met with, running through a long and entire course, and regularly too, without any chill whatever. Nor does it seem reasonable to class promiscuously together, all the rhythmical varieties of intermittent, so specially attached to definite localities, and so rigidly kept separate in nature. In one place we have tertian and its complications, in others, quartans, which are rare elsewhere; in some places, quotidians abound; in remote districts, as in Russia, we read of settimans and octomans, never met with here or in Great Britain. This exclusive or prominent prevalence, surely seems to indicate a peculiarity in the causative morbid agent.

Remittents, too, are in a similar manner strongly marked by widely diverse characteristics. Not to speak of the now familiar admission or recognition of a so-styled "Congestive Fever," we have abundant and excellent authority for the belief, that the periodic or intermittent fevers, of the middle and piedmontese country of the South, differ palpably from those of the lower alluvial districts; the fevers of the cotton fields from those of the rice lands. The possible acclimation of the negro in the latter, comparatively striking in degree, if not absolute and complete, offers a strong contrast to the impossibility and non-occurrence of the like acclimation in the upper country, as affirmed by Nott and others, of unimpeachable competency. Of the African Coast fevers, we may collect from "Bryson's Reports," many statements to the same purport, which deserve to be noted in confirmation. The island of Fernando Po is inhabited by a robust athletic tribe of negroes, but its climate is deadly to the natives of any portion of the neighboring continent, or of any of the other islands along its shores. We also find Dr. Livingstone's black companions, during his wanderings in the interior, seized with fevers always or almost with certainty, on traversing regions to which they were strangers. We can hardly help concluding from these circumstances that the febrific malaria of every district, contains within itself something peculiar and specific, capable of impressing a relevant and definable modification of the type and character of the fever it is causative

in producing. For such a nova cohors febrium, we suppose, room and place must be found, sooner or later, in our books.

In many parts of this admirable volume we shall have occasion to notice the indifference to authority, and the disregard of respected names, so characteristic of our country, and for which Dr. Bartlett, in his earnest search after truth, was ever remarkable. Like other compilers, also, he has allowed himself too readily to balance one authority against another, without the requisite consideration of their relative weight; thus illustrating what the most eminent wit and poet of our profession in America has recently alluded to with humorous felicity, as "the hydrostatic paradox of controversy." This is more particularly to be regretted in the portion of the work in which yellow fever is treated of, where he has fallen into repeated errors from unquestioning reliance upon miscellaneous monograph essays, and from want of such guidance as he would have derived from the opportunity of personal observation and inquiry.

He has not, indeed, entirely escaped the same danger in his history of periodical fever, especially the form of bilious remittent; and thus the value of the latter half of the book is somewhat impaired. But with all these allowances, it must be admitted to have attained a degree of excellence rarely to be hoped for, and certainly never surpassed.

Not long after the publication of the third edition of this, his greatest and most successful work, Dr. Bartlett found his intractable malady gaining ground on him so much as entirely to incapacitate him from labor. He therefore resigned his professorship, and withdrew from all participation in business. Retiring to his quiet home in Smithfield, Rhode Island, he was received by his friends with the warmest affection, and attended with all care and gentle assiduity. Here, in the seclusion of his sick-chamber, he solaced himself with the delights of literature; with the composition of verses upon grave subjects connected with and expressive of the warm philanthropic energy which had rendered active and illustrated his whole life and character; and with those profoundly religious senti

ments of faith and gratitude, which had ever sustained and soothed him; and, finally, he sunk into his last sleep, after tedious suffering, most patiently and manfully borne, in bright hope and confident expectation of a blessed immortality.

So labored, so lived, and so died Elisha Bartlett; and thus he deservedly attained an eminence among the physicians of our age and country enjoyed by few. Let his virtues and his worth be held in perpetual remembrance.

SAMUEL HENRY DICKSON.

MORETON STILLÉ.

1822-1855.

MORETON STILLÉ, the youngest son of John and Maria Stillé, was born in the city of Philadelphia, on the 27th of October, 1822. Upon his father's side the family was of Swedish origin, its earliest member, of whom anything positively is known, being Olof Person Stillé, who emigrated to this country with the first Swedish colony, in the year 1638, under a passport or letter of recommendation from Eric Bielke, Lord of Wyk, Peningby, and Nyñas, in Upland, Sweden. Shortly after their landing on the banks of the Delaware, the Swedes established numerous settlements, principally on the western bank of the river. Olof Stille's place of residence, marked on Lindstrom's map as "Stille's land," was situated on what is at present termed "the Neck," and is the only homestead, Mr. Watson informs us, now known of any of the Swedish families whose names are on the list taken in the year 1693, for the information of William Penn.

On the maternal side, Dr. Stillé was descended from the family of the Wagners, one of whom came over to this country and settled as a clergyman in Reading, Pennsylvania, in the year 1759. Mr. Wagner's father and grandfather were both of them clergymen, also; his great-grandfather was Tobias Wagner, Chancellor of the University of Tübingen in 1662. In the Biographie Universelle, vol. 1, p. 26, he is described as "un des Théologiens les plus habiles et les plus féconds du dix septième siècle," one of the most skilful and fertile theo

logians of the seventeenth century. Few Americans can look back to a longer line of ancestry, settled in this country, than the family to which he belonged; and the tenacity with which they have clung to the spot where their first ancestor settled, is, in our country at least, somewhat remarkable.

Moreton Stillé began his school education with the Rev. Mr. Steel, at Abingdon, in 1831. In the following year he was placed at Edge Hill Seminary, Princeton, where his industry and capacity for learning, judging from his teacher's reports, some of which still remain, were considerable, and secured him a high place in his class. In 1838, he entered the Sophomore class of the University of Pennsylvania. During the whole period of his collegiate course he bore an excellent character, and was much respected by his fellow students for his gentlemanly bearing and conduct. He was a good student, and finally carried off an honor; but he took a peculiar interest in the proceedings of the literary society to which he belonged, the Philomathean.

Having chosen the profession of medicine as most congenial to his tastes, on the 17th of July, 1841, he began its study with his brother, Dr. Alfred Stillé. How admirably Dr. Stillé was qualified for the duties of a teacher, and how faithfully he performed them, it may not be proper to speak of; it is but justice to remark, however, that the even more than fraternal affection with which Moreton regarded him in after years, was greatly due to the feeling he conceived for him when his pupil.

In the following October, Moreton matriculated in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania. During the whole course of his attendance upon lectures, he was an attentive and even zealous student; the profitable manner in which his studies were pursued, is evinced in the admirable Thesis he presented for his degree, which received the highest compliment that can be paid to a student's effort, the unanimous request of the faculty for its publication. He obtained his degree of M.D. in the spring of 1844.

In the month of October, of the same year, he embarked