ART. IX.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.-A popular Treatise on Medical Philosophy; or an exposition of Quackery and Imposture in Medicine. By CALEB TICKNOR, M. D. New York: Gould and Newman. 1838. 12mo. pp. 273.

THIS is the era of quackery-it flourishes like the green bay tree. It is not medical quacks alone, that thrive and fatten : we have quacks in morals, politics, religion, and literature, temperance quacks, abolition quacks, education quacks, quacks innumerable. When the schoolmaster has been so long abroad, and when the spirit of inquiry is the characteristic of the age, it is passing strange that so many people should suffer themselves to be humbugged. Thousands are daily quacked out of comfort, out of temper, out of health, out of money, out of their senses,—and lastly, into their graves. A more fertile theme does not at present occur to our mind, than that which exposes quackery, no matter in what form; and we have long wished that some able writer would devote his talent to expose a system founded in fraud, and carried on to an alarming extent by the unhallowed spirit of gain. To the author of the work before us our thanks are due, for the able and fearless manner in which he has handled quacks in medicine, whether in or out of the profession-he has struck at the root of the evil, and treated them like a philosopher: withal, there is neither personality nor vindictiveness in a single line he has written; his sole aim seems to have been to contribute to the welfare of the community, as well as to advance the honor and dignity of a profession, of which he proves himself to be a most worthy member.

Chapter fifteenth is intended for his professional brethren, the rest of the volume for the public generally. The excellent arrangement of his plan, and the ability with which he has conducted it, will do, we should think, much good; no one can rise from the perusal of the work without improvement. It will not enable him to be his own physician, but it will make him shun quack medicines, and abhor those who vend them. It requires both taste and judgment for a medical man to avoid technical obscurities, and write in a style adapted to general comprehension; this our author has done, and having done it, deserves due praise.

The author begins with a very cursory history of the origin of medicine; then gives a general view of the human body and its divisions of the anatomy of the digestive organs, and the diseases to

which they are liable. To this follows some account of the curious quack medicines, bepuffed in advertisements, and bepraised in certificates, as sovereign specifics for the cure of these multifarious diseases. We see at a glance the villany of the quacks who vend them; we see the absolute impossibility of any one medicine, or combination of medicines, being a certain cure in any one disease, much less that any one medicine is a panacea—an infallible remedy in every complaint.

We wish we had room to quote (pp. 50-53) the edifying history of the rise and fortunes of a famous quack cathartic pill, invented by two rogues, to impose upon the public, and fill their own pockets; the tricks used to get certificates of wonderful cures―the system of puffing, &c., whereby the inventors made a great fortune, and laughed in their sleeves at their dupes. We must refer all pillswallowers to the book itself for this laughable account. Doctor Ticknor adds, in concluding it: "If the history of the quack medicines, so much in vogue at the present day, could be accurately ascertained, there is little doubt that a tale similar to the above could be told of nearly all."

We have no doubt of it—at least we have no doubt, that nine tenths of such medicines are impostures, and believed to be such on the part of the inventors.

The author tells another truth, which we recommend to the particular attention of those concerned; it only illustrates a position that we have long been inclined to hold-that there is no presuming too much on human "gullibility:"

"It is an indisputable fact that in this city, and the same is probably true of other cities in the United States, a great majority, if not four fifths of the quacks, are of foreign origin; writing after their name, graduated at Edinburgh,' having studied at Glasgow,' recently from Paris,' 'licentiate of the Royal College at London' of the University of Halle;' but many, we believe, might with more propriety be dubbed renegades from Botany Bay, or graduates of Old Bailey. It is difficult to decide which affords the most fit subjects for our astonishment, the unblushing impudence of the empiric or the downright stupidity, or as it is sometimes called, gullibility, of those who take his nostrums. People who claim to have common sense, and who manifest it on most other ocasions men who are educated and enlightened and who feel as though they occupy no small space in society, and wield no little influence over their fellow men, are quite as prone to follow in the wake of some notorious quack, and to sing hosannas to his name, as those of less pretensions."- p. 53.

The author speaks of cathartics, as one of the articles vended by quacks for the cure of all manner of diseases. We, who see the papers teeming with advertisements, and the walls beplastered with handbills, should deem such to be the most largely sold. We wish every body exposed to be taken in, could read what the author says of the effects of their indiscriminate use. (pp. 56-60.)

There is one truth, we are glad to see put in such a clear light as it is in this book. It may do some good to the dupes of Graham

and the bran bread system. It is this: that the appetite of a healthy man, in nine times in ten, is his best guide as to what is good for him—if his taste and smell approve of the viands before him, there is little danger of being injured by moderate indulgence. By the way, of bran bread; the author gives an affecting account of the wretched effects of an apparently infatuated adherence to this article, upon the late lamented Professor Averill. "Died of Graham," it seems, might be written over his grave.

We also learn, that one free from disease need not swallow pills to avoid disease—the stomach is never idle; if not doing good it is doing harm, and if loaded with disagreeable and unnatural potions, it may create that, which, by their use, it was intended to avoid.

Chapter fifteenth, we have no remarks to make upon we leave that for the medical faculty to settle among themselves; but as a "looker on in Venice," we should say it ought to do good.

The last chapter, "of the influence of the clergy in causing and perpetuating empiricism"-we recommend it to the perusal of those for whom it is intended-the author treats them with great respect. May he who, reading it, condemns himself, amend.

We must now close this hasty notice, with a fervent wish, that "Ticknor on the Philosophy of Medicine" may be generally readit cannot fail to do good. A word or two to the author in closing: some portions of his work seem to have been written in haste, and more attention is evidently paid to matter, than manner. A careful revision will show him the necessity, if it should come to a second edition, of some corrections in the text.

One thing more. The author should add another chapter to his book. It should be: on the agency of the newspaper press in promoting the influence of Quackery. We believe it to be immoral. Our newspapers even those whose conductors would shrink from giving the slightest direct countenance to any thing so injurious and immoral-are full, every day, of advertisements and puffs of quack medicines and quack practitioners, many of them of the most indecent kind. We have not room to take up this subject now: it deserves a full exposition. There are many things, no doubt, that can be said and urged on the other side; concerning which all that we can do now is to lay down, fearless of being overthrown, the broad assertion, that nothing can be said which will morally justify the agency of the press in this matter.

2.-The River and the Desart; or Recollections of the Rhone and the Chartreuse. By MISS PARDOE. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart. 1838. 2 vols. 12mo.

THE utter worthlessness of these volumes is their only claim to notice-a public journal is bound to caution the community not to waste money on such blotted paper. It is the third attempt of this lady to palm off her nonsense and inanity by an imposing title; and in every instance, the silly affectation of it should have excited a suspicion that it was used only as a lure for the simple ones. Traits and Traditions of Portugal-The City of the Sultan-The River and the Desart-there is no difficulty in divining for what shelves and for what hands, books with such titles are intended. In her former works there was some little merit-here and there a page of pleasant reading; in the one now noticed, there is absolutely nothing; and yet no where out of Italy is there a more delightful region to ramble in, or one yielding more to fill the traveller's eye and mind, than that which it professes to describe. The Rhone has its story and song, its contrasts of grandeur and beauty, its sunny-side hills and smiling valleys, its rich vineyards and its crumbling ruins, scarcely inferior to the Rhine-the wild scenery of Dauphiny-the lofty heights of the maritime Alps, with the blue waters of the Mediterranean rolling at their base-Avignon with its pontifical recollections-Vaucluse, that still echoes, as Dupaty says, with the names of Petrarch and Laura-the minstrelsy of Provence-Nismes, and Arles, and Aix, with their monuments of former glory:-all these, we should think, might have furnished the author with sufficient of interesting matter for her volumes, and spared us the dull and wearisome details about Marseilles, which now occupy so large a part of them-and Marseilles, every one knows, has little to gratify the curiosity of the scholar or the lover of nature.

We cannot discover any thing to commend in Miss Pardoe's books; she has no talent for description, no originality of thought, and no beauty of language; if they do not deserve to be classed among the miserable trash which the press is now pouring out to enfeeble and corrupt the mind, they are but one degree removed from it. Her taste is surely not the most delicate; there is internal evidence enough that she is not over scrupulous with respect either to language or topics; and a fair inference may be made, from a passage in the letter giving an account of her arrival in Paris, that she has not been particularly choice in her own reading, and that her writings are not likely to be the most profitable to young readers of her own sex. The passage referred to is as follows:

"I left England with the hope that I should effect an acquaintance with M. Hugo. You know how anxious I was to see and converse with him, how ardently I admire the originality and power of his genius, and how much I worship talent." However much she may worship talent, there is no danger of her becoming an object of idolatry on the same account.

3. Historical Causes and Effects, from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Reformation. By WILLIAM SULLIVAN. Boston: 1838. 12mo. pp. 606.

THE public are indebted to the author of this volume for several excellent works upon subjects of the highest interest, particularly adapted to early instruction. The publication of his Political and Moral and Historical Class Books, forms an important era in the history of education in our country-they are of themselves far more sufficient to instruct our youth in several of the most important classes of their duties, than all the means before within their reach. In fact, Mr. Sullivan is fairly entitled to the credit of having first introduced the study of the nature and principles of our government into the schools; his political class book was exactly the thing needed for the purpose, and we rejoice that he has the satisfaction of knowing the great instrumentality he has had in calling attention to this very important subject. No commendation too high can be bestowed upon a gentleman of his elevated rank and professional eminence, for laboring so earnestly and perseveringly to increase the means of imparting valuable knowledge to the young, and we know not to what higher purpose leisure, experience, learning, and talent can be applied-it seems to be coming back again to the days of Socrates and Plato, of Cicero and Quintilian, when we find such men as Mr. Sullivan, Justice Story, President Duer, and some others in our own country, Lord Brougham, Guizot, and Cousin, in Europe, employing their time in whole or in part on books of instruction for young men. With such ends, education must triumph, and its triumph is the certain improvement of mankind.

Mr. Sullivan possesses many qualities in addition to those of a finished and elegant writer, and of a man of learning, which eminently qualify him for the task he has undertaken; he has been a careful and discreet looker on during the greater part of our existence as a nation; he has held many important political trusts; he has been intimate with the wisest and best men the country has produced; his views of our government are the result of practical observation, and he does not believe that a nation can be wise and virtuous, unless there is knowledge and integrity in the individuals. which compose it. With such an expounder of our constitution and government it is safe to trust the principles of our young men. His last work deserves a fuller notice than we have now room for. It is the best digest of history, from the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West to the Reformation, extant in our language. It is written in the same simple and beautiful style which has marked all his works; its arrangement is clear and convenient; it exhibits throughout accurate research and faithful report of facts,