194 
NATURE 
[OcToBER 16, 1913 
the improvement of future editions may not be 
out of place. 
Vital statistics necessarily form the principal 
medium through which the layman acquires a 
knowledge of the prevalence of disease. The re- 
marks on pp. 8-9 might be amplified with ad- 
vantage. In particular the methods by which 
corrections for the age and sex constitutions of 
different populations are made can be readily ex- 
plained to an intelligent reader, and such an 
explanation would enable him to avoid many fal- 
lacies in comparing mortality rates. 
(2) This translation of Besson’s well-known 
treatise forms a notable addition to the list of 
text-books on bacteriology available to the 
English student and laboratory worker, and we 
may say at the outset that Prof. Hutchens has 
admirably performed the undoubtedly difficult 
task of translating and emendating a foreign text- 
book in such a manner as to render it palatable 
to the English reader. The translator, while 
adhering closely to the French text, has wisely 
decided to reproduce the sense rather than the 
letter of the original, with the result that the text 
betrays little or no sign of its foreign origin. The 
present translation has been made from the last 
French edition, which appeared in 1911, and con- 
sequently numerous additions have been made by 
the translator so as to bring the matter up to date. 
The most extensive of these additions are the 
chapters embodying recent work on the relation- 
ships of the Gaertner-Paratyphoid group of 
bacilli, to which subject English writers have 
made important contributions, also on the work 
of the English Royal Commission on Tubercu- 
losis, in which Prof. Hutchens formerly partici- 
pated. The chapter on the microscope has also 
been entirely rewritten and contains a most com- 
plete account of the working of the modern micro- 
scope, including the principle of dark-ground 
illumination and its practical applications. 
Besides these major additions to the French 
original, there is scarcely a page of the text which 
does not bear evidence of the work of the 
emendator. This generally takes the form of 
bracketed paragraphs or footnotes, which the 
translator has interpolated where the views of the 
French author, or the French school generally, 
happen to conflict with current English or German 
opinion. By the advanced laboratory worker 
these interpolations will be readily appreciated, 
but it is possible that the student may become 
bewildered by the multiplicity of these interpola- 
tions, which not infrequently contain opinions at 
variance with those of the French author. Short 
of rewriting the whole book, however, such de- 
fects are, of .course, inevitable, and it is to be 
NO. 2294, VOL. 92] 
hoped that the translator, with the experience he 
has now gained, may see his way to compile an- 
equally comprehensive and purely English text- 
book, in’ which greater scope for the exercise of 
criticism would be available than is possible in 
a work written at second hand. It is doubtful 
whether the French original was really the best 
foundation on which to build an English text-book. — 
The English mind is essentially practical, and 
there is no doubt that many of the methods so 
minutely described by the French author and 
many of the complicated media recommended for 
the isolation of various micro-organisms are either 
antiquated, superfluous, or unworthy of mention. 
The arrangement of the matter in the book may 
justly be considered a model, and the prominent 
headings of the various sections are most helpful 
to the reader. 
The book is well bound and beautifully printed, 
and the illustrations are excellent. The only im- 
portant misprint we have noticed is the curious 
but consistent employment of “an” before such 
words as “homogeneous,” “herd,” and “horse.” 
As a most comprehensive treatise on bacteri- 
ology, we can confidently assert that Dr. Besson’s 
book in its English dress has unique claims on 
English workers in bacteriology. 
(3) The great merit of this monograph rests on 
the important contributions which the authors 
have made during the past four years to our 
knowledge of the etiology of Johne’s disease. 
This disease is one which affects cattle (and 
possibly also sheep and goats) in various countries, 
and it is only recently that serious attention has 
been directed to it in Great Britain. The chief 
pathological lesion in affected cattle is an irregular 
thickening of the bowel, generally in the neigh- 
bourhood of the ileo-cecal valve, and the symp- 
toms to which this lesion gives rise are chiefly 
diarrhoea and extreme emaciation. The disease 
leads to serious economic loss, and the name by 
which it goes in this country is that of Prof. Johne, 
of Dresden, who in 1895, in conjunction with Dr. 
Frothingham, first directed attention to the pres- 
ence of acid-fast bacilli in the thickened intestine. 
For many years all attempts to cultivate these acid- 
fast organisms on artificial media either failed 
entirely or the cultures that were obtained from 
the lesions proved to be incapable of reproducing 
the disease in experimental animals. In 1910 
Dr. Twort and Mr. Ingram started an investiga- 
tion of this question and ultimately succeeded in 
obtaining a growth of the organism on an egg- 
medium in which killed tubercle bacilli were in- 
corporated. Later it was found that the addition 
of killed Timothy grass bacilli, or glycerine ex- 
tracts of these bacilli, gave equally good results. 
