482 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1168 



scliool eoTxrse, they are to be tried over at 

 Greek for just the most precious years educa- 

 tionally, and our modern world is to have 

 the broken fragments. This claim is pressed 

 even more impudently by Mr. Livingstone in 

 his recent " Defense of Classical Education." 

 He insists that aU our sons are to be muddled 

 about with by the teachers of Greek up to at 

 least the opening of the imiversity stage, en- 

 tirely in the interests of Greek scholarship. 

 Professor Keeble's dream of " sweet reason- 

 ableness " is a mere dream. These classical 

 people are absolutely ignorant of their own 

 limitations; they can imagine no compromise; 

 they mean to ram compulsory Greek down 

 the throat of every able English boy they can 

 catch, and they mean to load the scales in 

 favor of Greek at any cost to science, philos- 

 ophy and national well-being. — H. G. WeUs 

 in Nature. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Human Physiology. By Percy G. Stiles. 



Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Company, 



1916. Pp. 405. 



The announcement in the preface, the 

 " purpose is to present concisely the accepted 

 facts with only a limited description of the 

 experiments by which these facts have been 

 established," gives an idea of the scope and 

 nature of the book. There is the further 

 qualification that books of this sort are at 

 fault if they do not make it plain that " un- 

 settled questions confront the investigator at 

 every turn." 



Little of historical importance is mentioned, 

 the omission being purposeful. , It is an open 

 question in the mind of the reviewer whether 

 the student should not have some knowledge 

 of the history of science as well as of wars and 

 "low ambition and the pride of kings." If 

 necessary, low ambition could be found in the 

 history of science. 



While strongly inclined to view with great 

 charity the author's confession of a feeling 

 akin to guilt because he has not acknowledged 

 all the illuminating ideas and happy ' teach- 

 ing devices which he owes to his contem- 

 poraries, the reviewer can not wholly suppress 



the wish that such a feeling might become 

 highly contagious and assume a grave form 

 among authors of test-books and the writers 

 of papers generally. The full acknowledg- 

 ment of such obligations might dim individ- 

 ual brilliance at times, but science would not 

 be the loser thereby. The author's " atone- 

 ment " might have been more complete if he 

 had included the works of Ott, Stewart and 

 Tigerstedt (English translation) in the list 

 of collateral readings at the end of the book. 

 In the brief statements of a historical na- 

 ture on pages 15 and 16, one finds but little 

 mention of the influence of French investi- 

 gators in physiology. A statement of Pro- 

 fessor Howell is so pertinent in this connec- 

 tion that I venture to quote it. 



The establishment of physiology as an experi- 

 mental science is usually attributed to Johannes 

 MiiUer and his pupils or their contemporaries who 

 fell under his influence. But as I read its history, 

 its modern characteristics, whether for good or for 

 evil, owe their origin as much to the French as to 

 the German school. Johannes Miiller himself was 

 not preeminent as an experimenter — he made use 

 of anatomical rather than physiological methods; 

 but his contemporary Magendie was a typical mod- 

 ern physiologist, and whatever may have been the 

 extent of his personal influence during Ufe, there 

 can be no question that his methods of work and 

 his points of view are the ones that were subse- 

 quently adopted in physiology. 



On this point, the reviewer is in full agree- 

 ment with Howell. In the present world con- 

 flict of ideals and ideas, even such minor 

 considerations as these should not be wholly 

 lost sight of. 



One departure from the usual method of 

 treatment is found on page 95. In the legend 

 of Fig. 22 the author states that the coordi- 

 nating center for the reflex, a part of whose 

 path is shown, is left undetermined. Evi- 

 dence is accumulating that the location of the 

 coordinating center for a reflex varies for 

 different reflexes in the same animal, and for 

 a reflex of essentially the same natiire in dif- 

 ferent species of animals. 



One might take exception to the statement 

 on page 116 that " We are not usually aware 

 of the nerve currents that arrive in the cen- 



