224 THE AMERICA^ MONTHLY. [September. 



Lessons in the Diagnosis and Treatme7it of Eye Diseases. 

 By Casey A. Wood, M. D. Sq. i6mo, pp. 154. Detroit : 

 Geo. S. Davis. Price, 25 cents. 



This is intended for the use of the busy practitioner that is not 

 a specialist, and it fairly well accomplishes its object. 

 Living JSIatter : Its Cycle of Growth and Decline in Aftimal 

 Organisms. By C. A. Stephens. i6mo., pp. 107. Norway 

 Lake : The Laboratory Co. " 



This little volume is, as the author says, a resume of an ex- 

 tended investigation into the causes of old age and organic death, 

 especially of the human being. The subject is treated as a phil- 

 osophical study, the author beginning with the consideration of 

 universal matter, which he says feels ; " hence the universe has 

 everywhere a low degree of sensory perception .... The earth 

 lives in a certain sense ; not the self-conscious life of an animate 

 organism, yet sentient in a low degree." Protoplasm, or biogen, 

 as the author prefers to call it, accepting the word invented by 

 Dr. Cones, is treated after the manner of the chemist and psy- 

 chologist rather than of the naturalist and microscopist, and after 

 a somewhat extended consideration of the anatomical changes 

 which accompany old age, he concludes that life is never 

 qualitatively but only quantitatively diminished; that death 

 comes not from a decline of initial vital power, but from 

 extrinsic obstacles which befall from material surroundings 

 and from imperfect modes of living. " Death comes not 

 from a law of Nature, for the law of Nature is life. Uni- 

 versal matter lives from eternity and never dies." "A tissue 

 is old because there is little biogen in it, not so much be- 

 cause the biogen has grown intrinsically weak." The human 

 being inclines toward death, according to Mr. Stephens, from 

 three principal causes: by reason of minute mechanical and 

 chemical accidents within the tissues ; by physical accidents from 

 surrounding matter, imperfect food and imperfect assimilation ; 

 and by the reaction from these as shown in discouragement and 

 world- weariness. " Every one of these causes of death and old 

 ageing is of the nature of an ordinary physical cause fairly within 

 human power to avoid or remedy, and many of which in fact we 

 are every day avoiding and remedying. It is the sum total of 

 these causes which has heretofore rendered death a seemingly in- 

 evitable sequence to life. Yet not one of them but can be singly 

 warded ofi" by human science and foresight, and if one, why not 



all r 



To the scientist death seems as natural as life, and he seeks no 

 reasons for avoiding it. He endeavors to learn what life is, not 

 liow it may be indefinitely prolonged, for he recognizes that from 

 the solar system down to a naked drop of living protoplasm, a 

 decline and death are visible from the beginning. Universal 

 death is the law of Nature, not imiversal life, and the cause can 

 be no more "■ warded off by human science and foresight" than 

 human science and foresight can ward oft' the attraction of grav- 

 itation or the precession of the equinoxes. 



