METEOROLOGICAL TABLE FOR APRIL, 1863, AT Houston.

After ages of improvement and expansion the medical profession has become a world-wide Republic. Every good member of this Republic is both a law-maker and a law-abider. Whenever he ceases to be either, he becomes properly an alien, and no change of residence or country should save him from the fate of an outcast. In this professional Republic, written laws and constitutions are not required, because of the exietence of an allprevading common law, which is of paramount authority. All voluntary associations among its members, therefore, are subject to its authority without the formality of special enactments. This common law is as necessary to this Republic as the law of gravitation is to the solar system. Let it be destroyed, and, like the natural world deprived of law, all is chaos and disorder. Exclusive systems can no more be tolerated in this Republic than exclusive opinions and practices, and no man or set of men can make a rule for the government of all, unless it be approved and adopted by each individual member.

This Republic is founded upon Medical Science, which requires of its votaries constant and unwavering publicity in all their professional acts. Discoveries and improvements must ever be open to the scrutiny of mankind. Every member is expected to be active in making them; but he must neither disguise the truth, nor render his discoveries subservient to personal advantage. To find new remedies for disease, or new virtues in old remc

dies; to construct new formule, and to propose new adjuncts to remedies long in use; to condemn the abuse or unskillful employment of remedies, however valuable, on all legitimate and meritorious duties; and it is for the profession at large to put such inovations to the test of the experimentum crucis, and to approve, modify and condemn, as judgment and observation may dictate. The decisions of such tribunals are final, and inovations must submit to them without appeal.

Under the influence of strong inducements, individuals may be led astray, especially in the use and recommendations of nostrums sanctioned by influential names. A druggist or pharmacentist who places at the head of his ingenious compounds such harmless names as sarsaparilla or buchu, with the assurance that all the remaining ingredients are harmless adjuvants to these, may, perchance, gain the approval of some not over-careful physicians, who thereby acknowlege, virtually, that they place more confidence in such nonprofessional remedies, than in the approved formula of the profession. They can hardly justify themselves before the just tribunal of the Medical Republic. But they are scarcely more culpable than such as refuse to their medical brethren the use, at their discretion, of long approved articles of the materia medica.*

Rare as are the transgressions of physicians against the common law of the profession, it is proper that journalists should detect and expose them; and the higher the station of the offender, the bolder should be the denunciation. The increasing demand for nostrums and for the adoption of systems in medicine, render it necessary that the common law of the profession should be rigidly enforced in all its bearings; and to the journals, volunteer exponents of this law, we must look for watchful care in regard to these matters. *Referring to an order of the Surgeon-General, still in force, forbidding the supply of calomel and tartar emetic to army surgeons-the climax of charlatanry. [Dr. Taylor informs me that this has been rescinded.-EDITOR.]

Phthisis Pulmonalis---Consumption.

The deposition of tubercle in the pulmonary tissue is one of the most common diseases that attacks the human family, and it occurs in all countries and amongst all races and colors. The depositions of tubercle is not confined to any tissue, but is more fatal when it attacks the lungs, phthisis pumonalis; or the lymphatics, scrofula; or the brain, tuberculosis meningitis; the mesentery, tabies mesenterica.

These portions of the body being more prone to the depositions of this matter, and about in the order in which we have given them. It prevails more extensively than any other disease, and out of the nine hundred and sixty-eight millions (9,680,000) of inhabitants of the globe about 3,000,000 die annually. That is about one in every 32.266 of persons living, die every year of this disease alone, which is greater than any other disease, except those that occur epidemically, such as cholera, influenza, and variola, before vaccination was discovered and used. From this statement it will be seen how important this subject is to every physician.

HISTOLOGY OF TUBERCLE.

Tubercles are of two kinds-gray, milary; and yellow, coalescing tubercle; encysted tubercle.

Tubercle signifies tumor, in both instances, but in the former there are single deposits of grey, transparent matter, principally albumen and the salts of lime. In the latter, yellow matter, albumen, lime and oily particles. Miliary tubercles are diffused through the tissues which they infest, and do not soften but ulcerate out in hard bodies.

Coalescing tubercle is deposited in eggregation and softens by ulceration. Both kinds are miliary in formation, and are cells peculiar to this discrasia. Until the investigations of Robin and Virchow they were supposed to be heterologous or heteromorphus; but they have proved that all the supposed heterologous formations are similar to tissues in the body, and they are cells, one called cytoblastions; the other nuclei The former are hard and transparent, the other soft and oily. Both believed by Robin and Virchow to be connective tissue filled with albumen and the phospates and carbonates of lime.

These cytoblastions, when viewed by a microscope, appear of various sizes, forms, and consistence, and are composed, or compose, moleculesr or nuclei of irregular shape.

The forms of tubercles are miliary—like millet-seed. Infilterated tubercle, in patches or masses; encysted, surrounded in a mass by cyst; calcarious, loaded with chalk or lime. Sometimes they are soft and at other times hard as stone. They are, therefore, sometimes indurated, soft, cheesy, diffluent, waxy or calcarious.

When pressed between two glasses and examined by the microscope they have an irregular shape-round, oval or triangular, and varying in diameter from 0 to 10 of an inch. These contain from one to ten granules, and are rendered transparent by acetic acid, but unaffected by water.

There is very little difference between recent tubercles and other albuminous compounds.

We have given the opinions of Robin and Virchow as to the formation, and we here quote from Dr. Bennett, that "Everything that I [He has] have seen of tubercles tends to convince me that it consists of an exudation which