April 3, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



533 



literary and other forms of research. The 

 means for beginning this work have been 

 already provided by your honorable 

 board. 



It will also be necessary to provide 

 means for fellowships and scholarships. 

 The present writer has been strongly op- 

 posed to the present fellowship system in 

 America, believing that its evil of hiring 

 men to study in a certain place often 

 outweighs its advantage of furnishing 

 promising men with means of making the 

 most of their period of training. But in 

 a matter of this kind it is not possible for 

 a single institution to stand aloof from 

 its associates, and to demand an adequate 

 return in laboratory or other assistance 

 from each fellow will tend to minimize 

 these evils of the system. 



SCIEIfTIFIG BOOKS 

 Anatomy of the Brain and Spinal Cord, with 

 Special Reference to Mechanism and Func- 

 tion. By Harris E. Santee, M.D., Ph.D. 

 Fourth edition, revised and enlarged. Phil- 

 adelphia, P. Blakiston's Son & Co. 1907. 

 In this fourth edition, Dr. Santee has so 

 enlarged upon the previous editions as to make 

 & book of 451 pages, including an excellent 

 index, and has added a considerable niunber 

 of illustrations. His confessed endeavor has 

 been to present the present knowledge of the 

 anatomy of the human central nervous system. 

 To do this, he states that he has gleaned, as 

 far as possible, from " original sources " and 

 he gives special credit to the works of Mc- 

 Murrich, Cunningham, Morris's " Anatomy," 

 the reference books of Barker, and to Dr. A. 

 W. Campbell's recent " Histological Studies 

 of Cerebral Localization." 



Published in this country, we already have 

 tm exhaustive compendium of the literature 

 up to that time, in Barker's " Nervous Sys- 

 tem " and, in its contemporary, the work of 

 Gordinier, we have a very excellent and serv- 

 iceable text-book. Dr. Santee's book is less 

 exhaustive as to the anatomy of the nervous 

 system than either of these and one of its 



aims is to include added findings which go to 

 make up the present status of our Imowledge. 

 It is designed as a text-book for medical stu- 

 dents primarily. In the preface it is stated 

 that the special objects in view throughout 

 the book are the " location of functional cen- 

 ters and the tracing of their afferent, asso- 

 ciative, and efferent connections." Attention 

 is very wisely given, in the general text, to 

 the embryology when such will aid the student 

 in comprehending the adult structures, and, 

 at the end of the book, a special chapter is 

 wholly devoted to the origin and differentia- 

 tion of the brain and spinal cord. 



In arrangement of subject-matter, the au- 

 thor has presented the structures in the order 

 which he thinks convenient to the dissector, 

 though the book is manifestly for use, not in 

 the dissecting room, but in the laboratory, 

 where properly hardened (and therefore long 

 removed) brains and spinal cords may be used, 

 supplemented with the study of stained sec- 

 tions under magnification. The order begins 

 with the meninges of the encephalon, then 

 passes to the cerebrum and rhombencephalon 

 with their various subdivisions, then takes up 

 the meninges of the spinal cord, followed by 

 a study of the cord itself, and ends with a 

 chapter on the tracing of impulses and the 

 chapter on embryology. 



While the dura mater of the base of the 

 cranium almost of necessity has to be studied 

 in the dissecting room, the spinal cord is more 

 easily and safely removed with its dura intact, 

 and usually it is thought that all the mem- 

 branes are best studied and their significance 

 better grasped while, or after, studying the 

 superficial characters of the structures they 

 envelope. In the study of related mechan- 

 isms, it is usually considered pedagogically 

 wisest to proceed from the simpler to the more 

 complex structures. The spinal cord, being 

 much less voluminous and its architecture 

 much more easily grasped, as well as having 

 functional precedence in most of the activi- 

 ties of the general body, is considered first by 

 the student in most laboratories. 



In the total 128 illustrations. Dr. Santee 

 has displayed good judgment in the choice of 

 those taken from other works, fifty-three of 



