MINOR CORRESPONDENCE. J. T. M. says, "In the Autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone (vol. i. p. 358) it is stated, that during the war (i. e. before the peace of Amiens) only one of our generals was killed, that his name was Mansel, and that he was an Irishman. The passage in question was written before the death of Sir Ralph Abercromby, but is the statement correct in other respects? There was a General Mansel killed in that war, at Valenciennes (I believe), and he was of a Glamorganshire family, and resided at Cosgrave, in Northamptonshire. The late Major Mansel of Cosgrave was his son. Did Tone confound him with the Mansels of the county Limerick, or were there two General Officers of that name, killed in the same war?" R. T. would be thankful to be informed whether the copies of Clynne's Annals, of the Annals of the Priory of St. John the Evangelist of Kilkenny, and of the Annals of Multifernon, Rosse, Clonmel, &c. which Ware (in his Preface to Campion) says that the Earl of Marlborough "caused to be transcribed and made fit for the presse," are now known to exist. Abp. Nicolson states that the Earl of Marlborough deposited a Transcript of Clynne's Annals in the hands of Henry Earl of Bath, on condition they should be printed. Any information respecting any copy of any of the above named Annals will be acceptable. We are obliged to our correspondent W. H. for his communication respecting the discovery of coins of Henry III. but from the drawings forwarded it is impossible to pronounce with certainty whether the specimens referred to in his letter are different from the published coins of that King, and of Henry V. or IV. although they appear to be common and well known types. Impressions in sealing-wax are always preferable to drawings. Perhaps our correspondent could favour us with a sight of the entire hoard of coins, in which there possibly may be rare or inedited varieties. We cannot further assist D. P. R. then by referring him to Blakeway's Sheriffs of Shropshire, fol. 1831. A Correspondent from Newport Pagnell writes us that, about ten years ago, a Painting of St. Christopher, as well as one on a subject unknown, was discovered in the neighbouring parish church of Ravenstone. A. L. asks "May not St. Clement's Danes be a corruption of St. Clement des Dunes, which would mean St. Clement of the Sands, Shore, or Strand? At Boulogne sur Mer there is la Porte des Dunes-the sea, as report goes, having anciently been much nearer to these gates than it now is." S. Y. S. points out the deficiency of a work (which he has not leisure to undertake himself), to contain brief memoirs of all the Archbishops and Bishops of England since the Reformation as settled in 1559. These memoirs should not be too long, but about the length of those given of the Irish Prelates in Harris' edition of Ware, 1739. I would suggest to any person, who should undertake the subject, not to forget to give the dates of consecration (and the places), and of translation and death in every case; and the names of the Bishops who consecrated each prelate. The following hints, as to a few of the Books necessary in the work, may be useful. Dr. W. Richardson's edition (1743) of Bp. Godwin's "De Præsulibus Angliæ;" Le Neve's "Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ," for the dates, &c.; Le Neve's lives of the Protestant Archbishops; Browne Willis's English Cathedrals, 4to, and four Welsh Cathedrals, 8vo. (also Edwards' edition of B. Willis' St. Asaph as it is carried down to 1806); A. Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses (Bliss' edition); Fuller's Worthies, Nichols's edition; Britton's Cathedrals; S. H. Cassan's Lives of the Bps. of Winchester, Salisbury, Bath and Wells; the several county histories which notice Cathedrals; the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine, &c. &c. For the records of consecration of all our Bishops down to 1841, I beg to refer any person who is inclined for the subject to the Appendix to Hon. and Rev. A. P. Perceval's Apology for Apostological Succession. (Rivington) The records are copied from the Lambeth and other registers. Memoirs of many living prelates are given in the Church Magazine." At page 363 in the note-for Caloranéde, read Calprenéde; and at page 379, 2nd column, line 22, for Wallis, read Hadder. We have to correct the notice of erratum in our last, p. 338; the gentleman whose name should have been printed in p. 312 is John Audley Jee, esq. (not Hill). P. 423, line 4, for Ellitson, read Elletson; line 6, for Zealand, read Yealand. GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. Memoir of the late James Hope, M.D. &c. By Mrs. Hope. WE think it is Tertullian who calls medicine the sister of philosophy,* "Medicina Soror Philosophiæ ;" and other very high praises have been given to the art, which has been considered superior to all the other sciences, both as regards the subject of its studies, and the high importance of the ends it has in view. Hippocrates declared that it was necessary that all men should understand medicine,† because all men needed it; but modern experience has somewhat modified this doctrine of the philosopher of Cos, and has considered it better for a man to trust his constitution in the hands of sundry wise and well-chosen leeches, than to take care of it himself. However, undoubtedly it was considered of old to be a very sacred and distinguished profession, from the days of Esculapius himself,who gave the first prescription that is on record,-that all his patients should sleep wrapped up in the skins of rams,-to the days of Democritus, who is said to have passed his days and nights, not in an easy chariot, but in charnel-houses and sepulchres, that he might meditate without interruption, and at length, as Cicero, with a tacit approbation of the deed, tells us, put out his eyes, in order that the inward mind might be the better irradiated. Without, however, recurring to such extraordinary devotion as this, or recommending it to the moderus, we certainly find the physician of old, or as he might more correctly be called the surgeon-apothecaryaccoucheur, whether practising at Athens or Cos, or in the countries immediately under the guardianship of Apollo, (for the modern physician, who will neither bleed nor administer medicine himself, was an unknown character,) to have been so highly exalted, as might induce us to believe that he belonged to a superior race of beings, or his patients had more money than wit. Herodotus tells us that Democedes, a physician of Crotona, was a constant guest at the table of Darius (oμorpáñezos,) when even the nobles were not permitted to enter; that Menecrates would not prescribe for any one who would not promise to be his bond-slave; and that Melampus (who appears from the name given him of кa@áprov, to have practised according to the Harrowgate and Cheltenham systems,) when called in to attend the daughters of Protus, were labouring under a stomach complaint; who, as a punishment for preferring themselves to Juno, made an agreement, before entering on the case, that he was to have one of them for his wife, and with her, as dowry, a third part of the whole kingdom! We must, however, as some apology for this ambition, recollect, that the primitive physician was a person of no ignoble birth, and could never be ranked among Tertullian was apparently translating a saying of Democritus,-IoTopiŋv σoφιὴς δοκέω Ιητρικῆς ἀδελφὴν καὶ συνοίκον. † Χρὴ πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἰητρικὴν τέχνην ἐπιστασθαι. This was the person mentioned by Virgil. the parvenus. One dated his descent as the tenth from Hercules, another the seventh from Esculapius. The illustrious Hippocrates was the ninth from Crysamis, the eighteenth from Æsculapius, and only in the tenth degree removed from Jupiter himself. His mother was a descendant of the Heraclidæ, his father rejoiced in the blood of the Asclepiadæ, so he was on both sides divinely descended; not to mention that his grandfather, Gnosidicus, wrote a book, like Sir Benjamin Brodie, on diseases of the joints. It was not at all unusual for a whole city to march out in procession to meet a successful practitioner, place a crown of gold on his head, and inscribe a decree on a column to his praise.* Ptolemy gave Cleombrotus a hundred talents of gold for the cure of Antiochus, that is, 637,500 aurei. The very Parcæ, the fatal sisters themselves, revered the skill of Oribasius, and left their vital threads uncut. Periander was a great man, and would have been at the head of his profession, but he unhappily took to scribbling epigrams and other kinds of verses, carrying them about to his friends, and thus incurred the just rebuke of Agesilaus; "Why do you, Periander, prefer being a bad poet to a good physician?"+ Pliny says that Augustus being cured by Antonius Musa of his complaint by a lettuce (lactucâ), the senate decreed the latter a statue. But it is necessary to break off, or we might fill volumes with an account of the rewards which gratitude bestowed on science. We reluctantly must pass over that illustrious man Capivaccius of Padua, who was in later times the richest and most magnificent of his class, and the no less famous Goropius, a Brabantin doctor, who was presented with a chain of gold and immense presents by Philip II. But closing the volume of medical history for a season, when we open it again as it revived in later times, we find its empire invaded by novel opinions, strange heresies, and wild doctrines fetched from the brains of visionaries and enthusiasts, which have left their impression in the Mesmerism and Homeopathy and Phrenology of the present day. Cardan maintained that it was necessary to be ill in order to possess the faculties in perfection.‡ Tachinius said the acids in the human body had a voluntary power and skill of selecting those alkalies which were most to their taste, and best suited to their purpose. Condillac informs us that he wrote part of his philosophic treatise, Cours de l'Etude, when fast asleep, as Coleridge wrote the Vision of Kubla Khan. Another scientific person seems to infer that so far from wanting medical assistance, we might live and flourish independent of Nature herself, and her currents of vitality. Lower (and we have the highest authority for the fact) says that he had supported a young man who was suffering from hemorrhage on rich fluids and broths, till at length he discovered that instead of blood it was a sort of portable soup that was circulating in his veins! Nor was this a solitary instance, for a Paris physician has asserted that the same thing has twice in practice occurred to him§. Swammerdam says that his most brilliant researches were always made when under the * The Soyμa Aoŋvaɩwv in praise of Hippocrates is extant, but it is doubtful whether Hippocrates was at Athens during the famous plague described by Thucydides, &c. Sometimes, however, the patients ventured on a joke on their medical adviser, and thus Chrysippus got the appellation of Chesippus, ἀπὸ του χέζειν. † Τί δήποτε, ὦ Περιάνδρε, αντὶ χαριέντος Ιατροῦ, κακὸς ποιητὴς καλεῖσθαι επιθυμεις. Thus Pliny, though with a different meaning, "Optimos nos esse dum infirmi sumus." § See Cabanis, Rapport du Physique et du Moral, vol. I. p. 255; but as regards the opinions of this very able man, we refer our readers to Palissot, Memoires, II. p. 184. Chenier, Tableau de Litterature, p. 6. Droz. Philosophie Morale, p. 19, 294, and Le Maitre, Soirées de St. Petersburg, vol. I. 135. Cabanis was properly defended against injudicious attacks in Foreign Quarterly Review, No. VII. p. 60, 85, &c. attack of a terrible hypochondriasis; and Cabanis, the physician of the Revolution, mentioned that the brain digested thought, as the liver secreted bile, and that poetry and religion are a product of the smaller intestines ! But, perhaps, it would be as well in an age when the marvellous is not so much in credit, and the healing art has come down to more moderate and reasonable demands than she previously sustained, not to place too implicit a confidence in these rare and anomalous effects of nature, but to call in the assistance of modern science, which, professing much less than she formerly did, certainly performs much more. Let us then take a view of the life, acquirements, and conduct of a modern physician in contrast with the ancient. Dr. Hope, the subject of this memoir, certainly had no chance of marrying a princess, seeing his statue erected at Waterloo-place, opposite the College, or having a gift from the King of all the royal domains in Cornwall. Yet the perusal of his life may be of interest, and even of benefit. It is the life of an able and accomplished person who was cut off in the midst of an extensive and increasing practice, while his knowledge and experience were becoming daily more justly estimated, and the resources of his mind more fully developed. The general reader will find a valuable truth embodied in this history, that success is nearly independent of chance or fortune, if only due means are taken and persevered in. That in most cases the unsuccessful will find the causes of failure, not in the world but in themselves; and that the old adage, "Labor omnia vincit improbus," is a poetical expression of an absolute and irresistible truth. The medical student will also imbibe, with this lesson of wisdom, much additional information. It will enable him to pursue, and trace step by step, the gradual and certain advancement of the subject of this memoir from unknown and unassisted obscurity to fame and fortune; he will see with what toil of mind and thought, and therefore, with what certainty, every advance was made in the arduous profession he had chosen; with what unwearied accuracy of observation and soundness of reasoning and reflection, he was acquiring the solid materials of his future skill; and how in time that painfully acquired power, instead of appearing the slow result of incessant thought, assumed the character of an intuitive instinctive faculty, which showed itself in a discernment and experience that could at once distinguish and separate the primary and essential phenomena presented to it, in a delicate and sensitive touch which could detect the incipient rudiments and mysterious infancy of disease, and in that fine sagacity which would seem almost to penetrate into the remote causes of vitality, and disclose the very secrets of nature herself. Such is the reward of well-applied industry, united to fair and good natural talents, excited by honourable ambition, and guided and strengthened by just and virtuous principles, and such we believe to be exhibited in the history of the life of which we are about to trace a faint outline from the original. * Dr. James Hope, we are informed, attained great eminence and large practice at an age (40) when most physicians are only beginning to be thought of, and his success was not owing to patronage, or any fortunate accidents, but to his talents, his industry, and his character. Yet, says his biographer, Cette justesse de raison, cette sagacité froide qui d' apres l'ensemble des données, sait tenir les resultats avec precision, ne suffit pas au medicin: il lui faut encore cette espèce d' instinct qui devine dans un malade la maniere dont il est affecté, &c. v, Cabanis, I. 60. "Ere such eminence was attained, the grounds on which it had been sought had become entirely changed, and ambition had given place to a far different principle of action. Religion had become the main spring of all his exertions, and the restingplace of all his hopes, and the instance shows forcibly how poor are the motives of action which this world can afford, when generous aspirations so early satisfied, worldly hopes so early realised, are acknowledged to be insufficient sources of happiness, unstable guides to conduct, and all voluntarily and deliberately placed in subordination to the dictates of Chistianity.” Dr. Hope was a tenth child of a family of twelve, and was born at Stockport, 23 Feb. 1801. His father was a manufacturer and merchant at that place, and retired with a fortune of 40007. per annum, to Prestbury Hall, in Cheshire. He lived to a sound vigorous old age, walking twenty miles a day till he was near 85. His mother's age was 67 at her decease; but the family did not inherit this parental power of constitution. Eleven of Mr. Hope's children arrived at years of maturity, and from their earliest childhood were so remarkable for their healthy appearance that their lives were constantly chosen for insertion in leases. This early promise, however, proved delusive. Five died under the age of 25; two others, including Dr. Hope, died at 40; and the four surviving members of the family are of a very delicate constitution. In after years, when Dr. Hope's medical experience had made him competent to judge what might be the causes of such degeneracy in the descendants of so long-lived a family, he was decidedly of opinion that it could be ascribed in great measure to the very injudicious mode of clothing and feeding children, which was then too prevalent, and which was adopted by his mother, under the direction of a surgeon of great eminence in the town of Manchester. Dr. Hope believed that exposure to cold and inadequate nutrition in childhood sowed the seeds of disease which was developed in later years. This opinion was the result of his own medical experience and of physiological observation on animals, in which tubercular disease may be produced by a similar mode of treatment; and, as five out of eight of Mr. Hope's children died of tubercular disease, the instance of this family strikingly verifies the analogy between the causes of disease in man and in the inferior animals. Of the three children who had not tubercular disease, one died in infancy, and the two others suffered from severe and undue exposure to which they had been subjected, since before the age of twenty they fell victims to acute rheumatism, terminating in one with inflammation of the heart. James Hope, at the age of six or seven years, was placed with the Curate of Prestbury, the Rev. Mr. Monkhouse, and from that early age displayed the character of a studious and intelligent boy. His hand-writing was beautifully correct, and he drew maps with singular elegance. A chart of a history of England is still extant, about a yard square, done at the age of nine, and so admirably written, as well as coloured, as not to be distinguishable from engraving. At the same time of life he was found reading the Arabian Nights' Entertainments by stealth, under a table; and even at the age of eight his father found him perusing Milton's Paradise Lost, and having chid him for poring over a book he could not understand, took the book from him, while the boy could not comprehend the reason of the reproof, as he felt himself much interested in the story. But his eagerness for knowledge is more strikingly shown in the delight he expressed in reading Parkes's Chemical Catechism; he was actually fascinated with the science, and began to perform many of the experiments described in the book, though he was much vexed at not being able to form sulphuric |