The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-16 00:00:00

MEN-OF-WAR PACKETS.

Various opinions have been adduced as to the cause
ofhe loss of the men-of-war packets, with many sug-
gestions also offered to make them safer vessels at
sea; and lately several alterations have been proposed
by Officers of the different Dock-yards, which would
todoubt materially tend to the greater safety of them,
Yet the point would not be wholly accomplished by
IttlY plan I have. heard of. As a seaman who has
-e many voyages in deep waisted vessels of this
description, I would offer my opinion that the cause
Of the loss of the packets is, in all probability, to be
attributed to the short, or what is now termed
dandy tiller, and that with a very raking stein post,
Ivhich the pickets have, gives so very small a leve-
?age for steering, that, running before a sea, they
tannot answer their helm quick enough to prevent
their either broaching too or coming by the lee; the
vessel consequently fills, and with a heavy body of
'eater on deck, and so much of that deck skylights
that can only be ill-secured, the sea, unable to
escape by the ports and scuppers, forces its way
below, and the vessel founders as a natural conse-
quence.
A.B.
•

" THE MANIA FOR ANATOMICAL DIS-
SECTION AND OPERATIVE SURGERY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SIR,--The tremendous crisis which Burke and
Hare have been the means of instituting for the cure
of anatomical mania, and the false notions which this
revulsion has elicited concerning the nature of dis-
section, induce me to offer some remarks which may
perhaps r be equally serviceable to your medical and
general readers. I would, in the first place, advise
all to be chariiable to each other on this subject; and
even to rejoice'at the horrible sacrifice of life, which
h 55 been as seasonably discovered, to prevent a far
'tore lamentable :degradation of moral sentiment
Which this mania was manifestly causing among the
lower class. • I hesitate not to say,. as the result of
what all now know, that the gradation is very easy
from the habit of selling their friends for dissection,
when dead, to that of killing or allowing them to
die for the same purpose. It remains, then, only to
discover the causes which have contributed to en-
courage the former habit; and here I must impugn
the Medical, or, more particularly, the Surgical
Profession, for their extravagant estimate of the
value of
anatomical knowledge and manual
dissection, aud the public for their contradictory ac-
quiescence and resistance: the latter have, by both
these-means, greatly aided in increasing the bonus
offered to the jackals of the dissecting-room. They
have first idolized the exclusive superficial anatomist
as an expert operator, and then invented safety
tombs and other means' to render difficult the ac-
quisition of the required skill. But, it seems, from
the
increasing vigilance of magistrates and their
subordinate agents, as if the public had already
zennd that the viper which their ignorance had
They
was attempting to sting their own bosoms.
illey began to despise the simple prescriber of jalap
,and rhubarb, and extoll to the skies the hero of the
'Meet and scalpel : but they have found to their
cast that the latter will perform his maiming opera-
ticsas upon them while living, and ultimately steal
them from their peaceful graves, and dry them in
the sun like so many simple herrings. That the
ancients might reasonably feel great curiosity to
examine the structure of the human body, when
their_ observations were unavoidably restricted to
the inferior animals, may easily be imagined; but it
a.necessary to look further in order to understand
Why the anatomical mania has continued to grow
wilt!! the
facility of indulgence, till it has taken ex-
ctoZre possession of the professional mind, and has
totally thrown into oblivion all the knowledge of our
predecessors on the impalpable and general phenomena
of animal life, and on the changes producible in
them by medicine. Why do we now hear both the
booing and the pompous medical maniac appeal in-
cessantly to actual manual dissection, as the sole
and absolute requisite in his art ? Why does he
Place the tie plus ultra of talent in the ability to cut
off a limb which another might have healed ? We
/nay infer the reason from the observable fact that
he treats all disease as if it originated and existed
solely in the part most palpably affected; whose vi-
tality and function he considers independent of the
test of the body, and subject only to their peculiar
local influences. He even allows a wounded limb
t 5 affect the whole system of vital organs, in sympa-
thetic fever, without perceiving the absurdity of ne-
teeting their influence, in a part which, without
Leir support, must inevitably die. Thus, he fore'-
," draws together, with his bewitching plaister, an
['neer which nature opened as the best palliative of
ae.
igeneral derangement; and which, in spite of his
40._ ,
'et efforts, she often luckily re-opens in the same
,e another part. He tortures his mechanical genius
a invent trusses, with which to restrain a protrud-
lit intestine, thinking he has nothing more to coun-
teract than the impulse of sudden exertions, which he
eannot
ag.ne that any human body can safely
111,, -"e• He torments his strictured and fistulous
ri,atient with dilating bougies, having no conception
t'l,t an occluded living canal differs from a dead
tube %hie!) he may force open by mechanical power,
exerted in the direction of either extremity. For
aght he knows, food and its residue might easily be
ton;
to:exchange their places of ingestion and e
x
p
e
l
-
len ; for he does not understand that each extremity
c't the alimentary canal can contract naturally and effi
e4et ntly only on matter appropriately consistent arid
4atulant,:so that we need not expect from him an
hteMpt so to regulate all the secretions of the body
he may form in the lower gut a natural bougie,
es it gradually excites the natural action of
t 'Part, may cause the patient to feel the pleasure
of
qxistence and gratitude to his creator for its sup-
Pon without without any necessarily disgusting function.
hi e thus see that he cannot efficiently apply even
°wn local principle of practice. With all this
tendency, however, to partial locality, he aims oc-
onally at the use of general remedies ; but we
ILlti they arse still local and partial. It is in vain
Llit. he ascends from local to what he calls general
"'ceding; for in either operation, he demonstrates
,
thst he has no notion of his darling refuge Mamma-
tirla) except as it consists in excess of blood. If he
,
°lves medicine, we still find that he acts exclusively
‘l,!' the -liver, bowels, skin, or kidnies, following
I;iroughout, as circumstances may have made him
ta°oSe Abernethy, Hamilton, Clutterbuck, Broussais,
0t enure other local -.sages. Man seems to him to
be Made up of as many separate identities as there
7:'Parts or organs in his body; any one of which
paring contracted disease, may lead the rest in its
t.
as our maniac himself blindly follows in that
some medical autocrat. He speaks of their
41114 of imitation and sympathy, though they
tern not, in bis ideas, to have any necessary fun-
IMtiental analogy among them, so that a man
4,lht as well .iae packed up with parts taken in-
-110 iroiiiiitely from as many different individuals.
'4‘, despises as such all theories which tend to shew

that vitality is one throughout nn animal body; lie
has no notion even of warming his shivering patient,
except by external heat ; for the brandy, with
which he occasionally cheers his on n phlegmatic
carcase, he dreads as the lighter-up of his bugbear
inflammation, and as an incendiary more terrible
than his fellow-maniac Martin, of Minster notoriety.
But why all this ? I answer simply, because his
education has taught him to use his eyes, his ears,
and his touch, only in the grossest manner : reason
and enlarged observation have been degraded in his
mind, because lie has been rendered capable of rea-
soning no farther than that two and three make five
rather than four, and of observing only that flesh is
not blood, nor blood flesh. Without being a mathe-
matician or an experimental philosopher, he has
learnt to ape the scepticism of both ; and to dis-
trust all evidence that does not consist of an angle
or a colour. • If lie endeavours at all to enlarge the
sphere of his knowledge he calls in the aid of the
microscope or the conjuring stethoscope; and thus,
prying, as he thinks, into the very nooks of the
human body, he laughs like the idiot fly, at the
great circle of animal life to him for ever invisible.
How, indeed, can he be expected to be capable of
more ? He turns up his nose now at his apprentice
who compounds his insignificant potions, only be-
cause he himself held the same degrading situation
for several years of his life; just as I have seen a
barber turned physician, treat contemptuously one
of his late block-scrutinizing fraternity, though he
had himself put off only the name, not the manners
and habits of the craft. Nay, this absurd mode of
education is to be perpetuated by that chef-d'oeuvre
of legislative wisdoM, the jalap-merchant's act; and
the student is condemned to sigh for several years,
for the opportunity of cutting up the human car-
case, though he is all the while quacking with
his precentor's inferior patients, or with the
victims of the public charities; a sort of quackery,
forsooth, which he is led to think he never
can fully understand without the sovereign requisite
manual of dissection. Thus disgusted at the nearly
obliterated traces of the scanty education which he
may have received in his very boyhood, and with a
knowledge of his profession, such as refers to keep-
ing books and colouring mixtures, or• mayhap, dis-
solving salts in senna-tea, as a panacea, he goes to
make himself expert in the dissecting-room, to gape
at what he calls a capital operation, and to run
through the wards of an hospital, utterly despising
every patient that is not condemned as the victim
of operating ignorance. When he returns to claim
the confidence of the public, he trusts, in reality, to
all-powerful nature, while he puffs off his secret
compounds with a soft or a pompous exterior, and
waits with the feeling of a shark for the chance of
signalizing himself by irrecoverably maiming some
of his Majesty's more honourable subjects. That
I am not drawing an imaginary picture will be
acknowledged, when I state that I have heard of a
pompous gentleman who became notable for open-
ing the wind-pipe for the relief of croup, as often as
many open a vein in the arm, until he had repeat-
eily found himself the assistant of the great mur-
derer—death. Cataract has, of late, become a great
object of the operating mania; and yet it might
easily be proved that a majority of patients do not
enjoy a twentieth part of the benefits desirable from
couching or extraction, for want of judicious general
treatment before and after the operation, treatment
which we cannot look for so long as the surgeon's
object is only to lower the system, that it may better
bear the consequent inflammation ; and so long, let
me add, as he supposes the formation of cataract to
be totally independent of any condition of the
body in general, and of any remedies thereto rip-
, plicable. I can bear testimony to the effect of such
ignorance in a gentleman who is, at this moment,
calm, by looking forward to the operation alluded to
as an easy and certain means of regaining his sight,
when hereditary cataract, which is already evident,
shall have become complete, though he is sensible
that his health has great need of improvement, and
that his sight varies with it. If this gentleman be
disappointed by the failure of the anticipated opera-
tion, he will surely curse the anatomical and operat-
ing mania of the day. But I may illustrate this
subject more palpably to the minds of the public, and
particularly in the great town of Manchester, by a
reference to the tremendous spectacle which was
there exhibited of surgical monomania and physiolo-
gical ignorance, on the occasion of the late notori-
ously melancholy launch; when, to the utter ne-
glect of the great principle of reciprocity on which
all the animal functions support each other, and
especially those of respiration, circulation, and the
generation of heat, veins and arteries were attempted
to be cut as if they could create the blood which
the heart had ceased to throw into them ; when, on
the other hand, and, as if for contradiction's sake,
blood was actually squirted into the empty vessels;
when these means, with artificial respiration through
the natural passages, and through openings rudely
made in the wind-pipe; when I say these partial
arid exclusive means were relied upon to re-animate
bodies which were lying enveloped in their dripping
garments, and on the chilling ground ! Let me tell
the actors in this tragedy, that life is neither air nor
blood alone; and that before they pretend to repeat
the experiments of John Hunter, or any other phy-
siologist, on more than cats and dogs, they should
learn more of anatomy and physiology titan is im-
plied in the knowledge that an animal body con-
tains heart, lungs, and blood-vessels, demonstrable
by the superficial dissection.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Alancliester. CENSOR lIIEDICUS.

We learn that in some parts of the country,
an expedient has been hit on for supplying the place of the
small local notes, which the bankers, by the late act, are
now prohibited from circulating. Manufacturers and
others who have large sums to pay weekly to their work-
people have. drawn cheques on their banker of U. each to a
very large amount; and as these are readily taken by the
shopkeepers, on the credit of the issuer, they have passed
from hand to hand instead of being presentei to the
banker's for payment, and have thus got gradually into cir-
culation. As there is nothing illegal in offering a cheque
drawn by another in payment, there was no other diffi-
culty in the case than in finding people willing to take
them, and they possessed an advantage over the country
bank notes in paying no stamp duty. The banker on
whom they were drawn ran no risk, as he would only pay
them to the amount of balance in his hands belonging to
the drawer; and if the credulous people who took them,
for want of any thing better, or through old prejudices in
favour of a piper circulation of some kind, chose to go on,
the circulation of these cheques may extend until some
shock to local credit shall bring them again to their senses.
Some individuals of large dealings in this way were pre-
paring, it is said, to have cheques printed, so as to save the
trouble of filling up and signing in the usual manner.
Some remedy ought to be found for this abuse, if possible,
or the act for extinguishing the small notes will only have
substituted one class of paper issuers for another, at once
more numerous and less worthy of credit.— Times.

A dreadful accident happened on Tuesday,
near Aldgate Church. A Mr. BRAASCH, a commission
agent, and highly respected, slipped his foot off the pave-
ment at the monsent a waggon laden with coals was passing,
the fore wheel of which passing over his head, literally
crushed it to atoms. His death was instantaneous. He
has left a wife and family. "

FASHIONABLE AND MISCELLANEOUS.

The Duke of CUMBERLAND left town. about
nine o'clock yesterday morning, on a visit to the KING at
his Palace at Windsor.

The Duke of WELLINGTON left town for
Windsor yesterday morning, fur the purpose of having an
audience of his MAJESTY.

The Princess SOPIIIA took an airing in her
carriage yesterday, for the first time since her recovery
from her recent indisposition.

A deputation of West India Merchants and
Planters, and some of the Agents to the West India Islands,
attended at the Treasury yesterday, and had a conference
with the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER. Lord SEA-
FORD, Mr. PALLMER, M.P., Mr. HIBBERT, and Mr.
COLVILLE, were among the deputation.

A deputation of the principal Auctioneers,
among whom were Messrs. WINSTANLEY, IIOGGART,
MARSHALL, and GEO. ROBINS, were admitted to a con-
ference with the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER yester-
day afternoon, at the Treasury.

Prince POLIGNAC, the French Ambassador,
had an interview with the Earl of ABERDEEN yesterday
at the office of the Secretary of State fer Foreign Affairs.
Viscount MELVILLE held a levee as First
Lord of the Admiralty yesterday, at the Admiralty, which
was attended by about thirty Naval Officers.

Earl BATIIURST visited Mr. Secretary PEEL
yesterday.
The CHANCELLOR Of the EXCHEQUER en-
tertained the Cabinet Ministers to dinner yesterday even-
ing at his residence in Downing-street.

The news of the accouchement of the lady of
THOMAS WENTWORTH BEA U moNT, Esq., M.P., at
Branch Hill Lodge, near London, on the 11th instant, of
a son and heir, was :received with great glee by the
numerous friends of the family at Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
on Monday last. The bells of the several churches in that
town rang merrily on the occasion, as did a'so tlo e of
St. Mary's, Gateshead.

Yesterday a Court of Directors was held at the
East India House, when the following Commanders took
leave of the Court previous to departing for their respec-
tive destinations ;—viz., Captain DAVID RAE NEWALL,
Waterloo; Captain JAMES BURNETT, Scaleby Castle;
Captain ROBERT SCOTT, Vansittart; Captain GEORGE
KINNAIRD BATHIE, Lowther Castle; and Capt. ROGER
B. EVEREST, Charles Grant, China direct. Captain
CHRISTOPHER BIDEN was sworn in to the command of
the ship Princess Charlotte of Wales, consigned to
Bengal.

REMOVAL OF THE MENAGERIE FROM
EXETER 'CIIANGE.—The removal of this immense Col-
lection of Wild Beasts has been effected without the
slightest accident, and with a boldness and tact that could
only have been the result of long practical experience.
The arrangement' of the Collection at the King's Mews
will, we understand, be on a most superior and extensive
scale, and we trust will obtain the same degree of public
patronage that it has always hitherto enjoyed. The Lions
alone are worth the money paid for seeing the whole Col-
lection ; they are magnificent animals on the largest scale
of magnitude.

A few days ago, one of the Worthy Magis-
trates of Queen-square Police-office was requested by a
gentleman to attend on an officer's widow, residing at
Bethnal-green, at any convenient time, fur the purpose of
administering an oath, and signing an affidavit authorising
her to receive her husband's pension, the lady being bed-
ridden, and unable to attend herself. The Magistrate ac-
cordingly repaired to the lady's dwelling, and after per-
forming his necessary duties, in the course of conversation,
from various circumstances, discovered that she was his
aunt, and instead of being a Captain's widow, she was the
widow of an Admiral.

It is rumoured that a celebrated Commoner,
the son of a wealthy Baronet, has incurred his father's
high displeasure, by the course which he has taken upon a
certain vital consequence.

A hostile meeting took place in the Garrison
Close, one day last week, between two gentlemen of this
town. The affair was amicably adjusted, after an inter-
change of shots.—Hull Packet.

The Secretary and all the clerks in the Com-
missioner's Office, in Chatham Dock-yard, have received
orders to hold themselves in readiness to remove to Sheer-
ness. It is expected that the clerks in the Navy Pay-
office will also be removed to that place. Commissioner
LEWIS, from the Navy Board, is, we understand, ap-
pointed to superintend both yards, Commissioner Curl-
NINGHA3I retiring with the rank of an Admiral.—Maid-
stone Journal.

We understand that a valuable and handsome
piece of plate has been presented to STEPHEN LOVE HAIVI
MICE, Esq., first surgeon of the Royal Naval Hospital at
Plymouth, by the officers of that establishment, and the
families recently belonging to it, as a memento of their re-
spect and esteem, and to mark their sense of the high opi-
nion entertained of his professional abilities, which we are
authorized to state have been exerted on all occasions with
so much kindness and attention, with suck promptitude
and skill, as to make Mr. HAMMICK'S retirement a matter
of deep and general regret. This is the second piece of
plate which has been presented to this gentleman, on the
occasion of his retiring from the public service, by those
who have had the best means of appreciating his character
and worth, from having acted with him in the same esta-
blishment.—Plymouth and Devonport Journal.

The largest of all known medals is supposed
to be that which the States of Upper Austria presented, in
the year 1716, on the occasion of the birth of the Impe-
rial Prince LEOPOLD, which weighed 16 mares, or eight
pounds, of fine gold. Previously, the medal which King
CHRISTIAN V. of Dcmnark caused to be struck, in com-
memoration of the naval victory gained over the Swedes,
in the year 1677, passed for the largest medal extant.
LUDICROUS SCENE.—III a case which oc-
curred in the Crown Court during the late Gloucester
Assizes, a countryman who had been subpoenaed as a wit-
ness on the part of a prisoner, set the whole Court in a
roar of laughter. Matters proceeded very smoothly dur-
ing his direct examination, and he made no objection to
answer any question which was put to him on behalf of
his friend in the dock, but after he had been subjected
for some time to the galling fire of a cross-examination
by the Counsel for the prosecution, he became restive,
and at length finding his stock of patience completely
exhausted, he expressed his determination to answer no
more questions from the same quarter in the following re-
solute terms " I wont say no more—be cloned if I do
—l'se a told you all I knows about it—and that's all I got
to say, by G—!" When the Counsel for the prisoner
again addressed him, he said, " Aye, I can speak to these
mon, but its unpossible vor I to answer so mony on ye, at
.once—as to the Lord—he up there—(pointing to the
'lunch)--let un ax me as mony questions as un likes, and
I'll answer un, but I'se can't tolk to a lot of fellows all at
one time. " Cheltenham Chronicle.

ANOTHER ROWLAND STEPHENSON.—A
Mr. W., a considerable speculator in corn, and otherwise
connected with trade, has absconded, carrying away with
him a considerable sum of money, obtained by arts of im-
position on confiding friends, on whom his plausible and
insinuating manners, together with high pretensions to
openness in his dealings, had, at one time, made most fa-
vourable impressions, though of late his character had ma-
terially suffered in the estimation of the public. It is to
be feared that he has also succeeded in swindling tradesmen
in several other towns, as it is known that in Leeds he had
ordered goods to Liverpool for exportation to a consider-
able amount, some of which have actually been shipped off
for New York, to which place, after he had completed the
sum of his nefarious designs, he was intending to ship
himself. Before, however, this could be accomplished, he
was, in consequence of his mysterious absence, and other
suspicious circumstances, pursued to Liverpool, where he
had been heard of, but where, owing to some secret inti-
mation, most unhandsomely given him, he contrived
to elude his pursuers. They have, however, succeeded in
attaching a considerable sum of money, lodged in the hands
of his agents; and stopping, in tronsitu, a considerable
portion of manufactured goods, purchased by bills at three
months' date. On finding himself in the proximity of
those whom it would not be pleasant to see, be lost no
time in taking his course across the island ; and there is
the evidence of letters from him, with the Portsmouth
post-mark on them, that he has got out of the country in
an American ship, called the Columbia, destined for New
York. We have scarcely ever heard of such a tissue of
fraud, contempt of all moral principle, and disregard for
the welfare of his friends, us is attributed to this man.
His projects have not been on so magnificent a scale as
those of RownaND STEruzwsow, but yield not to his in
profligacy and utter recklessness of the ruin in which they
may involve his connections and his own family. _ He hae
eft a wife and six children.—Hull Rockingham.

FASHIONABLE INTELLIGENCE.

ARRIVALS.

The Earl of St. Germains, in St. James's-square, from Surrey ;
Colonel and Mrs. Brown and family, at their residence, King-
street, Portman-square. from Amwell Bury, :.Herts George
Dempster, Esq. and Mrs. Dempster, in George-street, 'Hanover.
square, from Scotland; the Marquis and Marchimiess de Macelo
and suite, at the Burlington Hotel, Old Burlington ,and, Cod:.
streets, from the Brazils ; Mr. and Mrs. C. F.'Bennett and Miss
Sheppard, at ditto, from the Royal York Crescent, Clifton';, T. B.
Estcourt, Esq. M.P. at ditto, from Devizes; G. Towrey, Esq. et
Crawley's Hotel (late Cook's), Albemarle-street, from Sunning-
hill ; Mrs. and Miss • Purcer, at the St. George's Hotel, -Albe-
marle-street, from the Continent; ,Mrs. and Miss B. Cummings,
at Kirkham's Hotel, Lower Brook-street, from Paris ; William
M‘Duft; Esq. at ditto, from Ireland ; Capt. and Mrs. Lambert, in
Regent-street, from Brighton.