720 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 882 



tries. A dictionary for the use of the medical 

 profession in this country must he prepared 

 along hroader lines and must include many 

 definitions which we search for in vain in 

 those of other countries. This makes the task 

 much more difficult, taking into consideration 

 the wonderful progress of medicine and its 

 collateral sciences in the last few years. Only 

 a physician of the highest professional attain- 

 ments can undertake such a work, and the 

 publisher must be congratulated on entrusting 

 this work to such a man as Dr. Cattell. His 

 editorial experience as editor of International 

 Climes, his laboratory work in some of our 

 best medical institutions and his high stand- 

 ing as pathologist and practitioner make him 

 eminently fitted for the task. The immediate 

 predecessor of the present book was Lippin- 

 cott's " Medical Dictionary," published in 1897 

 under the editorial collaboration of the late 

 Professor John Ashhurst, Professor George A. 

 Piersol and Professor Joseph P. Remington. 

 For this edition Dr. Cattell had the able as- 

 sistance of other collaborators to whom he 

 gives proper credit in the preface. One will 

 understand what an amount of painstaking 

 labor was involved in the preparation of the 

 present work when we state that Dr. Cattell 

 devoted five years to its completion. The 

 medical lexicographer is generally confronted 

 with such an " embarras de richesse " regard- 

 ing his material that it taxes an author's 

 greatest editorial ability to overcome the diffi- 

 culty satisfactorily. But we must admit, that 

 our author, by a wise economy in the grouping 

 of words, has not only solved this problem, but 

 also succeeded in such a way that his medical 

 dictionary contains more words than any other. 

 For instance, all words which begin with the 

 same initial element or are of the same ety- 

 mological origin are grouped together. This 

 space-saving method has made it possible to 

 insert so many new words and to give the 

 dictionary its encyclopedic character. The 

 etymology of words derived from foreign lan- 

 guages is always given, not, however, imme- 

 diately after the word, but after the defini- 

 tion, following here the arrangement of the 

 " Standard Dictionary." In this connection 



we may remark that the printing of the Greek 

 alphabet with its proper pronunciation in 

 English seems extremely appropriate, taking 

 into consideration the large number of physi- 

 cians who are not such apt Greek scholars as 

 Dr. Achilles Rose. Eponymic terms are pro- 

 fusely given, and at the same time accurately 

 and concisely, which is a very important 

 matter. The cross-references are ample and 

 are one of the most useful features of the 

 book. The author's aim to furnish the med- 

 ical student, the practitioner and the labora- 

 tory worker with a dictionary of moderate 

 compass and at a reasonable price is more than 

 fulfilled. It must indeed be very gratifying 

 for the author and for the publisher, that this 

 book, which was first published in August, 

 1910, met with such success that it had to be 

 reprinted within three months after publica- 

 tion and issued in a new edition within a 

 year. The new edition is materially increased; 

 about 500 new words have been inserted, and 

 71 new illustrations have been added. 



Take it all in all we do not hesitate to 

 recommend Lippincott's " New Medical Dic- 

 tionary " as an indispensable tool for the med- 

 ical profession at large. 



Felix Neumann 



Surgeon General's Library, 

 Washington, D. C. 



TEE MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION OF 



AMEBIC AN UNIVERSITIES AT THE 



UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO^ 



Nearly every one of the twenty-two univer- 

 sities constituting this association was repre- 

 sented at this meeting, the larger number of 

 them by its president and at least one dele- 

 gate, as was the case with Minnesota. 



The first paper presented was by Dean 

 Greene, of Illinois, on the question of the rela- 

 tive advantages of organizing university de- 

 partments on the usual plan of permanently 

 retaining a single head versus the Harvard 

 plan of a departmental committee under a 

 chairman. 



It was shown that while during the period 

 during which a department is small and in- 



'From the Minnesota Alumni WeeTcly. 



