molecular structure, or on the resulting dynamical relations, as well as on the fundamental attributes of the ultimate atoms. There is, therefore, no longer any reason for limiting the statement of the great fundamental law of definite proportions to the relations of elementary substance, and clearness of exposition is gained by giving to this statement the widest possible scope.
But unquestionably the most important advance in chemistry during the last decade has resulted from the study of the thermal changes accompanying chemical processes, which has proved that the law of the conservation of energy is a directing principle in chemistry as important as it is in physics. This study has developed an entirely new branch of our science called thermo-chemistry; and we now confidently look forward to a time in the near future when we shall be able to predict the order of phenomena in chemistry as fully as we now can in astronomy.
So important and fundamental have been the changes required by the recent progress that, in preparing this book for a new edition, the author has found it necessary to add a great deal of new material and in many places to rewrite the old, but he has endeavored to make the new edition, like the first, a popular exposition or the actual state of the science.Health in the Household; or, Hygienic Cookery. By Susannah W. Dodds, M. D. New York: Fowler & Wells. Pp. 602. Price, $2.
By hygienic cookery the author means the preparation of predominantly vegetable dishes without stimulating condiments or the assistance of ingredients hard to digest. On this subject she is in her own preferences radical, for not only would she discard heating meats and spices and grease of all kinds, but she intimates that she would do away with milk, and, going behind even the uncorrupted instincts of animals in a state of nature, would abolish salt. Exalting grains, fruits, and vegetables, as the predominantly suitable staples of human food, she has something to say of the manner in which these things should be combined in a single meal—what of them should be eaten together—that deserves attention. Radicalism and the statement of principles constitute, however, but a part of the book. In the practical part the author is more catholic, and gives recipes for dishes both in "the hygienic dietary"—that is, a dietary strictly according to her principles—and in an enlarged dietary of "compromise dishes," into which meat dishes and the least deadly errors of modern seasoning are admitted. Hygienic people do not appear confined to a spare or monotonous diet. Mrs. Dodds's list is full and various, and some of the dishes are as good any the gourmands have. Including the compromise dishes, the dyspeptic who is strong enough to bear them can, after all, live like an epicure.
La Fabula de los Caribes. (The Fable of the Caribs.) By Juan Ignacio de Armas. Havana: Francisco S. Ibañez. Pp. 31.
This monograph is numbered I of a series of Americanist studies, and is a paper which was read before the Anthropological Society of Havana, at a date not given. It traces the fable of the Caribs—who were reported to be neighbors of the Amazons, to be cannibals, and to flatten their heads—from its origin with the ancients and its primitive location on the Black Sea, through the mutations it underwent with the authors of the middle ages, to its final location by the Spanish chroniclers in the newly discovered regions of tropical America. Having examined the grounds on which the characteristics first ascribed to the Chalybs of the Euxine were assigned to the Caribs of America, he finds that they were false, and that our Caribs were a people of mild and peaceful habits. "The fable of the Caribs," he says, "was in the beginning a geographical error; then a hallucination; and finally a calumny."
Reflex Nervous Influence, and its Importance as a Factor in the Causation and Cure of Disease. By D. T. Smith, M. D. New Orleans.
Reflex influence is that property of the nervous system by means of which, when one organ is affected, some other one responds to its call and acts instantaneously with it for the common good. It is an important factor in many relations of the individual to its environment; and familiar instances of its operation may be found in the daily actions of men and beasts. Dr. Smith conceives its function to be much more general than has been supposed, and would extend it to cases of disease. Thus colds are cases of the response of some correlated internal nerves, now of one part, now of another, to impairment of vitality in the cutaneous nerves. Poultices act favorably by stimu-
