890 Literary Notices. 



turn to " Intestinal Worms," and find an article that might have 

 been written twenty or thirty years ago, before the structure or 

 history of these creatures was understood. This is the more 

 discreditable, since the publication of Dr. Cobbold's JEntozoa has 

 placed a large body of accurate information within easy reach. The 

 relation of the hydatids to the tape-worms is not explained, and 

 barely alluded to. This article is perfectly useless to any student at 

 the present day. "We must carefully guard against condemning the 

 whole work because Professor Owen's part is badhy done. Unless 

 he takes reasonable pains to bring the remainder of his papers down 

 to within a few years of the present date, the student may save 

 himself trouble by considering the " biological sciences " omitted 

 from this edition. In other departments, he has a good chance of 

 getting the information which he wants, though now and then a slip 

 is made. Thus the writer of " Irradiation" misquotes the old ballad 

 of " Sir Patrick Spence," and explains what he calls the " new moon 

 in the old moon's arms" as an effect of irradiation ! 



Diarrhoea and Cholera ; their Origin, Proximate Cause, and 

 Cure, through the Agency of the Nervous Centres, by means of 

 Ice. By John Chapman, M.D., M.B.C.P., M.RC.S. (Triibner & Co.) 

 — Dr. Chapman considers summer diarrhoea and cholera to result 

 from over-stimulation of the vaso-motor centres by the heat of hot 

 climates or the summer of temperate climates. This excitation of 

 vaso-motive action induces contraction of the blood-vessels supplying 

 the intestines, and at the same time stimulates the mucous glands. 

 Ice reduces vaso-motor energy, and removes the diseases. This is 

 Dr. Chapman's argument, ingeniously supported by reasoning, and 

 by an appeal to cases. If this is a true explanation of cholera, how 

 does it account for the winter attacks of that malady, which, if we 

 remember right, were very violent some years ago, both in Russia 

 and Scotland? Dr. Chapman stands out favourably from the 

 ordinary run of doctors by having a philosophy, and by having 

 arrived at it through a process of reasoning upon physiological 

 facts. Whether he is right or wrong, numerous experiments must 

 show. He is an independent thinker, and having studied medicine 

 somewhat late in life, he was probably less amenable to the baneful 

 influences in favour of mere orthodoxy am! receptivity which 

 medical schools appear to exert on ordinary pupils. 



Elements of Physics and Natural Philosophy. Written for 

 General Use in ISTon-technical Language. By Neil Arnott, M.D. 

 Sixth and Completed Edition. Part II. (Longmans.) — This 

 second part and volume of Dr. Arnott's great popular work treats 

 of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and astronomy ; and in an 

 appendix we find a brief treatise on popular geometry, which might 

 be advantageously extended and published in a separate form. We 

 cannot say that the second volume of the " Elements of Physics" is as 

 good as the first, though it contains much valuable matter admirably 

 put. The portion relating to heat was written before heat 

 was generally considered as a mode of motion ; and although 

 modern ideas and discoveries are slightly noticed, they do not occupy 

 the position to which they are fairly entitled. From section 115, 



