The Microscope. 37 



Dr. James Reeves recently cut 1,259 serial sections from a 

 human embryo, five-eighths of an inch long; 1,252 of these sections 

 were mounted on seventy-six slides. They are now in the possession 

 of the JefPerson Medical College Museum, Philadelphia. 



The Northwestern University of Chicago has recently pur- 

 chased one of Prof. W. A. Rogers' comparators, with universal end- 

 measure and coefficient of expansion attachments, etc. This instru- 

 ment is in the private laboratory of Prof. Ewell, at Evanston, 111. 



Clarence M. Weed, in the American Naturalist, states that 

 the genital organs of the Phalangiince are best exposed if the caudal 

 poi'tion of the abdomen be compressed between the thumb and finger. 

 The oi'gans are thus pushed out of the genital opening between the 

 coxae, and if the specimen is immediately dropped in alcohol, will 

 generally remain exposed. 



Helmholtz dates his start in science to an attack of typhoid 

 fever. This illness led to his acquisition of a microscope, which he 

 was enabled to purchase owing to his having spent the autumn vaca- 

 tion of 1841 in the hospital, prostrated by typhoid fever ; being a 

 pupil, he was nursed without expense, and on his recovery he found 

 himself in possession of the savings of his small resources. — Sir John 

 Ijiibbock. 



BOOK REVIEWS. 



A Text-Book on Surgery, General, Operative and Mechanical, by John 

 A. Wyeth, M. D., Professor of Surgery, New York Polycliaic,etc. New 

 York: D. Appleton & Co. 1887. Royal octavo, pp. 777. 



The above work of Professor Wyeth will be received with open 

 arms by the profession of America. Although the exhaustive treat- 

 ises of Gross and Agnew and the great International Encyclopaedia 

 are unequaled in their field, an American surgeon has not in recent 

 years produced a thoroughly popular text-book. This is confirmed 

 by the large circulation of Bryant, Erichsen, and other foreign works. 

 Again, because of the great change that operative surgery and sur- 

 gical therapeutics have undergone by the introduction of antiseptic 

 methods, a work on surgery written three or four years ago is useless 

 as a text-book. 



The experimental period of antiseptic surgery has, however, 

 passed, and the writer of to-day can lay down the truths of antisepsis 

 and the rules for obtaining it, with the assurance that they will be 

 but slightly, if at all, modified for many years to come. Scattered 

 through our journal literature of the last few years, and in recent 



