292 



NA TURE 



[July 27, 1905 



Germany, or introduce new crops and new industries 

 like the United States, or organise its workers like 

 Hungary, the Board has one sufficient and final 

 answer in the fact that such has never been the 

 Engjish theory of the function of a public office. 



In the book before us we have an account of the 

 policy of a man who took a different point of view, 

 and created, perhaps, the most paternal ministry of 

 agriculture in the world. Dr. Ignatius Dardnyi was 

 Minister of .Agriculture for seven years (1896-1903) in 

 Hungary, and during his tenure of office he built up 

 an extraordinary system of agricultural education, in- 

 vestigation, and organisation in Hungary. It would 

 be impossible in the limits at our disposal to discuss 

 either the means adopted or the results that have 

 accrued; roughly speaking. Dr. Dardnyi's method in 

 any industry was to make a start with a State-owned 

 farm or garden, forest or mill, as the case might be. 

 Here proceeded the inv-estigations necessary to estab- 

 lish the conditions requisite for success, and from this 

 centre issued the teachers w-ho carried the new- 

 methods to the cultivators. The State then stepped 

 in again, sometimes to lend the cultivator the money 

 necessary for the fresh start, or to organise a co- 

 operative society to enable him to realise the full 

 advantage of the newer methods. Thus, by leaps 

 and bounds, the whole character and quality of 

 Hungarian agriculture has been changed. The reader 

 will find the process set out fully with a wealth of 

 statistical detail in Dr. Dar^nyi's book, which takes 

 the form of a kind of valedictory report on quitting 

 office. It has been excellently translated by Mr. 

 Gyorgy, who, knowing so well the conditions pre- 

 vailing in England, adds a preface discussing the 

 value and limits of State interference in such matters. 

 It is a wonderful record; to the English reader, par- 

 ticularly if he be a farmer, it seems difficult to believe 

 that so much can be done for the industry, and also 

 that the distance of a few hundred miles should render 

 impossible in this country methods that have proved 

 so practicable and so fruitful for the Hungarian 

 agriculturist. 



OVR BOOK SHELF. 

 The Treatment of Diseases of the Eye. By Dr. 



Victor Hanke. Translated bv J. Herbert Parsons, 



F.R.C.S., and George Coats, M.D., F.R.C.S. 



Pp. vi-l-222. (London : Hodder and Stoughton, 



1905.) Price 3s. 6d. net. 

 Dr. Victor H.anke, the writer of tliis little book, 

 is principal assistant to Prof. Fuchs in Vienna, 

 and the methods of this famous clinique are 

 those which are here given to a wider public. It 

 naturally follows that it is characterised throughout 

 by a practical sanity which has been sadly lacking in 

 some books on similar subjects which have recently 

 been thought worthy of translation. The author has 

 no special hobby-horse on which to ride to mental 

 destruction. His treatment throughout is practical, 

 scientific in the best sense of the word, what we mav 

 call for lack of a more fitting adjective, common- 

 sensical. There is no rash advocacy of new and un- 

 tried methods of treatment simply because of their 

 novelty. Consequently, it is a book which can be 

 thoroughly recommended to all practitioners of the 

 art of medicine. Reliance on it will not lead to dis- 

 NO. 1S65, VOL. 72] 



appointment, for the methods advocated are 

 thoroughly modern and sound. 



.\ careful reading reveals practically no ground for 

 adverse criticism, and many points for active com- 

 mendation. The warning against the indiscriminate 

 use of cocaine is one that should be unnecessary to 

 any practising ophthalmic surgeon, and vet we have 

 only recently seen prescriptions for lotions and drops 

 given to patients for frequent use containing cocaine. 

 " The immoderate use of cocaine ... is not only 

 unnecessary but actually harmful to the corneal 

 epithelium "; and again, " Cocaine should in general 

 not be used, for on the one hand its action is only 

 transitory, while on the other it has an injurious in- 

 fluence on the corneal epithelium ; moreover the 

 dilatation which follows the temporary contraction of 

 the vessels is harmful." 



It would be easy to point out many places in which 

 good results can be obtained by methods of treatment 

 other than those recommended, but as the book does 

 not in any way pretend to be exhaustive, and as the 

 methods given are thoroughly sound, it would be 

 hypercritical to do so. We doubt, however, the 

 advisability of the use of adrenalin in severe inflam- 

 matory glaucoma, even if only given to facilitate the 

 operation. Macallan, in a paper in the Ophthalmic 

 Hospital reports some two or three years ago, pointed 

 out the dangers of this drug in glaucoma, and its 

 tendency to set up the ha?morrhagic form. 



The chapter on the various forms of inflammation 

 of the cornea and their treatment is quite the most 

 valuable in the book, and generally the earlier 

 chapters dealing with the external diseases of the eye 

 are fuller than the later chapters. The reason of this 

 is that the author does not pretend to give descrip- 

 tions of operations where only " considerable skill and 

 e.xperience can command success," and in diseases of 

 the deeper parts of the eye the advice of the 

 ophthalmic surgeon is more likely to be called for, 

 and this book is not intended for him. In conclusion, 

 we can only reiterate what we have already stated, 

 that students of medicine will find this a thoroughly 

 safe guide in the treatment of diseases of the eve. 

 Die Stelhmg Gasseiidis zu Deskartes. By Dr. Her- 

 mann Schneider. Pp. 67. (Leipzig : Diirr'schc 

 Buchhandlung, 1904.) Price 1.50 marks. 

 G.ASSENDi .^XD Desc.\rtes were contemporaries and 

 fellow-countrymen, but the relation between them is 

 mainly one of contrast. Gassendi was of peasant 

 origin, a writer encyclopaedic in his range, an Epicurus 

 redivivus with all Epicurus 's distrust of mathematics 

 and all his belief in a material soul, a sceptic who was 

 yet content to remain in the ranks of the Catholic 

 priesthood, his face ever turned to the past whether in 

 philosophy or religion. On the other side there is 

 Descartes, a noble by birth, a student principally of 

 the human understanding, something of a Platoiiist, 

 with the Platonist's reverence for mathematics and 

 numbers, a dualist who fixed a great gulf between 

 mind and body and between man and the lower 

 animals, an uncompromising doubter of everything 

 but his own doubt and all that is implied by the 

 capacity to doubt, the exponent of cogito, ergo su>n — 

 in a word, the representative of the disdnctively modern 

 tendencies, which mean in religion Protestantism, in 

 science mathematical physics, in philosophy Kan- 

 tianism new and old. Only in so far as modetn 

 thought inclines to atomism and materialism — and 

 how much that is the author points out in his closing 

 paragraph— do we find that its sympathies lie with 

 Gassendi rather than with Descartes. 



These contrasts, extended into a detailed discussion 

 of some of the writers' most important works and 

 particularly of their vievi-s on psychology, physics, and 



