470 REVIEWS. 



The definitions, while concise, are comprehensive, and the correct 

 pronunciation, the capitalization, and the derivation of the words 

 are given. By the use of thin but opaque paper and small but 

 clear-cut type, compactness is secured without sacrificing com- 

 pleteness or legibility, while reference is facilitated by printing 

 the words in heavy type and making them project beyond the 

 line of the paragraph. The work is supplemented by many 

 anatomical, clinical, posological, and therapeutical tables and by 

 a large number of good plates, many of which are colored. The 

 book is well and attractively bound in limp red leather. 



E. L. W. 



Contributions to Medical Science by Howard Taylor Ricketts 1870-1910. 

 Published as a Tribute to his Memory by his Collea^es under the 

 Auspices of the Chicago Pathological Society. The University of 

 Chicago Press. Chicago, Illinois. 1911. Pp. 497. Cloth. 



This volume, in which are collected all of the original papers 

 of investigations published by Doctor Ricketts and his pupils, 

 forms a worthy memorial to this brillant young man who had 

 accomplished so much, who gave such promise for the future, and 

 who sacrificed his life to science. A statement by the Committee 

 of the Chicago Pathological Society appointed to prepare a suit- 

 able memorial and a short biography of Doctor Ricketts by 

 Ludvig Hektoen forms a suitable introduction to the volume. 

 The earlier papers on blastomycosis and imamunology are 

 important contributions to medical science, but it is the work on 

 Rocky Mountain spotted fever and typhus fever that established 

 the reputation of Doctor Ricketts as a brilliant investigator. 

 Rocky Mountain spotted fever was a disease of unknown etiology 

 which occurs in certain regions of Montana and adjacent states 

 and which was supposed to be communicated to man by the bite 

 of a tick. Doctor Ricketts concluded that this disease is caused 

 by a small bacillus which he was unable to cultivate on artificial 

 media and which is transmitted from man to man by the bite of 

 a tick, Dermacentor occidentalis, occurring in the region where 

 thi? disease is endemic. He further proved that there is a hered- 

 itary transmission of the specific microorganism from tick to its 

 offspring through the egg. These discoveries, if substantiated, 

 are not only of importance as elucidating the etiology and 

 epidemiology of the disease under consideration, but they dis- 

 closed new biological principles that promise to be of great 

 significance to medicine. Hitherto it had been believed that 

 only protozoan and spirochaete diseases were transmitted by ticks 



