Exophthalmic goître as a sequel of influenza : strophanthus as a remedy, and the effect of overdoses of thyreoid extract.
- McAdam, R.L.
- Date:
- 1894
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Exophthalmic goître as a sequel of influenza : strophanthus as a remedy, and the effect of overdoses of thyreoid extract. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![does not aim to be compendious, but simply gives such facts as may be of daily use. One of the most concise as well as interesting chapters in the volume is that on habitations. It describes the various sanitary features of a house and the method of making a sani- tary inspection thereof. The chapter on sewage is somewhat too concise. The authors have evidently aimed to make their work com- pact rather than comprehensive ; and, while this has caused the omission of certain topics that are familiar in works on hygiene, the reader will appreciate their avoidance of voluminousness. What the book does give is, on the whole, a practical sum- mary of recent progress in hygiene. The Technique of Post-mortem Examination. By Ludvig Hektoen, M. D., Pathologist to the Cook County Hospital, Chicago, etc. With Forty-one Illustrations. Chicago: The W. T. Keener Company, 1894. Pp. viii-172. [Price, $1.75.] The author states that, while this little book has been pre- pared for the guidance of medical students, still its scope and method have been arranged with the intention of making it useful to the practitioner. The form of record and the instruments employed, as well as the various steps in the examination of the body, are de- scribed, and the text is elucidated by forty-one illustrations, but we note that Figure 24 is a repetition of Figure 5. We are glad to see that the author urges that the necropsy should be made as soon as practicable after death. The work is admirably arranged and printed, and it is the best manual on this subject that we have seen. A Theory of Development and Heredity. By Henry B. Orr, Ph. D., Professor at the Tulane University of Louisiana. New York and London: Macmillan & Co., 1893. Pp. ix-255. [Price, $1.50.] The author considers that an explanation of growth, devel- opment, and inheritance is afforded by the assumption of the creation of a primitive mass of protoplasm that acquires nerv- ous co-ordinations which influence activity and growth. As this mass divides and subdivides it adds continually new co- * ordinations to those already acquired; the process of growth and development comes by repetition to have the character of reflex action—that is, becomes more rapid. “As the same forces act on each generation and form a series of stimuli that are similar for each generation, so each generation repeats in its life the course of development followed by all its ancestors.” We do not believe there is any evidence that will sustain the author’s conclusion that the greatest part of the molecular change which is brought about in living matter by the action of external forces is that change which occurs in the nervous organization. In the first place, he confounds the simulation of the functions of the nervous system with the existence of nervous structures. It does not seem to us that the latter need be assumed to explain the phenomena of development and heredity in plants and the lower animals. A study of the phagocytic activity of white blood-cells suffices to explain all such phenomena by analogy. And yet there is no change in the nervous organization of the phagocyte, and there is no nervous organization to be changed. Such a position ignores the inherent forces of a living cell, and the nervous system in living organisms is but an incident, a medium for the transmis- sion of afferent and efferent impulses in the lower forms, and, in addition to these, in the higher forms for storing impressions. The study of micro-organisms has shown that while, mor- phologically, there is no change, yet by changes in environ- ment a harmful may in successive generations develop into a harmless microbe. Such a change is necessarily consequent upon some intrinsic transformation of the micro-organism that is certainly independent of any nervous organization. Reason- ing by his method of analogy, subject to fallacy as such a method of logic has always been considered, we are justified in concluding that in higher forms of living matter molecular change is produced by the action of external forces independent of even the most elementary form of nervous structure. Neither heredity nor atavism satisfactorily explains all the phenomena of life ; and environment, including education and training, necessarily influences beneficially or disadvantageously the vital phenomena. We do not believe the evolutionary theory suffices to ex- plain either development or heredity, for there are gulfs in the continuity of the surface of such speculation that are, and probably will remain, impassable. The Deport of the Department of Pathology of the University College, London, 1892-93. Together with a Collection of Papers and Abstracts published from the Laboratory. Vol- ume I. Edited by Victor Horsley, F. R. S., F. R. C. S., and Rubert Boyce, M. B. This volume is composed of a collection of publications by investigators at work in the pathological laboratory of the Uni- versity College. The papers embraced in it have been pub- lished during the period from the beginning of 1892 to Alay, 1893, and have appeared in various medical and scientific journals. Actually the volume is a collection of reprints on pathology and histology, and it is a most creditable exposition, of the character of the work done in the institution. Relation d'une epidemie de cholera. (Etude clinique et experi- mentale.) Par MM. A. Mairet, professeur de clinique des maladies mentales et nerveuses, et F. J. Bose, chef de clinique des maladies mentales et nerveuses a la Faculte de medecine de Montpellier. Avec 4 planches et 11 traces dans le texte. Montpellier : Charles Boehm, 1893. Pp. 6-98. This volume gives the observations made by the authors during an epidemic of cholera at the Montpellier Insane Asy- lum in June and July of 1893. The disease was introduced into the institution by a male nurse from Marseilles, aDd there were fifty-five cases of cholera in all—twenty-three in males and thirty-two in females. The authors trace the origin and the course of the epidemie very carefully, and consider that, as the disease did not appear in the wards for females until sixteen days after it had existed, in those for males, the water supply of the institution could not be considered as the disseminating medium. The nurse first afl'ected had charge of the linen, and was on duty two days alter he became sick, so the authors think it is probable that the clothing was infected by him during those days. Their experience showed that the number of cases in- creased when the temperature and the height of the barometer were elevated. The symptomatology, pathology, diagnosis, prophylaxis, and treatment are very fully considered. Their brochure is an interesting account of a local epidemic of cholera and of its management. BOOKS, ETC., RECEIVED. Dissections Illustrated. A Graphic Handbook for Students of Human Anatomy. By C. Gordon Brodie, F. R. C. S., Senior Demonstrator of Anatomy, Middlesex Hospital Medical School,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22325311_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
