December i i, 1902] 



NA TURE 



12 



anatomy illumine the laws of mammalian morphology, 

 is the first and chief difficulty of anyone who now or 

 afterwards undertakes the preparation of a text-book on 

 human anatomy. No living anatomist is likely to be 

 more successful in overcoming this difficulty than Prof. 

 D. f. Cunningham, who is deservedly held in the highest 

 esteem by the surgeon and physician, as well as by the 

 man of science. While admitting that Prof. Cunningham 

 has been more successful than any one of his piede- 

 cessors, one rises from the study of this work with the 

 feeling that, in spite of rapid improvement, it will 

 take decades of progress to make the theory of anatomy 

 fit its facts as a glove does the hand. 



Not a single decade has passed during the last two 

 centuries without someone proclaiming from the house- 

 tops that at last the whole field of human anatomy is ex- 

 plored and finished, and yet the annual output of new 

 research has continually increased. The manner in 

 which this work is produced is evidence of the rapid 

 growth of the subject. It is no longer possible for one 

 man to be intimately acquainted with the more recent 

 work or to supply first-hand information in each of the 

 many departments into which human anatomy has been 

 subdivided, and hence the necessity for a collective effort. 

 Works of reference like the English Quain, the French 

 Poirier, the German Bardeleben, necessarily demand the 

 combined services of specialists, but here, even in a work 

 designed to meet the needs of candidates for a pass 

 degree, the same necessity has been felt. The editor has 

 been fortunate in the selection of his collaborators. To 

 Prof. Young, of Owens College, and Prof. Robinson, of 

 King's College, London, have been assigned the sections 

 on embryology and the vascular system ; to Prof. 

 Thomson, of Oxford, that on osteology ; to Prof. 

 Paterson, of Liverpool, the muscular and nerve systems ; 

 to Dr. Hepburn, of Edinburgh University, the section 

 on joints ; to Prof. Howden, of Durham University, the 

 section on the organs of special sense ; to Prof. 

 Birmingham, of Dublin, the organs of digestion ; to 

 Prof. Dixon, of Cardiff, the urinogenital system ; to Dr. 

 Stiles, the section on surgical anatomy ; while the editor 

 himself undertook the central nervous system. It may 

 be said at once that each contributor has given, not only 

 the best that is known, but has also made original con- 

 tributions to his particular section. Some of the sections, 

 such as those on the nervous system, the alimentary 

 system and embryology, gave their authors a greater 

 opportunity than did others, and these opportunities 

 have not in any single case been allowed to slip by. 



There is a unity in the work which may be explained 

 by the fact that all the contributors, with one exception, 

 are pupils of the veteran leader of the Edinburgh 

 anatomists, Sir William Turner, to whom the book is 

 most worthily dedicated. This work has all the merits and 

 also all the defects of the Edinburgh school. There are 

 the fail and lucid descriptions of the important things, 

 but there is also an over-strenuous endeavour to be 

 thorough by the introduction of masses of unimportant 

 or irrelevant detail. Turn, for instance, to the descrip- 

 tion of the spermatozoon, and it will be found that the 

 medical student is expected to master more than fifty 

 details concerning its structure ; or turn to the de- 

 scriptions of a bone, a muscle or an artery, and the 

 NO. 1728, VOL. 67] 



same crowding of detail will be found. A student 

 who thoroughly prepares himself from this work will 

 present himself to his examiners loaded with more 

 than 60,000 anatomical facts, 75 per cent, of which will 

 appeal to his memory more than to his intelligence, and 

 only a small percentage of which will be of use to him in 

 the practice of his profession. It is a primary defect of 

 the Edinburgh school that, owing to its detachment from 

 the hospitals, it has come to regard the study of anatomy 

 as an end in itself instead of being only the scaffold- 

 ing on which a student has to lay his knowledge of 

 physiology. On the combined basis of anatomy and 

 physiology he has subsequently to build his knowledge 

 of pathology, surgery and medicine, and all the efforts of 

 the anatomist and physiologist must be bent so as to 

 reach this end. The student, when he comes to build 

 out his mental picture of the circulation, respiration and 

 locomotion of the human body, will find that this work 

 will afford scarcely a better anatomical scaffolding than 

 older and less complete works. 



One feels that Prof. Cunningham has let slip an oppor- 

 tunity that occurs to a man only once in a century. With 

 such a powerful syndicate of anatomists behind him he 

 could have disregarded the prejudices of examiners, 

 relegated thousands of useless anatomical details to the 

 limbo of oblivion and made his subject once again live. 

 That he has not done so shows that the principle on 

 which present systems of anatomy are designed meets 

 with his deliberate approval, and it is on those broad 

 lines that most thinking men will join issue with him. 



During his study of this work the reviewer has laid it 

 side by side with Bell's " Anatomy," another triumph 

 of the Edinburgh school, but of a century ago. The 

 opinion has been forced on him that the design of the 

 older book is the better of the two. All through Bell's 

 pages, in spite of some crude theories, inaccurate facts 

 and passing personalities, anatomy is made to coquet 

 with physiology and morphology, and all three are 

 invariably made to serve as handmaidens to the surgeon 

 and physician. The ideal treatise of human anatomy 

 will be produced by the man who accepts the principles 

 of the anatomists of the beginning of last century and 

 applies them to the facts at the disposal of anatomists 

 at the beginning of the present one. 



The illustrations of this work are all well designed and 

 artistically finished, but the poorness of its binding and 

 its narrow margins, which give it a general appearance of 

 meanness, are out of keeping with the high standard of 

 its contents and the artistic demands of the present day 

 medical student. A. Keith. 



DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS FOR 

 BEGINNERS. 



Differential Calculus for Beginners. By Alfred Lodge, 

 M.A., with an Introduction by Sir Oliver J. Lodge, 

 D.Sc, F.R.S., LL.D., Principal of the University of 

 Birmingham. Pp. xxv + 278. (London : George 

 Bell and Sons, 1902.) Price 4s. 6d. 



PROF. ALFRED LODGE is so well known among 

 mathematicians as an authority on the teaching of 

 geometry and kindred subjects that the addition of his 

 brother's name to the title-page may appear superfluous. 



