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uncle Peter may be offended, and old Nat. Curmudgeon, who has promised to stand god-father, forget him in his will. Peter Nathaniel,' accordingly exclaimed the black ruffian, when he dashed the water over my piteous countenance.

"It was of less consequence, for the curtain was now about to fall. I felt too weak to resist this contumely, and submitted to be placed on the bed of my sorrowing parent. She gently laid me on her bosom, and the sight was so affecting that the bearded barbarian, papa, seemed to be moved by it. He dropped some consolatory words, and said, if any thing could restore me, that loved bosom would. I was sorry to be obliged to agree with the murderer in any one opinion, though I felt I was departing; but in truth this soft and yielding breast was delightful whereon to rest my fevered cheek. I raised my little hand towards it—I threw the latest glance of my closing eye upon it-I drew one draught of nature from its fountain-I uttered one short sigh-I had for one moment tasted an earthly heaven, and for an everlasting heaven I winged my flight." With this beautiful sentence, Baby concluded his auto-biography.

In the press, and will soon be published at this office, A COMPENDIOUS HISTORY OF THE ASIATIC, OR SPASMODIC CHOLERA, including an account of its causes, and the best means of prevention and of cure.

ORIGIN, SYMPTOms, and Cure of THE INFLUENZA, OR EPIDEMIC Catarrh, with some hints respecting common colds, and incipient Pulmonary Consumption, pp. 80. Published at the office of the Journal of Health, No. 121 Chesnut street, Philadelphia.

THE MONTHLY AMERICAN JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY AND NATURAL SCIENCE, conducted by G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Esq. is published on the first of every month -Price $3 50 per annum, in advance.

JOURNAL OF INSTRUCTION. Published semi-monthly, at the office of the Journal of Health, No. 121 Chesnut street, Philadelphia, in quarto form-$1 25 per annum, payable in advance.

SICK HEADACHE. Just published and for sale by all the principal booksellers causes, cure, and means of preventing the sick headache-by James Mease, M. D., member of the American Philosohical Society, &c. 3d edition. This work has met with the most decided approbation of the public press, and will be found a very valuable addition to all family libraries.

THE EFFECTS OF THE PRINCIPAL ARTS, TRADES, AND PROFESSIONS, and of the civic states, and habits of living, on Health and longevity. This work is expressly calculated for all classes of mechanics, manufacturers and field labourers, as well as for the different professions. Cheap edition: price 37 1-2 cents.

PORTER'S CATECHISM OF HEALTH; or, plain and simple rules for the preservation of the Health and vigour of the constitution, from infancy to old age. Dedicated to the youth of both sexes, throughout the United States, as well as to their parents and guardians. Cheap edition-price 37 1-2 cents.

THALES THE MILESIAN, one of the seven wise men of Greece, and addicted to astronomy, while gazing very intently at the stars, fell into a pit, for which he was laughed at by an old woman, who happened to be near, and who told him that he had better first learn how to govern his own movements, before he pretended to study those of the heavenly bodies. The rebuke, though not without point, might have been spared, considering how really useful and profitable were the astronomical speculations and discoveries of Thales. We mention the anecdote, however, for the purpose of hinting to some of our city councils, and sundry editors of newspapers, that their zeal might have a much more profitable direction in the interests of the public health, if, at this time, in place of straining their mental vision : across the Atlantic, to try and make out the occult causes of cholera-and failing to do so, to assume for it a character not proved, they were to look at home and inquire into the numerous 'pits' of disease into which we are all daily liable to stumble.

The Board of Aldermen of New York, acting as a Board of Health, have, we understand, petitioned Congress to take measures for preventing the Cholera reaching our shores; and recommended that a medical commission be sent to England (Europe) to inquire into the nature of the disease. We have strong doubts of the competency of the worthy Aldermen to act as members of a Board of Health; nor do we think that their action as such, comes within their attributes. Their suggestions indicate a very sufficient ignorance of the subject, as well as conVOL. III.-23

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vey a more than implied insult to the physicians not only of their own city, but of the United States. Why did the self-constituted Board of Health not petition Congress, or, if it was not in session at the time, request the President, to prohibit the arrival on our shores of the Influenza, and to establish a non-intercourse with that vile easterly wind, which Lord Bacon tells us is neither good for man nor beast. The ability of Congress to keep off the Cholera, even were it, agreeably to the suggestions of some of our newspapers, to establish a cordon along the whole seaboard, is about as questionable, or rather is just as improbable, as to keep off the Influenza, or our yellow or bilious fevers. All attempts of this nature have utterly failed in Europe, even when enforced by the whole array of civil and military police-in fact, by entire armies. Despite of all the cordons and triple cordons, St. Petersburgh and Vienna and Berlin have been visited by the Cholera. It is enough for us to suffer from apprehension beforehand, and perhaps the ravages of the disease ultimately; but, in the name of humanity, let us be exempt from the barbarous restrictions, the perpetual vexations, and the interruptions to business and pleasure, of cordons sanitaires, and quarantines, in epidemic diseases. We only wish that some of these lovers of restrictions could be made to appreciate their nature, by being quarantined some thirty days in a lazaretto of one of the Mediterranean ports, and to feel the irksomeness, the suspicious watchfulness with which they look on all around them, and the consequent gloom pervading all, even when they are in perfect health, and have had no sickness on board their vessel.

This formal warning off of an epidemic disease, and threats to use, if need be, the arm of the law, and the law of arms, constantly reminds us of the familiar story of Canute, king of Denmark and England, who, in an assumed tone of imperious command, forbade the advancing tide from approaching his royal presence, or daring to wet his royal throne, which was located for the moment on the sea shore.

Magendie, a French physician of note, on his visit to Sunderland, where the Cholera was, by the last accounts, still raging, praises the English government for not surrounding the town with a cordon of troops, which as "a physical preventive would have been ineffectual, and would have produced a moral panic far more fatal than the disease now is." But having so recently expressed our views in this matter,* we pass to a notice of the other recommendation of the New-York Board of Aldermen, viz. to send medical men abroad in order to obtain information respecting the nature of the Cholera. One would almost suppose, from the purport of this suggestion, echoed by some of our newspaper editors, that

* See articles 'Sanitary Cordon,' in No. 5, and, ‘The Cholera not Contagious,' in No. 10 of the present volume of this Journal.

the United States were in much the same relation to the rest of the world, as the Celestial Empire,' China; and that, unless by special mission sent by other nations to us, or by us to them, we could have no means of becoming acquainted with each others' situation. The art of printing, and the circulation of knowledge by books and journals, are for the moment forgotten; and it seems to be gravely imagined, that our physicians have all the time been in a state of stupid wonder at the progress and ravages of the Cholera, and are waiting for the information to be derived from the mission proposed by the New York Board of Aldermen.

Had these worthy gentlemen made inquiries of their professional townsmen, or taken measures to create a Board of Health, composed of physicians, they would have learned that numerous documents concerning the Cholera have been published during the last twelve years; in which the localities where it has been most destructive, the class of people on whom it has spent its greatest fury, the causes which have given it force, and in many instances rendered the pestilential atmosphere operative, have been fully and distinctly set forth, and many useful precautions and means of prevention indicated. We have in our possession at this time, more than a hundred different works,— books, hospital reports, essays, reviews, and letters on Cholera, from the first hospital reports in India, in 1818, down to an account in October, 1831, of the disease in Berlin; and still more recently, of its occurrence in England. They are written by English, French, and German physicians, in their respective languages; and have been consulted by us, as well for our own satisfaction, as to be enabled to place the subject before our medical brethren, and to prepare a compendious history of the disease, which we shall soon lay before the public.

What shall we do to guard against the Cholera is, after all, the question which recurs. We have already anticipated the question, in the article entitled Precautions against the Cholera. We shall add more hints adapted to the situation and exposures of the inhabitants of the United States.

1. Let Congress be petitioned, if petitioned it must be, to lay a tax on distilled liquors, and thereby increase their price, and thus throw some impediment to their excessive use. Such a law would do more for the prevention of Cholera, and diminishing its mortality when present, than a military cordon established along the whole line of our seaboard, and the most rigid system of quarantine, to boot. "The proximate causes," of Cholera Morbus in Russia, according to Dr. Ucelli, who wrote in the midst of the ravages of the disease, "were intemperance and the abuse of spirituous liquors, (to which in this country, Russia, the lower classes are most fearfully addicted,) together with sup

pressed transpiration."-We have, on a former occasion, stated, that out of one hundred persons destroyed by the Cholera in Warsaw, it was proved that ninety had been addicted to the free use of spirituous liquors. After the decline of the disease at Riga, the occurrence of the Whitsun holidays caused a temporary augmentation of new cases, from the indulgence in intoxicating drinks, and other irregularities incident to a popular festival. The immediate predisposing cause of the attack of the most virulent Cholera in Gateshead, adjoining Newcastle upon Tyne, has been attributed, as we learn from the late English papers, to the tippling carried on at Christmas Eve.

2. Let our city corporations increase the price of tavern licences, and take away those which merely afford a convenience for tippling and nightly excesses.

3. Let them avail, to the utmost of their vested authority, in order to widen and ventilate alleys, passages, and courts, in which a number of people are congregated together.

4. Let them also make diligent inquiry into the means of lodging of poor wretches, who are huddled, hundreds of them together, during the night, without adequate space; and who convert the air into a source of pestilence by the exhalations from their lungs and skin! These poor creatures should be distributed to different parts, and cleansed and clothed and fed; and their old receptacles closed up, after being thoroughly aired and fumigated.

5. Let there be places of deposit in different parts of a city, in which there should be flannel, to be used when called for, to wrap round the body of the sickly, and those threatened with, or actually labouring under the disease. Also, several simple apparatus for applying the vapour bath; and medicines, such as solid opium, or the tincture, &c. In the same place, there should be persons in attendance, hired by the corporation, to apply the bath, to bleed, and such other offices as require to be promptly performed under the orders of a physician.

6. Let diligent attention be paid to cleanliness of the streets and houses, and frequent personal ablutions and bathings be recommended.

At Frankfort, on the Maine, each street had its Cholera committee, consisting of two or three of the chief inhabitants. These gentlemen visited every house daily, to see that the rooms were whitewashed, decayed fruit, vegetables, filth of every kind removed; and that, at least one slipper bath of tin is kept ready to be filled with hot water, under every roof. Soup kitchens have been prepared in every district. Very large supplies of medicines, and of provisions of all sorts, have been laid up. The medical men have had their districts allotted to them. Bands of trustworthy persons have been sworn in to act as attendants