Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/788

708 of Botany in Leland Stanford Junior University, has therefore undertaken the present work mainly for the purpose of presenting, in somewhat detailed form, a summary of the substance of the great mass of literature upon the subject that has accumulated, much of which is out of reach of the botanical workers who have not access to the great libraries. Papers published by him from time to time have served as the basis of the work, and these have been supplemented by somewhat extended series of observations, the results of which are published now for the first time. The illustrations were, as a rule, made by the author from his own preparations, and most of them expressly for this work. A bibliography of fourteen pages and a full index make the work complete as a book.

Limited as is the district to which this volume of the work is devoted, the southern tier of counties and the coast from the North Foreland to the Land's End, it presents an extraordinary variety of outline, soil, and climatic influences, and is hence of great interest to the climatologist and health-seeker. Each county is taken up separately. The general geological features and the surface configuration are first considered; then the climate, mortality statistics, and other facts bearing on the healthfulness of the more important towns; and finally a summing up of the diseases which are aggravated by and those benefited by a sojourn in this climate. For instance, "rheumatism prevails generally in Cornwall, which therefore is to be avoided by persons of rheumatic tendencies. The county as a whole presents influences, probably in the water, which are preventive of urinary stone and gravel." Devonshire, Somerset, Dorset, Hampshire, and the southeastern counties are dealt with in detail, and valuable conclusions drawn from their physical and climatic peculiarities. The portion of the work on medicinal springs occupies the last hundred pages, and consists of a consideration of the chemical composition of each water and its probable effect on the body, especially with reference to diseased conditions. The book contains a great deal of interesting information, much of which was before inaccessible to the general reader and practitioner, and with the companion volume promised will undoubtedly take rank as a standard treatise.

The rapid advances which have occurred during the past decade in all the sciences have been nowhere more marked than in the department of surgery. They have made necessary the publication of a book of 1082 octavo pages as a supplement to a work of six volumes which seven years ago was a complete and exhaustive treatise on surgery. In this volume the aim has been to obtain a digest of accepted and valuable facts; mere novelty and possible future value not being considered sufficient warrant for serious consideration. In carrying out the intention to make the volume a supplement to its predecessors, the authors of the several articles have so far as possible avoided repeating the contents of the previous work. Some topics were originally so elaborately treated as to now require but little discussion, while others—such, for instance, as brain surgery—which may almost be said to have come into existence during the past seven years, have called for more space than did the article in the main portion of the work.

Diseases of the Vascular System and Thyroid Gland is Part IV of a very thorough and extensive treatise on modern medical practice. While the subjects treated in this volume are few in number, they are of great importance to the general practitioner. The first article, to which more than half the volume is devoted, is on the diseases of the heart and pericardium, and was written by Dr. James T. Whittaker, of Cincinnati. An interesting section of the paper is devoted