Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

When Dumas discovered chloroform by distilling alcohol from chloride of lime, it was little thought that it would become the valuable therapeutic agent which it has proved to be. Applications run fast in these busy days; and at Messrs. Horne's in Whitechapel, we have an engine working under the combined influence of steam and chloroform, -a combination which the best engineering authorities state to possess many great advantages. It is not easy to render mechanical details familiar without the aid of diagrams; but the principles of this "combined vapor engine" may be rendered intelligible by a brief general description. The steam having done its work of moving the piston in one cylinder, escapes into another in which is a quantity of chloroform in small flat tubes. This substance volatilizes at a very low temparature; and it thus is converted into vapor of considerable elastic force by the heat of the waste steamand is in this state employed to work a second piston. We have, indeed, two engines combined in action - one moved by steam-the other by chloroform. The professed advantages are the saving of 50 per cent. in fueland as all the steam is rapidly condensed in the evaporation of the chloroform, the same water is constantly returned to the boiler, by which the necessity for using salt or impure water is avoided. The first engine of this kind was constructed in 1846, in Paris,-in which ether was then employed. This engine is still working in a glass manufactory at Lyons-chloroform being substituted. A Parisian paper informs us that M. Charles Beslay has, by order of the Minister of Marine, constructed a very powerful engine of this description, which is pronounced by a commission to be perfectly efficient. A question having been raised as to the effect of chloroform on the health of sailors, M. Quoy, Inspector-General of the medical branch of the marine services, has reported favorably. We learn, however, that the English patentees propose to use a volatile fluid which is much less expensive than chloroform, equally efficient, and less obnoxious.

The German papers announce the death, at Leipsic, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, of the well-known philologist, Gottfried Hermann. This celebrated Hellenist was born at Leipsic in 1772; and at the early age of twenty-four was appointed Professor at the university of that city. He filled the same chair till the last day of his life-a period exceeding half a century. He was the founder of the Greek Society at Leipsic; and the author of many learned works which have made his name a familiar sound to the scholars

of Europe. The King of Saxony had, after the German fashion of honoring the intellectual chiefs of the land, granted him letters of nobility.

Ethnological science has recently sustained a serious loss by the death of Dr. Prichard. He was well known by his great work, 66 Researches into the Physical History of Man," in five volumes, and his yet more popular "Natural History of Man.' In addition to these, he was the author of "An Essay on the Vital Principle," a treatise on "Insanity," a book "On the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Language," and many other works and essays which appeared in the Medical journals. At the time of his death, Dr. Prichard was President of the Ethnological Society.

By an excavation undertaken at the end of November in the watering-place of BadenBaden, the Baths of Caracalla have been discovered in a state of good preservation. They are just under the market-place, between the Inn at the Rose and the parish church,―occupying a square of about 5,000 German feet long by 3,000 feet broad.

Mr. Macaulay's "History" is out of print. Three thousand copies-the number of the first edition-are already sold; and a second edition-it is said an improved one-is already in the press. The rumor runs that the author has sold his two volumes for ten years, to the Messrs. Longman, for an annuity of £600 for that period. If poetry be down in the market value, history is, it seems, up. "The Row" and Albemarle Street would now probably return "Paradise Lost" without looking at it :-so that Simmon's £5 was after all a liberal sum for an epic poem, when we contrast 1848 with 1667. Hume made very little by his "History; " but Smollett made £2,000 in a very short time—and his work is said to have sold to the then amazing extent of 10,000. It was time that History should have a turn. Mr. Hallam's historical works have, it is true, sold well; but Carte struggled hopelessly against want-and Sir Harris Nicolas, whose whole life was dedicated unremittingly to the illustration of English History, has just passed from amongst us in circumstances too painful to describe. writers should learn, however, (and there are examples enough already to have taught them) that the mere keeping together of facts, the dry display, as it were, of antiquarian diligence, has but slender charms for the general reader. The labors of Carte and Nicolas, are

Our

like the drawings of great masters-of use

[ocr errors]

the National Assembly decrees: -1. The French republic proposes to the governments of Europe, America, and other civilized coun

only to students. The multitude look for color and composition, and for that skill which can make "even dry bones live." Let us add to this pleasing account of the book-tries, to concur in a congress for a proportional market, that 18,000 copies of Mr. Dickens's Christmas story were sold on the first day of publication.

The Delhi Gazette says that the famous diamond, the Koh-i-noor (the largest and most precious in the world), forfeited by the treachery of the sovereign at Lahore, and now under the security of British bayonets, at the fortress of Govindghur, is likely ere long to be brought to England and added to the Crown jewels. M. Antoine d'Abbadie, writing to us from Cairo, gives the following account of an animal new to European science--which account he received from Baron Von Müller, who had recently returned to that city from Kordofan. "At Melpes in Kordofan," said the Baron, "where I stopped some time to make my collections, I met, on the 17th of April, 1848, a man who was in the habit of selling to me specimens of animals. One day he asked me if I wished also for A'nasa, which he described thus-It is of the size of a small donkey, has a thick body and thin bones, coarse hair, and tail like a boar. It has a long horn on its forehead and lets it hang when alone, but erects it immediately on seeing an enemy. It is a formidable weapon; but I do not know its exact length. The A'nasa is found not far from here (Melpes), towards the S.S.W. I have seen it often in the wild grounds, where the negroes kill it, and carry it home to make shields from its skin. N. B. This man was well acquainted with the rhinoceros, which he distinguished under the name of Fertit from the A'nasa. On June 14th, I was at Kursi, also in Kordofan, and met there a slave-merchant who was not acquainted with my first informer, and gave me spontaneously the same description of the A'nasa; adding that he had killed and eaten one not long before, and that its flesh was well-flavored." Herr Rüppell and M. Fresnel, adds M. d'Abbadie, have already spoken of a one-horned African quadruped; and I have also some notes which tend to establish the existence of perhaps two different kinds.

[blocks in formation]

disarmament, the abolition of war, and the formation of a court of arbitration. 2. The Congress shall open on the 1st of May, 1849, at Constantinople."

The Carlisle Journal gives the following particulars of Mr. Stephenson's first celebrated engine, the Rocket. It was bought in 1837, from the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company, by Mr. J. Thompson, of Kirkhouse. Here the engine was worked for five or six years, on the Midgeholme line,—a local line belonging to Mr. Thompson. Soon after the engine was placed on the line, the contest for East Cumberland took place, when Sir J. Graham was superseded by Major Aglionby; and it was used for conveying the Alston express with the state of the poll from Midgeholme to Kirkhouse. Upon that occasion the Rocket accomplished its share of the work, a distance of upwards of four miles, in four minutes and a half,-thus reaching a speed nearly equal to sixty miles an hour. On the introduction of more powerful engines, the Rocket was "laid up in ordinary" in the yard at Kirkhouse ;-where it now stands, no less a monument of the genius of the inventor, than as a mark of the esteem in which his memory is held by Mr. Thompson. Such an engine, says the Journal-the first constructed on the principle which has brought railways to such a height of perfection in this country, ought to have its abiding-place in the British Museum.

THE PLANTAGENET GUARD RAZOR.-We have one fault to find with this razor-one fault (which we suppose the very ingenious inventors will in no wise amend)—we object to the name. Why "Plantagenet?" They were a bearded as well as a bearding race. Though, indeed, such a razor as this might have tempted Richard the Lion-hearted, or Edward Longshanks, to have shaved rapidly before he rushed into the battle, heard raging without. Then "Plantagenet" accords well with royal letters patent; at any rate it is better than your fashionable Greek names, so the one fault is not a thing to be startled at. The "Plantagenet Guard Razor" is an instrument of very beautiful workmanship, of the choicest mechanism. A guard, toothed like a pocket-comb, but more widely, and with a slight curve, fits upon a pivot inserted (an insertion of no ordinary difficulty in highly tempered steel) into the broad part of the

back of the razor. This guard fits firmly, but is slipped on or off very easily. When off, of course, we have a razor of the usual form; but when on, it acts as a perfect break, a guard against the razor (were it the sharpest ever honed) cutting chin, lip, or check-a perfect skin-preserver-whilst it seems actually to render shaving easier. The teeth of the guard, with the nicest adjustment, are made to protrude so as to keep the skin away from the chance of a cut, whilst the beard is given to the razor's edge, and only the hair to be removed. It is difficult to make this plainly intelligible without a drawing, but the characteristics are such as we have described. To how many may not this guard razor be a boon! To the youth who with fear and trembling adventures upon his first shave, and has a sort of passion for lather and steel to his chin-a passion which is not very longlived. To the blind man-the passenger on board ship-the invalid who cannot leave his bed, and to whom the shaving by a barber is a diurnal torture—a hateful operation-to say nothing of head shaving, and other surgical purposes. There is another class, to whom, perhaps, most of all, shaving or being shaved is torment-the paralyzed; even they cannot cut themselves. The razor may be adapted for use in either the right hand or the left.Douglas Jerrold's Newspaper.

An open-air trial of the new Electric-Light was made on Tuesday evening in front of the National Gallery:-and Trafalgar-Square shone in its lustre as in the light of day. The Nelson Column was tortured out of that obscurity which is congenial to its condition of premature desolation,-and which for one-half of time shrouds it from the exposure of impotence to which for the other it is doomed. If this mode of illumination can be brought practically into use, the pillar must be finished for very shame. The old oil lamps, so long beloved in the aristocratic quarter about Grosvenor Square, as an "ancient institution," are now avenged-what gas did for them it has now to suffer from the new glory. The gas lamps looked as they used to look-like farthing candles in the sunshine. There will be no dim nooks and corners in the metropolis if this "new light" prevail. Half the "mysteries of London" will perish in its

beams.

LAMARTINE'S "JOCELYN" AND LOUIS NAPOLEON. The library of Louis Napoleon has been sold by auction, and amongst the books was a handsome copy, bound in morocco, of Lamartine's poem of "Jocelyn." The value of "Jocelyn." The value

of the work was much enhanced by the fact that on the inside of the cover appeared the fellowing words, in the handwriting of the Prince, in French :-"Undertook the reading of this book at Florence, Sunday, the 7th of May, 1837. Abandoned it as being too sublime for me. Undertook the reading for the second time, Monday, the 8th, without being more fortunate. Recommenced by a new effort, Tuesday, the 9th, and abandoned it definitively." Considering the present position of the author and the critic as rival candidates for the Presidency of the French Republic, this anecdote is somewhat curious. Little did the Prince think, when he wrote the above, that he and the poet whose work he had been obliged to abandon as being too sublime for him, would one day meet under circumstances which must severely test the ability of both.-Morning Post.

[ocr errors]

TO-DAY.

THE EMPERORS THEODOSIUS AND FERDINAND. 900 YEARS AGO AND Nine hundred years ago the Slavonian race held Italy; their leader might occasionally be a Roman Emperor, occasionally a barbaric chief. The German and Celtic races oppose them, and a struggle ensues for the mastery of discordant, imbecile Italy. It is the same now. A German prince rules over the great mass of the Slavonian race; he wishes to be thought a German or Austrian, and would fain persuade mankind that the Austrian Emperor is German. But now the truth comes out, and the descendants of the ancient Goth, Hun, Greek, Croat-all Slavonians-call on him to give up the delusion; to place himself at the head of the Slavonian race; to expel the German from the Slavonian territory, and rescue their brethren from the thraldom of Turkish and Russian, and Prussian despots. Nine hundred years have not affected much the position of the race on the face of the globe; their physical character and their morale (making allowance for the modification of a kind of civilization) remain of course as they were a thousand years ago. When Theodosius was hard pressed by the German and Celtic races, he looked for assistance to the Slavonians; into the arms of this race the house of Hapsburgh has been forced to throw itself.-Dr. Knox (Medical Times).

An electric telegraph is about to be erected between Berlin, Cologne, and Frankfort-on-theMaine. For this simple undertaking, nine political treaties with various governments have been concluded.

SHORT REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

PATHOLOGIA INDICA; or the Anatomy of Indian Diseases, based upon morbid specimens, from all parts of the Indian empire, in the Museum of the Calcutta Medical College. By Allen Webb, B.M.S., Professor of Descriptive and Surgical Anatomy in the Calcutta Medical College, &c.

The object of this work is to give an idea

wide Oriental experience is, that the general effects of the climate upon the human frame have been much exaggerated. It may aggravate the virulence and violence of certain disorders, as fevers and cholera; but that is probably about its extent; moral evil is at the bottom of much which is ascribed to cli

mate, especially as regards the natives.

MEDITERRANEAN.*

of the nature and treatment of Indian diseases, by a selection from the most remarkable BELGIUM, THE RHINE, ITALY, GREECE, AND THE cases furnished by the Company's medical officers to the Medical Board at Calcutta, and by a selected catalogue of morbid specimens of preparations from the museum at the same capital. The "cases" give a full description of the symptoms and treatment; the catalogue, besides a description of the specimens, an account of the subject whence it was taken, Dr. Webb frequently adding remarks. He also contributes general observations, sometimes in the form of notes, sometimes as an introduction to the sections; exhibiting a sensible knowledge of Indian diseases, and some very curious professional learningclassical, Arabian, and Oriental, as well as modern.

The book will be found very useful, especially to medical men proceeding to India; since the representation of facts, with a guiding commentary, is the next best substitute for experience in the treatment of disease, or the actual inspection of the morbid preparations. An examination of the museum itself on arriving at Calcutta, as suggested by Dr. Webb, is the best thing to correct erroneous ideas touching alleged peculiarities of Indian pathology, which frequently have no real existence, though assumed by medical works of authority in this country. The conclusion Dr. Webb draws from his long and

continental travel is almost out of the question, Continental illustrations, at a moment when must acquire quite a new interest. If a solace remains under such a bereavement, it is to take up a book like this, by the side of what the good people on the continent call, curiously enough, a "sea-coal" fire. Imagine seventy and upwards of beautiful engravings, for a little more than a guinea! Truly, art effects a purely English object, when it thus imparts to those less favored by fortune a share in the pleasures hitherto attainable only by the rich. Italy and Greece, the homes of ancient art, still lovely in their decay-the Rhine, consecrated by a thousand legends - Belgium, every edifice of which recalls associations of sturdy energy and commercial activity—the Mediterranean, whose shores are endeared by historic fame, and charm us by their surpassing loveliness, summon up visions of romantic beauty, which will not meet with disappointment in those who refer for gratification to this splendid tome.-New Monthly Magazine.

Belgium, the Rhine, Italy, Greece, and the Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean, Illustrated in a Series of beautifully-executed Engravings, with Historical, Classical and Picturesque Descriptions, by the Rev. G. N. Wright and L. F. A. Buckingham, Esq. Peter Jackson.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

MEMOIR OF WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

Memoir of William Ellery Channing, with Extracts from his Correspondence and Manuscripts. In three volumes. London: John Chapman, 142 Strand. 1848.

If Dr. Channing's career had been closed fifteen years ago, opinion would have been greatly divided respecting his merits as a thinker and his influence as a writer. The hero of a sect was, not unnaturally, regarded as a pretender by professional critics; and he sustained for awhile the double misfortune of theological favoritism and literary depreciation. In his productions there was a freshness of manner sufficient, on the one hand, to suggest the claim of originality, and, on the other, to provoke the charge of ambitious and unscholar-like departure from recognized standards of judgment and taste. The proportion in which the truth was divided between these opposite exaggerations, is now pretty well understood. The time is fully come,-not to say a little past, for assigning to the American essayist his true place; and the present memoir rather follows, than precedes the united verdict of his generation. He was not a man of such dimensions as to require great distance for his admeasurement; and if he were, perhaps, in the present condition of the world, with blended elements of unity and variety in its civilization, distance of space is an adequate substitute for lapse of time, and the mutual judgments of nations may foreshadow the sentence of posterity. The action of his thought was wide and immediate, rather than deep and slow; tending more to ripen the best fruits of the present, than to crumble the soil, and prepare the seed for growths invisible and future. In this respect, indeed, his productions mark an era in the literature of our language. He is the first purely moral writer who has acquired a popular power, and found his way, not only into the boudoir of the professed reader, but into the pocket of the artisan. Essayists, never able to escape, as a class, the repute of dulness, have been content, from the time of Addison to that of Coleridge, to find acceptance in the library of the student, or at the breakfast-table of the man of letters; and even these have been glad to shelter themselves under the cover of some Review, which would secure them introduction to a political party of larger range than their own natural circulation. Channing, far from being dependent on such artificial extension of his audience, found all

the customary media and methods of publication too narrow for his thought. His articles of review were snatched from the periodicals in which they first appeared, and, notwithstanding their grave and earnest character, spread with the rapidity of a revolutionary speech or an exciting fiction. His lectures and sermons, though perpetually trenching on the polemic ground of philosophy and divinity, could not be confined to the ordinary circle, but passed into the hands of thousands by whom the literature of the platform and the pulpit had been held in little respect. The numerous editions of his works, and the competition of popular publishers for their English sale, indicate a scope and direction of influence unexampled among writers of the same class. Channing could well afford to neglect the hostile criticisms with which he was occasionally assailed; whatever supercilious purists might say of his style, and scrupulous orthodoxy deplore in his theology, he was assuredly one of the powers of the passing age; made so, in part, by singular adaptation to its moral wants, in part by certain elements of intrinsic greatness, which the present memoir enables us to point out.

These volumes, for which we are indebted to Mr. W. H. Channing, nephew to Dr. Channing, present rather the history of a mind, than the record of a life; we might better say, the portraiture of a mind in its various relations and modes of activity. For nothing is more striking in the sketch which they give, than the absence of all movement or essential change of scene, and the slight dependence of their interest upon the biographical order of succession. They carry us, indeed, along the line of great events; enabling us to watch, from beside the cradle of the young American republics, the struggles of the old world through the vastest war, and the most productive peace of modern times. They introduce us into the society of many considerable men, Story and Marshall, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Sismondi and Degerando, Blanco White and Theodore Parker. And their action would appear to shift its place sufficiently, transporting us, as it does, not only to the beach and hills of Rhode Island, the hospitable plantations of Virginia, the ambitious intelligence of Boston, but to the banks of Windermere, the passes of Switzerland, and the streets of Rome. Yet all these varieties are ineffectual to relieve the sameness perhaps we should rather say,

TT

« ZurückWeiter »