450 
REVIEWS. 
sive character — some branches of it, indeed, of that rapidly 
advancing nature, that the pen of the author can hardly 
keep pace with the medical innovations and improvements of 
the day. Anatomy is found to undergo, ever and anon, ampler 
development, to receive additions to its stock of facts ; in 
physiology, either novel theories arestruck out, or alterations 
are made in those already in existence; while disease of some 
kind is discovered to have been erroneously delineated, or 
to have been attributed to wrong causes, or else treated on 
unstable principles ; all which renders the steps of .the 
editor of an anti- dated medical work, fearful and perilous in 
the extreme, lest he hit not off the latest medical facts and 
theories, or do not succeed in keeping his pages uniform and 
level with the most recent improvements of the day ; though, 
take what pains he may to accomplish this, he will, after all, 
run great risk of finding himself below high-water mark. 
The last edition of the “ Outlines 55 coming to us “ revised, 
improved/’ and enlarged, by Delabere Blaine himself, appeared 
in 1841, and is numbered “ the fifth edition ;’ 5 though little 
differing from its predecessor, the fourth : its venerable and 
aged author having at the time passed his “ three score years 
and ten/’ and being less capable of, or inclined to, the labours 
of authorship. This accounts for the very little w hich, in 
reality, was done towards amendment or improvement, and 
this rendered the book, at the time that it came into the 
hands of its editor, Mr. Mayhew, so much the more still in 
need of “revision and correction. 5 ’ We will not say the w r ork 
had become altogether “a dead letter/’ but w r e will take upon 
ourselves to pronounce the condition it had degenerated into, 
as, if not quite in itself, next door to, an “ Augean stable ; 55 so 
loud at this time did it “groan for correction. 55 
But words insufficiently express the extent to which our 
editor has found it necessary to employ the pruning knife, or 
rather say sickle ; — nay, the scythe too had to be used on occa- 
sions, as will be seen by such passages as the following : — 
STRUCTURE OF THE TEETH. 
“ Teeth are supposed to have some specialties of structure which dis- 
tinguish them from simple bone; and, a, priori, something of this kind might 
