May io, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



3^7 



Cholera Treatment. — Dr. Yvert, who claims to have had 

 a large experience in the treatment of Asiatic cholera, reports that 

 by the use of bichloride of mercury he has been able to reduce the 

 mortality from 66 to 20 per cent. He also says, that, used as a 

 prophylactic in those who have recently arrived in a region infected 

 with cholera, it has in every instance warded off the disease. 



Yellow-Fever in Florida. — From the best information we 

 have been able to obtain, the reported case of yellow- fever at San- 

 ford, Fla., was a true case. The patient, a Mrs. Dumont, wife of 

 a boarding-house keeper, died April 20. 



Insomnia. — Insomnia is an affection which is trying to both 

 physician and patient alike, and many are the remedies which have 

 been recommended for its cure. The latest of these is the peanut, 

 eaten ad libitum just before retiring. A member of the clergy re- 

 ports success with the peanut after having tried other means with- 

 out result. 



Tobacco-Smoking. — We have recently given the views of 

 different physicians as to the effects of tobacco-smoking upon 

 health, and have also referred to experiments bearing upon the 

 question of the antiseptic power of tobacco-fumes. Additional 

 evidence on these points is constantly accumulating. Dr. Hajekof 

 Vienna has declared that smokers are less liable to diphtheria than 

 non-smokers in the ratio of i to 2.8 ; and Dr. Schiff says that 

 smoking is forbidden in the bacteriological laboratories, because it 

 is known to hinder the development of bacteria in the various cul- 

 ture-media. 



ACTION OF Electric Light on the Eyes. — A new disease, 

 called photo-electric ophthalmia, is described as due to the con- 

 tinual action of the electric light on the eyes. The patient is 

 wakened in the night by severe pain around the eye, accompanied 

 with excessive secretion of tears. An oculist of Cronstadt is said 

 to have had thirty patients thus affected under his care in the last 

 ten years. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



Physiological Notes oji Priinary Education a?id the Study of 

 Langicage. By MARY PUTNAM JACOBI, M.D. New York 

 and London, Putnam. 12°. $1. 

 " If literature were the business of life, or if, as was at one time 

 supposed, education meant nothing else but acquaintance with 

 literature, there would be some logic in the extraordinary promi- 

 nence habitually assigned in education to the study of modes of 

 expression. But from the modern standpoint, that education 

 means such an unfolding of the faculties as shall put the mind 

 into the widest and most effective relation with the entire world of 

 things, spiritual and material, there is an exquisite absurdity in the 

 time-honored method." Such is the opinion of the author ; and 

 such, we are glad to say, is the growing opinion of all observant 

 men and women, except, perhaps, those whose observation is 

 limited by the walls of their classrooms, and who do not discern 

 the signs of the times. Dr. Jacobi gives us, in this book of but 

 one hundred and twenty pages, the account of a most interesting 

 personal experiment in primary education, in which a child was 

 taught algebraic signs as a means of concisely expressing certain 

 relations, long before any attempt was made to learn how to 

 write. It would be interesting, did space permit, to follow in 

 detail this experiment. By the time the child was four and a half 

 years old, she had learned the following elements : straight, 

 curved, slanting, and half-slanting lines ; also to distinguish per- 

 pendicular and horizontal lines, and to draw either straight or 

 curved lines parallel to each other. She was well acquainted with 

 all forms of the triangle, the rectangle, square, trapezium, trape- 

 zoid, pentagon, hexagon, circle, and cube. When five years, the 

 child was taught the equality of any two subjects which were 

 demonstrably equal to the same third. And so the child went on 

 to arithmetic, the meaning of words, and botany, before she was 

 six years old. 



The author discusses quite fully the place for the study of lan- 

 guage in a curriculum of education. On this subject Dr. Jacobi 

 says that it is necessary to maintain a just proportion between the 



study of languages and the other studies of a general curriculum. 

 The effect on mental development and training is to be obtained, 

 if at all, by the age of fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen. By this time 

 the pupil requires the broader and more robust discipline of other 

 knowledge, pursued with the thoroughness of scientific method 

 which will then be practicable. It is undesirable to continue the 

 systematic study of languages at this time (they should be dropped 

 altogether) ; although the habit of reading in all may be most 

 profitably kept up, and other subjects, especially history, studied 

 through their medium. We must confess a great deal of surprise at 

 some of the results which Dr. Jacobi reached in her experiment 

 with the child already referred to. Had this child's accomplish- 

 ments been reported to us in ordinary conversation, we should 

 have regarded her as a phenomenon. But it is evident that hefr 

 teacher believes that what was done with her could be done with 

 the average child ; and we have too much confidence in Dr. Jacobi 

 to deny it without due consideration, yet would like to see the ex- 

 periment carried out on a large scale before deciding that the plan 

 was a feasible one. Having given no little attention to the study 

 of languages, and knowing some of their difficulties, we are aston- 

 ished to find the author stating that " one great reason for teach- 

 ing children a reading acquaintance with four or five languages 

 between the ages of eight and fourteen, is, that by the latter age 

 they may really know these languages, and then begin to study 

 something else, or of more immediate practical utility," as if a child 

 could at the age of fourteen have a reading acquaintance with four 

 or five languages, and really know them. We should be glad to 

 learn that the opportunity had been given Dr. Jacobi to carry out 

 her plan on a sufficiently extended scale to determine its practica- 

 bility, for the results which she claims are certainly much to be 

 desired. 



AMONG THE PUBLISHERS. 



GiNN & Co. have just issued " A Vocabulary to the First Six 

 Books of Homer's Iliad," by Professor Thomas D. Seymour of Yale 

 College. It is claimed that a concise special vocabulary to the 

 Homeric poems, or to parts of them, is open to far fewer objections 

 than a similar vocabulary to any other work of Greek literature, 

 since the words are found more nearly in their original significa- 

 tions and constructions. This vocabulary has not been compiled 

 from other dictionaries, but has been made from the poem itself. 

 The maker has endeavored to be concise, — to give nothing but 

 what is important for the accurate and appreciative reading of the 

 Iliad, — and yet to show the original and derived meanings of the 

 words, and to suggest translations which should be both simple 

 and dignified. A confident hope is felt that the concise form of 

 this vocabulary will save much time for the beginner in Homer. 

 More than twenty woodcuts, most of which are new in this country, 

 illustrate the antiquities of the Iliad. 



— The Index of Current Events (Montreal) was originally in- 

 tended as a weekly for the use of editors only, and the amount of 

 the annual subscription was decided upon with due regard to the 

 comparatively limited possibilities in the way of circulation among 

 the class it was intended to serve. It has since been suggested 

 that an index of this character might have a much wider utility, 

 and that in particular all those whose calling it is in any way to 

 educate and mould public opinion would find such a publication of 

 considerable service. The Index of Current Events is therefore 

 offered at one dollar per annum, post free. 



— T. Y. Crowell & Co. will publish soon George Brandes' " Im- 

 pressions of Russia," in which are included chapters on Russian 

 literature, which has been translated by Samuel C. Eastman of 

 Concord, N.H., who spent last summer in Denmark, and worked 

 under Brandes' supervision. 



— Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. have nearly ready a collection of 

 poems by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the eminent Philadelphia physician, 

 entitled " The Cup of Youth," which will be published in shape 

 similar to his former volume, " A New Year's Masque ; " and a 

 volume by Mrs. A. J. Woodman, a niece of the poet Whittier, en- 

 titled " Picturesque Alaska," giving an amusing account of experi- 

 ences on a trip to Alaska, illustrated with photographs of the most 



