Of Pisa, the grand central depôt of Italy for foreign consumptive patients, Dr Burgess says: 'The excess of humidity and warm temperature of the Pisan climate depress the vital force, induce an overwhelming lassitude, and are, in my opinion, most unfavourable elements in a climate so generally recommended for pulmonary consumption. Whatever effect the humid mildness of the air may have in diminishing excitability, and in allaying pulmonary irritation in patients of a nervous temperament, it is decidedly injurious in those of a feeble and lymphatic habit.... The delusion of an Italian climate, as regards the cure or prophylaxis of tubercular consumption, is in no part of that country, so delightful to persons in sound health, more clearly portrayed than at far-famed Pisa. The stagnant life, the death-like silence, the dreary solitude of this dull town, whatever utility these elements may have in allaying the restless irritability of nervous and excitable patients, always produce serious evils upon those consumptive invalids of a melancholy turn of mind, or whose spirit is broken by hope deferred. Brooding over their melancholy condition, in a foreign land, away from the comforts of home, without the solace and cheering influence of friends and relations, they soon break down and perish.' M. Carrière and Sir James Clark consider the climate of Rome adapted only for consumptive patients in the first stage of the complaint; but Dr Burgess, after a train of reasoning founded on scientific facts, comes to a conclusion consonant with his own theory, that it is not adapted for consumption in any stage or form whatever.
It is needless to follow our author to Naples, for this place is admitted by all writers to be injurious in cases of pulmonary consumption; but we may conclude this fragmentary survey by stating that, according to Dr Burgess, the least injurious portions of Italy are the Lake of Como and the city of Venice, the air in neither of them being warm, but in both equable. Here we end as we began: 'It is a mistake to suppose that a warm, humid, relaxing atmosphere can benefit pulmonary disease. Cold, dry, and still air, appears a more rational indication, especially for invalids born in temperate regions.' It will be seen that our author differs occasionally from both his great predecessors, Sir James Clark and M. Carrière; but even in so doing, he has at least the merit of fairly opening out a most important subject.
Let it be understood, that we have merely mentioned the nature of the contents of this volume, without attempting to follow Dr Burgess either in his reasonings or in the facts on which these are founded. We have now only to recommend the work as one that will be found highly interesting and suggestive, both by the medical and non-medical reader.[3]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Climate of Italy in Relation to Pulmonary Consumption: with Remarks on the Influence of Foreign Climates upon Invalids. By T. H. Burgess, M. D., &c. London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans. 1852.
[3] We print the above as we received it from a respectable contributor, but without giving any opinion ourselves upon a subject of which we are not qualified to judge.—Ed. C. J.
THE DEVICE, OR IMPRESS.
If the various works of useful and ornamental art discovered in the sepulchres of nations long since fallen into oblivion, were of no other value, at the present day, than merely to be applied to the purposes which they were originally intended to subserve; if they did not elucidate the manners, customs, and progressional refinement of men with passions and feelings similar to our own; the labour and expense incurred by their exhumation would be thrown away. It is not, then, for the intrinsic value of the specimens to be produced, neither is it for any very particular admiration of the 'good old times,' but to exhibit and illustrate a very general and exceedingly active phase of our ancestors' minds, that, turning over the refuse materials of history, we proceed to disinter, from their worm-eaten pages, the dead and almost forgotten art of Device—an art that once claimed an extensive literature, and canons of criticism, peculiarly its own. From about 250 to 400 years ago, were the high and palmy days of this 'dainty art.' Then, the learned and subtile schoolmen of the age did not disdain to write upon it, with ink scarcely dry upon the pens with which they had been discussing the most abstruse dogmas of theology; then, not unfrequently, the cureless curate, by the concoction of a happy device for a generous patron, found himself a beneficed bishop. Nor is such preferment to be wondered at. The qualifications considered necessary to constitute a device-maker, were fully equal to those which Imlac described to Rasselas as requisite to form a poet. 'Philosophy and poetry,' wrote Père le Moyne, 'history and fable, all that is taught in colleges, all that is learned in the world, are condensed and epitomised in this great pursuit; in short, if there be an art which requires an all-accomplished workman, that art is device-making.' Ruscelli says: 'It belongs only to the most exquisite wits and best-refined judgments to undertake the making of devices.' Yet, though the learned doctors of Padua, Wirtemberg, and the Sorbonne, engaged in deep disquisitions on the emblematical properties, natural and mythical, of cranes and crescents, sunflowers and salamanders, pelicans and porcupines—the length and language of mottoes—how the wind should be pictorially portrayed, with many other equally weighty considerations, still the chivalrous knights of the tournay, and the fair ladies of their devoirs, attained proficiency in the art. Wolf of Wolfrath, the lute-player, records, that at a grand tournament held at Vienna in 1560, crowns of laurel were awarded to the knights who wore the wittiest devices, as well as to those who excelled in feats of arms.