i 3 4 



THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY 





supreme instance of what can be done by one man. 

 Even others, who hold that the conditions of time 

 and place, the surroundings of every sort, the capac- 

 ity of receptivity of the human mind, have, more 

 than any individual effort, brought about the great 

 steps in the world's history, cannot well deny, that 

 even if this step were to come, without Muhammad, 

 it would have been indefinitely delayed . ' ' 



The book contains much matter of great 

 interest to the sociologist, the psycholo- 

 gist, and the eugenist, as well as to the his- 

 torian sensu stricto. It is interesting to 

 learn, for example, that none of the sons of 

 the first three Caliphs, Abu Bakr, Omar, 

 and Othman, all of whom were indeed 

 superior persons, "inherited their father's 

 character." 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



By Logan Cltndening. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 



$5 .00 6 x 9 J ; xxii + 399 New York 



THE HUMAN BODY. 



By Trevor Heaton. E. P. Duff on and Co. 



$3 .00 5! x 8; ix + 150 New York 



These two books with the same title 

 appear almost simultaneously, the first 

 by an American practising physician, 

 the second by an Oxford don. Both are 

 sound, authoritative, well-written trea- 

 tises intended to give the layman a clear 

 and sufficient understanding of how his 

 body is put together and how it works in 

 health and in disease. Both serve this 

 purpose incomparably better than any 

 prior books in the field. They make both 

 the old-fashioned "family doctor book" 

 and the high-school "physiology and 

 hygiene" look the sad, dull things that 

 they were. 



So far the two books travel along to- 

 gether. Then their paths begin to di- 

 verge. Dr. Clendening's book is vastly 

 more entertaining, better and more exten- 

 sively illustrated, and written with a 



Gargantuan dash, vigor, wit, and humor 

 which leaves it with no real competitor 

 whatever. He explodes ruthlessly all the 

 popular superstitions about the body and 

 its care which have held sway over the 

 lay mind, and only in lesser degree over a 

 good fraction of the collective medical 

 mind, for many long ages. Altogether, 

 Dr. Clendening has made a notable con- 

 tribution to the joy of the world as well as 

 to the store of common knowledge. His] 

 book will irritate the pedants and the 

 uplifters, in and out of the medical pro-, 

 fession, but we see no harm in that. 



POPULATION PROBLEMS OF 

 AGE OF MALTHUS. 

 By G. Talbot Griffith. The Macmillan Ct 

 $5 .00 55 x 8f ; 2.jG New York 



In this extremely interesting and useful 

 volume the author has attempted to recon- 

 struct for modern eyes the statistical pic- 

 ture which Malthus had before him when 

 he wrote his essay. 





"This theory that an increasing population was 

 in all cases desirable and necessary became an axiom 

 which continued for some centuries, and discussions 

 were always taking place as to the various means of 

 securing this. Towards the end of the eighteenth 

 century, when, in point of fact, the population was 

 increasing with a rapidity hitherto unapproached, 

 there was, owing largely to the failure to take a 

 Census, a great feeling that the population was 

 decreasing. 



"It was into such an atmosphere that Malthus's 

 Essay on Population burst. The continued absence of 

 any reliable and official figures of the population 

 heightened the surprise effect of the essay, and when 

 in 1 801 a Census was taken, it confirmed what 

 Malthus had said about the increase of the population 

 up to that time. The Essay, backed up by the Census, 

 killed the axiom that under all circumstances an 

 increasing population is desirable." 



The book is a valuable contribution to 

 the history of human biology. 





