liv Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



ately diagrammatic human section. Who will ever profit from such a 

 description of the normal where comparisons with possibly patholog- 

 ical conditions in other parts of the atlas or in his own specimens are 

 desired ? 



V. Monakow^ has made excellent use of his opportunity. His 

 * Gehirnpathologie ' contains a concise and well considered summary of 

 anatomy of the brain, its physiology, general pathology and the clin- 

 ical symptoms of organic brain disease (p. 1-375). He then passes over 

 to problems of diagnostic localization (p. 376 666) and discusses the 

 principal disorders of the circulation; hemorrhage (p. 667-792), occlu- 

 sion of arteries (p. 793-876), and sinus-thrombosis (p. 877-894). This 

 is the first part of Vol. IX of Nothnagel's Special Pathology and 

 Therapy. It is one of the few books which deserve complete reading 

 by the reviewer because one has the feeling that a man of experience 

 speaks of things with which he is familiar and if criticism of detail is 

 provoked m a few portions of the work one may give it without fear 

 of hurting publisher or writer. There are so many good points that 

 an enumeration of possible defects does not detract from the deserved 

 admiration. 



v. Monakow starts with a short sketch of the early embryology, and 

 insists on the importance of an independent growth of two parts of the 

 nervous system; the sensory proton (the sense-organs and the vegetative 

 nervous system) on the one hand and on the other, the motor apparatus 

 with the rest of the ' central ' nervous system ; illustrations of this are 

 seen in anencephaly, amyelia etc. In the sketch of the development 

 of the brain-vesicles, the formation of ' five vesicles ' out of the 

 three fundamental enlargements of the neural tube deserves criticism 

 as incorrect, though sanctioned by long tradition ; the forebrain con- 

 sists of the one original enlargement of the neural tube (primary fore- 

 brain) with two hemisphere-protrusions ; why should these two protru- 

 sions be called one vesicle on ground of the arbitrary existence ot a 

 ' cella media '? A similar objection holds for the division of the rhomb- 

 encephalon. How can we speak of two 'vesicles' if at the level of 

 the dividing line (in the adult the lower end of the ' pons ') the 

 lumen of the tube is widest ? The division into three enlargements 

 and accessory pockets is much more correct and didactically clearer. 

 The laws of development are very hastily mentioned and the sequence 

 of development suggested on physiological grounds — vegetative life, 



' Gehirnpathologie votl Dr. C. v. Monakow, Zurich, mit 211 Abbildungen. 

 Wien, 1S97, Alfred Holder. 



