to the overthrow of many errors, and to the discovery of new physiological and pathological principles; which has prompted its professors to exertions that have eminently contributed to the general adoption of a more judicious treatment of many disorders, to the rejection of numerous inert substances inserted into the materia medica, and to the augmentation of the list of those of approved medicinal virtues ; to a more liberal use of vigorous remedies and to a more bold and successful method of practice.

This view of the laws regulating the communication of contagious disorders proposed by dr. Hosack, greatly limits the ground of controversy; and I am gratified in adding, that it has met with a most favourable reception with the physicians of Europe, and has reflected great honor on the state of medical learning in this country. (See the London Ann. Med. Review, for 1809; the Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal.) For more able details on the subjects of contagion and infection, and for the histories of various epidemics which have prevailed in the United States, the reader will consult that valuable periodical journal, the Medical Repository, edited by drs. Mitchill, Smith, and Miller; the Philadelphia Medical Museum, by dr. Coxe; the American Medical and Philosophical Register, conducted by drs. Hosack and Francis ; and the Massachusetts Medical Communications.

The following note refers to the account of Bacon and Coke, in the 16th page, and was accidentally omitted.

Having frequently referred to Francis Bacon, (lord Verulam, and viscount st. Albans,) it may not be amiss to mention his melancholy fall. Pope says,

"If parts allure thee, think how Bason shined,

The brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind."

In March, 1620, a committee of the house of commons, appointed to inquire into abuses in the courts of justice, reported specific charges of corruption against him in the execution of his office of lord chancellor of England. His antagonist, sir Edward Coke, who was then a member, was one of the committee appointed to draw up the charges against him; and he was finally impeached before the house of lords. He at first avoided an investigation on the plea of sickness; but finally, on the 30th of April, he made a humble and contrite confession, and admitted that, pendente lite, he had received large sums of money, and other douceurs, from suitors in his court, and he was fined forty thousand pounds, impris

oned in the tower during the king's pleasure, rendered incapable of holding any office, place, or employment, and of sitting in parliament, or coming within the verge of the court. The king afterwards set him at liberty, and gave him a pension. He lived obscurely in his chambers at Gray's Inn, where his lonely and desolate condition so wrought upon his melancholy temper, that he pined away, and, after all his influence, he was reduced to so low an ebb as to be denied beer to quench his thirst; for, having a sickly stomach, and not liking the beer of the house, he sent now and then to lord Brook, who lived in the neighbourhood, for a bottle of his beer, and after some grumbling the butler had orders to deny him. He died on the 9th of April, 1626, in the sixty-sixth year of his age-a met ancholy example of great powers of mind connected with profligacy of heart.

Sir Edward Coke was tainted with the scholastic learning of the times, and was scurrilous and malignant in the extreme. As attorney general he conducted the prosecution for high treason against the illustrious sir Walter Raleigh, in the most barbarous manner. As a specimen of his manner I have made the following extracts:

"Here is mischief, mischief in summo gradu, exorbitant mischief. My speech shall touch these three points- mutation, supportation, and defence.”«

"There is treason in the heart, in the head, in the mouth, in consummation; comparing that in the corde to the root of a tree; in ore to the bud; in manu to the blossom; and that which is in consummatione to the fruit."

In the course of the trial several altercations took place between him and the prisoner; in one of which he thus addressed Raleigh :

"Thou hast a spanish heart, and thyself art a spider of hell."

At one time one of the court gently checked him, on which he sat down in a great rage, and would not proceed until after several urgent entreaties. At the repeating of some things Raleigh interrupted him and said he did him wrong, upon which the following curious dialogue took place, in which Raleigh handleđ him with great, but just, severity.

66

Attorney. Thou art the most vile and execrable traitor that ever lived. Raleigh. You speak indiscreetly, barbarouɛly, and uncivilly.

Attorney. I want words sufficient to express thy viperous treason.

Raleigh. I think you want words indeed; for you have spoken one thing half a dozen times.

Attorney. Thou art an odious fellow; thy name is hateful to all the realm of England for thy pride.

Raleigh. It will go near to prove a measuring cast between you and me, mr Attorney."

Raleigh was condemned, and was imprisoned fourteen years in the tower, where he devoted himself to study and writing. He was afterwards liberated.

T

and permitted to look for a mine in America, where, having given offence to the king of Spain, he was sacrificed to the resentment of that government, and exe cuted on his old sentence, in 1618. Just before his decapitation, he took the ax from the executioner, and, smiling, thus addressed the sheriff: "this is a sharp medicine, mr. Sheriff, but it is a physician that will cure all diseases." State Trials, vol. 1.

The following supplementary note relates to the 21st page.

Butler's satire against the Royal Society commences in the following strain: "A learn'd society of late,

The glory of a foreign state,
Agreed, upon a summer's night,

To search the moon by her own light,

To take an invent'ry of all

Her real estate and personal;

And make an actual survey

Of all her lands and how they lay."

The poem then proceeds to state that they pointed a telescope at the moon, and saw two armies engaged in desperate battle; and finally a huge elephant, which was supposed to have taken fright, and broken loose from one of the hostile armies; after several strange speculations upon these phenomena, and their preparing a memoir on the spot for insertion in the transactions of the society, a person present, who was not so deeply infected with this philosophical mania, discovered that the elephant was a mouse which had insinuated itself into the instrument. This threw the assembly into confusion, and finally they agreed to "unmount the tube and open it," when lo! the hostile armies appeared in the shape of

66 prodigious swarms

Offlies and gnats, like men in arms."

And the poem then concludes,

"But when they had unscrew'd the glass,

To find out where th' impostor was,
And saw the mouse that by mishap

Had made the telescope a trap,
Amaz'd, confonnded, and afflicted,
To be so openly convicted,

Immediately they get them gone,
With this discovery alone,
That those who greedily pursue
Things wonderful, instead of true,
That in their speculations choose
To make discoveries strange news,
And nat'ral history a gazette
Of tales stupendous and far fet;
Hold no truth worthy to be known,

That is not huge and overgrown,

And explicate appearances,

Not as they are, but as they please,

In vain strive nature to suborn,

And, for their pains, are paid with scorn."

The famous Cowley, who was one of the earliest members, addressed a complimentary poem to the Royal Society, in the form of a pindaric ode, which Sprat has prefixed to his history, and which appears to have mitigated his sufferings under the attacks of the hostile wits. Cowley, appears to have had the satire of Butler in his eye when he wrote the following lines :

"Mischief and true dishonour fall on those

Who would to laughter or to scorn expose

So virtuous and so noble a design,

So human for its use, for knowledge so divine.

The things which these proud men despise, and call

Impertinent, and vain, and small;

Those smallest things of nature let me know,

Rather than all their greatest actions do.

Whoever would deposed truth advance

Into the throne usurped from it,

Must feel at first the blows of ignorance,

And the sharp points of envious wit.

So when by various turns of the celestial dance,

In many thousand years

A star, so long unknown, appears,

Though heaven itself more beauteous by it grow,

It troubles and alarms the world below,

Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show."

148

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

I hope that this specimen of the effusions of two of the most celebrated wits of the age may not be considered as improper.

Dryden was also one of the earliest members of the Royal Society, and was finally excused from paying his arrears probably on account of his straightened circumstances. See Birch.

The Royal Society certainly afforded some ground for the ridicule that was cast upon them. Sprat says, "their manner of gathering and dispersing questions is this: First they require some of their particular fellows to examine all treatises and descriptions of the natural and artificial productions of those countries in which they would be informed. At the same time they employ others to discourse with the seamen, travellers, tradesmen, and merchants, who are likely to give them the best light. Out of this united intelligence from men and books they compose a body of questions concerning the observable things of those places." These questions, so framed, were dispersed to their correspondents in different quarters. Thus far the scheme was judicious, and was in general judiciously executed; but some of the questions were calculated to create mirth at the expense of the society. Sprat has published answers returned by a gentleman of Batavia to certain inquiries sent thither. Two of them are as follows:

"Whether in the island of Sambrero, which lyeth northwards of Sumatra, about eight degrees northern latitude, there be found such a vegetable as master James Lancaster relates to have seen, which grows up to a tree, shrinks down when one offers to pluck it up into the ground, and would quite shrink unless held very hard? and whether the same being forcibly plucked up, hath a worm for its root, diminishing more and more according as the tree groweth in greatness; and as soon as the worm is wholly turned into the tree, rooting in the ground, and so growing great? and whether the same plucked up young, turns, by that time it is dry, into a hard stone, much like to white coral?

"Answer. I cannot meet with any that ever have heard of such a vegetable. "What ground there may be for that relation concerning horns taking root. and growing about Goa ?

"Answer. Inquiring about this, a friend laught, and told me it was a jeer put upon the portuguese, because the women of Goa are counted much given to Techery."