M. Gehlen's memoir appeared. M. Riffault read to me every thing respecting the muriatic ether, but I found nothing about Gehlen, or the singular properties he relates of the muriatic ether. Mr. Thomson only speaks of the process of Basse, which consists in mixing melted sea-salt, alcohol, and sulphuric acid; and which, with the exception of the fusion of the salt, has been pointed out by several chemists. I think myself therefore entitled to conclude, that in Great Britain, as well as in France and Spain, the muriatic ether was unknown, and that, being ignorant of M. Gehlen's labours, I have at least the merit of publishing it. How often does it happen that a discovery is made in one country, which had been known in another long before! and this happens because all learned men do not speak one language, and their works are not always translated. This is the case with M. Gehlen's discovery*.

XXIV. Memoirs of the late ERASMUS DARWIN, M. D. [Continued from vol. xxix. p. 339.]

DARWINIANA.

IN Doctor Darwin's First Class, Ord. I. Gen. 1, mentioning arterial hæmorrhage, he suggests the breathing an air with less of oxygen. In the hemoptoe of arterial blood, he proposes, besides the reduced air, making the patient sick by whirling round in a chair suspended by a rope; actual vomiting, a practice we believe first introduced by the famous Dr. Willis; bathing in cold water, or sudden immersion of some of the limbs, or sprinkling the whole body with cold water. For the haemoptoe narium, bleeding of the nose, he advises plunging the head into cold water with powdered salt hastily dissolved in it: lint strewed with wheat flour

* Since writing the above, M. Boullay, a respectable apothecary in Paris, informed me that he made the ether in question with the muriatic acid and alcohol long ago, although he never gave publicity to his experiments, because he did not think they were so complete as they ought to have been. I am proud to have an opportunity of doing justice to M. Boullay.

Note by M. THENARD.

put

put up the nostrils; or a solution of steel in brandy aps plied to the vessel by means of lint.

Arriving at Gen. 2, mentioning sudor calidus, warm sweat, he has the following curious observations on the use of calico and flannel:

"If an excess of perspiration is induced by warm or stimulant clothing, as by wearing flannel in contact with the skin in the summer months, a perpetual febricula is excited, both by the preventing the access of cool air to the skin, and by perpetually goading it by the numerous and hard points of the ends of the wool; which, when applied to the tender skins of young children, frequently produce the red gum, as it is called ; and in grown people, either an erysipelas, or a miliary eruption, attended with fever.

"Shirts made of cotton or calico stimulate the skin too much by the points of the fibres, though less than flannel; whence cotton handkerchiefs make the nose sore by frequent use. The fibres of cotton are, I suppose, ten times shorter than those of flax, and the number of points in con•sequence twenty times the number; and though the manufacturers singe their calicoes on a red-hot iron cylinder, yet I have more than once seen an erysipelas induced or increase ed by the stimulus of calico, as well as of flannel.

"The increase of perspiration by heat, either of clothes of of fire, contributes much to emaciate the body; as is well known to jockeys, who, when they are a stone or two too heavy for riding, find the quickest way to lessen their weight is by sweating themselves between blankets in a warm room : but this likewise is a practice by no means to be recommended, as it weakens the system by the excess of so general a stimulus, brings on a premature old age, and shortens the span of life; as may be further deduced from the quick maturity and shortness of the lives of the inhabitants of Hindostan and other tropical climates.

"M. Buffon made a curious experiment to show this circumstance. He took a numerous brood of the butterflies of silkworms, some hundreds of which left their eggs on the same day and hour; these he divided into two parcels; and placing one parcel in the south window, and the other in

the

the north window of his house, he observed, that those in the colder situation lived many days longer than those in the warmer one. From these observations it appears, that the wearing of flannel clothing next the skin, which is now so much in fashion, however useful it may be in the winter to those who have cold extremities, bad digestions, or habitual coughs, must greatly debilitate them, if worn in the warm months, producing fevers, eruptions, and premature old age."

He makes the following ingenious and unfortunately too true observations respecting the diarrhea infantum, gripes in infants:

"Milk is found curdled in the stomachs of all animals, old as well as young, and even of carnivorous ones, as of hawks (Spallanzani). And it is the gastric juice of the calf which is employed to curdle milk in the process of making cheese. Milk is the natural food for children, and must curdle in their stomachs previous to digestion; and as this curdling of the milk destroys a part of the acid juices of the stomach, there is no reason for discontinuing the use of it, though it is occasionally ejected in a curdled state. A child of a week old, which had been taken from the breast of its dying mother, and had by some uncommon error been suffered to take no food but water gruel, became sick and griped in twenty-four hours, and was convulsed on the second day, and died on the third! When all young quadrupeds, as well as children, have this natural food of milk prepared for them, the analogy is so strong in favour of its salubrity, that a person should have powerful testimony indeed of its disagreeing, before he advises the discontinuance of the use of it to young children in health, and much more so in sickness. The farmers lose many of their calves, which are brought up by gruel, or gruel and old milk; and among the poor children of Derby, who are thus fed, hundreds are starved into the scrophula, and either perish, or live in a state of wretched debility.

"When young children are brought up without a breast, they should for the first two months have no food but new milk; since the addition of any kind of bread or flour is

hable to ferment, and produce too much acidity, as appears by the consequent diarrhoea with green dejections and gripes; the colour is owing to a mixture of acid with the natural quantity of bile, and the pain to its stimulus. And they should never be fed as they lie upon their backs, as in that posture they are necessitated to swallow all that is put into their mouths; but when they are fed as they are sitting up, or raised up, when they have had enough they can permit the rest to run out of their mouths. This circumstance is of great importance to the health of those children who are reared by the spoon, since, if too much food is given them, indigestion, and gripes, and diarrhoea, are the consequence; and if too little, they become emaciated; and of this exact quantity their own palates judge the best.”

His observations are no less curious respecting perspiratio foetida, fetid perspiration:

"The uses of the perspirable matter are to keep the skin soft and pliant, for the purposes of its easier flexibility during the activity of our limbs in locomotion, and for the preservation of the accuracy of the sense of touch, which is diffused under the whole surface of it to guard us against the injuries of external bodies; in the same manner as the secretion of tears is designed to preserve the cornea of the eye moist, and in consequence transparent: yet has this cutaneous mucus been believed by many to be an excrement; and I know not how many fanciful theories have been built on its supposed obstruction. Such as the origin of catarrhs, coughs, inflammations, erysipelas, and herpes.

To all these it may be sufficient to answer, that the antient Grecians oiled themselves all over; that some nations have painted themselves all over, as the Picts of this island; that the Hottentots smear themselves all over with grease. And lastly, that many of our own heads at this day are covered with the flour of wheat and the fat of hogs, according to the tyranny of a filthy and wasteful fashion, and all this without inconvenience. To this must be added the strict. analogy between the use of the perspirable matter and the mucous fluids, which are poured for similar purposes upon all the internal membranes of the body; and besides its being

3

being in its natural state inodorous; which is not so with the other excretions of fæces, or of urine.

"In some constitutions the perspirable matter of the lungs acquires a disagreeable odour; in others the axilla, and in others the feet, emit disgustful effluvia; like the secretions of those glands, which have been called odoriferæ; as those which contain the castor in the beaver, and those within the rectum of dogs, the mucus of which has been supposed to guard them against the great costiveness which they are liable to in hot summers; and which has been thought to occasion canine madness; but which, like their white excrement, is more probably owing to the deficient secretion of bile. Whether these odoriferous particles attend the perspirable matter in consequence of the increased action of the capillary glands, and can properly be called excrementitious; that is, whether any thing is eliminated, which could be hurtful if retained; or whether they may only contain some of the essential oil of the animal; like the smell which adheres to one's hand on stroking the hides of some dogs; or like the effluvia, which is left upon the ground, from the feet of men and other creatures; and is perceptible by the nicer organs of the dogs, which hunt them, may admit of doubt.

"M. M. Wash the parts twice a day with soap and water ; with lime water; cover the feet with oiled silk socks, which must be washed night and morning. Cover them with charcoal recently made red-hot, and beaten into fine powder and sifted, as soon as cold, and kept well corked in a bottle, to be washed off and renewed twice a day. Internally rhubarb grains vi. or viii. every night, so as to procure a stool or two extraordinary every day, and thus by increasing one evacuation to decrease another."

He gives a cure for the tape-worm.

"The tape-worm is cured by an amalgama of tin and quicksilver, such as is used on the back of looking-glasses; an ounce should be taken every two hours, till a pound is taken; and then a brisk cathartic, of Glauber's salt two ounces, and common salts one ounce, dissolved in two wine-pints of water, half a pint to be taken every hour till Vol. 30. No. 118. March 1808.

H

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