Bibliographical Record.

Recent Medical Periodicals.-Within the past year or eighteen months several new periodicals devoted to recording medical doctrines and practice have been launched into the world; and as we have been favoured by copies of some of them, they claim so much notice in these pages as may suffice to indicate their purpose and scope. British periodical medical literature is enriched by a few new journals, but still when compared with the like literature of France, Germany, and (as we think may now be added) the United States of America, it remains far less copious. The first new journal we feel called upon to notice is The Birmingham Medical Review, a quarterly journal of the medical sciences. As the whole series has not reached us, we must form our opinion of it from the two numbers we have in hand, viz. No. 1, published in January, 1872, and No. 5, the first number of the present year. It is published in Birmingham, and may be taken as indicative of a healthy provincial feeling of self-help and independence, and of a desire on the part of the Birmingham practitioners to vindicate for themselves a status in medical periodical literature, and the ability to contribute in no mean proportion to the general stream of medical knowledge issuing from the press. We attribute these sentiments and motives to the Birmingham practitioners because, although the editor looks farther afield than Birmingham and its vicinity for contributions, yet the moving spirit, the scheme and, commercially, the speculation itself, are to be found in that enterprising town.

It was started with four departments, viz. original communications, reviews, and bibliographical notices, jottings at the societies, and a periscope. In the last example in our hands we notice that the reviews and notices take the first place, and the jottings at the societies have dropped out. To our apprehension these changes are not improvements, for we feel confident that good original communications, having practical issues, will be better and more largely appreciated than reviews of books. These latter, indeed, have a better field in other established periodicals, in which, too, either greater space affords more scope to make them more fully analytical or more frequent publication gives occasion for more speedily bringing books

under the notice of readers. If original communications, after having yielded precedence to reviews, suffer reduction in quantity or in quality, it may be legitimately urged that the Birmingham men have failed to establish their ability to maintain a journal representative of the scientific knowledge and practical experience they possess. In short, simply as a review of medical books and a periscope, it could not carry on an existence; and, in plain terms, could not justify its existence.

The 1873 number we also regard as less complete in the table of contents, for in it the matters noted in the periscope are not stated, as in the first part issued, and the reader must, therefore, turn over each page of the periscope to discover them. It strikes us, moreover, that the "jottings at the societies" ought to be a useful section of the journal, if well selected, for Birmingham has at least one large medical society, in connection with the British Medical Association, having sections for the special pursuit of microscopical and pathological science. It might, consequently, be fairly supposed that useful notes could be culled from the proceedings, for which the local medical journal would be the best medium of communication.

We shall not single out particular papers for remarks, but speak generally of the original communications as of a valuable character, creditable to the distinguished Birmingham practitioners who have produced them, and we may note, in passing, that the names of many of the leading medical men in Birmingham do not appear, as we should have looked for, as contributors.

Although we have thus freely animadverted on this new journal, we can confidently recommend it as a worthy addition to the English periodical press, and wish it success.

Food, Water, and Air, in relation to the Public Health, is a literary venture of Dr. A. Hill Hassall, the well-known veteran in chemical and microscopic researches respecting food and drink, than whom none can claim more attention in such matters.

Although the subject of food, water, and air includes all the elements concerned in public health, we cannot congratulate Dr. Hassall on the title he has taken for his paper, for to many less instructed minds its scope will, we apprehend, appear to fall within the range of sanitary medicine as but one section of it, and not of general importance.

It is a monthly publication, of quarto size, having a dozen pages, each of two columns. Its low price, threepence, puts it within the range of every man's pocket who wants to know what will improve and what deteriorate public health, and for himself what to eat, drink, and avoid.

Each number is made up of several "Leading Articles," and of a gathering of "Facts relating to the Public Health," selected from

the current literature, medical and general. Indeed, more or fewer of the "Leading Articles" themselves are transplanted productions; and, judging from the contents, Dr. Hassall has few coadjutors in contributing such articles, whether critical, analytical or original. Herein, therefore, is in our estimation a weakness of this periodical. The next to notice is The Medical Record, which has made a vigorous start, and called to its aid many eminent physicians and surgeons, most of them practising in London. It is a weekly publication, but in plan departs from that of the usual periodicals. According to the editor's" proem," its "object is to supply medical men the means of receiving week by week the progress of physiological and pathological science, and of medical, surgical, and obstetric art, in all the countries in which they are successfully cultivated." The accomplishment of these objects is sought by brief and critical reviews and notices of published books and of essays and papers printed apart or published in volumes of transactions and reports. A notice of new inventions and a column or two of miscellaneous jottings and news fill up the remainder of each number.

We must, however, not fail to remark a very useful feature in connection with the analytical notices, viz. the appending of a list of the papers contained in various journals, chiefly foreign. This plan will be of great value to the student of any special branch of medicine, inasmuch as by looking through these lists for a year, or other period, he can at once learn what contributions have been made on the topic he is working at. It will, however, be incumbent on the editor to secure as complete a bibliography as practicable, and especially to see that the work done and recorded by English writers is duly catalogued. We make this remark because we have remarked lists containing only references to foreign articles. We doubt not this new periodical will be duly appreciated, as it occupies ground only partially cultivated by other journals. To maintain a successful career it must persevere in the same course, fulfilling its special mission as a faithful and full record of work everywhere accomplished, of hypotheses advanced, of questions calling for solution, and of practical improvement effected.

"Our American cousins" have produced several new journals of late years, as might be expected from the energy and the commercial activity so largely developed in them, and from their wide-spread attachment to periodical literature. The first we direct attention to is the Archives of Scientific and Practical Medicine, edited by Dr. Brown-Séquard, assisted by Dr. E. C. Séguin, of New York. The name of the editor is itself a guarantee for originality in research and for articles of scientific value. It is astonishing, indeed, to find him playing the part of an editor to another medical journal when he is, and has been for some time, a principal editor of the Archives de Physiologie,' and when we find his name attached

to lectures, to treatises, and to papers encountered on every side. All this displays extraordinary activity and industry; but it will also lead to the suspicion of hastiness and want of reflection in the work accomplished, and will be a constant source of danger of the writer repeating himself. His coadjutor, Dr. E. C. Séguin, is the son of Dr. E. Séguin who many years ago interested himself in the education of idiots, and not long since produced a small treatise on medical thermometry, reviewed in these pages.

It is a well got-up journal, creditable to the publishers, Lippincott & Co., of New York, and is to appear monthly. The first part was published last January. According to the prospectus, it is to be chiefly occupied by original papers in every branch of medical science; but besides these each part will also contain an exposé of the state of knowledge on some great medical question, together with translations of short foreign papers; reports on the results of experimental laboratory researches; reviews of books and bibliographical notices, and reports on the progress of medicine, surgery and obstetrics, and a miscellany.

The indefatigable editor contributes two original communications, one "On a New Mode of Treatment of Dyspepsia, Anæmia, and Chlorosis," the other on the "Effects of Injuries of Nerves;" and besides these he adds a report on the state of our knowledge" on the sudden arrest of many normal and morbid phenomena. For future numbers he likewise promises a long series of papers. Dr. Séguin appears as joint author with Dr. Sands of a paper detailing "a case of traumatic brachial neuralgia treated by excision of the cords of the brachial plexus."

We are pleased to see among the contributors the name of Dr. W. H. Draper, as author of a paper on "Cerebral and Visceral Neuralgia;" and, if for no other reason, the name of a lady medical authoress, Dr. Mary C. Putnam, will attract attention to the article on the "Significance of the Pulse in the Forming Stage of Generalised Puerperal Peritonitis." There is a pedantic smack about this title, but the subject-matter of the article appears to be an attempt to explain the clinical features of puerperal peritonitis by the pathological processes hypothetically concerned in their production.

We wish success to this well-devised literary undertaking, and hope from its contents an advancement of our scientific medical knowledge. If carried out rigidly, according to its programme, as mainly a medium for recording original work, it will occupy a hiatus in the current medical literature of America.

The Sanitarian is another new American venture, purposed to appear monthly. It is edited by Dr. A. N. Bell, of Brooklyn, and published by Barnes & Co., of New York and Chicago. Its special object is sanitary medicine, but it also gives space for brief "book

notices," apparently limited to treatises on sanitary science or on cognate subjects.

The contents of the first number include an address by Dr. Agnew on "The Importance of Sanitary Science," the outline of a bill introduced in the Senate of the United States, to establish a "Bureau of Sanitary Science;" a short paper on "Results of Sanitary Improvements of Towns," based on English returns; a brief quotation from the Vienna Wochensschrift," "On Preventive Medicine; a report of a committee of the Medical Society of the State of New York on "Infant Mortality;" a " History of the New York Quarantine Establishment," by Dr. Bell, the editor; a sensational communication, headed "School Poisoning," showing the accumulation of carbonic acid gas in some factories and schools visited by the city sanitary inspector, Dr. James; some observations on "The Necessity of Re-vaccination," and others on "Life Assurance. The most important and lengthy paper is that by the editor, who, after a sketch of the opinions held relative to quarantine during the last quarter of a century, goes on to describe the conditions and arrangements of quarantine adopted in New York and vicinity, illustrating his paper by a "Quarantine Chart of New York Harbour," and by plans of the hospitals and warehouses constructed on small islands in the harbour for the effectual carrying out of the system. So complete an account cannot fail to interest, in spite of defects in style. This sanitary periodical has assuredly a very wide field of usefulness, and should command a wide success in the United States, where sanitary medicine is, speaking generally, a recent innovation, and not as yet a matter of legislation by the general government.

A new French medical quarterly made its appearance in January last, under the title of Revue des Sciences Médicales en France et à l'Etranger. It is edited by Georges Hayem, an agrégé of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, and in the prospectus sets forward the desirability of a more complete acquaintance with what is done abroad as a leading object. This aim, indeed, we regard to be a very desirable one, for French medical writers generally display a lamentable ignorance of what is achieved outside their own country, and, as is remarked by the editor, there is no journal which makes it its business to record the discoveries, the experience, and the prevalent opinions of foreign lands.

In character it does not accord with that of a review in the English sense. It presents no exhaustive critical and analytical essays of books, of their teachings, and of the professed objects of the authors in writing them, after the fashion we are accustomed to, but rather follows the fashion of compilers of medical retrospects, in making brief analyses and abstracts of the subject-matter of books, of pamphlets and of articles published in transactions, reports, and journals. Its more important articles give a critical résumé of the