will be seen that the patient is suspended in the heated air, which is moreover applied to the back in the first instance; there is no fatigue incurred; and when perspiration has been generated and carried on as long as is deemed expedient, he is let down again, without difficulty or danger, into his heated bed, and surrounded with the warm blankets employed in the bath itself.  The room in which we saw the experiment performed, was at a temperature of 43 deg.  Fahrenheit; the clothes of the bed were of the same temperature:  the lamp is conical, and has no tube; the wick is merely inserted in it; the charge is two ounces of spirits of wine.  In ten minutes after the lamp had been applied, the thermometer at the foot of the frame on which the patient is made to recline, was 136 deg.; at the head, 116 deg.; on the blanket, which covered the bed, 96 deg..  Were the vapour applied above the patient instead of under him, the difference between the heat at the breast and back would be at least 40 deg..  The temperature once raised, may be kept up at a very small expense; so that the whole price of the bath, continued for half an hour or three quarters of an hour, will not exceed eightpence or ninepence.  There is a very simple expedient, by which, when the temperature of the chamber formed by the frame of the bath is once raised sufficiently high, steam, either simple or medicated, may be introduced, and the lamp apparatus may be applied either at the foot, the head, or the side, as is most convenient.  The grand recommendation, however, of the bath, is the applicability of the vapour to the entire surface of the body; the simplicity and ease of the application, both to the assistants and the patient; the exclusion of the possibility of cold; and its cheapness.  In all these points of view, we look on it as a valuable invention.

Spectator.

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NOTES OF A READER

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DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.

One thing which I am unable to interpret among the oddities of the English, is their inconsistency respecting dramatic entertainments.  I have never yet been present where two or three of my countrymen were gathered together, that, after a wrangling review of the weather, they did not turn their conversation upon the theatres.  There is no topic more universally discussed than the decadence of the drama, or the engagements, merits, and adventures of the performers.  Neither the Lord Chancellor nor the Archbishop of Canterbury is ever so familiarly known by name and person to the public, as the first tragedian and comedian of the day; and the theatrical belles and heroines are either elevated to the peerage by matrimony, or lowered by the undertaker into Westminster Abbey.  As some French Vaudevillist observed, “Moliere was denied in France the rights of sepulture, while

  “Garrick repose a cote de leur rois!”