700 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



per cent, while the mortality in fifty 

 cases not treated with serum was forty- 

 two per cent. In Trieste the adoption 

 of tlie antitoxine treatment has reduced 

 the mortality from 58-3 to sixteen per 

 cent, four hundred and six cases of diph- 

 theria being thus treated. 



Occasionally some bad effects have 

 followed the administration of the se- 

 rum, such as high fever, pain in the 

 muscles and the joints, enlargement of 

 the lymph glands, skin eruptions, and 

 occasionally it seems to produce or has- 

 ten kidney complications. 



Tlie celebrated Prof. Virchow has 

 said that while he was not such a wor- 

 sliiper of antitoxine serum as many of 

 its first discoverers, and, like others, he 

 was in doubt about many things per- 

 taining to it that further experience 

 might correct, still he could not refrain 

 from saying that it was the duty of 

 every earnest physician to use the rem- 

 edy. The possibility that it would do 

 harm was so insignificant that it might 

 be ignored. 



" science:' 

 "We welcome with much satisfaction 

 the reappearance, in an improved form, 

 and apparently under the very best au- 

 spices, of our excellent contemporary, 

 Science. The names upon its editorial 

 committee are vouchers for the compe- 

 tence with which subjects falling into 

 the several departments which these 

 gentlemen supervise will be treated. 

 The only important science which we 

 fail to see on the list of those which 

 our contemporary embraces in its pi'O- 

 gramme is political and social science. 

 It is true that the professors of this 

 branch of science are not altogether at 

 one even as regards the fundamentals 

 of their subject ; but all the more need 

 is there for full discussion of that sub- 

 ject from every rational point of view. 

 Pciychology and paleontology, which are 

 on the programme, are of interest chief- 

 ly as loading to wider and more intelli- 

 gent views of man as a social and po- 



litical animal ; and we therefore trust, 

 nay believe, that our revived contempo- 

 rary, when it settles fully down to work, 

 will have many a useful chapter to give 

 us on the important topic to which we 

 have called attention. Meantime we 

 wish it, very heartily, all success. 



LITEKARY NOTICES. 



Towards Utopia. Being Speculations in 

 Social Evolution. By A Free Lance. 

 New York: D. Appleton & Company. 

 Pp. 252. Price, $1. 



Tnis is a book which we can cheerfully 

 recommend to all who are interested in so- 

 cial questions. The author does not wear 

 the badge of any school, and he writes in a 

 style which is by no means academic. He 

 believes in the duty of being as original as it 

 is in one's power to be, and he therefore un- 

 dertakes to apply some reforms, or what he 

 considers such, to the accepted spelling of 

 the English language and to some of its 

 terms of expression. His theoretical con- 

 victions in regard to social principles are in 

 general of the individualist order, but he is 

 very far from being doctrinaire even on this 

 ground. He is to describe him briefly a 

 man of strong human sympathies and liberal 

 tastes who has applied himself independent- 

 ly to consider the changes that will take 

 place in society before it arrives at anything 

 like its perfect development. The condition 

 of perfect development he calls Utopia, and 

 that he does not undertake to discuss or de- 

 scribe ; he contents himself with the humbler 

 task of describing in a discursive and very 

 off-hand manner what he calls " semi-Utopia" 

 a condition of things intermediate between 

 what we see now and the best and highest 

 condition possible for humanity. 



In the second chapter of the work occur 

 the following excellent remarks: "Utopia 

 can never be rightly seen otherwise than by 

 the aid of science and a true philosophy 

 that teach us to discriminate the possible 

 and practicable from the impossible : the 

 route can never be tracked by others than 

 by pilots soundly trained in physical, psy- 

 chological, and social science ; and the 

 march can never be performed by an army 

 not disciplined and educated by the teach- 



