private converfation and public fpeaking: and people laugh now at fo many different things, that it is not easy to fay at what they laugh. Quintilian has bestowed a long chapter upon the Ridiculous: but I think he has not explained it fo well in many words as Ariftotle has done in two, where he fays that the thin, or Ridiculous, is alxos avaduver, that is, the deformed without hurt or mifchief. And with this definition of Arilto:le Cicero agrees, when he fays, that Lecus autem et regio quafi ridiculi, turpitudine et deformitate quadam continetur. It is therefore the oppofite of the Beautiful; and as there is the fame knowledge of contraries, fo that we cannot know any one thing without knowing at the fame time what is contrary to it, this accounts for laughter being peculiar to our fpecies, as no animal upon this earth, except man, has any fenfe of the Beautiful, and confequently of the Deformed. And the higher our fenfe of beauty is, the more lively, and the more correct at the fame time, will our perception of the Ridiculous be; whereas thofe, who have not a correct taste of the Beautiful, will be difpofed to laugh at they do not know what; and hence it is, that laughter is fo common among vulgar men. But men of exalted minds, and who have a high fenfe of the Beautiful and Noble in characters and manners, are very little difpofed to laugh; for, though they perceive the Ridiculous, they are not delighted with it. This we obferve among the Indians of North America, whom we call Savages; for not only in their public affemblies, where they deliberate upon ftate affairs, there is the greateft gravity and dignity of behaviour obferved, but in their private converfation there are none of thofe violent bursts of laughter which we fee among us; nor do you obferve in a company of them fo many people laughing and speaking at the fame time, that one can hardly understand what is faid, or what is the fubject of the laughter. This I have been affured of by several perfons, who have lived for years among them, understood and spoke their language, and converfed familiarly with them +. Thofe people, we must, I am afraid, allow, have a higher fenfe than we of what is

* Dr. Franklin in a pamphlet, which he has published, containing, among other things, Remarks upon the Savages of North America, fays, that in thefe affemblies they behave with the greatest order and decency, without having any need of a fpeaker, fuch as in our House of Commons, who is often hoarfe with calling to order. Every speaker in thofe Indian affemblies is heard with the greatest attention, and after he has fat down, before another rifes they wait a while to know whether he has any thing to add.'

The

+ I know three gentlemen who were in the fervice of the Hudfon's Bay Company, and lived in that country, one of them twentynine years, another twenty-four, and the third feventeen. first gentleman I mentioned was three years by himself, without any other European, among a nation of Indians far to the west of Hudfon's Bay, who ride on horfeback, and are from thence called Equeftrian Indians, by whom he was moft hofpitably entertained, provided with every thing he wanted for food and raiment, and all without fee or reward,'

beautiful,

beautiful, graceful, and becoming in fentiments and behaviour. The generality of men among us are fo much difpofed to laugh, that' they do not diftinguish properly betwixt the fubjects of laughter and thofe of admiration. Thus we commonly laugh at a witty or clever faying; whereas we fhould admire it, and approve of it with a fmile expreffing pleasure. Such men do not appear to know, that the paffion which excites laughter is contempt; and the proper object of contempt is vanity, without which the meaneft animal that God has made is not contemptible: and therefore we do not. laugh at the foolish abfurd things which any idiot fays or does; but if he is vain, and thinks he is fpeaking and acting very properly, we defpife and laugh at him. The objects, therefore, of ridicule are confined to our fpecies, as well as the fense of it. And in this way I understand what both Ariftotle and Cicero fay of it.

I would have thofe who indulge themselves fo much in laughter, look at themselves in the glafs when they laugh, and attend to the noife they make; for there are many people who have faces not otherwife difagreeable, but which they disfigure very much when they laugh. And fome of them make a noife upon that occafion which is very difagreeable, and indeed is hardly human. It is true that the dulce loqui, and the ridere decorum, qualities which Horace fays he poffeffed when he was young, are the gifts of nature; but fuch men, though they be obliged to fpeak, whatever their natural tone of voice may be, are not obliged to laugh. And they should confider that men of genius and an exalted mind are not at all delighted with the ridiculous, though, as I have observed, they must perceive it; but their delight is in the beautiful, which, as I have shewn elsewhere, is the only pleasure of our intellectual nature."

The principles and rules of rhetoric are well illuftrated in the examples of eloquence, which our author brings from the Grecian and Roman writers, and particularly in an excellent critique on Demofthenes, in which the fubject and the style of his orations are diftinctly confidered, and fully illustrated. The volume concludes with an account of an oration, pronounced at Oxford, by Lord Mansfield, on the fubject of Demofthenes's oration De Coronâ.

Though we cannot think, with this enthusiastic and venerable admirer of former times, that nothing is improved in England fince the days of Milton, but that, on the contrary, every thing has grown worfe, and, among other things, language; we allow that there are faults in the present fashionable mode of writing and fpeaking, which a judicious attention to the precepts of Ariftotle and Lord Monboddo might correct.

E.

ART. II. Medical Facts and Obfervations: Vol. II. Svo. pp. 232. 3s. 6d. Boards. Johnfon. 1792.

THI "HIS volume consists of eleven original communications, to gether with the abridged account of two papers from the French Journal de Chirurgie and our Philofophical Tranfac

tions.

The first article is a Cafe of a Compound Fracture of the Leg, with Remarks. By Mr. Henry Yates Carter, Surgeon at Kettley, near Wellington, Salop.

This cafe is rendered curious on account of the leg being preferved, although the mufcles were almost completely divided: we are told, that the lower part of the leg, with the foot, remained hanging only by a small portion of the gastrocnemius internus mufcle.'

The fecond cafe is of a boy whofe head was preffed in an engine employed for draining a coal-mine. It is related by the fame writer. The injury was extenfive, and the boy, though he recovered in other refpects, loft the fight of both eyes.

3. Cafe of a Boy whofe left Leg and Thigh, together with Part of the Scrotum, were torn off by a Slitting Mill. By the fame. In this dreadful accident, the lad's great toe was caught be tween the pinion wheels, while the mill was at work. The confequence was, that the toe faftened, and the limb was gradually drawn in, and crushed it as it went, till the mill had reached close to his body. At that inftant, a man, hearing his cries, came to his relief, and forcibly tore him from the machine. The boy lingered till the fixth day from the accident, when he died. In this cafe, no hemorrhage enfued from the divifion of the crural artery.

4. Cafe of a fungous Enlargement of the Extremity of the Female Urethra: with Remarks. By Mr. T. Hughes, Stroud Water, Gloucestershire.

This fungus was extirpated by the knife. The cure was retarded by frequent fuppreffions of urine.

5. Cafe of Emphysema, brought on by fevere Labour Pains. By Mr. R. B. Blagden, Petworth, Suflex.

6. An Account of the fpontaneous Cure of an Aneurism. By the

fame.

This disease (No. 6.) was occafioned by puncturing the artery with a lancet. After fix months, a tumor was formed nearly as large as a cricket ball, hard, and having in it a strong pulfation. The arm was thrunk and cold, and no pulfe was perceptible at the wrift.-After a fhort time, the tumour be

gan

gan to leffen, and gradually difperfed: the arm acquired its warmth, and the pulfe at the wrift was again to be distinguished. Mr. Blagden thinks that this cafe ferves to confirm the opinion, that nature is capable of effecting the cure of aneurisms folely by her own efforts.

7. Some Remarks on the Anguftura Bark. By Mr. George Wilkinton, Sunderland.

Mr. Wilkinson's experiments and opinions coincide with thofe of Mr. Brande, who has lately published a treatise on this bark; (fee Review, New Series, vol. vii. p. 398.). In enumerating the virtues of this drug, he appears, however, to be too fanguine its utility we can readily allow, for we have often proved it: but while, with Dr. Pearson, we rank it as a medicine that will produce the effects of the warm vegetable bitters, but with greater efficacy, we cannot admit, for many reasons, that, in cafes where the Peruvian bark has hitherto been exhibited, this new drug is a preferable medicine. Nothing is so fure to bring a remedy into difrepute, as to attribute to it a variety of powers, difcordant among themselves.

8. An Account of two Cafes of Polydipfia, or excessive Thirst. Exceffive thirst is a frequent symptom of other diseases, but it does not often occur as conftituting a disease itself. It may indeed be doubted, whether, in the prefent inftances, it can with propriety be termed a difeafe, fince its presence never deranged the health of the body, and its abfence was then only noticed when the body was under the influence of fome complaint. Under whatever name it paffes, it is certainly a rare occurrence, and, as fuch, worthy of notice.-Two perfons, one a poor woman in Paris, the other a labouring man in this country, drank daily fixteen or more quarts of liquor; principally water. In both cafes, the practice had been of long con

tinuance.

9. An Account of the good Effects of Electricity in a Cafe of Paralytic Affection. By William Gilby, M. D. Birmingham. Dr. Gilby endeavours to prove, that, in these cases, the electric fparks fhould be taken from the muscles which are antagonifts to thofe that are contracted.'

10. Obfervations on fome Epidemical Effects. By Mr. William Blizard, F. R. S. and S. A. Surgeon to the London Hofpital.

Mankind, as Mr. Blizard juftly obferves, are very generally interested in inquiries into the nature of epidemical effects on the human body; and the fubject requires great elucidation.

The

. The varying and unexpected appearances of the fame disease, at different feafons, plainly point out the influence of an agent, against whofe attack we are not guarded; and this agent frequently proves to be fome epidemical difpofition, which afterward manifefts itself by clear figns. To obferve whether there be a reigning epidemical conftitution, or general tendency to particular complaints, is furely an object of importance; and the hints furnished by Mr. Blizard may tend to promote the inquiry.

His introductory reafoning, in which he attempts to fhew how epidemical caufes act on the body, is rather obfcure, nor will it admit of abridgement: we fhall, therefore, only extract the facts on which his theoretical reflections are founded:

In the autumn of 1787 a man was admitted into the London Hofpital on account of a hurt of the head. After a few days a confiderable degree of erysipelatous inflammation appeared over the whole fcalp. The evacuations were larger than would have been judged proper had the nature of the fymptom been clearly underfood. The man died. Erysipelas foon generally appeared both in the hofpital and out of it; and almoft every cafe of injury of the fcalp, however flight, was attended with more or less inflammation of the eryfipelatous kind.

In the beginning of the year 1789, in feveral recent cafes of fyphilis, in which mercury was in ufe, diftreffing ulcerations originated in the ton fils, which became worfe during the employment of the mineral. On difcontinuing the mercurial preparations, employing the warm bath, and washing with foft gargarifms, they all got well +.

The disease called the Mumps (Cynanche parotidea) is underflood to be frequently fucceeded by fymptoms of inflammation in the breafts of women and teftes of men. A few years fince this complaint appeared in feveral patients at the hofpital. Not one of thefe cafes was fucceeded by the different fymptoms in the fexes: but at the very fame time there was a remarkable number of inftances of inflamed breafts and teftes without any known caufe whatever f.

• Hernia humoralis, and fpafmodic affections about the neck of the bladder and urethra are fometimes of general occurrence. In

Contemporary inftances of gouty inflammation, frequently obfervable in confequence of flight cafual irritation, feem allo ftrikingly to evince the power of epidemical caufes in predisposing parts to be variously affected.'

Thefe ulcerations were widely different from those about the mouth which are of common occurrence in mercurial courfes.'

Inftances of this kind, and of the retroceffion of gouty and erythematous inflammation, may poflibly one day prove fome kind of fimilarity of structure or function, in diftant parts, affected together, or in fucceffion, by the fame caufes.'

January,