NATURE 



97 



THURSDAY, MAY 29, 1890. 



THE LA BORA TOR Y OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE 



OF PHYSICIANS, EDINBURGH. 

 Jxeports from the Laboratory of the Royal College of 



Physicians, Edinburgh, Vol. II. (Edinburgh and 



London : Young J. Pentland, 1890.) 



THE liberal spirit in which the laboratory of the 

 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh is thrown 

 open to workers in every department of biology that 

 bears, however remotely, upon medicine is worthy of the 

 liighest praise. That the opportunity for research thus 

 afforded has been appreciated is well shown by this 

 record of the work done in the laboratory during the 

 second year of its existence. Sixteen papers are included 

 in the volume, many of them anatomical and gynaeco- 

 logical, some pathological, one morphological (on the 

 stomach of the Narwhal), and others (while including the 

 results of studies in the laboratory) in the main clinical. 

 This very diversity renders criticism difficult. Taking a 

 "high critical standpoint and employing as a standard 

 the volumes which emanate from laboratories devoted to 

 one subject — the Reports of the Physiological Laboratory 

 of University College, London, or the studies from the 

 Biological Laboratories of Cambridge or of Owens 

 College, for example— it would be easy to find fault, to 

 indicate papers that ought scarcely to be included, and to 

 discover the absence of any series of allied researches of 

 high scientific value, such as might be expected to be 

 turned out in some special field of work, were the labora- 

 tory already long established, and were it given up to one 

 branch of science, rather than intended from the first to 

 be of use for investigations in all branches of biology. 

 Yet to judge the volume from such a standpoint would 

 be unfair both to the promoters of the laboratory and to 

 those working within it. Taking medicine alone— that is 

 to say, as apart from surgery and gynaecology— its extent 

 is so considerable, and the topics dealt with so varied, 

 that all original investigations, even if of equally high 

 practical value, cannot be of equal scientific import : 

 when surgery and gynaecology are also included, it is yet 

 more obvious that much of the work that is rightly per- 

 formed in the laboratory, while capable of almost imme- 

 diate application to clinical practice, will be of a nature 

 that does not necessarily call for great powers of original 

 research. Clinical importance equally with scientific value 

 must determine the inclusion of articles in such a volume 

 as this. Herein, indeed, lies the only valid criticism 

 that can be directed against these reports : if they be 

 published purely as evidence of the activity of the 

 laboratory, they well fulfil their purpose ; but it is a 

 little difficult to see what other use they possess. From 

 the very diversity of the investigations, the reports 

 cannot be expected to rank as useful additions to the 

 library of the specialist in any of the subjects treated ; 

 there is too much extraneous matter. The gynaecologist 

 will reap little benefit from the latter half of the volume, 

 the pathologist will fail to appreciate the niceties of frozen 

 sections of the lower portion of the body, cut in different 

 planes. If such reports are to be of value to other 

 workers, rather than, as I have said, as evidence of 

 NO, 1074, VOL. 4?] 



activity, they must be issued in separate parts, and, 

 what is of still greater importance, they must assuredly 

 not be issued at regular intervals. Successful as the 

 laboratory has been up to the present, it is impossible to 

 manufacture always a definite quantity of original work 

 per annum and to order, and if it is intended to publish 

 so many hundred pages at the expiration of every year, 

 then it is only to be expected that many of those pages 

 will either be work not of the highest quality, or will be 

 upon subjects incompletely matured. 



Having said thus much, it is a pleasure to draw atten- 

 tion to the many excellent articles that appear, in these 

 reports. The investigation by Mr. Irvine and Mr. Wood- 

 head (the late Director) upon the secretion of carbonate 

 of lime, a continuation of that described in the last 

 volume, is of great importance to morphologists as well 

 as to pathologists. In their last paper these observers 

 pointed out that birds can assimilate and secrete car- 

 bonate from other salts of lime, as, for instance, the 

 sulphate, and they advanced the statement that coral 

 animals have in all probability the same power. In this 

 communication is described the process of shell forma- 

 tion in the crab. The crab can produce its shell if, in the 

 artificial sea-water with which it is supplied, the chloride 

 be the sole calcium salt present ; and the carbonate 

 which forms the basis of the shell is deposited, it would 

 appear, by a process of dialysis within the chitinous 

 upper part of the epithelial cells. In this process it is 

 suggested that phosphoric acid acts as the carrier of the 

 lime to parts where carbonic acid is being given off ; that 

 carbonate of lime is formed in such regions ; and that 

 the phosphoric acid re-enters the circulation. It is thus 

 rendered easy to comprehend why it is that wherever 

 dead or vitally inactive tissue exists in the body, in bone 

 matrix, chitin, and foci of caseous or fatty degeneration, 

 there lime is deposited. 



It has been known since 1875 that glycosuria may be 

 only apparent, and that the agent reducing oxide of 

 copper in the presence of an alkali, after the administra- 

 tion of chloral hydrate, for example, is not a sugar. 

 Schmiedeberg and Meyer, in 1879, showed that this 

 substance is glycuronic acid. Dr. Ashdown contributes 

 an excellent paper upon the differentiation of this sub- 

 stance from glucose. From his experiments he leans to 

 the view that there is a distinct chemical process presided 

 over by the renal epithelium, which has as its result the 

 formation of glycuronic acid — morphia, chloroform, curare, 

 or one of a number of other drugs, being present in the 

 blood. 



Mr. H. A. Thomson, in his paper upon " Tuberculosis 

 of the Bones and Joints," gives what is perhaps the most 

 complete resume' of the varieties of tubercular affection 

 in these regions that has yet appeared in our language ; 

 following Konig, he emphasizes the bone-factor in joint 

 tubercle, as opposed to the synovial membrane. Dr. 

 Cartvvright Wood's paper, upon " Enzyme Action in the 

 Lower Organisms," deals in a most suggestive manner 

 with certain points in the biology of the Bacteria. The 

 action of the soluble ferments produced during the growth 

 of micro-organisms, not only in directing and controlling 

 the growth in various media, but, as each month at the 

 present time is yielding further indications, in producing 

 the symptoms of disease, is a subject which before all 



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