1883.] Analyses of Books . 103 
hospitals show a desire to “ dabble in bricks and mortar.” The 
new buildings are fitted with water-closets placed in the interior 
of the buildings, and thus sewer-gas is laid on, and conveyed 
almost to the bed-side of the patients, whilst drains are made, 
as in the majority of modern dwelling-houses, to run underneath 
the building. It is lamentable how completely men of science, 
commonly so-called, forget that a water-joint does not prevent 
the interchange of gases. 
The results of the Listerian system in surgery are proved to 
be decidedly successful. The author, in pointing to the value of 
the work of such men as Lister, Wells, and others, asks pointedly 
why the highest honour ever earned by a physican or a surgeon 
is a baronetcy, whilst lawyers and financiers may aspire to and 
frequently attain peerages ? Walter Savage Landor complained 
that the “ blackest mud of the Bar and the Exchange ” was 
“ shovelled up against us in heaps.” 
Dev Chemismus, Magnetismus, und Diamagnetismus in Lichte 
melir dimensionalev Raum-anschauung .* By Richard 
Brosch. Leipzig: R. Brosch. 
Our readears will doubless admit that we have here to grapple 
with a perplexing and a thankless subjedt. To ignore it because 
it seems not easily reconcilable with the orthodoxies of modern 
science is contrary to our custom, and to our notions of duty. 
To form, as far as we are able, a fair and impartial estimate of 
its value, is to offend two opposite parties, each of which tacitly 
demands from us a benevolent neutrality. The subject has also 
its inherent difficulties. To judge of an attempt to consider 
chemism ( i.e ., the totality of chemical phenomena), magnetism, 
and diamagnetism, in relation to a concept of space of more 
than three dimensions, a clear understanding of such space, and 
of what it involves, is essential. But such a clear understanding 
we do not possess. We do not deny that possibly to beings 
higher than man— the existence of which in the universe we 
here neither affirm nor deny — space may perhaps appear to admit 
of four dimensions. But this consideration does not assist us in 
the least. Perhaps our best course will be to quote from the 
work before us a popular presentation of the matter, which Herr 
Brosch, curiously enough, borrows from an opponent, — Professor 
Vogel. 
“ We measure space according to a threefold extension, — 
* Ghemism, Magnetism, and Diamagnetism in the Light of a Poly-dimen- 
sional View of Space. 
