893.] Recent Literature. 1077 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Piersol's H istology.'—This text-book requires more than a pass- 
ing notice. The four hundred illustrations, with the exception of a 
little over ten per cent. of them, are from original drawings by the 
author, and give to the book an air of originality that is refreshing. 
'This book is the only American Manual of histology that has yet 
been published that meets the requirements of modern methods of 
teaching. It is not overburdened with accounts of methods and descrip- 
tions of laboratory appliances, too numerous to be brought into 
an elementary course. About twenty pages at the close of the volume, 
are given up to the discussion of the best standard method of fixing, 
mounting, staining and embedding, that are used in histology, without 
giving a bewildering lot of detail that is more calculated to appal than 
to inform the beginner. 
This course seems to the writer a rational one, and is a feature that 
will especially commend the book to students, who wish to get an actual 
working knowledge of histology. 
The descriptive part is full, without being burdened with detail that 
is of no essential use to the beginner in acquiring an elementary knowl- 
edge of the subject. The important tissue-structures and relations of 
tissues, are indicated in the text with heavy-faced type, so that the student 
has before him the important points indicated to him by catch-words. 
Without pretending to be a treatise on embryology, the subject of the 
development of the tissues and tissue-elements is dealt with fully enough 
for the purposes of a text-book especially intended for medical students. 
The original figures are derived very largely from preparations made 
from the human subject.and the book, therefore, has an added value, 
from the fact that it is a new contribution to the iconography of the 
subject. 
Blaeu attention is given to the most recent developments in cytol- 
ogy and in the histology of the nervous system, in both of which great 
recent advances have been made to bring it up to modern requirements. 
. The volume is well gotten up and altogether reflects much credit u 
the successor of Professor Leidy, who was, it may not be generally known, 
1 Text-book of Normal Histology, grid an account he the development of the 
tissues and of the organs. By George A. Piersol, M. D., Professor of Anatomy, ket 
versity of Pennsylvania. 8 vo, pp. 439, with 409 ose in the text. Philad 
phia, J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1893. 
