in Great Britain, Dr. Philip thinks that it has not been sufficiently noticed or discriminated by medical men in general. From his description of the symptoms, however, (which is given with considerable minuteness and even prolixity,) the disease in question appears to us to be nothing more than the common pulmonary phthisis, occurring in an individual who was subject to disorders of the digestive organs; thus occasioning two sets of symptoms, which may exist at the same time, but which have no particular connection with each other. Any thing that deranges the functions of the stomach and bowels so much weakens all parts of the frame, that it is not surprizing if, in those who are predisposed to consumption of the lungs, this complaint should be brought on by dyspeptic affections: but we perceive no other reason for speaking of it as a dyspeptic phthisis, or for describing it as a peculiar species of disease.

Case of Inguinal Aneurism. By J. S. Soden, Esq. of Bath. -This aneurism was cured by tying the external iliac artery: the operation being performed according to the mode recommended by Mr. Abernethy, except that only one ligature was used, very thin, and of silk.' No untoward circumstance of any kind occurred, and the cure was completed after a moderate length of time.

Facts illustrating the Effects of the Venereal Disease on the Foetus in Utero. By William Hey, Esq. of Leeds.-An extensive practice in midwifery for 57 years givés a kind of oracular authority to Mr. Hey's judgment, and they are peculiarly valuable at a time when so much confusion prevails in opinions on the subject on which he writes. He does not hesitate to declare his conviction of the possibility of a proper syphilitic infection being transmitted from a father to the foetus, after all symptoms of the disease have been removed, and he is judged to be in perfect health;' and that, under these circumstances, he is capable of communicating the disease to his wife. Although satisfied of the fact, Mr. Hey confesses himself unable to account for it by any plausible hypothesis.

The volume concludes with an interesting paper by Dr. Marcet, on the Medicinal Properties of Stramonium: whence we learn that the extract of the Datura Stramonium relieves acute pains of various kinds more effectually than any other narcotic medicine.' The stramonium, or thorn-apple, had been principally known in this country as a vegetable poison, inducing a train of violent symptoms, which seemed to indicate that its action was principally on the nervous system; it was indeed partially known to the Germans, as an article of the materia medica: but its specific effect in relieving pain does

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does not seem to have attracted attention; and the same remark also applies to some experiments that were performed on it in America. The preparation which Dr. Marcet employed was an extract made from the seeds, and this he thought was decidedly more powerful than an extract from the whole plant. He gives this account of its effects, when administered in small doses:

'The most common effect in cases of chronic disease, attended with acute pain, is to lessen powerfully, and almost immediately, sensibility and pain; to occasion a sort of nervous shock which is frequently attended with a momentary affection of the head and eyes, with a degree of nausea, and with phænomena resembling those that are produced by intoxication; to excite in many instances nervous sensations, which are referred to the œsophagus, or bronchiæ, or fauces, and which sometimes amount to a sense of suffocation; to have rather a relaxing than an astringent effect upon the bowels; to have no marked influence upon the frequency of the pulse, though in a few instances it has appeared to render it somewhat slower; to produce but a transitory and inconsiderable dilatation of the iris and pupil; and to have but little immediate tendency to induce sleep, except from the state of comparative serenity and ease, which generally follows the symptoms I have just described.

'In some instances, however, as will be seen on perusing the annexed cases, the beneficial effects are obtained without the patient experiencing any of the uneasy sensations above-mentioned; while in a few others, the unpleasant consequences of the medicine have been experienced without any subsequent benefit.'

Dr. M. then relates fourteen cases in which the stramonium was employed; and he sums up the results in this paragraph:

Thus from the facts I have just laid before the Society, (the only ones that have yet come under my own observation respecting the effects of stramonium,) it would appear that in four cases of sciatica decided benefit was obtained. The efficacy of this remedy was still more strongly marked in two cases of sciatica combined with syphilitic pains. It failed entirely in two instances of diseased hip-joint. It produced considerable relief, as to pain, in a case of supposed disease of the spine followed by paraplegia; and likewise in one of cancer of the breast. It allayed materially the pain occasioned by an acute uterine disease. It was of great and repeated utility in a case of Tic douloureux; its utility in a second case of the same description was very doubtful; and in a third, it entirely failed.'

ART. XI. Twelve Lectures on the Prophecies relating to the Christian Church, and especially to the Apostacy of Papal Rome, preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn, from the Year 1811 to 1815; being the Ninth Portion of those founded by the Right Reverend William Warburton, Lord Bishop of Gloucester. By Philip Allwood, B. D., Fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge. 8vo. 2 Vols. 11. 4s. Boards. Rivingtons.

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T is stated by Mr. Allwood, in his preface, that he has attempted in these lectures to demonstrate the divine authenticity' of the prophetical Scriptures merely from the events with which many of their most striking predictions can be fully proved to correspond.'

'This,' continues the learned author, appeared to be the most simple, and at the same time the most powerful mode of arguing that could be adopted; for, if a fact, which has excited. the astonishment of mankind, or has been marked by any distinguishing and unprecedented peculiarity, which has given rise to the most important results, and has been altogether unforeseen, except perhaps from the hints derived from Revelation itself, by those who lived at the time, if such a fact shall, upon examination, be found to have been either expressly foretold, or very intelligibly described in figurative language, many ages before it occurred; then, without all doubt, the previous Revelation of it can only have proceeded from the communication of a being, who is infinite in knowledge, to foresee, and in power to bring to pass, such a circumstance as this. But if this mode of reasoning be allowed any weight, when applied to a single event, how much additional strength must it derive from its application to a great number of such instances of fulfilment; and more especially when they are discovered to form parts of a grand scheme of dispensation, the comprehension of the whole of which does far surpass man's understanding. How irrefragable does it become, when employed upon a train of unexampled events, which have succeeded each other for many centuries, in a regular and unbroken series, and according to an arrangement that had been previously and most explicitly described! Such is the principle which has formed the basis of the following disquisitions; and in order to afford it the more complete illustration, the subjects to which it is applied are resolved into two grand divisions,-the prophecies which relate to the periods that were prior to the dispersion of the Jewish nation, and to those which have been subsequent to it. The former of these is comprehended within the first and the latter within the second volume of the present work.'

The first lecture is an exposition of the text, "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed," which is made to denote the blessedness that was to attend the posterity of Abraham; and which, through the intervention of the appointed seed, was to be co-extensive with the existence of mankind :

'Such,'

Such,' says Mr. Allwood, is the blessedness comprehended in this glorious prophecy in its ultimate state of accomplishment: but unquestionably, every improvement in the state of mankind; every approach, generally speaking, among the sons of men, towards the being what they ought to be, must argue either an incipient or a progressive fulfilment of it. A prophecy, therefore, of this extent and importance has necessarily hitherto been only partially fulfilled. It comprehends the future as well as the present state of being; the ages that are yet to come as well as every past age since it was uttered.'

The above is a fair specimen of the generalities in which this work abounds; and we are sorry to say that it appears to us to be composed of barren declamation rather than of solid argument. It is easy to select some sentence in the Bible, to separate it from the context, and to make it prophetic of any thing that the writer finds suitable to his purpose; and the attempt is much facilitated when the supposed prophetic passage very contains neither time nor place, nor distinctive circumstance. On the present occasion, we see nothing which clearly marks that an allusion is made to any other person than to Abraham. National vanity was not less characteristic of the Jews than of other people; and, in celebrating the founder of their race, they pay a tribute to their own feeling of importance and desire of aggrandizement. Abraham, with his pastorał retinue, was at this time going to take possession of a more spacious and fertile country than he had left; and the historian relates that he did this under happy auspices. In the exaggerations of the eastern idiom, therefore, he was congratulated on the transfer of his abode to a more genial soil; and Jehovah himself is introduced as announcing the happiness which was about to be experienced by him and his posterity: but when, in addition to the other benedictions, it is said, "And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed," the words are surely to be understood with those limitations which all eastern hyperboles require: the "families" should be circumscribed within the posterity of Abraham ; and the "earth" must not be extended beyond the region of Judea.

The second lecture represents the Mosaic law as introductory to and typical of the Christian dispensation. The Mosaic law was well adapted to the moral and intellectual state of the people for whom it was designed: it was an accommodation to their ignorance: but to represent the whole as a sort of allegory, or to consider the cumbrous apparatus of ceremonies, of which it consisted, as containing so many symbols of what was to happen under a future dispensation, can have no other tendency than to exercise the imagination at the expence of the understanding. Symbolical interpretations of Scripture

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are vague and delusive; and to forsake the literal and grammatical sense for the typical and imaginary, is to relinquish the clear course of a strait path for the dark obliquities of a labyrinth. The typical explanations of Scripture can at best be only conjectural; and the conjecture itself, instead of arising out of intellectual research, is likely to be nothing more than the result of some favourite hypothesis or some preconceived opinion. Those, also, who delight in converting the ceremonial services of the Old Testament into a chequered allegory, should recollect that persons have not been wanting who have allowed only an allegorical verity to the miraculous relations in the New: but the critic, who venerates strict historical truth, will cautiously abstain from dissipating its substance or altering its features in the shadows of fiction.

Nothing has so much impeded the right interpretation of the Old Testament, and especially of those parts which are called prophetical, as the previous determination to adapt it to a particular hypothesis. The marginal notes and titular inscriptions in most of the common Bibles scarcely leave the reader at liberty to explore the genuine historical and critical sense, but fix the attention on some typical or allegorical interpretation, which is as different from the true as the ignis fatuus of a morass from the sun-beams in a clear sky.

Mr. Allwood, with the mass of commentators, converts Deuteronomy, xviii. 15. into a splendid prediction respecting the advent of Christ: but we conceive that the words," The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me," &c., when considered in connection with the context, are totally adverse to such an interpretation. Moses had been solemnly admonishing his countrymen against imitating the superstitious abominations of the people, whose land they were going to possess; and he particularly dissuades them from placing. any confidence in their soothsayers, and diviners: intimating that they would always have a more trusty monitor, and a more sure guide, in the prophets which God would successively employ as the interpreters of his will.. The word ', which occurs in the original, does not (as Rosenmuller has remarked) refer to any particular prophet, as Joshua or Christ, but is used in a collective sense to signify that persons would not be wanting among the Israelites, through whom God would maintain an intercourse with his people in a manner similar to that which he had vouchsafed by the medium of Moses. Many of the commentators lay great stress on the words " a prophet like unto me," as if they were applicable only to Christ: but Moses, as the context demon

strates,