productive of miasmata, and the circumstances favouring their generation; considers the nature, properties, and effects of miasmata; their operations upon the human constitution, and the means of preventing the generation of malaria, and of counteracting its effects on the human body. The climates, and usual course of the seasons, in the different British possessions in India, are then specifically detailed, and abstracts of the medical returns are given. The premonitory symptoms of intertropical diseases, and the importance of attending to them, conclude the first book.

The second gives an account of the diseases of the stomach most prevalent in India, and warm climates; to which succeeds an account of the diseases of the Liver and Biliary apparatus, followed by those of the small and large Intestines, the Spleen and the Pancreas. Sub-sections give a variety of curious and valuable information on subjects connected with those conditions, such as elongation and unnatural position of the colon, observations on hypochondriasis, melancholia, and mental alienation, as connected with the accumulations of morbid matters in the bowels, the effects of the presence of worms, of hemeralopia, or night-blindness, &c.

One of the most important part of the work is that, in which, in the most ample manner, he treats of dysentery, its forms and consequences, its simple and its complicated existence, its causes, pathological appearances, and its

treatment.

In the third book Mr. Annesley treats of the fevers of warm climates, remarks on their pathology, exciting and predisposing causes, types and forms, intermittent, remittent, and continued; and gives an elaborate account of the complications and terminations of these, with the appearances on the examination of the fatal cases. The various modes of treatment are described, and the most judicious means proposed. Nor does the author forget to point out the essential management of convalescence from fever and dysentery, and of change from a hot to a temperate climate, either during or after a recovery. He suggests also many sanatory rules for the management of European troops upon their arrival in India, and during their stay in the country, with the view of mitigating the prevalence of disease amongst them. This subject has, since Mr. A.'s work, attracted the attention of the Inspectors of Hospitals; and various arrangements have been made, which will be found conformable to his suggestions, particularly as regards diet, clothing, &c. Appendices, of considerable extent, give extracts from Official Reports made to the Army Medical Board, by various Medical Officers, for access to which the author is indebted to the zeal and liberality of Sir James M'Grigor.

SIR CHARLES BELL, K.H., F.R.S. L. & E.

"If a man perform that which hath not been attempted before, or attempted and given over, or hath been atchieved but not with so good circumstance, he shall purchase more honour than by affecting a matter of greater difficulty, or virtue, wherein he is but a follower."

BACON.

SIR CHARLES BELL was born in Edinburgh, in the year 1778. He is the youngest son of the Rev. William Bell, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland;* and was educated at the High School of Edinburgh; a seminary, whence have issued some of the most eminent characters of our time. His attention was early turned to the study of Anatomy, for while a mere youth, he assisted his brother, Mr. John Bell, in his anatomical

The eldest brother of Sir Charles Bell was the late Robert Bell, Esq. advocate, professor of conveyancing to the Society of Writers to the Signet in Edinburgh, and author of several publications, of good repute, connected with the law of Scotland. His second brother was the celebrated John Bell, surgeon in Edinburgh, under whom Sir Charles was educated; and his third and now only surviving brother is George Joseph Bell, Esq. professor of the law of Scotland in the University of Edinburgh, and successor of Sir Walter Scott, as one of the principal clerks of the Court of Session-a gentleman who, as a lawyer, has had the rare distinction of living to hear his works on law quoted, both from the bar and on the bench, as of the very first authority.

lectures and demonstrations; and, even before he had become a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, he had published the first part of his Plates of Dissections.

In the year 1799, Mr. Charles Bell was admitted a member of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons; and immediately afterwards as one of the surgeons of the Royal Infirmary (the only hospital then in Edinburgh) where he exhibited remarkable skill as an operator. In the operation of lithotomy, in particular, he used the knife instead of the gorget, and on the first occasion of his performing that operation in the theatre of the hospital, he succeeded in extracting the stone in two minutes and a half, to the astonishment of those who had been accustomed to witness the protracted suffering of the patient under the operation with the gorget.

The same professional intrepidity and dexterity, combined with great simplicity and originality, marked all his operations during his subsequent career; so as fully to justify the encomium of M. Roux, who in his work on the state of surgery in England, in reference to the similarity of Mr. Bell's mode of operating to that of the Parisian School, happily characterises him as operating " Avec grâce sans affectation."

Towards the close of the last century, a very painful controversy arose among the members of the medical profession in Edinburgh. The subject of discussion was the proposed repeal of a regulation, under which all the fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons, in their turn, were privileged to operate in the Royal Infirmary. But this contest was unluckily imbittered by imputations on the purity of the motives of the senior members of the college, and by insinuations that they were actuated by an unworthy jealousy of their juniors; while the heats and resentments thus engendered were aggravated and perpetuated by the perverse and misdirected ingenuity of the leading disputants; so that the debate passed by a very rapid declension into a virulent and acrimonious personal altercation, in which two of the most eminent medical men at that time in Scotland, losing sight of the original subject of dispute, wasted their time and abused their talents in a reciprocation of sarcasm and invective, alike unworthy of one and of the other; and but slightly palliated by the wit and fancy so prodigally expended in the embellishment of their rival effusions.

The champion of the junior members of the college of surgeons was Mr. John Bell, while the leader of the adverse party was the no less celebrated Dr. Gregory: and although, looking back to those times, it is impossible not to lament that a subject of ephemeral interest and minor importance, should have alienated two such men; yet those who were then in the vortex, particularly if connected with either party, were not permitted to