SIR,

sometimes

conjectures respecting the discoveries which an enterprizing traveller might perhaps be enabled to make in the African continent. It is not beyond the verge of possibility to suppose, that the Egyptians extended their dominions beyond the geographical limits which are usually assigned to that country; and the inhabitants of some solitary oasis, some secluded valley, may yet retain vestiges of their language, religion, and customs. The celebrated Mosaic of Praneste might be adduced as a proof that the Egyptians were well acquainted with the interior of the African continent; that panoramic map of Egypt terminates with an expanse of water, thus coinciding with the accounts of the great central lake, reported by the negroes to be the common source of the Nile and the Niger. Instances are not wanting of detached and insulated colonies, or rather fragments (if the expression may be allowed) of great nations retaining their national characteristics through a long course of ages. The descendants of the Carthaginians, in the valley of Battuecas, retained undisturbed possession of the language and rites of their ancestors, until they were exterminated in the 16th cen F. C.

tury.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

a

a certain extent, they tend to check the general desertion from the established religion; but, owing to a defect for which it is my object to propose a remedy, they fail to produce this effect, except in a very limited degree. They are erected for the most part, either by subscription raised amongst the more opulent part of the parish, or from motives which disprove the aphorism-that man cannot serve both God and Mainmon. In the former case, the pews are all reserved to the subscribers: in the latter, they are let: and in both cases the poor, by far the most numerous part of every parish, are excluded, as no, or at most a very small and inadequate, portion of these chapels is appropriated to their use. They, therefore, if disgusted by the neg ligent manner in which the service is often drawled or hurried over in the parish-church, or scandalized by the immoral life of the clergyman; have no other alternative than that of resorting to places of dissenting worship.

To remedy this inconvenience, and render chapels-of-ease more generally useful, I propose that a law be made, enacting, that, in every chapel-of-ease, at least one-third, or such greater or less proportion as may be thought more proper, be set apart for the use of the poor. H.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine,

SIR,

N the account of a trial lately record

IN

ed in the General Evening Post, I met with a passage which I shall be very glad to have explained by means of your publis cation, not only for my satisfaction, but that the public should understand how the law stands respecting the matter. A man was found guilty of an assault, and his counsel stated that he had been indicted for a like offence some time before, but, in consideration of his having a wife and family, and its being believed he was both drunk and mad at the time, the prosecution was not pursued. The Recor der said, "If the defendant had now pleaded insanity, he should have been sent to Newgate for life, as the Act of Parliament enables the court to do."

My wish is to have the clause of the Act, brought before your readers; for I cannot suppose that there exists an Act which sentences insane people to confinement for life, unless the insanity conA CONSTANT READER. tinues! 3 U

a Licentiate of that body; on which occasion he addressed some congratulatory Greek verses to the board of Censors. About the year 1786, he engaged in the office of teacher, and delivered lectures on the principles and practice of medicine at the Public Dispensary. But his success, we believe, in this undertaking, was inconsiderable. Such attempts, indeed, have seldom proved eminently advantageous, except in connexion with the large hospitals, the reputation accruing from an attendance on these great schools being deemed of almost equal importance to the future success of the student, with the knowledge to be acquired there. At a subsequent period, Dr. Willan received, as pupils at the Dispensary, young physicians who had recently graduated, and who were initiated into actual practice, under his superintendence, among the patients of the institution; a mode of tuition from which they derived much practical knowledge, and were gradually habituated to the responsibility of their professional duties. Upwards of forty physicians, almost all of whom have subsequently attained professional reputa tion, or now occupy responsible situa. tions, both in this country and abroad, have received the benefit of this instruction.

From the time when Dr. Willan settled in London, he pursued his professional avocations with an indefatigable industry and attention, of which there perhaps are few examples. He never quitted the metropolis for any considera tion of health or pleasure during a period of thirty years. For many years he conducted the medical department of two dispensaries, (having subsequently been favoured with an appointment to the Finsbury Dispensary, in addition to that of Carey-street,) during which his unremitting attention to the progress of the diseases which came under his care, is evinced by the prodigious collection of cases, which he has recorded in MS, mostly in a neat Latin style, in which he wrote with great fluency. From this as siduous and patient observation of the phenomena of disease, he doubtless acquired that acute diagnostic skill, which is the true characteristic of a sound phy sician, and which all, who have witnessed his practice, allowed him to have possessed in an eminent degree. This discriminative talent, indeed, has been sutficiently manifested in his great work "on Cutaneous Diseases;" but the delicacy of his tact, which enabled him to

detect, like an accomplished artist, the minute peculiarities in the appearances of these diseases, which escaped the notice of ordinary observers, was very remarkable. During the whole of bis ca. reer, he was not less assiduously employed in examining the records of medicine, both ancient and modern, than in the ac tual observation of diseases; of which the learning and critical acumen dis played in his publications, as well as the mass of manuscript collections which he has left behind, afford abundant proof. His habits of domestic privacy enabled him to dedicate a large portion of time to these researches; and indeed to the unabating ardor with which he applied himself to them, must be attributed that premature injury of his health, which shortened the period of his life.

The rise of medical reputation, unassisted by powerful connections, when all unworthy arts of advancement are disdained, must necessarily be very slow. For a considerable time it has no existence, even in the narrow circle of private friends, whose confidence is placed on older heads: and ultimately, it springs but from the gradual accumulation of individual approbation, as the opportuni ties of meriting it from time to time

Occur.

"Crescit occulto velut arbor vo
Fama-."

Dr. Willan's advance to public reputation, and to the consequent emoluments of the profession, was, however, regularly progressive, though slow; and his publications, especially his Treatise on the Diseases of the Skin, upon which his posthumous reputation will principally rest, finally placed his professional cha racter upon high ground. In the spring of 1791, he had the honour of being chosen a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He had been early attached to antiquarian researches, and in his juvenile days had, with considerable industry and accuracy, collected from the Odyssey a history of the manners of the primeval times of Greece. Latterly he communicated some papers to the Society, of which, however, he declined the honour of publication; particularly a collection of provincial words, and an elaborate essay on the practice of "Lustration by Need-fire," (scarcely extinct in some of the northern counties,) which led him into a curious and extensive research, respecting similar practices in ancient times, and the mythological superstitions connected with them. It was not until 3 U 2

the

length severely, anasarcous, from the feet upwards. A sudden unfavourable change of the weather, in September, occasioned a return of the cough and hoarseness, with some expectoration; and the probability of becoming puthisical, under the influence of an English winter, induced him to accede to the strenuous recommendation of some of his friends, and to undertake a voyage to Madeira. He accordingly embarked with his family in the Thames, on the 10th of October; and, after being fiftythree days on shipboard, detained by foul winds in the Downs and at Portsmouth, he arrived at Madeira on the 1st of December. During this interval, a considerable hardness and tumefaction took place in the abdomen, with an effusion of water into that cavity, and he was harrassed by a dysenteric attack. By perseverance in an active course of medicine, however, after his arrival at Funchall, all the symptoms were considerably alleviated; insomuch that, in the month of February, he meditated a return to the south of England in April. But this alleviation was only temporary: his disease was again aggravated; the dropsy, and its concomitant obstruction to the functions, increased; and, with his faculties remaining entire to the last, he expired on the 7th of April, 1812, in the fifty-fifth year of his age.

By the death of Dr. Willan, the profession was deprived of one of its bright ornaments, and of its zealous and able improvers; the sick of a humane, disinterested, and discerning, physician; and the world of an estimable and upright man. By his exterior deportment in public, indeed, he was far from rendering justice to his own character. His early education, his studious mode of life, and retiring disposition, prevented that display of his various and extensive knowledge, in mixed society, which delighted the privacy of a small circle of friends, and which was dispensed with much playfulness and simplicity of manner. In all the relations of domestic life, indeed, he was an object of general esteem and attachment. The gentleness and humanity of his disposition were equally conspicuous, in the exercise of his professional duties; in the patient attention with which he listened to the complaints of the sick, whom, in his fullest occupation, he never dismissed from his presence, dissatisfied with the brevity of his inquiries; and in the liberality with which he imparted his assistance, yet refused

the remuneration to which he was entitled, when the circumstances of the patient appeared to render it oppressive. In his intercourse with his professional brethren, he was liberal and independent, and extremely tender of giving offence. As a practitioner, as we have already observed, he was a close and faithful ob server of diseases, and by the peculiar quickness with which he detected their characteristic appearances, however obscured by complication, he had obtained a copious store of sound experience: yet it has been remarked, that he did not always prescribe with that vigour and decision which so much discriminative talent would have authorised.

As a professional writer, Dr. Willan appeared early, in his contributions to the periodical works. On his arrival in London, he became a member of a pri vate medical society, which held its meetings at a coffee-house, in Cecil-street, and which published two volumes of papers, under the title of "Medical Communications," in 1784 and 1790. In the second of these volumes he published the history of "A remarkable Case of Abstinence," in a bypochondriacal young man, which was interrupted for the space of sixty-one days, and terminated fatally. We believe that this was the only medical society of which he was ever a member.

Several communications from him were also printed in the London Medical Journal, edited between the years 1781 and 1790, by Dr. Simmons. In the 4th volume, page 421, a short letter of his appears, stating the character of a nondescript Byssus, found in the sulphureous waters of Aix, and differing from that which he had discovered in the waters of Croft and Dinsdale. In the sixth volume of the same Journal, he relates a fatal case of obstruction in the bowels, from constriction of the colon near the sigmoid flexure, which prevented any evacuation for upwards of thirty days before death; to which he appended some useful reflections on the diagnostic symptoms of these obstructions, as occurring in the large or in the small intestines. In the seventh volume he describes the cure of a case of chorea, by the cuprum ammoniacum, which, however, he candidly acknowledges, in a subsequent publication, speedily recurred, and was cured by very different means. In the same volume he relates also a singular termination of abdominal dropsy, by a spontaneous discharge of the fluid

per