July, igo5.] 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



491 



for the latter's good. To emphasise the power of mind 

 over body, instances are given where medical men have 

 succumbed to the very diseases which they have made their 

 special life-study. These instances may be merely coinci- 

 dences, or it may be that a certain disease was studied in 

 particular, and dwelt upon mentally because the specialist 

 himself was a victim to it ; in any case, opinion leans to the 

 belief that continuous concentration of thought on any one 

 particular part of the body tends to its local malnutrition 

 and eventual organic disease. Genius alone is of little 

 avail unless accompanied by such necessary attributes to 

 success as set forth by Dr. Schoficld in his chapter, " The 

 Personality of the Physician." Genius, as a matter of fact, 

 is not an essential, for who cannot recall to memory names 

 of many worthy and eminently successful disciples of 

 /Escalapius, whose success in life followed from what they 

 were more than from what they knew. There is much 

 worldly wisdom in these pages, but let us hope that evil 

 consequences, such as are portrayed as a possible resultant 

 from a visit to a Harley Street consultant, are overdrawn. 

 The plodding, careworn, weary, practitioner might scan the 

 chapter on " The Secret of Success in Practice " with a 

 fond hope that this secret is laid bare ; he will find there apt 

 quotations from, among others, Reynolds, Gull, and Treves, 

 containing advice felicitously and loftily expressed, but the 

 secret that still lies hidden defies the efforts of successful 

 genius to define. The closing chapter chiefly consists in an 

 exposure of quacl< methods and Christian Science remedies ; 

 it also eloquently pleads for the need of systematic study of 

 " Unconscious Therapeutics " in our medical schools. That 

 this will come in time is hardly in doubt, and when it does, 

 the profession will be the more fully armed and equipped 

 for war against quackery than it has been in the past. Dr. 

 Schofield deserves the gratitude of his medical brethren for 

 bringing this subject so prominently before them. 



ZOOLOGY. 



A Treatise on Zooloj^y, edited by E. R. Lankester, Part 

 v., Mcllusca, by P. Pilseneer (London : A. and C. Black, 

 iqo6, pp. 355, illustrated). — The want of a thoroughly 

 scientific and trustworthy work written in English on the 

 MoUusca, which should embrace the results of continental 

 research on this difllcult but interesting group, has long 

 been felt in this country. The want is supplied by the 

 handsome volume before us, which is the work of Dr. 

 Pilseneer. the greatest living authority on the group to 

 which it is devoted. In securing such a writer the Editor 

 is to be highly congratulated, as this has resulted in a 

 volume which will long remain the standard on the subject. 

 \ good idea of the vast strides which have been made in our 

 l;nowlcdge of the natural history of the group, and also of 

 the difference between present and former methods of in- 

 vestigation and description, will be gained by contrasting 

 the volume before us with Woodward's " Manual of the 

 Mollusta," which was regarded as an excellent work in its 

 day. The amateur must not expect that he will be able to 

 assimilate all that is to be found in this volume, .sentences 

 like " the Mollusca are ctvlomoca^la with a distinct crclom 

 and hivmoca'l," and " in the adult there arc two ccvlomic 

 cavities, the pericardial ccclom and the true goncKxvl or 

 gonadinl cavity " indicating that it is written bv a specialist 

 for advanced students and specialists. For these, despite the 

 occurrence of such a forbidding name as " Prorhiphidoglos- 

 somorpha," it will doubtless prove all that is expected — and 

 that is a great deal ! 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Martin's Tabies, or " One Languajic in Commerce." By 



.MfreJ J. .M.irtin. Fourth Edition. (London : T. Fisher Un- 

 win, ujofi, pp. 271 ; price 2s. 6d.) 



.\t Kimberley last summer the reviewer was told that a 

 truck-load of blue clay from the diamond mines contains on 

 an average only aboiit .4 of a carat. This statement did 

 not convey much meaning at the time, but reference to this 

 useful and handy book now shows that about 82 milligrams 

 is the average yield per truck; that is i-i2th of a gram. 

 The book serves two purposes, one to provide useful in- 

 formation of every kind about weights and measures gener- 

 ally, and the other to urge the compulsory adoption by 



Great Britain of the international metric system. The 

 arguments in favour of the metric system are so well known 

 and so forcible that there is no need to here repeat what 

 every reasoning man knows and feels strongly about. It 

 would not be too much to say that English conservatism in 

 this matter is in some measurable position responsible for 

 the back seat which England takes among the countries of 

 the world in regard to recognition of exact science. It can- 

 not be said that the same demand e.xists for a decimal 

 coinage. Coinages of different countries are of the most 

 varied description, but the majority possess one feature in 

 connnon, namely, that their largest unit is inconveniently 

 small for representing pounds and hundreds of pounds, and 

 that this unit is divided into cents which are too small to 

 conveniently repiesent sums expressed in pence. None of 

 these coinages ought properly to be called decimal coinages. 

 If the French had only adopted metric nomenclature in their 

 coinage their case would have been a strong one. The 

 decifranc, franc, decafranc, and hectofranc would be excel- 

 lent monetary units for any country to adopt ; the franc and 

 centime are not satisfactory. Moreover, the shilling of the 

 duodecimal system finds its way into France in the frequent 

 occurrence of 1 fr. 25 in prices. And it must not be for- 

 gotten that if England is conservative in regard to weights 

 and measures, English and Italian speaking people can 

 count properly up to a hundred and upwards, and this is 

 impossible in the languages of many civilised countries, c.y., 

 France and Germany. 



Cliance : A Comparison of Facts witli tiie Ttieory of Pro- 

 babilities. By Joseph Cohen (London : Charles and Edwin 

 Leyton, pp. 4S ; price 2s. net). — What makes the average 

 Britisher a gambler, both in his business and in his re- 

 creations, is his ignorance of the laws of probability. He 

 speculates in the hopes of making a fortune, instead 

 of devoting his attention to estimating the probability 

 factor which often converts that fortune into an 

 expectation of loss. It is important that some 



knowledge of the theory of probabilities should 

 form a part of the most elen.entary education in order to 

 check this absurd and injurious speculative tendency, and 

 there can be no better way of making a start than by show- 

 ing that the results of theory are borne out by actual experi- 

 ence. The author details the results of many thousands of 

 trials made by tossing a coin and throwing dice, also with 

 cards and Halma pieces, and he compares the numbers 

 obtained by actual trial with those found by theory. The 

 result gives an interesting idea of the percentage divergence 

 which is to be anticipated when the number of trials is 

 finite, and it is interesting to see how this divergence is 

 small in the case of the more probable events, and becomes 

 greater in the case of im|)robable ones. The book can be 

 read by an\one, and requires no knowledge of mathematics. 



The Anatomy of Knowledge; an Essay in Objective Logic, 



by C. E. Hooper (London : Watts and Co., igo6 ; 

 pp. 226, price 3s. bd. net). — The appearance of this excellent 

 and thoughtful little work is opportune, for, as the author 

 observes, it can scarcely be denied that many of our modern 

 specialists and experts are in the position of persons who 

 cannot see the wood for the trees, or, as it may be more 

 aptly expressed, who cannot see the tree for the branch on 

 which each happens to be sitting. Quo vadis? is, indeed, 

 applicable to a large proportion of the scientific workers of 

 the present day, and anything that tends to consolidate 

 thought on the object and trend of the vast stores of know- 

 ledge that are now being accumulated, and as to the nature 

 of knowledge itself, should accordingly receive a hearty 

 welcome by .ill thinking minds. What is knowledge, what 

 are the principal things of which we have knowledge, how 

 do we know what wo do now, what is the relation of know- 

 ledge to practical life, and how is it connected with religious 

 belief? are some of the fundamental questions the author 

 endeavours to answer, .\lthough philosophy, which is really 

 the subject of this work, is a study often supposed to be 

 abstruse and unpractical, " it may yet prove to be the very 

 fulcrum by means of which the power of enlightened liuman 

 will is destined to effect a renovation of the world." The 

 application of philosophical methods to endeavour to ascer- 

 tain to what (if any) goal many of our scientific studies are 

 leading us, is a crying and urgent necessity. 



