this coagulum would in time have been converted into a fibrous tumour, if the animal had not been killed. I have had frequent opportunities of making similar observations. This appears to illustrate the probable origin of fibrous tumours in man-at least of such as occur in the stomach, the intestinal canal, and more especially in the uterus, where there are more frequent opportunities for the formation of coagula."

4. Tumours in which cartilage predominates-cartilaginous tumours. 5. Tumours in which osseous tissue predominates-osseous tumours. 6. Tumours consisting in whole or in part of dark pigment-melanotic tumours. The pigment entering into these tumours is by no means uniform in its characters. In many cases it consists of dark granules inclosed in round or oval cells, sometimes it is modified hæmatin, and it is occasionally composed of granules of sulphuret of iron. The first constitutes true, the two last, false or spurious, melanosis. The pigment is never the sole constituent of these tumours, the other elements being fibrous tissue, a few vessels, and not unfrequently malignant growths, as tubercle, encephaloid, or scirrhus. In true melanosis the colour is brown (of a bistre tint), blackish, or if only a little pigment is present, gray; in the false variety resulting from altered hæmatin, it is blue, violet, or brownishblack; and in that depending on sulphuret of iron it is of a slate-gray, or greenish-black. Melanotic tumours are more frequently observed in the female than the male sex.

7. Tumours containing gelatinous matter-gelatinous tumours; which are described by Vogel as follows:

"In many tumours there occurs a viscid jelly-like substance, partly infiltrated amongst the firm elementary tissues, and partly contained in appropriate spaces or cavities, sometimes in such abundance, and so greatly exceeding the other elements, that the tumours may with great propriety be termed gelatinous. The elements coexisting with gelatine in these tumours are various, generally fibres, vessels, and occasionally cartilage, and most commonly of all, cancer-cells forming gelatinous cancer-colloid.

"This substance is always transparent and colourless, sometimes fluid, resembling thickened mucus; at other times resembling half-fluid jelly. Under the microscope it appears completely amorphous, and so perfectly transparent that it is not easy to see it. In six cases in which I have examined it, its physical and chemical characters appeared constant and identical with those of mucus.....Nothing can as yet be stated with certainty respecting the origin of this substance; it arises, however, in all probability, like normal mucus, from modified proteincompounds of the blood." (pp. 204-5.)

8. Tumours inclosed in a true cyst-encysted tumours.

The malignant tumours are divided into two leading groups. The former embraces those in which little (or no) organization is apparent, namely: 1. Typhous deposits.

2. Scrofulous deposits.

3. Tubercle.

The second includes the more highly organized secondary formations; namely, carcinoma, subdivided into

1. Cellular cancer-encephaloid.

2. Fibrous cancer-scirrhus.

3. Melanotic cancer.

4. Gelatinous cancer-colloid.

We pass over these subjects without comment; the character of the typhous deposit having been noticed in our review of Rokitansky, in Number XXIX, and cancer fully discussed in our recent review of Professor Walshe's Treatise.'

The remainder of this lengthy chapter is devoted to the consideration of unorganized morbid products.

The following scheme includes the various substances capable of occurring as deposits in the human body:

1. Protein-compounds.

2. Fats: a, cholesterin; b, margarin and margaric acid; c, olein; d, fatty granules of uncertain composition.

3. Uric acid and urates.

4. Salts of lime: a, oxalate of lime; b, basic phosphate of lime; c, carbonate of lime.

5. Ammoniaco-magnesian phosphate.

6. Sulphuret of iron.

7. Bile-pigment. 8. Silica.

9. Various substances of easy solubility, deposited in consequence of evaporation, &c., as chloride of sodium, phosphate of soda, &c.

From one or more of these constituents are formed all the concretions occurring in the human body. These are arranged by Vogel into

1. Such as are produced from the secreted fluids.

2. Such as are formed in the parenchyma of organs.

The subject is completely treated in all its bearings, but contains little with any claim to novelty. The analyses of the concretions are for the most part taken from Simon.

We now arrive at a short chapter of twenty pages on the morbid changes in the physical properties of the tissues and organs. Changes of colour, volume, form, and consistence, are discussed, and a considerable amount of original matter introduced.

After a very brief and somewhat unsatisfactory chapter on the combinations of morbid changes, we come to the consideration of independent organisms in the human body-parasites. These are divided into Epiphytes and Parasitic animals.

The Epiphytes are subdivided into (1) vegetations in the human fluids, namely, the torula cerevisiæ in vomited fluids and fæcal evacuations, and Goodsir's sarcina ventriculi; (2) vegetations on the external skin and its appendages, namely, in Tinea farosa (Gruby, Fuchs, Bennett), in the sheath of the hair in mentagra (Gruby), within the root of the hair in Herpes tonsurans (Gruby, Hebra), and in Plica polonica (Gunsburg); and (3) vegetations on the mucous membranes, as, for instance, in the aphthæ of children, in the cicatrices of the mucous membrane after typhus, &c.

Parasitic animals are subdivided into infusoria, insects, arachnida, and

worms.

The following experiment, in relation to infusoria in the blood, is interesting, although leading to a negative result. Two ounces of water, containing millions of infusoria of the same species (either monades or the young of the cyclidium glaucoma), were injected into the vein of an adult cat. At the expiration of twenty-three hours not a trace of the infusoria

could be observed, and when the animal was killed, two days subsequently, the search was equally unsuccessful. If Siebold's* article on parasites is studied conjointly with the present chapter of Vogel, the reader will acquire an immense amount of information that may in vain be sought for in English or French medical literature.

Congenital changes in the human body are then considered. causes of malformation are, according to our author, the following:

The

1. Abnormality of the generative material of one or both parents. 2. Abnormality of the maternal organism, pathological changes in the uterus, fallopian tubes, &c.

3. Diseases and abnormal conditions of the placenta, membranes, or cord.

4. Pathological affections directly affecting the fœtus-diseases and mechanical injuries.

The different forms of malformations are arranged in eight classes, most of which are divided into orders and genera. The difficulty of condensing this subject within the limits of some forty pages will be at once recognized by those who are conversant with the voluminous works of Meckel, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Otto, Gurlt, Vrolic, &c. The present chapter (although little more than a syllabus) contains infinitely more available matter than the works of any one of the authors just quoted.

The part now before us concludes with a chapter on the changes occurring directly after death. Like all that precedes it, it is well worthy of perusal, but contains no especial novelty either in the way of arrangement or material.

From our previous knowledge of the writings of Vogel, and from the high reputation that he has acquired during the last seven or eight years (and pathological histology is of no older birth), we took up our pen with a decided prepossession in his favour. If we have been slightly disappointed in not finding so many original observations as we expected, that disappointment has been more than counterbalanced by the philosophic spirit pervading the whole work. Unlike Lebert, whose work is noticed in our last Number, he strives not for glory but for truth, and every page shows his desire to render to all men their due. Here we have none of the self-gratulation and assumed superiority for which we were compelled to inflict a moderate castigation on the pseudo-Frenchman; on the contrary, we can lay our hand on several pages in which M. Vogel desires to recant or modify opinions he had previously adopted; and the truthful singleness of mind he displays cannot fail to have its due weight with his readers. In his knowledge of the foreign literature of his subject, we may express our decided conviction that he stands unrivalled. Carswell and Hope, Owen and Liston, Simpson and J. H. Bennett, are but a few of the British names that meet us in his pages. France, Italy, Holland, and Denmark, all lay open their stores before him, and he gathers as freely from Cruveilhier and St. Hilaire, Cerutti and Bassi, Vrolik and Broers, Hannover and Steenstrup, as from his own countrymen Müller, and Henle, and Gluge.

We have had occasion, in several parts of this review, to notice the

• Wagner's Handwörterbuch, &c., vol ii, pp. 641-92.

Atlas; but if we spoke of it as a mere volume of illustrative plates we should be doing its author a great injustice. Of the 291 figures contained in it, 270 are drawn from nature, and accompanied with copious explanations extending over 128 quarto pages. Of the accuracy of most of the figures we are enabled to speak from experience.

We are glad to learn that this work is likely soon to appear in an English dress, from the competent pen to which we are indebted for the excellent work of Simon, recently issued by the Sydenham Society. We trust that Dr. Day will incorporate in it the most important cases from the 'Icones,' and have it properly illustrated. We do not doubt that a work of this nature, with microscopic delineations of morbid products, would supply a want which has been long experienced in this country.

ART. V.

Geschichte der Findlinge in Oesterreich mit besonderer Rücksicht auf ihre Verhältnisse in Illyrien. Von Dr. RAIMUND MELZER, K.k. Director der Staats- und Local-Wohlthätigkeits-Anstalten zu Laibach.—Leipzig,

1846.

History of Foundlings in Austria, with especial Reference to their Condition in Illyria. By Dr. RAIMUND MELZER, Imperial Director of the State and Local Charitable Institutions at Laybach.-Leipsic, 1846.

8vo.

THE author of this able and learned work is unusually well qualified for the task he has set himself. Trained in the service as well as in the superintendence of the commission for inquiring into the state of the poorhouses and houses of correction, then acting in the capacity of professor of midwifery and physician to the lying-in and foundling hospitals, and, lastly, appointed to the responsible post of director to the state and local charitable institutions, he has been diligently employed, during ten years, in the performance of duties which have familiarized him with the causes and effects of poverty. It was natural that the institutions with which he was most intimately connected, first as physician, and subsequently as director, should engage the greater share of his attention. Accordingly, it scarcely required the stimulus of the example of the prize essays of MM. Terme and Monfalcon, of which the reader will find elaborate notice in the Twenty-sixth Number of our Review, to urge him to the laborious inquiries which have issued in the work before us-a work for which his habitual occupations, and his access to public documents, peculiarly fitted him.

His mental qualifications for his task will appear of no mean order to any one who will take the pains to peruse his Introduction, in which he shows that he has not been a careless observer of poverty and the poor, and that the great and perplexing alternations which have beset all national efforts for the relief of indigence have not escaped him. These alternations have rarely been better expressed than in the following passage:

"Poverty has the great misfortune that it borders closely on vice, and easily passes into it. Nay, we may call vice a moral poverty. Two steps further, and

the pauper becomes the criminal. If charity is not circumspect, it will be deceived and cheated by vice or crime, and innocent poverty will be robbed of the assistance which was intended for it. How easily this may happen may be inferred from the familiar fact that natural benevolence is easy of belief, and from the mistakes which philanthropic persons are continually making. As often as poverty is mixed up with vice it is in a state of resistance against law, for vice is in its very nature lawless. This circumstance is the source of many evils with which even the best administration of Foundling Hospitals has to contend, and is the reason why several governments exclude those establishments from the lists of charitable institutions, and esteem them a greater evil than the existence of those whom they are intended to assist."

Our author shall state in his own words the case of foundling hospitals, and shall exhibit the way in which the charity which presided at their foundation has been and is deceived and cheated:

"The Christian pity," he says, "which called these institutions into being, went so far in its anxious care for mother and child as in their reception to make itself blind. These institutions had not existed long before they became the dupes of vice. They were established to preserve purity of morals, and they soon began to undermine them. The stricter the principle of secrecy was preserved, and the further it was carried, the more shamelessly was it abused. Parents, bound by the ties of marriage, forgot their most sacred duties, and relieved themselves of children whom they regarded as heavy burdens; and they did this because the regulations of the institution tempted them to it-because they saw themselves thereby exculpated from a punishable offence, and even justified in their unnatural conduct. The foundling hospitals were crowded with applicants, and the expense increased with their increasing numbers till the evil reached an alarming height. To prevent this monstrous outlay from increasing, and, if possible, to effect a permanent diminution of expense, without endangering the original humane aim of the institution, formed the problem; the solution of which became the anxious wish of the government and of every friend of humanity."

And is not this the history of all charities without exception, and especially of all so-called national charities? Let us suppose a large town, if such a supposition be reasonable, in which no such thing as a beggar is to be found, but it is known that a large number of its inhabitants are poor, many in want, and some few, perchance, starving. A benevolent person, aware of these facts, proclaims them, and appeals to his fellowcitizens in behalf of the sufferers, insisting that they ought to carry purses in their hands, and invite the destitute to apply to them for alms as they walk the streets. What would be the consequence? Why, what other result could follow but that which has followed from the habit of dropping halfpence into the hands of street beggars-the creation of a band of masqueraders, who make mendicancy their profession, and come to think it to the full as honest as working with their hands, and somewhat safer than stealing, but who are much more likely to forget the danger of petty larceny than to be reminded of the safety and respectability of honest labour. And what is the total result of this misguided charity? This: to draw off, by the constant dropping of halfpence and pence into idle and unworthy hands, the fund which was destined to the support of honest labour, and which, so applied, would have rescued a greater number of deserving people from want, and saved more victims of threatened starvation than all the idle almsgiving in the world. It would probably