Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/873

Rh progressive agriculture which is really to educate a community is not accompanied by monthly displays of sky-rockets. A "fast" director of experiments may astonish the natives with his performances, but cautious deliberation is one of the first conditions of scientific success. Quickstep, hurrah-boys scientific agriculture, which demands that there must be something to show by a week from next Saturday that will make a rattle in the newspapers is quite too-too to be of much value to anybody. No doubt your enterprising American is not going to dawdle forever over miserable trifles, but for that simple reason not much is to be expected of him in the way of the substantial advancement of science.

book is intended as a guide to students in their early dissection-work. The experience of the authors has led them to choose the cat for the subject to be treated, as being the mammal most nearly resembling the human species, which is readily obtainable, and of convenient size to dissect and preserve. They begin at the beginning, and give full directions in regard to weights and measures, terminology, notetaking, instruments and their care, killing the animal, etc., and throughout the book the methods of dissecting and preserving the several parts are fully detailed. The book does not aim to describe all the muscles, veins, nerves, etc., of the animal, and it gives a large proportion of space to the viscera. The illustrations are numerous, and where possible the technical names are printed upon the several parts. There are numerous lists and tables, and many references to other publications, which afford collateral reading. While this is a work adapted to a physiological laboratory, where, no doubt, it has been prepared, yet it will be of service to many who are denied the opportunities of such an institution. It will be a very useful book for young students at home, who propose to pursue the medical profession. Like all other manipulation, the earlier dissection is practiced the better, and certainly the earlier the student gets an outline knowledge of practical anatomy by his own examination of anatomical structures, the greater will be his advantage when he comes to the crowded and multifarious studies of the medical college.

advancement of the healing art by means of experimental research is the subject of which this little volume treats, and which also forms the theme of the address that is prefixed to it. In England vivisection has been closely restricted by act of Parliament, and a society exists whose aim is to entirely suppress the practice. Dr. Owen demonstrates the unreasonableness of the supersensitive members of this society, by showing how immensely the physician's power of relieving human suffering has been extended by the knowledge gained by Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, by Hunter, and by later experimenters, through vivisection. He mentions aneurismal and intra-abdominal tumors, fevers, and nervous diseases as among the disorders for which vivisection has suggested means of successful treatment. Among the lesser ills he mentions the pain in teeth that have been filled, and states that a method of devitalizing the tooth-pulp was discovered through experiments on three dogs. "As many millions of human beings have been and will be, in the present generation, relieved through Dr. Arkövy's vivisections from sufferings equal to, perhaps greater and much more prolonged than, those which were endured in behoof of those millions by three dogs. Add to these millions the generations of the so-relieved in time to come."

is the retiring president's address, delivered before the Philosophical Society of Washington on the 2d of December last.