Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/771

Rh with it. The woodcuts are in the most finished style of the engraver's art, and have been prepared at a lavish expense. Besides the array of fine woodcuts, illustrating the steam-engine in all its phases, there is a collection of elegant portraits interspersed through the work of all the principal men whose names are associated with its progress. These excellent likenesses cannot fail to heighten the interest that will be felt in the biographical features of the volume.

new project in scientific journalism, though under the responsible control of the eminent English physiologist, Dr. Michael Foster, has nevertheless so international a make-up as to give it a strong claim to liberal American support. Dr. Foster's corps of assistant editors are all very able men; and when we say that the American cooperating editors are Prof. H. P. Bowditch, of Boston, Prof. H. M. Martin, of Baltimore, and Prof. H. C. Wood, of Philadelphia, it will be seen that American science is well represented, so that there will be no excuse if the physiological work of this country is not fairly chronicled. We are glad to see these indications of a growing scientific unity and practical co-working between the two countries. The politicians will continue to nurse antagonisms and alienations in the interest of what they deem patriotism; it remains for Science to undo their work as far as it may by cultivating a policy of harmony and mutual helpfulness.

is to be a record of original research and progress in this branch of science; but its editors give a wide and rational construction to the term "progress" as applied to physiology. While experimental manipulation will remain the fundamental means of getting at facts, it will still be recognized as legitimate to think about the facts and find out their meanings. The editors say in their announcement:

"The physiologist works not only by experiment, but also by observation, and indeed by what is often depreciatinglydeprecatingly [sic] spoken of as speculation. The conductors of the Journal would be the last to wish that its pages should be occupied by idle writing and the exposition of baseless views; but they would be equally unwilling to refuse a paper because it threw light on a subject by rearranging old facts rather than by bringing forward new ones."

The relations which the periodical will sustain to the medical profession, from which it ought to derive a strong support, are thus indicated:

"No branch of study during recent years has been more fruitful in physiological truths than the investigations into the action on living organisms and tissues of the various chemical bodies known as poisons and drugs. Between such investigations and those into the action of medicines no logical separation is possible, and the physiologist who does not welcome the physiological truths gained by medical practice as warmly as those coming from the laboratory is unworthy of the name. So also a little reflection teaches us that the phenomena of disease are in reality the deeper and more hidden events of the body thrust up to the surface by some dislocation of the economy. Hence all communications, in which the results of pathological observation or experiments are discussed with the view of elucidating their causation rather than in the interests of clinical science, may fairly find a place in a journal devoted to physiology."

As The Journal of Physiology will be occupied with substantial original work, and as the supply of this kind of matter is not steady and regular, the issue of its successive parts and the amount of material they contain will be subject to the discretion of the managers. Instead of appearing at strictly regular intervals, the numbers will be issued at periods varying from two to three months, while from four to six numbers will form the annual volume of about five hundred pages. The Germans are falling into this mode of publication, which seems sensible for a periodical of this kind. One of its obvious advantages is, as the editors say:

Of the importance of the science of physiology, nothing needs here to be said. A great body of physiological truth has been established which is of such moment to the welfare both of individuals and of the