72 



NATURE 



[June 23, 1892 



dency to return to vegetable colouring-matters, and that 

 large quantities of maqui berries are being imported into 

 Europe from Chili for the purpose of colouring wines. 

 In the three years ending 1887 the exports of this sub- 

 stance were respectively 26,592, 136,026, and 431,392 

 kilos, by far the largest proportion finding its way to 

 France. 



The little book before us has no pretensions to be 

 regarded as a complete treatise on the analysis of wines. 

 Its aim is to furnish the analyst with a number of carefully 

 tested methods for the detection of sophistications and 

 adulterations, and for the rapid determination of those 

 constituents on which the character of wine mainly 

 depends. Dr. Magnier de la Source is well known in 

 France as an authority on the subject, and the Bulletin 

 of the French Chemical Society contains papers by him 

 relating to the analysis of wine. His methods are, for the 

 most part, similar to those adopted by the Association of 

 German and Austrian analysts, although they are not 

 described with that minute attention to detail which has 

 been found desirable by the German-speaking chemists. 

 As may be seen on turning over the pages of Fresenius's 

 Zeitschrift filr analytische Chemie, the " musts" and wines 

 of Germany are periodically examined and reported upon 

 with all the method and regularity adopted in the case of 

 the London water-supply ; and it has happened in the past 

 that the modes of determining such constituents as the 

 vegetable acids, glycerin, and " extractive matters" have 

 been discussed and wrangled over in a manner which 

 recalls the famous fights over " organic carbon," " albumi- 

 noid ammonia," and " previous sewage contamination " 

 of years ago. The only fault that we have to find with 

 this book is that its author hardly does justice to his 

 German brethren ; although, it is but fair to add, some 

 reference to their work is to be found in the excellent 

 bibliography at the end of the volume. T. E. T. 



MODERN THERAPEUTICS. 



An Introduction to Modern Therapeutics. By T. Lauder 

 Brunton, M.D., &c. (London : Macmillan and Co., 1892.) 



THIS work is a reprint of the Croonian Lectures de- 

 livered before the Royal College of Physicians, 

 London, in 1889. Whatever Dr. Brunton writes is sure 

 to be interesting, and the present lectures have lost none 

 of their lucidity or freshness though three years have 

 elapsed since they were before the medical profession. 

 It is hardly necessary to say that the subject is one with 

 which Dr. Lauder Brunton is eminently fitted to deal, and 

 the non-medical reader will be convinced when he has 

 read the volume that medicine and therapeutics are far 

 from being the inexact sciences they were not many years 

 ago. The elementary nature of some of the early pages 

 will be understood when it is remembered that the 

 audience before which the lectures were originally given 

 consisted in a large measure of men who had learnt 

 chemistry before the days of Crookes, Lockyer, and Men- 

 deleeff. It was necessary that the author should lead them 

 through a brief survey of the chief facts and theories re- 

 lating to atoms and molecules until the more difficult 

 subject of the composition, constitution, and methods of 

 union of organic radicles is reached. This is done in an 

 NO. I 182, VOL. 46] 



admirably clear summary, assisted by those apt illus- 

 trations drawn from every-day life for which Dr. Brunton 

 is so well-known. Our new drngs are now made by the 

 chemist ; so great has been the advance of organic 

 chemistry, that the pharmacologist has hard work to keep 

 pace with all the new combinations that issue from the 

 laboratory. But the two classes of investigators, the 

 chemists and the experimental therapeutists, have at 

 least gone hand in hand so far, that it is now possible to 

 judge the action of a drug by its composition. This, how- 

 ever, as Dr. Brunton points out, is not a rule without 

 exception. There are many drugs which behave in un- 

 expected ways ; they no doubt, in the future, will be 

 brought into harmony with laws of nature yet to be 

 discovered. At present it is not possible to prophesy the 

 physiological action of a chemical compound with (that 

 mathematical accuracy which enables astronomers to 

 foretell eclipses ; pharmacology is yet, and perhaps always 

 will be, an experimental science. 



The lectures stand practically in the same condition as 

 that in which they were delivered. A volume of equal 

 size to that under consideration would have been neces- 

 sary to include all the new work that has appeared in the 

 last few years. The tuberculin of Koch ; the importance 

 of poisonous proteids, and the diminishing popularity of 

 the ptomaines ; the action of the intestinal epithelium 

 {vice the liver) as the gatekeeper protecting the body from 

 the entrance of albumose ; the application of phagocytosis 

 to the problems of disease, together with the views of the 

 antiphagocytists — these are a few of the big questions 

 that have come to the fore in the last three years, and it 

 is only active pathologists who would be able to realize 

 how much longer these lectures would have been if full 

 reference had been made to all of them. The main facts, 

 and the principal conclusions adduced by Dr. Brunton, 

 will, however, still remain ; and all those who read the 

 lectures in the medical journals before will welcome 

 their appearance in a more permanent form now, and to 

 those who missed them in 1889 we can confidently re- 

 commend the book as one which will not only be interest- 

 ing but also useful. W D. H. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Elementary Hydrostatics. By W. H. Besant, Sc.D., 

 F.R.S. " Cambridge Mathematical Series." (Cam- 

 bridge : Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1892.) 

 The success this work has achieved will be gathered 

 from the fact that this is the fifteenth edition, so that any 

 further criticism on our part would be quite unnecessary. 

 The brief snatches of historical matter, together with the 

 lucid and simple explanations, all tend to stir up in the 

 student an amount of interest which in the reading of 

 many other works on this subject lies dormant. By a 

 careful study of the illustrations, especially those relating 

 to pumps, presses, &c., the beginner may gather much 

 knowledge about the principles on which they are based. 

 In this edition the text has undergone a careful revision, 

 several alterations and additions having been made. A 

 uniform system of units has been maintained throughout, 

 and the chapters on the motions of fluids and on sound, 

 which in previous editions were inserted among those on 

 the equilibrium of fluids, have here been separated. 

 The examples and problems at the termination of each 

 chapter are as numerous as ever, a new edition of 



