BOOKS AND LITERATURE 



Osmotic Pressure. — All physiologists should know Alexander Find- 

 lay's Osmotic Pressure^ and know it well. This little book is one of 

 its publishers' series of Monographs on Inorganic and Physical Chem- 

 istry, this series being edited by the author of this book. 



Findlaj^ writes not primarily for physiologists, but for students of 

 physical chemistry, a feature which gives the reader to feel that he is 

 in contact with an author whose familiarity with the field here covered 

 goes deeper than that acquired by one whose interest in osmotic pres- 

 sure has been mainly physiological. The treatment is concise and at 

 the same time quite clear and readable; the reviewer read the book 

 through at a single sitting. Physiologists have long been in need of 

 just such a treatise as this, for most writers on physical chemistry are 

 interested in osmotic pressure largely for the advancement of the theory 

 of solutions, and the subject has usually received but inadequate 

 treatment excepting from this standpoint. The book before us seems 

 exceedingly well balanced, however, and all phases of this exceedingly 

 important domain receive what must be accounted a very adequate 

 treatment. A goodly number of references to the literature, extend- 

 ing from Abbe Nollet (1748) to Morse and other workers who are still 

 busy in this line, make an essential part of the presentation. 



Since Findlay's contribution toward the advance of physiology wiW 

 lie chiefly in helping to clear up the vagueness and ambiguity in regard 

 to osmotic pressure, so prevalent in the minds of biological students, 

 it may be well here to make brief mention of his treatment of the sub- 

 ject in some of its more befogged regions. Dutrochet's terms of endos- 

 mosis and exosmosis are tacitly dropped. "The single term osmosis 

 is now used to denote the whole process of diffusion through a mem- 

 brane or permeable septum" (p. 1, footnote). The importance of the 

 membrane in producing osmotic pressure receives here, at last, the 

 attention which it logically demands, though the matter is not as strongly 

 emphasized as might be desired. "In view of the misunderstandings 

 and confusion of thought to which the use of the expression 'osmotic 

 pressure of a solution' has given rise, it may be emphasized here that 



'Findlay, Alexander, Osmotic pressure. pp. 84. Longmans, London, 1913 

 ($1.00). 



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