THE

HE delight I have received from perusing the rational Reports of your humane, intelligent, and courageous Correspondent, Dr. Reid (for in an age like this, of malicious criticism, it demands the firmness of a man devoted to the service of his fellow-creatures, to project even the shadow of a medical reform), I cannot easily express; and this delight has been greatly augmented of late, by perceiving that he is not to be deterred by the suggestions of false pity, from exposing the inefficacy of the prevailing mode of treating the disease called Consumption-for, until the whole nation is roused to a due sense of the necessity of discovering some method of checking its originating causes, or applying other sorts of remedies in the cure, when the present so miserably fail,we have scarcely a right to assume the character of a reflecting or even a rational people.

To see consumptive patients, as I continually do, owing to the situation I live in, riding about early on raw damp mornings, after coming out of hot-curtained beds; frequently lodged on the humid banks of a muddy river, in houses whose walls, being constructed of rude masses of petrosilex, are always cold, and often damp in the spring; to see many of these unfortunate beings condemned to drink profusely of water on an empty stomach, or load their jaded digestive faculties with balsamic mixtures, or repose on contaminated feather-beds, probably one of the many original causes of this cruel disease to the healthy who attend them, and possibly the very origin of the discase itself; for thousands of feather-beds (that accursed invention of unthinking luxury,) in this country, have not for centuries performed any quarantine, while even new ones, as they are called when the ticking is new, are often little else but pest-conductors, composed of materials from brokers' shops, to which they are generally consigned by the heirs of those who died of contagious diseases. To see these things and be silent in the view of such

errors, is impossible.-Permit me, there, fore, to state one or two instances of persons recovered, who were very far gone in this disease, by a directly opposite principle, and to suggest, as I hope many others will do by means of your li beral pages, how far I have reason to think, that a contrary treatment would be of utility, the result of some degree of experience among my relatives.

Considering consumption as a lasting, habitual, intermittent fever, arising from the effect of cold humid vapours absorbed by bodies relaxed and dry-whether by the acridity of hereditary humours, the heat induced by intemperance, the artificial noxious warmth of manufactories, or excessive application of the mind to studies that irritate the nervous system, or athletic exercises by far too violent :whether the victim is prepared by the bed infected; the indulgent nurse; the meretricious chambermaid; or the ambi tious tutor, who wants to rear a prodigy of infantine abilities-whatever be the cause, if it really be of the nature of fever, as a fever, I think there can be no doubt, it ought to be treated; and if the system of cold ablution has been found favourable in other fevers, I cannot see why it should not be resorted to in the crises of this.-In support, therefore, of this doctrine, let me be allowed to advance a case in point, as it appears to me.—A young gentleman, whom I knew many years ago, being given over by all the physicians at the Hot Wells, on expressing a cen tainty that he could not live out another week, was advised by a stranger, as that was his opinion, to try an experiment to save his life, and to go to a poor woman's cottage in the neighbourhood, where there literally was nothing to be had but bread, potatoes, and water. He went, subsisted on nothing else for the first week, scarcely eating any thing whatever, and, when I saw him, was completely recovered, having continued this low diet from choice for about a year afterwards.

The second is more remarkable.

A linen-draper, connected with a house in Bread-street, Cheapside, being considered in a deep decline, was sent by his physicians to Gibraltar, where his distemper increased, until an order came to dismiss all the English from the garri son, war being declared suddenly with Great Britain. Embarked without delay in a felucca, he was scarcely out of the harbour when an Algerine pirate took them prisoners, and this gentleman was

first stripped, then allowed a jacket and a coarse pair of greasy trowsers, and at night consigned to the cold benches of the long-boat without straw or covering: the food was black bread, with coarse fibres and stalks in it, and thus he remained until the vessel arrived at Algiers, exposed nightly to cold, dews and rain; and when there, daily driven to the common slave-market for sale.

Yet under this discipline this gentleman got daily better in health, and finally was so well recovered of his disorder, as, on procuring his liberty, by means of the Neapolitan Envoy, to go by Minorca to Spain, and from thence walk all the way to England. When I saw him on his return, he was perfectly hearty, strong, and very able to have walked with ease thirty miles a day.

He attributed his cure to want of food (for at first he could not eat his wretched allowance), and to the cold dews of the night in a fine atmosphere. I could add to these cases others, that point out to privations and dry cold air for their cure. The upper parts of Glocestershire, from Cirencester to Stowe in the Wold, have done more towards recovering persons approaching to consumption, than all the damp warm southern coast of England. In parturition the people called Gypsies rarely ever suffer a fever, or lose a child, and they always chuse to be delivered in the open air, even in winter, and prefer a high and dry flat country for that purpose. All animals do the like by instinct; and whatever dumb creature has by accident dislocated a joint, or broke a bone, seeks the nearest wet ditch, where, although often half famished, he assuredly recovers without a fever. But it will be replied, with loud consent, Would you have us treat consumptive delicate patients thus?-and what are we to do in the winter? To which I can only calialy answer, Not without their own consent: but in cases called desperate, which may not after all be so, I can see no objection, if they admit of the reasoning, to go very great lengths in this way, according to their habits of life; for before we get rid of a malady so fatal and contagious, we must submit to many resolute experiments.

Again, if I were to seek for an air proper for a person in this disease, I should always chuse to send him to that where the sheep seldom are subject to the rot, and where many recover that are tainted, as in the upper part of Glocestershire I know to be the case; not to

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the Estuaries of the Severn Sea, itself the seat of heavy vapours, fogs, and dense nists; where agues are within the reach of a ride, for all along every vale leading to its waters they reign: and through Dordham Down, and from Herfield to the hills all around, the air is the purest of the pure, yet the vicinity of our wetdock and grounds, that extend from the Hot-wells to Cannon's Marsh, can never be fit for tender lungs. The water of the Hot-wells, even under its at present improper management, thousands know to be a great corrector of intestinal acrimony; and could they be received as they rise out of the earth with all their light and wholesome air, fresh, as I may say, from the mine, and thus drank, accompanied with some light bread, or wholesome food, at any time that was agreeable to the patient, and in what quantity also was agreeable to him, no doubt they would do wonders-but prescribed, as they often are, at too early hours, in too large quantities, and on an empty stomach; or, which is still worse, after previously being physicked and weakened, it is no wonder they have lost their reputation; especially when we consider that they are drank from a cistern, not from the spring head, and consequently less warm and more vapid, of course less imbued with those virtues which once made them so justly famous in these cases.

But while a company of merchants hold these noble springs, the gift of heaven to the whole island, under perhaps a questionable right of manor, and conduct them as a profitable concern, there is little hope of their sources being ever unveiled as they ought to be to all eyes; or baths formed in abundance, as are daily wanted for hundreds lingering under ulcerous complaints, for which they are a sovereign acknowledged curative lotion.

To effect this desirable object, the ci tizens of Bristol have, however, only to demand of any one presenting himself at the next election for member of parlia ment, that he shall undertake to bring in a bill for the purpose of purchasing this spring of the merchants, and restoring it to the public, to whom it ought ever to have belonged, with every accominodation that the corporation could have procured, gratis.

In that case proper houses might be, erected of the driest materials, where the air could be tempered by steam and ventilators, to receive the consumptive

patients;

patients; whose beds might be of clean soft straw, or fern, with conveniences for exercise, both within and without, suitable to the winter months, with accommodation also for riding, swinging, &c.; in short, a real establishment for the cure of phtysis on the best principles; where students in medicine might have every opportunity of acquainting themselves with the whole progress of that stubborn disease, and learn from the communications of their numerous patients its general origin.

To such houses there can be no doubt, I think, of finding subscribers; for as the generality of the sufferers under this disease are among the wealthy classes, and most are softened deeply by their sufferings, we might expect great support from many patients and their relations, at least as much as would sustain the poor who come for advice.

Thus, Sir, I have thrown together a few loose hints that I hope may be ultimately serviceable to the public; for my motto has always been, that every ef fort in a good cause does good, and that we are never so blameable as when we despair.

Bristol, Jan. 4, 1809.

Your's, &c.

G. CUMBERLAND.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

I

SIR,

BÉG leave to submit for insertion, in the Monthly Magazine, a description of a new fence for enclosing pleasure grounds.

The basis of the invisible fence is elastic iron wire, manufactured, prepared, and applied by a process discovered and matured by the undersigned. Of this infrangible material, which for the main-wires must be drawn out to the thickness of a

small reed, continuous strings are inserted horizontally through upright iron stancheons; the interval between the strings is about nine inches, between the stancheons about seven feet. The horizontal

wires in a state of tension, are fastened to two main stancheons at the extremities of the fence, passing at freedom through holes drilled in the intermediate stancheons. The tension of each horizontal wire is preserved by the superior stability of the extreme stancheons, on the construction of which, and the echanism of the hase-work, the whole as a barrier against heavy cattle, depends.

When the extent of the fence is great, the main-stancheons are relieved at expedient distances by other principal stanche

ons.

An improvement in the mode of joining horizontal wires, qualifies every part of the length equally to bear the higliest degree of tension.

The invisible fence, in this simple form, of the height of three feet and six inches, has in the royal pleasure grounds at Frogmore, and in various parks of the nobility and gentry, been invariably found adequate to exclude the largest and strongest kinds of grazing stock. Increased in heigth two feet, the fence becomes applicable to deer parks: deer have never been found to injure it, or attempt to leap it, and appear to avoid it as a snare, probably detered by its transparent appearance. When it is intended to keep lambs out of plantations, perpendicular wires, comparatively small, are interwoven upon the lower horizontal wires: and to protect flowers and exotics from hares and rabbits, it is only necessary to narrow the interstices, by minute additions to the upright wires. On substances so small, presenting a round surface, neither rain nor snow can lodge; independent of which, by a coating of paint, they are preserved from the effects of the weather.

The strength attained by the principles on which the materials are manufactured, and the erection of the fence is constructed, cannot be justly conceived, but by a person who has witnessed the effect of a considerable force impressed, or weight lodged on a single wire of a fence erected. The tempered elasticity of the tort-string, allows it to bend, and on the removal of the oppressing force, the vigorous recoil of the wire, vibrating till it reassumes a perfectly straight line, shews that a violent shock cannot warp it. Your's, &c. King's Road, Chelsea.

J. PILTON,