tion of the lungs followed, which was suddenly fatal on the 11th of February, 1822. He was but 68 years of age, and it is probable that if we had possessed a little earlier those means of obtaining information in chest affections which we now have, he would still have been alive and full of activity. The place he occupied in the Academy was filled. by M. Chaussier, and that in the College of France by M. Laennec, who also has since been cut off very young from a profession which he had already enriched, and to which he had promised still more important discoveries.*

LETTER TO JEAN NOEL HALLÉ.

"The history of your life, can well attest the sufferings which a medical man of fine feelings has to endure; and, therefore, I shall find indulgence, if I venture to impart to you some sentiments respecting the trying hours of our profession. No one will better understand me.

"It was but the painful sequel to a much tried life, when at the age of 68, shortly before your death, you submitted to the anguish of lithotomy, which nothing but the force of resignation could have enabled you to sustain with your habitual gentleness.†

"To what extent you were the protector, the friend, and the helper of the poor, was shown in a time when a part of mankind had ceased to be human.

"It was yours to experience what it is to serve others with our whole soul, and yet to be misjudged by them, and then, as it were by the majesty of innocence, to compel esteem from the madman.

* From the collection of Eloges historiques, read at the meetings of the Royal Institution of France, by Baron Cuvier..

+ Cuvier, Eloges historiques. Paris, 1827. T. iii, p. 345.

"The hound set on against his benefactor often recognizes him in the moment of attack, and instead of tearing, covers him with caresses.

"In the tumult of unbridled passion, you were enabled to preserve calmness of mind for yourself and others.

"To you it was permitted to visit Malesherbes in his imprisonment, and to receive his farewell; you drew up the petition for Lavoisier.

"Could the stones of Paris speak, they would testify that you alone wiped away the tears of the sorrowing.

"Every project in medicine tending to the benefit of society might safely reckon on you as its patron and protector. How untiringly did you contribute to the spread of Vaccination!

"You have kept no record of personal sacrifices and thanks received; where the deficit lay it is easy to divine.

"You acted benevolently with a full participating heart; you were rather surprised when in any case gratitude followed, than shocked when it was wanting.

"Franklin relates that he lent a sum of money, and when the debtor would have returned it to him, he requested him to lend it to some other person in similar need, and so on continually. Thus did you consider property as a deposit -a debt to be discharged.

"But if the physician works with his mind as Fenelon teaches that men ought generally to work, is it not true that the burden of the profession, or rather the addition of selfishness, often presses like lead on his heart?

"Those who are conversant only with business or mechanical employments, can scarcely imagine what a heavy heart the medical man takes with him out of the house of death.

"There are indeed physicians who look upon disease and death merely in the abstract, and who would seem to have to do not with the sick but with sickness, not with the dying

but with death, who practise lege artis, and content themselves with common-place morality; with such I shall not trouble you.

"Neither does death awake any overwhelming compassion, in cases where the cessation of suffering appears as a benefit.

"In such instances, sickness deals with the invalid as a gardener does with a tree which he wishes to transplant, and whose roots he therefore carefully loosens from the soil. The separation from their accustomed habits and relations takes place then so gradually that it comes to be considered like the natural result of preceding changes.

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"But how is it when a dangerous illness falls like a rocket into the house, and now none but the physician can save? when the life sinks, not gradually and gently like the fluttering of a leaf before it falls from the tree, or the stopping of a watch, but when Nature, like a tragedian, seems to have compressed the most affecting scenes into the last act? Exhausted, returns the medical man to his house, solacing himself with the hope of forgetting the toils of the day, and renewing his strength in refreshing sleep; when lo! at midnight he is summoned to a child who is dying of croup. The parents welcome him as an angel from heaven; it is the first time for days that they have attended to any one but their own child; they hang breathless on his expressions; they scan his features to extract from them his thoughts; they draw hope from every question, every direction, every gesture; the mother smiles at him in half desponding thanks because the child is quiet; the father in emotion grasps him by the hand; but the quiet is of short duration, the child can cough no more, it bends its head backwards, it stretches out its limbs convulsively to breathe-in vain, it expires.

"Who else is now the companion to the physician besides the groaning lamentations of the stricken parents?

"Should he hereafter lose a friend, one perhaps on whom he has cheerfully expended years of toil, self-denial, self-sacrifice, where can he turn for pity?

"From the furnace of his anxieties he is followed by the sighs only of those who intimately share them; few concern themselves about him, who is nevertheless harassed and worn down by his efforts to assuage the woes of others.

"Another practitioner goes with a heart oppressed with grief to his chamber; he is immediately called to a woman in labour, and compelled to perform the operation of craniotomy.

"Nor is it enough that in critical and decisive moments he draws, like the orphan boy in a lottery, he knows not whether a prize or a blank; that, like a swimmer, he has to struggle with the apparent dead; that, like a father confessor, he has to speak consolation at the very gallows, -no, he must pass the ordeal of ignorant and perverted judgments. In thus running the gauntlet of reproaches on the one hand, and envious joy on the other, he must sustain himself by his conscious innocence, as men who are undergoing operations or suffering pain bite a bullet to prevent them crying out.

"For the dying there is an Euthanasia, for the mourner a visit of condolence, but who concerns himself about the suffering physician? And yet he has most frequently to experience that in bereavements the tears of survivors become like aquafortis to his soul, and that powerlessness to save others curdles as it were his own blood.

"But I hear you exclaim, 'O desine renovare dolores!' and therefore I will cease to complain, and solace myself with the hope, that as in other respects there have been improvements in the condition of the medical man, so there will be also in regard to consideration shown to their feelings.

"He who has read the letters of Zimmermann which

appeared after his death, will remember that medical attendants in noble houses were formerly accommodated with a seat but not with a chair, and that domestic physicians were permitted to use riding horses but not leather bridles.

"There is no word of more frequent recurrence in Japan than 'Patience!' Golownin's journey and the narrative of his captivity in that country suffices to teach the European physician contentment. You indeed practised patience and resignation so thoroughly, that you may justly claim the palm of victory."

REMARKS ON THE LETTER TO JEAN NOEL HALLÉ.

This letter is one of the most interesting of the collection, whether we consider the history of the person to whom it is addressed, or the simple yet powerful painting of medical trials which it contains.

These trials are such as pertain to the Physician,* not as he is a man merely, but as he is a medical man; and they are such as attend not merely the practitioner who is maintaining a hard struggle for a livelihood, though on him of course they press with double weight, they affect also the prosperous and successful.

The trials, here described, may be chiefly classed under two heads the sorrows of sympathy and the sorrows of isolation.

The first of these, the sorrows of sympathy, especially pertain to the medical profession, and woe to him who enters into it without a full appreciation of his requirements in this respect, for his duty and conduct will then

* The reader will mark the wide signification given in the German work to the term physician, the text will sufficiently show that it is of medical practice generally of which the author and the editor are speaking.