284 CARPENTER, ON HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY. 
physiology its interest, and supplies the facts that make it a 
progressive science. We hope we may be excused from 
alluding to this subject, but it is vital to us. We cannot 
expect to keep pace either with Germany or France in phy- 
siology, or any other branch of natural science, unless a 
greater effort is made to place these sciences in a proper 
position in our Universities. Our statesmen, our clergy, and 
our lawyers, educated in our universities, are all more or less 
infected with the heresy that human thought, character, and 
action, are little influenced by the culture of the natural 
sciences; the consequence is, that they are everywhere snubbed 
and ignored in our courses of education, and their cultivators 
rewarded in the same manner as persons of diligent habits 
who occupy menial and official positions in society. When 
England treats her great men of science as they ought to be 
treated, she will find that there is no want of genius and 
power amongst her sons; but as long as the men who culti- 
vate natural science are regarded as on a level with those 
who cultivate the meaner arts of life, so long must she submit 
to the degradation of holding a second-rate position amongst 
the nations that cultivate science. 
It was the burthen of the life of the late Prof. Edward 
Forbes, who occupied a professedly scientific position, that 
he was always treated as a clerk and not as a man of science. 
Throughout the whole of the so-called science and art depart- 
ment there is one universal feeling among men of science— 
that they are treated as clerks, and the objects and aims of 
the officers criticised and judged of by the mere clerk- 
intellect which the Government places over them. In these 
posts scientific men are insulted, degraded, and discharged, 
and there is no help for them anywhere. 
But we must still be thankful for our privileges. We do 
not think there is a better text-book of Human Physiology 
than Dr. Carpenter’s extant. All honour to our young men 
who, for little thanks and scant reward, can be found to aid 
in the work of making known what has been done in foreign 
countries in the great work of scientific progress. The present 
edition of the ‘ Human Physiology ’ is different from the last. 
Much is omitted and muchis added. The great feature of all 
four editions of Dr.Carpenter’s work—the sections on the func- 
tions of the cerebrum—are now omitted. In the chapters on 
food and digestion, considerable additions have been made to 
the section treating of the saliva, whilst the experiments of 
recent continental observers on the effect of the nervous system 
in this quarter are fully detailed. The experiments of Briiche 
on the influence of the gastric acid on the fibrine and albumen, 
