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mountainous, but the ridges run in nearly the same direction as would the road, and from the numerous large nullas falling into the river near to Peagune it appears possible that a practicable line might be formed. The distance is only fifteen miles.

A tolerably level railway across this part of the country would reduce the expense of actual transport to Mergui to one man for four days to every one and a half tons of coal, or to nearly one Rupee per ton, supposing the carriage is to be drawn by men; but by employing ponies the price is reduced to less than four annas a ton. Now in case of delay and extra power being required in some parts of the line, take the expense at three times the estimate, or twelve annas per ton, which is still only a quarter of that incurred in the transport by water; thus being a saving of 22,500 Rupees in favor of the road upon the transport of 10,000 tons of coal.

The best description of road for this country appears to be a single suspension rail of timber (as represented by figures 1 to 4 in the enclosed sketch) as being cheapest in construction, uninjured by heavy rain, easily repaired, and (by actual experiment) offering less resistance to the motion of carriages than any other form of road. It consists of a plank of hard wood, three inches broad by ten or twelve deep, supported on posts nine or ten feet apart, and varying in length according to the surface of the country passed over, so as to support the rail in a horizontal line. The rail is let into a notch cut on the top of the posts, and is adjusted by means of wedges driven in opposite directions between the posts and the rail; the resistance is reduced thirty per cent. by the addition of a thin plate of iron upon the top of the rail. A carriage having only two wheels with the load suspended on either side is represented in figures 1, 2, 3.*

*

A road on this principle has been tried with great success in England. A horse was found capable of dragging fourteen tons, exclusive of the carriage, during a good day's work where the rail was quite level. Figure 4 shews the manner of crossing streams and small ravines. I have no doubt but these carriages would run upon a cable stretched from point to point should circumstances require it.

Models can be furnished if required.

(Signed)

MERGUI, 6th May, 1839.

I have, &c.

C. H. HUTCHINSON,

2d Lieut. Madras Artillery.

(A true Copy.) E. A. BLUNDELL,

Commissioner in the Tenasserim Provinces.

We have not received Lieut. Hutchinson's sketch, but his description is nevertheless sufficiently intelligible. The subject is of so much interest that we deem it ex

pedient to publish the annexed extracts from the description of Palmer's Railway, given in Hebert's Engineer's Cyclopedia, Vol. 2, pp. 425, &c.

"Instead of two lines of rail laid upon the ground, as heretofore, Mr. Palmer's railway consists of only one, which is elevated upon pillars, and carried in a straight line across the country, however undulating and rugged, over hills, valleys, brooks, and rivers, the pillars being longer or shorter, to suit the height of the rail above the surface of the ground, so as to preserve the line of the rail always straight, whether the plane be horizontal or inclined. The waggons, or receptacles for the goods, travel in pairs, one of a pair being suspended on one side of the rail, and the other on the opposite side, like panniers from the back of a horse. By this arrangement only two wheels are employed, instead of eight, to convey a pair of waggons; these two wheels are placed one before the other on the rail, and the axle-trees upon which they revolve are made of sufficient length and strength to form extended arms of support, to which are suspended the waggons or receptacles on each side of the rail, the centre of gravity being always below the surface of the rail. The rods by which the waggons are suspended are inflexible; hence, although the weights on each side be not equal, they will, nevertheless, be in equilibrio; as may be observed in a ship, which, being unequally loaded, assumes such an angle with the surface as preserves the equilibrium. Although an equal distribution of the load on both sides is desirable, it is not necessary. A number of carriages are linked together, and towed along the rail by a horse, as barges on a canal. Owing to the undulation of the country, the horse will sometimes be much below the rail, in consequence of which he is provided with a sufficient length of rope to preserve a proper angle of draught.

"Provision is made for trains of carriages that are proceeding in opposite directions, by means of "sidings" or passing places. With respect to loading, if both receptacles be not loaded at the same time, that which is loaded first must be supported until the second is full. Where there is a permanent loading-place, the carriage is brought over a step or block; but when it is loaded promiscuously, it is provided with a support connected to it, which is turned up when not in use. From the small height of the carriage, the loading of those articles usually done by hand becomes less laborious. The unloading may be done in various ways, according to the substance to be discharged, the receptacles being made to open either at the bottom, the ends, or the sides. In some cases it may be desirable to suspend them by their ends, when, turning on their own centres, they are easily discharged sideways.

"Among the advantages contemplated by the patentee of this railway, may be mentioned that of enabling the engineer, in most cases, to construct a railway on that plane which is most effectual, and where the shape of the country would occasion too great an expenditure on former plans—that of being maintained in a perfectly straight line, and in the facility with which it may always be adjusted; in being unencumbered with extraneous substances lying upon it; in receiving no interruption from snow, as the little that may lodge on the rail is cleared off by merely fixing a brush before the first carriage in the train; in the facility with which the loads may be transferred from the railway on to the carriages, by merely unhooking the receptacles, without displacing the goods, or from other carriages to the railway, by the reverse operation; in the preservation of the articles conveyed from being fractured, owing to the more uniform gliding motion of the carriages; in occupying less land

than any other railway; in requiring no levelling or road-making; in adapting itself to all situations, as it may be constructed on the side of any public road on the waste and irregular margins, on the beach or shingles of the sea-shore,-indeed, where no other road can be made; in the original cost being much less, and the impediments and great expense occasioned by repairs in the ordinary mode, being by this method almost avoided.

"A line of railway on this principle was erected, in 1825, at Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, chiefly for conveying bricks from that town, across the marshes, for shipment in the river Lea. The posts which support the rails are about ten feet apart, and vary in their height from two to five feet, according to the undulations of the surface, and so as to preserve a continuous horizontal line to the rail. The posts were made of sound pieces of old oak, ship timber, and in a, the slot or cleft at the upper ends of the posts, are fixed deal planks twelve inches by three, set in edgeways, and covered with a thin bar of iron, about four inches wide, flat on its under side, and very slightly rounded on its upper side; the true plane of the rail being regulated or preserved by the action of counter wedges between the bottom of the mortices, and that of the planks. By this rail, on the level, one horse seemed to be capable of drawing at the usual pace about fourteen tons, including the carriages.

"The late Mr. Tredgold, whose opinion in matters of this nature will ever be entitled to attentive consideration, expressed himself very favourably to this invention in his Treatise on Railroads and Carriages :- "We expect (he observed) that this single railroad will be found far superior to any other for the conveyance of the mails, and those light carriages of which speed is the principal object; because we are satisfied that a road for such carriages must be raised so as to be free from the interruptions and crossings of an ordinary railway."

ART. VI.-Memoria sul Renascimento e stato atticale della Medicina in Egitto, del D. G. E. MINO.

Memoir on the Regeneration and actual state of Medicine in EgyptTranslated from the Italian of J. E. MINO, Doctor in Philosophy, Medicine, and Surgery. Leghorn, 1838.

(For the Journal of the Asiatic Society.)

We are indebted to Mr. W. H. CAMERON for a copy of Dr. MINO's pamphlet, which was printed in Europe for private circulation, and contains many details worthy the close attention of all who take interest in the progress of general as well as Medical education.

Dr. MINO's essay affords full evidence of the failure of CLOT BEY'S system for the introduction of Medical science into Egypt. The causes of the failure are moreover explicitly and palpably exhibited. There was no penury of means, no paucity of teachers; all that the most princely munificence could place at the BEY's disposal he was permitted to command without controul. Still the tree produced no fruits, and this simply, because it was planted at the wrong end. They commenced where they should have terminated; namely, by the erection of a School taught in the vernacular language. It is difficult to conceive a more ludicrous attempt than that to teach me

dicine to Arab pupils through European Dragomans, themselves destitute of Medical knowledge. Far different would the result have been, had the admirable principle of the Normal schools of Prussia and France been adopted in the first instance-had CLOT BEY for the first four years contented himself by educating thoroughly a few clever youths through the medium of his language, and had he then employed them to impart, in their own tongue, the knowledge they had themselves acquired.

Such is the system which silently and unprofessedly has been adopted in the CALCUTTA COLLEGE with a success which defies denial. If but few pupils have been educated, the completeness of their education is unquestionable; and each is now ready to be made the means of diffusing his own knowledge among his countrymen in the only dialects they understand.

In September next the Medical College of Calcutta ceases to be exclusively an English School, and will embrace, with its original Normal section, a secondary vernacular class, receiving instruction, through the Hindoostanee language, from native teachers, and numbering over 150 pupils. Let this class but prosper, as we doubt not it must, and then indeed we may triumph in accomplishing the inappreciable object of placing medical assistance practically within the reach of all classes of the Native population. Similar institutions will then spring up in all the great provincial cities, and thus to every village and hamlet will radiate the light of the most beneficent science within the acquisition of man.-EDS.

Prior to the reform introduced by the Pacha and Viceroy MEHEMET ALY, medicine was in the same state in Egypt as in other parts of the Levant; it was, namely, in a state of absolute infancy, or to speak more accurately, in one still inferior to infancy itself. Not possessing schools or masters, books or dissecting-rooms, nor any other place of public or private instruction, the natives who devoted themselves to the care of the general health, following corrupt traditions, practised a blind empiricism which, mingled with a certain superstitious charlatanism, was more adapted to disseminate death, than to prevent the premature diminution of lives. Foreigners who there practised medicine were generally persons destitute of science and of conscience, and abusing the unfortunate licence given to all of calling themselves Physicians, they simulated the character that they possessed not, and thus profaned the sublime priesthood of Hygea, to the incalculable detriment of the wretched. The true and clever physicians, who for merit and legal qualification could be entitled such, in Egypt were very few, and often disregarded and forgotten; as not unfrequently happens in unpolished and illiterate nations, to the truly learned placed in counterposition to the charlatan.

Although the French claim for themselves the work of the regeneration of medicine in Egypt, it is undoubted, nevertheless, that the glory of the enterprise, whatever it may be, is due to the Italians. In truth, since Egypt began to breathe, which was about the year 1811, when MEHEMET ALY completed his sanguinary struggle with the

Mamelukes a year that signalized the commencement of new military reforms the first roots, so to speak, of the medical laurel were planted there by Doctors MENDRICI (Genoese), RAFFAELLI (Leghornian), MARTINIL (Pisan), DEL SIGNORE (Piedmontese), CUNHA (ditto), KARACucci (Cattarese), MARNECHI (Piedmontese), GENTILI (of Ancona) CERVELLI (Pisan), MORPURGS (of Trieste), DURANDO (Piedmontese), CALUCCI (Neapolitan), LARDONI (Roman), VERNONI (Piedmontese), and several others, all Italians, too numerous to be mentioned; whereas in that long period the French could reckon no other countryman of their's than a certain M. DUSSAP, Apprentice-Surgeon.

Nor should, on the contrary, all the French professors be cited who followed the memorable expedition of 1798, in as much as those were days of battle, and those personages, albeit highly eminent, had no opportunity of mixing as much as was necessary with the aborigines, of coming in contact with the native physicians, and of diffusing, by word and example, the salutary precepts whereof we intend discussing. In fact, after their departure no vestige remained of their knowledge; we mean, not a school, not a scholar, no prevailing system, no sensible sign was to be discovered, that denoted any tendency to the destruction of the abominable empire of empiricism and imposture.

The light of true knowledge illuminates in the end even the dimmest and most near-sighted. Hence, notwithstanding their deeply-rooted and numberless prejudices and antipathies, the Arabs finally discovered the difference that existed between European doctors and those quacks who for so long a period had usurped among them the name and attributes of physicians.

MEHEMET ALY above all, who was then devising a bold, political reform of the state which had been placed in his hands by fortune and courage, convinced by experience, and by the dint of warm, benevolent suggestions (among which held the foremost place those of the CHEV. DROVITTI, Piedmontese) perceived the inestimable service that so grand an enterprise could derive from the Art of Healing suitably professed, and delayed not to make the talent of the European physicians contribute to his mighty undertaking.

In the year 1822 Doctors MARTINI, DEL SIGNORE, CINBA, and some others, were charged by him with the erection at Abou-Zabel of an Hospital, modelled and managed after the best European establishments of its kind, and were directed to lay before him a plan of a general systematic arrangement of the Medical Service in the Viceroyalty. This is in reality the era of the regeneration of medicine in Egypt; and if the foundations of it were laid by Italian hands, we must legitimately conclude that the glory of having re-produced medi

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