Critical Digest. Ixv 



evidence for the neuroglia nature of these cells. The therapeutic part 

 of this chapter contains so many valuable practical hints though that it 

 will form one of the most attractive parts of the book for the practi- 

 tioner ; it is indeed so full that it might make many believe that the 

 various measures could be learned from the book, if experience did 

 not show that only practical training will make a masseur or an electro- 

 therapeutist. 



In a measure as we approach the clinical sides of the subject we 

 feel that a practitioner of experience is the author of the work. The 

 subjects of clinical teaching show the matured judgment, although even 

 there an effort to bring in all the possible opinions of the various ' au- 

 thorities ' must prove confusing to most students, since, as a rule, ob- 

 solete views are put forth beside accepted ones without sufficient ad- 

 verse criticism. 



In connection with the various topics ennumerated above, we find 

 a number of special histological and physiological excursions which are 

 on the whole far more satisfactory than the general sketch of anatomy. 

 The paragraphs on the cerebral cortex give a resume largely of a pub- 

 lication of Andriezen, a mass of details, unfortunately omitting prac- 

 tically everything that is essential just for those who do work on patholog- 

 ical changes of the cortex. A careful reader of the paragraph on the 

 geniculate bodies (p. 358), if he is acquainted with the exact literature 

 on these parts, will notice on what insufficient grounds Mills fa- 

 vors the refuted views of Darkschewitsch \ and how much more con- 

 cisely and accurately the matter could be stated. On p. 365, the 

 unique view of Hamilton on the corpus callosum, never corroborated, 

 is conscientiously reported with just as much emphasis as any other ; 

 it is even specially favored on p. 366, in a paragraph which is decid- 

 edly too ' suggestive.' 



Chapter VI is of some interest to the anatomist. It begins: 'Acute 

 focal diseases of the brain, such as hemorrhage, softening, tumor, and 

 abscess, when they do not result fatally, leave cystic, necrosed, or 

 sclerosed areas, and these [?] lead to progressive degenerations of the 

 central and peripheral nervous system.' — ' Secondary degeneration is 

 set up and progresses chiefly in the conducting tracts along the lines in 

 which they transmit motor, sensory, or other impulses. In the sensory 

 systems it is ascending or centripetal — from the peripheral sense organs 

 to the dorsal ganglia or cord [!] and from the cord to the brain ' etc. 

 Mills distinguishes secondary degeneration and involution (a retrogres- 

 sion which certain structures undergo as the result of disuse). The rela- 

 tively simple ' laws ' are not outlined. The reader learns that the fillet 



