LITERARY NOTICES. 



851 



The subject is clearly presented, and his 

 views and conclusions are not only practical, 

 but so important that they can not receive 

 too much popular attention. 



Antiseptic Surgery : The Principles, 

 Modes of Application, and Results of 

 the Lister Dressing. By Dr. Just 

 Lucas-Championniere, Surgeon to the 

 Hopital Tenon. Translated and edited 

 by Frederic Henry Gerrish, A. M., M. 

 D., Professor of Materia Mediea and 

 Therapeutics in Bowdoin College. Port- 

 land: Lorin<r, Short & Hannon. 1881. 

 Pp. 240. Price, $2.25. 



The editor's object in introducing this 

 work is to enable his fellow-practitioners in 

 America, in the absence of any low-priced 

 treatise on the subject in the English lan- 

 guage, to gain such a knowledge of Lister's 

 method as will enable them to apply it with 

 essential accuracy. The method has become 

 thoroughly established in medical science, 

 and is being rapidly adopted by intelligent 

 practitioners in all countries. It is recog- 

 nized in England, " reigns supreme " in 

 Denmark, " has its enthusiasts " in Ger- 

 many, "has gained a firm foothold" in 

 France, and is represented among the sur- 

 geons in Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Rus- 

 sia, Italy, and America. " Nelaton," says 

 the author, " was accustomed to say that 

 the man who should discover the means of 

 suppressing purulent infection deserved a 

 statue of gold. If this view of Nelaton's 

 was generally entertained, the statue would 

 be raised to Professor Lister, for purulent 

 infection has disappeared from the list of 

 wound complications in the services in 

 which his method is followed." 



The Origin of Primitive Superstitions, 

 and their Development into the Wor- 

 ship of Spirits, and the Doctrine of 

 Spiritual Agency among the Aborigi- 

 nes of America. By Rushton M. Dor- 

 man. Twenty-six Illustrations. Phil- 

 adelphia: J. B. Lippiucott & Co. 1881. 

 Pp. 398. Price, $3. 



Mythology, as considered by the au- 

 thor, includes in its broadest definition all 

 pagan religious beliefs, commonly called 

 superstitions, and can not be confined to 

 collections of fables and traditions, which 

 are the folk-lore of peoples. In this, its 

 larger sense, it is a very important branch 



of archaeological science, and its study re- 

 flects much light into a past which written 

 history has not penetrated. The author is 

 struck with the universality of mythology, 

 and with the evidence it presents of the 

 homogeneity of man's religious beliefs, and 

 his purpose is to collate the facts that show 

 this homogeneity, to reduce to a system of 

 religious beliefs the multitude of supersti- 

 tions that have germinated among uncult- 

 ured peoples, and to trace all superstitions 

 to a common origin. The general preva- 

 lence of the same superstitions and folk- 

 stories among primitive peoples has led to 

 exaggerated efforts to trace a derivation 

 of one system of mythological belief from 

 another by contact or migration of myths. 

 Mr. Dorman believes that these efforts have 

 been wrongly directed; that the mytholo- 

 gies in question *are all of natural develop- 

 ment among each people ; and that their 

 similarities among all peoples in the same 

 successive stages are explained by the fact 

 that their growth has always and every- 

 where taken place according to the laws of 

 man's spiritual being, nence we have uo 

 need to assume communications between 

 the negroes and the American Indians and 

 other uncultured peoples, of the existence 

 of which we have no evidence, to account 

 for the coincidence of such myths as the 

 "Uncle Remus" stories of the plantation 

 negroes with similar stories among tribes 

 strange to them. Mr. Dorman takes issue 

 with those who believe that the higher 

 phases of belief and worship have been 

 the most ancient, and have become debased 

 in the ruder forms. According to his view, 

 " all primitive religious belief is polytheis- 

 tic. All savage tribes are full of the terror 

 of invisible spirits which have been liberated 

 by death," which fill all nature, animate and 

 inanimate, are in the air, the wind, the 

 storm, the rock, the vale, the river, the 

 water-fall, and which " transmigrate into 

 human beings, animals, plants, and even 

 into inanimate stones, idols, and heavenly 

 bodies, which are supposed to be animate 

 thereafter. Hence originates the worship 

 of ancestors, and also of animals, plants, 

 stones, idols, and the heavenly bodies." He 

 is also convinced that those writers are wrong 

 who have affirmed of any people that they 

 are destitute of religious feeling, and as- 



