our coal measure Ironstone formations were the direct result of the process of coal formation, the water in which the coal was formed removing from the surrounding rocks, by virtue of the dissolving power of carbonic acid, the Iron which they contained; this, if retained within the coal basin, gradually produced the argillaceous carbonates of Iron as we find them, but if the ferruginous waters passed away from the influence of the dissolved vegetable matter, then oxidation ensued, and hence the deposits of Hæmatite in ponds and fissures as we see them near Ulverstone. The same carbonized water had previously been active in dissolving the limestones formed around the coal basins, and into the cavernous spaces thus formed, and these are common in all our carboniferous limestone districts -the peroxide of Iron was deposited, as at Whitehaven, in the Forest of Dean, and in Glamorganshire.

Further study is required before it can be certainly determined whether or not the chemical changes indicated, are those only which have been active in producing our Iron ores as we now find them. It is, however, believed that the hypothesis put forward will serve to explain most of the conditions which are presented to the careful observer. They are, at least, honest attempts to read the phenomena which are presented to us in the varied conditions under which we find the most useful of the metals, IRON, occurring in the inorganic world.

VI. ON MEDICAL SCIENCE: ITS RECENT PROGRESS AND PRESENT CONDITION.

THE season which has passed away, although not especially fertile in the fruits of the earth, has not been deficient in those of the mind. The intellectual harvest, gathered at the autumnal meetings of learned and scientific societies, at statistical congresses, and other assemblages of men earnestly engaged in the pursuit of common objects, has been plentiful and of perhaps more than average quality. We have already registered many of these products, but there is one class of them, which, from its purely technical nature and the unfitness of many of its details for public discussion, is rarely noticed, except in Journals strictly professional; and yet it relates to matters in which we are all deeply interested. If there is any subject which “ comes home to our business and bosoms," it is that of Medicine. Next in importance to the supply of our daily wants of food and clothing, is the care of our health, and the improvement of the means of its conservation is a topic to which none of us can be indifferent; an occasional survey, therefore, of the

condition of Medical Science, free from objectionable details, may fitly find a place in a Journal designed for general circulation.*

We have before us the papers read at the Dublin meeting of the British Medical Association, the communications to various provincial meetings of the same body, contributions to the Journals, and last, but by no means least in value, the addresses delivered at the opening of the winter session at the different medical schools, metropolitan and provincial. The conclusion to be drawn from these various sources of information as to the recent progress and present condition of Medical Science is a most encouraging one. In no former period of equal length have such advances been made as in the last half-century in the detection of diseased action or morbid change, and if equal progress has not been made in the Art of Medicine, in the application of Science to the prevention of death or the relief of suffering, still even in that respect the advances have been immense. The practitioner now undertakes with confidence the treatment of diseases which his predecessors regarded as incurable, and the modes of treatment have, in many instances, been simplified and made less painful.

A recapitulation of some of the additions thus made to the means of combating disease ought to be specially interesting to the readers of a Journal like ours, for it has been strictly and exclusively by the means of research furnished by experimental science, that our knowledge of disease has been extended, and if wise empiricism, or happy imagining (the inspiration of genius), has, rather than scientific research, furnished the improved methods of treatment, Science has provided the means of utilizing the thoughts thus suggested.

But leaving these generalizations, let us proceed to a few details, and first of the improved methods of research. Of these the foremost has been the extension of the power of vision by the microscope. The additions to our stores of knowledge, both of healthy structure and of morbid changes, thus acquired, would fill volumes; and we have not space for the enumeration of even a few of them.

Next, in point of value, should be placed the discovery which to some extent does for the sense of hearing what the microscope

* We think it right to say that, in making such a survey, we take as our guide and as a sketch-map of the country over which we intend to travel, an address recently delivered before the North Wales branch of the British Medical Association, by its president, Mr. Thomas Eyton Jones, of Wrexham. In choosing such a guide, we are not alone influenced by the intrinsic merits of the address, as a lucid and comprehensive abstract of the recent progress of medicine, but we have pleasure in showing that not only in our great cities, the centres of mental activity, is medical science studied with earnestness, but that the men living in remote provincial towns, and practising among widely scattered populations, are able to keep pace with, and to rival their more favourably situated brethren.

does for the sight. We know not who first applied his ear to the walls of the chest, to endeavour to learn, from the sounds thence emitted, the variations in the action and conditions of the organs therein contained; but he who first thought of interposing between the ear and the naked body a tube of some unyielding material, and thus made mediate auscultation an universally applicable mode of research, deserved to be ranked among the greatest benefactors to mankind. And an equal rank should be given to the inventor of percussion as a mode of examination, the man who first showed that by close attention to the varied quality of the sounds produced by a smart blow on the walls of the chest, most precious knowledge might be obtained of the condition of the contained viscera.

The sense of touch also has not been without its cultivators. The tactus eruditus has long been one of the most highly valued accomplishments of the surgeon, but improved methods of palpation have made it almost equally useful to the physician; and most valuable additions have recently been made to the information which the touch gives as to the pulse. The knowledge gained by gentle pressure with the tips of the fingers on a superficial artery, of the frequency, force, and other qualities of the action of the organs of the circulation, is necessarily uncertain, because it is subjective knowledge, and because therefore the accuracy of the observations must depend on the carefulness and experience of the observer, and the delicacy of his sense of touch. A beautifully imagined instrument now registers for us the pulsations, and describes on paper the height, form, and other qualities of each arterial wave. We must also regard as helps to the sense of touch the improved modes of applying the thermometer to the surface and the cavities of the body. Most precious knowledge is thus acquired as to the progress of febrile and inflammatory diseases, and our powers both of prognosis and of diagnosis have been immensely increased.

To all these modes of rendering medicine more and more one of the exact sciences, must be added the improved modes of research furnished by chemistry. Our knowledge of the composition of organic bodies, and of the chemical changes constituting assimilation and degeneration, and of the processes of growth, secretion, and excretion, has only within the last quarter of a century acquired anything like the character of certainty. The physiological chemist has not only entered so far into the arcana of Nature as to be able to ascertain, to a great extent, how she does her work, but has even succeeded in imitating her operations. Not content with analysis, he has with considerable success attempted synthesis also. "Already he has been able to produce a large number of organic compounds from carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, and even from the pure elements themselves. In fact, of the three great classes of alimentary substances, the production of the oleaginous is quite

within his reach; that of the saccharine is almost within it; but the albuminous is still beyond."*

The application of such researches as these to the Science of Medicine is too obvious to need pointing out. They furnish the only safe basis on which the knowledge of diseased actions and of morbid poisons can be founded. To the latter class of bodies, owing to the unusual prevalence of infectious diseases, special attention has recently been paid, and we seem to be on the eve of brilliant discoveries in reference to some of them. The question is still unsolved whether the poison, or contagium, of the so-called Zymoses, consists of living germs, i.e. entire, although undeveloped, organisms, or of living portions of organic matters, i.e. germinal particles or cells, or of dead matter, peculiarly compounded, and undergoing some special process of decomposition.

For a further extension of our power of research into the chemical constitution of organic bodies, we are indebted to a new application of the Science of Optics. Spectrum analysis now not only tells us of what elements the planets and the photosphere of the sun are composed, but whether certain red spots which may be the subject of medico-legal inquiry, are or are not stains of blood. For this great discovery we have to thank Mr. Sorby, of Sheffield. Dr. Bird Herapath, of Bristol, was the first to employ it in the inquiry into a case of alleged murder. It is impossible in imagination to limit the extent to which micro-spectroscopy may aid us in the analysis of organic bodies.

One of the latest applications of physical science to the purposes of medicine is a further extension of the powers of sight. Endoscopy, in its various forms, by most ingenious combinations of lenses, mirrors, tubes, and, in some instances, increased means of illumination, enables us now to explore all the canals opening on the surface of the body, and even to inspect some of its cavities. The revelations thus made are wonderful, and have far exceeded the expectations of those who first suggested such means of research. It might have been expected that, looking through the window of the Cornea, we might ascertain the exact condition of the internal structures of the eyeball. But who would have imagined that from the morbid changes observed in them we might be able to pronounce with certainty on the existence and nature of disease existing, not only in the brain, but in so remote an organ as the kidney? An amusing instance of the enthusiasm with which this line of inquiry is now pursued was given at the international medical congress which recently sat in Paris. A zealous worker in the field of endoscopy foretold the time when, by means of the lime-light, the whole body

Dr. Letheby's Introductory Lecture at the London Hospital.-British Medical Journal, Oct. 5, 1867.

would be rendered diaphanous, and morbid changes be detected in its innermost recesses.

But our space will not permit us to linger in this tempting field, and we pass on to notice a very few of the latest improvements in the Art of Medicine. If asked to indicate the one quality which characterizes the present race of practitioners as compared with the majority of their predecessors, we should say that it is conscientiousness, shown by increased reverence for the human body, and a greater wish to diminish pain or to avoid its infliction. Surgery has become eminently conservative. The man is not now most admired by his brethren who performs in the most dashing style the capital operations of surgery. It is almost universally felt that such operations, being more or less serious mutilations, are, in the same ratio, confessions of the imperfection of the art. He is not now liable to be sneered at, as he was within our recollection, who professes greater pride in the preservation of a finger than in the amputation of an entire limb. Modern surgery thinks it no condescension to labour in the removal, not of disabling deformities only, but of disfigurements and blemishes, and by various plastic operations to endeavour to restore to "the human form divine pristine beauty, lost by accident or disease. Many of these triumphs of conservative surgery would, because of their tedious and therefore additionally painful nature, have been impracticable but for the grandest discovery ever made in relation to the art of medicine, that, viz. of a safe and easy method of producing temporary unconsciousness of pain. If there be one invention of human genius worthy to be called an anticipation of the millennium, it is that of anæsthetics. To say nothing of the preservation of life, the amount of agony from which mankind has thus been saved is incalculable.

its

This topic, the avoidance of suffering in surgical operations, is one of such surpassing interest to humanity that we are tempted to enlarge upon it a little. Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since the introduction into practice of the use of anaesthetics, and of the present generation few are conscious, from their own experience or observation, of the magnitude of the boon; and this may be said even of the large majority of surgeons now in practice. We will, therefore, extract from a work not likely to be read except by professional persons, and written by one who has done more than any other man living to bring about this blessed change, Sir James Simpson, a description by a master in the art of composition, the late Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh, of the horrors of a surgical operation under the old mode of treatment.

"Several years ago," Professor Wilson writes in a letter to Sir James Simpson, "I was required to prepare, on very short warning, for the loss of a limb by amputation I at once agreed to submit to the operation, but asked a week to prepare for it;