BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

Lehrbuch der Azneimittellehre. Von Dr. C. G. MITSCHERLICH, Privatdocenten an der Königl. der Königl. Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität und praktischem Arzte zu Berlin. Svo. 2 Band. Berlin, 1838, 1846.

Manual of Materia Medica. By C. G. MITSCHERLICH, Privatim docens to the Royal Frederick-William's University, and practical Physician at Berlin. Two volumes. Berlin. 1S3S. Annuaire de Thérapeutique, de Matière Médicale, de Pharmacie et de Toxicologie pour 1847, contenant le Resumé des Travaux Thérapeutiques et Toxicologiques publiés en 1846, et les Formules des Médicaments nouveaux; suivi d'un Mémoire sur les principaux contrepoisons, et sur la Thérapeutique des empoisonnements et de diverses notices scientifiques. Par le Dr. A. BOUCHARDAT, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, Agrégé de la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, Pharmacien en chef de l'Hôtel Dieu, &c. 1Smo. pp. 302. Paris, 1847.

Our German brethren have a singular mode of bringing out many of their treatises on science, and on medical science more especially. Mitscherlich's work on Materia Medica appeared in its first portion as long ago as the year 1838, and its last has not been long issued. There can, therefore, be but little unity in such productions; and it must often happen, that the purchaser of the first parts must be disappointed in receiving the remainder, and, when he does obtain them, they cannot be in entire keeping with the precursors; as, generally, in the lapse of years, material changes must have occurred in the views of the author, and in the progress of science. In most works of a cyclopædiac character, time and a long time-must necessarily elapse before they can be concluded, and the same objection holds as to the want of uniformity in the earlier and later articles; but as these are not necessarily nor perhaps often-by the same author, the objection

is not so valid. In the case of Dr. Copland's valuable dictionary, written wholly by himself, great and deplorable delay has occurred, and as we have before said-there is no knowing when it will terminate; and if the author's life should unfortunately end, and science be thus deprived of a valued ornament, it may experience the fate of the Cyclopædia of Surgery-dead from inanition-and an imperfect work may be left in the hands. of the original purchasers. Such was the case with the Dictionnaire des Etudes Médicales, which expired at the termination of the fourth volume, leaving ourselves amongst the bereaved ones.

We wish our German Confrères would abandon this custom of issuing their works piecemeal; for it not unfrequently happens, as the Abtheilungen are sold separately, that a purchaser is unable to obtain some of them, and is thus saddled with an incomplete work, as has happened to ourselves more than once.

It is not our intention to examine the work of Mitscherlich in detail. In a former article, we spoke of the general character of the German works on Materia Medica and Therapeutics; and commended them for paying much more attention to the therapeutical relations, rather than exhausting-as is commonly the case with the English works on the subject-every topic of chemistry and natural history that has any bearing on the matter, and passing over the therapeutical portion in a very cursory and often slovenly manner. Such works are assuredly not desirable as accompaniments to a course of medical lectures. Practical materia medica cannot be completely taught by lectures, although they afford the student most important and essential facilities. An acquaintance with the sensible qualities of drugs can only be attained fully by handling them; but the principles of general therapeutics, and the indications which special articles are capable of fulfilling, can be conveyed by lectures in a manner to render the impression forcible and enduring; and the most valuable accompaniments to the student of materia medica, in the shape of books, are those that teach just so much of the sensible properties of the articies of the materia medica as may enable the practitioner to recognize and select the genuine, and to discard the spurious and imperfect; whilst they expand copiously on the adaptation of such articles to the treatment of disease. It is,

doubtless, desirable, that the young graduate should know every thing relating to chemistry and natural history, contained in the pages of Pereira, or Royle, or Ballard and Garrod, or in the Dispensatory of the United States by Messrs. Wood and Bache; but such knowledge, however desirable, cannot certainly be indispensable. Where, consequently, it is a matter of moment, that the aspirant for medical honours should, at an early period, be sent forth in the practical exercise of his calling, the necessaries should be inexorably demanded, but the luxuries may be postponed for after attainment.

The appearance of the Annuaire de Thérapeutique of M. Bouchardat we have heralded more than once. This is the seventh year of its advent, and we are pleased to learn from its author, that "its success has increased year by year, so that it has now attained a circulation equalled by few works on medicine or pharmacy." "I take to myself" he adds "more and more credit for having borrowed of M. Arago the idea of terminating each volume by one or more unpublished works, to which I devote all my attention; and I am of opinion, that these memoirs have contributed much to cause the Annuaire to be sought after; so that my publisher has been obliged to reprint three years that were exhausted." p. v.

To such memoirs contained in the present number, we shall restrict our reference at present. The body of the Annuaire, like that of Ranking and of Braithwaite, is indeed a kind of Collectanea or Adversaria, similar to the Record department of our own Journal, and therefore does not admit of analysis. Many of the articles have indeed been already published in those Recueils.

Our readers are aware, that, according to the views of Liebig, aliments admit of classification into the azoted or nitrogenized, or such as are capable of forming organized tissues; and the non-organized or non-nitrogenized, such as are inservient only to respiration-views, which we have always considered not only to demand proof, but to be, in some respects, unsupported by observation; and to be based rather on chemical than physiological results. From the chemists they have received, however, great attention, and MM. Bouchardat and

Sandras in the 'Annuaires' for 1843 and 1845, and in the supplement to that of 1846, examined into the digestion of fatty, saccharine and amylaceous substances, and endeavoured to discover the rôle of these substances in nutrition; and to complete the inquiry, they have, in the Annuaire before us, examined the "Digestion of Alcoholic Drinks ;" and after a detail of certain experiments on animals and man, have made the following conclusions:

"By comparing and associating the results of the experiments which we have just detailed, a clear idea may be formed of the mode of absorption of alcoholic drinks, the changes induced by them in the animal economy, and the role which they play in nutrition. We may begin by remarking, that for alcoholic drinks the first period of digestion, properly so called, which consists in a solution, is wanting, as it is also wanting in the digestion of fatty bodies. Alcoholic drinks undergo no other alteration in the digestive apparatus than that of being diluted by the gastric juice and mucus, the saliva, and the other fluids that may be poured into the digestive apparatus. The absorption of alcoholic drinks is effected, as Magendie had already shown, by the orifices [?] of the veins. It is especially in the stomach that this absorption takes place, when alcoholic drinks are given either in great excess or mixed with sugar. This absorption may be continued through the remainder of the intestines.

"The chyliferous vessels contribute, in no respect, to the absorption of alcoholic drinks. After they have been taken, the chyle may be very abundantly collected, if they have been given with fatty aliments: in such case the chyle exhibits no appreciable trace of alcohol.

"When alcoholic drinks are introduced into the torrent of the circulation, the alcohol is not eliminated by any of the secretory apparatuses: a small proportion only is evaporated from the lungs, and may be collected with the gases and vapours which are constantly exhaled from that organ.

"If the alcohol is introduced into the circulating apparatus in too great quantity, the arterial blood preserves the colour proper to venous blood; and the alcohol may occasion all the phenomena of asphyxia.

"The alcohol, under the influence of the oxygen incessantly introduced into the economy by respiration, may be immediately converted into water and carbonic acid. But in many of our observations we have obtained an intermedial product of combustion, acetic acid.

"The alcohol and the products derived from it disappear

rapidly from the economy: when it is introduced simultaneously with glucose or dextrine, its destruction is more rapid than that of these last bodies." p. 280.

The results, therefore, of the observations of MM. Bouchardat and Sandras do not throw much light on the use of alcoholic agents as elements of combustion or respiration. Of late, it has been urged by Chossat and others, that when animals die of inanitiation, the fatal effects are owing to the fatty matters from within and without being consumed, and to the cooling influence thus induced; and it has been conceived that in long protracted fevers, alcoholic stimulants may be serviceable as calorifying agents and that if they be properly given, they may sustain the vital flame' until the malignant disturbing agent or influence has passed away. It may be so: yet we think mischief is often done by over-stimulation in such cases; and the excitant has appeared to us not unfrequently to act most injuriously, by exhausting the slight amount of excitability remaining in the tissues. Life consists in a reciprocal action between special excitants and excitable membrane; and it cannot be too strongly borne in mind, that we may exhaust that excitability by the very agents employed to arouse it; and that life may really be sooner extinguished by the very means we employ to maintain it. As we sooner exhaust the feeble fire by endeavouring to fan it into greater vigour, so may we produce, by excitants, a flickering of the flamma vitalis, the thermum emphytum or Biolychnium prior to its more speedy extinction.

The "notice of the principal counterpoisons and the remarks on the Therapeutics of poisoning by M. Bouchardat" we pass by for the present, as we design to insert it in toto in the Record department of our next number.

The Medical Student's Vade Mecum, or Manual of Examinations upon Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Materia Medica, Surgery, Obstetrics, Practice of Medicine, Poisons, &c. Second Edition, revised and greatly enlarged. By GEORGE MENDENHALL, M. D., Lecturer on Pathology in the Medical Institute of Cincinnati, etc. 12mo. pp. 574. Lindsay and Blakiston Philadelphia, 1847.

We spoke in suitable terms of commendation of this work on the appearance of the first edition, and are glad to find that the