September 26, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



307 



and location of points suitable for attack or 

 necessary to be taken. 



The war, the end of which the unpolitical 

 majority of us are now longing to greet, was, 

 however, grimly scientific in its every aspect. 

 Aviation commandeered the mechanical engi- 

 neer, the astronomer and the photographer. 

 The submarine demanded that the physicist 

 tell us all he knew. Without the chemist gas 

 could not be used. Camouflage confused and 

 confoimded enemy mathematics: there were 

 no lines straight in the right way, nor 

 rectangles by which to calculate ranges and 

 set guns. The wireless in its naanifold appli- 

 cations made the skilled electrician work. 

 Men were selected — they had to be — according 

 to tests determined by the psychologist. And 

 so on, until the colleges used " direct action " 

 and took the young soldier under their im- 

 mediate supervision, an act in itself necessita- 

 ting a coordination between the army and the 

 university that was undreamed of twenty 

 years ago. 



In an illuminating article in the Columhia 

 University Quarterly Mr. Frederick Paul 

 Keppel, imtil recently Third Assistant Secre- 

 tary of "War, has detailed some of the achieve- 

 ments of academic men (to use an adjective 

 which the War Department affects to loathe) 

 that helped us to win the war. The archeol- 

 ogist designed the best trench helmet; the 

 tropical botanist told us how to get charcoal 

 for gas masks; the astronomer showed us that 

 it is the shape of a moving thing's tail and 

 not its head that determines its course; the 

 lawyer directed war finance; the physicist 

 and chemist brought our production of field 

 glasses up from 1,800 in 1914 to 3,500 in a 

 single week in 1918 ; the physician greatly de- 

 creased our death rate by chemical steriliza- 

 tion and the splinting of fractures; the an- 

 thropologist showed that it is the breadth of 

 a soldier's hips and not the length of his legs 

 that gives him marching ability; a doctor of 

 philosophy established conferences for the dis- 

 cussion of technical problems, and thereby 

 prevented excellent suggestions from dying a 

 quiet death in the pigeonholes of the War 

 College. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Menders of the Maimed: The Aiiatomical and 

 Physiological Principles underlying the 

 Treatment of Injuries to Muscles, Nerves, 

 Bones and Joints. By Arthur Keith. 

 London, Oxford Medical Publications 

 (Henry Frowde; Hodder and Stougbton). 

 1919. Pp. 335. 



Those who had the good fortune to hear Pro- 

 fessor Keith during his tour of the United 

 States in 1915 will need no further introduc- 

 tion or incentive to read this book than the 

 statement that the author has written it as be 

 speaks — in the same delightful conversational 

 style which characterizes his public lectures 

 in the college of surgeons. 



The subtitle, far too cumbersome for a book 

 heading, gives the substance of its contents 

 which are the written records of the lecture 

 course for 1917-18. " Menders of the Maimed " 

 rightly interprets the book, the inspiration of 

 which is a renewed interest in treatment of 

 the locomotor and nervous systems elicited by 

 the war. 



" Men of business find it necessary from time 

 to time to take an inventory of the goods they 

 have in stock; occasions arise when medical 

 men must do the same thing and make a sur- 

 vey of the means of treatment at their dis- 

 posal. That is the case now; surgeons are 

 being called on to restore movement to thou- 

 sands of men who have been lamed or maimed 

 in war; they find it necessary to reexamine the 

 foundations vi their science and practise. In 

 this book I have sought to help them by a re- 

 statement of the principles which underlie 

 the art of orthopagdic surgery." Thus the au- 

 thor expresses his mission and he carries it 

 out in a way at once characteristic of himself 

 and appealing to the reader for he builds the 

 history of orthopsedic surgery around those 

 who themselves m'ade the history. As we read 

 we actually feel the presence of John Hunter's 

 restless active figure. We see Hilton, sarcastic 

 and independent, his waistcoat with its de- 

 cisive pattern linked from jweket to pocket 

 with a heavy gold chain. H. O. Thomas is in 

 his workshop fashioning splints. Little seeks 



