784 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 542. 



tiquity lias grown into dozens of full vol- 

 umes, hundreds of chapters and thousands 

 of special papers, not to include the tens of 

 thousands of ill-recorded scientific utter- 

 ances and literal millions of press items. 

 This vast lite'rature is not easily summed; 

 it must suffice to say that the evidence 

 seems to establish the existence of man in 

 Asia and Europe and northern Africa dur- 

 ing later Tertiary times, and thus before 

 the glacial periods of the Pleistocene; but 

 that the earliest Americans lagged behind, 

 coming in probably before all the ice-peri- 

 ods closed, possibly nearer the earlier than 

 the latest. Despite the wealth of literature, 

 there is a woeful dearth of definite knowl- 

 edge concerning the date or dates of man's 

 appearance in different lands — and herein 

 lies another of the present problems of 

 anthropology. 



Such are some of the larger problems of 

 anthropology, that youngest science whose 

 field touches those of all the rest. The 

 special problems are legion: those of gen- 

 eral sort are at once problems of science 

 and of statecraft, of the daily life and wel- 

 fare of millions, of greatest good to the 

 greatest number. Fortunately all are such 

 as to be solved by the slow but sure proc- 

 esses of observation and generalization; 

 and it is especially pleasing to see — and to 

 say — that these scientific processes are more 

 steadily and successfully under way now 

 than ever before. W J McGee. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 Post-mortem Pathology : A Manual of Post- 

 mortem Examinations and the Interpreta- 

 tions to be drawn therefrom. A Practical 

 Treatise for Students and Practitioners. 

 By Henry W. Cattell, A.M., M.D. Sec- 

 ond revised and enlarged edition. Phila- 

 delphia and London, J. B. Lippincott Co. 

 1905. Pp. xii -f- 551. Copiously illustrated. 

 Pathological anatomy as a control of clin- 

 ical observation has formed, and to a large 

 €xtent still forms, the main basis of our more 



exact knowledge of disease. After the study 

 of human anatomy had revealed to them the 

 parts into which the body is divided, it was a 

 very natural curiosity which prompted medical 

 men to examine after death the bodies of hu- 

 man beings who during life had manifested 

 phenomena which deviated from the normal. 

 Indeed, before the era of modern experi- 

 mental inquiry developed in medicine, facts of 

 normal and pathological physiology had for 

 the most part to be reached through the com- 

 bined results of clinical and post-mortem ob- 

 servation. The discovery of the seat of dis- 

 ease, it was believed, would be most helpful in 

 leading to a knowledge of its cause; this idea 

 was shared by Morgagni, the distinguished 

 founder of the science of pathological anat- 

 omy, as is evidenced by the title of his chief 

 treatise: De sedibus et causis morborum per 

 anatomen indagatis, and it was believed in 

 by the great pathological anatomists, like John 

 Hunter, who followed him. 



At first, post-mortem pathology confined it- 

 self largely to the determination of variations 

 in the gross form, consistence, appearance and 

 weight of the more conspicuous organs, but 

 gradually this naked-eye study became ex- 

 tended in a methodical way to all parts of the 

 cadaver until to-day the macroscopic side alone 

 of a completely performed autopsy has as- 

 sumed formidable proportions. The micro- 

 scopic study of pathological anatomy received 

 a great impetus in the first half of the last 

 century through the activities of the so-called 

 pathological-anatomical school in Prance, the 

 representatives of which, including Cruveil- 

 hier, Chomel, Andral and Louis, maintained 

 that one of the chief functions of the physi- 

 cian consists of a search for pathological- 

 anatomical alterations and of the investigation 

 of the local products of disease; this view 

 exerted an extraordinary influence in trans- 

 forming the methods and theories of medical 

 men. The tendency was transplanted by the 

 celebrated Eokitansky to Vienna, where it was 

 further developed. It reached its acme, how- 

 ever, in the work of Virchow, who, passing 

 from macroscopic studies to rnicroscopic ex- 

 aminations and taking advantage of the his- 

 tological discoveries which were being made, 



