THE SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. BY WILLIAM AITKEN, M.D., Edinburgh, Professor of Pathology in the Army Medical School. 2d American, from the 5th, enlarged and carefully revised, London edition. With large additions by MEREDITH CLYMER, M.D., etc. In two volumes: with a map, lith. plate, and numerous illustrations on wood. Vol. 1. Philad.: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1868. Svo., pp. 927. (Price of the two volumes, $12 00.)

[For sale by Keith & Woods, 219 North Fifth Street, St. Louis.]

Within a remarkably short time after the issue of the first American edition of this comprehensive work, we are called upon to attest its value by announcing a second. It is the reprint of a new English edition, to which the American editor has made considerable and important additions. In his first preparation of the work for the American publisher, Dr. CLYMER introduced similar improvements upon the London issue, for which he, at the time, received the heartiest acknowledgments from the medical press. It is the more incomprehensible and painful to notice, that the author of the work embodied most of the American editor's additions in the text of his fifth edition without the faintest allusion to Dr. CLYMER. It is difficult to overlook this mark of illiberality and narrowness, which we trust Dr. AITKEN will, in a future edition, endeavor to expunge. The author's preface, bearing date of April, 1868, advises us that in his fifth edition the articles on malignant cholera, paralysis, epidemic meningitis, and intestinal obstruction, have been rewritten, and the subjects of locomotor ataxy, progressive muscular atrophy, glosso-laryngeal paralysis, aphasia, dilatation of the bronchi, and the application of the sphygmograph, have been introduced. The new articles now prepared by Dr. CLYMER have a still wider range, embracing some very important subjects, such as cholera infantum, hereditary syphilis, gonorrheal rheumatism, etc. These and his other additions are too numerous to repeat; they show unmistakably that Dr. CLYMER'S office has been no sinecure.

The selection of material from the progressing sciences of the day, as far as we can judge from this volume, has been eminently judicious. Yet some instances strike us as a little indiscreet. For instance, several pages and a lithographic plate (the only one in the volume) have been devoted to HALLIER'S doubtful discoveries of the cholera fungus, which thus far are unsupported by other authors, and called in question by very many; while no

attention has been paid in the chapter on suppuration to COHNHEIM's important experience as to the formation or source of pus, known since July, 1867, generally accepted as true, and repeated and confirmed by a number of experimenters. The hazard incurred in receiving the latter into a textbook as a matter of fact would be a thousand times less than the risk which Dr. AITKEN runs of promulgating an error, in giving so prominent a place to HALLIER'S experiments.

The work has thus been brought up to an enormous compass, and in completeness is surpassed by none in the English language but perhaps REYNOLDS' System of Medicine, over which it has the advantage of greater uniformity and homogeneousness.

It will be unprofitable to enter into an analysis of the work before we have received the second volume. But there is one feature introduced into the present edition which, we will briefly notice, namely, the new "provisional nomenclature" adopted by the Royal College of Physicians of London. The plan of this nomenclature is, first, "to give an English name to the discase, employing the terms in popular use whenever they are not absolutely inaccurate; and to use only one word, or as few words as possible, in naming a disease. Secondly, to give a classification based upon anatomical considerations, namely,- General Diseases, or such as affect the whole frame, subdivided into Sections A (zymotic diseases) and B (constitutional diseases); and Local Diseases. This classification (in the English nomenclature) is given entire in Dr. AITKEN'S work, occupying about 25 pages. If we accept the principle of anatomical classification, we have every reason to be satisfied with the work accomplished, though even here we meet with a few instances of what we must consider errors in principle. Thus among the subheads under which Local Diseases are distributed according to anatomical systems, we find, among the rest, "diseases of the cellular tissue." The divisions entitled "diseases of the female breast," and "diseases of the male mamilla," are made to occupy the same rank as those which enumerate the diseases of the nervous system, of the respiratory system, etc., while they would seem to have found a more appropriate and humble place among the diseases of the generative system. This table must be strictly considered, as it is officially styled, a provisional nomenclature, and not as a permanent and invariable nosological standard. Its defect is a radical one,-unavoidable because it arises from the incomplete

ness of our science. Disease, it has been said, is the manifestation of life under abnormal conditions. In a given organism, the same deviation from the normal conditions of health must produce the same result: the same disease. This deviation, this abnormal condition, is the "cause " of the disease. Knowing the cause, therefore, and its mode of operation, we would know the disease. Unfortunately, we do know extremely little of the etiological conditions of disease; medicine would become an exact science, at least as much so as anatomy and physiology, if we had certain knowledge of the cause of diseases; and this alone can ever make it so. Hence, in our estimation, a definite and immutable nosological system can be constructed only on the basis of a perfect etiology. The time has not come for attempting this; perhaps it is far distant, and we must content ourselves meanwhile with "provisional" classifications.

The extérieur of the volume is elegant; it is among the best productions of Lindsay & Blakiston's press.

G. B.

A THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MIDWIFERY, including the Diseases of Pregnancy and Parturition. By P. CAZEAUX, Member of the Imp. Academy of Medicine; Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris; etc., etc. Revised and annotated by S. TARNIER, Adj. Prof. in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris; etc., etc. 5th American, from the 7th French edition. By. Wм. R. BULLOCK, M.D. With 175 illustrations. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1868. Svo., pp. 1124. Price: cloth, $6 50; leather, $7 50.

[For sale by Keith & Woods, 219 North Fifth Street, St. Louis.]

The very high reputation which CAZEAUX' excellent and comprehensive—almost encyclopedic-treatise on the science and art of obstetrics has always enjoyed in this country (thanks to the American translator) would relieve us from writing a single word, beyond the bare announcement, in order to introduce the 1124 closely-printed pages of this latest edition to the favorable notice of our readers, were it not that the seventh French edition, of which the book before us is a translation, has been so thoroughly revised and enlarged, that it is, as the annotator avers, "so to speak, a new one."

The decease of Prof. CAZEAUX taking place after the sixth edition was almost exhausted, Prof. TARNIER was entrusted with the preparation of another. By repeating a few passages from

A

the preface of this editor, we can best inform the reader of the nature of the changes the work has been made to undergo: classical book," says TARNIER, "soon grows old in these days, and it was found impossible to bring out a new edition without subjecting it to the alterations demanded by the progress of science. . . . Out of respect for CAZEAUX's memory, it was decided that the printing should be done in two kinds of type; the larger for the old text, and the smaller for what I had myself written. The reader will readily distinguish what belongs to CAZEAUX and what to myself, but the work has been resolved into a homogeneous body without contradictory annotations. This last result could not possibly have been attained without retouching the old text, by which a new direction and meaning has been sometimes given to the original ideas. Should it be desired to know certainly what CAZEAUX's opinions were, it will, therefore, be necessary to consult an old edition.-Especially have I made it a duty not to change the spirit in which the work had been conceived"

..,

etc.

The labor of Prof. TARNIER has been diligently and conscientiously performed; his additions are numerous, extensive, and judicious, and form, with the original, "a homogeneous body," so that the reader's attention is not drawn off by incoherence of text or abrupt intercalations.

A book has thus resulted, unquestionably of the highest excellence, comprehensive in scope and detail, perhaps too much so for the beginner, but the very best work of reference on which the practitioner can rely.

G. B.

CONSTIPATED

BOWELS: the Various Causes and the Different Means of Cure. By S. B. BIRCH, M.D., M.R.C.P., London, etc. From the 3d London edition. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1868. 12mo., pp. 181. Price, $1 25.

[For sale by KEITH & WOODS, Booksellers, 219 North Fifth Street, St. Louis.] We have been unable to discover the date of the first English edition of this book. The second appeared in 1863. Its author lays himself open to a little ridicule by some whimsical disclosures that he makes to the public. In his preface he delicately states, that he has had many opportunities of observation "through peculiar circumstances." If our curiosity is piqued by this phrase.

it is gratified by discovering (page 16), that the doctor is of constipated parentage, and, moreover, that he himself "has had, in his own person, but too much experience of hereditary tendency to constipation." We learn also that his family connection is "tolerably large," but has been constipated "far beyond the average." We were quite unprepared for this inside view of the Birch family, and notwithstanding the pathos of his sentence on these sympathetic and homefelt influences," we scarcely think they can be grateful to their indiscreet relative for placing them in this historic attitude.

66

Another peculiarity of the author is lugging in school-boy Latin and unnecessary French words. Our old acquaintance, Scylla and Charybdis, appears twice; Cloacina's temple is duly brought in, and he manages to introduce the list of the cities that contended for the birth place of HOMER.

For much of this cheap ornament we think the author must have studied the collection of foreign phrases in the appendix of his pocket dictionary. We congratulate him on his expression "apropos in relation to" (page 19). We have nothing farther to say on these minor points, except that the book is much disfigured by profuse italics, and the singular negligence of the proof-reader in the matter of spelling.

Under the head of causes of constipation, the author gives us little that is new. He enlarges in pretty nearly the customary way on the abuse of aperients, which, he says, is the most fruitful source of chronic constipation; on luxurious and indolent habits; on torpidity of the liver; on neglect of regularity in defecation, or nervous anxiety regarding it; on atony of the intestinal canal; on deficiency of moisture; on mechanical causes, and finally on special conditions connected with infancy and old age.

He does not enter deeply into the physiology connected with his subject, saying in his remarks on torpid liver as a cause : "While we take every opportunity of extending our knowledge in the scientific direction, we must nevertheless mainly depend upon clinical observation and well-ascertained natural laws; chemistry and the microscope being accepted as modest, though valuable and ever-present subordinates." Further comment on this portion of the book is perhaps unnecessary, and we pass on to the therapeutics, which is much the more valuable part. Here, too, general principles are enforced with much good sense