144 
SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 
Text-Book of Physiology. Edited by E. A. 
Scuarer, LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Phys- 
iology, University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh 
and London, Young J. Pentland; New 
York, The Macmillan Co. Vol. II. 
In the preface to the first volume, issued 
nearly two years ago, it is stated that ‘the want 
ofa text-book in the English language to which 
students could turn for information beyond 
that contained in the ordinary manuals has 
long been felt by teachers of physiology (in 
England). ‘The most extensive of the exist- 
ing text-books do not aim at giving the full 
and precise information, nor the references to 
original authorities which are required by the 
advanced student.’ The object of the work, 
the second and final volume of which is 
now before us, is to supply this want. The 
object is an excellent one. But when we 
enquire how far the editor and his able col- 
laborators have succeeded in their laudable 
aim, we feel bound to answer that the execu- 
tion does not in all points correspond with the 
design. Not that the book is devoid of good 
qualities. In certain respects its merits are 
conspicuous. No text-book of physiology in 
the language is more accurate. None is so ex- 
tensive in its scope. Few are so scientific in 
treatment. But as regards its avowed purpose 
it labors under a serious, if not a fatal, defect. 
The ‘advanced student’ for whom it is in- 
tended scarcely exists at present. The 
twentieth century, which, as the newspapers 
have assured us, holds so many wonders in its 
womb, may in the fullness of time produce 
from the strangely miscellaneous contents of 
that mysterious receptacle some such miracle 
of precocious learning. In this year of grace 
1901, he is, we fear, almost as much an abstrac- 
tion as Macaulay’s omniscient schoolboy. We 
can hardly help thinking, indeed, that what- 
ever may have been the original plan of the 
book, the editor has not always been able to 
prevent his contributors from running away 
from him, or the contributors their subjects 
from running away with them. The conse- 
quence is that while some of the authors have 
evidently had in mind as their model the ex- 
haustive ‘Handbuch’ of Hermann, and have 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Vou. XIII. No. 317. 
treated their respective themes with a wealth 
of illustrative detail and a copiousness of 
reference which leave little to be desired for the 
purposes of the professional physiologist, the 
contributions of others are such in contents and 
style as a student of actual flesh and blood, 
who had diligently improved his time in the 
physiological department of a medical school 
of actual brick and mortar, might. hope to read 
with intelligence and profit. 
We are far from supposing that a book on 
the lines of the ‘ Handbuch,’ addressed to expert 
physiologists, is without value. On the con- 
trary, we believe that if Professor Schafer and 
his talented coadjutors, starting with the pres- 
ent work as a basis, expanding what is incom- 
plete and retrenching what is too elementary, 
were to develop it into a really comprehensive 
treatise, and do for the physiology of the be- 
ginning of the twentieth century what Hermann 
and his fellow-workers did for the physiology 
of the early eighties of the nineteenth, they 
would confer a greater benefit on the cultivators 
of the science in all lands than a dozen Richet’s 
Dictionaries will ever do. But in order that 
this may be accomplished, the impossible task 
of crowding into 2,200 pages a far greater 
volume of knowledge than Hermann twenty 
years ago was barely able to grapple with in 
more than 5,000 pages, would have to be 
frankly given up, and the idea of combining 
within the same boards a book for students and 
a book for experts once and for all abandoned. 
When all due deduction is made for the dis- 
crepancy between plan and performance, it 
would be unjust not to say that the work re- 
mains by far the most notable recent attempt 
ata systematic exposition of physiology on a 
large scale in any language. Upon the whole, 
too, it cannot be denied that the authors, while 
avoiding hypercriticism in handling the experi- 
mental results of others, have escaped the still 
more serious error of making their articles 
mere compilations in which all the facts that 
have crept into the literature are spread before 
the reader without indication of their relative 
authenticity and importance. Occasionally, 
however, but so rarely as to excite surprise, it 
would seem that the Rhadamanthus of the blue 
pencil must have nodded over his long task. 
