practical guide to the practitioner who may not have had the advantage of a large clinical experience in this field, treatment both medicinal and non-medicinal, hygienic measures, disinfection, etc., are all covered with careful, complete details.

In illustrations the book is rich indeed; the pictures alone. are easily worth the price of the book. It is a work which should find a readily accessible place on the shelves of every practicing physician.

PRACTICAL PROBLEMS IN DIET AND NUTRITION. By MAX EINHORN, M. D., Professor of Medicine at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, and Visiting Physician to the German Hospital. 8vo, cloth, pp. 64. Wm. Wood & Co., Publishers, New York, 1905.

This little booklet consists of six very practical chapters, being a collection of papers written by Dr. Einhorn which have appeared in medical journals, and will be of considerable interest to both students and practitioners, who as a rule do not pay sufficient attention to so important a subject. In fact, we are rather too prone to rely far too much on the administration of drugs, devoting too little attention to dietetics and other hygienic meas

ures.

SURGICAL DIAGNOSIS, A Manual for Practitioners of Medicine and Surgery. By Orro G. T. KILIANI, M. D., Surgeon to the German Hospital; Member of the New York Surgical Society; of the Surgical Society of Berlin (Germany), etc., etc. 8vo, cloth, pp. 449. Illustrated by fifty-nine full-page plates and engravings in the text. Wm. Wood & Co., Publishers, New York, 1905.

In this most excellent addition to medical and surgical literature the introductory chapter gives the various methods of examination and how to carry them out properly. The special part has been arranged in anatomical order, beginning at the head, after the method of von Bergmann's Handbook of Surgery.

In most instances he gives the concensus of opinion of the best recognized authorities, and where surgical questions are of too recent date to have been decided definitely, he gives his own personal opinion, founded on experience.

The tables are all original except in a few instances, where

proper credit is given; and with the exception of a few figures, re-drawn after illustrations in standard works, the cuts are original.

It is a most excellent and valuable work, and will enable the practitioner to decide definitely and correctly many questions decidedly difficult as to whether an operation is advisable or not. The operations which may become necessary, and the selection of the particular operation, as well as the prognosis, have been mentioned only when important for the practitioner to know them when proposing operation to the patient.

The opinions are lucid, the statements concise, and the language plain and simple.

"ATONIA GASTRICA (Abdominal Relaxation). By ACHILLES ROSE, M. D., and ROBERT COLEMAN KEMP, M. D. 12mo, cloth, 215 pages, illustrated. Price, $1.00, net. Funk and Wagnalls Co., Publishers, 44-60 East 23rd St., New York, 1905.

The object of this book is to present facts which demonstrate the relations of abdominal relaxation to a number of pathological conditions, and to show the importance of these relations in regard to the etiology, pathology, and therapy of the diseases of the stomach, the abdominal organs in general, the organs of respiration, of circulation, and the nervous system. The book also describes and treats on the significance of the plaster strapping

as the most rational therapeutic measure..

for Students and Practitioners.

ARNEILL'S EPITOME OF CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS AND URINALYSIS. A Manual (Lea's Series of Medical Epitomes. Edited by VICTOR C. PEDERSEN, M. D.) By JAMES R. ARNEILL, A. B., M. D., Professor of Medicine and Clinical Medicine in the University of Colorado, Physician to the County Hospital and to St. Joseph's Hospital, Denver. In one 12mo volume of 244 pages, with 79 engravings and a colored plate. Cloth, $1.00, net. Publishers, Philadelphia and New York, 1905.

Lea Brothers & Co.,

This is the seventeenth volume of Lea's Series of Medical Epitomes, and Dr. Arneill has furnished a fit companion to the

others of this series.

It contains an enormous amount of up-to-date information on laboratory investigations and clinical diagnosis, skilfully condensed, simply and clearly stated. The sections on the blood and urine are very full, but sufficient consideration is also given to the examination of stomach contents, feces, sputum, many bacilli, cerebro-spinal fluid, milk, etc.

Illustrations are freely used wherever they can help to a better understanding of the text.

Selections.

WHY DOES THE SOUTHERN NEGRO ESCAPE THE RAVAGES OF SYPHILIS? When we compare the effects of syphilis on the white and colored races, we are struck with the remarkable fact that the negro escapes the disastrous sequela of late constitutional poisoning almost entirely; and added to this we may say, whether he is treated or not for the malady.

Of course this broad statement is likely to be questioned by those who have not given the subject careful study, and who have assumed that syphilis affects all alike and runs about the same course in the average case.

But the negro of the South, especially the out-of-door laborer, is not an average case - he is an exception - and as far as we have observed, the black negro (we do not mean mullattos and mongrels), whether in or out of doors, possesses a remarkable immunity to the graver constitutional forms of syphilis. It is true, primary syphilis attacks the negro with even more severity than it does the white man, but it practicallly goes through him— affects him thoroughly, gives him cutaneous lesions, and knocks him around generally. But the negro who lives on good, plain food, leads an out-of-door life, especially in the sun, avoids overindulgence in alcoholics, wisely avoids saturation with the iodides in fact, neglects standard lines of medication -- will, after one summer of sweat and sunshine, find himself with a sleek hide and all of his syphilis left behind.

We have treated thousands of cases of syphilis in white and colored patients, and this has been our observation. According to the conditions existing among the colored race, there should be ten times as much syphilis among them as among the whites. According to the ignorance and carelessness of those afflicted with the disease, there should be ten times as much constitutional trouble as we would find among the whites; and yet how many negro children do we see born with hereditary syphilis? We will venture the assertion that it is an extremely rare thing. to find a negro baby with hereditary syphilis, though the idea is very prevalent that the negro race is all syphilitic. It is a popular belief, but an erroneous one, certainly so far as chronic constitutional infection goes.

Now what are we to learn from this observation?

The first important lesson is that there is a decided difference between a negro and a white man! Some people seem to think there is none whatever! Apart from any facetiousness, we wish to say that it teaches us that syphilis is eliminated from the system by the emunctories, and is not antidoted and neutralized altogether by drugs administered. We believe that the negro sweats out his poison, and improves his reconstructive elements by his exercise and labor in the open sunlight, which stimulates digestion and assimilation.

The next lesson - and the most important one - is the minimum amount of drug poisoning he gets in treatment. We have for many years seen the direst results follow over-zealous and indiscriminate drug administration in the hands of inexperienced practitioners, and many woeful cases have fallen into our hands in which the mercurial and iodine poisoning had wrought havoc which was charged to a malady which could have been cured long before by milder and more rational and scientific measures.— C. A. Bryce, M. D., in Southern Clinic.

THE DISORDERS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ARISING IN THE COURSE OF CHRONIC NEPHRITIS.-W. M. Leszynsky says that, aside from the various neurasthenic manifestations occurring in patients with chronic nephritis, many of the transitory subjec

tive nervous phenomena arising during the course of the disease are the result of uremic (or possibly other) intoxication in varying degree, while nearly all of the transitory objective nervous phenomena, and the more permanent and incapacitating or fatal complications are primarily due to the concomitant arterial disease. Hence palpable evidence of arteriosclerosis and high blood-pressure is usually of the greatest significance. The many forms which the nervous disturbances attendant on nephritis assume are described in detail, and several illustrative cases are cited in which the failure to recognize the uremic condition underlying symptoms apparently of nervous origin led to serious results. Medical Record, May 20, 1905.

THE TREATMENT OF WOUNDS WITH PERUVIAN BALSAM.The writer treats wounds such as usually occur in large factories by first cleansing the surfaces with sublimate solutions, and then dropping pure Peru balsam over the bruised areas and applying gauze immersed in balsam. The dressings should be changed every two or three days. The wounds heal quickly and are easily kept clean. The gauze does not adhere to the wounds, as occurs in using dry dressings, neither does it macerate the tissues like moist dressing. He has also treated varicose ulcers with fairly good results.- So. Med. and Surgery.

THE CURABILITY OF EARLY PARESIS.-C. L. Dana, New York (Jour. A. M. A., May 6), suggests that paresis, like tabes with which it is closely related as a parasyphilitic disorder,- may be arrested in its earlier stages. By "arrested" he does not mean the well-known remissions of the disease; in these, he says, there still remains a certain amount of paretic mental impairment, but he rather means a complete disappearance of all evidence of degenerative changes in the brain. He reports a number of cases illustrating his contention, in which symptoms decidedly indicative of paresis appeared, characteristic mental changes, convulsions, Argyll-Robertson pupil, etc., but which disappeared under treatment, and the patients remained well for