Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

facts and conclusions of the works analysed, whilst the others, the more numerous, state in a few lines the subject-matter of the production noticed, and are spoken of in the prospectus as "works for consultation." Besides the foregoing matters are lists of contributions, "Bibliographical Notes" in the several branches of medicine, indicating their source and the names of the writers.

We have looked through the 1039 pages of the first volume of this new journal, now complete in two parts, and are pleased to observe how fully it represents the work accomplished in the principal countries of the globe where medicine assumes the character of a cultivated science. We heartily wish this French and foreign review of the medical sciences a large success.

The next periodical we would call attention to is, Lo Sperimentale, an Italian journal, devoted to medicine and surgery, published at Florence, under the direction of Professors C. Ghinozzi, Burresi, and Landi. It is far from being It is far from being a new publication, but it is new to us among the journals received, and we are glad to bring to notice this effort of our Italian brethren to advance and diffuse medical science. Its contents consist of original communications and of abstracts from other journals, along with some items of medical intelligence. The original memoirs are by Professor Morelli and Dr. Festi, Dr. Agostinelli, Dr. Casanova, Dr. Massei, and Dr. Zecchini, more or fewer of which names will be familiar to our readers who take note of the researches and teaching of our foreign professional brethren. The first paper is on diphtheria, as noticed in Florence and its vicinity, in the decenniad 1862-1872, and will be found interesting to our sanitarians. The same may be said of the second memoir which is occupied by a history of variola which prevailed epidemically at Castelfidardo in 1871-72, accompanied by comments on the necessity for revaccination, and by arguments in favour of animal vaccination. Dr. Casanova writes a physiological disquisition on the self-moving cell as the nidus of normal and pathological tissues. Dr. Massei gives a case of laryngeal stenosis, and is followed by Zecchini, who sketches the various views propounded on the origin of man, and shows himself opposed to the doctrines of the evolutionists by reference to an assortment of authorities and statements of very various weight.

The extracts from other journals and the reviews of progress are all of indigenous origin, as though medicine was uncultivated outside the Italian kingdom. The only departure from this adhesion to home-spun physic occurs in a brief bibliographical notice of an Italian version of MacCormac's Notes of an Ambulance Surgeon.' In recent times much scientific activity has reappeared in Italy, and its results are the appropriate material of the journals of the country, but when reviews of the state and progress of the several branches of medicine are undertaken the survey must be held as very inade

[ocr errors]

quate which does not extend beyond the boundaries of the Italian kingdom.

Lastly, we have to introduce a greater novelty in the shape of a Spanish fortnightly medical periodical, started this year by Dr. P. G. de Velasco and edited by E. Garcia Perez. Each number bears on its face an allegorical picture, indicating the several departments of medical knowledge, which looks quaint enough in a nineteenth-century publication. The several numbers are further illustrated by portraits of eminent physicians and by woodcuts in elucidation of cases described or of other matters treated of. The woodcuts cannot be commended for accuracy of drawing or for artistic finish.

The matters treated are very various. Original articles appear on the requirements of medical schools for efficient teaching, on the method of teaching anatomy, also notes on the work done in public institutions, and papers on questions in the science and practice of medicine, surgery, &c. Besides such papers there are bibliographical notices of books, notes of cases and of pathological specimens, biographies of the eminent men whose portraits are engraved, extracts from foreign journals, reports of societies, meteorological memoranda, and news. The title selected for this journal is El Amfiteatro Anatomico Español.'

To make our review of recent medical periodicals more complete we will name one other, the Correio Medico de Lisboa, which does great credit to the profession in Portugal, and has been kindly supplied to us now for more than a year.

The growth of a vigorous periodical medical literature is a healthy sign. It is indicative of the recognition of something to impart and of something to acquire, of a pervading spirit of inquiry, of a generous rivalry in the diffusion of professional observation and experience. It moreover holds out the best prospect of so diffusing the knowledge acquired and the hypotheses advanced in one country among the other nations of the earth, that the observers and original investigators in each land may occupy a common platform, and proceed with their work in the full consciousness of what others have already accomplished in the same direction. This salutary end is especially advanced by those journals which present from time to time an abstract of the facts and opinions published in the current literary productions of the day, and we note with satisfaction the appearance of such abstracts or reports in all the principal medical papers published in different countries. It would not be without interest and instruction to produce a complete list of the medical journals now published in the several countries of the globe. Such a list would be some criterion of the medical activity existing in each, and, we take it, would exhibit the profession in England as less alive to the value of a periodical press than

other countries in Europe, and particularly so in regard to more strictly scientific journals.

Origin and Destiny of Mankind.1-This handsome volume, with many excellent illustrations, discusses a subject which must be of intense interest to medical as it is to other men, but the manner in which the subject is dealt with, apart from the matter, places it beyond the pale of the medical reviewer. A great portion of its contents consists of archæological matter,-the archæology of the religions of the world, and a comparative examination of their teachings and principles compared with those of the Christian faith. To a considerable extent also the volume is a critique of the facts and doctrines of the Bible, and substantially a theological one. There is a vast amount of valuable research and information in its pages; but the author, with regard to almost all his facts and statements, is only a borrower, and he appears to us to select only those that make for his purpose that purpose is primarily and essentially a destructive one. In his view religion is an antiquated affair, a nature-worship in its primitive shape, but overlaid with an immense mass of sacerdotalism. He consequently would rid mankind of the incubus, and demand only a sort of reverence to some power in nature, one, however, which becomes a vanishing quantity when the mind attempts to seize upon it, and may, in our apprehension, for what it is worth, be relegated to the region of myths. From nature, personified as a power or force, we are told we spring, and to her must return; this nature is eternal; in chemical combinations resides her creative power, and no vital force, peculiar to living beings, has an existence; protoplasm is the foundation of all organic life, and between organic and inorganic matter chemistry knows no real distinction; and lastly, this world, and all its varied matters and creatures, are the result of evolution from some filmy, attenuated diffused matter, which many a long day since existed in "infinite space," but eventually found itself squeezed together into a more coherent mass, "which progressively condensed, and thus gave rise to heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity." Having got thus far, each and all of these several active factors set to work, and, as a result, concocted this fair world and all its inhabitants.

An account such as this of the origin of mankind, but duly expanded and dressed up in the much evolved scientific language of the day, may commend itself to some minds as worthy of acceptance, but to our humble conception is as mystic as the assumed myths it seeks to replace.

There is, as we set out by saying, a vast mass of information in

1 On Mankind, their Origin and Destiny. By an M.A. of Balliol College, Oxford. London, 1872. Pp. 78.

this large volume, comprising a collection of facts not known and not accessible to many readers. Consequently, there is much to repay perusal; but the reader instructed at all in the matters treated of will soon perceive that it is very much the composition of a special pleader, who will only see one side, who raises doubts and difficulties which have been disposed of aforetime, or have no actual existence, who withholds facts and arguments that may be advanced against him, and uses hypotheses and speculations to serve his purpose as if they were demonstrated verities.

Frey on the Microscope.'-This is a translation of one of the best and newest Continental treatises on the microscope and its use in investigating the various tissues and parts of the body in their normal and in pathological conditions. The first section is devoted to the theory of the microscope. The theory of the magnifying lens, the simple microscope, the compound microscope, the cause and correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, are explained, together with the employment and uses of the different parts of the compound microscope, and the section concludes with a notice of some of the instruments of the best makers, e.g. Merz, of Munich; Nachet and Chevalier, of Paris; Zeiss, of Jena; Oberhauser and Hartnack, and Smith and Beck of London. With regard to the large instrument of the last-named makers, the author finds that its great advantage over Oberhauser's large instrument is that the stage permits of the introduction of a perfected condenser. In other respects it is, as judged by a Continental standard, too complicated. The second section is on apparatus for measuring and drawing, and touches at some length on micro-photography; the third treats of the binocular stereoscopic and polarizing microscope. With regard to the value of the stereoscopic microscope, the author is of opinion that by many it has been over-estimated. The future can only decide whether science is to derive real benefit from it. The fourth section, on testing the microscope, completes that portion of the work which chiefly refers to the instrument proper, as distinguished from its uses and discoveries. Then follow sections on the use of the microscope, microscopic examination, the preparation of microscopic objects, on fluid media and chemical reagents, on methods of staining, impregnation with metals, the drying and freezing processes, on mounting and injecting. The section on injecting appears to us particularly good, but all these chapters are full of practical directions and information which cannot fail to be of the greatest value to the worker.

From the eleventh section to the end, inclusive-a space of between four and five hundred pages-is allotted to the description of the

1 The Microscope and Microscopical Technology. A Text Book for Physicians and Students. By Dr. HEINRICH FREY, Professor of Medicine in Zurich, Switzerland. Translated from the German and Edited by GEORGE CUTTER, M.D. New York, 1872. Pp. 658.

microscopy of the tissues, fluids, and organs of the body in health and disease. We know of no more complete and valuable guide to the practical histologist. The book is not a mere descriptive microscopic anatomy, but rather a guide to the investigation of the tissues and fluids. It bears the same relation to an ordinary work on histology that a "dissector" bears to a descriptive anatomy book. For instance, take the eleventh section, on blood, lymph, mucus, and pus. The author first tells how blood is to be obtained and examined; how it is best diluted; the appearance of the corpsucles; then how the movements and changes in the living colourless cells may be brought into view by the means of the warm stage and iodine serum; how the colourless cells may be stuffed (gefüttert) by injecting granulated colouring materials for several days into one of the large lymph spaces which lie under the skin of the frog; the mode of numerically estimating the number of the two kinds of cells; then of the plasma of the blood and the pathological changes in the blood. On this lastmentioned point we may observe that Dr. Frey does not attribute much value to the endosmotic changes in the form of blood-cells which have been described in processes of disease. The two pathological conditions on which the microscope has hitherto thrown valuable light are those of leucemia and melanæmia. Of the latter condition he writes:

"In malignant forms of intermittent fever the enlarged spleen has been seen to have a blackish appearance. The microscope shows as a cause of this change of colour, granulated lymphoid cells, often of a considerable extent, and which contain within them granules of the black pigment. Passing out through the splenic vein, they become mixed with the blood, and are seen in this fluid when it is subjected to microscopic examination. In consequence of their size they produce obstructions in certain capillary districts, especially in the brain and liver" (p. 233).

Then the author gives the mode of repeating Recklinghausen's discovery of the transformation of lymphoid cells into red corpuscles in the blood of the frog. The effect of electricity, heat, and chemical reagents on the blood-corpuscles are next given, the mode of obtaining hæmatocrystalline, hæmatin, hæmin, and hæmatoidin, and the portion of the section devoted to the blood concludes with the discussion of the movement of the blood in the living animal. The process of

stuffing" "the lymphoid cells in the frog, to which we have alluded, was used by Cohnheim to establish the transmigration of those cells through the capillary walls and the fact that pus-cells come from the blood-vessels, for if a finely granular colouring material has been previously injected into one of the lymph-sacs of the animal a part of the pus-cells found on the surface of the mesentery (inflamed by exposure to the air) will be found to contain colouring matter. The lymphoid cells during health also migrate and appear as movable

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »