546 



NA TURE 



[August 8, 1901 



the conception of a single fundamental or primordial 

 matter as the source of material diversity" (p. 46). Prof. 

 Comperz's comment is, "Here it may almost be said 

 that inexperience was the mother of wisdom." We are 

 inclined to agree with him, though possibly not quite in 

 the sense in which the phrase is used. The scientific 

 teaching of the school seems to have been best at its 

 birth, and rapidly to have deteriorated. But while 

 admitting and appreciating the author's wish to give 

 credit to whatsoever things are true and of good report, 

 difficulties and uncertainties must e.xist owing to the 

 scarcity of original documents. We get the views of the 

 great thinkers of antiquity filtered through the minds 

 and coloured by the influence of a crowd of disciples, of 

 collectors, of commentators. The author admits that the 

 whole pre-Socratic philosophy is one vast field of ruins. 

 The picture constructed from these scattered mosaic 

 fragments may be very beautiful to look at, but it may 

 not be the same picture that was originally drawn. 



We should have liked to follow the author through 

 each school in which he discovers the different tendencies 

 of ancient thought or given some evidence of the dis- 

 criminating appreciations that have accompanied some 

 time-honoured name. One could linger long over the 

 Eleatics, those pioneers of criticism who sought to rouse 

 mankind from indolence of thought and the disposition 

 to dogmatic slumber. For the paradoxes of Zeno we 

 have always entertained a profound veneration, and the 

 author is kind enough to stir these dry bones and make 

 them live. Some of these he has clothed in a modern 

 dress, but the difficulty does not lie in the dress, and the 

 old problem connected with relative and absolute motion 

 seems as elusive as ever. The tale of the arrow sped 

 from the bow is put into this captious form : " Does an 

 object move in the space in which it is, or in the space 

 in which it is not ? " .^nd this seems as good a way as 

 any to put the problem, which does not seem to have 

 been clearly expressed in the original. Similarly with 

 the old, old story of Achilles and the tortoise, to which 

 we believed we could have given a satisfactory answer 

 before reading the author's comments, but now entertain 

 grave doubts. It is a difficult task to frame a paradox 

 which cannot be exploded in less time than it takes to 

 construct it, and the ingenuity of Zeno will be appreciated 

 by those who have attempted to follow him on this thorny 

 path. 



The historians and the physicians or medical schools 

 must also be passed over in silence, though it cannot be 

 imagined that in a critical account of Herodotus, for 

 example, there is not much to interest and perhaps some- 

 thing to qualify. The importance of the medical schools 

 is insisted upon, since here e.xact observation supplied a 

 much needed check to hasty generalisations, and many 

 a forgotten name to whom accident has denied justice 

 appears in this list of worthies, all contributing to build 

 up science as we understand the term. A work of some 

 600 pages by a German author might be supposed by 

 some to be a very dull work. This would certainly be an 

 error. It is bright and lucid, free from pedantry, and 

 occasionally epigrammatic. Prof. Gomperz promises us 

 two more volumes ; we have no doubt but that the interest 

 v.'ill be equally well sustained, and we hope he may again 

 meet as pleasant and competent a translator. 

 NO. 1658, VOL. 64] 



MEDICAL AND SURGICAL EXPERIENCES 

 IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 

 A Ch'i/ian IVai- Hospital ; being an account of the luork 

 of the Portland Hospital., and of experience of wounds 

 and sickness in South Africa, 1900, ivith a description 

 of the equipment., cost and management of a civilian 

 base hospital in time of war. By the Professional 

 Staff. Pp. 343. (London : John Murray, 1901.) 



THE Portland Hospital was a hospital organised and 

 equipped by voluntary effort in this country for 

 service in South Africa. It was the first of several similar 

 hospitals sent out after the declaration of war in October 

 1899 ; but it was not the first voluntary hospital ever 

 attached to a British Army at the front, as the authors 

 suggest in their preface. One well-known hospital, for 

 example, the hospital which is now the British Hospital at 

 Port Said, was originally established as a voluntary hos- 

 pital for the sick and wounded of the Egyptian Cam- 

 paigns. The Portland Hospital, however, has the credit 

 of being the first example in this country of a voluntary 

 undertaking on behalf of the sick and wounded being 

 placed entirely in the hands of the military medical 

 authorities for organisation, equipment and management. 

 Formerly the promoters of such undertakings preferred 

 to act independently and, as a matter of fact, to run 

 counter to official medical authority, believing that their 

 usefulness would be in proportion to the extent to which 

 they could over-ride the restrictions imposed by military 

 discipline and control. Continental nations have long 

 ago recognised the folly of this conception, and the Port- 

 land Hospital has the merit of having led the way in this 

 country towards a loyal recognition of the necessity of 

 voluntary aid in war becoming an integral part of the 

 military medical organisation. The dedication of the 

 volume to the Principal Medical Officer of the Field 

 Force and to the Officers of the Military Hospital, to 

 which the Portland Hospital was attached, indicates the 

 success of this more modern conception of the value of 

 voluntary aid in war. 



The Portland Hospital may, indeed, be regarded as 

 civilian only in name and in the fact that its professional 

 staft' consisted of Mr. .Anthony Bovvlby, Dr. Howard 

 Tooth, Mr. Cuthbert Wallace and Mr. J. E. Calverley, and 

 that the cost of its equipment and maintenance v.-as de- 

 frayed from private sources. In other respects it was a 

 distinctly military organisation under an Army medical 

 officer, Surgeon-Major Kilkelly of the Grenadier Guards, 

 and was, in fact, a fifth section of the military establish- 

 ment known as a general hospital at the base. 



The gentlemen named are the authors of this volume, 

 and they have achieved their task admirably. The open- 

 ing chapters and several voluminous appendices form 

 about one-third of the book and describe the personnel, 

 equipment and interior economy of the hospital. It can 

 scarcely be said that they open up fresh ground or present 

 new facts for consideration. The remaining chapters 

 contain an excellent and valuable record of the medical 

 and surgical work done in the wards of the hospital or 

 in the wards of other hospitals to which the staft" of the 

 Portland Hospital had access. 



The medical work is recorded in two chapters by Dr. 

 Tooth and Mr. Calverley. The first and more important 



