October 24, 1895] 



NATURE 



615 



It would be impossible to notice the numerous memoirs 

 liy which Major Rennell impressed the learned world of 

 his time. With Sir Joseph Banks and other friends, he 

 formed a sort of social circle for travellers and scientific 

 men, which led to the formation of the Raleigh Club in 

 1 827, and may be said to have formed the nucleus of 

 the Royal ( Icographical Society established three years 

 later. 



RenncH's training was purely a practical one in the 

 hard work which gave him a mastery of the techni- 

 calities of surveying and map-oonstruction. Knowing 

 the actual forms of sea and land at first hand, able him- 

 self to delineate them with exceptional skill, he could 

 not make the mistakes which beset the merely theoretical 

 student. This is still the one way to become a practical 

 geographer, only in the present day a w-orking knowledge 

 of geologj' must be added to proficiency in the arts of 

 observation and measurement. On such a foundation, so 

 gained, theoretical instruction may profitably be super- 

 imposed. Mere lectures on theoretical geography, iso- 

 lated lessons in the use of instruments, do not suflice to 

 make a man a geographer, any more than lectures on 

 theoretical chemistry and a few repetitions of the routine 

 of simple analysis will make a man a chemist. If British 

 geographers are to catch up and keep pace with those of 

 the continent, they must receive systematic training in 

 their student days, and take up geography as a serious 

 study, as one takes up any other science. For, alas, the 

 good old days are gone, and there is no Warren Hastings 

 on the threshold of the twentieth centuiy to confer 

 pensions of ^600 at the age of thirty-five on the would 

 be Rennells of to-day ! As geological students have 

 to follow other methods than those of Murchison, so 

 present-day geographers cannot take RenncU too literally 

 as their model ; and Mr. Markham plainly states that he 

 looks to the labours of the University lecturers in geo- 

 graphy to maintain the succession of British geographers. 

 If this is to take place, there must be fresh organisation 

 and encouragement of pure geographical research on the 

 part of the Universities. Much progress is improbable 

 as long as the antithesis between " geography " and 

 " science " is a possible figure of speech. It is not so in 

 Germany. Hugh Robert Mill. 



D' 



COUNTER-IRRITA TION. 

 The Theory and Practice of Counter-Irritatioti. By H. 



Cameron Gillies, M.D. (London : Macmillan and 



Co., 1895.) 



R. GILLIES has selected a subject rich in literature 

 but poor in experiment, and has treated it entirely 

 from the literary as opposed to the experimental side. 

 The first part of the book is devoted to a rt'suind of the 

 literature of counter-irritation, and inflammation, which 

 Dr. Gillies rightly considers he must not only quote, but 

 criticise. Some of his criticisms we do not understand, 

 some arc entirely superfluous, Dr. Gillies taking up much 

 space in demolishing theories which in the present day 

 nobody could possibly believe in, some — and two of 

 these we shall consider — show a want of scientific under- 

 standing. 



On page 73, our attention is drawn to a paper by Dr. 

 Mollis, published in the St. Bartholomew's Hospital 



NO. 1356, VOL. 52] 



Reports for 1S74. Dr. Hollis showed that vesication could 

 be produced in the Actini;e by the local application of 

 liquor ammonia:. The importance of these researches 

 consisted in the fact that they demonstrated that the 

 living cell itself, using this term in its general sense, was 

 capable of reacting to an irritant. It is to work done 

 exactly on these lines by Metschnikoff ' that we owe the 

 modern theory of Phagocytosis. The physiology, the 

 pharmacology, and the chemistry of the cell are presum- 

 ably to Dr. Gillies, as "provoking" as he admits Dr. Holhs' 

 monograph to be. The second class of experiments per- 

 formed by Dr Hollis demonstrated that local reaction to 

 irritants took place in the excised tail of a newt, thus 

 showing that this local reaction was independent of the 

 general circulation. Dr. Gillies objects to "all such ex- 

 periments, not only upon moral and humane grounds, but 

 on the ground also that we have not been able to make 

 sure that any good has come by them." " The tail is 

 either dead or living, if living the result only shows that it 

 is a living result ; if dead we arc not as physicians con- 

 cerned with the chemistry of the action." 



On page 78, our author considers an article by Dti 

 Lauder Brunton in the St. Bartholomew's (not the St. 

 George's) Hospital Reports for 1875. I^""- Gilhes differs 

 from the author upon two points. First, he (Dr. Gillies) 

 denies that inflammation can occur independently of 

 congestion. One would have thought that this had been 

 settled by Hollis. The discrepancy is explained when 

 one finds, after a page's reading, what Dr. Chillies means 

 by congestion — " an acceleration of the processes of 

 nutrition." When arguing with a physiologist it is as 

 well to adopt the usual physiological terminology. The 

 second point of difference is Brunton's dictum that 

 " pain in an inflamed part is probably due to distension 

 of the vessels and pressure on the nerves." ' The cha- 

 racteristic pains of neuralgia so called," says Dr. Gillies 

 " are not easily if at all referable to the pressure froni 

 active congestion." Is a nerve which is the seat of 

 neuralgia an inflamed part ? 



Dr. Gillies evidently believes thai "he alone destroys 

 who rebuilds," so we are not left merely amongst the 

 ruins of other theories, but are provided with a " new " 

 one. " Whatever good comes by the use of counter- 

 irritants is because, by their irritant effects, they stimu- 

 late the activity of the tissues of the part to which they 

 are applied and accelerate the blood supply thereto, so 

 increasing nutrition or repair, as the need may be." 

 This is the only new theory which we have been able 

 to extract from chapter vii. What about the remote 

 effects of counter-irritants? If Dr. Gillies is convinced 

 that whether directly or remotely counter-irritants act 

 beneficially only when they directly, or reflexly, increase 

 the blood supply, that is at least a coherent theory ; 

 we think it quite probable that irritation of a given skin 

 area by a blister or otherwise can give rise to I'eflex dila- 

 tation of the corresponding vascular area. Bradford - 

 actually observed dilatation of the vessels of the kidney 

 upon stimulating the central ends of the posterior roots 

 of the so-called renal area, whereas stimulation of the 

 central end of an intercostal nerve always caused con- 

 traction. Dilatation of the vessels of the splanchnic 



1 *' Lemons sur Ic Pathologic compor^t: dc rinfl.immation." 

 - Journal of Phyiiology^ vol. x. 404. 



