April 6, 1893] 



NATURE 



531 



it is refreshing to find that in this, a most elementary 

 work, the pulmonary sacs of spiders are alluded to as 

 ^* fantracheae " (p. 105) and the lung hooks of scorpions 

 as "chambered tracheje" (p. 112). The author dis- 

 tinguishes between more general matter printed in large 

 type, and more detailed set up in smaller, pointing 

 out in his preface that " in reading the book for the first 

 time the student is advised ... to read only " the former. 

 The fact that in some cases a knowledge of the details 

 in question is indispensable for the appreciation of the 

 broader statements laid down for first reading, somewhat 

 detracts from the utility of the method employed ; and 

 in at least one case (two top paragraphs of p. 7) the sen- 

 tences are so worded that the exclusion of the smaller type 

 involves error and confusion of ideas. One of the most 

 characteristic features of the work is its marked brevity. 

 ^* A general review of the Mammalia " is essayed in eleven 

 pages, while the " Infusoria " are despatched in one line 

 and a word (but a cross reference to the Vorticella 

 described in full in a subsequent chapter). No wonder 

 then, that for want of due qualification, descriptions of 

 things and conditions in reality individual and special 

 should serve for those general and of broad application 

 (as, for example, the assertion that the spiders as an order 

 have an unsegmented cephalo-thorax, and that " all cells 

 resemble each other when they are first formed "), and 

 that negative characters should be occasionally employed 

 for diagnostic purposes, to the exclusion of others of a 

 positive and more forcible nature but requiring a more 

 detailed declaration {cf. the treatment of the limbs of 

 Primates). Some of the more lengthy descriptions are, 

 nevertheless, inadequate and unfortunate, notably that of 

 the sponges, which are defined (p. 85) as " the connecting 

 link between unicellular animals on the one hand and 

 multicellular animals on the other," and whose complex 

 structure is iHustrated by a diagram unlike anything in 

 nature. In dealing with the vertebrate reproductive 

 system and cloaca, the author has so mixed up details 

 and definitions that his statements are misleading^ 

 contradictory, and in part erroneous {cf. pp. 155 and 264, 

 and 135, 153, 252, and 256). In dealing with the lower 

 plants, the existence of sieve-tubes in the marine algse 

 {Macrocysits) might with advantage be alluded to as an 

 all-important elementary fact, and the definitions of the 

 Thallophyta and the Pteridophyta might well be 

 modified accordingly. Minor errors and deficiencies, 

 such as the implied absence of sensory cells in the hydra, 

 the too-frequent employment of the adjective "horny" in 

 allusion to structures having no such constitution {cf. espe- 

 cially pp. 102 and 192), the confusion between the " wing " 

 and patagium, and the definition of important orders 

 and families in teims which in their scantiness convey 

 no adequate meaning, will doubtless be duly corrected 

 and made good. This notwithstanding, the book has 

 many good points, and its clearness of style is a 

 high recommendation ; its greater subdivision, if ampli- 

 fied and supplemented by way of introduction of great 

 groups not even named in the present edition {e.g. the 

 Brachiopoda and Polyzoa), might be worked up into a 

 generally serviceable volume. 



The lesser subdivision of the volume chiefly merits 

 attention for having been avowedly compiled for the 

 NO. 1223. VOL. 47] 



examinees of the conjoint medical board above alluded 

 to. The programme is as follows :— -Amoeba (5 pp.), 

 Yeast Plant (3 pp.), Protococcus and Glceocapsa (6 pp.), 

 Bacteria (6 pp.), Vorticella (7 pp.), Gregarinae (5 pp.). 

 Hydra (9 pp.), the Liver Fluke (11 pp.). Tape Worms 

 (21 pp.), Nematoda (12 pp.), the Leech (11 pp ), General 

 Review of the Mammalia (11 pp.) = 107 pp. in all, of 

 which 66 are devoted to animal parasites — a veritable 

 diet of worms ! We know not upon what principles this 

 regime has been prescribed ; but when it is considered 

 that the doctrine of phagocytosis, which has of recent 

 years done more than all else to advance and revolu- 

 tionise medical science, is the direct outcome of com- 

 parative biological inquiry, and that its founder is a 

 non-medical man, we confess to a feeling of 

 astonishment. The programme itself savours of the 

 " Technical Education " bogie of our times, than which no 

 greater deception has ever existed. The principles of an 

 elementary scientific training must be the same for the 

 medical man and the mechanician, the philosopher and 

 the plumber. Natural laws and ultimate principles are 

 for all time and unalterable ; and experience shows that 

 the medical student whose elementary biological training 

 embraces a comprehensive structural analysis of some 

 small mammal (if of no lower vertebrate in addition) to- 

 gether with the principles of comparative morphology, 

 working from the tree thus surveyed as a whole through 

 the scattered leaves of his surgical anatomy, emerges a 

 thinking man, rather than a mere pedant, as has been so 

 often the case in the past. The chief value of biological 

 science to the medical student is unquestionably educa- 

 tional. To sink this all-important aspect of his scientific 

 training, in preference for a mere dabbling in helmin- 

 thology, as we venture to think has been done in the 

 case before us, is to neglect one of the surest safeguards 

 for the future, and to ignore the dictates of common sense 

 based upon experience. The attitude is indicative of 

 a retrogressive return to the days when medicine was the 

 only channel of approach to science, and to that order of 

 things, the lingering relicts of which, still hovering over 

 certain of our English-speaking Universities, to-day bar 

 the way to the employment of all but medical graduates as 

 responsible teachers of science in certain of their medical 

 departments. The time is fast dawning, when in London 

 and other great centres, the preliminary scientific 

 training of the medical student must of necessity be 

 imparted either in central institutions devoted to the 

 purpose, or in no less special ones attached to the medi- 

 cal schools themselves. This work, if it is to be done 

 properly and to the credit of the nation, must 

 clearly be entrusted to trained specialists, whose business 

 it shall be to keep abreast of the times ; and by such 

 men the text-books of the future will have to be written. 

 The principles which have called forth the volume now 

 under review, on the other hand, favour a professional 

 monopoly, under which the medical practitioner will tend 

 to usurp the functions of the trained non-medical educa- 

 tionalist, to the detriment of his own calling and the 

 reversion to a well-nigh obsolete constitution. Indica- 

 tions of the exercise of this monopoly are abroad ; but we 

 shall be much surprised if, in the bidding for the medical 

 student now rife, it obtains a foothold. 



G. B. H. 



