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How are we to secure for the art of discerning, curing and preventing disease, the maximum of good and the minimum of mischief, in availing ourselves of the newest discoveries in human knowledge? To any one wishing to look into this most interesting, and at the present time, vital question, we would recommend a paper by the accomplished President of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, admirable equally in substance and in form, entitled, "On the Signification of Fact in Medicine, and on the hurtful effects of the incautious use of such modern sources of fact as the microscope, the stethoscope, chemical analysis, statistics, &c.;" it may be found in No. 177 of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. We merely give a sample or two, in which our readers will find in better expression much of what he have already referred to. "Medicine still is, and must continue for ages to be an empirico-ra"A sober thinker can hardly

tionalism."

venture to look forward to such an advanced state of chemical rationalism as would be sufficient for pronouncing a priori, that sulphur would cure scabies, iodine goître, citric acid the scurvy, or carbonate of iron neuralgia." "Chemistry promises to be of immediate service in the practice of medicine, not so much by offering us a rational chemical pathology, but by enlarging the sources from which our empirical rules are to be drawn." Here we have our "middle propositions." "The great bulk of practical medical knowledge is obviously the fruit of individual minds, naturally gifted for excellence in medicine;" but the whole paper deserves serious contiuous study. We would also, in spite of some ultraisms in statement and expression, the overflowings of a more than ordinarily strong and ardent, and honest mind, recommend heartily the papers of Dr. Forbes, which appeared at the close of the British and Foreign Medical Review, in which he has, with what we cannot call else or less than magnanimity, spoken so much wholesome, though it may be, unpalatable truth; and, finally, we would send every inquiring student who wishes to know how to think and how to speak on this subject at once with power, clearness, and compactness, and be both witty and wise, to Dr. Latham's three little volumes on Clinical Medicine. The first two lectures in the earliest volume are "lion's marrow," the very pith of sense and soundmindedness. We give a morsel :

"The medical men of England do and will continue to keep pace with the age in which

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they live, however rapidly it may advance. I wish to see physicians still instituted in the same discipline, and still reared in fellowship and communion with the wisest and best of men, and that not for the sake of what is ornamental merely, and becoming to their character, but because I am persuaded that that discipline which renders the mind most capacious of wisdom and most capable of virtue, can hold the torch and light the path to the sublimest discoveries in every science. It was the same discipline which contributed to form the minds of Newton and of Locke, of Harvey and

of Sydenham."

He makes the following beautiful remark in leading his pupils into the vast ward of St. Bartholomew's :

"In entering this place, even this vast hospital, where there is many a significant, many a wonderful thing, you shall take me along with you, and I will be your guide. But it is by your own eyes, and your ears and your own minds, and (1 may add) by your own hearts, that you must observe, and learn, and profit. I can only point to the objects, and say little else than 'See here and see there.'

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This is the great secret, the coming to close quarters with your object, having immediate, not mediate cognizance of the materials of study and care, apprehending first, and then comprehending. For, to use an illustration, which no one need ever weary of giving or receiving, a good practical physician is more akin to the working-bee than to the spider or the ant. Instead of spinning, like the schoolmen of old, endless webs of speculations out of their own bowels, in which they were themselves afterward as frequently caught and destroyed as any one else, or hoarding up, grain after grain, the knowledge of other men, and thus becoming "a very dungeon of learning," in which (Hibernice) they lose at once themselves and it,— they should rather be like the brisk and public-hearted bee, taking, by a divine instinct, her own industry, and the accuracy of her instrument, honey from all flowers. "Formica colligit et utitur, ut faciunt empirici; aranea ex se fila educit neque a particularibus materiam petit; apis denique cæteris se melius gerit, hæc indigesta a floribus mella colligit, deinde in viscerum cellulas concocta maturat, iisdem tandem insudat donec ad integram perfectionem perduxerit."

We had intended giving some account of the bearing that the general enlightenment of the community has upon Medicine,-and especially of the value of the labors of such men as the late Dr. Combe, Dr. Henry Marshall, Sir James Clark, and others, in the

collateral subjects leading into, and auxiliary cere, et in crescente ætate, minui potius quam to pure Medicine,-but we have no space to augeri, scientiam," meaning by "scientia” an do them any measure of justice. The full abstract systematic knowledge. And Borimportance, and the full possibility of the deu gives as the remark of an old physician, prevention of disease in all its manifold, civil," J'étois dogmatique à vingt ans, observateur moral, and personal bearings, is not yet by any means adequately acknowledged; there are few things oftener said or less searched into than that prevention is better than cure. Let not our young and eager doctors be scandalized at our views as to the comparative uncertainty of medicine as a sciencesuch has been the opinion of the wisest and most successful of the art. Radcliffe used to say, that "when young, he had fifty remedies for every disease, and when old, one remedy for fifty diseases." Dr. James Gregory said, "young men kill their patients, old men let them die." Gaubius says, "equidem candide dicam, plura me indies, dum in artis usu versor, dediscere quam dis

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a trente, à quarante je fus empirique; je n'ai point de système à cinquante.' And he adds, in reference to how far a medical man must personally know the sciences that contributed to his art, "Iphicrates, the Athenian general, was hard pressed by an orator before the people, to say what he was to be so proud, Are you a soldier, a captain, an engineer, a spy, a pioneer, a sapper, a miner?' 'No,' says Iphicrates, 'I am none of these, but I command them all.' So, if one asks me, are you an empiric, a dogmatist, an observer, an anatomist, a chemist, a microscopist? I answer, No, but I am captain of them all.”

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THERE'S a shadow on the spirit,
But though it darkly clings,
Oh never, oh never fear it,

There's morning on its wings.
For the shadow on the fountain
Is sunshine but in gloom,
And the sadness on the spirit
Doth herald joy to come.

Gloomy days were not created
To last above their day,

Hearts were never rendered gloomy
To be in gloom alway.

Light aye follows upon darkness,
Song-birds carol after showers,
And sad bosoms spring to gladness
Like the merry-hearted flowers.

So it is, and ever has been;
So it will be, never fear;

Wait one moment, joy is coming,
Shades are fleeing-day is here.

From Hogg's Instructor.

ALEXANDER SELKIRK, THE ORIGINAL ROBINSON CRUSOE.

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shall, however, stir their remembrance once more, that our young readers may have a knowledge of the real as well as the imaginary Robinson Crusoe. There is, besides, a moral to be derived from his eventful life which may be studied to advantage.

Alexander Selkirk, or Selcraig, was the seventh son of John Selcraig and Euphan Mackie of Largo, in Fifeshire. The father was a shoemaker and tanner-most of the shoemakers in these days curing their own hides-and a man of some means. The property in which he lived, called Dunnochie, at the west end of Largo, was his own. Here Alexander was born in 1676. hood he was naturally of a wayward temper, which humor was much aggravated by the ill-bestowed favor of his mother, who formed great expectations of her son because of his being the seventh, a charmed number, ac

In boy

WE are not certain whether Defoe's admirable romance, "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," is quite such a favorite with the "rising generation" of the present day as it was with their youthful progenitors. If it is, we feel some misgivings that we undertake a thankless task in directing the attention of the juvenile reader to the real prototype of that most interesting of all imaginary personages. So very much like a true narrative of facts has Defoe contrived to weave his imperishable fiction, that the young mind, if not the old, is unwilling to think of any one having sat for the portraiture save the veritable Robinson Crusoe himself. Nevertheless, such is the fact, and as truth is at all times preferable to fiction, even the most highly wrought, we cannot help embracing this opportunity of thanking honest John Howell for the zeal with which he set about gleaning the history of the bona fide adven-cording to superstition. He seems to have turer. This he accomplished with characteristic enthusiasm, some twenty years ago; yet it is singular that no second edition of his little work, so far as we are aware, has ever been called for a circumstance which, perhaps, more than anything else, shows that the world did not care to be disabused of its belief in the ideal Robinson. It is true that the fact of Selkirk's having lived alone for four years and four months on an island, was known through the medium of several publications, prior to the fiction of Defoe, and from which he adopted the idea of his future work. Amongst others, it was made the subject of a paper in "The Englishman," by Sir Richard Steele, who saw and conversed with Alexander Selkirk. This account of him was published in 1713, six years before the production of Defoe's work. Still these notices had long been lost sight of by the general reader till Howell again revived them. Even his gathered statements, interesting as they certainly are, seem now in danger of experiencing a similar fate.

We

* The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, &c. By JOHN HOWELL.

early made choice of a seafaring life, and to have acquired some knowledge in navigation. That he soon became an able and expert seaman may be inferred from his subsequent history. Howell produces extracts from the session-records, to show that he was at home in 1701, as quarrelsome and reckless as could be well imagined.* In 1703, he was appointed sailing-master of the Cinque Ports galley, one of two privateer vessels sent out to the South Seas by a company under Captain Dampier, who had previously gained some reputation in that quarter of the world. In this expedition, however, he proved himself very ill-qualified for the command he had undertaken. His "arbitrary, unsettled turn of mind" led to continual disputes and heart-burnings, while their success in capturing prizes was by no means commensurate with their expectations. After the death of Captain Charles Pickering of the Cinque Ports, and the promotion of Lieutenant Thomas Stradling, to whom he had conceived

* He was summoned before the session for creating a tumult in his father's house, and fighting with his brothers.

an inveterate dislike, Selkirk seems to have the 19th of May, the vessels parted, never resolved upon making his escape as soon as to meet again. Strange to say, although an possible. In the conduct of Captain Dam- | exchange of some of the men took place bepier he foresaw nothing but ruin to the ex- tween the two ships, Selkirk remained with pedition. A dream which he had at this the Cinque Ports, thinking probably, as time, to the effect that the Cinque Ports Howell presumes, that no money was to be would be shipwrecked, is said to have deci- got under Dampier's command. While cruisded him in his determination. The two ves- ing along the shores of Mexico, without any sels having reached Juan Fernandez (Feb. success, a violent quarrel ensued between 1704) for the purpose of taking in wood and Captain Stradling and Selkirk, and he re water, a violent quarrel ensued between Cap- solved to leave, whatever might be the contain Stradling and his crew. Forty-two out sequence. At length the want of provisions of the sixty men went on shore, determined and the crazy state of the ship compelled never to go on board again, so that the Stradling to sail for Juan Fernandez. Here Cinque Ports rode almost deserted at anchor. the vessel remained from the beginning to For two days the men wandered about the the end of September, the breach between island, undecided what to do. Howell is in- the Captain and Selkirk daily becoming worse. clined to believe, though the fact is not stated At length, while the vessel was getting under by Funnel, the historian of the expedition, weigh, Selkirk was landed, with his chest, that Selkirk was amongst the disaffected, and all his effects. It must have been an and that it was during this misunderstanding, impressive scene to witness the leave-taking having ample leisure to survey the island, he of his comrades, while the surly commander had resolved upon making it his subsequent sat in the boat urging their return. Selkirk retreat. At length, through the mediation described his feelings as almost insupportaof Captain Dampier, the refractory crew ble when he heard the plash of the oars as were reconciled to their captain, and returned the boat rowed away, leaving him to solitude to their duty. While the vessels were lying and himself on an uninhabited island. His here a sail appeared in sight, when chase heart literally sank within him. was immediately given, and at length coming up with her she proved to be a French ship of about four hundred tons burden, with thirty guns, and well provided and manned. A desperate action ensued, the brunt of which was borne by the St. George, the Cinque Ports, after firing a few shots, having fallen astern and been becalmed. The fight was maintained yardarm and yardarm for seven hours, when at length the fire of the Frenchman began to slacken, there not being men left sufficient to work the guns, and she was on the point of yielding when a breeze sprang up, and she made sail, the St. George not being in a condition to follow her. Thus the gallant prize was lost just at the moment fortune seemed about to place her in their power. The Cinque Ports having bore up, the two captains, in opposition to the remonstrances of the crews, determined to return to Juan Fernandez, and allow the Frenchman to escape. On their return, however, they found the bay occupied by two French South Sea vessels of thirty-six guns each, too strong a force for them to compete with; so they bore away direct for the coast of Peru.

But it is not our purpose to follow Dampier in his unfortunate expedition. After sundry adventures, a few captures, and no small mismanagement, a serious misunderstanding occurred between the two captains, and on

The Island of Juan Fernandez, of which Alexander Selkirk was for the time the only inhabitant, is situated in the Pacific Ocean, about a hundred and ten leagues west of Chili. It is peculiarly rich in natural beauty --rocks, hills, and valleys-and abounding with delightful springs and streams of water, with umbrageous woods, and wild flowers innumerable. The shores abounded with fish, and numerous goats-a breed of which had been imported at some unknown period before-browsed upon its herbage. Such was the island-home of Selkirk, and, in the beautiful words of Cowper, he might have exclaimed, as he looked around

"I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute;"

but his heart still beat violently in response to the farewell salute of his friends; the plash of the receding oars still filled his ear, and his eye strained toward the little speck on the horizon long after, it had disappeared. The most intense feeling of desolation took hold of him

"Oh solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place!"

He felt, in short, an entire prostration of his faculties. It was not till the darkness of night overshadowed all things that he closed his weary eyes, and even then not to sleep, so dreadful did he feel the indescribable loneliness of his situation. He tasted no food until prompted by extreme hunger, and then he fed upon such shellfish as the beach supplied, for he felt as if spellbound to the shore. It was now the beginning of October (1704), the "springtime of the year" in those southern latitudes in which Juan Fernandez is situated. The island was glowing in all the freshness of its vernal beauty, but nature spread her charms in vain before the deserted in his present mood. He felt as "out of humanity's reach," and was miserable. Nor was this to be wondered at. The life of a seaman is perhaps the worst of all training for a recluse; for, although they may be said to be shut out from the world for years in long voyages, still they are always associated in little communities, and enjoy each other's society with greater relish because of their peculiar situation. To be at once transferred from a floating world of some sixty men, bound to each other by a common danger and a common interest, to an uninhabited island, where he never could "hear the sweet music of speech," was a trial of fortitude which no one can properly conceive. Neither was the temper of Selkirk of that phlegmatic character to bear calmly the ills which beset him. Often did he contemplate putting an end to his sufferings by a violent death." It "It was in this trying situation," says Howell, "when his mind, deprived of all outward occupation, was turned back upon itself, that the whole advantages of that inestimable blessing, a religious education in his youth, was felt in its consoling influence when every other hope and comfort had fled. When misery had subdued the pride of his hard and stubborn heart, it was then he turned to that Divine Being of whom he had thought so little at an earlier period. Then the uninhabited wilderness of Juan Fernandez was turned into a smiling garden, and the darkness of that despair that had nearly overwhelmed him began to clear away. By slow degrees he became reconciled to his fate, and as winter approached, he saw the necessity of procuring some kind of shelter from the weather; for, even in that genial clime, frost is common during the night, and snow is sometimes found upon the ground in the morning." One of the greatest difficulties experienced by the recluse was the living upon fresh food. He had no salt, and the

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loathing induced by the want of it was almost intolerable. It is astonishing, however, how accommodating the human constitution is. The palate became reconciled at last. The first great enterprise engaged in by Selkirk was the building of a hut. This roused his energies, and necessarily took him away from the beach, where he used to maintain a hopeless outlook for some vessel to relieve him from his melancholy situation. He found this occupation so agreeable that he built two huts. They were constructed of "the wood of the pimento-tree, and thatched with a species of grass, that grows to the height of seven or eight feet upon the plains and smaller hills, and produces straw resembling that of oats." The one was much larger than the other, and situated near a spacious wood. This he made his sleeping-room, spreading the bed-clothes he had brought on shore with him upon a frame of his own construction; and as these wore out, or were used for other purposes, he supplied their place with goats' skins. His pimento bedroom he used also as his chapel; for here he kept up that simple but beautiful form of family-worship which he had been accustomed to in his father's house. Soon after he left his bed, and before he commenced the duties of the day, he sang a psalm or part of one; then he read a portion of Scripture, and finished with devout prayer. In the evening, before he retired to rest, the same duties were performed. His devotions he repeated aloud, to retain the use of speech, and for the satisfaction man feels in hearing the human voice, even when it is only his own. The greater part of his time was spent in devotion. He had been heard afterward to say, with tears in his eyes, that he was a better Christian in his solitude than ever he was before, and feared he would ever be again. To distinguish the Sabbath, he kept an exact account of the days of every week and month, although the method he adopted to do so is not mentioned.

“Religion! what treasure untold

Resides in that heavenly word! More precious than silver and gold,

Or all that this earth can afford."

The smaller hut, which stood at some distance from the other, was used as a kitchen, in which he dressed his victuals. The furniture, as may be conceived, was very scanty, the pot or kettle he had brought from the ship to boil his meat in being the most valuable article. The pimento wood, which burns very bright and clear, served him both for

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