Am.  Jour.  Pharm. ) 
January,  1909.  j 
Book  Reviews. 
43 
and  medicine,  but  to  the  professor  and  the  practitioner  as  well,  has 
led  the  author  to  publish  a  third  edition,  in  which  certain  changes 
have  been  made. 
The  general  arrangement  of  the  book,  which  has  become  familiar 
in  the  previous  editions,  is  unchanged.  The  plan,  as  followed  in 
the  second  edition,  of  incorporating  a  number  of  additional  pre- 
scriptions without  comment,  for  students'  practice,  is  also  found, 
and  the  valuable  system  of  cross  referencing  the  prescriptions  them- 
selves is  continued. 
An  advantage  to  the  busy  prescriptionist  or  physician  wrould  have 
been  gained  if  a  cross  referencing  of  the  first  portion  of  the  book 
had  been  done  as  thoroughly  as  that  in  the  last  portion.  For  in- 
stance, agurin  is  not  cross  referenced  in  the  index  under  theo- 
bromine— sodium  and  sodium  acetate ;  also  phenazone,  which  is 
mentioned  in  prescription  No.  392,  is  not  indexed  at  all.  It  would 
have  been  an  advantage  also  to  have  indexed  Hexamethylenamina 
under  other  trade  names  besides  the  one  given,  which  is  Urotropin. 
It  is  somewhat  surprising,  also,  to  find  in  a  book  as  carefully  pre- 
pared as  this,  the  statement  on  page  41  regarding  Amylum,  that 
diastase  changes  starch  to  dextrin,  without  any  mention  of  the 
subsequent  change  to  maltose;  also  under  the  digestive  ferments 
pancreatin  and  pepsin  on  page  98,  no  mention  is  made  of  their 
mutual  incompatibility,  which  has  been  given  such  emphatic  pub- 
licity by  the  Council  of  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  of  the  American 
Medical  Association.  These  minor  defects,  however,  serve  but  to 
emphasize  the  value  of  the  book  as  a  whole,  and  the  third  edition 
will  be,  as  its  predecessors  have  been,  a  valuable  aid  to  the  phar- 
macist, whether  he  be  student,  proprietor  or  professor. 
C.H.  La  Wall. 
The  Chemist-Optician.  A  Survey  of  the  Theory  and  Practice 
of  Visual  Optics,  Especially  with  Reference  to  Sight  Testing  and 
Spectacle  Fitting.  The  Chemist  and  Druggist,  London.  Price 
$1.75.    From  McKesson  and  Robbins,  New  York  City. 
This  small  volume  of  210  pages  is  written  and  published  expressly 
for  retail  druggists,  who  in  a  great  many  parts  of  Great  Britain  as 
well  as  in  the  United  States  are  dealing  in  spectacles.  It  aims  to  do 
away  with  haphazard  processes  of  selecting  eyeglasses  and  gives 
the  dealer  the  scientific  principles,  optical  theories,  and  the  technic 
on  which  the  proper  fitting  and  adjusting  of  glasses  to  those  whose 
