194 



THE AMERICAN NATURALIST 



[Vol. XLI 



PHYSIOLOGY 



Hough and Sedgwick's Physiology.*— "The authors of this work 

 beheve that extensive and fundamental changes must be made in the 

 elementary teaching of physiology, hygiene, and sanitation, if these 

 subjects are ever to occupy in the curriculum of education the place 

 which their intrinsic importance requires." This sentence from the 

 Preface to this new book by two well-known professors of biology is 

 the key-note to its importance, for their intention in this respect cer- 

 tainly has been fulfilled. Not only the students of high schools, 

 academies, and colleges actually need to know the facts and principles 

 set forth here, but so also does the long-graduated 'average man' if 

 he would live well. Especially is it one more step toAvards the recog- 

 nition educational theory is certainly about to make, that in education 

 every part of a boy's body one is educating at the same time and in 

 the most real manner also the capability of his whole mind. 



The book is divided into two nearly equal parts: 'Physiology,' 

 and 'The Hygiene of the Human Mechanism and the Sanitation 

 of its Surroundings,' respectively. The latter half is subdivided into 

 accounts of personal hygiene, domestic hygiene, and public hygiene 

 and sanitation, with an important introductory chapter in addition. 



The matter of the first part of the book is better than its arrange- 

 ment in chapters, for the nervous system is placed last and the mus- 

 cular mechanism early in the list. For the learner the much more 

 preferable order is just the reverse, it being certainly difficult really to 

 understand any one of the great organic functions until the coordi- 

 nating purpose of the nervous system is mastered. One deplores 

 too the omission of at least a brief discussion of protoplasm in general 

 as an introduction to its differentiated natures. 



A far more serious omission (but one morv easily defctisibltO is 

 that of the basal principles of rcpnxhiction. WIhmi all is said, at 



» The Human Mechanism: its Physiologj' and Hygiene and the Sanitation 

 of its Surroundings/' Theodore Hough and William T. SedgAvick. Boston, 

 Ginn & Company, [1907]. Pp. ix + 564. Illustrated. 



