Mabch 27, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



469 



a compass, the book is far from being a mere 

 catalogue of names, facts and dates. The au- 

 thor's style gives life to his descriptions; he 

 has the happy faculty of seizing upon the sa- 

 lient points of his subject and vivifying them 

 by allusion, comparison and quotation. In- 

 terest, too, in the text is greatly increased by 

 the large number of portraits with which it is 

 illustrated, a feature that especially distin- 

 guishes the book in comparison with its pre- 

 decessors. 



In covering so vast a field errors are almost 

 unavoidable; nevertheless the number to be 

 noted in Dr. Garrison's book is so small that 

 it seems almost invidious even to mention 

 them. It hardly seems just, however, to speak 

 (p. 78) of Galen as " little of an anatomist." 

 Surely the writing of such a treatise as the 

 " De Anatomicis administrationibus " in the 

 second century marks its maker as one of the 

 greatest of anatomists! The title of Aver- 

 roes' great work (p. 89) is not " Ketab," but 

 rather " El-Kollijat," of which the word " Col- 

 liget " is merely a transliteration. Mention 

 should surely have been made (p. 149) of the 

 splendid " Quaderni d'Anatomia " of Leon- 

 ardo, at present being edited by Dr. Hopstock 

 and his colleagues. The discovery of the pan- 

 creatic duct by Wirsung (p. 180) was made 

 in the dissecting room of Vesling and not in 

 that of Vesalius. The statement (p. 602) that 

 " twins always have the same sex " is mani- 

 festly in need of correction. There are also a 

 few obvious minor slips, and one must regret 

 the omission from the bibliographic appendix 

 of such works as the excellent Vorlesungen of 

 Professor Ernst Schwalbe, Le Clerc's " His- 

 toire de la Medicine Arabe," Lauth's " His- 

 toire de I'Anatomie " and Medici's interesting 

 " Compendio storico della Scuola Anatomica 

 di Bologna." 



But such errors and omissions are of little 

 account beside the general excellence of the 

 work. Its thoroughness, conciseness and clear- 

 ness bespeak for it the fullest appreciation 

 from all who are interested in the past and 

 future of medicine. 



J. P. McM. 



Stammering and Cognate Defects of Speech. 



By C. S. Bluemel. 2 vols. New York, 



Stechert and Company. 1913. 



The first volume is called " The Psychology 

 of Stammering " and the second reviews crit- 

 ically many of the current systems for the 

 treatment of speech defects. The first hundred 

 pages of Volume I. are employed in a popular 

 exposition of such psychological facts and 

 opinions as the author may later need in his 

 description of the etiology of stammering. The 

 chapter headed " The Brain " deals rather dog- 

 matically with some of the mooted questions 

 of cortical localization and lacks many refer- 

 ences to original sources. The chapter on 

 aphasia is well handled and serves as an 

 excellent introduction to the author's thesis 

 that " the stammerer's difficulty is transient 

 auditory amnesia " (p. 187). It is well shown 

 that this amnesia attaches to the vowel sounds, 

 especially to the more obscure ones, and that 

 it is characteristic of the audito-moteur rather 

 than of the subject possessing predominantly 

 the visual type of imagery. We have already 

 (pp. 98 and 103) been prepared for this posi- 

 tion by the foregoing discussion concerning 

 the necessary incitation for voluntary speech. 

 This, it is held, always involves kinesthetic 

 imagery, auditory imagery being supplemen- 

 tary and functioning chiefly in vowel produc- 

 tion. Consonant production may be actuated 

 by kinesthetic imagery alone, but not so the 

 formation of the short and relatively " color- 

 less " voice sounds. When the auditory im- 

 agery is temporarily lost or weakened the more 

 obscure vowel sounds become impossible of pro- 

 duction and stammering results. This posi- 

 tion is strengthened both by introspection and 

 by the records of speech cases, and if correct 

 is of the utmost value in indicating the appro- 

 priate treatment for stammering. 



Volume II. includes an excellent account 

 of current systems of training, treated under 

 the chapter titles: Eespiration, Vocalization, 

 Articulation, Verbal Exercises, Mechanical 

 Appliances and Psychological Methods. 



Stevenson Smith 



