478  EDITORIAL. 
thesis,  that  the  whole  subject  must  be  looked  upon  as  in  a  transition  state. 
Meanwhile,  facts  will  be  accumulating,  and  new  laws  will  be  developed, 
until  some  mighty  mind,  like  Lavoisier  or  Berzelius  in  the  past,  suited  to 
the  work,  seizes  on  the  simple,  fundamental  truths,  ('which  are  at  the  basis 
of  all  natural  arrangements)  and  give  order  and  consistency  to  the  whole  mass. 
It  is  perfectly  appalling  to  a  beginner  to  take  up  such  a  work  as  Gmelin's, 
and  look  through  the  long  columns  of  complex  combinations  which  the  few 
elements  of  organic  matter  are  capable  of  constituting ;  yet,  viewed  as  a 
magazine  of  facts — as  a  cyclopedia  of  all  that  is  known  in  chemistry,  the 
"Handbuch"  is  a  glorious  monument  to  the  industry  and  genius  of  the 
author,  and  a  boon  of  great  value  to  all  classes  of  chemists,  and  to  phar- 
maceutists, who  frequently  have  occasion  to  refer  to  chemical  authorities, 
even  when  possessing  few  claims  to  the  name  of  chemists  themselves. 
The  Physiological  Chemistry  of  Lehmann  is  the  second  of  the  three  vo- 
lumes. (See  vol.  xxiv.  p. 286,  for  a  notice  of  the  1st  volume.)  The  second  and 
last  part  is  not  yet  translated,  but  will  probably  appear  in  the  course  of  the 
present  or  early  in  the  next  year.  This  volume  is  occupied  in  the  descrip- 
tion and  discussion  of  the  animal  juices,  including  the  saliva,  gastric  juice, 
bile,  pancreatic  juice,  intestinal  juices  and  contents,  the  blood,  chyle,  lymph, 
milk,  seminal  fluid,  fluid'of  the  egg,  mucus,  cutaneous  secretions,  and  urine. 
In  the  treatment  of  his  subject  the  author  has  aimed  as  far  as  possible  to 
confine  himself  to  the  known — to  facts — as  recorded  by  the  most  reliable 
observers.  He  repudiates  the  strong  tendency  to  build  bold  and  compre- 
hensive theories  on  a  few  results,  that  even  themselves  will  oftentimes  not 
bear  the  test  of  repetition,  and  the  deductions  from  which  are  mere  chi- 
meras. He  remarks,  (page  9,)  "  If  ever  we  cherished  the  hope  of  combi- 
ning the  results  of  former  inquiries  in  one  scientific  whole,  constituting  a 
purely  inductive  branch  of  science,  in  accordance  with  our  view  of  the 
method  in  which  physiological  chemistry,  and  more  especially  the  theory  of 
the  animal  juices,  should  be  treated,  our  courage  would  fail,  as  indeed  it 
often  has  done,  when  we  attempted  the  accomplishment  of  such  a  task.  We 
believe  that,  in  the  first  volume,  we  have  already  sufficiently  explained  our 
view  of  the  very  great  deficiency  of  our  knowledge  in  this  deparment  of  the 
physical  sciences,  but  there  is  less  a  want  of  positive  knowledge  than  a  re- 
dundancy of  materials,  that  render  it  a  matter  of  almost  insurmountable 
difficulty  to  demonstrate  with  clearness  the  pure  and  unadulterated  charac- 
ter of  science  free  from  pretentious  delusions.  We  confess  that  we  have 
therefore  abstained  from  attempting  in  the  following  pages  to  give  the  whole 
mass  of  the  results  that  have  been  obtained  within  this  department  of 
science  from  all  experiments  and  observations,  whether  good  or  bad;  limit- 
ing ourselves  to  facts  collected  by  the  best  observers,  which,  as  far  as  our 
powers  and  exper  ence  permitted,  we  have  compared  with  the  results  of  our 
own  observations:  testing  the  different  conclusions  and  hypotheses  by  a 
course  of  logical  inquire." 
We  have  only  space  for  a  few  further  extracts  from  the  chapter  on  gastric  j  uice: 
"  Gastric  Juice.— The  fluid  wh:ch  accumulates  in  the,  stomach  after  the 
