REVIEWS. 
73 
Has he been able to adduce a single undoubted instance of cholera produced 
by the action of external temperature ? If not, then be is hardly warranted 
in denying the evidence already accumulated in support of the contagion 
and poison theories. The next point to be noticed in Dr. Chapman’s book 
is that which refers to his treatment. The author, believing that the action 
of heat in the spine is the cause of cholera, considers that ice applied over 
the sympathetic centres is the only reliable remedy in cholera cases. Of 
course, if we admit Dr. Chapman’s conclusions as above, we cannot deny the 
truth of his proposition that ice is the sheet-anchor of remedial agents in 
cholera ; but, as we have already said, we do not think that the author’s 
argument rests on a sound basis. However, it is interesting to see what are 
the results of his practice, and we beg to refer our readers to Dr. Chapman’s 
volume for a most conscientious report on this part of the subject. We 
cannot say that the proportion of recoveries is anything very surprising, but 
our readers will judge or themselves on this point. One thing must be 
admitted; that of the hundred and one treatises on cholera which have been 
published during the past year, Dr. Chapman’s is at once the most interest- 
ing, the most scientific, and the most scholarly. 
MODERN CHEMISTRY EOR STUDENTS.* 
T O anyone but an eager follower of the study of chemistry, Dr. Frank- 
land’s book must appear very repulsive ; and did we not know what 
numbers there are devoted to this wondrous science, we should quake for 
the result to the enterprising publisher who issues it. 
The object of the work is to free the attendant at the Professor’s lectures 
from the necessity of taking notes of the matters brought before his notice, 
and so to prevent distraction from much that is being uttered, in order to 
have a record of the rest. All descriptive matter — at least nearly all — is 
omitted, as being within the student’s reach in other treatises ; and the work 
mainly consists of explanations, in symbolical language, of the chemical 
changes by which bodies are produced and by which they pass into others. 
The modern atomic weights are employed, but the notation is peculiar to 
Dr. Frankland, though now before the chemical world, to a certain extent at 
least, for some years. In the symbolical formulae of a body, our distin- 
guished author endeavours to represent at a glance, to the initiated, a 
synopsis of its chemical properties. The formulae are also expressions of 
ascertained facts concerning the body, and but little hypothesis. The typical 
formulae of Gerhardt have been found valuable to chemists, because they 
represented, to a considerable extent, the number of atoms of one element 
necessary to meet the combining power of another, thus furnishing an 
explanation of the faculty of atoms of becoming linked into complex groups. 
* u Lecture Notes for Chemical Students ; embracing Mineral and Organic 
Chemistry.” By Edward Frankland, F.R.S. &c. Professor of Chemistry at 
the Royal Institution of Great Britain and in the Government School of 
Mines. London : Van Voorst, 1866. 
