714 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1142 



fur die Jahre 1875-1895." This later part has 

 not been included in the new edition. 



In regard to the scope of the work, Sudhoff, 

 in the preface to the second edition, says: 

 " Dass ich personlich unter ' Geschichte der 

 Medizin ' etwas mehr verstehe als eine med- 

 izinische Literaturgeschichte : eine kultur- 

 geschichtliche Erfassung der heilenden Kunst 

 und Wissenschaft im Gesamtleben der Zeiten, 

 diirfte bekannt sein, kommt aber hier nicht 

 in Frage, wo es sieh urn eine ' Einfiihrung,' 

 urn ein Lehrbuch der Medizingeschichte 

 handelt." 



Pagel, likewise, has a broad idea of the im- 

 portance of the history of medicine, for he 

 says : " Die ganze moderne Medizin baut sich 

 auf dem Gedanken der Entwicklung auf." 



As the title indicates, the volume was based 

 originally on a series of lectures, more or less 

 popular in nature, but all of them readable. 

 The lectures are a little more thorough in 

 their content than those of Ernst Schwalbe 1 

 and the additions made by Karl Sudhoff raises 

 it out of the ranks of a volume of lectures and 

 forms the greater part of my excuse for re- 

 viewing the work in this place. 



The work proceeds along well-defined and 

 usual lines, taking up serially the develop- 

 ment of medicine in the various countries. 

 There is nothing new or startling in the 

 method of their presentation, but the facts are 

 essentially all there and the addenda and refer- 

 ences by the editor make the book a most use- 

 ful one for the beginning student. 



The first lecture deals with the beginnings 

 of the healing art and discusses the nature 

 of medical work in ancient and modern China 

 and Japan and among the Aztecs of Mexico. 

 The second lecture discusses medical history 

 among the peoples of ancient India, Babylonia, 

 Egypt, Palestine and the other countries of 

 Asia Minor. The succeeding four lectures 

 are devoted to the medical lore of the Greeks, 

 with one entire chapter given to Galen. 



The lectures from this point take up the 



development of modern medicine, and the 



later lectures are given a more biographical 



i "Vorlesungen ueber Geschichte der Medizin," 



Jena, 1909. 



cast as various eminent men exerted an influ- 

 ence over various phases of medical work. 

 Interpolated throughout these pages there is 

 given by Sudhoff, in a way to be found no- 

 where else, the sources of information, recent 

 developments of each special topic and recent 

 literature, but not in such abundance as to be 

 tiresome to the general reader. So that in 

 addition to being a volume of very readable 

 lectures it may also be used as a work of refer- 

 ence of no small importance, though of course 

 not attempting to rank with the Handbiicher 

 of Pagel and Haser. It will appeal to the 

 general reader as being free from a number of 

 technicalities and will be found to be one of 

 the best one-volume presentations of medical 

 history of recent years. 



Eoy L. Moodie 

 University op Illinois, 

 College of Medicine, 

 Chicago 



THE ZERO AND PRINCIPLE OF LOCAL 

 VALUE USED BY THE MAYA OF 

 CENTRAL AMERICA 

 Historians of mathematics refer to the 

 vigesimal system of the Maya 1 of Central 

 America and southern Mexico, but, to my 

 knowledge, no historian conveys the informa- 

 tion that the Maya, in the writing of numbers, 

 employed symbols for zero and the principle 

 of local value. Added interest attaches to this 

 matter from the fact that the Maya appear to 

 have done this earlier than any one else. My 

 attention is called to this achievement of the 

 Maya by a recent book issued by the Govern- 

 ment Printing Office in Washington, entitled 

 An Introduction to the Study of the Maya 

 Hieroglyphs, by Sylvanus Griswold Morley, 

 1915. This publication constitutes Bulletin 

 57 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 

 Nearly all the information contained in this 

 article is drawn from that source. 



The age of the Maya inscriptions and 

 codices is a matter of vital interest and, as 

 yet, of considerable doubt. It is known that 



i See, for instance, M. Cantor, ' ' Geschichte der 

 Mathematik," Vol. I., 3d ed., 1907, p. 9. 



