Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/285

Rh usually overlooked by students of Hebrew history.

Altogether the book is an exceedingly interesting and useful study; and the thought presented strikes out a fruitful and an unusual line of comparison. The author is never dogmatic, but his spirit is always that of the careful student and the scientific inquirer. As a literary production the work is admirable; the style is clear, the diction elegant and finished, and the reader's interest is well sustained to the end.

treatise is intended as an aid to the student or medical practitioner when brought face to face with cases of paralysis of different kinds. Instead of setting forth in the fullest manner all that is known of the several forms of the disease, as may be done in special treatises, the author's endeavor has been throughout to facilitate diagnosis; to explain and gather up the essential points to be borne in mind by the student or practitioner when he is called upon to decide as to the nature of any case of paralysis, and give a prognosis concerning it. The various forms of paralysis are now so numerous, and so many advances have been made in our knowledge in the directions of their origins, that some such aid to diagnosis may well be looked for by those for whom this work is intended. The signs of paralysis of the different cranial nerves have been pretty freely dealt with, because the recognition of such paralysis, either alone or in association with paralysis in other parts, is often a matter of the greatest importance. As a knowledge of nervous diseases of the kind now looked for can not be attained without something more than a superficial acquaintance with the anatomy and physiology of the spinal cord, a plenitude of details, especially of anatomical details, is necessary in such a treatise as the present one is intended to be. The comprehension and recollection of these details have been facilitated, as far as possible, by illustrations. The threefold division of the subject suggested in the title is followed in the text; and, to the sections there indicated, another is added on paralysis due to lesions of the cranial nerves. The general course of the discussion of the subject is outlined in a few pages of introduction. Paralyses of encephalic origin are then taken up, with reference, first, to the several conditions that cause them, and next to the diagnosis, or the clinical considerations favoring the existence of this or that causative condition. The pathological diagnosis is considered as applied, in the apoplectic stage, to primary and secondary comas, and again after or in the absence of an apoplectic stage. Under the head of regional diagnosis are discussed the regional or localizing value of special symptoms that may be associated with the paralysis, and the clinical indications favoring the diagnosis as referred to lesions in parts supplied by the cortical and the basal arterial systems, and by the vertebral and basilar arteries, respectively. In the sections on paralyses of bulbar origin, the regional diagnosis is treated with reference to the diagnostic indications derivable from a consideration of the blood-supply of the bulb. Paralyses due to lesions of the cranial nerves are described with reference to the particular nerves involved. The pathological diagnosis of paralyses of spinal origin is described with reference to extrinsic causes and intrinsic causes. In the last hundred pages, full and particular accounts are given of the spinal diseases associated with paralysis, together with tabular exhibits of the diseases and of their relative acuteness or chronicity.

"Eastern United States" is meant, for the purposes of this manual, all east of the western boundaries of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana; and the region differs from the Atlantic province of Dr. Packard by the variance between State lines and a more sinuous line of elevation, and by the inclusion of the whole of Florida and the New England States and the exclusion of all of Canada. The book appears to have grown up in connection with the author's class-work in the Southern Illinois Normal University. It embraces a brief