the mineralogical forms of matter, system after system is taken up and elaborately worked out, then alternately criticized and vindicated, and again earnestly attacked and vehemently defended, until, amid the controversy, a new principle of classification is started, and the old one has to yield. All this is a necessary consequence of that law of universal continuity in the works and phenomena of nature, whereby, in a multitudinous diversity of form, points of resemblance and analogy associate the more or less diverse in classes more or less remote, yet so that no one class shall be so distinct from its neighboring class that instances shall not exist bordering on the two, with regard to which it shall be doubtful which belongs to which. And thus it is that the scientific mind has never been satisfied without classification, and never long satisfied with any given system of classification, but always craving new ones, in the devising and elaboration of which consist the life and being of philosophy.

These considerations have been adduced to show in what mental attitude we have to approach the system of nosographic classification proposed by Prof. Campbell; to show that we have to inquire, not whether this system is the right one, excluding all others as wrong, but whether it is better than any others which have preceded it-the best which the existing state of science can furnish. We have given reasons for concluding that no system of classification can be absolutely correct, but that that is the best which seizes upon those points of difference which constitute the distinctest types, and those points of resemblance which determine the most natural links of association; and the question is, whether in our present stage of pathological science the modes in which the nervous apparatus is functionally and structurally affected do not constitute the best, clearest, most essential points of difference upon which we can ground a classification of diseased conditions. Our own opinion inclines decidedly to the affirmative, and we ground that opinion upon the omnipresence of the nervous system in all structures, its all-pervading influence in all functions.

Classifications dependent upon lesions in motion, sensation, secretion, nutrition, alimentation, elimination, circulation, respiration, alteration in solids or alteration in fluids, etc., etc., are necessarily partial, but what is common to all these properties is that all are potentially influenced by the nervous system, each is bound up with the rest in a synergy constituting the individual life of the living unit by the commissural relations of the nervous apparatus; and hence whichever organ or function be separately affected, the portion of the nervous system which is associated

with it must be affected, and through its affections influence other or functions associated with it by nervous relations.

organs

Hence we agree with Prof. Campbell in the general principle of his classification; perhaps we might demur to some of the details of his table, but he himself does not put it forward as complete, and solicits rather than holds aloof from the suggestions and strictures which may gradually perfect it.

Perhaps we may in some future paper take him at his word, especially in reference to the cardiac derangements which form so prominent a feature in febrile symptoms. D. F. W.

CINE.

ON POISONS, IN RELATION TO MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE AND MEDIBy ALFRED SWAINE TAYLOR, M. D., F. R. S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, etc., etc. Second American, from the Second Revised London Edition. Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea.

If this were merely a revised edition of a former work, it would only be necessary to announce that a work of such importance had attained a second edition, and leave the rest to the high character and general acceptation already obtained by the first edition.

But this is essentially a new book, differing from the first edition both in what it does and what it does not contain. The first edition was a scientific general treatise on poisons: the second is a consideration of poisons, primarily in a medico-legal point of view, and incidentally with a view to medical practice. On this head we will allow our author to speak for himself. He says:

"In this new edition of my work on Poisons I have been compelled to restrict my remarks to a consideration of those substances which give rise to medico-legal inquiries. TOXICOLOGY is a wide subject in itself, and it would be hopeless on the part of a writer to endeavor to include in one small volume all those facts and principles which are now comprehended under this department of medical science. One of two courses is open to him he may give a distinct notice of every substance which has been known to have a noxious action on the animal body, and in this case the book would become a catalogue of drugs with a brief history of poisons; or he may exclude those substances which belong rather to the history than the practice of the subject, and thus devote more space to the consideration of substances which, from the frequency of their employment for murder and suicide, are of great practical importance. I have chosen the latter course."

On turning to the body of the work, we find that the gain arising from this conclusion is much greater than the loss; that if the field of investigation is more limited, its culture is much deeper and more thorough, and, as a necessary consequence, more productive. Thus in regard to the medico-legal consideration of strychnine and prussic acid, the criminal courts of England have, within the last few years, furnished such terrible occasions for the exercise of toxicological science as to render it necessary to completely reconstruct the description of those powerful agents. In these causes celebres of the English bar, Dr. Taylor has been very extensively employed as a skilled witness, and the strength and clearness with which he brings out the prominent points of the legal transactions thus brought before him, evince great legal acumen as well as medical science; indeed, few general readers would peruse the cases of poisoning by strychnine without interest, and certainly no lawyer without advantage.

The way in which these investigations are carried on in England under the management of unscrupulous counsel and interested witnesses, shows that, with all our complaints of the American courts, we have the consolation, such as it is, that we are no worse off than others.

Altogether we feel pleasure in giving the book our unqualified approbation, and recommend it cordially not only to physicians and lawyers, but to general readers, as replete with inestimable information.

From W. T. Berry & Co.

Editorial Department.

A SLIGHT MISTAKE.

THE following item appears in the Medical and Surgical Reporter:

"Sensible!-Charles Lamb is said to have had an uncompromising disgust for two things-roast pork and tobacco. He said, if he were to offer a sacrifice to the devil, it would be a roasted pig stuffed with tobacco!"

What! Charles

Somebody has been joking our contemporary. Lamb an enemy to roast pig! He, the gentle Elia! Alas! the editor of the Reporter can never have read the Essays of Elia; and, in commiseration for his cruelly neglected education, we will supply him with one paragraph, hoping that its flavor will induce an appetite for a further indulgence.

"There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling, as it is well called: the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet, in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance-with the adhesive oleaginousO call it not fat-but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it-the tender blossoming of fat-fat cropped in the bud-taken in the shoots-in the first innocence-the cream and quintessence of the child pig's yet pure food-the lean no lean, but a kind of animal manna-or rather fat and lean, (if it must be so,) so blended and running into each other that both together make but one ambrosial result or common substance."

And this is the man who would sacrifice roast pig to the devil. But he had an uncompromising disgust for tobacco also! What! he who never wooed his pillow without inhaling the fragrant breath of two long clays, filled by the loving hands of his sister Mary-the Bridget Elia of the essays-he loathe tobacco!-he who, even when his health dictated the disuse of it, struggled and groaned, struggled and regretted,

struggled again, and yielded! Hear him while engaged in one of these struggles:

me.

"I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of believing me, were I to tell them what tobacco has been to me, the drudging service which I have paid, the slavery which I have vowed to it. How, when I have resolved to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started up; how it has put on personal claims, and made the demands of a friend upon How the reading of it casually in a book, as where Adams takes his whiff in the chimney-corner of some inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the Complete Angler breaks his fast upon a morning pipe in that delicate room, Piscatoribus Sacrum, has in a moment broken down the resistance of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my midnight path before me, till the vision forced me to realize it-how, then, its ascending vapors curled, its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious ministerings conversant about it, employing every faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How from illuminating it came to darken, from a quick solace it turned to a negative relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, thence to a positive misery. How, even now, when the whole secret stands confessed in all its dreadful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond the power of revocation. Bone of my bone

It was an unkind trick which somebody played upon the guilelessness of our contemporary, for he should have reflected that not to be acquainted with Elia is a misfortune to be commiserated, not a crime to be visited with such savage jests as this. But read the book, brother Reporter; purchase for yourself the Essays of Elia; and the malice of your persecutor shall redound to your exceeding joy, and the device of the wicked be overruled to your great happiness. Get the book, brother, and let your first reading be the "Dissertation on Roast Pig."

THE NATURAL WEATHER-INDICATOR.

WE have had for some time under our notice a very interesting natural curiosity under this name, presented to us by its discoverer, Mr. Louis S. Ullman, of Columbia, in this State. It is some portion (the dried pistil, we imagine) of an Arabian plant, possessing very remarkable hygroscopic characters; indeed, we doubt whether any hygrometer exists so delicate in its indications. It has this advantage over the suspended hair, the wild oat, etc., that, being of a spiral form, its dilatations and contractions are manifested by the winding and unwinding of the coil; so that, an index being attached to its extremity, its motions are not linear