May 23, 1889] 



NATURE 



75 



only in the five-lines field that Dr. Flint here allows him, 

 would, one must think, find his garner too e;iipty to satisfy 

 the pillaging of the College examiner. And one sin- 

 ■cerely hopes he would. On the other hand, upon the 

 very next page, the significance of the so-called vibration 

 of voluntary muscular contraction is treated in a tho- 

 roughly satisfactory way, and in view of extremely recent 

 experiments 



One might have expected, in a text-book of human 

 physiology, to find some description of experiments in 

 hypnotism, or at least some mention of the matter. It 

 is a subject that more and more demands attention from 

 the physiologist and from the physician, and a subject 

 to which the student of medicine can have no better in- 

 troduction than from the objective, non-metaphysical side 

 from which the physiologist makes his inquiries. One has 

 failed to discover any reference to the subject in this work. 



A few instances of curious, and one may say unjust, 

 omission of certain authorities demand mention in a 

 notice of the book. On p. 53 it is related that following 

 ligature of the coronary arteries the heart ceased to 

 beat after a mean interval of twenty-three and a half 

 minutes in six experiments by Erichsen. One would 

 have thought the laborious and all- important research 

 on this subject by Cohnheim and his pupil. Von 

 Schulthen-Rechberg, not to speak of previous work by 

 Panum, and by Samuelson, and Von Bezold, was at least 

 worthy of some comment in the connection, and the more 

 so that the results obtained were so infinitely more sig- 

 nificant and valuable than those of the experiments here 

 quoted by Dr. Flint. In describing the endings of nerve- 

 fibres in the fibres of striated muscle, Doyfere and Rouget 

 are mentioned, and very properly so ; but the name of 

 Kiihne does not appear, and nothing is said of the nucle- 

 ated " sole." The description, too, is illustrated by two 

 figures from Rouget, more than a quarter of a century 

 old. On p. 262 occurs the following : — " It is possible, 

 however, that future researches may show that micro- 

 organisms play an important part in actual digestion, as 

 is foreshadowed in a recent article by Pasteur (August 

 1887). Pasteur has isolated seventeen different micro- 

 organisms of the mouth. Some of these dissolved albu- 

 men, gluten, and caseine, and some transformed starch 

 into glucose." " These observations are very suggestive, 

 and they seem to open a new field of inquiry as regards 

 certain of the processes of digestion." To most readers, 

 these lines would certainly infer that observations of this 

 kind had first been recognized in their full bearing by 

 Pasteur, or that, indeed, the observations of Pasteur were 

 the earliest or the most important of the kind. To do 

 this is to do signal injustice to a large number of investi- 

 gators, who, possessed of the idea, have obtained ex- 

 perimental evidence of its truth, much more complete 

 than, and several years in advance of, that published by 

 Pasteur. One need only mention the names of Du- 

 claux, Marcano, Hueppe, Miller, Wortmann, Escherich, 

 Bourquelot, Brieger, Wolff ; and there are many others. 



A minor point on which one is inclined to join issue 

 with Dr. Flint is the terminology he employs. He does 

 not employ the word metabolism, but the notion is 

 expressed by employment of " assimilation," and " dis- 

 assirailation." The latter has a peculiarly uncouth ring. 

 The words " anabolism " and " katabolism " one does 



not find. To speak of serum albumin as serine ; of para- 

 globulin as metalbumen, and of this last as " dissolved 

 fibrin" is likely to render more confused subjects that 

 are sufficiently so already. It is not usual to spell the 

 name lecithin indiscriminately lecithene and lecethine. 

 Gustation and olfaction are not pretty words. 



In the matter of illustrations the volume is thoroughly 

 and artistically equipped. Fig. 64 and one or two more 

 of the same kind are, however, severe blemishes. How, 

 one asks, can the drawing of a dog with a fistulous wound 

 in the body benefit the student ? What good purpose 

 can it subserve? The figure is a useless, gratuitous 

 exhibition of what must to every mind be the unfortunate 

 and repulsive accompaniment of physiological research. 

 Intellectual and material boons conferred upon society 

 justify to the full a pursuit of the science in despite of 

 every difficulty of this kind, because those boons can be 

 obtained for it by no other course of action. They do not, 

 however, justify for such a book as Dr. Flint's one single 

 picture such as those referred to. 



As was to be expected, the question of the elimination 

 of nitrogen from the body is treated with that pleasant 

 decision and competence that can be assumed only by 

 an author who has himself carried on research in the 

 field of which he is writing. The observations of Dr. 

 Flint upon Weston the pedestrian are seemingly at 

 variance, as he remarks, with those of Parkes, and of Fick 

 and Wislicenus, made upon other persons. The sugges- 

 tion is valuable that the difference may be explained by 

 the much more strenuous character of the exertion under- 

 gone by Weston than by Parkes's soldiers, or by the 

 physiologists who walked up the Faulhorn. Dr. Flint 

 found that the excretion of urea was increased by a walk 

 of 100 kilometres a day for five consecutive days, the 

 walker being upon the same generous diet during as well 

 as before and after the exertion. Fick and Wislicenus 

 during their ascent and for a short time beforehand 

 abstained from all nitrogenous food. They found an 

 actual decrease in the amount of urea excreted in the 

 period of exertion. But in the main result the researches 

 are in accord. They all alike fail to yield evidence of 

 increased degradation of proteids sufficient to account for 

 the increased quantity of energy set free. 



In conclusion one has to add one word in praise of the 

 form and typography of the book. It is evident that, as 

 the author says in his preface, " the publishers have 

 spared nothing in the mechanical execution of the 

 work." C. S. S. 



GEOGRAPHY IN GERMANY. 

 Beitriige zur Geophysik : Abhandlungen aus dem geo- 



graphischen Seminar der Universitdt Strassbiirg. 



Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Georg Gerland. I. 



Band. (Stuttgart: Koch, 1887.) 

 Bericht iiber die Eniwi eke lung der Methodik und des 



Studiums der Erdkunde. Von Prof Dr. Hermann 



Wagner. Im Geographisches Jahrbuch, 1888. (Gotha : 



Perthes.) 



IN 1886-87 there was much discussion among English 

 geographers about the limits and methods of their 

 subject. The whole matter had been gone into by the 

 Germans a few years before. It is curious to note that 



