344 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



published under the editorship of Prof. E. H. Starling; secondly, by the sad 

 fact that the death of the talented author occurred soon after the completion 

 of the MS. 



Walter Holbrook Gaskell was an eminent physiologist whose work was always 

 marked by a wonderful breadth of view, by originality and by courage. His 

 writings, which invariably aroused interest and have formed the stepping-off 

 stones for many subsequent researches, will be much missed. Throughout a long 

 life he has been working at many problems connected with the sympathetic or, as 

 he prefers to call it, the involuntary nervous system, and the present work forms 

 a fitting summary to that life's work. The book is an intensely interesting one 

 from beginning to end. 



We are in entire agreement with the author that the solution of physiological 

 problems needs the co-operation of morphology to be satisfactory, and conversely 

 morphology must call to its aid physiology. It is unfortunately true that nowadays 

 it is extremely difficult to keep abreast with the enormous amount of work that 

 is being done in these two great branches of knowledge, and the result is that one 

 side or the other suffers. Indications of this are not lacking in the present volume. 

 To take an example, one of the sub-headings of a chapter is " Motor nerves of 

 muscles surrounding the segmental duct." Segmental duct is a definite term in 

 embryology, and it is somewhat bewildering to the biologist with any acquaintance 

 with vertebrate embryology to find that when the author uses this term he does 

 not mean the same as the anatomist or embryologist. As a matter of fact it is 

 about the one part of the uro-genital ducts he does not mean. Again, after 

 describing in a general way the Pronephroi and their derivatives, he concludes 

 when dealing with the metanephros : " The Wolffian body now takes no part in 

 urinary excretion, only the generative gland remaining, whose duct is the Miillerian 

 duct." This is a loose kind of statement. Why only the generative gland, as if 

 it were either a part of the Wolffian body, or took part in urinary excretion? 

 Furthermore, this applies to the female alone, for as is noted in another connec- 

 tion some lines lower down, in the male it is the Wolffian duct that is the genital 

 duct. Apart from these matters and the drawing comparisons between vertebrates 

 and Limulus or other arachnid, which are certainly not to be regarded as generally 

 accepted, the book is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the Involuntary 

 Nervous System. Whether future research will endorse the conclusions set out — 

 and it probably will many of them — is not so important as the bearing the work 

 will have on future work along similar lines. It gives the reader a good account 

 of our present knowledge of the problems with their difficulties and limitations in 

 such a way that it is bound to stimulate interest in a fascinating branch of 

 physiological and morphological research. The diagrams help to make clear 

 some of the difficult points, and the whole book is clearly and concisely written. 



C. H. O'D. 



MEDICINE 



Cerehro-Spinal Fever. By Michael Foster, M.A., M.D., Capt. R.A.M.C. 

 (T.F.), and J. F. Gaskell, M.A., M.D., Capt. R.A.M.C. (T.F.). [Pp. viii + 

 222.] (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1916. Price \2s. 6d. net.) 



Although outbreaks of cerebro-spinal fever have occurred in recent times in 

 Ireland and Scotland, the year 191 5 first witnessed this disease on an epidemic 

 scale in England. Physicians and pathologists have thus had the opportunity of 

 studying it at first hand, and this admirable monograph is the fruit of such a study, 



