Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/578

560 completeness is given; and we have the folk music of various tribes and nations, described and illustrated with specimens, in its different degrees of development. Next, the religious aspect of music is referred to, and the beginning of harmony is discussed in connection with the appearance of Christian church music. The era of pure choral music succeeding this is followed by the rise of secular music, with the history of opera swaying to and fro in the struggle between the musical and dramatic elements for predominance. Instrumental music is next studied in its early and middle stage; the sonata; and finally the modern developments, with all their varieties of style and form. In these discussions the typical works of each age. form, and style are described and analyzed, the work done by the composers who have made epochs in the progress of the art or established new forms is examined into, and each point is illustrated by the introduction of scores. Wagner is the latest master who has left a distinct mark in the growth of music, and the nature and effect of the most characteristic features of his compositions are inquired into in what seems to us a truly judicial spirit. 

Chemistry in Daily Life embodies the substance of a course of lectures delivered by Dr. Lassar-Cohn, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Königsberg, to a society in that town modeled after the celebrated Humboldt Academy of Berlin. The book is written in a popular style, and covers a very wide and important field. It is really a technological handbook of what is perhaps best described as household chemistry The subjects treated are necessarily extremely various, and, except from the side of their importance in the affairs of everyday life, are not in many instances very closely connected. The Physics and Chemistry of Breathing, Argon, Composition of Fats, Tetravalency of the Atom of Carbon, Vaseline, and Incandescent Gaslights are some few of the special headings in the first two chapters, and will perhaps serve to indicate the great variety of topics treated. Perhaps the most important chapters are the first five, which deal chiefly with the chemistry of physiology. Tanning and bleaching are given a chapter. Oil painting, modern-explosives, glass manufacture, photography, and metallurgy are other subjects receiving special attention. The work is necessarily more or less superficial, but it contains much information of importance to the ordinary householder. The translation seems to have been very well done.

The importance which proper nursing is known to have in therapeutics has led of late years to systematic courses in this subject, both at general hospitals and in special schools. These courses have made special text-books a necessity. Dr. Wise's work is the latest handbook of this sort to reach us. As the author says, the chief difficulty in a text-book of nursing is to strike a happy medium between a medical and a high-school text-book—to avoid extreme technicality on the one hand and a too superficial treatment on the other. Dr. Wise seems to have accomplished this. The first volume, with the exception of the last four chapters, which give some general instructions for the preparation and care of the sickroom, is devoted to a statement of the simpler facts of anatomy, physiology, hygiene, and sanitation which have a bearing on nursing. It is the second volume which is the real text-book. Methods of applying local remedies and bandaging are first taken up. The treatment of fractures, dislocations, inflammation, and hæmorrhage are next considered. Emergency work, artificial respiration, 