360 
Analyses of Books. 
[June, 
Vichy and its Therapeutical Resources. By Prosser James, 
M.D., M.R.C.P. Fifth Edition. Bailliere, Tindall, and 
Cox. 
This pamphlet presents little to attract the especial notice of our 
readers. It gives a description of the Vichy springs, their origin, 
and the history of the Spa. The account of the neighbourhood 
is flavoured with a soupqon of satire : — “Our Continental friends 
have either an excessively keen eye for the beautiful, as well as 
the curious and rare, or a very poor opinion of John Bull’s judg- 
ment, for they never fail to find something for him to see, and, 
having seen, to pay for. A house in which some one was born, 
or died ; a ruin which may have been a castle, or may not ; a 
convent, a church, — anything, in short, which can be seen is 
called a sight, and serves the purpose of extracting a franc from 
the purse of the credulous traveller.” 
Next follows a chemical analysis of the waters, which it ap- 
pears all contain a modicum of arsenic. The present rage for 
mineral waters — all we believe imported — shows what may be 
done by persistent advertising. The life-pills led the way and 
the waters followed. 
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. By Robert 
Chambers, LL.D. Twelfth Edition, with an Introduction 
relating to the authorship of the work by Alexander 
Ireland. London and Edinburgh : W. and R. Chambers. 
It is hard for men still on the sunny side of their fortieth year 
to realise the outcry which greeted the first edition of the 
“ Vestiges.” It is harder still for those who are now waxing old 
to look back upon that outcry without a feeling of deep humilia- 
tion — shame for our country and shame for our boasted and 
boastful nineteenth century. For the part taken in this tumult 
by the churches — the so-called religious world — there was, 
indeed, slight and scanty cause. For the book denounced, when 
viewed by men in their sober senses, is found to be, alike in its 
line of argument, its purpose, and its very title, plainly theistic 
and at issue with no point of the creeds of Christianity. 
But the conduct of a great part of the scientific world of the 
day is even more to be deplored than is that of ecclesiastics. 
The late author said, as quoted in Mr. Ireland’s introduction : — 
“ I feel embarrassed in presenting myself in direct opposition to 
so many men possessing talent and information, but I think 
there are reasons independent of judgment for the scientific class 
