76 



KNOWLEDGE. 



February, 1913. 



nature of cancer, is wisely content to quote from various 

 authors whose views agree more or less closely with his own. 

 Then follow some very valuable and carefully - prepared 

 statistics regarding the increase of cancer, its geographical 

 distribution and its relation to trades and occupations, and 

 lastly come the author's conclusions which are perhaps best 

 given in his own words, " The malady shows a real and 

 regular increase in all civilised countries during the last fifty 

 years." " Apart from exceptional customs it scarcely exists 

 among peoples and in districts and countries where the diet is 

 cool, and frugal, without irritating or stimulating adjuncts, the 

 use of water as the staple drink is of effect in immunity." Of 

 the various substances taken as foods, the following are 

 regarded by the author as tending to the production of cancer 

 " fermented liquors, animal and other proteids in long and 

 continuous excess, highly salted and toxic foods and drinks, 

 hot foods and drinks much above blood temperature, and 

 apparently highly acid drinks, such as sour wine and some 

 metals or minerals, of which arsenic is an acknowledged 

 example." A critical examination of the figures quoted by 

 the author makes it very difficult to arrive at any other 

 conclusion than that which we have quoted above. The 

 author is to be warmly congratulated on the very careful 

 way in which he has collected and arranged his statistics. 



S. H. 



The Doctor and the People. — -By H. de Carle Woodcock. 

 312 pages. 7j-in. X5-in. 



(Methuen & Co. Price 6/- net.) 



In the volume before us we have a series of short essays 

 on everything that appertains to the work of the general 

 practitioner, the doctor of the people. The hospitals, contract 

 practice, the Poor Law, and a host of other subjects, not 

 excluding the National Insurance Act, are all discussed from 

 the point of view of the enlightened general practitioner. 

 " The provincial doctor, and even the Metropolitan, is, like 

 the French peasant, letting the world's controversies rage 

 while he attends to a hundred daily duties of his practice. 

 Sometimes he assists at a tragedy that he cannot prevent, 

 sometimes at one that he can. He is an easy target for the 

 caricaturist, but he does not read the caricature ; or if his 

 attention is arrested when Mr. Bernard Shaw attacks him in 

 a whirlwind of wit, he remembers that in the last twenty-four 

 hours he has saved, quite possibly, more than one life. Such 

 is the man I have wished to portray." Again and again have 

 we taken up the book, intending to review it, but so full of 

 interest have its pages been that we have been compelled to 

 continue reading. Some chapters we have read again and 

 again, so excellent is the style in which these are written. The 

 author is no Utopian, but at least some of the faults of our 

 present system he is unable to pass over. Our Poor Law 

 comes in for a large share of reproof, and terrible are his tales 

 of the work of the Poor Law doctors. The infirmaries suffer 

 little better at his hands. " These Poor Law hospitals have 

 been and still are under-staffed ; the nurses have not held the 

 highest rank in the nursing world ; the doctors have in many 

 cases ceased to be scientific and have become swamped in the 

 small details of hospital management." The admission of 

 medical students and the provision of a staff of visiting con- 

 sultants to these institutions is strongly advocated. 



To the doctor and his patient alike we most heartily 



recommend this book. c 



b. H. 



PAINTING IN NORTH ITALY. 



A History of Painting in North Italy from the 



Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century. — By T. A. Crowe 



and G. B. Cavalcasei.le. Edited by Tancred Borenius. 



3 vols. 1339 pages. 207 illustrations. 9-in.X6-in. 



(John Murray. Price £3 3s. net.) 



The three volumes in which Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle 

 deal with the history of North Italian painting is the com- 

 plement of their larger work on the history of painting in Italy, 

 which has been for many years in course of republication, 



and, like it. has been long out of print. Together they form 

 an invaluable and exhaustive compendium of information on 

 Italian art, with which no student can dispense. Crowe and 

 Cavalcaselle pursued their labour of love in the intervals of 

 important official work, and at a time when photography was 

 in its infancy, when handbooks were unknown, when frescoes 

 and paintings now collected in public galleries and museums 

 were still mouldering in the inaccessible remote churches and 

 convents for which they had been painted, a prey to damp 

 and neglect. Those who have read carefully all the republished 

 volumes can only marvel at the industry, the knowledge, the 

 insight, which amounted to genius, in this monumental work. 

 Despite the accumulation of data of various kinds, of lost and 

 forgotten archives, of recovered paintings, which have come 

 to light since its first appearance, editors and commentators 

 of Crowe and Cavalcaselle have astonishingly little to add to 

 or to detract from their decisions. Oftener, where in the then 

 state of knowledge they could only conjecture ; subsequent 

 investigations have confirmed their conclusions; while their 

 masterly summaries of the relationship of the art of a painter 

 to his predecessors and successors, and their penetrating 

 criticism, have remained unsurpassed. The volumes which 

 deal specially with painting in North Italy begin with the 

 impetus given to Venetian art by Fabriano and Pisano, and 

 by the Bellini ; the paintings of the Bellini, their artistic 

 position and influence, occupy the greater part of the first 

 volume. The second volume opens with the school of 

 Squarcione, whose curious career is unique in the history of 

 painting. A tailor by trade, Squarcione turned his commercial 

 instincts into the channels of art. Acute enough to observe 

 that the religious impulse in art was giving place to the classic 

 revival, he collected models of antiquity, and formed a school 

 of painting for their study. Artists came to it from far and 

 near, and Squarcione derived great kudos from exhibiting 

 their productions under his own name. Among them was the 

 great Mantegna, whose work, like that of many of the later 

 Florentines, bears the impress, in something sculpturesque in 

 its character, of the classic models he had studied. With 

 Volume III we have reached that most mystic and poetic of 

 painters, Giorgione. One special value of these volumes is 

 that the authors have included the artists of many small towns, 

 such as Vincenza, Ferrara, Friuli and Brescia, minor schools 

 which still have their place in the history and development of 

 art. 



E.S.G. 



PHILOSOPHY. 



Modern Problems. — By Sir Oliver Lodge. 320 pages. 

 8-in.X5-in. 



(Methuen & Co. Price 6/- net.) 



The modern problems which Sir Oliver Lodge considers, 

 are chiefly those of philosophy and sociology. Since Professor 

 William James developed the philosophy of pragmatism, with 

 its basic idea that there is no other definition of truth than 

 that " Truth is useful," a great many philosophic doctrines, as 

 well as theologic speculations and scientific hypotheses have 

 been examined by this touchstone. It was, in fact, from a 

 contemplation of the mutable hypotheses of science — mutable 

 in the sense that theory is useful only as it relates facts and 

 must continually accommodate itself to newly-discovered ones 

 — that the basic postulate of pragmatism arose. Sir Oliver 

 Lodge, who is a philosopher almost before being an investi- 

 gator, and who at any rate has never separated the two roles, 

 supplies for the pragmatists several solutions of problems in 

 scientific paradox which have engaged their attention. For 

 example, in the essay on " The Nature of Time," he points 

 out that while it might be plausible to argue that, if we regard 

 time as made up of discontinuous instants, we can have no real 

 existence except in the present instant, yet that these 

 " puzzles about duration and succession, about co-existence 

 and sequence, are avoided, or greatly minimized, by recognizing 

 that our direct primary form of apprehension is not either 

 space or time, but Motion." From time he goes on to argue, 

 very usefully it seems to us who have wandered rather 

 confusedly between the opposing battalions of the Pragmatists, 



