Feb., 1893. SOME NEW BOOKS. 145 



with one or two exceptions [e.g.^ the notice of Cheselden's patient, 

 on p. 81, and the account of Goldscheider's investigations of the 

 sense of motion, p. 69). 



A useful and able book like this, if it was to stimulate the growing 

 interest taken in the subject in England, needed to be very well 

 translated. Professor Ziehen has been unfortunate in his translators. 

 They have obviously taken pains, but they do not appear well quali- 

 fied for the task, either by complete mastery of the English language, 

 or by close familiarity with the subject itself. They have made the 

 initial mistake of abandoning the fluent, personal, lecture form of the 

 original, for a buckram, awkward, impersonal form. The transla- 

 tion is, as a whole, clumsy and disfigured by inelegancies, and one is 

 always reminded that the work is a German one. There are many 

 strange words, such as taction, obtusion, appertinent, respective, 

 literature, innerved, impeditive (" a very impeditive sheath of caout- 

 chouc " for "a close-fitting indiarubber tube"), synchronically, sen- 

 sual for sensuous {e.g., " sensual vivacity "), to dampen for to 

 damp. As Goldsmith at a famous dinner-party said of the phrase 

 " happy rebellions "—we have not the phrase. The word " impart " 

 is used freely ; a stimulus " imparts" a sensation, one sensation even 

 " imparts" another ; a cortical centre "imparts" a motion — where pro- 

 duce or discharge is the accepted term. Magnitudes are " projected " 

 on an axis of abscissas, instead of being " measured off." Very often 

 the particles get wrong, and the order of words destroys the emphasis. 

 On page 124, by translating " hochstens " by " at least " instead of 

 " at most," they make the passage unintelligible, and many other 

 such confusions occur [e.g., on pages 215, 245, 44.). 



More serious mistakes arise from unfamiliarity with the subject. 

 Awkward or unusual names are used, gustatory bulbs (instead of 

 taste-l)uds or taste-bulbs), zone of Rolando for the motor area, 

 threshold of distinction (which should surely be "difference"), 

 faradic electricity, synovial duplicatures, auditory bones. In some 

 cases the translators improve on their author, and make him blunder ; 

 the description of chemical stimuli on p. 37 is absurd in the tran- 

 slation ; on page 102 they blunder gratuitously over the connection of 

 the hemispheres with the different sides of the field of view ; in the 

 same chapter the nodal point of the eye is described as the point at 

 which the rays {i.e., from a single point) intersect, not a word of which 

 of course, is in the original. The " well-known blind patient of 

 CheseMen" is actually rendered " the well-known Cheseldens, who was 

 born blind." It is amusing to find, in a work intended for English 

 readers, "the then youthful English statesman, Gladstone." The 

 mistakes occur principally in the earlier, more physiological, half of 

 the book ; the later half is fairly readable, but it, too, contains both 

 blunders and inelegancies. On the whole, the translation must be 

 pronounced very unsatisfactory, and contrasts glaringly with the 

 excell'-nt translation of Hoffding's " Outlines," which is a boon to the 

 English student. It speaks much for Professor Ziehen that he is 

 interesting in spite of his translators. 



S. A. 



Public Health Problems. By John F. J. Sykes, B.Sc, &c. [Contemporary 

 Science Series ] London: Walter Scott, 1892. Price 3s. 6d. 



The peculiarity of this book is, that the author, to use his own words, 

 has attempted " to cast a reflective and suggestive line of thought 



