THE AMERICAN QUARTERLY MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL.1 THERE seem to be two ways open to those who desire the improvement of the microscope; historical proof of this statement is afforded by the classification of "Continental” and “Anglo-American" instruments which has always obtained. The characteristic of the Continental method has been the secondary position of the manufacturer; he has worked according to the intelligent demands of men who from Kölliker to Ehrenberg knew exactly the kind of instrument that they needed. The characteristic of the Anglo-American method has been the prominent position which the manufacturer himself has occupied in stimulating among the public - learned and otherwise-a taste for technical excellence which but few observers have been able to utilize. Few who wish to be considered patriotic would care to dispute the preëininence of American objectives; few who wish to be considered sane would deny the superlative value of Anglo-American glasses; at the same time we must allow that the greatest development of histology, in fact of all branches of science, has been accomplished by means of the inferior Continental instruments. Our superiority in objectives has been attended principally by a simple joy in possession, or at most by such an employment as that which resulted in the ecstasy of the Rev. Mr. Cook after gazing through the seventy-fifth. A similar distinction may be made between Continental and Anglo-American microscopical journals: in Germany the anatomical, botanical, and other special journals have absorbed the material that in England and America has gone to form a microscopical journal, leaving, perhaps, a certain amount of microscopical literature for society proceedings; England and America, on the other hand, have witnessed the rise and fall of a number of journals of this class.

When we compare the following words of an editorial of the new quarterly, "This leads us to a statement of what, in our opinion, a microscopical journal should be. Recognizing the value of microscopical study in the various branches of natural science, such a journal should aim to publish the results of research carried on with the microscope in every department," with the only article that we feel specially capable of appreciating, we feel afraid that the zeal of the editor has directed the aim of the journal almost too high for success; that originality and real character will be sacrificed in attempting to publish results of research in every department. We believe that a recent decease in English microscopical journalism was caused by the futility of such an attempt, and that prudence would counsel a more limited endeavor.

We express our opinion, however, with the utmost good will toward our latest and fairest attempt at microscopical journalism; if it fails to select the most scientific of anatomical and physiological papers it will without doubt do much to cultivate among its medical readers a generous interest in other departments of research, and, we hope, increase the amount of popular interest in the observation of nature.

1 The American Quarterly Microscopical Journal. Volume I. No. 1. October, 1878. Containing the Transactions of the New York Microscopical Society. Edited by Ro HITCHCOCK. 150 Nassau Street, New York.

HOLDEN'S OSTEOLOGY.1

THE superlative merits of the plates of this work and the pleasant style in which it is written have atoned for many deficiencies both in accuracy and fullness. We do not intend to imply that the text has been bad, but only that it has not been very good. The present edition is in many respects much better than its predecessors. It has been carefully revised; several additions and one most judicious omission have been made. An admirable plate has been added to illustrate the structure and development of bone, and there are also new wood-cuts for the same purpose. The chapter on this subject, though not exhaustive, is very satisfactory. We do not think it necessary to record the various technical criticisms we could make. The text, though not all it might be, is on the whole good, and can be safely recommended to students. We regret that the author devotes but a few words to the internal architecture of bone, and says nothing at all of it in describing the individual bones. This certainly, in view of many recent researches, is a serious deficiency. We must protest also against having Hutchinson's impossible theory of the action of the intercostals presented without a word of apology, or as much as a hint that its correctness has ever been questioned. The omission which delights us is that of the chapter on transcendental anatomy. Both students and teachers can employ their time better than in endeavoring to free the poor archetype from the mass of error and jargon that covers it.

T. D.

HILTON'S REST AND PAIN.2

THIS work is one of that class which makes reputations, its author being better known in this country for the valuable series of lectures he has published on this subject than for any other of his professional labors. To those who are not familiar with the book we would explain that this is not a compact little monograph on what might be supposed to be an easily handled subject, but a series of eighteen lectures illustrating the advantage of the applications of dry anatomical facts, too frequently forgotten by the surgeon by the time his experience is mature, to carefully prepared clinical studies. The relation of nerves to diseased organs, the condition of the nervous centres and the joints in surgical disease, the significance of pain as a symptom of disease, and the great value of rest as a fosterer of repair, or as a maintainer of the healthy action of an organ, are some of the points illustrated by a large number of cases and a generous supply of wood-cuts. The appearance of the book in its present form adds to the interest with which it will be received. It is the first of the new monthly series of Wood's Library of Standard Medical Authors, which is to be issued at such moderate prices as to place these 1 Human Osteology. By LUTHER HOLDEN, F. R. C. S. author, with the assistance of ALLAN DORAN, F. R. C. S. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston. 1878.

Fifth Edition, revised by the
With numerous illustrations.

2 On Rest and Pain. A Course of Lectures on the Influence of Mechanical and Physiological Rest in the Treatment of Accidents and Surgical Diseases, and the Diagnostic Value of Pain. Delivered by JOHN HILTON, F. R. S., F. R. C. S. Edited by W. H. A. JACOBSON, F. R. C. S. Second edition. New York: William Wood & Co. 1879.

books within the reach of those who have hitherto been unable to indulge in many of the more valuable writings of the day on account of their expense. It is part of the general movement to popularize literature of the highest order which should meet with universal encouragement.

JOHN BARNARD SWETT JACKSON.

THE death of Dr. Jackson comes upon us as a loss we had little contemplated and for which we were quite unprepared. Age had not left him unchanged, but it had never subdued his elastic and almost youthful nature. A sudden and brief illness, attended with less of suffering than that which we are too often called to witness, ended in a few hours of unconsciousness, followed by a quiet release.

No man has ever died among us who has been more universally loved and respected, or whose loss has been more felt than his will be by the members of the profession to which he belonged. He was less widely known to the community at large than many others, but it would be safe to say that no one ever heard his name mentioned but in tones of kindly regard, or his character referred to except as that of a man without guile, true as truth, pure as purity, honest as Nature herself, whose works he studied. It may sound like extravagant language to claim so much for him, but he was quite exceptional in the singular child-like simplicity and transparency of his character, and in using the expressions here applied to him it is only among those who did not know him that such words need fear questioning comment.

Born in Boston in 1806, he graduated at Harvard University in 1825, and took his medical degree in 1829. In 1847 he was appointed to the Professorship of Pathological Anatomy in the Medical School of the University, which office he held at the time of his death.

The class to which Dr. Jackson belonged in college numbered many distinguished names. At the head of it stands that of Charles Francis Adams, the man in whose firm hand the country felt its dignity and honor safe in the most perilous moments of its long agony. Admiral Charles Henry Davis, who united great scientific acquirements to the distinction he gained in his profession; Judge Ames, of the Supreme Court of the State; the Reverend Drs. Hedge and Lothrop, conspicuous among the clergy; the distinguished astronomer, Sears Cook Walker; John Langdon Sibley, as true-hearted an enthusiast in his Library as Dr. Jackson was in his Museum; Dr. Augustus Addison Gould, beloved as a practitioner, highly esteemed as a man of science, -all these names are in the list of graduates of 1825. Not one of those whose names are mentioned, living or dead, was more faithful in the task to which he set himself than our patient, unwearied Curator, our sincere and devoted teacher.

It was not as a practitioner that Dr. Jackson was chiefly known. He was not in all respects fitted for the every-day work which belongs to that laborious calling. He was perhaps too sensitive, and, if such a word may be ventured, too scrupulous, to work quietly and easily to himself, which is one great condi

tion of success. A great physician must have something of the great general about him, and more than one great general has left it on record that he could get a good nap on the battle-field in the interval of its decisive moments. The singular delicacy of Dr. Jackson's nature stood in the way of his success in the rough out-door world where men are necessarily jostled together in competition. With his vast knowledge of disease it might have seemed that he would be wanted everywhere in consultation. Perhaps he knew too much; knew the tricks of nature which baffle the most skilful diagnosticians too well to speak with that positiveness which is often decisive, in virtue of its personal emphasis, in cases where doubts are plenty and convictions feeble; where in the words of the great old master "the moment is pressing, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult."

It was not in the routine of medical practice that Dr. Jackson won that great reputation which reaches all over the land, and beyond it, wherever pathological science is cultivated. He studied disease in its effects upon the organs. There was a long series of years during which the ruined or injured vital machinery of our fellow-citizens, the cause of whose death was asked by those interested, was almost certain to pass under his thorough and careful inspection. The results he found in each case he minutely recorded. The history of the disease he took the greatest pains to learn. What Morgagni did for Valsalva he did for the whole medical profession of our city. In this way he accumulated a great mass of original materials, fresh transcripts from nature, which as far as they professed to go would be more likely to gain than lose by comparison with the famous works of an earlier day, the Sepulcretum of Bonetus, the great treatise De Sedibus et Causis Morborum, or the Clinique Médicale of Andral.

"As far as they professed to go." There is no propriety in comparing pathological anatomy as Dr. Jackson studied it with the pathological histology of a later epoch. He was not a microscopist. The telescope of the infinitesimal universe had not perfected its eyesight until long after he had become an adept in studying the larger aspects of diseased structure. What he knew he knew thoroughly, but he never pretended to have the slightest knowledge beyond what his honest naked eyes could teach him. He was not ashamed of their nakedness: in fact it was next to impossible to coax him to look through a microscope, he would turn away with "I know nothing about it," in a tone that implied he did not want to have anything to do with it. But these same honest eyes of his were very keen ones, and saw things with about as little of chromatic or other aberration as any that have opened to our dayligh His look penetrated like an exploring needle, and many a tympanitic fancy of careless observers has collapsed under its searching scrutiny.

This is not the place to do more than allude to the record he has left of himself in medical literature. For half a century he has been at work among us, and the inventory of his finished labors, were it made out in full, would astonish many of those who have seen him only when he was busied with some of those smaller tasks in which he was punctilious to an extent that now and then provoked a good-natured smile. He had the true genius of a curator, and was never tired of working at his specimens, to get them into the best condition and show them off to the best advantage.

To know what he accomplished one must visit the Cabinet of the Society for Medical Improvement. This was the child of his affections. It owed its being to him far more than to any other, perhaps than to all others. During its earlier years, at least, he was the life and soul of it, and it never lost its hold on his paternal interest. In 1847 he published a Descriptive Catalogue of this museum in a volume of three hundred and fifty pages. It was of this work that a distinguished Philadelphia professor spoke as being the most valuable contribution to pathological anatomy made up to that date in this country.

In this same year, 1847, the late Dr. John Collins Warren presented his large collection of pathological and other specimens to the Medical College. Dr. Jackson had no sooner entered on the duties of his professorship, to which was annexed the curatorship of the Warren Museum, than he began a long series of labors upon the preparations, having reference to their preservation, their proper arrangement and display, and, so far as possible, the obtaining of information as to their history. This was continued most patiently and diligently for more than twenty years, until, in the year 1870, Dr. Jackson published his Descriptive Catalogue of the greatly increased Warren Anatomical Museum in an octavo volume of seven hundred and fifty well-filled pages.

These "Catalogues" are much more than the words might lead one who read the titles on their backs to infer. A very large amount of valuable practical information is contained in the two volumes. All the specimens are classed systematically, and a large proportion of them described in such a way that each of the works may be consulted with profit in a great number of medical and surgical cases.

Dr. Jackson's unpublished medical records are voluminous, and if they could be published entire would prove a vast storehouse of important knowledge. Many of his observations have the merit of originality, some of them, it may be, which were truly his own, belonging equally to others. Among them may be mentioned, as having been considered at the time new and independent observations of Dr. Jackson's, the fact that the decidua was not a "false membrane," but a changed condition of a normal tissue; the partial antagonism or incompatibility between tubercle and cancer; the infrequency of tubercle in alcoholic subjects, to which might be added many small anatomical points which he was always ready to illustrate by his specimens. Those who knew Dr. Jackson's truthfulness would feel sure that he would claim nothing as his own discovery which he did not believe to be so, and those who knew his curious accuracy would be just as certain that such eyes as his must have seen many things which all common observers had overlooked.

As a lecturer Dr. Jackson was exact rather than fluent or copious in expression, but his knowledge was so genuine and so thoroughly his own that it commanded the closest attention and the greatest respect. For the last few years he has not lectured, but confined himself to his duties as curator. Never was there a more enthusiastic devotee to that particular kind of work. He was a picture of cheerful content in the midst of the fragmentary specimens of nature's handiwork by which he was wont to be surrounded. No student in the first flush of his boyish enthusiasm was ever more full of excite