Part 2

Among the remedies for cholera, or perhaps we should rather say attempted remedies, the vapour-bath is conspicuous over all the other means of cure, external and internal: stimulants, frictions, rubefacients, blisters, have that for their indirect object which the vapour-bath accomplishes directly, namely, to produce heat on the surface of the body, and thus restore that correspondence between the temperature of the interior and exterior parts, which in the disease is so strangely disturbed. There are two difficulties in the application of the vapour-bath, which are not easily overcome. When applied to the patient in the ordinary way, from the nature of the heat, the upper surface of the body is scorched, while the back is almost cold. Now in cholera, the application of heat to the back is of essential importance. In the whole of the machines for applying the bath, the patient is exposed to more or less tossing about; which, from the extreme prostration of strength in cholera patients, is always injurious; and as the patient must, when taken from the bath, be replaced on a comparatively cold bed, the sudden change will often do more ill than the bath will do good. To these must be added, in a disease which chiefly affects the poor, another item, forming an important drawback on the utility of the ordinary vapour-bath,--the application of it is attended with no inconsiderable expense. A machine which should obviate these objections, was a desideratum; and we think such a one has been invented by Mr. Burnet, of Golden Square. It is so simple as to be easily described without a diagram, and so well adapted to the end, and so easy and cheap in application, that we think we shall be rendering an acceptable service to our readers in describing it. The best way to effect this is to show the steps of its application.

We suppose the patient lying on his back in bed. The two sides of a framework, about 6-1/2 by 2-1/2 feet, are placed one on each side of him; five or six broad canvass straps, which are meant to support his body, are placed beneath him by a couple of attendants; two transverse pieces of wood are then introduced at the foot and head, to extend the framework; and the cross straps, by means of eyelet-holes, are attached to the sides, by a row of common brass pins. This is the work of about a minute. One attendant then raises the frame at the head, while the other introduces a couple of feet about nine inches long into the frame; and this done, the foot is raised in a similar way, and similarly supported; a board is then fitted to the foot, through a hole in the centre of which the chimney of the heating apparatus passes; the blankets are closely tucked round the patient and the frame; the lamp is applied, and the process of bathing commences. In this way, it will be seen that the patient is suspended in the heated air, which is moreover applied to the back in the first instance; there is no fatigue incurred; and when perspiration has been generated and carried on as long as is deemed expedient, he is let down again, without difficulty or danger, into his heated bed, and surrounded with the warm blankets employed in the bath itself. The room in which we saw the experiment performed, was at a temperature of 43° Fahrenheit; the clothes of the bed were of the same temperature: the lamp is conical, and has no tube; the wick is merely inserted in it; the charge is two ounces of spirits of wine. In ten minutes after the lamp had been applied, the thermometer at the foot of the frame on which the patient is made to recline, was 136°; at the head, 116°; on the blanket, which covered the bed, 96°. Were the vapour applied above the patient instead of under him, the difference between the heat at the breast and back would be at least 40°. The temperature once raised, may be kept up at a very small expense; so that the whole price of the bath, continued for half an hour or three quarters of an hour, will not exceed eightpence or ninepence. There is a very simple expedient, by which, when the temperature of the chamber formed by the frame of the bath is once raised sufficiently high, steam, either simple or medicated, may be introduced, and the lamp apparatus may be applied either at the foot, the head, or the side, as is most convenient. The grand recommendation, however, of the bath, is the applicability of the vapour to the entire surface of the body; the simplicity and ease of the application, both to the assistants and the patient; the exclusion of the possibility of cold; and its cheapness. In all these points of view, we look on it as a valuable invention.

_Spectator_.

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NOTES OF A READER

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DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.

One thing which I am unable to interpret among the oddities of the English, is their inconsistency respecting dramatic entertainments. I have never yet been present where two or three of my countrymen were gathered together, that, after a wrangling review of the weather, they did not turn their conversation upon the theatres. There is no topic more universally discussed than the decadence of the drama, or the engagements, merits, and adventures of the performers. Neither the Lord Chancellor nor the Archbishop of Canterbury is ever so familiarly known by name and person to the public, as the first tragedian and comedian of the day; and the theatrical belles and heroines are either elevated to the peerage by matrimony, or lowered by the undertaker into Westminster Abbey. As some French Vaudevillist observed, "Moliere was denied in France the rights of sepulture, while

"Garrick repose à côté de leur rois!"

Yet, notwithstanding all this clamour of popularity--all this infatuation--there is no branch of the arts so grossly neglected in England as the drama. It is no longer the fashion in London to attend the theatres. Owing partly to the increase of private amusements, and partly to the late hours gradually adopted during the reign of George the Fourth, the custom of play-going has declined among the higher classes, and naturally produces the reaction of bad pieces and indifferent performers. Even a clever actor, when satisfied that he is to receive judgment from an unrefined and uneducated audience, will degenerate and grow slovenly; and from what I have observed of the London stage, I see it is the custom to daub for the galleries, or to creep through the business under cover of a cold, tame mediocrity. Without the slightest patronage from the court or substantial encouragement from the fosterers of literary merit, these luckless personages are expected to attempt the same exertions and intense study, which is rewarded, in foreign countries, by the most flattering and judicious attention; as well as by a pension, to cheer the infirmities of old age. Although tolerably well paid by his manager, the English actor has the mortification of being tyrannized and insulted by the gallery, and overlooked by the higher classes. A few persons of rank and fortune are provided with private boxes at the national theatres; but these are usually let by the night to plebeian tenants. It is rare indeed to observe a family of distinction in the dress circle of either Drury Lane or Covent Garden; while the French play is never deficient in a fashionable audience.

The Opera, too, is nightly becoming more crowded; while at the two patent theatres "a beggarly account of empty boxes," and an equally beggarly account of flat, stale, and unprofitable performances, greets me whenever I am rash enough to take my post of observation. Lady Romford has a private box, which she visits only in preference to staying at a still duller home, on a disengaged evening; and Bagot occasionally drags me to the play, to make my foreign ignorance and inexperience a pretext for following Lady Clara to a spot which no one seems to visit without an apology. People in society give as many reasons for having done so strange a thing as go to see the new tragedy, as they would invent in Paris to excuse a similar omission.

Since the Kemble munia, and the Byron mania, there has been a general affectation of indifference towards poetry and the drama; your true fashionable never mentions either without ridicule--the natural consequence of previously exaggerated enthusiasm.

But above all the absurdities connected with this national weakness, stands that of the public prints. So much importance is given by the newspapers to every thing relating to the histrionic art, that we are daily informed of the whereabout of all the third-rate performers of the minor theatres; that "Mr. Smith, of Sadler's Wells, is engaged to Mr. Ducrow for the ensuing season;" or that "Miss Brown, belonging to the ballet department of the Surrey theatre, has sprained her ankle." While two thirds of a leading print are occupied with details of the Reform Bill, or a debate on some constitutional question,--or while the foreign intelligence of two sieges and a battle is concentrated with a degree of terseness worthy a telegraph, half a column is devoted to the plot of a new melo-drama at the Coburg; or to a cut and dried criticism upon the nine hundredth representation of _Hamlet_--beginning with the "immortal bard," and ending with the waistcoats of the grave-digger!--_The Opera, a Novel_.

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EUGENE ARAM.

The recollection of this man is still preserved at Lynn, in Norfolk, at which town he was for some time usher at the grammar-school. A small room at the back of the house, in which he slept, was, until these last few years, (when it was pulled down and rebuilt,) mysteriously pointed to by the little urchins as they passed up to bed of a cold, ghost-enticing night, as the chamber in which the "usher, who was hanged for murder," was used to sleep.

The tradition which remains of his character is, that he was "a man of loneliness and mystery," sullen and reserved; that on half-holy-days, and when his duties would allow, he strayed solitary and cheerless, as if to avoid the world, amongst the flat uninteresting marshes which are situated on the opposite side of the river Ouse.

At Lynn the character of Aram was, until his apprehension, unexceptionable; but after that event, circumstances were then called to mind which seemed to indicate a naturally dark character; but whether these were all strictly founded in truth, or magnified suspicions arising from the appaling circumstances of the crime of which he was convicted, I am unable to determine. The following, derived from unquestionable authority, having been related by Dr. L., who was master of the grammar-school at the time, may serve as a sample:--there can be no doubt but that the worthy Dr. himself believed his suspicions well founded, as he used to tremble when he related it. It was customary for the parents of the scholars, on an appointed day, to dine with the master, at which time it was expected they would bring with them the amount of their bills. It was late at night, after one of such meetings, that Dr. L. was awakened by a noise at his bed-room door; he rose up, and going into the passage which led to the staircase, but which was not in the direct way from Aram's bed room to the ground-floor, he discovered the usher _dressed_. Having questioned him as to the object of his rising at that unseasonable hour, Aram confusedly answered that he had been taken unwell, and had been obliged to go do down stairs. The Dr. then retired, unsuspiciously, to bed. From the combined circumstances of the noise at the door, his great agitation and confusion, and from his being found in the passage, the worthy Dr., in later years, had no doubt, that, from its being known to Aram that a considerable sum of money was in his bed-room, Aram intended nothing less than to rob him; and no doubt, continued the narrator, he _would_ have murdered me too, if it had been rendered necessary, from my discovering or opposing him.

The spot just at the entrance to the play-ground, at which Aram was taken into custody by two strange men from Yorkshire, is still remarked, and generally by the young scholar in a tremulous whisper.--_Literary Gazette_.

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THE NATURALIST.

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AGENCY OF MAN IN EXTINGUISHING OR SPREADING SPECIES.

Let us make some inquiries into the extent of the influence which the progress of society has exerted, during the last seven or eight centuries, in altering the distribution of our indigenous British animals. Dr. Fleming has prosecuted this inquiry with his usual zeal and ability, and in a memoir on the subject has enumerated the best authenticated examples of the decrease or extirpation of certain species during a period when our population has made the most rapid advances. We shall offer a brief outline of his results.

The stag, as well as the fallow-deer, and the roe, were formerly so abundant that, according to Lesley, from five hundred to a thousand were sometimes slain at a hunting-match; but the native races would already have been extinguished, had they not been carefully preserved in certain forests. The otter, the marten, and the polecat, were also in sufficient numbers to be pursued for the sake of their fur; but they have now been reduced within very narrow bounds. The wild cat and fox have also been sacrificed throughout the greater part of the country, for the security of the poultry-yard or the fold. Badgers have been expelled from nearly every district which at former periods they inhabited.

Besides these, which have been driven out from some haunts, and everywhere reduced in number, there are some which have been wholly extirpated; such as the ancient breed of indigenous horses, the wild boar and the wild oxen, of which last, however, a few remains are still preserved in the parks of some of our nobility. The beaver, which was eagerly sought after for its fur, had become scarce at the close of the ninth century, and, by the twelfth century, was only to be met with, according to Giraldus de Barri, in one river in Wales, and another in Scotland. The wolf, once so much dreaded by our ancestors, is said to have maintained its ground in Ireland so late as the beginning of the eighteenth century (1710,) though it had been extirpated in Scotland thirty years before, and in England at a much earlier period. The bear, which in Wales was regarded as a beast of the chase equal to the hare or the boar, only perished as a native of Scotland in the year 1057.

Many native birds of prey have also been the subjects of unremitting persecution. The eagles, larger hawks, and ravens, have disappeared from the more cultivated districts. The haunts of the mallard, the snipe, the redshank, and the bittern, have been drained equally with the summer dwellings of the lapwing and the curlew. But these species still linger in some portion of the British isles; whereas the large capercailzies, or wood grouse, formerly natives of the pine forests of Ireland and Scotland, have been destroyed within the last fifty years. The egret and the crane, which appear to have been formerly very common in Scotland, are now only occasional visitants.

The bustard (_Otis tarda_,) observes Graves in his _British Ornithology_, "was formerly seen in the downs and heaths of various parts of our island, in flocks of forty or fifty birds; whereas it is now a circumstance of rare occurrence to meet with a single individual." Bewick also remarks, "that they were formerly more common in this island than at present; they are now found only in the open counties of the south and east, in the plains of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and some parts of Yorkshire." In the few years that have elapsed since Bewick wrote, this bird has entirely disappeared from Wiltshire and Dorsetshire.

These changes, we may observe, are derived from very imperfect memorials, and relate only to the larger and more conspicuous animals inhabiting a small spot on the globe; but they cannot fail to exalt our conception of the enormous revolutions which, in the course of several thousand years, the whole human species must have effected.

The kangaroo and the emu are retreating rapidly before the progress of colonization in Australia; and it scarcely admits of doubt, that the general cultivation of that country must lead to the extirpation of both. The most striking example of the loss, even within the last two centuries, of a remarkable species, is that of the dodo--a bird first seen by the Dutch when they landed on the Isle of France, at that time uninhabited, immediately after the discovery of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope. It was of a large size and singular form; its wings short, like those of an ostrich, and wholly incapable of sustaining its heavy body even for a short flight. In its general appearance it differed from the ostrich, cassowary, or any known bird.

Many naturalists gave figures of the dodo after the commencement of the seventeenth century; and there is a painting of it in the British Museum, which is said to have been taken from a living individual. Beneath the painting is a leg, in a fine state of preservation, which ornithologists are agreed cannot belong to any other known bird. In the museum at Oxford, also, there is a foot and a head, in an imperfect state, but M. Cuvier doubts the identy of this species with that of which the painting is preserved in London.

In spite of the most active search, during the last century, no information respecting the dodo was obtained, and some authors have gone so far as to pretend that it never existed; but amongst a great mass of satisfactory evidence in favour of the recent existence of this species, we may mention that an assemblage of fossil bones were recently discovered, under a bed of lava, in the Isle of France, and sent to the Paris museum by M. Desjardins. They almost all belonged to a large living species of land-tortoise, called _Testudu Indica_, but amongst them were the head, sternum, and humerus of the dodo. M. Cuvier showed me these valuable remains in Paris, and assured me that they left no doubt in his mind that the huge bird was one of the gallinaceous tribe.

Next to the direct agency of man, his indirect influence in multiplying the numbers of large herbivorous quadrupeds of domesticated races, may be regarded as one of the most obviate causes of the extermination of species. On this, and on several other grounds, the introduction of the horse, ox, and other mammalia, into America, and their rapid propagation over that continent within the last three centuries, is a fact of great importance in natural history. The extraordinary herds of wild cattle and horses which overran the plains of South America, sprang from a very few pairs first carried over by the Spaniards; and they prove that the wide geographical range of large species in great continents does not necessarily imply that they have existed there from remote periods. Humboldt observes, in his Travels, on the authority of Azara, that it is believed there exist, in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, twelve million cows and three million horses, without comprising in this enumeration the cattle that have no acknowledged proprietor. In the Llanos of Caraccas, the rich hateros, or proprietors of pastoral farms, are entirely ignorant of the number of cattle they possess. The young are branded with a mark peculiar to each herd, and some of the most wealthy owners mark as many as fourteen thousand a year. In the northern plains, from the Orinoco to the lake of Maracaybo, M. Depons reckoned that one million two hundred thousand oxen, one hundred and eighty thousand horses, and ninety thousand mules, wandered at large. In some parts of the valley of the Mississippi, especially in the country of the Osage Indians, wild horses are immensely numerous.

The establishment of black cattle in America dates from Columbus's second voyage to St. Domingo. They there multiplied rapidly; and that island presently became a kind of nursery from which these animals were successively transported to various parts of the continental coast, and from thence into the interior. Notwithstanding these numerous exportations, in twenty-seven years after the discovery of the island, herds of four thousand head, as we learn from Oviedo, were not uncommon, and there were even some that amounted to eight thousand. In 1587, the number of hides exported from St. Domingo alone, according to Acosta's report, was thirty-five thousand four hundred and forty-four; and in the same year there were exported sixty-four thousand three hundred and fifty from the ports of New Spain. This was in the sixty-fifth year after the taking of Mexico, previous to which event the Spaniards, who came into that country, had not been able to engage in any thing else than war. All our readers are aware that these animals are now established throughout the American continent, from Canada to Paraguay.

The ass has thriven very generally in the New World; and we learn from Ulloa, that in Quito they ran wild, and multiplied in amazing numbers, so as to become a nuisance. They grazed together in herds, and, when attacked, defended themselves with their mouths. If a horse happened to stray into the places where they fed, they all fell upon him, and did not cease biting and kicking till they left him dead.

The first hogs were carried to America by Columbus, and established in the island of St. Domingo the year following its discovery in November, 1493. In succeeding years they were introduced into other places where the Spaniards settled; and, in the space of half a century, they were found established in the New World, from the latitude of 25 deg. north, to the 40th deg. of south latitude. Sheep, also, and goats have multiplied enormously in the New World, as have also the cat and the rat, which last, as we before stated, has been imported unintentionally in ships. The dogs introduced by man, which have at different periods become wild in America, hunted in packs like the wolf and the jackal, destroying not only hogs, but the calves and foals of the wild cattle and horses.

Ulloa in his voyage, and Buffon on the authority of old writers, relate a fact which illustrates very clearly the principle before explained by us, of the check which the increase of one animal necessarily offers to that of another. The Spaniards had introduced goats into the island of Juan Fernandez, where they became so prolific as to furnish the pirates who infested those seas with provisions. In order to cut off this resource from the bucaneers, a number of dogs were turned loose into the island; and so numerous did they become in their turn, that they destroyed the goats in every accessible part, after which the number of the wild dogs again decreased.

As an example of the rapidity with which a large tract may become peopled by the offspring of a single pair of quadrupeds, we may mention that in the year 1773, thirteen rein-deer were exported from Norway, only three of which reached Iceland. These were turned loose into the mountains of Guldbringe Syssel, where they multiplied so greatly, in the course of forty years, that it was not uncommon to meet with herds consisting of from forty to one hundred in various districts.--_Lyell's Geology_, vol. ii.

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THE NOVELIST.

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THE CONFESSION OF SERVENTIUS.

(_Concluded from page 46_.)