410 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1400 



structure of the brain, particularly in the med- 

 ical schools, where the net result of the stu- 

 dent's best efforts was too often the acquisition 

 of a jargon of Greek and Latin polysyllables 

 without meaning or interest except to the anti- 

 quarian — and the examining board. Other fac- 

 tors in the recent improvement in teaching this 

 subject are students of better caliber and train- 

 ing and better teachers. Without advancement 

 in these two directions the publication of ade- 

 quate text-books could not greatly improve the 

 situation, for the students of former days could 

 not have used the books of to-day, and the 

 same is probably true of not a few of their 

 teachers. 



The study of the brain is intrinsically diffi- 

 cult. The medical student, in particular, must 

 master and remember a vast amount of ex- 

 tremely intricate anatomical detail before he is 

 prepared to diagnose his first neurological case. 

 Since the student can be expected to acquire 

 at best only a very small part of the known 

 details and to remember still less, it is essen- 

 tial that a selection be made for him by his 

 teacher. And the success of the instructor will 

 be determined as much by what he leaves out 

 of the course as by the skill with which he 

 organizes the irreducible minimum which he 

 does attempt to present. 



A student who is directed or permitted to 

 memorize a long list of the absurdly cumber- 

 some names which have been given to the 

 visible parts of the brain without gaining a 

 definite idea of their functional significance 

 and interrelationships has a real grievance. 

 And the chief pedagogical difficulty lies in just 

 this point that the parts are so inexti-icably 

 interrelated, both anatomically and physio- 

 logically, that one can not know anything of 

 value about one of them until he knows a little, 

 at least, about a good number of others. It is 

 like learning a new language; the beginner 

 must know something of its grammatical 

 structure and vocabulary before he can read. 

 When I began the study of Latin I was re- 

 quired to spend an entire year in memorizing 

 Harkness' Grammar before I was permitted to 

 read a line of a Latin author. I understand that 

 languages are not taught by that method any 



more. The teacher of neurology, as of Latin, 

 is faced with the problem of making the struc- 

 tural elements dynamic, of giving them func- 

 tional values, as early in the course as possible. 



The successful text-book on the nervous sys- 

 tem, accordingly, must lay dovm certain gen- 

 eral principles of the relations of structure and 

 function, illustrate these by a judicious selec- 

 tion of examples, proceed in an orderly way to 

 an examination of the gross features of the 

 central nervous system, accompanied by an ex- 

 position of a few significant microscopic details 

 of each part and an analysis of its functional 

 connections with the periphery and with other 

 centers, and finally these elements must be knit 

 together, the related parts being woven into 

 working systems of conduction pathways and 

 cerebral centers, each of which has a definite 

 part to play in the complex web of bodily 

 adjustments. Not until the anatomical con- 

 figuration and normal action of each of these 

 several functional systems has been clearly con- 

 ceived, the topographical relations of the an- 

 atomical pathways to each other in various 

 parts of their courses visualized, and the func- 

 tional patterns in which they may be combined 

 determined, is it possible intelligently to inter- 

 pret the clinical pictures presented by nervous 

 disorders or to make any diagnosis of a neu- 

 rological case by other than rule-of-thumb 

 methods. 



Dr. Eanson's book very satisfactorily meets 

 these severe requirements. The learner is skil- 

 fully guided from the start in his selection of 

 topics and the order in which to take them up 

 by an analysis of the physiological factors in 

 the organization of the nervous system which 

 is simplified as far as the intricacies of the sub- 

 ject permit. The presentation is clear, logical, 

 and accurate. The illustrations are judiciously 

 chosen, many of them are original drawings 

 which are important additions to the literature, 

 and they are beautifully executed. The pub- 

 lishers, too, have done their work admirably, 

 text and figures are well printed, typography 

 clear, and misprints very few. Most of the 

 figures are based on the human nervous sys- 

 tem, but there are included excellent drawings 

 of the brains of the dogfish and sheep which 



