REVIEWS. 
165 
PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY .* 
M EDICAL students have undoubtedly been hitherto at a loss for a 
handy book of physiological chemistry. True we may point to the 
fine treatise of Klein, Foster, Burdon-Sanderson, and Brunton ; but few in- 
deed are the students who have time to read and digest so elaborate a work. 
What most students require is a neat and compendious book which will 
serve as a guide in the physiological laboratory and will give them suffi- 
cient grasp of the subject to enable them to meet the examiner. It is not, 
now-a-days, enough to have . ‘ read up ’ the subject in a text-book, but the 
student must show that he has actually seen and handled what he reads 
about; he must prepare tissues for microscopic examination; he must test the 
proximate principles of the body ; he must demonstrate the chemical com- 
position and the characteristic reactions of the various constituents of the 
tissues and of the nutritive fluids. How is all this knowledge to be acquired 
in a limited time P Books on histology there certainly are ; but where can 
the student learn in small compass the pure chemistry of his subject P This 
is the want which Dr. Ralfe has set himself to supply, and we believe that 
the little work which he has produced is, in every way, fitted for its purpose. 
The instructions seem to be clear, concise, and trustworthy ; and every 
student in a physiological laboratory will find it useful to have it at his 
elbow. 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EARTH.f 
M R. WARD, when a young man of two-and-twenty, favoured the world 
with a modest essay, in which he enunciated his views on the constitu- 
tion of the Earth. The leading object of the writer was to show that the Earth 
had derived its existence from the Sun, and had been, and still was, slowly 
increasing in size : not by mechanical action, but by a physiological process 
analogous to the growth of an organic body. Six-and-thirty years have passed 
since that essay appeared, and science has meanwhile advanced with unex- 
pected rapidity. Nevertheless Mr. Ward believes that the march of science has 
only strengthened his position. Soon after the publication of his essay there 
appeared the Vestiges of Creation , and at a much later period The Origin of 
Species. But Mr. Ward had forestalled the writers of these works, and had 
convinced himself of the transmutability of species ; only he had his own 
way of explaining the operations of the laws of development. The present 
work is but an expansion of the earlier essay. It is not likely that Mr. Ward 
will secure a large number of adherents to his peculiar view that the Earth 
* Demonstrations in Physiological and Pathological Chemist'ry ; with a 
Concise Account of the Clinical Examination of Urine. By Charles Henry 
Ralfe, M.A.,M.D. (Cantab.), F.R.C.P.,&c. 8vo. London: David Bogue. 1880. 
t The Constitution of the Earth ; being an Interpretation of the Laws of 
God in Nature , by which the Earth and its organic life have been derived 
from the Sun by a progressive development. By Robert Ward. 8vo. London: 
George Bell and Sons. 1880 . 
