whether the antecedent maladies, or the violent remedies too often resorted to for their relief, were the immediate cause of the cæcal lesion. The presence of hard undigested substances, as melon-seeds, cherry-stones, and so-forth, has been noticed on several occasions. But, in not a few cases, it will be found difficult to trace the local mischief to any very manifest cause. Very generally, the patient's health has been ailing more or less for a length of time, before any swelling is observed in the iliac region. An Ilio-Cæcal phlegmon has been mistaken for a tumour formed by the liver, or by the displaced kidney; for an ovarian enlargement; for a ventral hernia; for a mere accumulation of fæcal matters in the caput cæci, &c. The latter case mentioned is the one which is most liable to impose upon us. It is well therefore to remember that a stercoral tumour is usually irregular and knobby on the surface, and that the existing dulness on percussion may be removed by dislodging the contents of the gut. Moreover, the formation of the tumour is always preceded by constipation. Whenever there is any ambiguity in the diagnosis, we should administer aperient medicines. As to the termination of the disease, we need scarcely say that, by the adoption of judicious measures in the early stage, the inflammation may often be checked before the suppurative process has commenced. When hiccup and diarrhea ensue, or symptoms of diffused peritonitis make their appearance, the prognosis is very unfavorable. "In such cases we find on dissection," says our author, "a purulent foyer around and behind the cæcum, with destruction of the cellular tissue which surrounds this organ and the commencement of the ascending colon, and of that in the iliac fossa, extending down to the crural arch, or even to the pubes; the affected gut is often much softened." Sometimes the abscess bursts into the cavity of the cæcum, either spontaneously, or after an effort of vomiting or coughing. If the fistulous opening remains, and the purulent secretion continues, the patient will, in all probability, become hectic and die; but not unfrequently the case terminates favourably; the discharge of pus becoming less and less, until at length it ceases completely. In other cases, the abscess opens into the rectum, or even into the urinary bladder. When it bursts outwardly, the quantity of purulent matter discharged has occasionally been very large : melon-seeds and other foreign substances have been known to be voided at the same time. In one of Dupuytren's cases, there were several fistulous openings, which gave vent to pus mixed with gaseous and fæcal matters; pus was discharged with the stools also. The patient ultimately recovered, in spite of this most unfavourable state of things. In a curious case related by M. Meniere, the abscess first broke outwardly; the cutaneous wound then healed, and the matter again collecting, it burst suc cessively into the cæcum, the urinary bladder, and at length outwardly through the cicatrix in the integuments. In all cases, the sooner that an outward opening is made with the knife, the better by giving a free outlet to the matter as it is formed, we shall often succeed in materially lessening, if not in altogether preventing, the lesion of the gut itself. VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. THIS is a remarkable volume-small in compass-but embracing a wide range of inquiry, from worlds beyond the visible starry firmament, to the minutest structures of man and animals. The work is written with peculiar and classical terseness, reminding us very much of the style of Celsus. No name is prefixed-perhaps in order to avoid the snarls of the narrowminded and bigoted saints of the present day, who will be up in arms against any man who presumes to think that this little globe we tread on, can number more than six thousand years since its first formation. The first chapter is on the Astral and Solar Systems. The following passage will convey some idea of our author's manner. "The evidence of the existence of other astral systems besides our own is much more decided than might be expected, when we consider that the nearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval beyond our own. The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards the sides of our system, where stars are planted most rarely, and raising the powers of the instrument to the required pitch, was enabled with awe-struck mind to see, suspended in the vast empyrean, astral systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our own. Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though these generally seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust. The general forms of these systems are various; but one at least has been detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form of our own. The distances are also various, as proved by the different degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them into view. The farthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles. It would thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an immensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wander on and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by inability to grasp the unbounded." 7. Coming down to mother Earth, our author seems to think that all matter, constituting the Heavens and the Earth, was originally one mass— and that, previously to stellar and planetary formations, nebulous matter must have been a universal "fire-mist," of an immensely high temperature. A change in this heat must have led to agglomeration, and the various forms which we see around us, in the Solar and Stellar Sys. terms. The solids, liquids, and gases of our Globe are reducible into fifty-five substances, called Elementary-six gases, forty-two metals, and several without names. In the nebular hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses thrown off from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had been previously thrown off from the sun. "The orbit of any satellite is also to be regarded as marking the bounds of the mass of the primary at the time when that satellite was thrown off; its speed likewise denotes the rapidity of the rotatory motion of the primary at that particular juncture. For example, the outermost of the four satellites of Jupiter revolves round his body at the distance of 1,180,582 miles, showing that the planet was once 3,675,501 miles in circumference, instead of being, as now, only 89,170 miles in diameter. This large mass took rather more than sixteen days six hours and a half (the present revolutionary period of the outermost satellite) to rotate on its axis. The innermost satellite must have been formed when the planet was reduced to a circumference of 309,075 miles, and rotated in about forty-two hours and a half." 37. By the same calculation, the Earth, at a certain time after it was thrown off from the Sun, was no less than 482,000 miles in diameter-being sixty times more than at present. It then required 29 days to perform its present diurnal rotation. At what period the moon was thrown off from the Earth, it is impossible to form an estimate. It is evident, however, that our satellite is unprovided with an atmosphere-and highly probable that it is incapable of supporting animal life. It does not present any water on its surface; but its mountains and volcanoes are on a stupendous scale. The Moon may be in progress to a formation that will exhibit seas and atmosphere, when it will present organic life like the Earth. "We have seen reason to conclude that the primary condition of matter was that of a diffused mass, in which the component molecules were probably kept apart through the efficacy of heat; that portions of this agglomerated into suns, which threw off planets; that these planets were at first very much diffused, but gradually contracted by cooling to their present dimensions. Now, as to our own globe, there is a remarkable proof of its having been in a fluid state at the time when it was finally solidifying, in the fact of its being bulged at the equator, the very form which a soft revolving body takes, and must inevitably take, under the influence of centrifugal force. This bulging makes the equatorial exceed the polar diameter as 230 to 229, which has been demonstrated to be precisely the departure from a correct sphere which might be predicated from a knowledge of the amount of the mass and the rate of rotation." 41. The internal heat of the earth supports the above theory, as evinced by volcanos, thermal springs, &c. Era of the Primary Rocks.-Dissections have gone far enough to show that the basis rock of this globe is of a hard texture and crystalline constitution, of which granite may be considered the type. Over this, except in some mountainous projections, other rocks are disposed in strata, apparently deposited from water, but broken and disturbed by uneasy movements from beneath. Through these clefts may be, here and there, seen projections of rock of the primeval species-basalt-which had evidently been in a molten state at the time of eruption. The deposition of the aqueous, and the projection of the volcanic rocks have evidently taken place since the settlement of the Earth in its present form, and its agglo meration from the nebulous or vaporiform state. Such rocks unquestionably evince a combination of two or more of silica, mica, quartz, and hornblende, each of which is composed of a group of simple or elementary sub stances. The deposition of Secondary Rocks or strata, is a process which is easily understood, being, in fact, still going on before our eyes, though on a comparatively small scale. In those days the seas were, in some places, more than a hundred miles in depth-and the submarine mountains of tremendous altitudes. The system of disintegration, under such circumstances, must have been enormous.. The matters worn off, being carried into the neighbouring depths, and there deposited, became the components of the earliest stratified rocks-the first series of which (gneis and mica slate system) were of prodigious thickness--even one hundred miles! The seas, at that epoch, were probably of a boiling temperature. These early strata contain nothing but what are found in the primæval granite. They are the same in materials, but only changed in form. They exhibit no traces of vegetable or animal remains, that tell the wondrous tales of past history, in subsequent strata ! Commencement of Organic Life.-Here a new feature takes place in the stratified rocks-limestone-the carbonic acid gas of which plays such a part in animal and vegetable existence. Here, then, is an indication that vegetable and animal life began to appear-the carbonic acid gas being then, probably, too great in the atmosphere to support the life of land animals. And what are the organic remains discovered in this early stratum of earth? The unpretending forms of various Zoophites and Polypes, together with a few single and double-valved shell-fish-all of them creatures of the sea. Of vegetable remains none have come down to us of this period-perhaps they were too fragile to stand the wear and tear of the long journey. Ascending to the next group of rocks-the Silurian-we find the traces of life become more abundant-the number of species extended-and important additions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea-plants, and fishes. From the lowest beds upwards, there are polypiarii, conchiferi, terebratula, mollusca, trilobate crustacea, &c. Red Sandstone.-We now advance to a new Chapter in this wonderful history. This term has been applied to a series of strata, of enormous thickness, a mixture of flagstones, marly rocks, sandstones, in which is found bitumen, a remarkable new ingredient, being a vegetable production. Here we have the same forms of life continued, with the addition of fishes, some of which are of most extraordinary form, and showing that the seas, in which the old red sandstone was deposited, must have swarmed with fishes. We can only notice one kind. "The pterichthys has also strong bony plates over its body, arranged much like those of a tortoise, and has a long tail; but its most remarkable feature, and that which has suggested its name, is a pair of long and narrow wing-like appendages attached to the shoulders, which the creature is supposed to have erected for its defence when attacked by an enemy." 70. |