fourths inches. Hemorrhage increasing, he asked what the members thought the proper procedure.

J. B. Cowan suggested dilatation and delivery.

G. W. Drake coincided; could not see that any thing could be gained by waiting. Craniotomy if necessary.

J. W. Duncan would advise, if pelvis large enough to deliver head, immediate dilatation, version, and delivery as rapidly as possible. To attempt to apply forceps above the brim of the pelvis might cause. delay which would result in the death of the mother as well as the child. If the deformity precludes the possibility of natural delivery he agreed that cesarean section is the thing to do at once.

J. A. Witherspoon said that it was impossible to deliver head at two and a half or three fourths inches. Case should be watched and cesarean section performed.

C. M. Drake recommended symphysiotomy and immediate delivery. Dr. Douglas thought the indications clear. In placenta previa deliver immediately always. The high forceps operation difficult and dangerous, and his plan of procedure will be cesarean section.

The meeting was one of the most successful ones in the history of the society scientifically and socially. The evening of the first day was spent at the Centennial Exposition, and also the afternoon of the second day, when the physicians of Nashville tendered the visitors a luncheon at the Lion Roof Garden. About two hundred members and their ladies were present. The X-rays were exhibited at the close of the night session of the second day, showing bones, foreign bodies, deformities, etc.

The following resolution was passed:

Resolved, That the recent outburst of yellow fever in the South and numerous conflicting State and municipal quarantine regulations emphasize the great need of national quarantine laws, which are uniform and protective; and

Resolved, That the Tri-State Medical Society in convention assembled urge upon members of Congress the need of laws governing quarantine in the development of cholera, fever, smallpox, and plague.

The society will meet in Birmingham, Ala., next year. The date will be selected by the Committee of Arrangements.

The following officers were elected:

President, J. A. Goggans, Alexander City, Ala.; Vice-Presidents, Andrew Boyd, Scottsboro, Ala., G. W. Drake, Nashville, Ala., C. M.

Drake, Atlanta, Ga.; Secretary, Frank Trester Smith, Chattanooga, Tenn.; Treasurer, George R. West, Chattanooga, Tenn.; Chairman Committee of Arrangements, George S. Brown, Birmingham, Ala. Next place of meeting, Birmingham, Ala.

Reviews and Bibliography.

Annual of the Universal Medical Sciences and Analytical Index. A yearly Report of the Progress of the General Sanitary Sciences throughout the world. Edited by CHARLES E. SAJOUS, M. D., Paris, and seventy associate editors. Assisted by over two hundred corresponding editors, collaborators, and correspondents. Illustrated with chromo-lithographs, engravings, and maps. Five volumes. 3000 pp. Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago: The F. A. Davis Company. 1896. The changes made in this edition of the Annual are an increase in the length of the abstracts, so as to enable the reader to gather more fully the bearing of the contribution; the presentation of headings and side headings in large, black letters; the writing out of all prescriptions in full; the collection of all therapeutic subjects in one volume so that it may be used for ready reference, and an increase in the number of colored plates.

There is shown throughout an increased range of selection, and the work is truly a marvelous exhibition of the degree to which the world has been brought into one scientific confraternity. In the editorial staff appear the names of many of the world's foremost physicians.

As in former years scientific progress grows apace, but unfortunately as in other years therapeutic progress lingers. Such as it is, however, it is the best of all countries collected and collated with marvelous industry and great ability. A physician would have poor appreciation of the value of his time if, taking pleasure or finding profit in reading medical journals, or interchanging views with medical men, he did not find the time gained for him in this digest worth many times the cost of these volumes. Without some aid of this kind a man can indeed but flounder in medical literature, not mentioning the cost and difficulty of gaining it directly from the journals.

It is certainly discouraging to the seeker after therapeutic truth to find. observers getting diametrically different results from the same methods of treatment. Mostly this has to be set down to self-delusion, sometimes to fraud in the interest of selfish gain. But it is far better so than that all should be intolerantly united in the advocacy of some gross error, as in ages past. The extremes correct each other. The misfortune is that too many of these observers have not trained their intellects outside of their particular lines, and they are as little capable of seeing truth, except in the rare instances in which it might meet them in their own narrow path, as the

child raised up in Mohammedanism or Buddhism or any other theological mold, is capable of seeing light that comes from other than his own smoky lamp.

But worst of all are the venal, not seldom editors of medical journals, who pronounce for whatever there is money in. But it is gratifying to be able to say that these volumes do not lend themselves to the exploitation of such vermin.

D. T. S.

A Text-Book of the Practice of Medicine. By JAMES M. ANDERS, M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., Professor of the Practice of Medicine and of Clinical Medicine in the Medico-Chirurgical College, Philadelphia, etc. Complete in one handsome volume of about 1300 pages. Fully illustrated. Price, cloth, $5.50; sheep, or halfmorocco, $6.50. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. 1898.

The rapid strides made in the last few years in the knowledge of medicine, and especially the diagnosis and management of disease, creates a necessity for rapid revisions and production of new text-books by authors of large experience. The work here presented gives in a comprehensive manner the approved results of the latest scientific studies bearing on medical affections, and sets forth with rare force and clearness the clinical pictures of the various diseases considered.

Especial pains have been taken to bring out the practical points, particularly with reference to diagnosis and treatment, and present them in convenient form. One can not read these standard text-books without being impressed with the difference between their methods and conclusions and the writer in the average medical journal. He wanders in vain who looks in these pages for the marvels of animal extracts and coal-tar preparations. The authors of these works must have some rule by which to decide on the admission of new remedies. This is along classic lines, and will do more to increase the student's difficulty in the choice of a text-book, perhaps, than in any other way.

D. T. S.

The American Text-Book of Operative Dentistry. In Contributions by Eminent Authorities. Edited by EDWARD C. KIRK, D. D. S., Professor of Clinical Dentistry in the University of Pennsylvania, Editor of Dental Cosmos, etc. Illustrated with seven hundred and fifty-one engravings. 702 pp. Philadelphia and New York: Lea Brothers & Co. 1897.

Believing that the developments that have taken place in operative dentistry, along with the growth of specialism, have been so great that no one writer might do the subject justice, the publishers have adopted the composite plan of authorship for this work. The work claims to be essentially a new departure, old traditions having been subjected to critical study and rejected when found erroneous; where statements are made they are sought to be based on verified fact.

In addition to the multifarious features of purely operative dentistry, the authors have entered deeply into the anatomy and physiology of parts where these points were involved, showing what a high plane this department of medicine, for that is what it has become, now occupies. As

becomes a work of this kind the work is well supplied with a fine class of illustrations. If it were only to know what can be done not to be able to do it, this work would be a pleasant and even valuable accession to large numbers of physicians.

Traumatic Injuries of the Brain and its Membranes. With a Special Study of Pistol-shot Wounds of the Head in their Medico-Legal and Surgical Relations. By CHARLES PHELPS, M. D., Surgeon to Bellevue and St. Vincent's hospitals. With forty-nine illustrations. 582 pp. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1897.

The avowed object of this work is to present a concise and systematic exposition of the injuries which the brain suffers from external violence. It has been based almost exclusively upon an observation of five hundred cases of recent occurrence. The light they shed is complete, the author claims, except as to illustrating the secondary pyogenic infection involving the brain substance. In view of this clinical deficiency the consideration given to cerebral abscess has been supplemented by some account of the conditions of septic invasion and of the degenerative process which it occasions abstracted from Macewen's History of the Pyogenic Inflammations of the Brain and Spinal Cord.

The generalizations which have been made and the conclusions reached have in each instance been verified by necroscopic observation. It is a painstaking work based on scientific methods, by an able man with abundant opportunities, and a real as well as valuable contribution to surgery and legal medicine.

D. T. S.

About Children. Six Lectures given to the Nurses in the Training School of the Cleveland General Hospital in February, 1896. By SAMUel W. Kelley, M. D., Professor of Diseases of Children in the Cleveland College of Physicians and Surgeons, etc. 179 pp. Cleveland: Medical Gazette Publishing Company. 1897. The author in this work has gone over the usual ground covered by lecturers in training schools for nurses. What he has to say is told in a pleasant manner, and the work is gotten out in a style of typography more than usually attractive.

D. T. S.

Lectures on the Action of Medicines. Being the course of Lectures on Pharmacology and Therapeutics delivered at St. Bartholomew's Hospital during the summer session of 1896. By T. LAUDER BRUNTON, M. D., D. Sc. (Edin.), LL. D. (Hon. Aberd.), F. R. S., etc. 673 pp. Price, $4.00. New York and London: McMillan & Co. 1897.

Few books ever gave the medical philosopher greater satisfaction than Headland on the Action of Medicines. After. three decades of marvelous progress, one of the most philosophical minds in the ranks of medicine. gives us this the accumulation of the collective wisdom of the ages, up to the dawn of the twentieth century. Saying thus much is not saying that there is not room yet for vast gains in knowledge, that the next writer of capacity may not find much here to correct. But the work is along lines most profitable, and such as will lead up, we may hope, to the goal of satisfactorily certain knowledge in the administration of medicine.

The work is not heavy reading. It is intended for students, and has a great deal that is commonplace, but it is all interesting and must be profitable. To the beginner in practice it is hard to find a work to be commended before this, as being calculated to add zest to his studies.

D. T. S.

Practical Diagnosis. The Use of Symptoms in the Diagnosis of Diseases. Second edition, revised and enlarged. By HOBART AMORY HARE, M. D., B. Sc., Professor of Therapeutics in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, etc. Illustrated with two hundred and one engravings and thirteen colored plates. 605 pages. Philadelphia and New York: Lea Brothers & Co. 1897.

The object of this volume, the author tells us, is to place before the physician and student the subject of medical diagnosis as it is found at the bedside. Thus, instead of describing locomotor ataxia or myelitis, there will be found in the chapter on the feet and legs a discussion of the various forms of and causes of paraplegia, so that a physician who is consulted by a paraplegic patient can in a few moments find the various causes of this condition and the differential diagnosis between each.

To us it seems simply a well-arranged, thorough carrying out of the plan of diagnosis by exclusion. In this edition the unavoidable faults of the first edition have been expunged, and many new facts have been added. As an aid in diagnosis the work is one of the fullest and most helpful, as was to be expected from the gifted and learned author, and in fact as already shown in the previous edition.

D. T. S.

Constipation in Adults and Children. With Special Reference to Habitual Constipation and its Most Successful Treatment by the Mechanical Methods. By H. ILLOWAY, M. D., formerly Professor of Diseases of Children, Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery, etc. 495 pp. Price, $4.00. New York: The Macmillan Company. London: Macmillan & Co. 1897. This work, as its title indicates, is an exhaustive discussion of constipation from whatever cause, and its various methods of treatment. It is written with more than usual attractiveness of style, while the typographical make-up is unsurpassed, the spacings being full and the letter large and clear. With a short glossary it would make a fine work for popular reading. In fact the intelligent person suffering from constipation could not do better than to supply himself with such a work.

D. T. S.

Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, United States Army. Authors and Subjects. Second Series, Volume 11: B-Bywater. 954 pp. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1897.

At the present rate of progress it can hardly be far into future before we shall have indexes of index catalogues. An index expurgatorius, based not on want of orthodoxy, but on want of literary or scientific value, is the thing now most needed. For the present, however, the public must be grateful for the industry that can gather and collate so vast a number of contributions to the world's stock of medical and semi-medical literature.

D. T. S.