rescue, from this devilish invention! to him it is owing that new-born man, by a process of restraint the very reverse of the old Egyptian practice, is not still bound hand and foot, a preposterous living mummy.

As strange it is, that good womanhood should still, in spite of the advancement of science, in these knowing days, retain a custom even more intolerable. Many a person at this day, I have no doubt, owes an ill state of health to this absurd system of excluding the air in infancy, in the same manner as those who survived their cruel treatment in the dreadful prison of Calcutta were visited by periodical swelled legs, and other miserable symptoms all their life after. In their cases, the connection between the disease and the cause was easily traced. Poor children cannot tell the secrets of their prison-house.

A warm, comfortable cloak, as it is called, may be as fatal to them as the dungeon of Calcutta. A case of that kind was reported about three years ago in the public prints. A poor woman had wrapped up her infant so close under a thick cloak, during a long walk through the snow, that when she uncovered it, the life was quite gone from the poor baby. This happened at Paddington. Unquestionably the child had cried as long as he was able, and was only covered up the closer; at last the mistaken good woman was pleased to find her brat composed to rest *.

* I was witness to a case not very dissimilar to this in its progress, though I hope less serious in the event. The good woman was a sailor's wife, travelling outside the stage, from Devonshire, with her little boy, to meet her husband at Portsmouth. I was seated by her, and took great delight in my pretty little fellow-traveller, who was of an interesting age, just beginning to notice one's attention with smiles. At last, the evening set in very severe; and he was, as a matter of course, to undergo suffocation to prevent his taking cold. However, the young tar strove with might and main against it, and manfully he fought with his now wellknown enemy, the tremendous red cloak: but after several unsuccessful sorties, my persuasions to his mother failing to operate as a diversion in

Here was an infant fairly killed with kindness; and much, I fear, that this has by no means been a solitary instance. But it is not always easy to get at the causes of an infant's death. There is a solution always at hand. It is but saying, the child died of convulsions; and thus, substituting the symptoms of a malady for the efficient cause of the malady itself, many a mistaken tender mother shelters her own ignorance or improvidence under a general term, and silences self-reproach with the common-place observation of how great a proportion of children born every year die under one or two years of age.

Poor candidates for a little frail breath! and well they may, when this chief nourisher in life's feast is debarred them. We deny them the common air, as if there were any other medium of existence for us besides the breath of life, which the Almighty put into man's nostrils. I once saw a noble steed thrown into a state of furious agitation, by having drawn up into his nostrils the bag out of which he was eating his corn. His master, who was at some distance, ran to relieve him, and I never shall forget the neighings with which this grateful animal spoke forth the sense of his benefit, as he snapped up the returning ether with wild extacy. As this bag to the horse, so is the sheet to the poor baby,

his favour, we were overmatched, and he was pent up closely; a little more so, to shew that she knew how to manage her child, as the good women say. It was to no purpose he struggled, kicked, and screamed ;to as little I remonstrated, begging her to observe how anxiously he desired to be in the fresh air, cold as it was. Her simple, taunting answer was, "Oh! I dare say, I warrant he does." She thought the boy very unreasonable not to submit to be stifled as usual; for what trouble should she have in nursing him if he caught cold! The fact was, the boy, by practice, knew more of pneumatics than his mother, or perhaps the whole sex, notwithstanding the Lecture Mania; and though in all probability he had formerly cried to bave his face covered from the cold, not foreseeing the alternative, he was, by this time, assuredly grown wiser. I parted with them at Exeter, almost equally amused and vexed at the pertinacious adhesion to custom of the tender half of my species.

which falling on his mouth, and sucked up by his breath, must operate as a valve to exclude every breath of wholesome air from mouth to nostril; besides the feverous irritation, the fretting, galling, impotent restlessness, it must produce in that helpless, senseless condition of exposure.

The mariner parching under a long calm in the tropics, is but a faint image of his privation. Imagine the seaman's short allowance of water dealt out to him. All his inward parts are fire. He snatches the delicious relief his heart is sick for, he cannot drink fast enough, he would swallow it entire, not by successive drops. What stops him so suddenly? An ocean of fresh water would scarce allay the man's thirst. His malady unabated, does he begin to loathe the unpalatable medicine? the water is tepid, foul, and peopled with corruption's unsightly brood; a thousand unclassed forms skimming about with uncouth and repelling motion. Well might we, that have access to the pure stream, imagine him overpowered with disgust.-No such thing. It is provident and fearful husbandry which forbids the lengthened draught. Necessity, with giant arm, arrests him in his miserable indulgence. Cruel indeed would be the enemy that bars the approach of such a man to the stream that was running to

waste.

And cruel in the effect at least, if not in intention, the mother who shuts out from her infant the inexhaustible stores of heaven. Can any one doubt, that to the poor gasping baby a draught of fresh air would be reviving, as the fresh stream to the mariner, or the waters of his native spring at Bethlehem to the war-heated David, when he longed for them in the cave of Adullam ?

I have read of a tribe of savages who were accustomed to bury their parents alive, when through age and weakness they became unable to add any thing to the common stock. The image is revolting enough to humanity. Nevertheless, if my spirit were about to enter the body of a little babe, and

had her choice where this little helpless mass should first breath the vital air, I do not know but it would be a preferable choice to take her chance of mature sepulture with the savages, rather than in some more favoured land to undergo the process of imperfect strangulation, for some hours of every day, during the first year or two of the fleshy investi

ture.

We can all remember when the treatment of patients infected with the small-pox had for its basis this same airdenying ordinance. The practice of one or two enlightened physicians overcame the prejudice without much resistance. It were to be wished that some of the humane and liberal among the profession would interest themselves in a case not strictly professional, and interfere to remove the pneumatophobia, or horror of air, in mothers and nurses, which has so long operated to the exclusion of poor babies from that common and universal right, that ancient and imprescriptible inheritance, that unalienable claim of all the sons of Adam, the privilege of breathing. I am, &c.

PNEUMATOPHILOS.

APHORISMS BY PHILALETHES.

[Continued from p. 60.]

ERIT in visu nati erit vitium cum Luna Soli adversa est, ac nebulosis stellis conjuncgitur. Item cum Luna est in occiduo cardine ambæque malificæ stellæ in cardine orienti, Sol quoque cardinalis est, natus ipse oculis capietur.

Thus translated:

There will be defect in the sight of persons born when the Moon is in evil aspect with the Sun, and in conjunction with nebulous fixed stars.-But when the Moon is in the western angle, and both the malefic stars in the eastern angle, the Sun also being cardinal, persons born under such positions will be deprived of sight.

[To be continued.]

To the Editor of the Monthly Correspondent.

SIR,

London, Feb. 19, 1814.

HAVE much pleasure in finding that there is at last a medium through which the admirers of the predictive art may promulgate their sentiments, and unfold the beauties of starry science; this has been long wanting to rivet the attention of the public, and to carry conviction to all thinking minds of the stable foundation on which the art is raised.

It is greatly to be lamented that this has been so unfortunately delayed. It is indeed with me a subject of the most poignant regret, that the lovers of this divine art should so long have been bereft of the means of perfecting the celestial structure, and of consummating their own ardent wishes.

At length, however, in the order of revolving periods, after a long, a very long night of the darkest ignorance, an epoch has arrived which may hereafter be regarded as a new day of truth and brightness. May the believers in planetary influences, seize with energy the auspicious occasion, to dissipate the mists that have obscured the beauteous aspect of the skies.

The prayers and thanks of all legitimate students, will go with you, Sir, in your labours, and the discriminating patronage of the public will ensure to you ample recompence for your exertions; added to which, you will have the consolation of knowing, that you have afforded the means of rescuing truth from ignominy, and the pursuit of it from shame.

I promise myself the pleasure of being a regular correspondent, and hope that at least I shall contribute my mite towards the furtherance of your views; as a pledge of which I send you the nativity of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales, it being full of interest to the scientific reader, and may be calculated hereafter to produce some happy illustrations of elementary influence.