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The International Encyclopedia of Surgery. A Systematic Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Surgery by Authors of various Nations, edited by John Ashhurst, Jr., M. D., Professor of Clinical Surgery in the University of Pennsylvania. Illustrated with chromo-lithographs and woodcuts. In six volumes. Volume VI. New York, William Wood & Company, 1886.

This is the concluding volume of this Encyclopedia, and we have yet to hear any words, other than of praise and satisfaction, from any of the subscribers. It is certainly the most complete work on practical surgery ever published. It is not, of course, a text-book for students: it is a work for mature practitioners and surgeons, and in the libraries of such it will occupy a chief place.

This volume treats of the diseases and injuries of the esophagus, intestinal obstructions, diseases of the rectum, genito urinary diseases, Cesarean section and its substitutes, ovariotomy, diseases of bones, and orthopedic surgery. It also contains an Appendix treating of the construction of hospitals, military surgery, and the history of surgery. The Library of Wit and Humor. Prose and poetry selected from the libraries of all times and nations, edited, with biographical and critical notes, by A. R. Spoffard, Librarian of Congress, and Rufus C. Shapley, author of "Solid for Mulhooly." Illustrated with fifty choice etchings. In five volumes 8vo: cloth, 400 pages each, $15. Philadelphia: Gibbie & Co., 1885. Cincinnati: M. E. Morehouse, 227 Main Street, Room 96.

This is, of its kind, a most excellent compilation. Not only are all our modern wits here enshrined-such as Billings, Twain, Holmes and others, but also the ancient and classical ones. It is an excellent work to pick up when one needs a laugh, and also to loan to a convalescent patient whose "blues" need dispelling.

Medical and Surgical Directory of the United States, comprising a list of all the physicians in the United States, arranged alphabetically. Complete in one volume. R. L. Polk & Co., Detroit, Mich., publishers. 1886. Price, $7.00.

The character and scope of this work are well indicated by its title. It contains the names of nearly 80,000 practitioners, arranged alphabetically by State, city, and post office. Each name is accompanied by information regarding place and time of graduation, when obtainable.

A descriptive article precedes the name of State and Territory, giving its location, boundaries, extent, climate, temperature, population, rate of mortality, mineral springs, medical institutions and societies, and the full text of all laws relating to the profession.

In addition, the 80,000 names are arranged alphabetically, accompanied only by figures, whereby the reader can readily find each name in its appropriate place in the directory proper. This list will enable any one to find the present location and address of any physician in the United States whose name he knows, and will, doubtless, bring many old friends into communication.

The book is a valuable one for many purposes, though of course not entirely free from errors.

The Surgical Diseases of Children. By Edmund Owen, M. B., F. R. C. S., Surgeon to the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London. 12mo., 585 pages, with four chromo-lithographic plates and 85 engravings. Cloth, $2. Philadelphia, Lea Brothers & Co., 1886.

Mr. Owen has here embodied the results of his experience in the study of infantile disorders. Chapters are devoted to all the common, and a great many of the uncommon, diseases, deformities and malformations which seek for the surgeon's assistance. Physicians doing a general family practice will be glad to have this manual for reference in their children's cases.

We notice a few points.

For a poultice he recommends a piece of lint wrung out of warm water and applied under rubber tissue.

Of Dwyer's method of passing a tube into the larynx in croup, the author says: "After due consideration, one feels justified in discoun

tenancing it."

In a list of food preparations, he speaks very highly of Carnrick's beef peptonoids, which, he says, "contain the nutritive elements of the meat with the solid constituents of milk and gluten."

For large nevi, reliance can be placed only on the thermo-cautery or electrolysis.

For opening in empyema he recommends the fifth intercostal space. Resection of the ribs should never be done as a primary measure.

We feel like saying "amen" to his opinion of iodine as an external application: "Iodine as an external application seems to have acquired a wide-spread reputation; possibly not a little of its virtue rests in the color it gives to the skin."

Diseases of the Stomach and Intestines. A Manual of Clinical Therapeutics for the student and practitioner. By Prof. Dujardin Beaumetz, Paris, France. Traslated from the fourth French edition by E. P. Hurd, D. D., with illustrations and one chromo-lithograph. Cloth: 8vo. pp. 390. William Wood & Co., New York, 1886. The author, well known as a teacher of practical medicine, thus explains the scope of his work :

6.

Although this work is entitled 'Diseases of the Stomach and Intestines,' it is less a treatise on the pathology of these affections than on the treatment to which, in fact, all other considerations are made subordinate. I have given especial attention to foods and alimentation. In these disorders hygienic therapeutics occupy the first place. The patient will be much more likely to find the means of his cure in the observance of a strict and well-regulated diet than in the administration of pharmaceutical drugs."

The translator has done his work well, and the publisher has supplied illustrations as needed, and one chromo-lithograph setting forth to the eye the composition of the principal elements. The volume is one of the series of Wood's Library of Standard Medical Authors. A treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System. By William A. Hammond, M. D., Surgeon General U. S. A. (retired list). Professor of diseases of the mind and nervous system in the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, etc., etc., etc., with one hundred and twelve illustrations, eighth edition, with corrections and additions. Cloth: 8vo. pp. 945. $5. D. Appleton

& Co., New York, 1886.

Columbus: Geo. H. Twiss.

The author very justly calls attention to the fact that the previous editions have received the approval of the profession beyond that ever given to any other werk of like scope and objects published in any part of the world. He has subjected this edition to a thorough revision, and has added a new section treating of tetany, Thomsen's disease, miryachit, and other obscure affections.

The author's style is clear, forcible, and to the point. Illustrative cases are drawn largely from the extended experience of the author. The difficulties of diagnosis, which are usually regarded as especially great in many diseases of the nervous centres, are greatly reduced by a graphic arrangement of the symptoms.

Facts and Mysteries of Spiritism. Learned by a seven years' experience and investigation. With a sequel. By Joseph Hartman. Philadelphia: Thomas W. Hartley & Co.

Bosh!

Instructor in Diseases of the Skin and Syphilis in the Imperial University of Vienna.

A Paper Presented to the Ohio State Medical Society, June, 1886.

Translated from the German by G. A. Collamore, M. D., Toledo, Ohio.

I will now collate various more recent accounts of the treatment of gonorrhea since the year 1871, and consider their usefulness. Some authors recommend for the cure of chronic clap the introduction of bougies, covered with ointment or drying gelatine, in the diseased urethra; others advise the employment of easily dissolving suppositories, which contain a greater or less dose of the astringent remedy. I can only declare as to this that I have obtained no better results from this mode of treatment than from carefully managed injections. Cleborne, in 1871, after he had used this method for ten years, was compelled to make similar assertions. He made bougies of a lead rod of suitable size, with the end carefully rounded. After the point of the bougie had been split to the depth of one-fourth of an inch, the ends were beveled. If such a bougie be dipped in vinegar or nitric acid until covered with a coating, a more rapid cure may sometimes be accomplished with it than with a bougie made of lead alone. Cleborne

has sometimes covered a bougie with carbonate of lead and cacao butter, and thinks that in this way the astringent metallic salts, tannin, etc., may be introduced. Soluble substances may be combined with a gelatine solution, with which the bougie is anointed. This method, Cleborne maintains, recommends itself for its ease of management and for the certainty of the application of the incorporated medicament to the urethral mucous membrane; but an unvarying result is to be expected from this mode of treatment as little as from every other. More recently in similar manner medicated metal sounds have been recommended by Auspitz, Unna, and Leopold Casper. Unna usually employs tin sounds, covered with an astringent ointment. He medicates his sounds by introducing them, correspondingly bent, into a glass cylinder shaped like a half moon, filled with the melted ointment, and then hanging them up to dry. The ointment recommended by Unna is solid at ordinary temperature and melts by the heat of the body. In this method of treatment Unna acts upon the endeavor to employ, with the chemical effect of the coating of the ointment, the mechanical effect of the metallic sound upon the swollen and tumid urethral mucous membrane.

Besides this, by means of previous endoscopic examination, the ointment used on the sound can be dissolved exactly upon the diseased portion. Casper noticed some disadvantages in the use of Unna's sounds. First, increase of discharge after repeated introduction, because the narrow places were irritated by the hard ointment mass. Second, if unsuccessful in introducing the covered sound, one must wait till the ointment melts, but, as it will be wiped off by the narrow parts of the urethra, it will have no effect on the the parts behind the stricture, where it should properly belong. Third, one should avoid introducing cacao butter into the bladder, unless positively necessary. Casper has, indeed, in consequence of this mode of treatment, seen a simple gonorrhea anterior transformed into a gonorrhea posterior and cystitis colli with violent tenesmus. (Similar symptoms may especially be observed in energetic treatment of the pars membranacea and prostatica.) Casper twice saw epididymitis arise during this treatment. To avoid these evils Casper had constructed a channeled German silver sound. This is slightly conical and twenty-five centimeters long. It has six grooves, about one and one-half millimeters deep, becoming shallower as they go back, and ending at five centimeters from the