A Text-Book of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, or the Action of Drugs in Health and Disease
1903
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
Holmes' book is founded on an accurate knowledge of the modern principles of pedagogics. He realizes that the student who learns a general principle of surgical pathology or practice is, by the very acquisition, a changed man. If many principles are learned, the theory of surgery is in the grasp of the student. Holmes' book is written in a new old way and represents a return to the simpler style of a simpler surgery. Actual clinical cases are used as a starting point in treating principles, and
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... in the choice of these cases the writer has not depended on his own experience alone but has freely quoted from current literature. The charm of Sir Astley Cooper, of Trousseau and of Billroth is in these simple pages. He who is in search of catalogued facts will consult an encyclopedia, a book of logarithms or interest tables, as need may indicate. But every seeker for the subtle relation between fact and theory which, when acquired, makes the real surgeon rather than the mere technician will read this new work. Practitioner and student may thus find equal profit in its pages. We predict that not only will this work find many readers but also many imitators, and that to the lasting profit of our genial art. This is a comprehensive work, covering the history, ethnology, biology and sociology of humanity in a compass of a little over 600 pages. The author is evidently a man of wide reading and a naturally suggestive and ingenious thinker. Notwithstanding his generally scientific accuracy, we notice several places wherein one might think that his information has been erroneous. At least, in some instances, he appears to have accepted as facts statements that draw on the credulity of the reader and seem to us somewhat irrational. Among these statements we can include such a one as that of the osteopathic school in Missouri selecting its anatomic subjects "on the hoof" in one of the asylums and some few other like instances, indicating a lack of faith in modern popular and political administration, which we think is undeserved. There is also a strong element of the author's personality evident in many of the pages in his comments on current matters, politics and the questions that come up from time to time in the news¬ papers. Perhaps the best chapters are those on heredity, hunger and love, the development of the mind, the senses and feelings and the instincts and emotions. The chapter on superstition will not suit the average believer in the Christian or in any other special religion, for the author is evidently, in his beliefs, what is sometimes called "broad" and his remarks on the subject are rather heterodox. His views on sociology also have several points for criticism, though, in the main, there is much of which everyone must approve. We regret that the author did not take time to get up an index, for a book of this character without an index is very unsatisfactory. It is not a book that one will pick up and read through as one would read a novel-at least the average individual will not do this-but there are subjects covered that one would be glad to look up in an index without having to wade through several chapters to find what is wanted. The Mycology of the Mouth. A Text-Book of Oral Bacteria.
doi:10.1001/jama.1903.02490200057021
fatcat:m22gxhneh5aj3nclvmzhyjpaby