who, nine years ago, had a fit, without any known cause, which has been repeated at intervals of every two or three weeks up to this time. He had resorted to all modes of treatment, without affording any relief, either in preventing or protracting the period of attack. There had been no injury of head at any time, and during the interval between the convulsions he is in perfect health; is very fond of study, and has quite an active mind. He states that whenever he bends his head forward he hears a loud crackling noise, and immediately a small tumor forms at the base of the occiput. During the convulsions there is no blueness of skin, but rather paleness; no frothing at mouth, nor labored breathing. Indeed, there are no symptoms, either before, after, or during a convulsion, which would induce him to regard it as a case of epilepsy. He was watching the case with a great deal of interest.

Dr. Hill inquired of Dr. Hodsden as to the continued success of his treatment proposed, for intermittent fevers, at a previous meeting of the Society, which consisted in a tablespoonful of prepared chalk, dissolved in a tablespoonful of vinegar, and immediately swallowed during effervescence. Dr. Hill stated that he had used it in several cases with

success.

Dr. Hodsden replied that it was his fovorite treatment for intermittents, and though he found it disagreeable to take, yet he had never known it to fail, when it could be administered before a chill came on, to arrest it at once. Dr. H. stated that it acted as a purgative, although neither the chalk nor the vinegar separately produced such an effect.

Dr. Currey stated that he had found vinegar or acetic acid, in combination with tincture of sanguinaria, equal parts of each, a certain cure for the herpes circinatus, and he believed it would be equally efficacious in other cutaneous diseases. In one case of eighteen months' standing, on which he had used, he might say, one hundred and one remedies, internally and externally, with only the effect of arresting it for a few weeks, he found one application of this mixture, applied with a camel's-hair pencil to the eruption, to kill the disease at once. In the other case, of a young girl ten years of age, there was not a place upon face, neck, or shoulders, upon which, if a half-dollar was laid down, it would not cover one or more rings of this variety of herpes. These rings were of nearly uniform size, averaging that of an American twenty-five-cent piece. With a camel's-hair pencil he traced the rings of each one separately. In one week afterwards the child was again examined, and a few spots which still appeared to be active were again touched, and the eruption has entirely disappeared. The formula for the mixture is as follows:

R Acetic acid.

Tincture sanguinaria........

..........aa. 3s.

M.-Apply with camel's-hair pencil to eruption.

In the first case acetic acid alone was frequently used, but only with the effect of arresting it for the time.

The Committee on Surgery was, by request, discontinued. The Com

mittee on Epidemics was continued till the Semi-annual Session, in March.

Dr. Currey, Chairman of Committee on the Progress of Chemical Science in its application to Medicine, reported that in confirmation of the views advanced by the President in his annual address, was the importance now attached to the science of chemistry as a branch of medicine. It is true that it has always been recognized as one of the departments in our medical schools; yet, while a large majority would pride themselves on their proficiency in surgery, or medicine, or obstetrics, or anatomy, there were but a very few who cared any thing for the chemical course beyond witnessing beautiful experiments. The report then set forth the application of chemistry to pathology and physiology, affording the physician a clearer insight into the nature and seat of disease, and the deviations from a healthy standard, and to therapeutics and materia medica, in furnishing us with more efficient remedies than were possessed not twenty years ago. These remedies are extracted for us by chemical research, not only from the vegetable kingdom, but minerals are compounded and new remedies thus provided from inorganic matter. It is the increased importance of these new remedies, and the clearer views which we now possess of pathology, that has advanced the science of medicine to its present commanding position.

Several new remedies were alluded to in the report, which were attracting the attention of the profession.

The report was accepted and the committee discharged.

The Society then adjourned to meet on the second Wednesday of March, 1859.

Bibliographical Notices and Reviews.

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF PHYSIC, delivered at King's College, London. By THOMAS WATSON, M. D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, etc., etc. A new American, from the last revised and enlarged English edition. With additions. By D. FRANCIS CONDIE, M. D., Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Member of the American Philosophical Society, etc., etc. With five hundred and eighty-five illustrations on wood. Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea. 1858. Imperial 8vo. Pp. 1224.

It would be a waste of time to write a formal review or even a lengthy notice of a work that has been so long favorably known to the medical profession of the United States as "Watson's Practice." With regard to our opinion of the general merits of the work, it is enough to say that it has been adopted as one of the text-books on the practice of medicine in Shelby Medical College. And as to the improvements of the present edition by the author, we will allow the American editor to speak, as no one is better qualified to know, or will be more willingly heard. "In the edition of which the present volume is a reprint, the lectures of Dr. Watson have undergone a thorough revision, and whatever of value. recent research has added to our stock of knowledge in the various departments of medical science has been carefully incorporated in them. The lectures on fever, especially, have been greatly enlarged and improved; the positive distinctions that have been insisted upon by eminent pathologists between typhus and typhoid fevers, are recognized as being founded in truth.

"The extent of these additions is shown by the fact, that notwithstanding a very considerable enlargement in the size of the page, the work has been increased by about two hundred pages. The intrinsic merits of Dr. Watson's Lectures are sufficient to insure for them a favorable reception. For comprehensiveness of matter, accuracy of detail, candor in the discussion of those questions upon which a difference of opinion exists among physicians, and a perspicuity and felicity

in the manner of presenting the several subjects embraced in them, they stand unrivalled." (Preface by the editor.)

We will not, however, claim the same right of hearing of the editor in his own behalf, nor will we volunteer an opinion of our own of the valuable service rendered by Dr. Condie, in preparing the edition before us for the American physician and student. We prefer to present the facts and let our readers judge for themselves.

Besides the addition of many valuable woodcuts, mainly from the rich pathological cabinet of Prof. Gross, comments on the following subjects constitute some of the principal additions to the original matter-viz: 1. Impure Air as a cause of Specific Diseases; 2. On the general diffusion of Tubercular Matter being more common with Children than Adults; 3. The Treatment of Delirium Tremens; 4. Hypertrophy of the Brain; 5. Meningitis Encephalica; 6. Cerebro-spinal Meningitis; 7. Bilious Remittent Fever; 8. Thrush, or Muguet; 9. Croup and its Treatment; 10. Tracheotomy in Croup; 11. Pathology of Whooping-cough; 12. Pneumonia in Children; 13. Typhoid Pneumonia; 14. Curability of Consumption; 15. Puerperal Fever; 16. Lead Colie; 17. Chronic Diarrhea; 18. Cholera Infantum; 19. Dysentery; 20. Yellow Fever; 21. Erysipelas. These various subjects of new matter occupy each from one and a half pages to upwards of twenty-five pages. They are included in brackets, and can be readily distinguished from the original text. It would be doing injustice to the editor if we were to leave the impression that the new matter introduced was only enlargements upon the subjects in the original text. Several of the longest and most important articles are additional subjects as well as additional matter; such, for example, as Bilious Remittent Fever, Yellow Fever, and Cerebrospinal Meningitis. So much for the quantity of the added matter; and as to the quality, the fame of the American editor as a sound, practical writer, is a sufficient guaranty.

[From Messrs. Blanchard & Lea; and for sale by W. T. Berry & Co., Nashville, Tenn.] E. B. II.

FORMULE FOR MAKING TINCTURES, INFUSIONS, SYRUPS, WINES, MIXTURES, PILLS, etc.; simple and compound, from the Solid and Fluid Extracts prepared at the Laboratory of Tilden & Co., New Lebanon, New York. Established in 1848.

The establishment of Tilden & Co.'s Laboratory and Pharmaceutical Garden at Lebanon, ten years ago, was hailed with much interest by both

druggists and physicians, as likely to supply this country with preparations of the various medicinal plants in a state of greater purity, and more accurately elaborated, than could previously be obtained otherwise than by importation. Our national pride was gratified in having a domestic pharmacopoeia equal to what we had been procuring abroad, and we were pleased in assigning to our fellow-citizens the profits of their scientific labors, instead of building up foreign establishments with our

custom.

This firm has accordingly received in an unusual degree the confidence and patronage of the profession, and, we will add, the favor of the medical press—that is, so long as they confined themselves to the legitimate occupation of carefully selecting and cultivating the plants from which the preparations were to be derived, and, with the aid of scientifically constructed apparatus, eliciting entire and unaltered the various active principles which should enter into the composition of our officinal extracts. Nor would there have been the slightest objection to their adding to these any extra-officinal preparations, simple or compound, suggested by medical works or by their own experiments, provided every thing was fair and above-board-provided that they had said what was in each preparation, and how much of it.

We have assumed that their solid extracts were prepared according to the provisions of our National Pharmacopoeia, and on that assumption they have had a large sale under the recommendations of the profession and the medical press. The firm, however, were not satisfied with the large profits which must have accrued from this patronage, and a few years ago they commenced advertising and selling their Fluid Extracts.

These are to all intents and purposes secret remedies—in other words, quack medicines. The relation in which they stand to the crude materials has never been published, nor does the present work throw any light upon the subject, but, on the contrary, is put forth expressly on the ground. that those who are selling and using the extracts are ignorant of the matter. We quote from the Preface enough to place this distinctly before the reader.

"This rendering of established Formulæ could not be given accurately by those who were ignorant of the exact relation the extracts bear to the crude materials whence they are derived; and while this relation is intended in most instances to be uniform-that is, drachm for drachm— still, from a variety of circumstances, in many cases there is a variation to the one side or the other of this line."

And as we are not informed in which of them these variations take place, of course they are all of them secret remedies; only we are asked