LITERARY NOTICES. 



707 



Joint-Diseases: Treatment by Rest and 

 Fixation. Pp. 15. Surgical Treat- 

 ment of Infants. Pp. 1'2. By Deforest 

 Willard, M. D. Philadelphia. 



Dr. Willard holds that rest subdues 

 joint-lnflamination more effectually than all 

 other means combined, and that the more 

 perfect the rest the greater will be the dimi- 

 nution of pressure, tension, and inflamma- 

 tion, and of their resultant ankylosis and 

 suppuration. The pamphlet contains the 

 arguments in support of his views and de- 

 scriptions of the appliances, and their appli- 

 cations, by which he secures the rest he pre- 

 scribes. 



The second paper is an address which 

 was read in June of last year before 

 the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society. The 

 author believes that the surgery of child- 

 hood, as compared with that of adult life, is, 

 aside even from congenital defects, suffi- 

 ciently marked and distinctive to entitle it 

 to separate consideration. Even the anato- 

 my of the child can not be learned from the 

 ordinary adult dissections during a college 

 course, but the surgeon must make himself 

 specially acquainted with it. References 

 are made, in the course of the address, to 

 classes of cases in which special treatment 

 and applications may be called for. 



The Prehistoric Palace of the Kings of 

 TiRTNS. By Dr. Henry Schliemann. 

 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 

 Pp. S80, with Chromo - lithographic 

 Plates, Map, and Plans. Price, $10. 



The citadel of Tiryns is one of the 

 most ancient ruins in Europe. The city 

 which it represents had its origin and 

 probably its whole existence in prehistoric 

 times. It is treated in Homer's " Iliad " as 

 a place whose greatness was of the past, 

 while Mycenae was still vigorous and Argos 

 rising. Its massive remains or " cyclopean 

 walls," standing some eighty feet above the 

 sea back of the Gulf of Nauplia, were re- 

 garded as a miracle in ancient days, and 

 have been objects of wonder to Greeks, 

 Romans, and moderns, for twenty -five 

 hundred years. Dr. Schliemann having at- 

 tacked, with more or less of satisfaction in 

 the result, Troy, Mycenae, and Orchomenos, 

 it was natural that the attention of the great 

 archaeologist should be directed to their ri- 



val in antiquity and in association with the 

 legends of the heroic age. His work at 

 Tiryns has been rather more successful 

 than at the other places he has explored, 

 because he has gone at it with the benefit 

 of acquired experience, and has been able 

 to perform it more systematically and in 

 such a way as to insure the preservation of 

 everything. He has laid bare the whole 

 plan of the palace and fortress, with all of 

 its most important details, and has given 

 the means for forming a clear idea of how 

 those Herakleid or Perseid Greeks lived. 

 The palace was reached by a winding car- 

 riage-way duly guarded with gates, the 

 thresholds, bolt-holes, and pivotal hinge- 

 holes of which, and the ashes of the 

 wooden parts, are still visible. The plan 

 of the palace was elaborate, and reveals a 

 grouping around two centers, the hall of 

 the men and the hall of the women, com- 

 munication between which was only indi- 

 rect. The walls were adorned with paint- 

 ings in animal and geometrical designs, and 

 plaques of alabaster with designs in blue- 

 glass paste, fac-similes of which are given 

 in the colored plates of the book. One of 

 the most remarkable features of the build- 

 ing was the bath-room, which was floored 

 with a single slab of stone of eight by ten 

 feet, that can not weigh less than nineteen 

 tons. Within this room was found a frag- 

 ment of the terra-cotta tub in which the 

 heroes took their baths. The arrangements 

 for drainage and the whole plan of the pal- 

 ace show a considerable advance in civiliza- 

 tion, when, as we have been accustomed to 

 believe, civilization had hardly begim on that 

 spot. The excavations, to which Dr. Schlie- 

 mann had given his personal attention, were 

 continued while he was preparing his ac- 

 count, during 1885, by his collaborator, the 

 distinguished German archaeologist, Dr. Will- 

 iam Dorpfeld. He made a series of new dis- 

 coveries hardly less interesting than those 

 which had already been made. Among them 

 are the facts that the huge stones of which 

 the walls were built were not absolutely 

 rude, but were roughly hewed and shaped 

 for their purpose ; that the walls were built 

 with clay mortar, which has been washed 

 away in all the exposed portions ; and that 

 these walls, which are of great thickness, 

 have chambers within them to which access 



