August 17, 1905 J 



NA TURE 



363 



he left very much to be done. He did not pretend 

 t(i explain the cause of all natural phenomena, nor 

 had he the vanity to want to be the head of a sect; 

 ho was too modest and too great a lover of truth for 

 that. But Descartes wanted to pass for the author 

 <if a new philosophy which could take the place of 

 the Aristotelian, and he stuck to what he had once 

 I)roposed though it was often very wrong. He 

 has done a good deal of harm to the progress of philo- 

 sophy, for those who believe in him imagine that they 

 know the cause of everything ; they waste time in 

 sustaining the doctrines of their master, and do not 

 work to penetrate the real reasons of the great number 

 of phenomena as to which Descartes has only pro- 

 pounded idle fancies. A severe judgment, but not an 

 undeserved one as regards the tenacity with which the 

 followers of the Cartesian philosophy clung to the 

 vorte.x theor}', though it hardly accounted for any of 

 the phenomena of planetary motion. 



Probably owing to the infirmities of old age, 

 Huygens during the period covered by this volume 

 did not do any astronomical work, though he wrote 

 to his brother Constantyn in 1693 that he had got a 

 tube made for a 45-feet object glass, chiefly to show 

 the moon and planets to persons of quality who could 

 not manage a tubeless telescope, which was pointed 

 to an object by cords. His interest in the use of 

 pendulum clocks at sea was unabated, and there are 

 several short letters on this subject. As the results 

 of repeated trials were not favourable, Huygens 

 endeavoured to find other means of realising iso- 

 chronic motion, not subject to disturbance from the 

 rolling of a ship, and designed several forms of 

 balance of which a full account is to appear among 

 his hitherto unpublished works. 



There arc fewer allusions to current political and 

 other events in this volume than in the previous ones, 

 but naturally the anti-Copernican action of the Uni- 

 versity of Louvain in 1691 is not passed over. The 

 faculty of arts suspended Prof, van VVelden for three 

 years for asserting that the earth was one of the 

 planets. He wrote to Huygens to beg for the inter- 

 cession of Constantyn Huygens or of King William, 

 but they do not appear to have done anything for 

 him. During the last years of his life, Huygens 

 wrote his well known little book " Cosmotheoros," 

 which was not published until 169S, three years after 

 th'- death of its author. J. L. E. D. 



•PSYCHIATRY. 

 Manual of Psychiatry. By J. R. de Fursac. Trans- 

 lated by A. J. Rosanoff, and edited by Dr. J. Collins. 

 Pp. xii + 352. (New York: Wiley and Sons; 

 London : Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1905.) Price 

 los. 6rf. net. 



THE author has managed to compress a fairly large 

 amount of information into this manual, but we 

 are afraid that the subject-matter is almost too con- 

 densed for the reader who is not already conversant 

 with the subject. This book is divided into two parts. 

 The first portion is a general study of the causes, 

 symptoms, and treatment of mental disorder, con- 

 NO. 1868, VOL. 72] 



sidered independently of the various affections in which 

 they are encountered. The second portion is devoted 

 to the study of the individual psychoses. 



The volume is rather unevenly divided ; some sub- 

 jects are fully dealt with, but the description of others 

 is somewhat meagre. The chapter on aetiology is 

 very good, and this important problem is thoroughly 

 reviewed. We cannot agree with the author in his 

 conclusion that heart disease is common in the insane, 

 and Strecker's figures as to the prevalency of this 

 malady in German asylums, viz. 61-7 per cent for men 

 and 42-7 per cent, for women, would not coincide with 

 similar statistics obtained from English asylums. 



In the chapter on general symptomatology the sub- 

 ject of hallucinations and their causation is briefly but 

 well described. Throughout the volume it is very 

 noticeable that purely psychological matters are dealt 

 with in greater detail than other subjects of equal, if 

 not of greater, interest to the practical physician. 

 For example, the pages on treatment are undoubtedly 

 the weakest in the book. Very little space is devoted 

 to this important subject, and the reader is left very 

 much in the dark as to the management of cases of 

 mental disorder. 



The author has evidently had the usual difficulty in 

 finding a good classification of insanity. He states 

 that in the absence of one that is founded upon a 

 pathological anatomy basis he has chosen " the most 

 practical, the most convenient, and the one which in 

 any given case would enable us to establish the prog- 

 nosis and institute the treatment." We quite agree 

 that he has made the best choice in selecting 

 Kraepelin's classification as the basis for his own 

 scheme. 



The first chapter in the second part is reserved for 

 the consideration of the " infectious psychoses," of 

 which the following are briefly reviewed : — febrile 

 delirium, infectious delirium, and hydrophobia. 



Under the heading of " Psychoses of Exhaustion," 

 the author describes conditions of primary mental 

 confusion and acute delirium. Toxic psychoses are 

 divided into two divisions, (a) acute, (6) chronic, 

 morphinomania and cocainomania being included in 

 the second class. Dr. de Fursac recommends that, 

 when possible, the rapid method of withdrawal of 

 morphia should be employed in the treatment of 

 morphinism, as he prefers this to the sudden and 

 gradual methods sometimes employed. 



The " autointoxication psychoses " include ursemia, 

 the polyneuritic psychosis or Korsakoff's disease, 

 dementia praecox, and general paresis. After 

 thoroughly considering the relationship of syphilis to 

 general paresis, the author states that " at the present 

 time we have no conclusive evidence either for or 

 against the syphilitic origin of general paresis." 



The next chapters are devoted to the description of 

 " psychoses dependent upon so-called organic cerebral 

 affections," and " psychoses of involution." The 

 latter include " affective melancholia " and " senile 

 dementia." We do not like the term "affective 

 melancholia"; it seems redundant, for clearly all 

 forms of depression must be affective. Further, the 

 author uses the term in a new sense, which causes 



