understanding in the fourth-finally, that men belong to the choleric and phlegmatic temperaments, in which the will and the understanding predominate; but women to the sanguine and melancholic, in which sense and feeling predominate. (German Literature, vol. ii. p. 102.) But the thorax, brain, muscles, and all the more important organs, are more highly developed in temperate climates than in either the tropical or polar latitudes,-because respiration, sanguification, secretion, nutrition, and all the forces of life, are diminished by a high temperature; and because, in excessively cold climates, animal heat is more rapidly abstracted by the surrounding atmosphere than it is obtained by respiration. From which it is obvious that the sanguine or dynamic temperament, with all its complications, whether athletic or intellectual, belongs emphatically to the middle latitudes; while in the tropical and polar regions, the adynamic constitution, with all its various modifications, predominates.

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The higher development of all the organs temperate climates, leads to a proportionally greater exercise of them, by which their development and power are still further augmented. So far is it from being true, as suggested by Menzel, that the sanguine temperament prevails in the south, and the phlegmatic in Europe, that very reverse is the fact. And we have seen

the

that there is no foundation in nature for the existence of a choleric temperament, unless it be regarded as a modification of the sanguine with a large brain; and that the melancholic is a modification of the phlegmatic, with a predominance of the brain over the other organs, as in Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Zimmerman, Cowper, Collins, and some others; in whom it was probably induced by over exertion of the nervous system, aided by an undue development of cautiousness and the absence of hope.

As for the rest, the cerebral or intellectual temperament is more common in cities and large towns than in the country-among scientific, literary, and professional men, including artists and the higher mechanics, than among servants, day labourers, small farmers, common mechanics, soldiers, seamen, boxers, and wrestlers, in whom the thorax and muscular organs are more fully developed than the brain, because more exercised, as proved by phrenological measurements.

Theory of Spasmodic Diseases.

It was said by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, that the discovery of a remedy for hydrophobia would be worthy of a great national reward, or even a title of nobility.* But are we not

* Alas! such is the present standard of morality, even among the most civilized nations, that the man who should invent some

equally in the dark in regard to the nature and treatment of tetanus and all other spasmodic diseases? Has any one explained their proximate cause, or laid down any certain principles of treatment which apply to all cases? Besides, the number of deaths from hydrophobia was only 15 throughout England and Wales, and 124 from tetanus, in the year 1839, according to the Registrar General; whereas it was 25,408 from all other spasmodic maladies.

It was observed by Dr. Cullen, that "as we know not the condition of the brain in the ordinary conditions of the will, we are also ignorant of its preternatural state in all involuntary movements." And Mr. Morgan says, in a Lecture on Tetanus, published in 1833, that "we can take no credit to ourselves for curing a disease, respecting the proper treatment of which we positively know nothing." In accordance with the theory of Boerhaave, that "convulsions are owing to a vigorous influx of nervous influence into the muscles," Bichat referred them to a "preternatural activity of the cerebral functions."* Others

dreadful engine of destruction, or perpetrate some thousand murders on the field of battle, would stand a much better chance of receiving a great national reward, than if he were to discover an exact method of saving millions of human beings from disease and premature death.

* Some late writers erroneously maintain that strychnia, brucia, nux vomica, the upas ticuti, and other narcotic poisons, augment the irritability of the muscular fibres; therefore should be given

maintain, with Dr. Billing, that their primary seat is in the white medullary portion of the brain; and others, with Dr. M. Hall, that they originate in the spinal marrow; while Liebig refers them to "an unequal degree of conducting power in the nerves.'

But that they are owing, in nearly all cases, to diminished vitality of the brain, will appear from the following facts:

1. That, in all the higher orders of animals, convulsions are invariably produced by a great and sudden loss of blood, as when they are bled to death. And it is generally known, that they often follow excessive hemorrhage from the uterus after turition. Why, then, is it that blood-letting is often practised in cases of tetanus, hydrophobia,*

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in cases of paralysis; but that as conia and the ticunas diminish irritability, and produce paralysis, they should be given in tetanus and hydrophobia.

* With a candour and magnanimity worthy of commendation, Dr. Elliottson gives it as his opinion, that he hastened the death of a woman labouring under hydrophobia, by bleeding. Dr. Clutterbuck also employs it in the same disease. Yet he acknowledged before the Medical Society of London, a few years ago, that everything had hitherto failed. And it has been said that all the Sampson remedies in the materia medica should be separately tried in succession. Such is the glorious uncertainty of physic, that in the treatment of diseases, the most opposite remedies are thrown into the stomach, "without rhyme or reason," so that when the patient recovers, it is impossible to know what one has produced the effect, or whether it was owing to the efforts of nature, in spite of a confused and empirical practice. For example, in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions of 1815, there is

and other spasmodic diseases? Is it not more in accordance with reason and common sense to follow the maxim of Hippocrates, that diseases are to be treated by remedies of an opposite nature from that of the causes which produce them? (Contraria medentur contrariis). Or is it more philosophical to follow the homœopathic doctrine, that Similia curantur similibus?

2. But convulsions are also produced by the sudden abstraction of animal heat from the body, without any loss of blood, or when its temperature is reduced several degrees below the natural standard, as shewn by the cramps induced by the exertion of swimming in cold water. Yet the cold bath has been frequently employed as a remedy for tetanus. As might naturally be supposed, it has, in several cases, proved almost instantly fatal.

3. It is well known that all the more active narcotic and other poisons, when taken into the stomach, or absorbed into the circulation, produce convulsions and death. Yet we are informed by Samuel Cooper, in his First Lines of Surgery, that solu

a case of tetanus, related by Dr. Phillips, brought on a young lady of delicate constitution by exhaustion from dancing and subsequent exposure to a cold atmosphere. In the first place, he had her put into the warm bath for fifteen minutes, when she became so much relieved that she begged not to be removed from it, and was allowed to remain fifteen minutes longer. In the mean time he bled her, when she seemed greatly exhausted, and the spasms returned, with faintness and vomiting. Yet he prescribed calomel and scamony, epsom salts and senna.