facts. Thefe moorftones are too enormous to be removed, Mr. Barrington himself thinks, even by the engineers of he prefent days.' Explosions must be as numerous, as thefe accumulations of rocks and therefore infinite in number. Each must have shook the island to its centre, in order to throw such maffes only a mile off. How then shall we scatter them as they are scattered, over the ifland? Let the Berkshire fhepherds tell us, Shepherds are often better judges of phyfical phænomena, than scholars. And the only way of accounting for thefe ftones, is what they have fuggefted to us; that they grow where they are seen, in their native beds.

Mr. Barrington hazards this wild and abfurd conjecture of an explofion, because it will remove a moft material part of the difficulties, which attend that moft ftupendous work of rude art, Stonehenge.' We have hazarded ours for the fame reafon. It is well known,' adds Mr. Barrington, that there are C no fimilar quarries in the neighbourhood, to furnish materials for this moft fingular structure; and engineers have long (but • unsuccessfully) attempted to account for fuch large flabs having been carried to their prefent fituation from fo confiderable a distance;' as the Grey Wethers near Marlborough, we fuppofe. And, fince explofions are ridiculous when any other principle in nature is competent to the occafion; and fince fuch explosions must be equally infinite in number, and at each repetition deftructive of the whole island; we are compelled to recur to the fimple and obvious principle, of thefe huge blocks growing generally where they are found, and growing particularly under the feet of the builders of Stonehenge.

We thus conclude our review of this volume of the Archæologia. We have reviewed it in a manner that we have never feen attempted before, but which we think peculiarly adapted for fuch a mifcellaneous work as this. We have drawn off nearly all the quinteffence of the volume, the richer juices, and the more poignant fauces, of it into our review. And we

have only to conclude our treat in the Chriftian manner, with a prayer of thanks for the regale which we have had, and with a prayer of hope, that each fucceeding volume may give us as good an entertainment as the present has.

1

ART.

ART. VII. Medical Effays. I. An Efay on the Principles and
Manners of the Medical Profeffion. II. An Inquiry into the
Merits of Solvents for the Stone. With Additions. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
boards. Dodley. London, 1789.

THESE Eflays are evidently the production of a well-
educated practitioner, and of an honeft man. There is
an air of difappointment which, in many parts, the author in
vain attempts to conceal, by which we fhould fufpect his best
endeavours in his profeffion have not met with the fuccefs they
were entitled to; and that being unable to ftoop to fervility or
meanness, he retired from it at an early age. However this may
be, it becomes us to do juftice to his honeft wishes to render
the profeffion more refpectable, by removing the unjust preju-
dices of the ignorant against it, and by reminding practitioners of
the conduct they ought to purfue.

In the firft effay, while the writer admits, or rather refuses to deny, that the medical art is in fome degree degenerated, he endeavours to fhew that this degradation has been effected by the behaviour of the world towards practitioners. That a fufpicious carriage and niggardly manner of rewarding their fervices, has obliged many of them, in their own defence, to adopt measures they never intended at the commencement of their career. Why this is fo often the case with one branch of the profeffion, the author explains with so much propriety that we thall give the passage in his own words:

That the impreffions of a favour recently conferred produce more immediate and lively fymptoms of gratitude than the remembrance of former acts of kindness, however beneficial or important, is a fact which experience confirms, but honour disapproves.

A grateful heart ardently pants to make a quick return for offices of benevolence, leaving prudence and reflection to pause and to delay. For it frequently happens that what in the moment of thankful rapture was magnified as a godlike action, dwindles, in the long-extended perspective of time and policy, into a kindnefs, a duty, and a trifling favour.

Did a due fenfe of the importance of obligations equally diminish in the minds of those who confer and those who receive them, the mutual complaints of ungrateful and unreasonable tempers would not be so often heard.

But it happens unfortunately in the general intercourses of life, that the conferrer of a benefit heightens and overvalues it in the. fame proportion that the perfon obliged depreciates and lowers it.

From a confideration of these truths, which are deduced from a view of the conduct of mankind in general, we can eafily account for the fame motives operating ftill more powerfully in the concerns of the medical profeffion in particular; a profeffion which exists in

relieving

relieving calamities, and lives by being rewarded for it. The phyfician, it is true, has often the advantage of receiving his fee, accompanied with the moft folemn proteftations of refpect and esteem, and attended with ten thousand indefcribeable circumftances that increase its value.

While the impreffions of prefent pain, hope, and fear, are deep in the hearts of the patient and his friends; while the love of money is repreffed by increafing danger and anxiety, he is conûdered and received as an invaluable friend, as one on whom the happiness and tranquillity of the family depend; while medicine is confidered as the last and only method of preferving a doubtful life.

In this cafe the prefent is generally fuch as a generous mind is proud to bestow, and fuch as will not difgrace acknowledged merit

to receive.

Happy intercourfe where gratitude and liberality increase the pleafure of doing good, and give a zest to that best of all efforts, an effort to blefs!

But in branches of the profeffion lefs honourable, less lucrative, but more fatiguing and laborious, the cafe is far otherwife: these unhappy men are feldom employed from any preference of opinion, but chiefly because their advice and affiftance are procured at the cheapest rates; and not unfrequently because they may be defrauded and imposed on with lefs difficulty, and lefs fear of detection and punishment.

It is a matter of ease, and often of triumph, to an illiberal mind, to find out fome plaufible pretence for disappointment, delay, or refufal; nor indeed can it be denied that the infamous returns of abuse and defamation are cheap methods of discharging, or rather evading a demand.

We may in fome degree excufe the celebrated Dr. Radcliffe for his unjuftifiable advice to Dr. Mead, under the fuppofition that he was irritated by fimilar treatment, and provoked by ill ufage.

An uncomplying kind of behaviour, fuch as Radcliffe's, bordering on cruelty, would be unfufferable in a man of less eminence, but would be highly culpable in any one.

The fubaltern practitioner must attain or affume more philosophy,' or he must not eat; he must learn to fubmit with patience to the infalts and injuries which the lower orders of his profeffion are daily exposed to.

And if he does not receive a confiderable gratification from the exercise of a benevolent difpofition, independent of the profits of his practice, he may look with envy on the preferable condition of an hewer of wood or a drawer of water.

The dexterity requifite for effecting a good day's work, and the plaufible exhibition of innocent no-meaning trifles in all cafes, certainly requires no great exertion of the mind in investigating the complaints of a patient, and may be termed an easy way of doing bufiness.

But fuch a conduct, how well foever it may anfwer the present purposes of profit, will afford no fatisfaction in the retired moments of unbiaffed reflection; when a man fhall find that he has loft many opportunities

5

opportunities of producing fome effential advantage, or removing fome threatening evil.'

Our author next proceeds to investigate fome of the prejudices against the art itfelf, independent of its practice. Here we meet with fome ingenious, but not fufficiently connected, obfervations. It is to be regretted, indeed, that in this, as well as every other part of the work, the ftyle is much too unconnected and diffufive. The paragraphs are fo fhort as to give them the air of aphorifms; and the mind is not only weary of fuch perpetual interruption, but often difappointed by a brevity which feems to leave the fubject unfinished. As this gentleman is fond of a Latin fentence, we fhall remind him of

The rest of this effay confifts chiefly of obfervations on the general mode of conducting the practice, and particularly of the prefent ftate of it. Though we coincide with the ingenious writer in moft inftances, we think in one he has fallen into a general error. Whatever may have been the opinion of Dr. Garth, or of modern wits, as to the fuperfluous number of practitioners, we with it to be afcertained how many of them are lefs employed through the day, than men, who should devote at leaft fome time to application, ought to be. If it be faid that this is the cafe of fome of the young phyficians, we anfwer their number is finall, and that the inferior branches have, for the most part, infinitely lefs leifure than men of business, who are much better paid for their labour. We are particularly induced to make this obfervation because the poverty of this clafs of practitioners is too frequently and inconfiderately afcribed to their numbers: but if they are all employed, it is plain their number is not greater than the public has occafion for, however injurious it may be to their own eafe and emolument.

In the fecond effay, or inquiry into the merit of folvents for the ftone, the author takes a view of moft of the lethontryptics that have been offered to the public, and fhews the superior advantages of the operation. But here, for want of keeping pace with the improvement of the art, he has fallen into an error which, in the prefent ftate of things, one almost wonders could been committed by fo fenfible a writer. The folvent medicine, fays our author, was fuppofed to act upon the ftone by diffolving the glutinous matter, which united like a cement, and bound the earthy particles of it together. It is indeed extremely difficult to conceive what idea the first who proposed alkalis as a folvent for the stone entertained of their effects, but it is only candid to allow that experiment directed them to the remedy.

It is now well known that the quantity of earth is trifling in the component parts of the human calculus, compared with the peculiar acid it contains. Thus the old practice confirming the modern theory, founded on experiment, is at least a prefumptive argument in its favour. While we admit this, we allow with the author the great impropriety of perfevering long in the use of remedies which materially injure the conftitution before they produce any effects on a calculus. Perhaps lime-water may be an exception to the general objections against alkalis; and if its effects are flower, may be perfevered in till fome advantages are produced, or the increafing pain encourages the patient to fubmit to the operation.

The author next glances at the inefficacy of fixed air, which its warmeft advocates must allow in this disease proved a mere bubble. The various objections against the operation are then fairly and candidly examined, and the moft rational conclufions. drawn, which are ftrengthened by a statement of facts taken from Mr. Chefelden's Hospital Practice, which, with the author's general fummary of the argument, we fhall lay before our readers:

The patients he [Mr. Chefelden] publicly cut for the stone, in St. Thomas's Hofpital, were two hundred and thirteen; their different ages, and the number that died, I shall endeavour to arrange:

• The proportion of twenty out of fuch a number cannot be thought great or alarming.

• Mr. Chefelden obferves that feveral had the small-pox during their cure, fome of whom died.

One of the first hundred and five had a violent whooping cough, which carried him off. In this cafe, the urgency of the ftone fymptoms most likely rendered the operation immediately neceffary; otherwife, waiting until the incidental difcafe was better would have been adviseable.

So that from the general opinion of furgeons, from Mr. Chefelden's account, from what has been imparted to me on the best au

thority,