APPENDIX. 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



An Introduction to Human Physiology. By Augustus D. Waller, 

 M.D., F.R.S. Third Edition. 1896. 



We congratulate Professor Waller on the appearance of a third 

 edition of this work. An interval of barely five years extends between 

 the first edition and the present. The book has been a pioneer in several 

 ways, amongst others in the limitation of the scope of an English 

 manual on physiology, written avowedly for the use of students of 

 medicine, to physiology alone without the addition of extraneous histo- 

 logical description. As a complete text-book of moderate dimensions 

 on human physiology we regard it as the best in the language. Nor 

 do we know of any so good either in French or German. 



Physiological problems are not easy to investigate with success, 

 neither is the science one that lends itself to being "embraced with an 

 easy span ". At least as difficult is it to convey within the compass of 

 600 octavo pages a comprehensive survey of the physiology of man. 

 The physics and chemistry of animals being a large subject, the medical 

 curriculum with right-minded modesty demands only a part of that 

 whole. That part, however, the part concerning man, is and certainly 

 for long will be the larger fraction. " The proper study of mankind is 

 man," and his physiology includes the brain as an organ of mind. To 

 all this larger fraction — and in reality to much else besides— Professor 

 Waller's book is excellent "guide, philosopher, and friend". 



In a text-book of not immoderate dimensions there are obviously 

 certain lines only on which a science can be traced. The historical 

 method is scarcely admissible in a treatise of that size. Approved facts 

 can be judicially selected from the whole mass available, and these cata- 

 logued will give a monument of evidence so far as they go. They are 

 however not the study itself but only the subject matter of the study. 

 Moreover, the inductive is only part of the method pursued by physio- 

 logy. Leaning on the exacter and more mathematical studies of 

 physics and chemistry it uses laws revealed by them — instance that of 

 the conservation of energy — as instrument for analysis of the corporeal 

 machines which form its subject. Besides facts therefore generalisa- 

 tions, wide and limited, must also be deposited in the text-book. The 

 question is for every volume, how many and how far? In text-books it 

 is too current not only to catalogue facts but also to catalogue general- 

 isations. The small manual of physiology usually devotes a line to 

 each doctrine, the name of an authority being thereto appended label- 

 like. This is honesty, but it is not responsibility, and from the latter 

 no mind teaching another mind may shrink. What wonder under such 



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