ii SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



lapse of duty if by the student, even though the label be remembered, 

 that to which it belonged soon fade forgotten. 



In the book before us it is pre-eminently the generalisations, the 

 opinions, of his science which the writer sets himself to tell, and in no 

 instance does he fail to unfold each in the manner of a thesis to be de- 

 fended in the presence of impartial but of critical inquirers. Pursuing 

 that course his facts come forward duly as items of evidence ordered in 

 natural sequence for a logical mind. It is in direct proportion as this 

 can be dene with any study that it can claim to possess educational 

 value. It is only when such a method is pursued that the student 

 grasps the proportion of the unknown to the known. It is only in such 

 a teacher that the student acquires that confidence which loyalty of 

 acknowledgment of want of knowledge is one of the most powerful 

 means to inspire. No one can lay down the present book without 

 realising that its subject science, altogether apart from its technical 

 applications to practical medicine, is replete with value as an edu- 

 cational means, and is expounded in such a manner as to fit it for that 

 end. For this Prof. Waller should have the thanks of all, especially 

 of English physiologists, for certainly no single volume of moderate 

 compass in the language had realised this aim. Physiology, although 

 it is a truism to say that it forms the basis of the art of healing, is too 

 often thought of merely as an appanage of medicine. But physiology 

 has a wider aim than that. It will " raise its voice, not only in the 

 hospital and consulting room, but in the school and in the senate ". 

 Changes in what we call the body bring about changes in what we call 

 the mind. History, as surely as she prophesies a fuller and more exact 

 knowledge of that molecular dance, which is the material token of 

 nervous action, prophesies to physiology a place of appeal and law- 

 giving in questions not only of the body, but also of the mind. To 

 this no stronger witness can be pointed than all the latter part of Prof. 

 Waller's chapter xv. Though this book is written avowedly for the 

 student of medicine, it is an admirable introduction to human physiology 

 for any student bent upon that knowledge for its own sake only. In- 

 deed the chief evidence that the author has addressed himself in par- 

 ticular to the medical student is the insertion in the volume of a certain 

 amount of elementary physics at the expense of space that might have 

 contained physiology. This is no fault of the author's. The teacher of 

 physiology has early to recognise that he has usually to deal with 

 students who know little or nothing of physics. The regulations of 

 the great diploma-granting Conjoint Board in the metropolis requires 

 no general course of instruction in physics as a part of its course of 

 education for the physician and the surgeon. The teacher before 

 beginning to lecture upon muscle, in treating of which he must per- 

 force employ electricity, is obliged to explain the nature of the voltaic 

 cell, of the induction coil, and of the general facts regarding resistance, 

 and the detection and measurement of currents. Similarly, his micro- 

 scopical analysis of muscle-structure has to be prefaced with a statement 



