his reading and reflection furnished : by this means he gained a knowledge of the ancients, as well as the moderns; he enlarged his ideas, and acquired the early habit of examin. ing opinions, and discriminating between those merely speculative, and those which resulted from fact and experiment; in a word, he hereby necessarily acquired new powers of reflection, and an increased energy of judgment.

A mode, not dissimilar, he follow ed in his studies: when any medical case occurred worthy of remark, and there are few cases but to a student of medicine are important, he examined various authorities upon the Same subject, and from these combined means drew a comparative result. We see not unfrequently ingenious youths, diverted by the ardour of imagination into irregularities, which length of time, and the strength of mature reason, with difficulty correct; but in the present subject of biography, we search in vain for the season of youthful indulgence: as he adopted by his conduct, so he claim ed an hereditary portion of his father's virtues, and has left us to judge of his youth, by numbering his years, rather than by recounting his pursuits. It was in the year 1736 that he graduated at Edinburgh, and printed his Thesis "de Emeticorum usu;" soon after which he came to London, and attended the practice of St. Thomas's hospital. Here he was at once furnished with the most ample op portunics of examining the doctrines of the schools, by a series of facts

drawn from disease and dissection.

Objects of poverty have all those feelings alive, that can rightly estimate the assiduity and the sympathy of those to whom they look up for succour; they are equally jealous of ap parent neglect, and grateful of seeming tenderness; and however unremitting the diligence of the Doctor might have been, his humanity to the poor was still more conspicuous to them to be diligent was his interest, to be humane was the spontaneous effusion of a good heart: this the patients saw and felt; and when he left the hospital, he soon experienced the pleasing confirmation of their decision.

However dark some may represent the propensities of mankind, ample knowledge of the poor has confirmed me in an opinion, that they are less inclinable to complain of injuries, than to acknowledge obligations: private injuries affect individuals, and mankind are more addicted to hearken to the relation of general good, than partial evil; and is humanity having become a subject of discussion to the miserable tenants of a sick ward, such as were discharged, not quite restored to health, found the way to the house of this amiable physician. Comfort of mind is a powerful restorative to a weakened constitution, and he who divides our miseries by his sympathy, proportionally adds to our consolation. Change of air, doubtless, contributes much to restore the fibre that has been debilitated by grief, penury, and sickness; and the same gratitude which impels the mind to dwell on virtuous rather than on vicious actions, would determine the eye of gratitude to him, who last saw us emerge from misery; to him, is attributed all the merits of his predecessors, as the artist who casts the metal is less valued than he who polishes its surface.

It is however, certain, that the poor who applied to him for relief, were loud in proclaiming the success of his practice, and gradually raised him to more lucrative employment. Dr. Fothergill himself has often mention ed how much he was indebted to this class of grateful though pennyless supplicants; and in his turn he acknow ledged the obligation, by humanely Continuing to give advice gratis to the poor, as long as he lived, long after their suffrages could tend to elevate his reputation: his persevering benevolence could then alone be actuated by the innate goodness of his heart.

After an excursion on the continent, he returned to London, and took up his residence in Gracechurch street; we may therefore date the commencement of his practice in the year 1740, for though he graduated in 1756, the intermediate time was chiefly employed in attending the hospitals, and laying that foundation, upon which was afterwards to be raised a distinguished superstructure.

Nothing hurt his feelings more, than estimating the profession of phy sic by its lucrative advantages; the art of healing, he considered in that sacred point of view, which connected it with a conscientious principle of action. "My only wish," he declares, "was to do what little business might fail to my share, as well as possible; and to banish all thoughts of practising physic as a money-getting trade, with the same solicitude, as I would the suggestions of vice or intemperance." And when the success of his practice had raised him to the summit of reputation and emolument, be seemed actuated by the same sentiment: "I endeavour," says this Conscientious physician, to follow my business, because it is my duty rather than my interest; the last is inseparable from a just discharge of duty, but I have ever wished to look at the profits in the last place, and this wish has attended me ever since my beginning."

If this language is foreign to the Iman of the world, it is at least worthy of a man of principle; and no physician will be worse for its perusal or imitation, nor of what he afterwards communicated upon the same subject. "I wished at my first setting out," he observes, "I wished most fervently, and I endeavour after it still, to do the business that occurred, with all the diligence I could, as a present duty, and endeavoured to repress every rising idea of its consequences; knowing most assuredly that there was a hand, which could easily overthrow every pursuit of this kind, and baile every attempt, either to acquire fame or wealth.—And with a great degree of gratitude, I look back to the gracious secret preserver, that kept my mind more attentive to the discharge of my present anxious care for those I visited, than either to the profits or the credit resulting from it: and I am sure, to be kept under such a circumscribed unaspiring temper of mind, doing every thing with diligence, humility, and as in the sight of the God of healing, frees the mind from much unavailing distress, and consequential disappointment.”

ghly flattering as his success must

have been, at this early period, it bore very little proportion to that blaze of character which succeeded his "Account of the Sore Throat attended with Ulcers," published in 1748, and since deservedly translated into every European language. Not long before this time, the disease which he now elucidated, in its general havock in London, had swept away indiscriminately, the hopes of some noble families, and particularly the two sons of the late Henry Pelham, brother to the late duke of Newcastle, and had hence excited very general alarm; the discovery therefore of a new and succes-ful treatment of so formidable and fatal a disease, was critically fortunate for the public, as well as for the author. Medical essays which promise improvements in the art of healing, are usually offered to the public in a state of imperfection, as long and repeated experiment is requisite to mature the offspring of a luxuriant genius; but this performance was exempted from the imbecility of a hasty birth, and the revolution it produced in the treatment of this disease, has obtained the sanction of the ablest physicians from that period to the present time, with less deviation perhaps than has attended the management of any other acute di order.

Although a natural bias for experi ment, does not now appear in many instances of his chemical investigations, yet it obviously pervaded the whole composition of his prescriptions. It is well known, that the mere exterior surface of bodies is no criterion of their component parts, when analyzed by chemical processes: the most sim ple and innocent articles used in diet, consist of parts, which developed and separated, become highly corrosive; culinary salt, applied to so many useful and dietetic purposes, contains as well as nitre and common sulphur, an acid, which is destructive to the hardest substances: other combinations may be formed, of bodies inoffensive and inert in their distinct states, which on union, become noxious to animal life. Chemistry is hence absolutely requisite to form a physician, who must have daily reference to it in

was inclined to sell it: the price was stipulated, and one obstacle alone remained to make it his own; it was let to a tenant at will, whose little family subsisted on its produce, and whose misery was inevitable, had he expelled him from this fruitful soi: the moment he was made acquainted with the circumstances of the family, he refused the offer, adding, "that that could never afford gratification to him, which entailed misery on another;" and when he relinquished this projected Eden, he made the family a present, of the intended purchase money,

his practice: yet in this department its purchase easy, as the proprietor of medicine, physicians are not unfrequently deficient; by which compositions have been recommended, and from thence combinations have resulted, which the prescriber neither proposed nor suspected. This was not the fate of Dr. Fothergill; there was such a well-directed selection in all his compositions, as happily united simplicity, elegance, and utility; and as the influence of his practice extended, his mode of prescription was proportionally imitated in the metropolis, and at length so generally adopted, that he principally contributed to bring about a revolution, that substituted elegant simplicity in the place of multifarious and discordant compound.

Materia Medica is that department of medicine most immediately allied to natural history, and to which he had devoted no little attention; having collected a cabinet of materia médica, seldom, if ever, exceeded for its extent or selection. He had even encouraged the idea of delivering lectures upon this entertaining and useful branch of medicine; but an increase of employment, joined with a diffidence of his own abilities, which none but himself entertained, diverted bim from this intention; and his valuable collection was generously presented to the college of Edinburgh, for the use of the public professor of Materia Medica in that university. The handmaid to this branch of medicine is Botany, a department of natural history, which affords the greatest instruction and recreation with the least exercise of the mind: it is, therefore, well adapted to the pursuit of a medical man, whose moments of seclusion are rather snatched from time by watchful diligence, than enjoyed from actual leisure.

As a rational means of unbending his mind, and affording at the same time collateral advancement in the healing art, botany acquired his patronage. On the Surrey side of the Thames he had noticed a spot of land, the situation of which sheltered it from the severity of the north wind, and in the soil of which vegetable: grew luxuriantly; its vicinity was convenient, and its extent rendered

were

Not far distant from this admired spot, he had afterwards a garden, which he occasionally visited; but he never furnished it with that profusion of exotics which he since collected from every quarter of the globe, and introduced into his garden at Upton, near Stratford. The walls of the gar den inclosed above five acres of land; a winding canal, in the figure of a crescent, nearly formed it into two divisions, and opened occasionally on the sight, through the branches of rare and exotic shrubs, that lined the walks on its banks. In the midst of winter, when the earth was COVered with snow, evergreens clothed in full verdure: without exposure to the open air, a glass door from the mansion-house gave entrance into a suite of hot and green-house apartments of nearly 260 feet extent, containing upwards of 3,400 distinct species of exotics, whose foliage wore perpetual verdure, and formed a beautiful and striking contrast to the shrivel-" led natives of colder regions. In the open ground, with the returning summer, about 3,000 distinct species of plants and shrubs vied in verdure with the natives of Asia and Africa in this spot that a perpetual spring was realized, where the elegant proprietor sometimes retired for a few hours to contemplate the vegetable productions of the four quarters of the globe united within his domain; where the spheres seemed transposed, and the arctic circle to be joined to the equator.*

It was

*The president of the Royal Society,

new

and microscopical naturalist, delineat ed his system, and created a species of animal beings, was the foremost in Europe. Those objects of nature, which were too bulky to transport, or too perishable to preserve, he ordered to be delineated by the pencil of artists, that he might give bread to a set of ingenious men, whom he wished to partake of his beneficence, whilst he rationally gratified his own

taste, and enlarged the boundaries
of the knowledge of nature of such
elegant specimens, whose value it is
difficult to estimate, he did not pos
sess less than twelve hundred; and
his collection of English heads, which
included those purchased of the late
John Nicholls, formed a treasure in
this particular department, which was
perhaps inferior to none.
To be Continued.

USEFUL INVENTIONS.

Receipt to make Cyder.

FTER the Apples are bruised

insert the bung in the closest and firmest manner so as to preclude the

A and pressed in the usual manner, possibility of the internal aur forcing

the juice should be immediately put into large open vessels and suffered to remain in this situation from 24 to 48 hours in order to deposit any crude matter which may have passed through the bag, and also to throw up the lighter particles in the form of scum, which should be carefully removed; the liquor is then to be drawn off and passed through a double flannel bag, removing the feculent matter by occasionally turning and rinsing it. When thus prepared, put two or three gallons into a strong well bound cask, in which matches (made by dipping linen rags in melted sulphur) are to be lighted and suspended from the bung hole by means of Iron Wire, and the bung lightly put in, fresh portions of match must be added until they cease to burn on their being introduced into the cask, which should now be violently agitated for the purpose of assisting the absorption of the sulphurous gas. After standing a quarter of an hour, draw it off into a tub, the cock and bung being left open that the light unabsorbed gas may be suffered to escape; after remaining in this situation, for about 15 or 20 minutes, the operation must be repeated five or six times with a like quantity of fresh liquor each time; return the different portions into the cask, and fill it up with the filtered liquor, put a quart of spirits to every 40 gallons, and

BELFAST MAG, NO, XIII,

a passage, should it be disposed to ferment. In six months it will be fit for bottling; the corks must be wired down and laid on the side in bins.

Rationale. Sulphurous acid which is formed by burning sulphur in confined portions of atmospheric air, has the well known property of checking fermentation, so that if the fresh juices of fruit be impregnated with this acid, it causes a suspension of the vinous fermentation until sufficient time is afforded for the fining of the liquor, which on its being bottled, gradually ferments, and causes it to assume the fine sparkling appearance met with in English Cyder. in the common sour Cyder the fermentation has proceeded through the vinous to the acetous, and consequently in a state nearly approaching to vinegar. in the mode usually practised in making Cyder in imitation of English, the fresh juice is at first put into the cask, and the whole drawn off when it shews signs of fermenting, the casks stoved with sulphur match, and the liquor immediately returned: racking off and stoving until it ceases to exhibit a disposition to ferment, which tedious process usually takes about six weeks, but which may be advantageously shortened by the substitution of sulphur matches in larger proportions as before directed, so as to impregnate the liquor with sulphurous gas.

R