48 
Reviews. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Phartn. 
\    January,  1896. 
But  the  above  are  minor  defects,  which  do  not  seriously  mar  a  valuable 
work. 
The  publishers  are  to  be  congratulated  on  the  good  appearance  of  the  book. 
E.  S.  Bastin. 
OuTeines  of  Materia  Medica  and  Pharmacology.  By  H.  M.Bracken, 
M.D.,  Professor  of  Materia  Medica,  Therapeutics  and  Clinical  Medicine,  Uni- 
versit}'  of  Minnesota.    Philadelphia:  P.  Blakiston,  Son  &  Co.  1895. 
There  is  doubtless  a  growing  demand  in  our  medical  schools  for  more  com- 
pact text-books.  Many  of  the  older  ones  and  some  of  the  new  are  not  only 
expensive,  but  they  are  too  long-drawn-out  to  permit  of  the  student's  reading 
them  thoroughly,  do  equal  justice  to  a  dozen  or  more  other  text-books  of  simi- 
lar length  on  other  branches  of  medicine,  and  at  the  same  time  accomplish  the 
large  amount  of  laboratory  work  required  in  a  modern  medical  course,  all  in 
the  limited  period  of  three  or  four  terms.  Hence  the  diminished  sale  of  such 
comprehensive  works,  and  the  increasing  popularity  of  quiz-compends.  The 
majority  of  the  latter,  however,  err  in  going  to  the  opposite  extreme.  They 
are  often  too  skeletal  and  juiceless,  deal  too  exclusively  with  the  baldest  facts, 
and  too  little  with  reasons,  to  satisfy  the  student  who  has  a  care  to  know  his 
profession,  and  not  merely  to  pass  his  examinations. 
The  writer  of  this  work  seems  to  have  appreciated  the  situation  and  to  have 
avoided  both  extremes.  He  has  given  the  essentials  of  a  vast  subject  within 
the  limits  of  less  than  four  hundred  pages,  and  has  done  it  in  a  way  that  is  far 
from  dry  and  uninteresting.  Excellent  judgment  has  been  exercised  in  the 
selection  of  the  facts  to  be  presented  and  those  to  be  excluded,  so  that  the  book 
contains  little  that  is  not  of  direct  value  to  the  practitioner.  What  the  author 
says  about  the  action  and  uses  of  drugs,  while,  of  course,  condensed  and  pithy, 
is  singularly  lucid  and  full  of  helpful  suggestion  to  the  thoughtful  student. 
The  plan  of  the  book  is  simple.  After  the  introduction,  which  deals  with 
such  topics  as  Official  Preparations,  Administration  of  Drugs,  Dosage,  Pre- 
scription Writing,  Physiological  Action  of  Drugs,  etc.,  the  different  materia 
medica  are  treated  of  in  the  following  order:  (1)  The  Acids;  (2)  The  Metals; 
(3)  The  Non-Metallic  Elements;  (4)  The  Carbon  Compounds;  (5)  The  Ani- 
mal Kingdom;  (6)  The  Vegetable  Kingdom. 
E.  S.  Bastin. 
Year-Book  of  Pharmacy.    London:  J.  &  A.  Churchill.    1895.    Pp.  455. 
The  present  volume  of  this  valuable  annual  is  fully  up  to  the  standard  of  its 
predecessors.  The  excellent  character  of  the  papers  read  at  the  Bournemouth 
meeting  we  have  commented  on  before,  and  most  of  them  were  published  in 
abstract  in  the  September  number  of  this  Journae. 
Contribution  to  the  Feora  of  Yucatan.  By  Charles  Frederick  Mills- 
paugh.  Field  Columbian  Museum:  Publication  4.  Botanical  series,  Vol.  I, 
No.  1.    Chicago,  1895. 
We  learn  from  the  introduction  "that  little  is  known  of  the  details  of  the 
botany  of  Yucatan,  except  that  it  is  very  poor  and  scanty,  and  largely  com- 
posed of  plants  that  still  bear  long  droughts  without  injury.  The  poverty  of 
the  flora  is  ascribed  to  the  fact  that  the  copious  rains  rapidly  filter  away  through 
the  porous  limestone  substratum. 
