X SS 5 *] Analyses of Books. 355 
to describe the characteristic behaviour of a very great number 
of substances. 
The work is, we are told, primarily intended for the use of 
medical students, and hence we find a chapter devoted to exa- 
mination for poisons. It is, of course, theoretically speaking, 
unchemical to classify bodies according to their behaviour with 
the living animal or vegetable body ; but to the medical practi- 
tioner, the pharmacist, and the sanitarian this category is very 
useful. Among the poisons we find no mention of chromium, 
which is now used on a vast scale in the arts, and may conse- 
quently give rise to accidents. 
The methods laid down for the recognition of the various sub- 
stances may be considered as satisfactory. 
The least acceptable feature of the book, in our opinion, is 
that it is written from the “ examinational ” point of view at 
present endemic in England. 
Notes from the Physiological Laboratory of the University of 
Pennsylvania. Edited by N. A. Randolph, M.D., and S. 
G. Dixon. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott and Co. 
We have here the records of original investigations undertaken 
chiefly from the point of view of the practical physician. These 
papers discuss in succession the faeces of starch-fed infants ; 
the feces of persons receiving inunctions of cod-liver oil ; the 
distribution of gluten within the wheat-grain ; the effects of the 
administration of turpeth mineral ; a reaction common to pep- 
tone and the bile-salts ; the behaviour of hydrobromic acid and 
of potassium iodide in the digestive traCt ; the digestion of raw 
and boiled milk ; the nutritive value of branny foods ; a meta- 
static heat-regulator ; the behaviour of petrolatum in the digestive 
traCt ; the cutaneous absorption of nicotine ; the dietetic faCtor 
in the treatment of angina peCtoris ; a painless escharotic ; and 
the cutaneous absorption of salicylic acid. 
The first of these papers, which we have had the pleasure of 
receiving and noticing in a separate form some time ago, proves 
that, contrary to the general opinion, many children under three 
months of age can digest starchy foods. 
The second memoir demonstrates that, in a majority of per- 
sons, both infants and adults, cod-liver oil applied persistently to 
the skin makes its appearance in the excretions. 
In the paper on wheat-grain the author questions the assump- 
tion that the gluten is found almost — if not quite exclusively 
in the fourth layer of the grain, as according to Parkes, imme- 
