These treatises brought down upon him a torrent of abuse from the medical reviewer of the day, who seems to have hated any thing new, or any deviation

exempted from abuse: while the loud ravings of frantic wildness, or the wailings of distress assailed the ears, and struck terror to the hearts of those who passed before the houses which contained the miserable, the wretched sufferers. As may be supposed, unless the violence of the disorder was spedily subdued, a horrid death was the consequence.

"Method of treating the disorder. I found by repeated inquiries respecting the progress of the disorder, and the fate of those who were seized with it in the adjacent villages, that bleeding, blistering, emetics, purgatives, salines, sudorifics, acids, &c. with gargarisms of various kinds, had been resorted to. Some recovered, some died; but none were sensible of having been really benefited by the means which had been employed, and the violence of the symptoms and duration of the dis'ease were not sensibly affected by any thing which had been done to relieve them, therefore great numbers chose to trust to nature only.

"I was now applied to by several labouring under the disease in an alarming degree, and had recourse to the established modes of treatment, the effects of which I attended to with unremitted application; but I could not perceive that any medicine which I applied possessed the least power over the disorder, either in mitigating its violence or hastening its disappearance. Three patients who were highly delirious became worse! I changed my medicines. I tried every powerful medicine 'that was likely to succeed. I ransacked my library for precedents, and consulted all the authors of celebrity who had treated on such disorders; but still not any one article, or any combination of medicines had any evident or decided effect.

"At this very moment, when all my efforts were baffled, my confidence destroyed, and hope itself almost extinguished by the distressing load of anxiety which oppressed my mind, the disorder became still more formidable, more frequent, and more commonly alarming! Every day new names were added to the list of sufferers; and it was not without the most mortifying and painful sensations that I saw them fly with confidence to me for relief, at the very time when experience had just taught me that small indeed was the assistance in my power to give them, unless by a bold deviation from the established modes of practice an effectual remedy could be found. I determined therefore that the next case which proceeded unchecked by the usual remedies should be subject to the new mode of treatment entirely, which I was resolved to administer boldly; but as the medicine in which my only hopes were founded was so diametrically opposite in its qualitics to those which are usually esteemed proper in raging fevers, I, at the same time, determined to give it with prudence and caution. It was evening: my resolution had not been fixed one hour, when two messengers arrived from two of my patients. The first was a gentleman upwards of fifty, the other a married woman aged about thirty; each of them had been seized with a violent attack of the disorder about five days before. My resolution was already taken; and the moment was soon to arrive which would determine the fate of my reasonings, my remedy, and my patients; nay not only of them but probably of many besides them, as numbers kept daily applying, either for the first time, or for more efficacious remedies than those they had already tried in vain.

"Without hesitation, therefore, I dissolved two drachms of volatile alkali, or carbonate of ammonia, in five ounces of water, half of which solution was distributed to each patient, with orders to take half a table spoonful, or two tea spoonsfull every two, three, or four hours, according to the

urgency

deviation from the established practice. But whatever might be the merits or demerits of these new modes of treatment, no just occasion was given to call

urgency of the symptoms-cold water or toast and water to be drank at pleasure. I particularly requested that I might be informed of the state of both these patients on the following morning; and it was not without considerable agitation, produced by contending hopes and fears, that I saw the messengers arrive.

"Conceive, then, what was my surprise! how great my pleasure! how extreme my satisfaction! when I was apprised that each of my patients had found astonishing relief, even from the very first dose of medicine! that both had had several hours of refreshing sleep, the first they had enjoyed since the commencement of the disorder; and that both were cool and perfectly collected, having had nothing like delirium after the first dose had been taken half an hour.

"Now I had reason to hope that I was possessed of a remedy, which seemed to be endowed with a specific power over the disease, as in these two cases it had manifested an immediate action, by extinguishing the fever and soothing the mental agony into perfect composure. From this time the volatile alkali was my constant remedy in every state, every form, and every stage of the disease. "Some of my patients were glowing with universal efflorescence; in some the extremities were swelled, in others fœtid ulcers appeared, particularly about the parts of generation; in most the throat was inflamed, often ulcerated, and respiration almost prevented; but in the most alarming cases a scorching fever and raging delirium rendered the patients situation horribly alarming; yet in all these variations of the disease the volatile alkali was my specific remedy, which I administered to between two and three hundred patients successively and successfully.

"In fact, although a great number of those patients were afflicted with the very worst symptoms of the disorder, and although many of them did not apply till the disease had gained its utmost virulence, yet, under both these disadvantages, out of near three hundred who took the volatile alkali but two died; both were very young children, in both the parts above the throat and nose were extremely swelled and ulcerated; in neither of them was the solution given in such quantities as was likely to succeed; in both the virulence of infection was extreme, and far advanced before relief was applied for.

"In recent cases, the first or second dose very frequently entirely destroyed every appearance of disorder: in most cases its beneficial influence was more or less sensibly perceived from the very first; and the satisfaction which my patients in general expressed, when they came to inform me of its operation, was not less than my confidence in its powers, and my heartfelt pleasure at its

success.

66

Having thus faithfully laid open my experience, the new mode of treatment, or rather the new remedy I have adopted, and the great and constant success which has attended it in nearly three hundred cases, in every stage, every form, and every degree of virulence of this alarming, this distressing, and alas! too frequently fatal disorder. I shall only add my most sincere wishes that the experience of others may confirm the hope, which is founded on my own, that the remedy I now recommend is possessed of specific powers in the cure of this if not of other malignant disorders like it, arising from contagion; at the same time declaring, that such have been the effects of this simple medicine, that were I to be seized with the plague itself at this moment, the volatile alkali would be the only remedy I would have recourse to, and I should fly to it with confidence.

call him a quack; for, instead of bragging of his pretensions and vending his nostrums, he freely communicated his knowledge to the public. "If a physician," says Dr. Peart, in his treatise on Consumption of the Lungs, "thus voluntarily comes forward to sacrifice the result of his labours, his pecuniary advantages, his immediate interests, from a hope that by so doing he will promote the health and happiness of mankind,—to grudge him the satisfaction even of thinking he is doing well is hard! But in the very act of divulging all that experience has taught him to think valuable, at the very moment when he begins to find it really so, in a pecuniary sense, to be insulted with ridicule and contempt, for the purpose of diverting the public attention from his labours and rendering them abortive, is what I did not expect. Though I despise the illiberality of my reviewer*, I acknowledge his power. He governs the public opinion of the faculty with absolute sway; his voice breaks forth like thunder from thick darkness; nothing is visible; imagination dresses him out in gigantic powers. Why this reviewer of medical publications should so resolutely set his face against practical improvements it is not easy to determine, unless he conceives that practical improvement is not consistent with the advantage of the practitioner; and that he is the terrible dragon, hired by the month, to protect the rich hesperian fruit which the happy uncertainty of practice so plentifully produced, and which, by pruning, will become less fertile."

Dr. Peart published also several works on Natural Philosophy: the Generation of Animal Heat investigated; on the Elementary Principles of Na

ture

*The good Doctor's extreme sensitiveness on the review of his works must have arisen from his retired and secluded habits. He sees the writer of the review in the phantasmagoria of his own imagination: "Power, swayer of public opinion, voice like thunder, thick darkness, invisible gigantic powers!!" It is quite ridiculous, when we know that most probably this "terrible dragon," the reviewer, was some miserable penny-a-liner, who was scribling, not amidst clouds and thick darkness, but "in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug,"

for his dinner; and which he very well knew he might call for, either in a voice like thunder or any other sound, in vain, unless the article was finished according to the directions of his employer; and that truth, just criticism, discernment, or learning had nothing at all to do with the review, nor did he even intend that they should.

ture, and the simple laws by which they are governed; on Electricity, with occasional Observations on Magnetism; on the Properties of Matter, the Principles of Chemistry, and the Nature and Construction of Eriform Fluids or Gases; on Electrical Atmospheres; the Antiphlogistic Doctrine of M. Lavoisier critically examined and demonstratively confuted; on the Composition and Properties of Water. Besides the above, Dr. Peart was the author of many papers in Nicholson's Chemical Journal, and also in the Gentleman's and Monthly Magazine.

HAXEY.

JAXA is the old German term for a Druidess, and most probably some spot near where the village now stands: was dedicated by the aboriginal Britons to the rites of that sanguinary superstition. The village of Haxey is situated on the side of a hill, which reaches its highest elevation a little beyond the Church; and in the midst of those fertile fields of rich brown sandy loam in which every vegetable good for food, and every plant pleasant to the eye, delights to grow. Its appearance at the present day answers very much to the description given by Leland, in his Itinerary, almost three hundred years ago: "The houses be sparkeled,"-that is, scattered.

This extensive parish seems not to have suffered such a depreciation in value at the Conquest as was the case with others in the neighbourhood. The entry in Doomsday Book is as follows. "Manor. In Acheseia (Haxa), Siward Barn had three carucates of land to be taxed. Land to six ploughs. Wazelin, a vassal of Geoffrey's, has there two ploughs and a half, and sixteen villanes, and eight bordars with three ploughs and a half, and nine fisheries

of

of seven shillings, and three acres of meadow. Wood, pasture here and there, five quarentens long and one quarenten broad. Value in King Edward's time and now one hundred shillings. Tallaged at twenty shillings.

"Norman Crassus claims seven oxgangs of land of Geoffrey de Wirce, in Haxey."

The valuation of the ninth sheaf, the ninth fleece, and the ninth lamb in this parish, made in the reign of Edward III. was £xxi. xvis. viiid, This return was made on the oaths of William Cok, John Peacock, John the son of Henry, and Richard Bill.

The fine land in the open fields in this parish is divided among a very great number of freeholders and copyholders; and the commons, since the inclosure, have of course been apportioned in a similar manner. When Cornelius Vermuyden had diverted the course of the Idle and the Torn, and drained off the great Mere, the water of which was about three feet deep in summer, this place became very much more secluded from all intercourse with Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire than it had ever been before; for the water between Westwoodside and Bearswood Green being no longer navigable by boats*, andthe ground being left imperfectly drained and very fenny, all the way between Idle Stop and across Sanderson's Bank, as well as from Wroot, became almost impassable. The water stood, before the inclosure of the Commons, about ancle deep for half a mile together; and the track, for road there was none, was full of deep boggy holes. Water we know affords an easy communication, but nothing is so difficult to pass as soft ground. This seems to have had a very evident effect upon the population, which appears from the registers, about two hundred years ago, to have been as large again as it is at present. After the fire, of which an account will be given in this chapter,

* "Neither was Haxey Carr less overwhelmed, large boats laden with xx quarters of corn, usually passing over it from the river of Idle to Trent bank; men also rowing with lesser boats to look swans over all parts of it; and in like sort over Starr Carr and Axholme Carr; in so much that there was no less than sixty thousand acres, thus overflowed by the said fresh waters." Ex diversis Depositionibus penes Remem. Scacc.