146 
We have given the title at length, cumber- 
some as it is, because it expresses the nature of 
the work, and because this book has the merit 
of being what it pretends to be. More than 
that, it is the successful working out of a well- 
considered and philosophical plan. The pur- 
pose, in short, is to offer to students a guide to 
the general principles governing the morphol- 
ogy of the human skeleton, considered accord- 
ing to development and comparative anatomy. 
The great beauty of the book is the subordina- 
tion of details to principles. It does not teach 
the bones as they must be taught to a student 
of medicine, but we wish that all medical stu- 
dents could have been put through this book 
before the beginning of their medical studies. 
With the bones are very properly considered 
both cartilages and ligaments. It is not the 
disjointed skeleton that is before us, but the 
real framework of the body. There is first a 
short chapter on the histology of bone and the 
other connective tissues involved, and then we 
begin the development of the skeleton from the 
chorda dorsalis. Then we have the shapes of 
bones, their connections, the development of 
joimts and the various kinds. Then we come 
to the description of the particular parts of the 
skeleton with the scientific significance dwelt 
upon and the details suppressed. What a relief 
from the compendium of anatomy which thinks 
well of itself because it gives the several surfaces 
of the orbital process of the palate bone! On 
the other hand, to take one example of many, 
how interesting to have the comparative anat- 
omy of the malar bone! 
It is not necessary to discuss the book in 
further detail. There are many morphological 
questions concerning which different opinions 
may be held, and an author is not necessarily 
wrong even if the reviewer should not agree 
with him on all points. That the plan of the 
book is good and that the aim of the author has 
been true is praise enough. We will add, 
that we wish someone would ‘do it into Eng- 
lish.’ THomMAS DwicuHr. 
HARVARD MEDICAL ScHooL. 
Evolution of the Thermometer, 1592-1743. By 
HENRY CARRINGTON Bouron. Easton, Pa., 
The Chemical Publishing Co. 1900. 98 pp. 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Vou. XIII. No. 317. 
This neatly printed and tastefully bound 
little monograph will be of interest to all 
physicists and chemists, and to the general 
public as well, for it deals with one of the most 
indispensable instruments in every laboratory, 
and one which, almost alone of those used by 
scientific men, has become an instrument of 
interest and use in every household. 
In dispelling the fallacies and clearing away 
the obscurities which have enveloped the evo- 
lution of the thermometer, Dr. Bolton has 
again placed scientific men under an obligation, 
while at the same time he has afforded them 
an hour’s entertaining reading. 
The book opens by disposing of the oft-re- 
peated claims that the inventor of the ther- 
mometer was Drebbel. The first use of the 
name, thermometer, and the first accurate 
description, comes from Leurechon in 1624, but 
the real inventor of the instrument was Galileo, 
and the date between 1592 and 1597. This is 
proved, not from any statements of the in- 
ventor, but from letters written to him, and 
the proof is complete. This first thermometer 
consisted of a bulbed tube, inverted in colored 
water, in which the liquid rose and fell with 
the temperature of the bulb. With such an 
instrument Sanctorius discovered that there 
was a normal body temperature. In 1632 
Jean Rey made a water thermometer, in which 
the expansion of a fluid replaced that of air, 
and not long after this Ferdinand II. of Tus- 
cany, by sealing the top of the tube, gave ap- 
proximately the modern form to the instrument. 
Mercury had been previously used to show 
expansion by heat, but in 1714 Fahrenheit 
constructed the first mercury thermometer 
with a reliable scale. 
Many different scales have at various times 
been applied to the thermometer, and in most 
of them the graduation has been almost purely 
arbitrary. The origin of the Fahrenheit scale 
is involved in much obscurity. Réaumur was 
the first to use the melting point of ice for 
zero, while his boiling point of water, 80°, was 
obtained by the expansion of one thousand 
parts of 80 per cent. alcohol between the freez- 
ing and boiling points of water. As this was 
eighty parts, he used this number for his higher 
fixed temperature. The first to adopt 0° and 
