244 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the presence of pain in 46 per cent, of 

 women, it is traced among other things to 

 " work that is either absolutely excessive, 

 or excessive relative to woman's constitu- 

 tion, by being prolonged too much during a 

 single session, or else which is insufficiently 

 relieved by recreation." It is impossible to 

 read this last section of the book without 

 coming to the conclusion that the author 

 in many instances is reasoning against her 

 convictions. 



The author does not seek to evade the 

 fact that 46 per cent, of women suffer a 

 greater or less degree of pain during this 

 time, and yet it has not the slightest bear- 

 ing upon woman's efficiency to work while 

 thus suffering to say, as the author does, 

 that this pain is not directly dependent upon 

 the need of rest. If we recognize in pain 

 the ideal curse of humanity, we may form 

 a notion of what a woman must undergo 

 who, under the lash of necessity or duty, 

 carries her burden of pain to her daily 

 tasks. It matters not whether the pain is 

 evaded, or mitigated or not by rest, it is a 

 panacea instinctively sought. It accords 

 also with the universal experience of medi- 

 cal men that pelvic pain, or hyperemia, is 

 quieted by rest, and this is as true of men- 

 strual pain as of auy other condition. Such 

 a fact as this cannot be reasoned away by ar- 

 guments drawn from speculative physiology. 

 But we must recognize in this book a 

 new departure in the literature of the ques- 

 tion. It is something new, as well as a 

 grand stride in the right direction, for the 

 advocates of woman's immunity from any- 

 thing like physical restraints to labor to 

 investigate facts and to couch this investi- 

 gation in scientific language. The faults of 

 the book are mainly those of hasty prepa- 

 ration, both in the collection of data and 

 the arguments based upon them. We are 

 satisfied that, with a wider range of facts 

 and greater deliberation in handling them, 

 many of the hasty generalizations which we 

 have pointed out would not have occurred. 

 The book shows hard and honest work, and 

 demonstrates the great capacity of Dr. 

 Putnam-Jacobi for scientific investigation. 



Fifteen-Cent Dinners for Working-men's 

 Families. By Juliet Corson. Pp. 40. 



This little tract is designed to show the 

 working-man's wife how she may provide 



for her household a sufficiency of good, 

 wholesome food at a cost easily within the 

 means of the poorly-paid day-laborer. An 

 edition of 50,000 copies has been published 

 by the author for gratuitous distribution, 

 and it would be an act of humanity to aid 

 in circulating the book among the class who 

 have need of the information it contains. 

 The poorer class of people are, in propor- 

 tion to their means, far more wasteful than 

 the rich, and the information here conveyed 

 cannot fail to be highly profitable to them. 



Report on the Telegraphic Determination 

 of Differences of Longitude in the 

 West Indies and Central America. By 

 Lieutenant - Commander F. M. Green, 

 U. S. Navy. Washington : Government 

 Printing-Officc, 1877. 

 Navigators, geographers, and others, 

 are constantly demanding improved values 

 of the geographical coordinates of places on 

 the earth's surface, as the demands of their 

 pursuits become more and more exacting. 

 When the longitude of a slow-sailing vessel 

 was obtained by observations of lunar dis- 

 tances a large uncertainty in the resulting 

 datum was inevitable, and was expected and 

 allowed for. Modern practice in steamers, 

 where every additional hour's run means the 

 expenditure of valuable fuel, etc., and where 

 an uncertainty as to the ship's position is 

 subsequently paid for by the owner in the 

 expenses of the voyage, demands something 

 more than the approximate longitudes of 

 prominent seaports, which before were suf- 

 ficient. 



This want has been long felt, and the es- 

 tablishment of secondary meridians has been 

 attempted in many places and by various 

 nations. In 1866 a committee of the French 

 Bureau des Longitudes was directed to pre- 

 pare a plan for fixing a certain number of 

 fundamental secondary meridians, separated 

 by convenient distances, all round the world ; 

 and, in March, 1867, their report having 

 been submitted to the Minister of Marine, 

 its immediate execution was directed. A 

 commission of eminent French naval offi- 

 cers was organized to superintend the prep- 

 aration for this work and its performance, 

 and five or six parties of skillful observers 

 were, after several months of preliminary 

 study and practice, dispatched with their 

 instruments to various parts of the world to 

 make observations of moon-culmintahms to 



