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Sick and Disabled Seamen.-One of the late Congressional documents comprises a letter from Dr. Ruschenberger, Surgeon to the U. S. Naval Hospital in New York, to a member of Congress, relative to the expenses of the Marine and Naval Hospitals. From it we make the following quotations respecting these important institutions. By an act approved July 16th, 1798, a tax of twenty cents monthly was levied on the pay or wages of all seafaring people; and, in consideration of the payment of this tax, collectors of ports are directed in the same act to provide for the temporary relief and maintainance of the sick or disabled seamen in hospitals.' Under this law all seafaring people who pay this tax, or hospital money,' are entitled to the relief specified or intended.

"The rate of the tax thus levied is very heavy, as may be seen by comparing it with the amount of seamen's resources. For example, in the navy the total pay and emolument of a seaman are, annually, $144, and rations $73; equal to $217. From this sum he pays yearly $2 40, or more than one per cent, (1.10) on his total income. This is not an income tax, nor a property tax, but a tax upon the liability to misfortune of a class whose pursuit is eminently perilous to health and life.

"An act approved March 2d, 1799, levied the same amount of tax (to be applied in the same way) on persons serving in the navy. Officers, seamen and marines under this act were entitled to the same advantage as sailors in the merchant service. The fund resulting under the operation of these two acts constituted the marine hospital fund.'

"By an act approved February 26th, 1811, the moneys, or tax collected from persons serving in the navy, were separated from the marine hospital fund, and constituted a fund under the title of navy hospital fund.' As no person in the navy had derived any advantage from the marine hospital fund between the years 1799 and 1811; and as it was fairly shown that the navy had paid at least $50,000 into it, this sum was taken from the marine hospital fund and paid over as the foundation of the navy hospital fund. By the act of 1811 the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Treasury, were constituted commissioners of this fund; but, by an act approved July 10th, 1832, the Secretary of the Navy became the sole commissioner.

"The act of 1811 provides not only for the temporary, but also for the permanent relief of the sick and disabled officers, seamen and marines; and under its authority the naval asylumn at Philadelphia was erected."

"From public documents I learn that the aggregate of hospital money collected from the merchant service for the year 1842 was $72,429 32, and the expenditure for the same year was $93,531 68; that the expense of sick and disabled seamen in the merchant service exceeded the receipts $21,102 36 for the year 1842, and for the half year ending June, 1843, the expenditure exceeded the receipts $9,129 77. Last year $25,000 were appropriated by Congress to

meet the deficit of the marine hospital fund; and unless some means be devised to prevent this annual deficit, it will probably increase from year to year.'

Dr. R. suggests several modes of reducing the expenditures of the marine hospital fund, and also of increasing the receipts of the navy hospital fund, but we believe no action was had by Congress on the subject.-Boston Med. and Sur. Jour.

Medical Appointment in the Regular Army of the United States.To persons desirous of entering the medical staff of the regular army, the following information from a responsible source will be acceptable:

It is prescribed by law that "no person shall receive the appointment of assistant surgeon in the army of the United States unless he shall have been examined and approved by an army medical board, to consist of not less than three surgeons or assistant surgeons, who shall be designated for that purpose by the Secretary of War.”

Applications for permission to be examined for the appointment of assistant surgeon must be addressed to the Secretary of War; must state age and residence of the applicant; and must be accompanied by respectable testimonials of his possessing the moral and physical qualifications requisite for filling creditably the responsible station, and for performing ably the arduous and active duties of an officer of the medical staff. These proving satisfactory, invitations are accordingly sent to the applicants.

The medical board of examiners rigidly scrutinizes the pretensions of each candidate, taking into consideration his physical qualifications and moral habits, as well as his professional acquirements; and reports favourably upon no case admitting of a reasonable doubt, as the health and lives of the officers and soldiers are objects too important to be committed to ignorant and incompetent hands.

Section 8 of the army bill, approved February 11, 1847, authorizes the appointment of "two additional surgeons and twelve additional assistant surgeons in the regular army of the United States." After the promotion of two assistant surgeons to the advanced grade of surgeon, and the appointment of the candidates who were examined and found qualified by the last medical board, there will still remain nine appointments of assistant surgeons to be made under the provisions of the section just quoted.

An army medical board has accordingly been ordered to convene in the city of New York on the 15th of this month (March,) for the examination of such candidates as may be authorized by the Secretary of War to present themselves. Applicants from a distance are notified that, as the board will probably be in session for a month, they will be in time if they present themselves three weeks after the board shall assemble.-Nat. Intel.

Theatrical Performances at the New York State Lunatic Asylum. By D. TILDEN BROWN, M. D., 2d Assistant Physician.-Among the

moral agents employed in all well-regulated Asylums for the insane, to divert the deranged mind from its morbid concentration, by giving new direction to thought, and suggesting new sources of contemplation, amusements deservedly hold a high rank; and every appliance which conduces to gratify or create a capacity for enjoyment in the unhappy lunatic, however humble in itself, becomes a valuable adjuvant in the process of restoration. Varied as it may be by periodical diversions and occasional festivals, the hospital residence of the insane is necessarily, in a degree, monotonous and insipid. Separated by affliction from the world, with its ties, affections, and pursuits; excluded by misfortune from the usual sources of rational happiness, much of their life is passed in the gloom of despondency; in inward struggles with their emotions; in revolving cherished delusions; or in groping amid the darkness of fatuity. In removing or mitigating such conditions, mirth and recreation, no longer frivolousor puerile, become dignified as instruments of cure. They not only prove serviceable by presenting temporary enjoyment, but by creating a future in the mind absorbed in gloomy retrospect, or present wretchedness, and by furnishing cheerful attractions to the memory of those who drown all recollections of the past in apprehensions of impending evils. They impel the patient to the exercise of self-control, both by suggesting that propriety of behaviour which will secure participation in such privileges, and by engaging the attention to the exclusion of irrational thoughts. Though by some miserable victims of hopeless despair, all attempts to arouse their cheerfulness are viewed as cruel mockery of their sufferings, to many, such occasions are sources of unalloyed pleasure; and the aggregate gratification experienced by the insane in any entertainment, is probably but little less than would be manifested by an equal number of their more sane brethren.

With such an estimate of their value, the guardian of the insane seeks to accumulate sources of amusement that he may alleviate confinement and ennui, and at the same time so vary recreation that it may not satiate by its monotony. He thus opens a new world of pleasure to his charge, presenting enjoyments adapted to their mental condition, and their capacity to appreciate them. The character of these amusements is varied by manifold causes. Thus the whole system of recreation of any Asylum, may be influenced or decided by the temperament of its Superintendent; by the social position and former occupation of its inmates; or by the locale of the institution itself; while numerous minor agencies will affect the details of its operation. As a class, the amusements of the American Asylums rarely differ in a material degree, but a few find both advocates and opponents among the medical officers. Dancing, social parties, permitting the commingling of the sexes, fairs, and attendance on public entertainments, have been successively opposed and defended. When, however, it is remembered that many of the insane are but little separated from the rest of the world in their sense of propriety and correctness of deportment, there seems no reasonable objection, provided the indulgence

be limited to this class, to a participation in those amusements which employ so much of the time of the sane world.

In this country, where the utilitarian spirit of the national character exhibits itself, even under the disturbing influences of mental alienation, employment in industrial pursuits, as a moral agent in the treatment of this disease, proves far more efficacious, and in general, more alleviating to the patient than mere recreation. In northern latitudes, however, such occupation is generally confined, by the severity of climate, to a comparatively small portion of each year; and although some branches of industry employ a limited number of patients during the tempestuous season, reliance is mainly placed on those ornamental arts and intellectual diversions which may be comprised in the term amusements. But these, of themselves, become agreeable and inviting occupations, arousing the inert, and tranquillizing the irritable. In their nature, they should be such as will engage, without exciting, those to whom they are addressed; and, while permitting that restrain. ing surveillance which their conditions require, will insure cheerfulness and mirth. Of the numerous source of amusement, combining present gratification and prospective benefit, which are available in an Asylum, none, perhaps, presents more decided advantages than dramatic representation. All the necessary materiel exists within the precincts of the institution itself, requiring only to be developed and set in operation. Among the throng which fill its halls, move the author and the actor, waiting only to be discovered by the discriminating tact of their guardians. There is the genius to create, and the talent to pourtray scenes of humor, sentiment, and pathos. From such convictions, the attempt has been made at the State Lunatic Asylum, during the present winter, to produce the exhibition of theatrical performances by the patients, for the twofold purpose of engaging some who pertinaciously object to all other employment, and offering an agreeable diversion to many others. These efforts have been attended with gratifying success, and the representations have realized the most sanguine hopes of the projectors. Original plays have been produced and enacted solely by the patients, and the approval of competent judges has pronounced the matter and the impersonation to be meritorious. The hope of approbation undoubtedly stimulated some to engage in this project, who might otherwise have declined; and the presence of the Managers of the Asylum with their families and friends, and, on one occasion, that of the Governor of the State, has gratified the desire, and fairly tested the feasibility of this enterprise. Although the performers consisted entirely, and the spectators mainly of patients, it is believed that an eyewitness of the scene, unconscious of these facts, would have discovered no indication thereof throughout the performance, or would have credited the assurance that the actors before him, and the spectators about him, were isolated from the world as victims of insanity.

The plays enacted thus far have been mostly humerous; caricatures of the follies of the age, burlesques on national characteristics, and ludicrous exhibitions of individual and sectional peculiarities. There

can be little doubt, however, that with the assistance of suitable appliances, pieces of higher pretensions, vaudevilles, melodramas, &c., might be successfully attempted.

Some patients have evinced a felicity in the conception and impersonation of the characters assigned them, not unworthy of professed representatives of the histrionic art.

Seventeen patients have assisted in these performances, some of whom have since recovered and left the institution. Others are convalescing, while to a smaller number, the Asylum will probably always prove a better home than the world with its turmoil can offer. Among these were individuals who believed, or had recently believed themselves to be the especial ministers of Divine will; exalted personages, Roman Pontiffs, or Secretaries of State; that by a wave of their hand they could control the movements of railroad trains, and vessels on the high seas; who had, previous to 'admission, been confined in chains, as dangerous, from their homicidal propensities; who insisted on their own idiocy and "inability to think," even while engrossed in the study of their parts; or whose ordinary conversation denied all attempts to trace coherence or point.

No injurious effects have, thus far, been discovered, and none are apprehended from the continuance of these diversions, if proper discrimination in the selection of performers, and admission of spectators, be exercised. On the other hand, undoubted benefits have accrued from the intellectual application, mental discipline. exercise of memory, and self-control of the performers, and from the diffusion of good humor and hilarity among the observers. The success of this attempt to remove the barrier which has hitherto debarred the insane from enjoyments of this nature, thus assimilating their condition more nearly to that of their sane brethren, is alike gratifying to the philanthropist, interesting to the philosopher, and encouraging to those whose duty and pleasure it is to "minister to minds diseased."-N. Y. Annalist.

Affection of Peyer's Glands in Adynamic Fever.-At a meeting of the New York Medical and Surgical Society, January 23d, Dr. Swett stated that he had lately had three cases of Typhus, throwing some light upon the pathology of the diease, especially as to the condition of Peyer's glands. The patients arrived in a vessel in which the disease had been very violent, the captain and all the sailors having suffered from it. In the first patient, no ulcerations were discovered, but some patches of Peyer's glands, near the ileo-cocal valve, were enlarged and discoloured, being of reddish brown hue. In the second, a girl of 20, who had the ordinary symptoms, the glands of Peyer were very much inflamed and ulcerated. The third case was that of a boy, attacked in a week after landing, who had suffered much privation. At the time of his entrance into the Hospital, he was exceeding prostrated. Stimuli were given at once, and he improved considerably. He lived for a fortnight afterwards, and for the last week seemed constantly dying. A day or two before his death, lived discolorations of a linear form appeared about the upper part of the abdomen, as if