386 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1164 



tions for medical research in this country, 

 seventeen, or nearly two thirds, are in con- 

 nection with medical schools. The report also 

 intimates that the " great growth of the spirit 

 of research in this country " accompanied 

 " the phenomenal development which medi- 

 cine has undergone in recent years." In fact, 

 the growth of medical research has been in 

 direct proportion to the increase in the num- 

 ber of full-time, salaried professors in medical 

 schools. This increase has been influenced, to 

 a certain extent at least, by the inclusion of 

 the possession of full-time teachers and the 

 conduct of resarch work as one of the ten 

 requisites in the basis- on which the Council 

 on Medical Education rated medical schools 

 in its first published classification. Since full- 

 time teachers were urged chiefly in the labo- 

 ratory branches, the development of research 

 has been most rapid in that division of the 

 medical school. Only a few medical colleges 

 were amply financed to provide full-time pro- 

 fessors in clinical departments and, therefore, 

 only a few have all departments, laboratory 

 and clinical, carrying on active research. 

 With larger numbers of full-time clinical pro- 

 fessors medical research in medical schools 

 will attain to a higher degree of efficiency than 

 is possible where that research is in isolated 

 laboratory departments. There can not fail to 

 be better results where all departments of the 

 medical school are interested and cooperating 

 in research, since then any department has the 

 advantage of all the resources of the medical 

 school; any discovery may be tried out under 

 adequate facilities and safeguards and its value 

 established or disproved. In fact, a modern 

 medical school, with its skilled faculty; with 

 its laboratories thoroughly equipped for med- 

 ical instruction and research, and with an 

 abundance and variety of clinical material at 



the Committee on Medical Eeseareh of the Assoeia- 

 tion of American Medical Colleges, read at the 

 Annual Meeting in Chicago, February 6, 1917. 



2 ' ' Essentials of an Acceptable Medical Col- 

 lege." Eeport of the Council on Medical Educa- 

 tion to the House of Delegates of the American 

 Medical Association, June 6, 1910, The Journal of 

 the American Medical Association, June 11, 1910, 

 p. 1975, paragraph 12 and p. 1976, paragraph 8. 



its command, constitutes the ideal arrange- 

 ment for medical research. On the other 

 hand, the medical school can not reach its 

 highest efficiency in teaching unless it is per- 

 meated by the spirit of investigation that is 

 engendered by research. The student can not 

 fail to be benefited. He appreciates better the 

 importance of the fundamental medical 

 branches; that the training in the medical 

 school merely admits him to the field of medi- 

 cine with its limitless possibilities for useful- 

 ness, and that his future success depends on 

 investigation, on keen observation, on accuracy 

 of judgment, and on the skiU with which he 

 applies his knowledge. Graduates of medical 

 schools in which research is a prominent fea- 

 ture of the work will be better able than those 

 of other schools to cope with the multiform 

 problems which confront the modern practi- 

 tioner of medicine. — Journal of the American 

 Medical Association. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Metamorphic Geology. By C. K. Leith and 



W. J. Mead. Henry Holt & Co., 'New York. 



1915. 



Metamorphism as defined by the authors em- 

 braces " all mineralogic, chemical and physical 

 changes in rocks subsequent to their primary 

 crystallization from magma." That is, it in- 

 cludes all changes produced by weathering, dis- 

 integration, decomposition and deposition by 

 sedimentation or from solution, as well as 

 those processes that solidify by crystallization 

 and rearrangement, arid thereby form crystal- 

 line schists. In this sense all rocks except un- 

 altered igneous rocks are metamorphic rocks, 

 namely, soils, sedimentary strata, and crystal- 

 line schists. While a comprehensive treatment 

 of all manner of alterations which may take 

 place in rock masses is the logical and satis- 

 factory method, it would seem advisable to em- 

 ploy some other term for the whole process 

 than metamorphism, which has acquired 

 through long usage a more restricted applica- 

 tion. 



E"aturally the subject is separated into two 

 parts, that of the destructive alterations, and 

 that of constructive ones, which, following 



