a new Hippocrates. Madame Jacintha would have preferred that the canonist had commenced by making his will; she even gave him some hints on the subject, but besides not thinking himself near his end, he was rather obstinate in certain respects. Accordingly I went in search of Dr. Sangrado, and brought him to the house. He was tall, sinewy, and pale, and for at least forty years had given constant occupation to the scissors of the Parcæ. This learned doctor was of grave exterior. He weighed well his words, and gave a noble turn to his expressions, his reasoning appeared geometrical, and his opinions very singular. After having closely observed my master, he said to him in learned accents: It is necessary in this case to supply the defect of a check of perspiration. Other people in my place would prescribe without doubt saline remedies, volatiles, etc., which for the most part precipitate sulphur and mercury. But purgatives and sudorifics are pernicious drugs, the inventions of charlatans; all chemical preparations seem only composed to inflict injury. For my part I employ means more simple and sure. What,' continued he, 'is your accustomed diet.' 'I eat,' replied the canonist, prawns and succulent food.' 'Prawns and succulent food!' exclaimed the Doctor with surprise. Now, indeed, I am no longer astonished at your illness. Delicate dishes are poisoned pleasures, they are the traps which luxury sets for the sure destruction of men. You must abandon epicurean dainties; the most tasteless dishes are best for the health. As the blood is insipid, it requires meats which partake of its own nature. Do you also drink wine?' added he. 'Yes,' said the licentiate, wine mingled with water." "Oh, mingled to your taste!' replied the doctor, 'what intemperance! what a horrible diet! You ought to have died long ago. How old are you?' 'I am entering upon my sixty-ninth year,' replied the canonist. 'Precisely,' replied the doctor, an anticipated old age is always the fruit of intemperance. If through life your drink had never been anything but pure water, and you had contented yourself with a simple nourishment, baked apples for example, peas, or beans, you would not now be tormented with the gout, and all your limbs would yet easily perform their functions. Still I do not despair of putting you on your feet, provided you abandon yourself to my directions.' "The licentiate, epicure though he was, promised to obey him in all things. Sangrado thereupon sent me in search of a surgeon, whom he named, and caused to be drawn from my master six good pallets of blood, to commence supplying the defect of perspiration; he then said to the surgeon, Mr. Martin Onez, come back in three hours and do the same, and to that morrow you will recommence; it is an error to suppose blood is necessary to the preservation of life; one cannot bleed a patient too much. As he is not compelled to any considerable exercise or movement, he requires no more blood to sustain life than a man who is asleep; life in each case only consists in the pulse and respiration." The good canonist, supposing that so great a doctor could not reason falsely, permitted himself to be bled without resistance. When the doctor had ordered frequent and copious bleedings, he said it was also necessary to give each moment to the patient warm water; assuring that boiled water in abundance could pass for the true specific against every ill. He left, assuring us that he would answer for the life of the canonist, if he were treated in the manner prescribed. The housekeeper, who perhaps formed a different opinion of his method than what he did, protested that it should be followed with exactitude-in fact, we promptly began boiling water, and as the doctor had recommended us, above all things, not to be sparing of it, we began by making our master drink two or three pints at a draught, and an hour afterwards we repeated the dose again; returning to the charge from time to time, we poured into his stomach a deluge of water, whilst on the other hand, the surgeon seconding us by the quantity of blood which he drew; in less than two days we reduced the aged canonist to extremity. The poor ecclesiastic being able to endure no more, whilst I was trying to make him swallow a large glass of the specific, said to me, in a feeble voice, 'Stop, Gil Blas, do not, my friend, give me any more; I see that it is necessary I should die, despite the virtue of water; and though I have hardly a drop of blood remaining in my veins, I am none the better; a fact which proves that the most able doctor in the world cannot prolong one's life, when its fated limit has arrived. I must then prepare to depart for another world." Gil Blas, going in search of the notary to draw up his master's will, the latter asks him the name of the doctor; "I replied, it was Dr. Sangrado. At this name, seizing his hat and cloak in haste, Good God!' he exclaimed, let us be off at once, for this doctor is so expeditious that he never gives time for the lawyers to arrive. That man has robbed me of many testamentary fees!" Had this victim of hydropathy and phlebotomy fallen into the hands of the opposite school, and the probang taken the place of the lancet, would he have prolonged his allotted time, or would he not rather, instead of going gently out like a candle, have ended his days in excruciating torture? Medicine is founded on numerous rules resulting from experiment, and fortified by observation; but the thin partitions which divide one case from another, form the barriers between life and death. The responsibility which the medical man feels, is not the value of human life, but the dread of a loss of faith on the part of the community. Two rival schools are established-like opposition steamboats, each seeks to land the greatest number in the shortest time; graduates are solicited, the way is smoothed for ignorance. Let loose upon the public with a diploma, accident directs their fatal shafts; dead men tell no tales, gratified heirs ask no questions. If a rival brother takes up the theme, Latin names, assured manners, and public lectures silence the community; and the doctor, the apothecary, and the undertaker restore our mouldering bodies to the great mother earth from whence we came, to enter into new combinations, and continue the eternity of matter. Yet temporary specifics are not unavailing, they extend the onward march of commerce. When temperance lectures had prevented or reduced the public sale of brandy, a new bitters brings it, Phoenix-like, to birth again, and they who would grudge a shilling for the honest tipple, will spend a dollar for the labelled nostrum, or the Aromatic Schnapps. It has been suggested that consumption, the bane of our country, is but the too speedy burning away of the fibres of the system; that any fatty matter which will supply extraneous fuel, if it cannot cure, will at least keep the patient in his present state; that cod-liver oil, peculiarly combined with iodine, as it is, is a universal specific for this disease. Cod-fish were formerly the cheapest articles of food, but the dictum went forth, and the price of cod-fish rose, and they became a great staple of commerce, a mighty source of wealth to the toiling fisherman. In a metropolitan paper we meet the advertisement of one whose condensed family medicines claim to occupy the middle ground between allopathy, homoeopathy, and the collateral branches of the healing art, embracing the good of all systems without their defects; put up in compact cases, with directions for prompt use by individuals and families." If this advertisement be true, we have made great progress in the art, and have no longer to dread lengthy doctors' bills and fatal results. He too must be a great man who can thus reconcile hostile creeds and rival schools. If it be not so, not only may we reproach the journal which, for a few shillings, sends this lure to destruction into 30,000 hands, but we may justly doubt the wisdom of a college that could give a diploma to one who acknowledges merit in those she bitterly condemns. The following novel method of treating consumption, we submit to the public-it is termed "Mortopathy," and is heralded by the author, as in advertising card, through the pub lic prints; it is hoped that it may not be unintelligible to the public, whom it is proposed to enlighten and relieve: "First put the patient into a warm medicated bath, into which is poured a continuous current of negative electricity. This chemically destroys the oily acids and other impurities of the cuticle, setting free all scrofulous and morbific humors-not only those upon the surface, but inviting the whole organism, and the 13 miles of excretory vessels in the system, to throw off by those natural channels the dead and impure matter in the circulation. Then, while the myriads of mouths freed of their contents, are open to take in the chemical food of the second bath, the patient is removed to it. To this second bath has been previously added some of the blood-renewing and purifying chemicals, as the hypophosphites of lime and soda, the phosphate of potassa, phosphoric acid, phosphate of iron or some of the sulphurets, as indicated by the temperament, disease, or idiosyncrasy of the patient. These chemical aliments are alterative and nourishing, and capable of repairing losses in many parts of the body; and the little, hungry mouths of the absorbents suck in the stimulating nourishment. The electric currents from the positive pole of the chemical battery which is applied to this bath, powerfully co-act with the efforts of nature, which are always in the endeavor to carry healthy deposits to the parts where most needed. Diseased nature is ever thirsting after healthy supplies, and in the effort to remove disease. "The alternating between these two baths will at once be seen to possess great advantages in scrofulous diseases, and in all complaints connected with, or dependent upon impurities of the blood. "Articles to the same end are given by the mouth, by enemas and by inhalation, in consumption and bronchitis, to break up tubercular deposits, heal ulcers, and restore tone and freedom of action to the air passages. In some cases of lung disease, medicated oils are used over the chest and body on removal from the second bath, to break up night sweats and to keep up a continued stimulation from the absorbents of the skin; an object of essential consideration in diseases of this nature. "These together are valuable auxiliaries to the peculiar stimulation of cold baths and the invigoration of the Motorpathic treatment; which last permeates and braces up, as with fibres of strength and vitality, the whole system, not only freeing it from disease, but building up the constitution, and making it a life battery of power." To determine with certainty the issues of life and death, is the province of no man. But to push with eyes open on destruction, when the interests of another are at stake, to wipe out from the list of the living a respected member of society, and attempt to exculpate error by raking up the early weaknesses of youth, when wholly irrelevant to the subject, is to insult family grief, and outrage the common-sense of a great and enlightened community. HON. SMITH ELY, JR., STATE SENATOR. THE position of a member of the Senate of the Empire State is, from the great interests continually there discussed, one of even more real importance than that of a representative in our Federal Congress. Hamilton and Burr-names connected by a rivalry which, beginning in generous emulation for distinction, ended in terminating prematurely the career of the one, and overshadowing the remaining years of the other-first started in public life in the legislature of this State. Rufus King, the distinguished Federalist, afterwards United States Minister at the Court of St. James, here first gave proof of those talents to which political enemies were proud to do justice; whilst John Jay, the two Clintons, Colden, and Philip Van Cortlandt, here sat in solemn deliberation in times past. In more recent years, Martin Van Buren studied in these legislative halls the science of politics, and the art of controlling men, which he afterwards made use of to ascend, and fill with honor, the Presidential chair. Marcy, who was declared by England's Prime Minister to be, in his day, the greatest of living statesmen-Dix, and Dickinson, both transferred to the Senate of the United States-Silas Wright, the ablest native genius New York has produced-Gouverneur Morris, Michael Hoffman, Seward, Preston King, and many others, achieved their reputation at Albany. The judicial power which the Senate formerly enjoyed, when acting under the name of the Court for the Correction of Errors, as the highest appellate tribunal in the State, has been abolished by modern legislation; but the power it has thus parted with is compensated for by the press of business and the enlarged interests incident to the vast progress which the State of New York has made, during the last few years, in population and wealth. This progress has been greatly accelerated by developing the natural resources of the State, and particularly by the opening of that great canal which brings the produce of the regions bordering on our vast lakes, to that mighty canal of naturethe beautiful Hudson-on whose broad bosom they are wafted to the Empire City, whence, again, transatlantic steam communication bears them to the different European marts and the distant climes of South America. One would suppose that New York, the third city in the world, and first in America, |