May 19, 192 1] 



NATURE 



;55 



at only 10 per cent. The workers' conservatism 

 in wearing loose clothes, in displaying- loose hair, 

 and in objecting to the use of goggles, and their 

 •diverse mental constitution which renders certain 

 of them. especially liable to accidents, afford illus- 

 trations of the importance of a psychological study 

 ■of accident determination. " The psychical fac- 

 tor," we are rightly told, "is one of the most 

 Important in accident causation." 



Chap. ix. deals with the industrial employ- 

 ment of women. From it we learn how man 

 invaded woman's primitive concern in industry 

 when hunting and fighting began to wane. No 

 evidence is forthcoming that woman's present 

 work in factories is more arduous than it was in 

 times preceding the Industrial Revolution. 



In the course of the remaining eight chapters 

 Tiseful illustrations are given of canteen menus, 

 washing and drinking appliances, seats, and over- 

 alls ; and a final chapter on reclaiming the dis- 

 abled, by the Medical Superintendent of the 

 Ministry of Pensions Hbspital at Leicester, brings 

 this original and invaluable work to its conclusion. 

 Invaluable it cannot fail to prove to him who 

 desires a lucid, critical, and temperate summary 

 of our knowledge in any one of the many fields 

 above referred to, or who seeks a list of refer- 

 ences to guide his further reading. Only one 

 defect may perhaps be suspected, namely, that 

 the authors have not kept fully abreast of recent 

 advances in the physiology of the neuro-muscular 

 system and in our psychological outlook on the 

 worker. Thus, in discussing the physiology of 

 muscular contraction, they ignore the recent work 

 of Lucas, Adrian, and others, as a result of which 

 physiologists are now chary of supposing that the 

 strength of an impulse along a given nerve-fibre 

 is variable, or that the staircase (treppe) pheno- 

 menon is due to practice. The authors' invariable 

 use of the term "end-organ" when they mean 

 ■"end-plate" may also indicate some lack of fresh- 

 ness in dealing with the same problem. Their 

 informing chapter on alcohol reveals an inability 

 to distinguish between the physiological and the 

 psychological, or else a desire to ignore the latter. 

 ■"First," they say, "we have to notice some 

 simple physiological or rather psycho-physiologi- 

 cal results." But when we come to these results 

 we discover them to be neither simple nor physio- 

 logical, but to be the outcome of a study of the 

 effects of alcohol on the psychological processes 

 {the physiological bases of which are quite un- 

 known to us) of learning Latin hexameters, and of 

 using the typewriter and the adding machine. The 

 authors, apparently for similar reasons, give us 

 no account of the perhaps more valuable and 

 more purely psychological investigations on the 

 NO. 2690, VOL. 107] 



subject by Prof. McDougall and Miss May Smith, 

 published last year by the Medical Research 

 Council. They even apologise for discussing the 

 psycho-neuroses, whereas apology is due for their 

 brief treatment of so important an industrial sub- 

 ject. They refer only to the work of Breuer (mis- 

 spelt Bruer) and Freud (published in 1895 !), and 

 they are concerned merely with such hysterical 

 manifestations as disturbances of locomotion and 

 speech, neglecting the far commoner and more 

 important anxieties, fears, and mild obsessions 

 which so strikingly affect industrial efficiency. 



The truth must be faced that no one writer and 

 no one " certifying surgeon " can combine in him- 

 self a knowledge of canteen management, den- 

 tistry, eye and limb injuries, pulmonary and other 

 diseases, vital statistics, and industrial psychology. 

 Hitherto the recognition and the prevention of 

 mental disturbance have been ignored as com- 

 pletely in industry as they have been in crime. 

 The prevalence of the psycho-neuroses among 

 workers has not been evident because it has never 

 been looked for, and because until recently no 

 adequate treatment was available for it. 



In other respects this book reaches an exception- 

 ally high standard. The defects to which we have 

 directed attention are only slight blemishes, if the 

 wide scope of the work be taken into consideration. 

 They should be easily remediable in the sub- 

 sequent editions which its assured popularity is 

 certain to evoke. Charles S. Myers. 



British Stratigraphy. 



Handbiich der Regionalen Geologie. Heraus- 

 gegeben von Prof. G. Steinmann und Prof. O. 

 Wilckens. 20 Heft, iii. Band, i Abteilung. 

 The British Isles: The Channel Islands' By 

 thirteen contributors. Local editor, Dr. J. W. 

 Evans. Pp. 354. (Heidelberg : Carl Winters 

 Universitatsbuchhandlung, 1917.) 155. 



THIS book is remarkable both in con- 

 tents and in origin. An excellent survey of 

 the whole range of British stratigraphy by a group 

 of highly qualified British authorities, it was pub- 

 lished in Germany by German publishers in the 

 very thick of the war (1917). It is part of an 

 ambitious scheme, planned in Germany before 

 the war, to embrace the geology of the whole 

 earth in a series of separate " handbooks " by 

 specialists writing in one of the three languages, 

 German, French, or English. The separate parts 

 were to be combined into volumes, of which the 

 prospective size may be gauged when we take 

 note that the substantial volume before us is 

 part i. of vol. iii. ; with France, Spain (already 



