THE MICROSCOPE. 127 



Manual of Histology. Edited and prepared by Thomas E. Satterthwaite 

 M. D., President of the New York Pathological Society, Pathologist to 

 St. Luke's and. Presbyterian Hospitals, etc., in association with five 

 writers from Boston, one from Philadelphia, one from Brooklyn, and 

 eight from New York City. 8 vo. iq3 illustrations, pp. 478. Published 

 by Wm. Wood & Co. 



The editor states in his preface the very reason that induced us 

 to undertake the work of preparing a manual, viz., " summarizing, in 

 concise and plain language, our present knowledge in this funda- 

 mental branch of medicine." Of the 19S illustrations, but sixty-five 

 were prepared for this volume, and only forty are claimed as origi- 

 nal. The first thirty-four pages are devoted to the mechanism of 

 the microscope and to methods of work, staining, injecting, etc. Here 

 is a work of sixteen editors, or less than thirty pages to a editor. It 

 is this style of book making that we have always disliked. It can- 

 not be stamped with the views of any one man, and it brings no 

 credit to the editor-in-chief or to any one of the buried writers. It 

 insures the sale of an extra number of copies, and in this particular 

 the chief editor has shown business sagacit}'. However, there are 

 grave histological errors, and for a work assuming so much they are in- 

 excusable ones. The structure of the spermatozoa is that given years 

 ago, and is not that received at the present time. Nothing is said 

 of the " fine filament much longer than the body and connected to 

 it by a homogeneous membrane." They are far from being as sim- 

 ple as "a ciliated cell." Again, on page 92 is given the method of 

 preparing dry bone which bears on the ludicrous and seems puerile 

 to one who has seen other methods tried, requiring one-tenth the 

 time and giving ten fold better results. By reading the chapter on 

 muscle one is convinced that the author either has never read Klein 

 and Smith or has entirely ignored their teachings. The simple 

 structure of non-striated muscle contrasts strikingly with that given 

 by late writers. 



A careful study of the book will show that in nearly every case 

 the author is a theoretical man, telling what must exist, 

 but avoiding the various details necessary for any one else to 

 arrive at the same conclusions. We notice that with one exception, 

 (Dr. Mayer) the authors fail to give the magnifying power used to 

 produce any of their figures. The illustrations are as good as they 

 are old with but few exceptions. When will the beautiful diagram- 

 matic figures of Rollet and his school be abolished ! The book has 



