NA TURE 



377 



THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1916. 



OCCUPATION AND HEALTH. 



Occupations : From the Social, Hygienic, and 

 Medical Points of View. By Sir Thomas 

 Oliver. Pp. x + 1 10. (Cambridge : At the Uni- 

 versity Press, 1916.) Price 6s. net. 

 ''THE subject of this book is the influence of occu- 

 -L pation upon health. After a brief historical 

 introduction the author deals with the effect upon 

 health of contamination of the air by smoke and 

 dust, both out of doors and in factories, this dis- 

 cussion being- followed by chapters on fatigue, on 

 the hygienic condition of factories, on the relation 

 of occupation to mortality, and on the choice of a 

 career. Finally, an account is given of the harm- 

 ful effects of certain dusty occupations, of gases, 

 and of electric currents. 



The brief space at his disposal and the wide 

 scope of the subject have doubtless made it im- 

 possible for the author to give more than the 

 merest outline of the relation of occupation to 

 health. He does not appear, however, to have 

 been altogether happy in his treatment of the 

 question. Although the book contains a mass of 

 interesting information, the reader constantly re- 

 ceives the impression that he is being presented 

 with a succession of disconnected and unrelated 

 statements. No stress has been laid upon funda- 

 mental principles, such as that health may be 

 affected either by the nature of the occupation, or 

 by the conditions in which the occupation is 

 carried on. Nor has any attempt been made to 

 distinguish essential from subsidiary factors. 

 The chapter on fatigue, for example, contains 

 scarcely any reference to the means by which 

 industrial fatigue can be recognised or prevented, 

 although recent work has shown both that 

 diminished output is the surest evidence of 

 fatigue, and that the introduction of short rest 

 periods at intervals during the working day 

 lessens the risk of over-fatigue. In view of the 

 extreme importance of the subject, both for em- 

 ployer and employed, a fuller treatment of indus- 

 trial fatigue would have been advantageous. 

 The book suffers, moreover, from faulty English 

 and from much needless repetition ; a paragraph 

 on pp. 55 and 56 is reproduced, for instance, 

 almost word for word on pp. 65 and 66. 



The least satisfactory portions of the book are 

 those dealing with the causation of fatigue, and 

 with the action of gases on the bodv : these are 

 not up to date. In the section on the causation 

 and nature of fatigue the author adopts the obso- 

 lete view that toxins formed during muscular 

 exercise are the cause of fatigue ; and no refer- 

 ence is made to the modern conception of 

 ■fatigue, although most, if not all, physiologists 

 now hold that the accumulation of lactic acid in 

 active muscles is an important factor in its pro- 

 duction. Again, in the chapter on gases, the 

 author speaks of carbon monoxide toxaemia and 

 apparently regards this gas as directly poison- 

 ous ; thus the statement is made (p. 89) that 

 NO. 2436, VOL. 97] 



carbon monoxide " may exercise a paralysing 

 influence upon the nerves of the heart, or upon 

 the nerve centres in the medulla oblongata." 

 These statements are erroneous, since Haldane 

 has shown that carbon monoxide is not directly 

 poisonous, and that its harmful effects are due 

 solely to the fact that it displaces oxygen from 

 combination with haemoglobin ; and their inclu- 

 sion in this book seriously detracts from its 

 ! scientific value. 



In spite of these defects the book contains much 

 } that is useful, especially in the chapters on factory 

 hygiene and on dusty occupations, and although 

 ' it cannot be recommended from a scientific point 

 ! of view it may prove of value to the general 

 j reader. F. A. B. 



; EXPERIMENTAL SPECTROSCOPY. 



Collected Papers on Spectroscopy. By Prof. 

 G. D. Liveing and Sir J. Dewar. Pp. xv -f- 566. 

 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 191 5.) 

 Price 30s. net. 



THE names of Profs. Liveing and Dewar stand 

 out prominently in the history of modern 

 spectroscopy, and the publication of their col- 

 lected papers will be cordially welcomed by all 

 who are interested in this rapidly advancing 

 subject. The chief results of their investigations 

 have doubtless already become widely known 

 through references which have appeared in text- 

 books and in papers by other workers, but to 

 those actually engaged in spectroscopic research 

 it will be a great convenience to have the com- 

 plete papers in this handy form. Moreover, it 

 will be especially stimulating to students to be 

 able to follow, step by step, the development of 

 the authors' ideas and methods of observation. 



The papers have been reprinted from the 

 original sources, with only printers' errors cor- 

 rected and the addition of a diagram for the sake 

 of greater clearness in the description of an instru- 

 ment. It may be questioned whether the wisest 

 course has been adopted in the arrangement of 

 the papers, which merely follow each other in the 

 order of dates of publication. There are several 

 instances in which a number of different papers 

 refer to the same subject, and an arrangement in 

 groups would not often have required the dividing 

 up erf a paper into sections. Inconvenience arising 

 from the plan adopted, however, is considerably 

 reduced by the addition of a classified index. 

 There is also a useful index of names. 



Excluding abstracts of papers which also appear 

 in full, and a few lectures dealing with subjects 

 of the authors' researches, the number of separate 

 papers is about seventy, dating from 1877 to 

 1904. The first is a brief account of the phos- 

 phorescence and flame sp>ectra of calcium fluoride, 

 and it is fortunate that this is the only case in 

 which positions in the spectrum are not expressed 

 on the scale of wave-lengths. It is not possible 

 even to enumerate the subjects of the remaining 

 papers, but it may be mentioned that among the 

 more extensive investigations, each of which 

 occupies several papers, are those on the reversal 



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