May ^i, 1877] 



NATURE 



79 



Well-arranged museums of every kind are now ?n educa- 

 tional necessity in every highly civilised state, and every- 

 where excepting in our own they are put on exactly the same 

 footing as libraries. They are to be seen in nearly every 

 town of any pretension on the Continent, and in cities, 

 such as Turin, Bologna, Lyons, Brussels, and Hamburg, 

 they exist on a scale which is only rivalled by those of 

 London. In the United States, also, and in Australia, 

 their value to society at large is fully recognised. They 

 arc liberally supported and largely endowed. In no mu- 

 seum out of Britain have I seen the chaos from which our 

 own are now painfully and slowly emerging. 



There are many highly organised museums in Britain 

 which perform their true function as repositories of know- 

 ledge, such as those at London and the Universities, 

 those of Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Taunton, Exeter, 

 .Salisbury, and others. Their numbers must be largely 

 increased if we are to hold our own in the race for know- 

 ledge with our neighbours on the Continent and our 

 kinsmen in Australia and America. 



W. Boyd Dawkins 



FOSTERS " TEXT-BOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY" 

 A Text-Book of Physioh^y. By M. Foster, M.A., M.O., 

 F.R.S., Prajlector of Physiology, and Fellow of Trinity 

 College, Cambridge. (Macmillan, 1877.) 



PHYSIOLOGY, like most other sciences, has been 

 making rapid strides within the last half cen- 

 tury, and although scarcely yet to be classed among the 

 exact sciences, the number of well-estabhshed facts which 

 have been accumulated is not inconsiderable, and is in 

 several cases sufficient to serve as a substantial founda- 

 tion for the building up of more or less stable theories, 

 and the enunciation even of tolerably fixed laws. Conse- 

 quently it is to-day no longer necessary to urge the im- 

 portance of the cultivation of physiological science as the 

 basis of rational medicine. Not only is this fully recog- 

 nised by the medical profession but there are distinct 

 indications that the public in general is beginning to 

 appreciate the importance of a correct knowledge of the 

 normal processes which are going on within the body, 

 preparatory to the recognition and cure of such devia- 

 tions frcm the natural processes as constitute disease. 

 And no wonder the science should be popular the object 

 of which is to teach us how "we live and move and have 

 our being I " 



Students of physiology in this country have long needed 

 an advanced text-book containing the leading facts and 

 inferences of the science set forth at length and in- 

 telligibly, the statements and deductions which are less 

 important or less clearly established being relegated to 

 the background of small print, or even omitted altogether. 

 The place of such a book was supplied in Germany by 

 Hermann's " Grundriss der Physiologic," in every respect 

 a model text-book, and one of which it is impossible to 

 speak too highly ; and it was hoped that the production 

 last year of a translation of Hermann's work would meet 

 the requirements of the English student. But whether 

 s'mply from the fact of its being a translation or from 

 other causes, certain it is that the book has not fulfilled 

 the expectations which were entertained with regard to it. 

 It is, therefore, a matler for sincere congratulation to 

 physiologists that one in every respect so well qualified 



for the task as Dr. Michael Foster should have under- 

 taken to provide what was so much needed in the way of 

 a text-book, and also, it may fairly be added, to himself, 

 that he should have brought the undertaking to so suc- 

 cessful an issue. 



Dr. Foster's aim in writing the [book is best given in 

 his own words : — 



" I have striven to explain, in as clear and straight- 

 forward a manner as I could, the main facts and funda- 

 mental principles of physiological science. The student 

 before whom things both new and old are tumbled out of 

 the physiological treasury, without adequate critical ap- 

 preciation ot their respective values, is simply bewildered 



instead of being taught And it is the duty of the 



teacher to bring his pupil to that which is fixed and sure, 

 without too much display or too much neglect of that 

 which is uncertain and loose A desire to contri- 

 bute, as far as my powers will allow, to the development 

 of physiology in the medical profession has been my 

 guiding principle in writing the book." 



The style of treatment and the mode of thought pur- 

 sued throughout are characteristic of the author, and 

 serve to indicate the originality of the book, always one 

 of the chief merits of a work of this sort. It is often 

 thought that a scientific text-book need be little more 

 than a museum of facts and opinions, carefully arranged 

 and neatly labelled, to enable them the more readily to be 

 " got up " by the student, in order that he may be able 

 to satisfy an examiner with a narration of whatever has 

 been stated or conjectured about any particular sub- 

 ject. Were this the case, the making of a text-book 

 would be a mere matter of scissors and paste-brush, and 

 the task could be performed by any one who was capable 

 of reading the language of the science. That the idea is 

 a wrong one is so self-evident that it would be waste of 

 words to delay in refuting it. Even an elementary text- 

 book is never so well done as when it is taken in hand 

 by one who is a master in the science. There is a well- 

 known instance in this particular science of physiology, 

 and, in fact, it is to Huxley's " Lessons" that Dr. Foster 

 wishes his book to be regarded as the sequel. 



An indication of the original character of the book be- 

 fore us is to be found in the fact that it is not through- 

 out equal. All the subjects are well done, but some are 

 better treated than others, a result to be expected from 

 the very extended nature of the science. No one — not 

 even a Helmholtz — can pretend to an intimate personal 

 acquaintance with all the branches of so ramified a 

 science, and it is casting no slur upon the rest of the 

 work to single out a section here and there, characterised 

 by the especial clearness with which the known facts are 

 stated and the phenomena are discussed and explained. 

 The articles on the coagulation of the blood and on gas- 

 tric and pancreatic digestion, and the chapter on the 

 spinal cord, may be especially mentioned as illustrations 

 of this. 



Another and a more prominent indication of originality 

 is occasionally met with in the descriptions of observable 

 phenomena, facts being here and there noticed which are 

 obviously the result of personal observation, and which 

 have not hitherto so far as we are aware, been noted 

 down. Thus in describing the phenomena of the heart's 

 beat in mammals the contraction of the auricles is stated 

 to be preceded by a peristaltic contraction of all the 



