66 
REVIEWS. 
THE ELECTRICITY OF THE BODY/ 
I T is unquestionable that the number of workers in pure physiology in this 
country is extremely small, for example, as compared with either Ger- 
many or Italy. Nevertheless, there are a certainnumber of earnest genuine men 
among us who have made, and are still making, valuable researches in phy- 
siological matters. And foremost in the ranks of these few must be placed 
the author of the present volume, who is almost alone in England the re- 
presentative of Matteucci, Du Bois-Reymond, Pfliiger, and Eckhard, and 
other workers in foreign countries. Not recently has he taken up the pur- 
suit of animal electricity, but twenty years ago, and ever since has he 
devoted the leisure hours obtained from a heavy practice to the pursuit of 
the electricity of animals. And it is the more remarkable because he has, 
in the book before us now, given wholly up many of the views which were 
held as true in his former volumes. We say this because we think that it 
is infinitely to the author’s credit that he has openly admitted his mistake 
and gone on another tack of scientific discovery. Of course men in the open 
pursuit of science will readily understand how an author may make mistakes. 
There is not a day nor an hour when our chemists and astronomers and 
zoologists are not making mistakes of the most serious character, mistakes 
which are calculated to leave each of their sciences on the stand-still for 
years ; but we are sorry to say that they do not always confess, their errors 
as candidly as the author of the present volume. We do not mean to say 
that they knowingly conceal their mistakes, or endeavour to give a semblance 
of truth to what they know to be false doctrine ; but they fail to see their 
errors till they have spent whole years of their life in bitter and hostile 
controversy. Therefore we have nothing but praise to award Dr. Radcliffe 
for the honesty and openness of his avowal. 
In the present volume he sets to work in real earnest at his subject, and 
he has given us the fruits of his later years’ researches. These involve work 
done with Sir W. Thomson’s “ New Quadrant Electrometer,” and the new 
u B. A. Unit of Resistance,” which was devised by the late Dr. Matthiessen, 
F.R.S., when he was lecturer at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is clear, therefore, 
that through the employment of these two instruments quite a new field 
* “ Dynamics of Nerve and Muscle.” By Charles Bland Radcliffe, M.D., 
F.R.C.P. London : Macmillan and Co., 1871. 
