GLEANINGS.
MEDICAL SUPERIORITY OP TkIE FRENcII,--It might be proved as the result of this system, of which we have given but an imperfect outline, that France in medical science is nearly half a century in advance of England. One important concomitant is, that the French public are better informed on medical subjects than the English public. This fact is indicated by the circumstance, that with the former a carriage and dashing equipage, an establishment, and various other externals, the substitutes of the sword and gold-headed cane, are not considered decisive proofs of merit; nor are any class of the practitioners required,—even by the vulgar,—to dose them with physic in order to maintain confidence, or ensure an adequate remuneration. A decisive proof of the healthy state of mind of the French public on medical subjects is to be found in the fact, that universal nos- trums of the class of the quack, or patent medicines, which in this country are so productive to the revenue, there do not sell ! Some particular departments of medical science, such as the treatment of aneurisms, which have here received more attention than on the continent, are here better known ; and it must also be stated, as an advantage to our account, that wherever the medical knowledge on both sides happens to be equal, the coolness and steadiness of what, perhaps, we may call the national temperament, will give the English practitioner the advan- tage. But these points of equality are few and trifling compared with those of superiority possessed by the medical practitioners across the Channel.—London Review, No. H.
LANGUAGE AS A REcORD.—A language is at once the most complete, and the least fallible of all historical records. A poem or a history may have been forged, but not a language. The bare circumstances of its existence, though it may long have ceased to be colloquially extant, proves in substance all that history can communicate. if we possessed o,nly a complete vocabulary of an ancient lan- guage, and were to digest the mass in accordance with an exact principle of syn- thesis, we should frame a model of the people who once used it, more perfect than any other monument can furnish : and here we need fear no falsifications, no concealments, no flatteries, no exaggerations. The precise extent of know- ledge and civilization to which a people have attained, nothing more, and nothing less, is marked out in the list of words of which they have made use.—Taylor's Transmission of zlneient Books.
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