Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/788

760 His plea for the validity and value of consciousness as a base of knowledge, and his demand for a place for the metaphysical method coördinate with the inductive, are suggestive and able. Belief in the past, trust in the reality of memory, in personal identity, in the uniformity of the order of Nature, and in an external world, is metaphysical—is made known by consciousness only, and is of the nature of faith.

We are reminded here from time to time, as we read, of Bixby's lately-published work on "Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge," but we have no space to attempt even an approach to a complete synopsis of the work, and must commend it to the personal examination of those interested.

is a painstaking book, that will hardly fail to prove instructive to the class of sufferers for whose benefit it has been prepared. Dr. Beard has supplemented his medical observations and experience of the disease, which he says is incorrectly termed "Hay-Fever," by an extensive series of inquiries put to patients in regard to numerous facts which it seemed impossible to get in any other way. He sent a circular containing fifty-five questions to a large number of persons, and received reports of some two hundred cases, giving much valuable information; and this, with his considerable personal practice, is made the basis of his treatment of the subject. In regard to the nature of the malady, he observes in the preface:

"The theory taught in this book, that this disease is a complex resultant of a nervous system especially sensitive in this direction, acted upon by the enervating influence of heat, and by one or several of a large number of vegetable and other irritants, has the advantage over other theories that it accounts for all the phenomena exhibited by the disease in this or in any other country.

"The transmissibility of the disease from parents to children; the temperaments of the subjects; the capricious interchanging of the early, the middle, and the later forms; the periodicity and persistence of the attacks, and their paroxysmal character; the points of resemblance between the symptoms and those of ordinary asthma; the strange idiosyncrasies of different individuals in relation to the different irritants; the fact that it is a modern disease, peculiar to civilization; the fact that it abounds where functional nervous disorders are most frequent, and is apparently on the increase pari passu with other nervous diseases; and, finally, the fact that it is best relieved by those remedies that act on the nervous system—all these otherwise opposing and inconsistent phenomena are by this hypothesis fully harmonized. Those, however, who are unwilling to accept this interpretation will in this work find a résumé that is meant to be both impartial and exhaustive of other theories, and of all known facts relating to this affection, wherever observed. . . . Bearing in mind that this work will find its readers mostly among the laity, and chiefly among the sufferers from the disease, the aim has been to avoid, so far as might be, purely technical words and phrases, and, while keeping strictly within the limits of science, to bring every point within the comprehension of those who know little or nothing of medicine, save what has been wrought into them by their own painful experiences with this distressing malady."

author begins his report with an allusion to the difficulty experienced by army medical men in getting their recommendations on sanitary matters attended to by the officers in charge of the posts, and follows this with the order of 1874, defining the duties of the medical officer so far as they relate to the hygienic management of the soldiers. This order seems broad